While these things, with the native tendency to resist authority of any kind, appealed to the multitude, the position of the Church, in later years, recommended itself to many educated men in Scotland as more logical than that of Knox; and convert after convert, in the noble class, slipped over to Rome.

The missionaries of the counter-Reformation, but for the persecuting Act, would have arrived in a Scotland which did not persecute, and the work of the Convention of 1560 might all have been undone, had not the stringent Act been passed.
That Act apparently did not go so far as the preachers desired.

Thus Archbishop Hamilton, writing to Archbishop Beaton in Paris, the day after the passing of the Act, says, "All these new preachers openly persuade the nobility in the pulpit, to put violent hands, and slay all churchmen that will not concur and adopt their opinion.

They only reproach my Lord Duke" (the Archbishop's brother), "that he will not begin first, and either cause me to do as they do, or else to use rigour on me by slaughter, sword, or, at least, perpetual prison." {177a} It is probable that the Archbishop was well informed as to what the bigots were saying, though he is not likely to have "sat under" them; moreover, he would hear of their advice from his brother, the Duke, with whom he had just held a long conference.

{177b} Lesley, Bishop of Ross, in his "History," praises the humanity of the nobles, "for at this time few Catholics were banished, fewer were imprisoned, and none were executed." The nobles interfering, the threatened capital punishment was not carried out.