James had yet other causes of uneasiness. His sleepless nights were disturbed, gloomy, and agitated; and even the light of morning did not disperse his inward darkness. The death of Hamilton, whose execution he had hastily ordered on mere suspicion, frequently gave him bitter pain. That unfortunate lord had done for the prince all that he had wished; and the latter now asked himself whether he had done well to deprive himself of so devoted a secretary. Perhaps he was innocent. He might have been calumniated. One night, at Linlithgow, James saw Hamilton in a dream, with his sword drawn, rush upon him and cut off first his right then his left arm,[239] saying to him, ‘Take that! while thou receive a final payment for all thine impiety.’ James awoke trembling, and asked himself what this dream could mean. His imagination was impressed by it. He mused mournfully on the strange vision, and expected that some heavy blow was about to fall on him. It was in this state of mind that a message reached him from Stirling that his son Arthur has just died. Shortly after, another message came from St. Andrews to announce to him that his son James was dead. These two young princes, his hope, his joy, and his glory, were no more. Within twenty-four hours of each other (some say at the same hour), they had been taken from him. He now comprehended his dream. His two arms were already cut off: it only remained for him to lose his own life, and all would be accomplished. Nothing could divert this prince, who was guilty at once of profligacy and of persecution: nothing could beguile his grief. His heart was broken, his mind was disordered. He shut himself up, and the only person whom he would see was his mother. Unhappy father! unhappy king! The queen-dowager did all she could to console her son and her daughter-in-law. ‘I am never from them,’ she wrote to her brother, Henry VIII., May 12, 1541, ‘but ever in their company.’ It appears that by this large sorrow the natural affections were reawakened in the king. He wrote to his uncle that he desired to see good will and the most perfect friendship and peace prevail between them.[240] [Sidenote: PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION.] While James was thus taken up with his sorrows alone, the doctrine of the Reformation made progress, and, if only liberty were accorded to it, its triumph in Scotland appeared to be at hand. A great multitude of the common people, both in the country districts and in the towns, held meetings more or less secretly at which they heard the Holy Word read and even explained. By 1540 many eminent men had received the evangelical doctrine. The earls of Errol and of Glencairn, the Lords Ruthven and Kilmaurs and their children, Sir David Lyndsay, Sir James Sandilands, Melville of Raith, and a large number of other influential persons appeared to be attached to the Gospel by genuine conviction.