events from July 1558
to 1560. {87a} There are also imperfect records of the Parliament of
November-December 1558, and of the last Provincial Council of the Church,
in March 1559.

For July 28 {87b} four or five of the brethren were summoned to "a day of
law," in Edinburgh; their allies assembled to back them, and they were
released on bail to appear, if called on, within eight days. At this
time the "idol" of St. Giles, patron of the city, was stolen, and a great
riot occurred at the saint's fete, September 3. {87c}

Knox describes the discomfiture of his foes in one of his merriest
passages, frequently cited by admirers of "his vein of humour." The
event, we know, was at once reported to him in Geneva, by letter.

Some time after October, if we rightly construe Knox, {88a} a petition
was delivered to the Regent, from the Reformers, by Sandilands of Calder.
{88b} They asserted that they should have defended the preachers, or
testified with them. The wisdom of the Regent herself sees the need of
reform, spiritual and temporal, and has exhorted the clergy and nobles to
employ care and diligence thereon, a fact corroborated by Mary of Guise
herself, in a paper, soon to be quoted, of July 1559. {88c} They ask, as
they have the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular, for common
prayers in the same. They wish for freedom to interpret and discuss the
Bible "in our conventions," and that Baptism and the Communion may be
done in Scots, and they demand the reform of the detestable lives of the
prelates. {88d}

Knox's account, in places, appears really to refer to the period of the
Provincial Council of March 1559, though it does not quite fit that date
either.

The Regent is said on the occasion of Calder's petition, and after the
unsatisfactory replies of the clergy (apparently at the Provincial
Council, March 1559), to have made certain concessions, till Parliament
established uniform order. But the Parliament was of November-December
1558. {89a} Before that Parliament, at all events (which was mainly
concerned with procuring the "Crown Matrimonial" for the Dauphin, husband
of Mary Stuart), the brethren offered a petition, in the first place
shown to the Regent, asking for (1) the suspension of persecuting laws
till after a General Council has "decided all controversies in
religion"--that is, till the Greek Calends. (2) That prelates shall not
be judges in cases of heresy, but only accusers before secular