HAMILTON’S ZEAL.
Some time after this ordinance, the ship which carried Hamilton reached port, and although this young Christian always had his New Testament in his pocket, he landed without being arrested and went his way to Kincavil. It was about the end of 1527. Patrick tenderly loved his mother and his sister; everybody appreciated his amiable character; the servants and all his neighbors were his friends. This gentleness made his work easier. But his strength lay above all in the depth and the sincerity of his Christian spirit. ‘Christ bare our sins on his back and bought us with his blood’;[61] this was the master chord which vibrated in his soul. In setting forth any subject he silenced his own reasonings and let the Bible speak. No one had a clearer perception of the analogies and the contrasts which characterize the evangelical doctrine. With these intellectual qualities were associated eminent moral virtues; he practised the principles which he held to be true with immovable fidelity; he taught them with a touching charity; he defended them with energetic decision. Whether he approached a laborer, a monk, or a noble, it was with the desire to do him good, to lead him to God. He taxed his ingenuity to devise all means of bearing witness to the truth.[62] His courage was firm, his perseverance unflagging, and in his dignified seriousness his youth was forgotten. His social position added weight to his influence. We have seen that the aristocracy played a far larger part in Scotland than in any other European country. It would have seemed a strange thing to the Scots for a man of the people to meddle with such a matter as reform of the Church; but if the man that spoke to them belonged to an illustrious family, the position which he took appeared to them legitimate, and they were all inclined to listen to his voice. Such was the reformer whom God gave to Scotland.
Patrick’s elder brother, Sir James Hamilton, on succeeding to the estates and titles of his father, had been appointed sheriff of Linlithgowshire. James had not the abilities of his brother, but he was full of uprightness and humility. His wife, Isabella Sempill, belonged to an ancient Scottish family, and ten young children surrounded this amiable pair. Catherine, Patrick’s sister, bore some resemblance to him; she had much simplicity of character, sense, and decision. But it was most of all in the society of his mother, the widow of the valiant knight, that Patrick sought and enjoyed the pure and keen delight of domestic life. He opened his heart to all these beloved ones; he made known to them the peace which he had found in the Gospel, and by degrees his relations were brought to the faith, of which they afterwards gave brilliant evidence.
HAMILTON’S PREACHING.
The zeal which was consuming him could not long be confined within the limits of his own family. His love for the Gospel silenced within him all fear and, full of courage, he was ready to endure the insults which his faith might bring on him. ‘The bright beams of the true light, which by God’s grace were planted in his heart, began most abundantly to burst forth, as well in public as in secret.’[63] Hamilton went about in the surrounding country, his name securing for him everywhere a hearty welcome. When the young laird was seen approaching, laborers left the field which they were cultivating, women came out of every poor cottage, and all gathered about him respectfully and lent him an attentive ear.[64] Priests, citizens from the neighboring town, women of rank, lords quitting their castles, people of all classes, met together there.[65] Patrick received them with a kindly smile and a graceful bearing. He addressed to souls that first word of the Gospel, Be converted! but he also pointed out the errors of the Romish Church.[66] His hearers returned, astonished at his knowledge of the Scriptures, and the people touched by the salvation which he proclaimed increased in number from day to day. Southward of the manor-house of Kincavil extends a chain of rocky hills, whose lofty peaks and slopes, dotted with clumps of trees, produced in the midst of that district a most picturesque effect. There more than once he talked freely about the Gospel with the country-folk, who in the heat of the day came to rest under the shadow of the rocks. Sometimes he climbed the hills, and from their tops contemplated the whole range of country in which he announced the good news. That Craig still exists, a picturesque monument of Hamilton’s Gospel mission.[67]
He began soon to set forth the Gospel in the lowly churches of the neighboring villages; then he grew bolder and preached even in the beautiful sanctuary of St. Michael, at Linlithgow, in the midst of numerous and rich altars. No sooner had the report of his preaching begun to get abroad than everyone wanted to hear him. The name which he bore, his gracious aspect, his learning, his piety, drew about him day by day a larger number of hearers; for a long time such a crowd had not been seen flocking into the church.[68] Linlithgow, the favorite abode of the court, was sometimes bright with unaccustomed splendor. The members of the royal family, and the most illustrious nobles of the kingdom, came to unite with the citizens and the people in the church. This fashionable auditory, whose looks were fixed on the reformer of three-and-twenty, did not at all intimidate him; the plainness, clearness, and conciseness which characterized Hamilton’s style were better adapted to act on the minds of the great than pompous declamation. ‘Knowest thou what this saying means,’ said he, ‘Christ died for thee? Verily that thou shouldest have died perpetually: and Christ, to deliver thee from death, died for thee, and changed thy perpetual death into his own death; for thou madest the fault and He suffered the pain.... He desireth nought of thee but that thou wilt acknowledge what He hath done for thee and bear it in mind: and that thou wouldst help others for his sake, even as He hath holpen thee for nought and without reward.’[69]
HIS MARRIAGE.
