The clergy did not allow him long time to disseminate his opinions. Pretending to wish a free conference with him, they decoyed him to St Andrews, where he was thrown into prison by archbishop Beatoun, and committed to the flames on the last day of February 1528, and in the twenty‑fourth year of his age. On his trial he defended his opinions with firmness, yet with great modesty; and the mildness, patience, and fortitude, which he displayed at the stake, equalled those of the first martyrs of Christianity. He expired with these words in his mouth: “How long, O Lord, shall darkness cover this realm! How long wilt thou suffer this tyranny of men! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”[43] “The murder of Hamilton,” {30} says a modern historian,[44] “was afterwards avenged in the blood of the nephew and successor of his persecutor;” and the flames in which he expired were, “in the course of one generation, to enlighten all Scotland, and to consume, with avenging fury, the Catholic superstition, the papal power, and the prelacy itself.” The good effects which resulted from the martyrdom of Hamilton soon began to appear. Many of the learned, as well as of the common people, in St Andrews, beheld with deep interest the cruel death of a person of rank, and could not refrain from admiring the heroism with which he endured it. This excited inquiry into the opinions for which he suffered, and the result of inquiry in many cases was a conviction of their truth. Gawin Logie, principal of St Leonard’s college, was so successful in instilling them into the minds of the students under his care, that it became proverbial to say of any one who was suspected of Lutheranism, that “he had drunk of St Leonard’s well.”[45] Under the connivance of John Winram, the subprior, they also secretly spread among the noviciates of the abbey.[46]