Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

and anger of Mary Stuart. But if the palace
mourned, the city rejoiced.[6]
We have missed the true character of this scene
if we have failed to see, not Mary Stuart and Knox,
but Rome and the Reformation struggling together
in this chamber. Where would Scotland have been
today if the vote of the Privy Council that night had
consigned Knox to the Castle, thence to pass, in a
few days, or in a few weeks, to a scaffold in the
Grass Market? The execution of the Reformer
would have been immediately followed by the
suppression of the ecclesiastical and educational
institutions which he had set up, and Scotland
plunged again into Popery would have been, at this
day, a second Ireland, with a soil less fertile, and a
population even more pauperized. Nay, the
disastrous consequences of the Reformer's
imprisonment or death would have extended far
beyond his native land.
Had Scotland been a Popish country at the time
of the Armada, in all human probability the throne
of Elizabeth would have been overturned. Nay,
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