The town played a central role in events leading to the establishment of Protestantism in the mid-16th century Scottish Reformation (see Siege of Leith). During her brief reign the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, who returned to Scotland from France in 1561, suffered from the deep discord that had been sown prior to her arrival. Protestant nobles and churchmen fearing that her personal faith and claim to the English throne, if successful, might lead eventually to a return to Catholicism remained implacably hostile to her rule. Although she was initially welcomed by the general population, the tragic chain of events that unfolded during her residence at Holyrood Palace, including the murders of her secretary David Rizzio and consort Henry Darnley, reached a crisis point which resulted in her forced abdication in 1567. Through his preaching at St. Giles calling for her execution as an adulteress and murderess one of the town's Protestant ministers John Knox inflamed popular opinion against Mary. After her arrest at Carberry she was detained briefly in the town provost's house on the present-day site of the Edinburgh City Chambers before being incarcerated in Loch Leven Castle. The civil war that followed her escape from imprisonment, defeat at Langside and flight to England ended with the final surrender of her remaining loyal supporters in the "Lang Siege" of Edinburgh Castle in 1573.