s were now, however, surging upwards
in both England and Scotland, which doubled the silent struggle between
the old ally and the new. On the side of France was the old religion,
the Church which at this period was the strongest of the Estates of
Scotland, richer than any of the others, and possessing almost all the
political ability of the time: on the side of England a new, scarcely
recognised, but powerful influence, which was soon to attain almost
complete mastery in Scotland and shatter that Church to pieces. In the
beginning of James's reign this new power was but beginning to swell in
the silent bosom of the country, showing here and there in a trial for
heresy and in the startling fires of execution which cut off the first
martyrs for the reformed faith. But there is no evidence to show that
James, a young man full of affairs much more absorbing than religious
controversy, with more confidence, politically at least, in the Church
than in any other power of his realm, had ever been awakened to the
importance of the struggle. The smoke of those fires which blew over all
Scotland in potent fumes from St. Andrews, on the further side of the
Firth; and from Edinburgh, where on the Castle Hill in the intervals of
the tiltings and tourneys, the Vicar of Dollar for example, of whose
examination we have a most vivid and admirable report, full of
picturesque simplicity, not without humour even in the midst of the
tragedy, was burnt--along with several gentlemen of his county: does not
seem to have reached the young King, absorbed in some project of State,
or busy with new laws and regulations, or inspecting the portraits of
the great ladies among whom he had to choose his bride. There is a
curious story communicated in a letter of one of the English envoys of
the period of his conversation with a Scotch gentleman, in which we find
a description of James listening to a play represented before the Court
at the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, in the Castle of Linlithgow. This
play is believed to have been Sir David Lindsay's _Satire on the Three
Estates_, one of the most effective attacks upon the corruptions of the
Church which had ever been made, and setting forth the exactions of the
priests from the peasantry and the poor at every event of their lives,
as well as the wealth and wickedness of the monastic communities, of
which Scotland was full, and which had long been the recognised object
of popular satire and objurgation. T