He had been invited back to Scotland by the leaders of the reformation; and mounting the pulpit at Perth, during the present ferment of men's minds, he declaimed with his usual vehemence against the idolatry and other abominations of the church of Rome, and incited his audience to exert their utmost zeal for its subversion.

A priest was so imprudent, after this sermon, as to open his repository of images and relics, and prepare himself to say mass.
The audience, exalted to a disposition for any furious enterprise, were as much enraged as if the spectacle had not been quite familiar to them: they attacked the priest with fury, broke the images in pieces, tore the pictures, overthrew the altars, scattered about the sacred vases; and left no implement of idolatrous worship, as they termed it, entire or undefaced.

They thence proceeded, with additional numbers and augmented rage, to the monasteries of the Gray and Black friars, which they pillaged in an instant: the Carthusians underwent the same fate: and the populace, not content with robbing and expelling the monks, vented their fury on the buildings which had been the receptacles of such abomination; and in a little time nothing but the walls of these edifices were left standing.

The inhabitants of Coupar, in Fife, soon after imitated the example.[***] * Melvil's Memoirs, p.24.Jebb.

vol.ii.p.