A Confession of Faith was this day subscribed by the king, his
household and courtiers, including Lennox, and many of the nobility and
other persons, professing ‘the religion now revealed to the world by
the preaching of the blessed evangel,’ and solemnly abjuring all the
doctrines and practices of the Romish Church.[117]
[Sidenote: JAN. 29.]
This day, Sunday, there were gay doings in the boy-king’s court of
Holyrood, namely, running at the ring, justing, and such-like pastimes,
besides sailing about in boats and galleys at Leith.--_Cal._
The reader must not be too much surprised at this occurring the day
after the signing of a solemn confession of the Protestant faith. The
truth seems to have been this: the signers signed under the pressure
of a party they had some interest for the moment in gratifying or
blinding, and the accepters of the document were content with the fact
of the signing, without regard to the too probable hypocrisy under
which it took place. It is not uncommon for professions to be only a
symptom of the reality of the opposite of what is professed.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1581.