who conducted her to Holyrood. This so far paved the way for Beaton's release, but as Angus had all men in his power, "to fine and ransom at his pleasure," mere personal influence was not to avail, and least of all that of the Queen Mother. David Beaton, therefore, the primate's nephew, the future Cardinal, was now in Edinburgh, negociating for the fugitive; and through the noted Sir Archibald Douglas, Provost of the city, an uncle of the Earl of Angus, he at last succeeded. To the Earl of Arran the Archbishop had to present the Abbey of Kilwinning; to Angus himself, in money, two thousand marks Scots; to George and Archibald Douglas, one thousand each, and to Hamilton, the murderer of Lennox, one thousand. Five thousand marks and an abbey, was certainly no trifling ransom in those days. After all, though Beaton was released by the end of the year, and was keeping Christmas with the Queen in Edinburgh, he was but barely forgiven, and not to be trusted. Soon after, both the Queen and he had to withdraw from the seat of the Court, and to Stirling once more.12 Restored, however, to his Episcopal functions, we shall see, only too soon, the base and ungrateful use which he made of his power. But so ended the But so ended the year 1526.

SECTION II.

ANNO 1527-1528-CONSTERNATION OF THE AUTHORITIES IN SCOTLANDTHE NEW TESTAMENT SOON FOLLOWED BY ONE LIVING VOICE, THAT OF PATRICK HAMILTON—HIS MARTYRDOM-ALEXANDER SETON, THE NEXT WITNESS, PERSECUTED—HE ESCAPES TO ENGLAND-THE NEW TESTAMENT GOES ON TO BE IMPORTED.

NCE more the analogy between England and Scotland is presented to our view. Under the English history we had occasion to observe, that as early as 1520, some alarm had been felt respecting what was called Lutheranism, the phrase of the day for any approach to Scriptural truth, even though the party molested might never have heard of Luther's name, or, at least, read a page of his writings. So Scot

12 Gov. State Papers, iv., pp. 461, 463, 468.

land was soon seized with similar alarm, and by the 17th of July 1525, an act of parliament had passed, enacting, that "no manner of persons, strangers, that happen to arrive with their ships, within any part of this realm, bring with them any books or works of the said Luther, his disciples or servants," on pain of imprisonment, besides the forfeiture of their ships and goods. Now, whether what was taking place last year as to books imported was known, we have no positive evidence; but at all events, by the autumn of this year there was fresh alarm, and that not owing to strangers. In the month of August 1527, the Earl of Angus having got himself appointed to be Chancellor, with Dunbar, the Bishop of Aberdeen and uncle of Dunbar the Archbishop of Glasgow, to assist him; Angus and the Lords of Council added the following clause to the act of 1525:-" And all other, the king's lieges, assistaries to such opinions, be punished in seemable wise, and the effect of the said act to strike upon them." Thus, between July 1525 and September 1527, as it was determined to extend those penalties to natives of Scotland, we have sufficient proof that importations by them had been going on; but while there were, very probably, some other publications, it is not a little extraordinary, that the only books which can now be traced, or distinctly specified, should be those of the New Testament itself of Tyndale's version. Never, then, let it be overlooked, that if the provisions of this act were followed out, there existed a time in the history of our country, when, if a vessel arrived at Leith or St. Andrews, at Dundee, Montrose, or Aberdeen, with copies of the New Testament on

