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 Zuerich, Basle,
and Strassburg, and brought home with him, and ultimately translated
into English, the First Helvetic Confession,[58] composed and agreed on