Note 873 — THE PREFACE (continued 4)
Reading edition
Bishop Keith animadverts with some severity on Knox's language in thus attributing this dearth and high price of provisions "as an immediate punishment upon what he calls 'the idolatry of our wicked rulers.'" (Hist. vol. ii. p. 193.) He also quotes an Act of Privy Council, 11th February 1562-3, against eating flesh during the season of Lent, because, as the Act bears, "The cattle had suffered much by the tempestuous storms of the winter bypast."