He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth.

The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the preachers and their party, and a crook in the lot of Elizabeth.
THE WAR OF KIRK AND KING.
The next twenty years were occupied with the strife of Kirk and King, whence arose "all the cumber of Scotland" till 1689.

The preachers, led by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and of an unknown proportion of the people.

The Reformation of 1559-1560 had been met by no Catholic resistance; we might suppose that the enormous majority of the people were Protestants, though the reverse has been asserted.

But whatever the theological preferences of the country may have been, the justifiable fear of practical annexation by France had overpowered all other considerations.