Towns > Hamilton > 1878-79 - Naismith's Hamilton directory for 1878-79, including Bothwell, Blantyre, Uddingston, Motherwell, and Larkhall to which is added, A history of Hamilton and neighbourhood

58 REFOKMATION ASSOCIATIONS.
the kingdom during the brief reign of Margaret the
Maiden, but being a crafty self-seeking ambitious
man, on the first rumour of the Queen's death, he
sent an invitation to the English King to approach
the Border. This was ostensibly to prevent blood-
shed, but really to forward the Baliol interest of
which he was a partisan. One of Rector Frazer's
successors was, Alexander, fourth brother of Robert
the Bruce. He espoused the cause of the Bruce, and
was taken prisoner along with his brother, Thomas,
while fighting against the M'Do walls, a Galloway
sept. His captors carried him to Carlisle, where, by
order of the English King, he was hanged, his head
being afterwards cut off and suspended at the gate of
the merry border town.
EBFORMATION ASSOCIATIONS — THE ATTITUDE OF THE
HAMILTONS — JOHN KNOX.
The ties which knit the House of Hamilton and
their burghers in feudal times had not lost any of
their strength when the Reformation period dawned
on Scotland. The head of the house was James, the
second Earl of Arran and Duke of Chatelherault. He
was of a vacillating and uncertain disposition. Popish
and Protestant by turns, but neither long ; and the
peoples' motto would appear to have been " like
master like man." When he joined the Lords of the
Congregation, he appointed Robert Hamilton of Both-
well — in the ancient church Rector of Torrens and pre-
bendary of Both well — minister of the parish, and thus
through his influence Hamilton was one of the few
parishes that had from the first a regular pastor of the
Reformed faith. Hamilton was the friend of John
Knox and it is notable that of one of the Duke of
Chatelherault's chaplains — Thomas Gwilliam, formerly
a black friar — Calderwood relates " that he was the