Lesley says, that James V., during his progress through the kingdom in 1540, came to Aberdeen, and among other entertainments {344} which were given him, the students of the university “recited orations in the Greek and Latin tongue, composed with the greatest skill”――“Orationes in Greca Latinaque lingua, summo artificio instructæ.” Leslæus de rebus gestis Scotorum, lib. ix. p. 430. edit. 1675. When we consider the state of learning at that period in Scotland, there is reason for suspecting that the bishop’s description is highly coloured, yet as he entered that university a few years after, we may conclude from it that some attention was at that time paid to the study of Greek in Aberdeen. It might have been introduced by Hector Boece, the learned principal of that university. If the king was entertained with the great learning of the students of Aberdeen, the English ambassador was no less diverted, in the very same year, with the ignorance which our bishops discovered of the Greek tongue. The ambassador, who was a scholar as well as a statesman, had caused his men to wear on their sleeves the following Greek motto, ΜΟΝΩ ΑΝΑΚΤΙ ΔΟΥΛΕΥΩ, “I serve the king only.” This the Scottish bishops, whose knowledge did not extend beyond Latin, read MONACHULUS, “a little monk,” and thereupon circulated the report that the ambassador’s servants were monks, who had been taken out of the monasteries lately suppressed in England. To counteract this report, Sadler was obliged to furnish a translation of the inscription. “It appeareth (says he) they are no good Grecians. And now the effect of my words is known, and they be well laughed at for their learned interpretation.” Sadler’s Letters, i. 48, 49. Edinburgh, 1809. In a debate which occurred in the Parliament which met in 1543, individuals among the nobility and other lay members discovered more knowledge of Greek than all the ecclesiastical bench. Knox, Historie, 34.