We owe it to the Rev. Christopher Anderson, the author of the 'Annals of the English Bible,' that attention has been once more turned to the deeply interesting story of Alexander Alane, or Alesius. Principal Lorimer, in his 'Scottish Reformation,' has thrown further light on him. And Dr Merle D'Aubigné, who appears to have minutely examined most of his tracts and commentaries, has wrought into his graphic but imaginative narrative much of the information which they have been the chief means of handing down to us. It was after his expatriation that he received from Melanchthon the name of Alesius, or the wanderer.
This highly distinguished but long forgotten alumnus of St Andrews University was born in Edinburgh on the 23rd of April 1500, of honest parents, and received the first rudiments of his education in his native city. It was probably while he was still there that he had vouchsafed on his behalf those wonderful interpositions of Providence, which remained through life engraven on his heart, and which he thus relates in his preface to his Commentary on the Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy, published at Leipzig in 1551. "Certe ab infantia [Diabolus] me saepe incautum opprimere voluit, et perdere non tam insidiis et crudelitate hostium, quam praecipitio in ignem et aquam. Verum ille, qui servavit me inter omnia pericula et infantem de gradibus patris mei cadentem in acervum lapidum advectorum ad extruendum supremum tabulatum in aedibus, et reptantem manibus in cacumine altissimi montis, ex cujus declivi vel praerupto, divinitus in alterum latus in quo facilis erat descensus, subito perveni."[283] With even more than his usual licence, Dr D'Aubigné thus recounts this adventure: He "was fond of going with other boys of his own age to the heights which environ Edinburgh. The great rock on the summit of which the castle stands, the beautiful Calton Hill, and the picturesque hill called Arthur's Seat, in turn His miraculous Escape. attracted them. One day, it was in 1512, Alexander and his friends, having betaken themselves to the last-named hill, amused themselves by rolling over and over down a slope which terminated in a precipice. Suddenly the lad found himself on the brink; terror deprived him of his senses; some hand grasped him and placed him in safety, but he never knew by whom or by what means he had been rescued. The priests gave the credit of this escape to the paper with which they had provided him, but Alexander himself attributed it to God and his father's prayers."[284]
Alesius, or Alane as he was still called, being of good abilities, was early sent to the university, and seems to have been one of the first set of students who entered St Leonard's College (the college founded by Prior John Hepburn, with the consent of Archbishop Alexander Stuart) after its opening in 1512. His studies appear to have been prosecuted there in the usual way, and in 1515 he became a determinant, or took the degree of B.A.;[285] and, probably after acting for a few years as a regent in the college, he was drafted as a novice into the priory, and ultimately became one of its canons. When John Major came to St Andrews in 1523 as principal of the Pædagogium, he, like Hamilton and some others who ultimately shared the same opinions, studied theology under him, and made great progress, especially in the study of the schoolmen and the fathers of the Christian church. He was, like most of the young scholastics of his time, fond of disputation; and if he listened to those lectures on the gospels which Major gave to the press some years after, he probably imbibed from his teacher that combative attitude towards the new Discussions with Patrick Hamilton. opinions which at this period of his life he showed. D'Aubigné says: "His keenest desire was to break a lance with Luther.... As he could not measure himself personally with the man whom he named arch-heretic, Alesius had refuted his doctrine in a public discussion held at the university. The theologians of St Andrews had covered him with applause.[286] ... Alesius, alive to these praises and a sincere catholic, thought that it would be an easy task for him to convince young Hamilton of his errors.... Armed cap-a-pie, crammed with scholastic learning, and with all the formulæ 'quo modo sit, quo modo nonsit,'" he had various discussions with him. "Hamilton had before him nothing but the Gospel, and he replied to all the reasonings of his antagonist with the clear, living, and profound word of the Scriptures.... Alesius, struck and embarrassed, was silenced, and felt as if 'the morning star were rising in his heart. It was not merely his understanding that was convinced, the breath of a new life penetrated his soul."[287] He continued from time to time to visit the reformer while he lived, and to cherish his memory after he had been so cruelly put to death.