Among his hearers was a young maiden of noble birth who with joy received the good news of salvation. Hamilton recognized in her a soul akin to his own. He had adopted the principles of Luther on marriage; he was familiar with the conversations which the reformer had with his friends on the subject and which were reported all over Germany. ‘My father and mother,’ said Luther one day, ‘lived in the holy state of marriage, even the patriarchs and prophets did the same; why should not I do so? Marriage is the holiest state of all, and the celibacy of priests has been the cause of abominable sins. We must marry and thus defy the pope, and assert the liberty which God gives us and which Rome presumes to steal away.’[70] However, to marry was a daring step for Hamilton to take, considering the present necessity, as speaks the apostle Paul. As abbot of Ferne, and connected with the first families of Scotland, his marriage must needs excite to the highest degree the wrath of the priests. Besides which, it would call for great decision on the part of Patrick and genuine sympathy on the part of the young Christian maiden, to unite themselves as it were in sight of the scaffold. The marriage however took place, probably at the beginning of 1528. ‘A little while before his death,’ says Alesius, ‘he married a noble young maiden.’[71] It is possible that the knowledge of this union did not pass beyond the family circle. It remained unknown to his biographers till our own time.[72]
While Hamilton was preaching at Linlithgow, archbishop Beatoun was at the monastery of Dunfermline, about four leagues distant, on the other side of the Forth. The prelate, when he learnt the return of the young noble who had so narrowly escaped him, saw clearly that a missionary animated with Luther’s spirit, thoroughly familiar with the manners of the people, and supported by the powerful family of the Hamiltons, was a formidable adversary. News which crossed the Forth or came from Edinburgh, did but increase the apprehensions of the archbishop. Beatoun was a determined enemy of the Gospel.[73] Having governed Scotland during the minority of the king, he was indignant at the thought of the troubles with which Hamilton’s preaching menaced the Church and the realm. The clergy shared the alarm of their head; the city of St. Andrews, especially, which one Scottish historian has called ‘the metropolis of the kingdom of darkness’,[74] was in a state of great agitation. The dean Spence, the rector Weddel, the official Simson, the canon Ramsay and the heads of various monasteries consulted together and exclaimed that peril was imminent, and that it was absolutely necessary to get rid of so dangerous an adversary.
The archbishop, therefore, took counsel with his nephew and some other clerics as to the best means of making away with Hamilton. Great prudence was needful. They must make sure of the inclinations of Angus; they must divert the attention of the young king who, with his generosity of character, might wish to save his relation; they must in some way ensnare the evangelist, for Beatoun did not dream of sending men-at-arms to seize Patrick at Kincavil in the house of his brother the sheriff. So the archbishop resolved to have recourse to stratagem. In pursuit of the scheme, Hamilton, only a few days after his marriage, received an invitation to go to St. Andrews for the purpose of a friendly conference with the archbishop concerning religion. The young noble, who the year before had divined the perfidious projects of the clergy, knew well the import of the interview which was proposed to him, and he told those who were dear to him that in a few days he should lose his life.[75] His mother, his wife, his brother, his sister, exerted all their influence to keep him from going; but he was determined not to flee a second time; and he asked himself whether the moment was not come in which a great blow might be struck, and the triumph of the Gospel be attained. He declared therefore that he was ready to go to the Scottish Rome.