Spottiswoode Society > History of the affairs of the Church and State of Scotland from the beginning of the reformation to the year 1568 > Volume 1

1543.] OF CHURCH AND STATE IN SCOTLAND. 05
presented to the Governor by Mr Sadler. The Governor
received him courteously, and heard him preach, and likewise
promised him a living and entertainment in the country ;
and the same Sir Robert, by license from the Governor,
went to St Andrews, and talked with the Cardinal ; but it is a
pity we are ignorant of the communing that passed betwixt
them, the purport thereof being only transmitted to King-
Henry by Richardson himself, and no part thereof dropped to
posterity in Mr Sadlers Letters. The books which were
sent from England were not very much esteemed in this
country, because it seems they treated mostly of true and
solid religion ; whereas the faction that favoured the new
opinions here, were mostly taken up with that part which
confuted the Bishop of Rome's supremacy, and tended to
depress the clergy, which was a point of reformation that
our great men were specially fond to advance and set
forward, that thereby they might enrich themselves out of
the spoils of the Church. Things went in this channel from
the first Parliament of the Governor, until the time that he
shifted sides, and went over to the Cardinal. But how soon
the Governor came with that Prelate to Stirling, his natural
brother John Hamilton, Abbot of Paisley, did so effectually,
it seems, represent to him the former false measures he had
taken, considering that the legitimacy of his own birth, and
consequently the very title to his own private estate, as well
as his advancement to the public high office in which he was
invested, did solely depend upon the Pope's authority, and the
laws of the Church as then established, that the Governor
himself was quickly reconciled to the Church, by making a
public renunciation of his errors, and receiving absolution
from the hands of the Cardinal, in the church of the Fran-
ciscans in that city. The consequence of which was, that
the two preachers Williams and Rough, and such gentlemen
as favoured the new doctrines, were dismissed from being
about the Governor. Sir Robert Richardson also, and
others that had come from England, were fain to return
home as being in danger of their lives since the new turn of
affairs. Nor was the Governor satisfied in the abandoning
of his former friends ; but that he might the better testify
his zeal and integrity in his late conversion, he, in the