Among his hearers was a young maiden of noble birth who with joy received the good news of salvation. Hamilton recognized in her a soul akin to his own. He had adopted the principles of Luther on marriage; he was familiar with the conversations which the reformer had with his friends on the subject and which were reported all over Germany. ‘My father and mother,’ said Luther one day, ‘lived in the holy state of marriage, even the patriarchs and prophets did the same; why should not I do so? Marriage is the holiest state of all, and the celibacy of priests has been the cause of abominable sins. We must marry and thus defy the pope, and assert the liberty which God gives us and which Rome presumes to steal away.’[70] However, to marry was a daring step for Hamilton to take, considering _the present necessity_, as speaks the apostle Paul. As abbot of Ferne, and connected with the first families of Scotland, his marriage must needs excite to the highest degree the wrath of the priests. Besides which, it would call for great decision on the part of Patrick and genuine sympathy on the part of the young Christian maiden, to unite themselves as it were in sight of the scaffold. The marriage however took place, probably at the beginning of 1528. ‘A little while before his death,’ says Alesius, ‘he married a noble young maiden.’[71] It is possible that the knowledge of this union did not pass beyond the family circle. It remained unknown to his biographers till our own time.[72] While Hamilton was preaching at Linlithgow, archbishop Beatoun was at the monastery of Dunfermline, about four leagues distant, on the other side of the Forth. The prelate, when he learnt the return of the young noble who had so narrowly escaped him, saw clearly that a missionary animated with Luther’s spirit, thoroughly familiar with the manners of the people, and supported by the powerful family of the Hamiltons, was a formidable adversary. News which crossed the Forth or came from Edinburgh, did but increase the apprehensions of the archbishop. Beatoun was a determined enemy of the Gospel.[73] Having governed Scotland during the minority of the king, he was indignant at the thought of the troubles with which Hamilton’s preaching menaced the Church and the realm. The clergy shared the alarm of their head; the city of St. Andrews, especially, which one Scottish historian has called ‘the metropolis of the kingdom of darkness’,[74] was in a state of great agitation. The dean Spence, the rector Weddel, the official Simson, the canon Ramsay and the heads of various monasteries consulted together and exclaimed that peril was imminent, and that it was absolutely necessary to get rid of so dangerous an adversary.