the sixteenth. If the battle of the warrior, "with its confused noise, and garments rolled in blood," had not first been won, we do not see how a stage could have been found for the greater battle that was to come after. The grand patriotism of Wallace, and the strong arm of Bruce, held the door open for Knox; and Edward of England learned, when he saw his mailed cavalry and terrible bowmen falling back before the Scottish battle-axes and broadswords, that though he should redden all Scotland with the noblest blood of both kingdoms, he never should succeed in robbing the little country of its nationality and sovereignty.

It is now the twelfth century; Iona still exists, but its light has waxed dim. Under King David the Culdee establishments are being suppressed, to make way for Popish monasteries; the presbyters of Iona are driven out, and the lordly prelates of the Pope take their place; the edifices and heritages of the Culdees pass over wholesale to the Church of Rome, and a body of ecclesiastics of all orders, from the mitred abbot down to the begging friar, are brought from foreign countries to occupy Scotland, now divided into twelve dioceses, with a full complement of abbeys, monasteries, and nunneries. But it is to be noted that this establishment of Popery in the twelfth century is not the result of the conversion of the people, or of their native teachers: we see it brought in over the necks of both, simply at the will and by the decree of the monarch. So little was Scottish Popery of native growth, that the men as well as the system had to be imported from abroad.

If in no country of Europe was the dominant reign of Popery so short as in Scotland, extending only from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, in no country was the Church of Rome so powerful when compared with the size of the kingdom and the number of the population. The influences which in countries like France set limits to the power of the Church did not exist in Scotland. On her lofty height she was without a rival, and looked down upon all ranks and institutions-upon the throne, which was weak; upon the nobles, who were parted into factions; upon the people, who were sunk in ignorance. Bishops and abbots filled all the great posts at court, and discharged all the highest offices in the State. They were chancellors, secretaries of State, justiciaries, ambassadors; they led armies, fought battles, and tried and executed criminals. They were the owners of lordships, hunting-grounds, fisheries, houses; and while a full half of the kingdom was theirs, they heavily taxed the other half, as they did also all possessions, Occupations, and trades. Thus with the passing

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years cathedrals and abbeys continued to multiply and wax in splendour; while acres, tenements, and tithings, in an ever-flowing stream, were pouring fresh riches into the Church's treasury. In the midst of the prostration and ruin of all interests and classes, the Church stood up in overgrown arrogance, wealth, and power.

But even in the midst of the darkness there were glimmerings of light, which gave token that a better day would yet dawn. From the Papal chair itself we hear a fear expressed that this country, which Rome held with so firm a grasp, would yet escape from her dominion. In his bull for anointing King Robert the Bruce, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, John XXII. complains that Scotland was still defiled by the presence of heretics. From about this time the traces of what Rome styles heresy became frequent in Scotland. The first who suffered for the Reformed faith, so far as can be ascertained, was James Resby, an Englishman, and a disciple of John Wicliffe. He taught that "the Pope was not Christ's Vicar, and that he was not Pope if he was a man of wicked life." This was pronounced heresy, and for that heresy he had to do expiation in the fire at Perth.' He was burned in 1406 or 1407, some nine years before the martyrdom of Huss. In 1416 the University of St. Andrews, then newly founded, ordained that all who commenced Master of Arts should take an oath to defend the Church against the insults of the Lollards, a proof surely that the sect was sufficiently numerous to render Churchmen uneasy. A yet stronger proof of this was the appointment of a Heretical Inquisitor for Scotland. The office was bestowed upon Laurence Lindores, Abbot of Scone.3 Prior Winton in his Metrical Chronicle (1420) celebrates the zeal of Albany, Governor of Scotland, against Lollards and heretics.1 Murdoch Nisbet, of Hardhill, had a manuscript copy of the New Testament (of Wicliffe's translation doubtless), which he concealed in a vault, and read to his family and acquaintance by night. Gordon of Earlston, another early favourer of the disciples of Wicliffe, had in his possession a copy of the New Testament, in the vulgar tongue, which he read at meetings held in a wood near to Earlston House." The Parliament of James I., held at Perth (1424),

2

1 See an extract from the original account of Resby, by Bower, the continuator of Fordun, in The Works of John Knox, collected and edited by David Laing, Esq., LL.D.;. vol. 1., Appendix ii.; Edin., 1846.

