ged in
chapters. The sixth lecture having temporarily gone amissing before its
delivery, Dr Mitchell prepared a rescension of it. The original and the
rescension are now combined in chapter x. He intended to devote an extra
lecture to Alesius, and another to Andrew Melville, but unfortunately
was unable. The chapter on Alesius is therefore taken from two of his
class-lectures, some of the longer extracts being thrown into
appendices, and a few passages being slightly compressed. This is at
once the fullest and the best account of Alesius that has yet been
published. The facts concerning Melville in chapter x. are supplemented
to a small extent in the paper quoted in Appendix A.

Comparatively few of the authorities were entered in the MS. when it was
placed in my hands. I have filled in many, and have taken care, in
almost every instance where volume and page are given, to check the
quotations with the originals. My notes, and my additions to Dr
Mitchell's notes, are enclosed within square brackets; but when I have
merely supplied authorities, they are not so distinguished. The list
which he had drawn up of the works of Alesius was partly in an obsolete
form of shorthand, which to me was quite undecipherable. Having been
privileged to examine a good many of these rare treatises in various
public libraries, I have been able, though only to an inconsiderable
degree, to supplement the list; these additions being marked like those
in the notes and other appendices. In revising the Lectures themselves,
I have corrected a number of trifling slips, but have made no alteration
of which Dr Mitchell would not have cordially approved had his attention
been drawn to it.

In preparing the Lectures, Dr Mitchell availed himself of elaborate
articles he had written at various times for periodicals and other
publications. The present volume is valuable in several ways, not the
least of these being that it embodies, on many obscure and important
points, the matured views of one of the most competent and cautious of
historical students--of one who grudged no time and spared no labour in
eliciting and elucidating the truth.

D. H. F.

_December 1899._

[Illustration: (signed) yrs always cordially Alex. F. Mitchell]

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION CONTENTS.

PAGE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR MITCHELL xiii

CHAPTER I.
THE NATURE A