the monastic superiors to make the necessary repairs was a perpetual source of strife between them and the bishops. This system led necessarily to the degradation of the rural clergy 1.

Meanwhile the majority of bishops and prelates scarcely affected to conceal their incontinency. They regularly obtained letters of legitimation for their children, married their daughters to the sons of the nobility and endowed them with the revenues of the Church. The beneficed clergy also openly kept their concubines 2, brought up their children in their own households, and not infrequently secured the succession to their benefices for their own sons. It is not surprising if under these circumstances the mass of the laity became as irreverent as they were ignorant. The Catechism was addressed to those who were accustomed to 'carreling and wanton synging in the kirk,' and has to rebuke those who in the tyme of Goddis word or service occupeis thame self in vaine, evil or any warldly talking, lauchhing, scorning or ony siclik doingis.' (pp. 68, 69.) Churches and cemeteries were profaned by secular business and pastimes. Very few of the parishioners went to Mass at all. Sundays and holydays were held in contempt, and the Catechism puts on record the very remarkable confession, that the neglect of the Sunday observance was one of the principal causes of the troubles then afflicting the country 3.

The popular discontent with the Church was further increased by the oppressive mortuary dues or 'corse presents,' the church cow' and uppermost cloth' exacted by the parochial clergy on the death of a parishioner. These

2

Dr. Lees' Paisley, pp. 227, 228.

* In multorum sacerdotum aedibus scortum publicum; pernoctabant in tabernis viri deo dicati nec a sacrilego quorundam luxu tutus erat matronarum honos aut virginalis pudor.' Conaeus, de dupl. statu religionis apud Scotus. Romae, 1628. The Catechism (p. 92) quotes as 'Ane special exempil worthi to be notit of al kirkmen' the punishment of the sons of Heli for being 'giffin to greit wantones and huirdome, abusand the woman quhilk cam to mak sacrifice.'

* P. 69. In reference to the comparatively strict view of the obligations of the 'third commandment' put forward in the Catechism, and for the history of Roman Catholic opinion on this subject, see Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, art. Sunday.

taxes were extremely galling to the poor, and form the subject of much bitter invective at the hands of contemporary poets and satirists. The abuse had been mitigated in England by Henry VIII, in 1529. Some years later James V in vain urged the Scottish clergy to adopt some remedy for it1. At the last moment only, at the Synod of 1559, in response to the petition of the Catholic lords and barons, was some alleviation of the burden granted. The Catechism is not without reference to the avarice and selfishness of all who dealt with the patrimony of the Church, from the highest to the lowest. The syn of Princis, Lordis, Byschoppis and uthir Patronis spiritual and temporall' promoting unworthy and unqualified persons to benefices for lufe of temporall geir to thair awin avantage,' is denounced as theft, and 'benefecit men' who receive 'teindis and offeryngis fra the christin pepil, ye sum tyme mair largelie than thay suld do, and wyll nocht mynister agane to the peple the word of God for the fude of thair saulis, the haly Sacraments for the consolatioun of thair saulis, and wyll gyf na parte of thair benefice for the sustentatioun of pure peple within thair paryschyng,' are declared guilty of the same sin (pp. 97, 98).

In describing the almost incredible scandals of their own Church during the last decades of its existence, zealous ecclesiastics, like Archibald Hay, Quintin Kennedy, and Ninian Winzet, use language which might be mistaken for that of Knox or Buchanan. The lamentations uttered by Winzet over the fallen hierarchy are especially interesting, from the resemblance in style and thought which his earlier writings bear to Hamilton's book. This courageous priest, on his ejection from his office of schoolmaster by the Reformers, seems for a brief period to have entertained hopes of a restoration of Catholicism through the influence of Queen Mary. In his Tract, published in 1561, addressed

1 Robertson's Statuta, vol. ii. pp. 305, 306.

' Compendius Tractive, pp. 151-153. Passages from these and other contemporary Catholic writers bearing on the subject are cited at length in Robertson's Notes to the Statuta Eccles. Scot., vol. ii. pp. 283-407.

to the queen, clergy, and nobility, he does not attempt to disguise or palliate the vices of his order. His treatise is rather an indignant invective against the prelates, at whose door he lays the chief blame of the revolution which had taken place. With severe irony he upbraids them for their hardness towards the poor, their greed, their luxury, and their scandalous lives. Your godly leving garnisit with chastitie, fasting, prayer and sobrietie, be the worthi frutis tharof... is patent to al man. . . Your godly and circumspect distribution. of benefices to your babeis, ignorantis and filthy anis,' he exclaims, al Ethnik, Turk and Jow may lauch at it, that being the ground of al impietie and division this day within the, O Scotland... Gaif the Princes of the erth yow yeirly rentis ... to the end that every ane of yow mot spend the samyn upon his dame Dalida and bastard browis [brats]?' He lays, moreover, particular stress upon their neglect of religious instruction, their 'dum doctrine exalting ceremoneis only without ony declaration of the samin... keiping in silence the trew word of God,' and their suffering the profanation of the sacraments by ignorant and wicked persons,' of the quhilk nummer,' he adds, 'we confesse the maist part of us of the ecclesiastical stait to have bene in our ignorant and inexpert youthe, unworthelie be yow admittit to the ministratioun thairof.' And if the sacraments themselves, through ignorance and avarice, are brought from their purity, what marvel is it (he asks) that matters of less price, as images, the invocation of saints, and prayers for the souls departed, are corrupted and profaned?

