When the opinions and martyrdom of Hamilton were the subject of conversation among the canons, several of the younger of whom were attached to him, Alesius refused to condemn him. He was not yet by any means, as Dr Lorimer would have it, a Lutheran; he was not yet prepared to separate himself from the old church; but he saw and mourned over her corruptions, and longed, and in a quiet way laboured, for the removal of them, and also yearned for the revival of a more earnest Christian spirit, and more correct moral conduct among those over whom his influence extended. From that day no one could induce him to express approval of the proceedings which had been taken against Hamilton, or to pronounce an unfavourable judgment on the articles for which he had been condemned to death. [Sidenote: Patrick Hepburn.] This silence brought him under the suspicion of his more bigoted associates, and gave special offence to his superior, Prior Patrick Hepburn (the nephew of Prior John, who had founded St Leonard's College), a violent, coarse, immoral young noble, emulous of the debaucheries and vices, as well as of the cultured _hauteur_, of the young French ecclesiastics of rank among whom his youth had been passed. Knox has given a graphic if rather coarse account of the revelries of this young man and his gay associates, more in keeping with what we should have expected from the sons of Tarquin in heathen Rome than from the _élite_ of the young ecclesiastics of a primatial Christian city, and under the eye of an aged archbishop.[288] The representation of Alesius is only the more credible because it is the more restrained, and the one representation corroborates the other, and proves to what a low ebb morality had sunk among the ministers of the old church in Scotland before it was swept away. Not only did this bold bad man set at nought the laws of God and the canons of his church, and make a boast of doing so among his boon companions, but even when the archbishop sought to separate him from his unlawful connection, the prior collected his armed retainers, and would have fought with him had not the Earl of Rothes and the Abbot of Arbroath, the primate's hopeful nephew, come between the two bands and patched up a sort of truce between their leaders.