h joy, and make full proof of his ministry.
As soon as the plague abated in the city, heedless of the new proofs he
then had of the cardinal's relentless determination to capture or trepan
him, and the earnest warnings of his northern friends that they could
not be answerable for his safety, he took his last farewell of his kirks
in Montrose and Dundee. At all hazards he was determined to fulfil his
engagement to meet his western friends in Edinburgh, to prosecute his
work there under their promised protection, and to seek a public
disputation with some of the popish clergy who about that time were to
meet in Synod in the capital. Disappointed of the presence and
protection of the western men, he laboured for a brief season in Leith,
Inveresk, and East Lothian without much success. At last, forsaken by
many of those who should have stood by him, he was seized at Ormiston,
under cover of night and promise of safe keeping, by the Earl of
Bothwell, Sheriff Principal of the county. The Earl pledged his honour
not to give him up to his enemies, but was soon persuaded to deliver him
to the governor, as was the governor to hand him over to the cardinal,
though he finally protested against his being tried or condemned by the
churchmen in his own absence. A full account of his labours during these
days of despondency has been given by Knox, who got from him, it is
said, the first rudiments of Greek, and who--having rendered his first
service to the cause of the Reformation by bearing the two-handed sword
for his protection--was dismissed on the night of his betrayal with the
significant words, "One is sufficient for one sacrifice," showing what
fate he now anticipated for himself.

[Sidenote: His Martyrdom.]

I cannot enlarge on these things, nor on the sad scenes which took place
at St Andrews on the last day of February and 1st of March 1545-46, when
the cardinal, regardless of the remonstrances of the regent and the
murmurs of the people, but with the assent of the Council which he had
adjourned from Edinburgh to St Andrews, condemned him to the stake.
Throughout all these trying scenes he comported himself as nobly as
Patrick Hamilton had done; and not less plentifully did his blood prove
the seed of the church, verifying his words, that few would suffer after
him before the glory of God evidently appeared. No doubt his cruel
martyrdom hastened the removal of that tyrant who set himself above all
restraint of civil law, and