This then was the moral and intellectual condition of the clergy of Scotland at the time when Henry VIII, in breaking away from union with the see of Rome, and dissolving the English monasteries, pressed James V to follow his example. The king sternly rejected all such overtures. Nevertheless, on the 6th of January, 1540, the Scottish prelates received from him a significant hint to put their own house in order. On that memorable day Lindsay's famous 'Satire of the Three Estates' was acted before the Court at Linlithgow, strange to b

say, in the presence of several bishops. That the king should have given his countenance to such an open attack upon ecclesiastical abuses is indeed remarkable. On the conclusion of the play he publicly called upon the assembled prelates, with some sharp words, to reform their lives, and threatened, otherwise, to send six of the proudest of them to his uncle in England'. In the following year (March 14) he recorded this warning in an act of Parliament, in terms which show, however, how little the civil government thought of making any departure beyond the limits of catholic orthodoxy. 'Because,' runs the act, 'the negligence of divyne service, the grett unhoneste in the Kirk throw nocht making of reparatioun to the honour of God Almychty and to the blissit sacrament of the Altar, the Virgyne Mary and al haly sanctis, and als the unhonestie and misreule of Kirkmen baith in witt, knawlege and maneris is the mater and cause that the Kirk and Kirkmen are lychtlyit and contempnit, for remeid hereof the Kingis grace exhortis and prayis oppinly all archbishopis ordinaris and uthir prelatis and every kirk man in his awin degre to reforme thare selfis .... and giff ony persoun . . . will nocht obey. . . . the Kingis grace sall find remeid tharfor at the Papis Halynes 2.'

James V died December 14, 1542, and for a brief period the Regent Arran yielded to English and Protestant influences. In May, 1543, the Parliament permitted the use of the Bible in the vulgar tongue. Bishop Leslie points to this act as the first alteration of religion, but, as has already been said, it was the single measure of the kind and was passed while Cardinal Beaton, who had fallen into disgrace with the Regent, was powerless and in prison, and while the other bishops, indignant at this interference with their jurisdiction, appealed to a Provincial Council. On regaining his liberty, and being reconciled to Arran by Hamilton, who had in the same year, 1543, returned to Scot

'The report of a spectator forwarded to Cromwell by Sir W. Eure is printed in Pinkerton's History, vol. ii. pp. 495-497

2 Act. Parl. Scot., vol. ii p 370.

land after an absence of three years in France and was now all powerful with his brother, the Cardinal assembled the. first of a series of conventions or national Synods, which continued to be held, with short intervals, by himself or his successor until the Protestant Reformation was established. Beaton's measures in defence of the Church were chiefly of a political character. The clergy were called upon to tax themselves for war with England. They were ready in such a quarrel to sell their chalices, and, if need be, go themselves into battle. It may be noticed, in passing, that in a Synod held at St. Andrews, in 1546, they provided for the expenses of sending to Trent the prelates who had been summoned by the Pope to attend the Council, which had opened in the preceding December, but at which, however, no delegate of the Scottish Church was at any time present1. Beaton was murdered by the lay leaders of the Protestant party, on the 29th of May of that year, just after he had celebrated with great pomp the marriage of his illegitimate daughter to the heir of the Earl of Crawford 2.

Hamilton received the Papal appointment to the Primacy, 28 November, 1547. He was enthroned at St. Andrews, July, 1549. During the vacancy a convention of the clergy had met at Edinburgh, March, 1547, and called upon the Regent to enforce the laws against 'the pestilencious heresies of Luther and his followers, who were openly disputing against the Sacraments, especially that of the altar.' The Synod provided that in every cathedral church a divine should be appointed to preach to the people. The new Primate had already taken an effective part in political and ecclesiastical affairs, and his strict orthodoxy was at this time beyond suspicion. But it is curious to note that five years previously, when he returned from his visit to France in company with David Panther, afterwards bishop of Ross, the arrival of the two men was hopefully expected by the

1 Robertson, Preface to the Statuta, pp. cxli-cxlv.

2 Lives of the Lindsays, vol. i. p. 201.