They affirmed the manner of it to be this: that certain presbyters should sit in the name of the whole Church, and should judge who were worthy or unworthy to come to the Lord's Supper.

I wonder that then they consulted about these matters, when we neither had men to be excommunicated, nor fit excommunicators; for scarcely a thirtieth part of the people did understand or approve of the reformed religion." {117} "There was," adds Erastus, "another fruit of the same tree, that almost every one thought men had the power of opening and shutting heaven to whomsoever they would." What men have this power in Scotland in 1559?
Why, some five or six persons who, being fluent preachers, have persuaded local sets of Protestants to accept them as ministers.

These preachers having a "call"-- it might be from a set of perfidious and profligate murderers--are somehow gifted with the apostolic grace of binding on earth what shall be bound in heaven.

Their successors, down to Mr.Cargill, who, of his own fantasy, excommunicated Charles II., were an intolerable danger to civilised society.

For their edicts of "boycotting" they claimed the sanction of the civil magistrate, and while these almost incredibly fantastic pretentions lasted, there was not, and could not be, peace in Scotland.
The seed of this Upas tree was sown by Knox and his allies in May 1559.
An Act of 1690 repealed civil penalties for the excommunicated.
To face the supernaturally gifted preachers the Regent had but a slender force, composed in great part of sympathisers with Knox.