From that time Simson was friendly to the Reformation. MS. Historie of the Kirk, p. 3, 4. In every protestant country, a metrical version of the Psalms, in the vernacular language, appeared at a very early period. The French version begun by Clement Marot, and completed by Beza, contributed much to the spread of the Reformation in France. The Psalms were sung by Francis I. and Henry II. and by their courtiers. The catholics flocked for a time to the assemblies of the protestants to listen to their psalmody. Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Marot, Notes N, O, P. At a later period, cardinal Chastillon proposed to the papal ambassador, as the best method for checking the progress of heresy, that his holiness should authorize some “good and godly” songs to be sung by the French, “cantar alcune cose in lingua Francese, le quali pero fossero parole buono et sante, et prima approvate de sua Beatitudine.” Lettres de St Croix: Aymons, ut supra, tom. i. p. 7, 9, 11. It has been said, that there was a Scottish version of the Psalms at a very early period. Dalyell’s Cursory Remarks, p. 35. It is more certain, that before the year 1546, a number of the Psalms were translated in metre; for George Wishart sung one of them in the house of Ormiston, on the night in which he was apprehended. Knox, Historie, p. 49. The two lines quoted by Knox answer to the beginning of the second stanza of the 51st Psalm, inserted in Scottish Poems of the 16th Century, p. 111. They were commonly sung in the assemblies of the protestants, in the year 1556. Knox, 96. John and Robert Wedderburn, brothers to the poet of that name mentioned above, appear {379} to have been the principal translators of them. Cald. MS. i. 108, 109. The version was not completed; and at the establishment of the Reformation, it was supplanted in the churches, by the version begun by Sternhold and Hopkins, and finished by the English exiles at Geneva.