After having remained in Paris for the space of two years, which he must have employed to much better purpose than most youths of his age, the death of his kind uncle reduced him again to poverty. Partly on this account, partly from ill health, he returned to his own country, and spent a year at home. Alter having recruited his strength, he entered as a common soldier into a body of troops that was brought over from France by John Duke of Albany, then Regent of Scotland, for the purpose of opposing the English. Buchanan himself says that he went into the army “to learn the art of war;” it is probable that his needy circumstances were of more weight than this reason. During this campaign he was subjected to great hardships from severe falls of snow; in consequence of which he relapsed into his former illness; and was obliged to return home a second time, where he was confined to his bed a great part of the winter. But on his recovery, in the spring of 1524, when he was just entering upon his 18th year, he again took to his studies, and pursued them with great ardour. He seems to have found friends at this time rich enough to send him to the University of St. Andrews, on which foundation he was entered as a _pauper_, a term which corresponds to the servitor and sizer of the English Universities. John Mair, better known (through Buchanan[2]) by his Latinized name of Major, was then reading lectures at St. Andrews on grammar and logic. He soon heard of the superior accomplishments of the poor student, and immediately took him under his protection. Buchanan, notwithstanding his avowed contempt for his old tutor, must have imbibed from Major many of his opinions. He was of an ardent temper, and easy, as his contemporaries tell us, to lead whichever way his friends desired him to go; he was also of an inquiring disposition, and never could endure absurdities of any kind. This sort of mind must have found great delight in the doctrines which Major taught. He affirmed the superiority of general councils over the papacy, even to the depriving a Pope of his spiritual authority in case of misdemeanour; he denied the lawfulness of the Pope’s temporal sway; he held that tithes were an institution of mere human appointment, which might be dropped or changed at the pleasure of the people; he railed bitterly against the immoralities and abominations of the Romish priesthood. In political matters his creed coincides exactly with Buchanan’s published opinions,—that the authority of kings was not of divine right, but was solely through the people, for the people; that by a lawful convention of states, any king, in case of tyranny or misgovernment, might be controlled, divested of his power, or capitally executed according to circumstances. But if Major, who was a weak man and a bad arguer, had such weight with Buchanan, John Knox, the celebrated Scottish reformer, who was a fellow-student with him at St. Andrews, must have had still more.