Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/419

1525.] with the growth of the spirit of the Reformation; and the history of the outward occurrences is the history of them in the effect which they worked in shaping the mind of the Reformer.

The world went smoothly with the Church for the first quarter of the century. The bishops and abbots ate, and drank, and sinned, and married their children, and believed their houses would continue for ever; till suddenly Luther started up in Germany, and the expanding circles of the great wave which he had created penetrated into Scotland. Patrick Hamilton, the Earl of Arran's nephew, a youth little more than twenty years old, was among the first of her children who was shaken with the undulation. The young abbot (he was the titular superior of Ferns) crossed to the Continent, 'to see that great sight.' He spoke with Luther himself; he spoke with Melancthon; and in the beginning of the year 1527 he carried back the lessons which he had learnt to his countrymen. It was a time when there was neither law nor order, when the strong trampled on the weak, and the ruling powers of the Church were happy in their adulteries, and there was no justice but to the strong. But authority, unequal to the protection of men's lives and properties, could rouse itself in defence of their souls. A friend of Hamilton, an Alexander Campbell, with whom he had shared his treasure, whispered the news that heresy was in Scotland. The rank of the offender made him peculiarly dangerous. He was seized, and convicted of Lutheranism before