Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/425

1534.] highest compliment. 'It is a pity,' he said to him, 'that ever you were a friar.'

But the attitude of the Scotch Government naturally threw upon the Romanizing bishops an increase of power, and they grew more vindictive as the times grew dangerous. Religion and politics had become so identified, that Protestants were not only hated in themselves, but they were allies of the English, traitors to the Commonwealth, to be hunted down and annihilated. In 1534 a fisherman named David Straiton was burnt. He had been required to pay tithe of what he caught. If the priests would rob him, he said, they might come for their tithe to the place where he got it; and as each tenth fish came up, he flung it back into the sea. He was excommunicated for disrespect; the lighter punishment soon drew after it the worst; he was executed at the stake.

In 1538, the conduct of the persecution fell into the hands of David Beton, and in him ultramontanism became absolute in its most relentless form. The attempt was no longer to conquer heresy, but to exterminate it; nor can it be said that a process which in Spain was absolutely successful, was in itself unwisely calculated. If the Scotch had been a people over whom bodily terror could exert a power, they would have yielded as the Spaniards yielded.

But Beton had to deal with dispositions as hard as