The illustrious Buchanan was himself in prison at that time. He was thirty-two years of age, and after a residence at the university of Paris, he had returned to Scotland and had been named preceptor to the earl of Murray, a natural son of James V. He was a poet as well as a historian, and his genius grew and developed itself under the influence of the classical poetry which charmed his leisure hours. There was something sharp and biting in his temperament, peculiarly apt for satire; and he had not spared the clergy in his _Somnium_, his _Palinode_, and above all in his satire against the _Franciscans_. It was for this last poem he was imprisoned. The companies of monks had keenly resented his sarcasm, and there was not a man in all Scotland whose death was more eagerly desired by the Romish party. It was said that the cardinal offered the king a considerable sum of money in order to compass it. However that may be, Buchanan was at that time a prisoner and was carefully watched in the prison of St. Andrews, some of the guards even spending the night in his room. The young man, already an illustrious writer, knew that they were seeking his life; the death of five martyrs showed him clearly enough the fate which awaited himself. One night he perceived that his keepers had fallen asleep.[220] He went on tiptoe towards the window, and climbing up the walls, succeeded, although with difficulty, in getting out. He then passed on and surmounted other obstacles as great;[221] and thus by the aid of God, and stimulated by the desire of saving his life, ‘he escaped the rage of those that sought his blood.’[222] He betook himself to France, taught for several years in the Collège de Guienne at Bordeaux, and afterwards in a college at Paris. Henry Stephens, when he published at Paris the first edition of Buchanan’s Paraphrase of the Psalms, calls him on the title-page of the book, ‘Poetarum nostri sæculi facile princeps.’ His escape took place, as nearly as we can learn, in March 1539. Many Gospellers, as we have said, followed the example of Buchanan that same month. As for himself, he appears at that period of his life to have been nothing more than one of the numerous poets and prose-writers who were then attacking the vices and the follies of the Romish clergy. But while attacking superstition, Buchanan did not fall as many did into infidelity: he adhered heartily at a later period to the evangelical reform, and Knox bears noble witness to him.[223]