138.
These two leaders now desired no better pretence for deserting the regent and openly joining their associates, than the complaints, however doubtful, or rather false, of her breach of promise.

The congregation also, encouraged by this accession of force, gave themselves up entirely to the furious zeal of Knox, and renewed at Crail, Anstruther, and other places in Fife, like depredations on the churches and monasteries with those formerly committed at Perth and Coupar.

The regent, who marched against them with her army, finding their power so much increased, was glad to conclude a truce for a few days, and to pass over with her forces to the Lothians.

The reformers besieged and took Perth; proceeded thence to Stirling, where they exercised their usual fury; and finding nothing able to resist them, they bent their march to Edinburgh, the inhabitants of which, as they had already anticipated the zeal of the congregation against the churches and monasteries, gladly opened their gates to them.

The regent, with the few forces which remained with her, took shelter in Dunbar, where she fortified herself, in expectation of a reenforcement from France.
Meanwhile, she employed her partisans in representing to the people the dangerous consequences of this open rebellion; and she endeavored to convince them, that the Lord James, under pretence of religion, had formed the scheme of wresting the sceptre from the hands of the sovereign.