1Another edited extract from Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland. The first article focused on the corruption and ignorance of the Roman Church and also the influence of books and pamphlets.
Among her Reformers, Scotland had no one who, for sheer intellect, could be compared with Calvin, nor, for commanding power, with Luther. But among them were able and scholarly men, many of intense devotion and zeal, and at least one born leader. These men were instruments or agents rather than causes of the Reformation; but that Reformation was a work, and the Reformers were prime factors in the work; the truths they held and taught were its first and real cause. It is therefore necessary to consider their teaching and its effects.
Patrick Hamilton, unlike some of the nobles of the following generation, had no sinister object in view, no hope of aggrandisement, in his opposition to a Church which was hopelessly corrupt. His thirst for knowledge is demonstrated by the fact that he had studied at Paris and Louvain before he began attending St Andrews University in June 1523. He must have spoken with considerable freedom, for early in 1527 James Beaton, then Archbishop of St Andrews, discovered that he was infected with heresy and decreed that he should be summoned and accused.
To what extent he had at that time adopted the principles of the Reformation is not known but, after fleeing to the Continent, he set forth at Marburg University a series of Latin theses which he supported with great learning and earnestness. These theses are believed to have been the original form of Hamilton’s little treatise, known in John Frith’s translation as Patrick’s Places. In Frith’s opinion,2 it contains “the pith of all divinity”. It is of special interest as the earliest doctrinal production of the Scottish Reformation, and as Hamilton’s “doctrinal manifesto”. It overflows with earnest piety and with evident desire to bring others to the feet of the Master. It is also valuable for the unconscious revelation the writer gives of his own disposition and personal faith. Here are some of his sentences:
2Frith himself was to become a martyr for the faith in England.
“The faith of Christ is to believe in Him; that is, to believe His Word, and believe that He will help thee in all thy need, and deliver thee from all evil.”
“Faith maketh a man a member of Christ; incredulity [unbelief] maketh him a member of the devil.”
“Faith cometh of the Word of God; hope cometh of faith; and charity springeth of them both.”
“Whosoever believeth or thinketh to be saved by his works denieth that Christ is his Saviour, that Christ died for him, and that all things pertain to Christ. For how is He thy Saviour, if thou mightest save thyself by thy works, or whereto should He die for thee, if any works might have saved thee?”
“I condemn not good deeds, but I condemn the false trust in any works; for all the works wherein a man putteth any confidence are therewith poisoned, and become evil. Wherefore thou must do good works, but beware thou do them not to deserve any good through them.”
When Patrick Hamilton, imbued with such principles and impelled by loving zeal, returned to Scotland in the late autumn of 1527 his preaching made many converts. In the words of Archbishop Spottiswoode, “At his return, wheresoever he came, he spared not to lay open the corruptions of the Roman Church, and to show the errors crept into the Christian religion, whereunto many gave ear, and a great following he had both for his learning and courteous behaviour to all sorts of people.”
The cruel death to which he was subjected – for he was roasted rather than burned alive – and the way in which he met it, also had a great influence for good. People could hardly help being angry and horrified at seeing a young man of blameless life so treated, while so many of the clergy, including some of those who sat in judgement on him, were allowed to live abandoned lives without punishment. “The grave testimony of his blood,” says Foxe, “left the verity and truth of God more fixed and confirmed in the hearts of many than ever could after be plucked away.” And Knox tells that, not only in St Andrews, where the martyrdom had taken place on 29 February 1528, but throughout almost the whole of Scotland, when men heard of his condemnation and death they began to inquire why he was burned, and to question the justice of his sentence.
It was when a proposal was made that several others should be burned, of the more outspoken preachers against the abuses of the Church, that a close friend of the Archbishop gave him this advice: “My lord, if you burn any more, except you follow my counsel, you will utterly destroy yourselves. If you will burn them, let them be burnt in deep cellars; for the smoke of Master Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon.”
The influence in Scotland of Patrick Hamilton’s teaching and death was not limited to widespread doubting of the justice of his condemnation, or even to the doubting of doctrines previously held as sure truths. Not a few accepted his teaching. Some of these proved capable defenders of it; some died for it.
One of his first converts, and one of the first to suffer for his principles, was Alexander Alane, a canon of the Augustinian Priory of St Andrews. He had tried hard, but unsuccessfully, to win Hamilton back to Romanism. Their discussions opened Alane’s eyes and shook his confidence. While his judgement wavered, he would neither approve of the proceedings against the martyr nor condemn his doctrine. Having been appointed to preach before a synod, a reference he ventured to make to debauched priests roused the ire of his prior, the dissolute Patrick Hepburn, who soon found a pretext for throwing him into a foul prison, where his health gave way. At last, through the help of his fellow-canons, he managed to escape and, after wandering in Denmark, France, Belgium and Germany, he arrived at Wittenberg about the close of 1531. Thereafter he was known, not as Alane, but as Alesius – that is, the fugitive or wanderer. Though he never returned to Scotland, he laboured to secure for his countrymen the inestimable privilege of reading the Word of God in their own tongue.
