We learn from Mary of Guise and Lesley's "History" that the very orchards were cut down.
If, thanks to the preachers, "no honest man was enriched the value of a groat," apparently dishonest men must have sacked the gold and silver plate of the monasteries; nothing is said by Knox on this head, except as to the Charter House.
Writing to Mrs.Locke, on the other hand, on June 23, Knox tells her that "the brethren," after "complaint and appeal made" against the Regent, levelled with the ground the three monasteries, burned all "monuments of idolatry" accessible, "and priests were commanded under pain of death, to desist from their blasphemous mass." {112} Nothing is said about a spontaneous and uncontrollable popular movement.

The professional "brethren," earnest professors of course, reap the glory.

Which is the true version?
If the version given to Mrs.Locke be accurate, Knox had sufficient reasons for producing a different account in that portion of his "History" (Book ii.) which is a tract written in autumn, 1559, and in purpose meant for contemporary foreign as well as domestic readers.

The performances attributed to the brethren, in the letter to the London merchant's wife, were of a kind which Calvin severely rebuked.

Similar or worse violences were perpetrated by French brethren at Lyons, on April 30, 1562.