Circumstances were by no means favorable to the Reformation. Archbishop Beatoun had soon thrown off his shepherd’s dress and left the flocks which he was feeding in the solitary pastures of Bogrian in Fifeshire. The simple, rude, and isolated life of the keeper of sheep was a sufficiently severe chastisement for an ambitious, intriguing, and worldly spirit: day and night, therefore, he was looking for some means of deliverance. Although he was then sleeping on the ground, he had plenty of gold and great estates: this wealth, the omnipotence of which he knew well, would suffice, said he to himself, to ransom him from the abject service to which a political reverse had reduced him. Since the victory of Linlithgow, Angus had exercised the royal power without opposition. It was needful then that Beatoun should gain over that terrible conqueror. The queen-mother, who had also fled at first, having ventured two months later to approach Edinburgh, her son had received her and conducted her to Holyrood palace. This encouraged the archbishop. His nephew, David Beatoun, abbot of Arbroath, was as clever and as ambitious as his uncle, but he hated still more passionately all who refused to submit to the Roman Church. The archbishop entreated him to negotiate his return; the party of the nobles was hard to win; but the abbot, having gained over the provost of Edinburgh, Sir Archibald Douglas, uncle of Angus, the bargain was struck. The archbishop was to pay two thousand Scottish marks to Angus, one thousand to George Douglas, the king’s gaoler, one thousand to cruel James Hamilton, the assassin of Lennox, and to make a present of the abbey of Kilwinning to the earl of Arran. Beatoun, charmed, threw away his crook, started for Edinburgh, and resumed his episcopal functions at St. Andrews. [Sidenote: HAMILTON DECLARED A HERETIC.] It was some time after the return of Beatoun that the king’s cousin began to preach at St. Andrews the glad tidings of free salvation through faith in Christ. Such doctrines could not be taught without giving rise to agitation. The clergy took alarm, some priests and monks went to the castle and prayed the archbishop to chastise the young preacher. Beatoun ordered an inquiry: it was carried out very precisely. The persons with whom Hamilton had engaged in discussion were heard, and some of his hearers gave evidence as to the matter of his discourses. He was declared a heretic. Beatoun was not cruel; he would perhaps have been content with seeking to bring back by fatherly exhortations the young and interesting Hamilton into the paths of the Church. But the primate had by his side some fanatical spirits, especially his nephew David, and they redoubled their urgency to such a degree that the archbishop ordered Hamilton to appear before him to give an account of his faith.[37]