Ch. 15: James V and the Reformation - Page 2

by excommunication: no grievance was more bitterly felt by the poor. The once-dreaded curses on evil-doers became a popular jest: purgatory was a mere excuse for getting money for masses.

In short, the whole mediaeval system was morally rotten; the statements drawn up by councils which made vain attempts to check the stereotyped abuses are as candid and copious concerning all these things as the satires of Sir David Lyndsay.

Then came disbelief in mediaeval dogmas: the Lutheran and other heretical books were secretly purchased and their contents assimilated. Intercession of saints, images, pilgrimages, the doctrine of the Eucharist, all fell into contempt.

As early as February 1428, as we have seen, the first Scottish martyr for evangelical religion, Patrick Hamilton, was burned at St Andrews. This sufferer was the son of a bastard of that Lord Hamilton who married the sister of James III. As was usual, he obtained, when a little boy, an abbey, that of Ferne in Ross-shire. He drew the revenues, but did not wear the costume of his place; in fact, he was an example of the ordinary abuses. Educated at Paris and Louvain, he came in contact with the criticism of Erasmus and the Lutheran controversy. He next read at St Andrews, and he married. Suspected of heresy in 1427, he retired to Germany; he wrote theses called 'Patrick's Places,' which were reckoned heretical; he was arrested, was offered by Archbishop Beaton a chance to escape, disdained it, and was burned with unusual cruelty,--as a rule, heretics in Scotland were strangled before burning. There were other similar cases, nor could James interfere--he was bound by his Coronation Oath; again, he found in the bishops his best diplomatists, and they, of course, were all for the French alliance, in the cause of the independence of their country and Church as against Henry VIII.

Thus James, in justifiable dread of the unscrupulous ambition of Henry VIII., could not run the English course, could not accept the varying creeds which Henry, who was his own Pope, put forward as his spirit moved him. James was thus inevitably committed to the losing cause--the cause of Catholicism and of France--while the intelligence no less than the avarice of his nobles and gentry ran the English course.

James had practically no choice. In 1536 Henry proposed a meeting with James "as far within England as possible." Knowing, as we do, that Henry was making repeated attempts to have James kidnapped and Archbishop Beaton also, we are surprised that James was apparently delighted at the hope of an interview with his uncle--in England. Henry declined to explain why he desired a meeting when James put the question to his envoy. James said, in effect, that he must act by advice of his Council, which, so far as it was clerical, opposed the scheme. Henry justified the views of the Council, later, when James, returning from a visit to France, asked permission to