After that diet, we find almost no question for matters of religion, for the space of nigh thirty years. For not long after, to wit, in the year of God 1508, the said Archbishop Blackader departed this life, while journeying in his superstitious devotion to Jerusalem. Unto him succeeded Mr. James Beaton, son to the Laird of Balfour, in Fife. More careful for the world than he was to preach Christ, or yet to advance any religion, but for the fashion only, he sought the world, and it fled him not. At once he was Archbishop of St. Andrews, Abbot of Dunfermline, Arbroath, and Kilwinning, and Chancellor of Scotland. After the unhappy field of Flodden, in which perished King James the Fourth, with the greater part of the nobility of the realm, the said Beaton with the rest of the prelates, had the whole regiment[5] of the realm. By reason thereof, he held and travailed to hold the truth of God in thraldom and bondage, until it pleased God of His great mercy, in the year of God 1527, to raise up His servant, Master Patrick Hamilton, at whom our history doth begin. Because men of fame and renown have in divers works written of his progeny, life, and erudition, we omit all curious repetition. If any would know further of him than we write, we send them to Francis Lambert, John Firth, and to that notable work, lately set forth by John Foxe, Englishman, of the Lives and Deaths of Martyrs within this Isle, in this our age. [5] Rule; control. [Sidenote: The Coming of Patrick Hamilton.] This servant of God, the said Master Patrick, being in his youth provided with reasonable honour and living (he was titular Abbot of Ferne), as one hating the world and the vanity thereof, left Scotland, and passed to the schools in Germany; for then the fame of the University of Wittenberg was greatly divulged in all countries. There, by God's providence, he became familiar with these lights and notable servants of Christ Jesus of that time, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and the said Francis Lambert, and he did so grow and advance in godly knowledge, joined with fervency and integrity of life, that he was in admiration with many. The zeal of God's glory did so eat him up, that he could of no long continuance remain abroad, but returned to his country, where the bright beams of the true light, which by God's grace was planted in his heart, began most abundantly to burst forth, as well in public as in secret. Besides his godly knowledge, he was well learned in philosophy. He abhorred sophistry, and would that the text of Aristotle should have been better understood and more used in the schools than then it was: for sophistry had corrupted all, as well in divinity as in humanity. [Sidenote: Persecution of Patrick Hamilton.]