The Governor selected John Rough for his chaplain and Thomas Williams
for his preacher, both ardent Reformers. The Acts of the previous reign
against heresy were modified to the extent that men suspect of heresy
might enjoy office, and heretics were accorded more merciful treatment.
Moreover, an Act of Parliament (March 15th, 1543) permitted the
possession and reading of a good and true translation of the Old and New
Testaments. But the masterful policy of Henry VIII. and the weakness of
the Governor brought about a change. Beaton was released from Blackness
and restored to his own Castle of St. Andrews; the Governor dismissed
his Reformed preachers; the Privy Council (June 2nd, 1543) forbade on
pain of death and confiscation of goods all criticism of the mediæval
doctrine of the Sacraments, and forbade the possession of heretical
books. In September, Arran and Beaton were reconciled; in December, the
Parliament annulled the treaties with England consenting to a marriage
between Edward and Mary, and the ancient league with France was renewed.
This was followed by the revival of persecution, and almost all that had
been gained was lost. Henry's ruthless devastation of the Borders did
not mend matters. The more enlightened policy of Lord Protector Somerset
could not allay the suspicions of the Scottish nation. Their "little
Queen" was sent to France to be educated by the Guises, "to the end that
in hir youth she should drynk of that lycour, that should remane with
hir all hir lyfetyme, for a plague to this realme, and for hir finall
destructioun."[286]
But if the Reformation movement was losing ground as a national policy,
it was gaining strength as a spiritual quickening in the hearts of the
people. George Wishart, one of the Wisharts of Pittarrow, who had fled
from persecution in 1538 and had wandered in England, Germany, and
Switzerland, returned to his native country about 1543, consumed with
the desire to bear witness for the Gospel. He preached in Montrose, and
Dundee during a visitation of the plague, and Ayrshire. Beaton's party
were anxious to secure him, and after a preaching tour in the Lothians
he was seized in Ormiston House and handed over to the Earl of Bothwell,
who, breaking pledges he had made, delivered him to the Cardinal; he
lodged him in the dungeon at St. Andrews (end of Jan. 1546), and had him
tried in the cathedral, when he was condemned to the stake (March 1st,
1546).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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