Alexander Campbell, the Prior of the Black Friars in St Andrews, had conversed secretly with Patrick Hamilton and confessed that he agreed with him in almost everything. Yet he harassed Hamilton at the stake, persistently crying to him while in bodily agony, “Convert, heretic; call upon our Lady; say, ‘Hail, the Queen'”. When he would not cease, Hamilton reminded him of what he had once said, and appealed to the judgement seat of Christ. Before long, Campbell died and was succeeded as prior by Alexander Seaton, the King’s confessor, a fearless preacher who, during the whole period of Lent, taught the commandments of God only, ever beating into the hearers’ ears that God’s law had been obscured by the traditions of men. His usual propositions were that Christ is the end and perfection of the law, that there is no sin where God’s law is not violated, and that it is not in man’s power to satisfy for sin, but that remission comes by unfeigned repentance and by faith apprehending God the Father, who is merciful in Christ Jesus His Son. This rousing preacher had to flee to escape persecution.
James Melville, or Melvin, an Observant Friar, had in 1526 boldly summoned the Bishop of Moray to the court of the Archbishop of St Andrews. When he was admonished to desist, he appealed to the Pope without submitting to his superiors. He fixed his appeal on the doors of the churches of St Andrews, and left Scotland by ship. To escape punishment he had, it was alleged, left the order and joined the Conventual Friars. However, he apparently returned to Scotland, for in April 1527 Clement VII revoked a letter he had written in Melville’s favour, and asked that he might be sent to prison or banished from Scotland, until he obtained licence from the Pope to return. In March 1535 the King, at the request of the Observant Friars, begged Paul III not to restore Melville to their order, as he had returned from Germany infected with Lutheranism, which he was attempting to spread among the ignorant people.
For affirming that Patrick Hamilton’s doctrines were true and that he was a martyr, Henry Forrest, who was in minor orders, was thrown into the sea-tower of St Andrews Castle and afterwards committed to the flames, which he endured with great patience. He is supposed to have been the Henry Forrest who was a student at St Leonard’s College in 1526, and therefore, in all probability, witnessed Hamilton’s martyrdom.
Among the Protestants summoned to appear at Holyrood in August 1534 were James and Catharine Hamilton, the brother and sister of the martyr. It seems that James, the Sheriff of Linlithgow, had been previously dealt with and had abjured his heresies; on being now summoned, he fled. He was condemned in his absence, and his goods were confiscated, except for his wife’s dowry. He was excommunicated as a relapsed heretic and a protector of heretics, and for possessing forbidden books, denying purgatory, invocation of saints etc, and using the Lord’s Prayer publicly in his own language. Catharine faced the tribunal, but the King, who was present, induced her to recant. The conduct of the three Hamiltons was typical of others. Patrick was followed to the stake or the scaffold by 20 or so of his countrymen but, like James, many fled; and, like Catharine, not a few recanted.
The better known of these martyrs are Thomas Forret, George Wishart and Walter Mill. The others are less famous. David Straton and Norman Gourlay suffered near Edinburgh in August 1534, being, says Knox, “both hanged and burnt according to the mercy of the Papistical Kirk”. Duncan Simpson, a chaplain, two Black Friars, named Keillor and Beverage, and Robert Forrester were burned on the Castlehill of Edinburgh with Thomas Forret, on 1 March 1539. It was apparently in the following summer that Jerome Russell, a Cordelier Friar, and Kennedy, a youth of “excellent ability in Scottish poetry”, were sent to the stake in the diocese of Glasgow. In January 1544 Robert Lamb, William Anderson, James Hunter, James Ronaldson, and Ronaldson’s wife, Helen Stark, suffered martyrdom at Perth. About the same time John Roger, a Black Friar, was secretly murdered in the sea-tower of St Andrews Castle. And in the summer of 1550 Adam Wallace was burned on the Castlehill of Edinburgh.
Of some of these witnesses for the truth very little is known. In none of the contemporary histories is Andrew Alexanderson mentioned. From an entry in the Lord Treasurer’s Accounts and another in the Register of Privy Seal, it is learned that he was convicted of heresy, and sentenced to death before 23 August 1538. And the Lord Treasurer’s Accounts make an incidental reference to a martyrdom in Cupar in May 1539 – “the time that the man was burnt for heresy in Cupar” – though the martyr’s name is not given.