2 McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. i., p. 415; Edin., 1819.
3 Laing, Knox, vol. i., p. 497.
4 Ibid.,
p. 495

5 McCrie, Life of Melville, vol. i.,
Wodrow, vol. ii., p. 67.

414.

magnificent cathedral, and a gorgeous hierarchy, were maintained in the service of the mass, and should it fall they too would fall. To avert so great a catastrophe, Crawar was dragged to the stake and burned, with a ball of brass in his mouth to prevent him from addressing the people in his last moments.2

The Lollards of England were the connecting link between their great master, Wicliffe, and the English Reformers of the sixteenth century. Scotland too had its Lollards, who connected the Patriarch and school of Iona with the Scottish

1 Acta Pari. Scotia, ii. 7.

2 Laing, Knox, vol. i., p. 497. Dr. Laing gives original notices respecting Craw..r from Fox, Bower, and Boece.

(1494) some thirty Lollards were summoned before the archiepiscopal tribunal of Glasgow on a charge of heresy. They were almost all gentlemen of landed property in the districts already named, and the tenets which they were charged with denying included the mass, purgatory, the worshipping of images, the praying to saints, the Pope's vicarship, his power to pardon sin-in short, all the peculiar doctrines of Romanism. Their defence appears to have been so spirited that the king, before whom they argued their cause, shielded them from the

3 "We can trace the existence of the Lollards in Ayrshire from the times of Wicliffe to the days of George Wishart." (Mc Crie, Life of Melville, vol. i., p. 8.)

doom that the archbishop, Blackadder, would undoubtedly have pronounced upon them.1

These incidental glimpses show us a Scriptural Protestantism already in Scotland, but it lacks that spirit of zeal and diffusion into which the sixteenth century awoke it. When that century came new agencies began to operate. In 1526, Hector Boece, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, and the fellow-student and correspondent of Erasmus, published his History of Scotland. In

that work he draws a dark picture of the manners of the clergy; of their greed in monopolising all offices, equalled only by their neglect of their duties; of their promotion of unworthy persons, to the ruin of letters; and of the scandals with which the public feeling was continually outraged, and religion affronted; and he raises a loud cry for immediate Reformation if the Church of his native land was to be saved. About the same time the books and tracts of Luther began to enter the seaports of Montrose, Dundee, Perth, St. Andrews, and Leith. These were brought across by the skippers who made annual voyages to Flanders and

1 Laing, Knox, vol. i., pp. 6-12.

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the Lower Germany. In this way the east coast of Scotland, and the shores of the Frith of Forth, were sown with the seeds of Lutheranism. By this time Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English, and he had markets for its sale in the towns visited by the Scottish traders, who bought numerous copies and carried them across to their countrymen. When the New Testament entered, a ray from heaven had penetrated the night that brooded over the country. Its Reformation

had begun. The Bible was the only Reformer then possible in Scotland. Had a Luther or a Knox arisen at that time, he would have been consigned before many days to a dungeon or a stake. The Bible was the only missionary that could enter with safety, and operate with effect. With silent foot it began to traverse the land; it came to the castle-gates of the primate, yet he heard not its steps; it preached in cities, but its voice fell not on the ear of bishop; it passed along the highways and by-ways unobserved by the spy. To the Churchman's eye all seemed calm-calm and motionless as during the four dark centuries which

2 Lorimer, Scottish Reformation, chap. 1; Lond., 1860.

had gone before; but in the stillness of the midnight hour men welcomed this new Instructor, and opened their hearts to its comforting and beneficent teaching. The Bible was emphatically the nation's one great teacher; it was stamping its own ineffaceable character upon the Scottish Reformation; and the place the Bible thus early made for itself in the people's affections, and the

THE first step in the preparation of Scotland for the task that awaited it was to form its tribes into a nation. This was accomplished in the union of the Pictish and Scottish crowns. The second step was the establishment of its nationality on a strong basis. The arms of Wallace and Bruce effected this; and now Scotland, planted on the twin pillars of Nationality and Independence, awaited the opening of a higher drama than any enacted by armies or accomplished on battle-fields. A mightier contest than Bannockburn was now to be waged on its soil. In the great war for the recovery in ampler measure, and on surer tenure, of the glorious heritage of truth which the world once possessed, but which it had lost amid the superstitions of the Dark Ages, there had already been two great centres, Wittemberg and Geneva. The battle was retreating from them, and the Protestant host was about to make its stand at a third centre, namely Scotland, and there sustain its final defeat, or achieve its crowning victory.

authority it acquired over their judgments, it was destined never to lose. The movement thus initiated was helped forward by every event that happened, till at last in 1543 its first great landingplace was reached, when every man, woman, and child in Scotland was secured by Act of Parlia ment in the right to read the Word of God in their own tongue.

The Reformation of Scotland dates from the entrance of the first Bible into the country, about the year 1525. It was doing its work, but over and above there was needed the living voice of the preacher, and the fiery stake of the confessor, to arouse the nation from the dead sleep in which it was sunk. But who of Scotland's sons shall open the roll of martyrdom? A youth of royal lineage, and princely in mind as in birth, was chosen for

this high but arduous honour. Patrick Hamilton was born in 1504. He was the second son of Sir Patrick Hamilton, of Kincavel, and the greatgrandson, both by the father's and the mother's side, of James II.' He received his education at the University of St. Andrews, and about 1517 was appointed titular Abbot of Ferne, in Ross-shire, though it does not appear that he ever took priest's orders. In the following year he went abroad, and would seem to have studied some time in Paris, where it is probable he came to the first knowledge of the truth; and thence he went to pursue his studies at the College of Marburg, then newly opened by the Landgrave of Hesse. At Marburg the young Scotsman enjoyed the friendship of a very remarkable man, whose views on some points of Divine truth exceeded in clearness even those of Luther; we refer to Francis Lambert, the exmonk of Avignon, whom Landgrave Philip had invited to Hesse to assist in the Reformation of his dominions.

