is deed; and so also, I regret to say, did John Major, the
old Scottish Gallican, then resident at Paris, and preparing for the
press his Commentary on the Gospels, the first part of which was to be
dedicated to his old patron in Scotland, and was emphatically to express
his approval of what that patron had done to root out the tares of
Lutheranism.[27] But, according to the well-known saying, "the reek of
Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it did blow."[28] His martyr death
riveted for ever in the hearts of his friends the truths he had taught
in his life. This was especially the case with the younger _alumni_ in
the colleges, and the less ignorant and dissolute inmates of the priory
and other monastic establishments in the city. As at a later period it
was felt certain that a stern Covenanter had been detected when a
suspected one refused to own that the killing of Archbishop Sharp was to
be regarded as murder, so in these earlier days it was thought a
sufficient mark of an incipient Lutheran if he could not be got to
acknowledge that Hamilton had deserved his fate. On the charge that he
had a copy of the English New Testament, and had been heard to say that
Hamilton was no heretic, Henry Forrest was subjected to a rigorous
imprisonment and a violent death. Forrest was a native of the county of
Linlithgow, and had associated with Hamilton in St Andrews, and was the
first to share his bloody baptism there. He was burned at the north
kirk-style of the Abbey Church, that the heretics of Angus might see the
fire and take warning from his fate.[29] One for simply touching in his
sermons with a firm hand on the corruptions of the clergy had to escape
for his life.[30] Another, whose history after being long forgotten has
been again brought to light in our own day, for a similar offence was
subjected to cruel imprisonment, and at last forced to flee from his
native land.

[Sidenote: Alesius and the Scriptures.]

The name of this confessor was Alexander Alane, and it is so entered in
the Registers of St Andrews University; but it is by the name of
Alexander Alesius, imposed on him by Melanchthon, that he has been
chiefly known to posterity. It may admit of some doubt whether he was
absolutely the first after the death of Hamilton to abandon his
country[31] and all he held dear, rather than renounce the faith the
martyr had taught him, or crouch before the lecherous tyrant who had
destined him to a filthy dungeon and a lin