[310] [There is "great uncertainty" as to whether this meeting took place in 1536 or 1537 (Hardwick's Reformation, 1883, p. 182 n.). The year 1537 is given by Alesius in his 'De Avthoritate Verbi Dei' (p. 18), and is repeated in the translation. In the latter it is said: "Contrary to all my expectacion I chanced to fall agayn into such a disputacyon as I was in before, and in maner with like adversarys.... Unto this disputacion I came sodenly unprepared, for as I did mete bi chance in the streate the right excellent Lord Crumwel going unto the Parlament Howse in the yeare 1537, he whan he sawe me called me unto him, and toke me with him to the Parlament House to Westmyster (sic), where we fownd all the bisshops gathered together.">[
[311] Cattley's Foxe, v. 381-384. [The whole of this account, as Cattley points out, is taken by Foxe almost verbatim from a statement made by Alesius himself in his rare tract entitled, Of the Auctorite of the Word of God agaynst the Bisshop of London, wherein are conteyned certen disputacyons had in the Parlament Howse betwene the Bisshops, abowt the nomber of the Sacraments, and other things very necessary to be known: made by Alexander Alane Scot and sent to the Duke of Saxon. Christopher Anderson says that this translation of the tract De Authoritate Verbi Dei Liber was made by Edmund Allen. So completely had the original name of Alesius dropped out of knowledge that Anderson actually charges the printer with committing "a strange blunder in the title." Believing that Ales was the real name of Alesius, he thought that the printer had divided the name of the author between the author and the translator ('Annals of the English Bible,' ii. 479 n.).]
[312] [For the circumstances of his departure, see Appendix [G].]
[313] [For M'Alpine, see Gau's Richt Vay, Introd., p. xii.]
[314] "I owe much," he says, "to your father, who received me most hospitably at my first coming hither, and, in name of Duke Maurice (now Elector of Saxony), invited me to give my services to this famous university, and retained me here some years after, when I was called elsewhere" (i.e., probably Königsberg), "promising me the favour and grace of the most illustrious prince elector. Finally, after the war, he encouraged me, then hesitating, to write to the elector to beg the restitution of my books and other effects, which I had lost at the time of the siege of this city, kindly offering his best services in rendering my supplicatory letter to the prince, by which, however, he only succeeded in securing that the elector, when departing from his own dominions to attend the imperial diet, should give instructions on the matter to his counsellors whom he had left at home, and should deliver to be sent on to me a letter full of kindness through Damianus Sybothendorff, secretary to his highness."
[315] On the former of which occasions he inscribed the following paragraph in the matriculation book of the university: "Anno MDLV, die 23 Aprilis, qui Divo Georgio sacer est, et quo existimo me natum esse, supputatis retro LV annis, ego Alexander Alesius, gente Scotus, Patriâ Edinburgensis, atavis consulibus, qui duobus regibus, Jacobo Quinto, et Henrico Octavo, et quatuor electoribus, Johanni Friderico, Mauricio et Augusto, Ducibus Saxoniae, et Joachimo Electori Brandeburgensi inservivi, invitus suscepi officium rectoris universitatis scholae in inclytâ urbe Lipsiâ."
[316] Lorimer's Scottish Reformation, 1860, pp. 112, 113. [The Perth martyrs are noticed above, pp. [53], [54]. See also Laing's Knox, i. 117, 118, 523-526.]
[317] Lorimer's Scottish Reformation, 1860, pp. 115, 116. [The quotations from the Cohortatio which follow agree substantially with those given by Dr Lorimer, but many of the variations in the phraseology show that Dr Mitchell had the original as well as Lorimer's translation before him when he wrote.]
[319] M'Crie's Knox, 1855, p. 462.