ment of the Reformation. He seems to have ultimately determined upon residing in Scotland; and, with this view, returned in 1558, or early in 1559. The town of Ayr, in which he had formerly lived in monastic seclusion, was now destined to be the place of his public ministrations; and he mentions St John's church as the place where he taught his doctrine "oppinlye befoir the pepil." Nor did he decline controversy with the popish ecclesiastics: for, in 1559, he became the opponent of Quentin Kennedy, the well known abbot
of Crosraguel;[1] and at a later period he had public disputes with Black, a Dominican friar, and with Robert Maxwell, a schoolmaster in Glasgow; but of neither of these has any account, so far as we are aware, been preserved. Early in 1559, Hamilton, archbishop of St Andrews, had summoned Willock, and some of the other protestant preachers, to appear before him; but their trial was prorogued by the queen regent's orders, and they were summoned to appear before the Justiciary court at Stirling. In the mean time, the gentlemen of the counties of Angus and Mearns, where the protestant doctrines prevailed, assembled with their followers, with the avowed intention of accompanying the ministers to Stirling. The queen regent became alarmed, and
promised to Erskine of Dun, "to take some better order." Upon the faith of this promise, they retired, and the ministers did not, of course, consider themselves as still bound to appear. But when the day of trial came, the regent ordered the summons to be called, the ministers outlawed, and their cautioners amerciated.
It is fortunate when such instances of duplicity meet with "the skaith and the scorn" which they deserve. This was certainly the case in the present instance. While the breach of faith alienated the affections of some of her best supporters, it had not even the temporary effect of retarding the progress of the new doctrines. In the following July, Willock preached in St Giles's, Edinburgh, to large audiences; and in harvest, the sacrament of the Lord's supper was publicly administered. The regent requested that mass might still be said, the church leaving it to the option of the people to attend the popish or the protestant service; but Willock and his party were sufficiently powerful to resist the proposal, and she had the mortification of seeing her wishes frustrated by the very men whom she had proclaimed rebels not two months before. She was to receive a yet more decided blow from them. In October, the nobility, barons, and burgesses, assembled at Edinburgh, to discuss the question, whether a regent who had contemptuously refused the advice of her born councillors,—who had infringed the laws, both of the realm and of common good faith,—and who had carried on a civil war in the kingdom, should be suffered any longer to rule tyrannically over them. After a statement of their opinions by Willock and Knox, she was solemnly deposed, and a council, assisted by four ministers, of whom Willock was one, was appointed to carry on the government, till the first meeting of a parliament.
The arrangements which followed the establishment of the Reformation, and the appointment of superintendents over provinces, have been noticed in several of the lives in this work. In September, 1561, Willock was ordained superintendent of the west, at Glasgow, in presence of some of the most powerful of the nobility.[2] From this period ceases everything in his history, that may be
- ↑ See an account of their controversy, so far as it proceeded, in Keith's History, Appendix, 193—9.
- ↑ Although the form of admission did not take place till that date, there is evidence that Willock was settled in the west, and had an allowance from the revenues of the archbishopric of Glasgow, as early as October, 1560, before the meeting of the first General Assembly. In the following January, his wife, who appears to have resided in England
