to Tyndale's Testaments, which he was so anxious to discover, and destroy, and he had also received copies from England in order to identify the version. Hacket's language implies that the practice of carrying away such books in trading vessels had been a common one before it had been distinctly observed and watched. There was as yet in Scotland no prohibition of such literary imports, nor for five years to come, though in 1525 there had been an enactment against strangers" bringing with them any books of Luther, and in August, 1527, "natives or the king's lieges" are comprehended in the prohibition, the inference being that they had already been engaged in the traffic. Leith, Montrose, and Aberdeen were parts as accessible as St. Andrews, and they were all visited by vessels carrying Tyndale's New Testaments to a ready and secret market. Patrick Hamilton,1 born in the city or diocese of Glasgow, the young and intrepid reformer, related by both his parents to the royal blood of Scotland, had returned from the Continent, and begun to preach the Gospel; but going to St. Andrews, on a treacherous invitation of the primate, he was placed under espionage, tried with great pomp on thirteen different articles, and burned before the gate of the College of St. Salvador, the same day on which his judges returned their verdictSaturday, 28th February, 1528. The burning of the martyr lasted six hours. Campbell, Prior of the Order of Blackfriars, had betrayed him, and now as prosecutor he pressed as the first and special charge against him his confession that "it is lawful for any man to read the word of God, and in special the New Testament." But his martyrdom did not kill the Reformation, and a shrewd friend said to the archbishop, "My lord, if ye burn any more, except ye follow my counsel, ye will utterly 1 His name stands under the year 1528 in a register of Acta Rectoria of the University of Paris as Patricius Hamelto, Glassguensis, Nobilis. His Loci, translated by Fryth at Marburg, were long a popular digest of theology, and went by the name of "Maister Patricks Places." They may be seen in Foxe, vol. IV, p. 563, or in Laing's edition of Knox's Works, vol. I, p. 19. He was present at the inauguration of the University of Marburg, and his name survives on the first page of the Album. XVI.] NEW TESTAMENT IN SCOTLAND. 247 destroy yourselves. If ye will burn them, let it be in how (hollow) cellars, for the reek (smoke) of Master Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon." In October of the same year, Rinck, writing from Cologne to Wolsey, makes the disclosure, already told, that Bibles enclosed in packages, and artfully covered with flax, were by sea "taken into Scotland and England as to the same place, and sold as merely clean paper."1 As the panic spread, prohibitions became more sweeping and stringent, and among others the bishops issued a ban declaring that the New Testament was neither to be read in the vernacular nor sold. The particulars with allied instances are to be found in a letter of Alexander Ales to King James V. His proper name was Alane, and so it is written in the old registers of the University of St. Andrews. He was a native of Edinburgh, born in 1500. He had been a canon in St. Andrews, and owed his religious change to conversations with Patrick Hamilton during his imprisonment, and was now an exile from Scotland for the "Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." "Whence," he asks, “shall they hear sound doctrine if they are not allowed at home to read the books of the Gospel?" and he mentions, "that travelling abroad, he had heard of the king or emperor enacting laws against dogmas, but not against the reading of the Scriptures." In a reply to an attack of Cochlæus, he nobly vindicates domestic reading of the Scriptures, which was so common in Germany, "even in many places which have no business with Luther," and he exposes the common trick of confounding all versions of the sacred books with Luther's translation. "I have heard the chief among our 1 See page 179. 2 The name Ales was coined for him by Melanchthon, 'Aλnorios, wanderer, suggested by the similarity of Alane to dλeivw. Melanchthon occasionally plays upon the meaning of the name, and in reference to his own troubles fears that he would be forced to"become another Alesius." Though Mr. Anderson will not admit it, there is sufficient proof that Melanchthon helped Alesius in the composition of his letters to the king. The "Wanderer" settled at length as Professor of Divinity at Leipzig, where he died in 1565. Lorimer's Patrick Hamilton, p. 241, Edinburgh, 1857. preachers declare that this same version, (Tyndale's in Scotland) gave them more light than many commentaries." The restless Cochlæus1 replied to Ales on the 8th of June, 1533. In the course of his letter he urges the employment of force, after the example of the Bishop of Treves, who had ordered first one bookseller, and then another, to be cast into the Rhone with their pernicious books; asserts that the New Testament of Luther is not the sacred book, but execrable and cursed; is not the Gospel of Christ, but of Satan; and bids the king desist from favouring any version, especially at this time, since the best and most undoubted translation in the vulgar tongue is productive of all possible mischief. The king was not disposed to cruelty, and had more than once interfered in behalf of the oppressed; but he was overborne by such ecclesiastical counsellors as the most profligate Prior Hepburn of St. Andrews, and David Beaton, afterwards the notorious cardinal. Henry Forrest, of Linlithgow, was apprehended and condemned " for nou uther cryme but because he had ane New Testament in Engliss," and in 1533 he was burned at "the North Church style of the Abbey of St. Andrews, that all the people in the shire of Forfar might see the flames." Other executions followed in the next year, for the Scottish ecclesiastics were not behind their English and foreign fellows in blindness, cruelty, and thirst for blood, and therefore Scotland, though it be but a small country, has an illustrious roll of confessors and martyrs. 1 Cochlæus, in his reply to Morysyn, charges Henry VIII with ingratitude, and complains that royalty had been unmindful of his poverty and his merits. But in September, 1534, he sent a servant to Edinburgh with one of his tracts, pro Scotia regno Apologia, for there appears this entry in the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, September, 1534, "Item, to ane servantt of Cocleus Not myself, but the truth that in life I have spoken ; 'Tis clear, if we refuse The means so limited, the tools so rude To execute our purpose, life will fleet, And we shall fade, and nothing will be done. |