The depth of Hamilton's knowledge, and the beauty of his character, won the esteem of Lambert, and we find the ex-Franciscan saying to Philip, "This young man of the illustrious family of the Hamiltons is come from the end of the world, from Scotland, to your academy, in order to

1 See his exact relationship to the Scottish king traced by Dr. David Laing, Knox, vol. i., p. 501.

be fully established in God's truth. I have hardly ever met a man who expresses himself with so much spirituality and truth on the Word of the Lord."1

Hamilton's preparation for his work, destined to be brief but brilliant, was now completed, and he began to yearn with an intense desire to return to his native land, and publish the Gospel of a free salvation. He could not hide from himself the danger which attended the step he was meditating. The priests were at this hour all-powerful in Scotland. A few years previously (1513), James IV. and the flower of the Scottish nobility had fallen on the field of Flodden. James V. was a child: his mother, Margaret Tudor, was nominally regent; but the clergy, headed by the proud, profligate, and unscrupulous James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, had grasped the government of the kingdom. It was not to be thought that these men would permit a doctrine to be taught at their very doors, which they well knew would bring their glory and pleasures to an end, if they had the power of preventing it. The means of suppressing all preaching of the truth were not wanting, certainly, to these tyrannical Churchmen. But this did not weigh with the young Hamilton. Intent upon dispelling the darkness that covered Scotland, he returned to his native land (1527), and took up his abode at the family mansion of Kincavel, near Linlithgow.

With the sword of Beaton hanging over his head, he began to preach the doctrines of the Reformed faith. The first converts of the young evangelist were the inmates of the mansion-house of Kincavel. After his kinsfolk, his neighbours became the next objects of his care. He visited at the houses of the gentry, where his birth, the grace of his manners, and the fame of his learning made him at all times welcome, and he talked with them about the things that belonged to their peace. Going out into the fields, he would join himself to groups of labourers as they rested at noon, and exhort them, while labouring for the "meat that perisheth," not to be unmindful of that which "endures unto eternal life." Opening the Sacred Volume, he would explain to his rustic congregation the "mysteries of the kingdom" which was now come nigh unto them, and bid them strive to enter into it. Having scattered the seed in the villages around Linlithgow, he resolved to carry the Gospel into its Church of St. Michael. The ancient palace of Linlithgow, "the Versailles of Scotland," as it has been termed, was then the seat

1 Dedication of Exegeseos Francisci Lamberti, &c., quoted in Laing, Knox, vol. I., Appendix iii.

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of the court, and the Gospel was now brought within the hearing of the priests of St. Michael's, and of the members of the royal family who repaired to it. Hamilton, standing up amid the altars and images, preached to the polished audience that filled the edifice, with that simplicity and chastity of speech which were best fitted to win his way with those now listening to him. It is not, would he say, the cowl of St. Francis, nor the frock of St. Dominic, that saves us; it is the righteousness of Christ. It is not the shorn head that makes a holy man, it is the renewed heart. It is not the chrism of the Church, it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that replenishes the soul with grace. What doth the Lord require of thee, O man? to count so many beads a day? to repeat so many paternosters ? to fast so many days in the year, or go so many miles on pilgrimage? That is what the Pope requires of thee; but what God requires of thee is to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly. Pure religion, and undefiled, is not to kiss a crucifix, or to burn candles before Our Lady; pure religion is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world. "Knowest thou," he would ask, "what this saying means, 'Christ died for thee?' Verily that thou shouldest have died perpetually, and Christ, to deliver thee from death, died for thee, and changed thy perpetual death into his own death; for thou madest the fault, and he suffered the pain."

Among Hamilton's hearers in St. Michael's there was a certain maiden of noble birth, whose heart the Gospel had touched. Her virtues won the heart of the young evangelist, and he made her his wife. His marriage was celebrated but a few weeks before his martyrdom.3

A little way inland from the opposite shores of the Forth, backed by the picturesque chain of the blue Ochils, was the town of Dunfermline, with its archiepiscopal palace, the towers of which might almost be descried from the spot where Hamilton was daily evangelising. Archbishop Beaton was at this moment residing there, and news of the young evangelist's doings were wafted across to that watchful enemy of the Gospel. Beaton saw at a glance the difficulty of the case. A heretic of low degree would have been summarily disposed of; but here was a Lutheran with royal blood in his veins, and all the Hamiltons at his back, throwing

2 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. iv., pp. 570, 571.

3 We owe our knowledge of this fact to Professor Lorimer. See his Patrick Hamilton, &c., an historical sketch.