gering death. But it admits of
no doubt that he was the most notable of all the band of young Scottish
exiles who had to leave their native country between the martyrdom of
Hamilton and that of Wishart, and who were honoured to do faithful
service in the cause of the Reformation in England and on the Continent.
The story of Alesius, of the shameless cruelties which drove him from
his native land, of the hardships he had to bear in the earlier years of
his exile, of the high place he gained in the affections of Melanchthon
and Beza, and the great work he was to do by his writings and
prelections for the Protestant churches of Germany, is one of the most
interesting in the great movement of the age. But to be appreciated it
must be told in detail, and as most of his work was done out of
Scotland, I have decided to reserve it for a supplementary lecture. I
must not, however, omit to mention here one special service which he was
honoured to do for the cause in his native land soon after he left it,
as it casts fresh light on the origin of the Reformation in Scotland.
His first publication, printed in 1533, was entitled 'Alexandri Alesii
Epistola contra decretum quoddam episcoporum in Scotia, quod prohibet
legere Novi Testamenti libros lingua vernacula.' It brought into bold
relief, and set high above all minor issues, what had been taught by
Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, and maintained by the Lollards of
Kyle in the fifteenth, and what had actually been urged as an additional
charge against Patrick Hamilton. Save for this epistle of Alesius, and
the controversy it occasioned, we might not have known that even in
ignorant Scotland the bishops had been so far left to themselves as to
issue such a decree.[32] It is still more melancholy to think that even
among the better informed controversialists of Germany one was found to
champion their cause, and to maintain that there was nothing at variance
with sound doctrine in the decree; that nothing but harm could come from
the practice of allowing laymen to read the Scriptures in their own
tongue; and that it could not fail to make them bad Christians and bad
subjects, as Luther's translation had done in Germany.

[Sidenote: Norman Gourlay and David Stratoun.]

[Sidenote: Fugitives and Martyrs.]

From the time that Alesius fled from Scotland down to the death of
James V. in the end of 1542, there was almost continual inquisition made
for those who were suspected of having