o
the horn. . . . " {276b}

It would be interesting to know who the Regent's Council were on this
occasion. The Reformer errs when he tells Mrs. Locke that the Regent
outlawed "the assisters" of the preachers. Dr. M'Crie publishes an
extract from the "Justiciary Records" of May 10, in which Methuen,
Christison, Harlaw, and Willock, and no others, are put to the horn, or
outlawed, in absence, for breach of the Regent's proclamations, and for
causing "tumults and seditions." No one else is put to the horn, but the
sureties for the preachers' appearance are fined. {276c}

In his "History," Knox says that the Regent, when Erskine of Dun arrived
at Stirling as an emissary of the brethren, "began to craft with him,
soliciting him to stay the multitude, and the preachers also, with
promise that she would take some better order." Erskine wrote to the
brethren, "to stay and not to come forward, showing what promise and
_hope_ he had of the Queen's Grace's favours." Some urged that they
should go forward till the summons was actually "discharged," otherwise
the preachers and their companions would be put to the horn. Others said
that the Regent's promises were "not to be suspected . . . and so did the
whole multitude with their preachers stay. . . . The Queen, perceiving
that the preachers did not appear, began to utter her malice, and
notwithstanding any request made on the contrary, gave command to put
them to the horn. . . ." Erskine then prudently withdrew, rode to Perth,
and "did conceal nothing of the Queen's craft and falsehood." {277a}

In this version the Regent bears all the blame, nothing is said of the
Council. "The whole multitude stay"--at Perth, or it may perhaps be
meant that they do not come forward towards Stirling. The Regent's
promise is merely that she would "take some better order." She does not
here promise to _postpone_ the summons, and refuses "any request made" to
abstain from putting them to the horn. The account, therefore, is
somewhat more vague than that in the letter to Mrs. Locke. Prof. Hume
Brown puts it that the Regent "in her understanding with Erskine of Dun
_had publicly cancelled_ the summons of the preachers for the 10th of
May," which rather overstates the case perhaps. That she should
"publicly cancel" or "discharge" the summons was what a part of the
brethren desired, and did not get. {277b}

We now turn to a fragmentary and anonymous "Historie of the Estate of
Scotland,