There was no expulsion of all Catholics who dared to stay; no popular massacre of all who declined to go.

While Morton was in power he kept the preachers well in hand.

He did worse: he starved the ministers, and thrust into the best livings wanton young gentlemen, of whom his kinsman, Archibald Douglas, an accomplice in Darnley's death and a trebly-dyed traitor, was the worst.

But in 1575, the great Andrew Melville, an erudite scholar and a most determined person, began to protest against the very name of bishop in the Kirk; and in Adamson, made by Morton successor of John Douglas at St Andrews, Melville found a mark and a victim.

In economics, as an English diplomatist wrote to Cecil in November 1572, the country, despite the civil war, was thriving; "the noblemen's great credit decaying,.