From the time that Mr. Patrick Hamilton suffered, until this period, papal tyranny reigned by fire and faggot without controul. In the year 1539, cardinal David Beaton succeeded his uncle in the see of St. Andrews, and carefully trod the path his uncle had marked out; to show his own greatness, and to recommend himself to his superior of Rome, he accused Sir John Borthwick of heresy, whose goods were confiscated, and himself burnt in effigy (for being forewarned of his danger, he had escaped out of the country). After this he suborned a priest to forge a will of K. James V. who died about this time, declaring himself, with the earls of Huntly, Argyle and Murray to be regents of the kingdom: The cheat being discovered, the earl of Arran was elected governor, and the cardinal was committed prisoner to the castle of Dalkeith; he soon found means to escape from his confinement, and prevailed with the regent to break all his promises to the party who had elected him into that office, and to join with him in imbruing his hands in the blood of the saints. Accordingly, several professors of the town of Perth were arraigned, condemned, hanged and drowned; others were sent into banishment, and some were strangled in private. We have departed thus far from the course of our narrative, to shew the reader, that the vacancies betwixt the respective lives in this collection, were as much remarkable for persecution, as the particular instances which are set before him in the lives themselves.