WHILE this fermentation of opinion was spreading through the nation, Knox, from the state of his mind, could not remain long unaffected. The reformed doctrines had been imbibed by several persons of his acquaintance, and they were the topic of common conversation and dispute among the learned and inquisitive at the university.[53] His change of views first discovered itself in his philosophical lectures, in which he began to forsake the scholastic path, and to recommend to his pupils a more rational and useful method of study. Even this innovation excited against him violent suspicions of heresy, which were confirmed, when he proceeded to reprehend the corruptions {38} that prevailed in the church. He was then teaching at St Andrews; but it was impossible for him to remain long in a town, which was wholly under the power of cardinal Beatoun, the chief supporter of the Romish church, and a determined enemy to all reform. Accordingly he left that place, and retired to the south of Scotland, where he avowed his belief of the protestant doctrine. Provoked by his defection, and alarmed lest he should draw others after him, the clergy were anxious to rid themselves of such an adversary. Having passed sentence against him as a heretic, and degraded him from the priesthood, the cardinal employed assassins to waylay him, by whose hands he must have fallen, had not providence placed him under the protection of Douglas of Langniddrie.[54] {39} The change produced in the political state of the kingdom by the death of James V. had great influence upon the Reformation. After a bold but unsuccessful attempt by cardinal Beatoun, to secure to himself the government during the minority of the infant queen, the earl of Arran was peaceably established in the regency. Arran had formerly shown himself attached to the reformed doctrines, and he was now surrounded with counsellors who were of the same principles. Henry VIII. laid hold of this opportunity for accomplishing his favourite measure of uniting the two crowns, and eagerly pressed a marriage between his son Edward and Mary, the young queen of Scots. Notwithstanding the determined opposition of the whole body of the clergy, the Scottish parliament agreed to the match; commissioners were sent into England to settle the terms; and the contract of marriage was drawn out, subscribed, and ratified by all the parties. But through the intrigues of the cardinal and queen‑mother, the fickleness and timidity of the regent, and the violence of the English monarch, the treaty, after proceeding thus far, was broken off; and Arran not only renounced connexion with England, but abjured the reformed religion publicly in the church of Stirling. The Scottish queen was soon after betrothed to the dauphin of France, and sent into that kingdom; a measure which, at a subsequent period, nearly accomplished the ruin of the independence of Scotland, and the extirpation of the protestant religion.