1 It was certainly a high compliment to the power of Luther's exertions, that his mere name served for years as a word of terror, both in England and Scotland. No writer, however, acquainted with the times, can now, for a moment, be misled by the foolish expedient. Luther had no connexion whatever with the English New Testament, nor did Lutheranism, as such, ever prevail in either country. The necessity of repentance towards God, and of faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, or the doctrine of justification by faith, once broached, might be cunpingly called by that name; but that such an idea as that Martin Luther was the author of the New Testament should have ever prevailed in Scotland as well as England, must to some modern * readers appear passing strange. Yet prevail it did, and for years; no doubt chiefly through the wicked contrivance of the priests, and especially the monks. How early they had succeeded in thus beguiling the people of Scotland, it is impossible to say; but even so late as the year 1545, when Cardinal Beaton and the Earl of Arran were proceeding through the country for suppressing what they called heresy, they turned towards Dundee, as they themselves declared, in order to bring to punishment all those who read the New Testament; for in those days, that was numbered among the most heinous crimes. Nay, such was the general ignorance, that the greatest part, or many of the priests, offended at the term NEW, contended that it was a book lately written by Martin Luther, and they demanded the OLD TESTAMENT! Buchanan, lib. 15, xxix., Spottiswood, p. 75.

board, the ship and cargo were liable to confiscation, and the captain to imprisonment! A battle was now to be fought and won, in the north as well as in the south of Britain.

But again, as in England, serious and long continued persecution did not commence till after the Scriptures had arrived; so it was in Scotland. Copies had soon found their way, and not in vain, to the canons of Cardinal College, Oxford; but so they had to the canons of St. Andrews, as well as other parties. The explosion at Oxford occurred in February 1526, and by February 1528, at the very moment when Tunstal and his vicar-general were sitting in severe judgment on the book in London, the New Testament will now be very pointedly referred to, and condemned, within the walls of the Metropolitan Church in Scotland.

The occasion of this, the first storm, is well known. It followed the arrival from abroad, about the autumn of 1527, and the subsequent exertions of one of the loveliest and most interesting of all characters in early Scotish history-Patrick Hamilton. Of the noble army of Martyrs on British ground, during the sixteenth century, he was to be the youthful and heroic leader.

Sir Patrick Hamilton of Kincavil, Linlithgowshire, a son of Lord Hamilton's, brother of the Earl of Arran, and brother-in-law of James the Third, had married a daughter of John Duke of Albany, brother to the same monarch, by whom he had a family of two sons and a daughter, James, Patrick, and Katharine. By both parents, therefore, the children were related to the royal family of Scotland. Bereaved of their father2 seven years ago, or the 2d of May 1520, on the High Street of Edinburgh, in a feud between the Earls of Angus and Arran, when about two hundred and fifty were slain, and Archbishop Beaton himself, then of the Hamilton party, very narrowly escaped with his life; these children were now destined to feel, by the loss of their father, not only the forgetful ingratitude of Beaton's heart, but the power of his wrath.

Patrick, the youngest son, born in the year 1504, and intended for an ecclesiastic, had the Abbacy of Fearn conferred upon him in his youth.3 Educated under John Major and others at St. Andrews, as

2 He is not to be confounded, as Keith and others have done, with an illegitimate son of Lord Hamilton's of the same name, a strange and too common practice of those times. Thus another Patrick, the Prior of St. Andrews, of whom we shall hear presently, had three sons, all of the same name with their father-Patrick Hepburn.

3 An extensive Abbey, in a fertile spot of Ross-shire, founded by the first Earl of Ross, in the

soon as he had any knowledge of the pure word of God, he could not conceal his sentiments, and consequently was involved in trouble. He then went abroad, where he is said to have remained two years. Three individuals went with him, one of whom, as a servant, abode by him to the moment of death, having accompanied him to the stake. As there is sufficient evidence that Hamilton returned direct from Marburg in Hesse, and the University at that place was not founded till 1526, this fixes his departure to the year 1525 at the latest, not 1526, as frequently stated. The parliamentary act of 1525, already mentioned, may have been in some degree connected with the first disclosure of his views; and, indeed, when his sentiments, as left by himself, in his latin treatise, are considered, two years may well be allowed for his attaining to such maturity of mind. Hamilton's name, like that of almost all who went to the Continent about that period, has been associated with those of Luther and Melancthon. He must have been eager to see these men, and there is no reason to doubt of his having known them both; but the evidence of his intimacy with Francis Lambert, John Fryth, and, of course, with Tyndale, rests on firmer ground. From Marburg, where Tyndale and Fryth appear to have been, he last came, and embarked in Holland for Scotland, thus following the very tract by which the New Testament Scriptures had preceded him into his own country. mind was full of ardour, and though Lambert had affectionately and strongly dissuaded him from rushing into such certain danger, if Fryth once told him what had just happened in England, one can easily conceive of this only adding oil to a flame already kindled.

