The persons with whom the Reformer was most familiar at St Andrews, were the professors of St Leonard’s college, who often visited him at his lodging {207} in the abbey. This college was distinguished by its warm attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation, which it had embraced at a very early period;[271] while the two other colleges were disaffected to the authority of the king, and several of their teachers suspected of leaning to popery. The Reformer was accustomed to amuse himself by walking in St Leonard’s Yard, and to look with peculiar complacency on the students, whom he regarded as the rising hope of the church. He would sometimes call them to him, and bless them, and exhort them to be diligent in their studies, to attend to the instructions of their teachers, and imitate the good example which they set before them, to acquaint themselves with God, and with the great work which he had lately performed in their native country, and to cleave to the good cause. These familiar advices, from a person so venerable, made a deep impression on the minds of the young men. He even condescended to be present at a college‑exercise performed by them at the marriage of one of their regents, in which the siege and taking of Edinburgh castle was dramatically represented.[272] During his stay at St Andrews, he published a vindication of the reformed religion, in answer to a letter written by Tyrie, a Scottish Jesuit. The argumentative part of the work was finished by him in 1568; but he sent it abroad at this time, with additions, as a farewell address to the world, and a {208} dying testimony to the truth which he had long taught and defended.[273] Along with it he published one of the religious letters which he had formerly written to his mother‑in‑law, Mrs Bowes; and, in an advertisement prefixed to this, he informs us that she had lately departed this life, and that he could not allow the opportunity to slip of acquainting the public, by means of this letter, with the intimate Christian friendship which had so long subsisted between them.