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which was solemnized on the 1st of January, 1537, in the church of Notre Dame, Paris. The fatal disease of consumption, derived from her mother, had begun to undermine her health before her marriage, and she died on the 10th of July, forty days after her arrival in Scotland, having nearly completed her seventeenth year, to the sincere regret of all classes of subjects, with the exception of the priests and prelates, who dreaded the overthrow of their pomp and power, from the influence of a queen who had been educated under the inspection of a person of such suspicious orthodoxy as Margaret of Valois." It was on this occasion, observes Buchanan, that "mourning dresses were first worn by the Scots, which," adds he, "now after forty years, are not very common, although public fashions have greatly increased for the worse."

The second queen of James V., namely, Mary of Guise, who upon the death of James became queen regent, was hostile to the Reformation. And her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, who was educated at the French court, was trained up in a blind devotion to the Popish Church, and taught by her uncles, the Guises, to believe that it would be the glory of her reign to restore her kingdom to the jurisdiction of the Pope. This, which could not have been accomplished without rekindling the flames of persecution, it was her purpose to achieve, wherever a fit opportunity offered itself. But happily she had never the means of doing serious injury to the reformed cause in Scotland. On her arrival at Edinburgh, on the 20th of August, 1561, to assume the reins of government, finding the Protestants in possession of the power of the state, she had meanwhile to yield to circumstances; and a few years after, her conduct, particularly her participation in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley, entirely and for ever stripped her of the sovereign power, which fell into the hands of the Reformers.

Drummond.-Holinshed's Chronicles, &c., Loudon, 1808, vol. v., p. 513. 2 Buchanan's History of Scotland, book xiv.

ATHARINE HAMILTON, the first of the Scottish female representatives of the Reformation to which we introduce the reader, was the daughter of Sir Patrick Hamilton, of Kincavil, Linlithgowshire, by his wife, who was a daughter of John, Duke of Albany, brother to James III. Her father was a natural son of James, first Lord Hamilton,' the father of James, second Lord Hamilton, and first Earl of Arran, whose

son James, second Earl of Arran, and Regent of Scotland, was, next to Mary Queen of Scots, nearest heir to the Scottish crown. Thus, on the father's side, she was nobly though not royally descended; and on the mother's side she was related to the royal family of Scotland. She was sister to the famous Patrick Hamilton, the first native who suffered martyrdom in Scotland for the Protestant faith;

1 Pinkerton affirms his legitimacy, supposing that he was a son of Lord Hamilton, by his second wife, Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of King James II., and relict of Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran.-History of Scotland under the house of Stuart, vol. ii., Pp. 45, 46. But Douglas has proved, from charters, that he was an illegitimate son of that nobleman.-Peerage of Scotland, vol, i., p. 697.

and she had another brother, Sir James, who also embraced the reformed sentiments. On the 2d of May, 1520, she lost her father, who fell on the High Street of Edinburgh, in a feud between the Earls of Arran and Angus, when about seventy men were slain, and James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, narrowly escaped with his life. Beaton was at that time one of the Hamilton party, though he afterwards, when Archbishop of St. Andrews,' made her brothers and herself feel the power of his wrath.?

The chief means by which Katharine was brought to the knowledge and belief of the reformed doctrines, were the instructions of her brother Patrick and the reading of the New Testament in English; for copies of Tyndale's New Testament had by this time been brought into Scotland. Her brother Patrick, after he had returned to Scotland from Germany, in 1527, inflamed with an unquenchable desire to communicate to his blinded countrymen the knowledge of the true way of salvation which had dawned upon his own mind, taught her the same divine and saving truths.

The burning of her brother, on the last day of February, 1528, shortly after his arrival in Scotland, made a deep impression on her mind, and confirmed her convictions of the truth of the principles which he had taught her, and for which he had suffered.

About six years after his martyrdom she was exposed to no small danger of sharing the same fate. Her relation to him had made her an object of suspicion to James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who had brought her brother to the stake, and to other ecclesiastics, who were waiting for an opportunity of proceeding against her for heresy.

At length she, with several others, were cited to appear before an ecclesiastical court, to be held in the abbey of Holyroodhouse, in August, 1534, to answer to the charge of maintaining heresies repugnant to the faith of the Holy Catholic Church, and condemned by general councils and by the most famous universities. On the

1 He succeeded to the metropolitan see in 1522.

2 Pinkerton's Hist. of Scot. under the house of Stuart, vol. ii., pp. 180-183.

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day appointed, several of those summoned appeared before the court, in which James Hay, Bishop of Ross, presided as commissioner for Beaton, the metropolitan archbishop; and refusing to abjure, were sentenced to the flames-as David Straiton, a gentleman of the house of Laurieston, and Norman Gourlay. Others who appeared having abjured and publicly burned their bills, were pardoned. Others sought safety in flight, as Katharine's brother, Sir James, of Kincavil, Sheriff of Linlithgowshire, who was condemned in his absence as a heretic, and his goods and lands confiscated. Katharine made her appearance, and the special charge brought against her was her maintaining that none could be saved by their own works, and that justification is to be obtained exclusively through faith in the righteousness of Christ. She admitted that these were her sentiments. Upon this, Mr. John Spence, lawyer, and afterwards king's advocate, one of those who had sat in judgment on her brother Patrick in 1528, began to argue the question with her. To enlighten her mind on the doctrine of the merit of good works, he proceeded to a lengthened discussion of the subject, telling her that there were divers sorts of good works—“ works of congruity and works of condignity"-each of which had attached to them a peculiar kind of merit. "Works of congruity," said he, "are those done antecedently to justification, which prepare for the reception of grace, and which it is congruous for God, in his goodness, to reward, by infusing his grace. Works of condignity are those performed after justification, from freewill, assisted by the grace infused at justification, which are meritorious, not only because God has promised a reward to them, but likewise on account of the intrinsic value of the works themselves." To Katharine, who had not studied dialectics, the abstruse distinctions, with which Spence seemed so familiar, were probably new, and served only to perplex her mind. At last, her patience being exhausted with the tediousness and subtilty of his argumentation, which entirely failed to convince her, she cried out, "Work here, work there, what kind of working is all this? I know perfectly that no kind of