It was about this time that a new evangelist arrived in the country, singularly fitted to impress on the hearts of men the lessons of the Holy Book to which they had now access in their native tongue. This was George Wishart, a younger son or nephew of Sir James Wishart, laird of Pittarrow in the Mearns. He appears to have been born about 1512-13, and to have received his university training in King's College, Aberdeen, then presided over by a distinguished humanist skilled both in Latin and Greek. He acquired a knowledge of Greek--at that time a very rare accomplishment in Scotland--either from the Principal of King's College, or from a Frenchman teaching languages in Montrose. From his early years he seems to have been intimate with John Erskine, laird of Dun, and at that time also provost of the neighbouring burgh of Montrose. The earliest notice we have of him is as attesting a charter granted in favour of Erskine.[57] This lends confirmation to the tradition which Petrie, himself a native of the town, says he had heard from ancient men (who in their youth had seen and known the reformer) that then, or soon after, he was employed as assistant or successor of Marsillier, the Frenchman Erskine had brought from France to teach the languages, and that, like him, he read the Greek New Testament with some of his pupils. John Hepburn, then Bishop of Brechin, would not naturally have been quick-scented to detect heresy in one who stood so high with his good friend Erskine of Dun; but David Betoun, Abbot of Arbroath, often resided at the mansion-house of Ethie, half-way between Arbroath and Montrose, and he was both more lynx-eyed and more anxious to stamp out any approach to heresy, and he urged the bishop on. [Sidenote: Summoned for Heresy.] Wishart in consequence was summoned by Hepburn, but instead of appearing in answer to the summons, he, like many others in that year of grievous persecution, sought safety in England, and it is said that he was forthwith excommunicated and outlawed. He found shelter under Bishop Latimer, whose diocese comprehended Gloucester and Bristol, as well as Worcester; but in the following year he fell into fresh trouble at Bristol--not, as was at one time supposed, by denying the merits of the Virgin Mary, but by denying the merits of Christ Himself. For this he was duly convented before Archbishop Cranmer, and, after conference with him, was persuaded to recant and bear his faggot. Soon after the enactment of the bloody statute of the six articles, he, like most of the Scottish refugees, left England and sought shelter among the reformed churches on the Continent, especially those of Zürich, Basle, and Strassburg, and brought home with him, and ultimately translated into English, the First Helvetic Confession,[58] composed and agreed on by the chief theologians of these churches. [Sidenote: His Appearance and Habits.]