But the poet who had the greatest influence in promoting the Reformation was Sir David Lindsay. His “Satyre on the three Estates,” and his “Monarchies,” had this for their principal object. The former was acted at Cupar in Fife, in the year 1535; at Linlithgow, before the king and queen, the court, and country, in 1540; and at Edinburgh, before the queen regent, a great part of the nobility, and a vast number of people, in 1554. Chalmers’s Lindsay, i. 60, 61. Row says, that it was also acted “in the amphitheatre of St Johnstoun.” MS. History of the Kirk, p. 3. It exposed the avarice, luxury, and profligacy, of the religious orders; the temporal power and opulence of the bishops, with their total neglect of preaching; the prohibition of the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; the extolling of pardons, relics, &c. In his “Monarchies,” composed by him at a subsequent period, he traced the rise and progress of the papacy, and has discovered a knowledge of history, and of the causes that produced the corruption of Christianity, which would not disgrace any modern author. The poems of Lindsay were read by “every man, woman, and child.” Row has preserved an anecdote, which serves to illustrate their influence, and the manner in which the reformed sentiments were propagated at that period. Some time between 1550 and 1558, a friar was preaching at Perth in the church where the scholars of Andrew Simson attended public worship. In the course of his sermon, after relating some of the miracles wrought at the shrines of the saints, he began to inveigh bitterly against the Lutheran preachers who were going about the country, and endeavouring to withdraw the people from the Catholic faith. When he was in the midst of his invective, a loud hissing arose in that part of the church where the boys, to the number of three hundred, were seated, so that the friar, abashed and affrighted, broke off his discourse, and fled from the pulpit. A complaint having been made to the master, he instituted an enquiry into the cause of the disturbance, and to his astonishment found that it originated with the son of a craftsman in the town, who had a copy of Lindsay’s “Monarchies,” which he had read at intervals to his schoolfellows. {378} When the master was about to administer severe chastisement to him, for the tumult which he had occasioned, and also for retaining in his possession such a heretical book, the boy very spiritedly replied, that the book was not heretical, requested his master to read it, and professed his readiness to submit to punishment, provided any heresy was found in it. This proposal appeared so reasonable to Simson that he perused the work, which he had not formerly seen, and was convinced of the truth of the boy’s statement. He accordingly made the best excuse which he could to the magistrates for the behaviour of his scholars, and advised the friar to abstain in future from extolling miracles, and from abusing the protestant preachers.