MEMOIR OF GEORGE WISHART, THE SCOTTISH MARTYR. WITH HIS TRANSLATION OF THE HELVETIAN CONFESSION, AND A GENEALOGICAL HISTORY OF THE FAMILY OF WISHART.

BY THE REV. CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D.,

Historiographer to the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and Corresponding Member of the Historical and Genealogical Society of New England.

AN inquiry into the life of George Wishart presented few attractions. Believing that he claimed the gift of prophecy, Mr Hill Burton* describes him as "a visionary." Mr Froudet charges him with preaching without authority and with illegally assuming the priestly office. Professor Lorimer‡ alleges that, in his early ministry, he denied the doctrine of the Atonement. Mr Tytler § has sought to prove that he intended murder, by conspiring against the life of Cardinal Beaton. Having ventured on the elucidation of his history, I have investigated the charges brought against him, with care and, I trust, impartiality. The result will be found in these pages. Meanwhile I may summarise my deductions, and say that the martyr has, from the inquiry, come forth unstained. He did not claim prophetic powers; he preached with canonical sanction; he did not act as a priest or ordained clergyman; he taught the doctrine of the Atonement throughout his whole ministry; he did not conspire against Beaton, and if he knew of the conspiracy he condemned it.

* Burton's History of Scotland, Edin., 1873, 12mo, vol. iii., p. 251. + Froude's History of England, Lond., 1870, vol. iv., p. 177.

Lorimer's Historical Sketch of the Scottish Reformation, Lond., 1860. § Tytler's History of Scotland, Edin., 1869, vol. iii., pp. 365-374.

I have accompanied the memoir of George Wishart with his translation of the first Helvetian Confession. I have added a genealogical history of the House of Wishart, which includes a memoir of Sir John Wishart of Pitarrow.

For useful materials I have been much indebted to Mr J. F. Nicholls, of the City Library, Bristol, the Rev. Dr Struthers, minister of Prestonpans, and Robert R. Stodart, Esq., of the Lyon Office. I also record my indebtedness to the townclerks of Montrose and Dundee, and to Mr Walter Macleod, of Edinburgh, who, as a professional searcher of the Public Records, cannot be too highly praised.

MEMOIR OF GEORGE WISHART.

During the reign of the fifth James, the intolerance of Scottish churchmen had reached its height. The clergy were cruel and rapacious. They seized the chief offices in the State, and the people groaned under their misrule. Feigning charity, they practised avarice. Their lives were dissolute in the extreme. The monasteries, formerly the sanctuaries of religion and letters, had become the unhallowed resorts of unblushing profligacy. Divine worship was a thing of unmeaning pomp and empty ceremony. Sacerdotal oppression crushed the national energies; and with the degradation of the sacred office religion began to be despised. Each confessor, as he arose, was dragged before the ecclesiastical tribunal, and might escape death only on a recantation alike public and degrading. The martyrdom at St Andrews, in 1527, of Patrick Hamilton, nephew of the Earl of Arran, and a descendant of the royal house, sufficiently proved that, in the maintenance of its supremacy, the Roman Church was determined to strike everywhere. But the death of this amiable martyr, instead of repressing, stimulated inquiry, and induced further investigation into the working of a system, maintained by the sale of indulgences on the one hand, and upheld by the executioner on the other.

James Wishart of Pitarrow, Clerk of Justiciary, and King's Advocate in the reign of James IV., married, prior to the 13th

April 1512, as his second wife, Elizabeth Learmont. This gentlewoman was a daughter of Learmont of Balcomie, and sister of that James Learmont, whose name as a statesman we shall find associated with public events in the interest of the Reformation. The family were descended from the older House of Learmont of Ercildoune, or Earlston, in the county of Berwick, of which Thomas the Rhymer was the most conspicuous member.

George Wishart, the future martyr, was the only son of James Wishart of Pitarrow, by his second wife. He was probably called George after his maternal grandfather; the name was certainly derived from his mother's family.* The precise date of his birth is unknown, but it has generally been assigned to the year 1513. By the death of his father, which took place before May 1525, his upbringing would devolve on his mother, assisted probably by her brother, James Learmont of Balcomie.

