y should
be punished as the law of holy church requires,[9] speak more
significantly of the alarm they had occasioned than these sporadic
martyrdoms. Still more, perhaps, does the abuse Fordun, or rather his
continuator, heaps on them, bear witness to the alarm they had caused.
Yet at the very close of the century, and in the old haunt, we find no
fewer than thirty processed, and through the kindness of the king more
gently dealt with than the ecclesiastical authorities wished; three of
the most resolute--namely, Campbell of Cessnock, his noble wife, and a
priest who officiated as their chaplain and read the New Testament to
them--being released when at the stake.

[Sidenote: John Major.]

Reforming tendencies in the sixteenth century, it has been said, first
showed themselves in Scotland in the reassertion of "those principles,
catholic but anti-papal," which had been maintained in the preceding
century in the Councils of Constance and Basle. The decisions of the
former were received in Scotland in 1418, and allegiance to Benedict
XIII. was finally renounced.[10] A Scottish doctor[11] had taken a
rather prominent part in the proceedings of the latter, though the
Scottish Church, like the others, ultimately fell away from that council
and the pope elected by it, and under Bishop Kennedy was reconciled to
the Roman See and to Pope Eugenius.[12] Scotland had had no Grosteste,
no Anselm or Bradwardine among its prelates in the middle ages, no
Wycliffe among its priests. Duns Scotus, the one theologian before the
sixteenth century who claimed Scottish birth and European fame, never
seems to have taught in his native land. Chief among its doctors in the
beginning of the sixteenth century stood John Major, a native of East
Lothian, who taught with distinguished success, first in Paris, then in
Glasgow, after that in St Andrews, then once more in Paris, and finally
in St Andrews again. Melanchthon, while ridiculing his scholastic ways,
places him at the head of the doctors of the Sorbonne. The remembrance
of his early labours in Montaigu College had not died out when Calvin
entered it, and probably he had returned to it before Calvin left.
Patrick Hamilton and Buchanan may possibly have been brought into
contact with him while there, as they, Alesius, and John Wedderburn
afterwards were in St Andrews, and John Hamilton and Knox in Glasgow. He
was a true disciple of D'Ailly and Gerson, but like them was warmly
attached to the