ded.

Before the Convention of Estates met, a thanksgiving day was held by the
brethren in St. Giles's, and Knox, if he was the author of the address to
the Deity, said with scientific precision, "Neither in us, nor yet in our
confederates was there any cause why thou shouldst have given unto us so
joyful and sudden a deliverance, for neither of us both ceased to do
wickedly, even in the midst of our greatest troubles." Elizabeth had
lied throughout with all her natural and cultivated gift of falsehood: of
the veracity of the brethren several instances have been furnished.

Ministers were next appointed to churches, Knox taking Edinburgh, while
Superintendents (who were by no means Bishops) were appointed, one to
each province. Erskine of Dun, a layman, was Superintendent of Angus. A
new anti-Catholic Kirk was thus set up on July 20, before the Convention
met and swept away Catholicism. {170} Knox preached vigorously on "the
prophet Haggeus" meanwhile, and "some" (namely Lethington, Speaker in the
Convention) "said in mockage, we must now forget ourselves, and bear the
barrow to build the houses of God." The unawakened Lethington, and the
gentry at large, merely dilapidated the houses of God, so that they
became unsafe, as well as odiously squalid. That such fervent piety
should grudge repairs of church buildings (many of them in a wretched
state already) is a fact creditable rather to the thrift than to the
state of grace of the Reformers. After all their protestations, full of
texts, the lords and lairds starved their preachers, but provided, by
roofless aisles and unglazed windows, for the ventilation of the kirks.
These men so bubbling over with gospel fervour were, in short, when it
came to practice, traitors and hypocrites; nor did Knox spare their
unseemly avarice. The cause of the poor, and of the preachers, lay near
his heart, and no man was more insensible of the temptations of wealth.

Lethington did not address the Parliament as Speaker till August 9. Never
had such a Parliament met in Scotland. One hundred and six barons, not
of the higher order, assembled; in 1567, when Mary was a prisoner and the
Regent Moray held the assembly, not nearly so many came together, nor on
any later occasion at this period. The newcomers claimed to sit "as of
old custom"; it was a custom long disused, and not now restored to
vitality.

A supplication was presented by "the Barons, gentlemen, Burgesses, and
others"