Mob violence, oppression by Protestant landlords, Kirk censure, imprisonment, fine, and exile, did their work in suppressing idolatry and promoting hypocrisy.
No doubt this grinding ceaseless daily process of enforcing Truth, did not go far enough for the great body of the brethren, especially the godly burgesses of the towns; indeed, as early as June 10, 1560, the Provost, Bailies, and Town Council of Edinburgh proclaimed that idolaters must instantly and publicly profess their conversion before the Ministers and Elders on the penalty of the pillory for the first offence, banishment from the town for the second, and death for the third.

{177c} It must always be remembered that the threat of the death penalty often meant, in practice, very little.

It was denounced, under Mary of Guise (February 9, 1559), against men who bullied priests, disturbed services, and ate meat in Lent.

It was denounced against shooters of wild fowl, and against those, of either religious party, who broke the Proclamation of October 1561.

Yet "nobody seemed one penny the worse" as regards their lives, though the punishments of fining and banishing were, on occasions, enforced against Catholics.
We may marvel that, in the beginning, Catholic martyrs did not present themselves in crowds to the executioner.