George Wishart chose the clerical profession, in which several members of his House had attained distinction, and wherein his prospects of advancement, owing to the intimacy which subsisted between his family and David Beaton, Abbot of Arbroath, the future cardinal, were not inconsiderable.† As his name does not occur in the registers of any of the Scottish colleges, it is extremely probable that he was sent by his maternal uncle to one or more of the universities of Germany. During the progress of his studies he seems to have embraced the Reformed doctrines. In the year 1534 John Erskine of Dun established at Montrose a school for the Greek language, under the superintendence of a learned Frenchman. On the retirement of this foreigner, Wishart, who had lately returned from the Continent, took his place. Having imported copies of the Greek Testament, he distri

* George Learmont was, in 1531, infeft as "son and heir of umql James

Learmont of Balcomie and Grizel Meldrum."

+ See Genealogical History of the Family of Wishart, infra.

Life of John Erskine of Dun; Wodrow MSS., vol. i.; Biblioth. Coll., Glasg.

buted them among his pupils. This procedure was reported to John Hepburn, Bishop of Brechin, who summoned him to appear in his diocesan court. This was in 1538.*

The times were perilous. Wishart saw his danger and fled. Proceeding to Cambridge, he entered the College of Bennet or Corpus Christi. Cambridge was a nursery of the Reformed doctrines. There, in the Augustinian monastery of which Barnes was prior, and Coverdale one of the monks, Bilner and Latimer had preached the new faith. There, too, had Cranmer and Ridley read the Scriptures in the original tongues: the former being a Fellow of Jesus College, the latter Master of Pembroke.

Wishart was probably invited to Cambridge by Dr Barnes, with whom he may have contracted an intimacy at Wittenberg, where that eminent divine resided with Luther. At Cambridge he was introduced to Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester. By Latimer his acquaintance would be earnestly cultivated. Each could point to oppression at the hands of bigoted churchmen. During a preaching tour which, under a licence from the University of Cambridge, he undertook in 1531, Latimer, in the pulpits of Bristol, denounced the doctrine of purgatory and the invocation of the saints. His prelections were received with favour by the laity; and on the invitation of the mayor he consented to conduct service on Easter Sunday. Informed of his intention, the local clergy procured an order from the Bishop of Worcester, an Italian named De Ghinuce, prohibiting any clerk from conducting service in the city, without his special sanction. The clergy next accused him of immorality, and as he disproved the charges brought against him, they arraigned him as a heretic in the court of Archbishop Warham. Their prosecution was stopped by the accession of Cranmer to the primacy. Being now bishop of the diocese, which he became in 1535, he was desirous that the Reformed doctrines should be preached in a city where a portion of the laity were willing to receive them, while as bishop he hoped to protect the preacher from molestation.

* Petrie's History of the Catholick Church, part ii., p. 182.

Eager to obey his wishes, and to be useful in the Church as a preacher or evangelist, Wishart agreed to proceed to Bristol. Obtaining from Latimer orders as a reader,* Wishart commenced his labours in Bristol, by lecturing, on Sunday the 15th May 1539, in the church of St Nicholas. The clergy were on the alert. They silenced Latimer eight years before, and in 1525 had compelled Dr Robert Barnes to bear his faggot. Wishart they pounced upon at once, charging him before the mayor and justices with preaching doctrines condemned by the Church.

Arresting the preacher, the mayor sought direction, as to further procedure, from the Recorder, Lord Cromwell, in the following letter:

"Pleaseth it your honourable Lordship to be advertised that certeyn accusations are made and had by Sir John Kerell, Deane of Bristowe, deputie of the Bishop of Worcester, our ordinary, and dyvers others, inhabitants of Bristowe foresaid, against one Geo. Wischarde, a Scotisheman born, lately beyng before your honourable Lordship; which accusations the said deane and other inhabitants aforesaid hath presented before me, the Mayor of Bristowe and justices of peace. And the same accusations I have received, sendyng the same unto your said honourable Lordship. And, furthermore, the Chamberlain and the Deane of Bristowe shall sygnyfy unto your honourable Lordship, the very truth in the premysses, unto whom we shall desyre you to give credence. And then our Lord preserve your honourable Lordship in helth and welth, according unto your own hartiest desire.

"At Bristowe the ix. day of June, Anno Regis Henrici VIII. xxxi.

"Be me THOMAS JEFFRYES, Mayor of Bristol.

"To the Right Honorable Lord,

"Lord Pryvy Seale."§

* This was an inferior order in the Church. The reader possessed a faculty to preach, but he was not under the vow of celibacy like ecclesiastics of a higher grade. Wishart is styled "the reader" in the correspondence which follows. + Seyer's History of Bristol, 1821, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. ii., p. 215.

The name of the dean was Kearne.

§ From the Original in the Public Record Office.