His

But be this as it may, Fryth was the man who took up, with a warm and kindred spirit, the exposition of his views, which Hamilton had left behind him at Marburg; and from it one may judge what his preaching must have been, upon his return. His treatise consists of two books; the first entitled "De lege et evangelio”—of law and Gospel; the second, "De fide et operibus"—of faith and works; or parts of what were then styled common places" in divinity. They formed a sort of farewell testimony to the course he intended to pursue in his native land. Thus the first Scotish or British Martyr of the day, was the first person who

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thirteenth century, under Alexander II., a preferment of considerable value. The Abbey afterwards answered as the parish church down to so recent a period as 1742, when the roof fell on a Sunday, during the service, and killed forty-four persons.

4 Hence in his final sentence, we have these words of Beaton-" And he being under the same infamy, (of heresy,) we decerning him to be summoned and accused upon the premises, he, of evil mind, as may be presumed, passed to other parts forth of the realm, suspected and noted of heresy. And being lately returned," &c.

5 It must be presumed that not only Lambert, but also Buschius, to whom we have alluded as such an admirer of Tyndale, could not fail to take a deep interest in young Hamilton. Herman von Busche, the pupil of Reuchlin, now the professor of poetry, history, and belles lettres, at Marburg, is said to have been the first nobleman in Germany, who, in spite of the contempt from his own order, laboured as a teacher in the middle and upper schools. See also our former references to MARBURG in vol. i., pp. 167, 397, note.

exhibited and maintained such positions in this infant seat of learning; which was the first University founded in Europe, without any reference whatever to the authority of the Pontiff. Fryth, delighted with the sentiments here expressed, says in the preface to his translation,—

"This treatise I have turned into the English tongue, to the profit of my nation to whom I beseech God to give light, that they may espy the deceitful paths of perdition, and return to the right way which leadeth to life everlasting." He here also speaks of his friend, as " that excellent and well learned young man, Patrick Hamilton, born in Scotland of a noble progeny, who, to testify the truth, sought all means, and took upon him priesthood, that he might be admitted to preach the pure word of God." This language seems to imply, that he had fully qualified himself, and been admitted to the ministry abroad, or independently of that community in which he was born. Hence said Beaton in his sentence, "Being lately returned, he, not being admitted, but of his own head, without licence or privilege, hath presumed to preach wicked heresy." Not that this noble youth was not an official character, or had not already passed through certain preliminary orders in the Romish community, for he was about "to be deprived of all dignities, honours, orders, and benefices of that church.”

Hamilton, on his arrival, had proceeded first to his brother's house in Linlithgowshire, Sir James having succeeded his father as Sheriff of that county; and here, as the sequel proved, he had preached, and conversed not in vain, as well as elsewhere. On the one hand, it has been said of him, that he did not fail to lay open the corruptions of the Church, and the errors by which the souls of men were ruined; but, on the other, that he had not attacked the hierarchy as an Establishment, nor its claims to infallibility. He certainly had not commenced with denunciation, but by preaching the truth itself, by enforcing the reading of the Scriptures, with the necessity of repentance towards God, and faith in Christ in order to good works. His discrimination as to the Law and the Gospel, as to Faith and its fruits, were evidently of the first order, very far above the age in which he suffered; and as to his mode of procedure, it seems to have exactly corresponded with the counsel which Tyndale gave to Fryth himself, five years after, as already explained. The Bellum Sacramentarium, or the bitter strife about ordinances, had commenced on the Continent in 1524, or before Hamilton's reaching Germany, and it

See vol. i., pp. 347, 348, 351.