Alexander Seaton was confessor to James V. The cause of his flight from Scotland, his letter to the King, and his retiring to England, are recorded in our common histories. Fox (p. 1000) informs us that he was accused of heresy before Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, in 1541, and induced to recant certain articles which he had preached. Spotswood (p. 65) speaks of “the treatises he left behind him,” and, among others, his “Examination by Gardiner and Bonner,” from which it appears that “he never denied any point which formerly he taught.” Fox had not seen this. We learn from another quarter, that, after his trial, he continued to preach the truths for which he had been accused. Bale says that he died in 1542, in the family of Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, who retained him as his chaplain. Script. Brytan. Post. Pars. p. 224. Alexander Aless was a canon of the metropolitan church of St Andrews. His conversion to the protestant faith was very singular. Being a young man of quick parts, and well versed in scholastic theology, and having studied the Lutheran controversy, he undertook to reclaim Patrick Hamilton from heresy, and held several conferences with him for this purpose. But, instead of making a convert of Hamilton, he was himself staggered by the reasoning of that gentleman. His doubts were greatly strengthened by the constancy with which he saw the martyr adhere to his sentiments to the last, amidst the scorn, rage, and cruelty of his enemies. Alesii Præfat. Comment. in Joannem: Jacobi Thomasii Orationes, p. 307, 308. Lipsiæ, 1737. Bayle, Dictionnaire, Art. _Ales._ A short time after this, he delivered a Latin oration before an ecclesiastical synod, in which he censured the vices of the clergy, and exhorted them to diligence and a godly life. This was enough to bring him under the suspicion of heresy, and he was thrown into prison, from which, after a year’s confinement, he made his escape, and, getting into a {371} vessel which lay on the coast, eluded his persecutors. He escaped in 1532. Cald. MS. i. 76. On leaving his native country, Aless went to Germany, where he was virulently attacked by Cochlæus, whom the Scots bishops hired to abuse him.[483] On the invitation of lord Cromwell and archbishop Cranmer, he came to England in 1535, and was appointed Professor of Theology in the university of Cambridge. But he had scarcely commenced his lectures, when the patrons of popery excited such opposition to him that he resolved to relinquish his situation. Having, at a former period of his life, applied to medical studies, he went to Dr Nicol, a celebrated physician in London, and, after remaining with him for some years, commenced practice, not without success. In 1537, lord Cromwell having met him one day accidentally on the street, carried him to the convocation, and persuaded him to engage, without preparation, in a dispute with the bishop of London, on the subject of the sacraments;