This nobleman, "notorious," as Burton says, "for fickleness," had been at first on the side of the Reformation, {5} and was then assiduously courted by Henry VIII. He had even consented to the marriage of the baby queen to the young English Prince Edward. But the influence of the queen-mother and the cardinal, backed by that of his own natural brother, the Abbot of Paisley, together with the unjust and impolitic demands of the English monarch himself, combined to turn him from his original leanings. He publicly abjured the Protestant faith, and was received into the bosom of the Catholic Church. He broke off all negotiations for a matrimonial alliance between the royal houses of England and Scotland, and ultimately consented to the betrothal of Mary to the Dauphin of France. The result of these proceedings was a protracted war with England, during which Scotland was repeatedly invaded, and portions of it devastated by the southern forces. But while these political and international intrigues, in which it must be confessed that there was little scrupulousness on either side, were going on, a great spiritual movement was making quiet progress among the people. The Reformation from Popery had begun in Scotland also. Patrick Hamilton, its protomartyr, had been put to death in 1528; but the smoke of his burning, to borrow the well-known words of one of the elder Beaton's own servants, "had infected all on whom it blew"; and the books of the German Reformers, together with the English Testaments of William Tyndale, had wrought like hidden leaven, especially among the more intelligent of the community. {6} Thus we account for the fact that, in spite of legal prohibitions and public executions, the knowledge of evangelical truth was diffused, even when there was no living voice to proclaim it publicly in the hearing of the multitudes; so that when a man like Wishart did make his appearance, he found crowds to listen to him appreciatively both in Dundee and Ayr. The Lollards of Kyle had still worthy descendants in that historic district; and the merchants in towns like that of Leith, whose commerce brought them into contact with men from Hamburg, Antwerp, and the cities of the Rhine, were disposed to welcome the new doctrines. Among the nobles, men like Glencairn and Errol and Ruthven ranged themselves on the side of the Reformers; while the influence of a satirist like Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and a scholar like Henry Balnaves of Halhill, was given heartily to their cause.