When the opinions and martyrdom of Hamilton were the subject of conversation among the canons, several of the younger of whom were attached to him, Alesius refused to condemn him. He was not yet by any means, as Dr Lorimer would have it, a Lutheran; he was not yet prepared to separate himself from the old church; but he saw and mourned over her corruptions, and longed, and in a quiet way laboured, for the removal of them, and also yearned for the revival of a more earnest Christian spirit, and more correct moral conduct among those over whom his influence extended. From that day no one could induce him to express approval of the proceedings which had been taken against Hamilton, or to pronounce an unfavourable judgment on the articles for which he had been condemned to death.
Patrick Hepburn.
This silence brought him under the suspicion of his more bigoted associates, and gave special offence to his superior, Prior Patrick Hepburn (the nephew of Prior John, who had founded St Leonard's College), a violent, coarse, immoral young noble, emulous of the debaucheries and vices, as well as of the cultured hauteur, of the young French ecclesiastics of rank among whom his youth had been passed. Knox has given a graphic if rather coarse account of the revelries of this young man and his gay associates, more in keeping with what we should have expected from the sons of Tarquin in heathen Rome than from the élite of the young ecclesiastics of a primatial Christian city, and under the eye of an aged archbishop.[288] The representation of Alesius is only the more credible because it is the more restrained, and the one representation corroborates the other, and proves to what a low ebb morality had sunk among the ministers of the old church in Scotland before it was swept away. Not only did this bold bad man set at nought the laws of God and the canons of his church, and make a boast of doing so among his boon companions, but even when the archbishop sought to separate him from his unlawful connection, the prior collected his armed retainers, and would have fought with him had not the Earl of Rothes and the Abbot of Arbroath, the primate's hopeful nephew, come between the two bands and patched up a sort of truce between their leaders.
The Christian lives and healthful influence of the younger canons could not but be felt to be a standing rebuke by their superior, and doubtless were one main cause why he bore them so deep a grudge and gave way to such savage outbursts of temper in his intercourse with them. He is said to have denounced them, and especially Alesius, to the aged primate, and probably with the view of entrapping him into some unguarded expression of approval of the new opinions, he got him appointed to preach the sermon at the opening of a synod of bishops and priests which was held at St Andrews probably in the Lent of the year 1529. Alesius, while carefully avoiding everything which might give needless offence to his hearers, thought, to use his own words, that in such presence, and speaking in the Latin language, he would not discharge his duty unless he earnestly exhorted those set in authority over the churches to the practice of piety, the observance of good morals, the study of Christian doctrine, and the pious teaching and governing of their churches. He confesses that he earnestly inveighed against immoral priests, but he adds that as he had said nothing in a disloyal spirit, or more harshly than the facts warranted, and had attacked no one by name, the sermon gave no offence to good men. But his irate and domineering prior imagined that the sermon was specially aimed at him, and was intended to hold him up to the ridicule of the assembled prelates and clergy. Having already defied the archbishop, Hepburn could not brook such a liberty on the part of one of his own subordinates. An opportunity soon occurred to him of paying back with interest the insult which he imagined had been done to him.
Assaulted and Imprisoned.
It so happened that the whole college of canons resolved, for many and grave reasons, to lodge a complaint with the king respecting the harshness and cruelty of their superior. When this came to Hepburn's ears, he rushed with a band of armed attendants into the sacred chapter-house where the canons were assembled, and when admonished by Alesius, who probably presided in the meeting, not in the heat of passion to be guilty of any foolish prank, he ordered the speaker to be seized by his armed attendants, and drawing his sword would have run it through him had not two of the canons forcibly dragged him back and turned aside his weapon. The affrighted and timid canon cast himself at his superior's feet and entreated him to spare his life, but in return only received a kick in the breast which nearly proved fatal to him. When he had partially recovered from this, and was being hurried off to prison, another dastardly attack was made on him, but that was parried by the prior's own retainers, who saw that he was beside himself with rage and fury. After this all the other canons were seized and imprisoned, but on the remonstrance of certain noble friends they were ordered to be released by the king, who was then in St Andrews and was informed of what had taken place.