Patrick Hamilton's initials, set into paving at the place of his execution, to commemorate his martyrdom.

Early life

He was the second son of Sir Patrick Hamilton and Catherine Stewart, daughter of Alexander, Duke of Albany, second son of James II of Scotland. He was born in the diocese of Glasgow, probably at his father's estate of Stanehouse in Lanarkshire, and was most likely educated at Linlithgow.

In 1517 he was appointed titular Abbot of Fearn Abbey, Ross-shire. The income from this position paid for him to study at the University of Paris, where he became a Master of the Arts in 1520.^[1] It was in Paris, where Martin Luther's writings were already exciting much discussion, that he first learned the doctrines he would later uphold. According to sixteenth century theologian Alexander Ales, Hamilton subsequently went to Leuven, attracted probably by the fame of Erasmus, who in 1521 had his headquarters there.

Return and flight

Returning to Scotland, Hamilton selected St Andrews, then the Scottish capital of the church and of learning, as his residence. On June 9, 1523 he became a member of the University of St Andrews, and on October 3 1524 he was admitted to its faculty of arts, where he was first a student of, and then a colleague of the humanist and logician John Mair. At the university Hamilton attained such influence that he was permitted to conduct, as precentor, a musical mass of his own composition in the cathedral.

The reforming doctrines had now obtained a firm hold on the young abbot, and he was eager to communicate them to his fellow-countrymen.^[2] Early in 1527 the attention of James Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews, was directed to the heretical preaching of the young priest, whereupon he ordered that Hamilton should be formally tried. Hamilton fled to Germany, enrolling himself as a student, under Franz Lambert of Avignon, in the new University of Marburg, opened on May 30, 1527 by Philip of Hesse. Among those he met there were Hermann von dem Busche, one of the contributors to the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, and probably William Tyndale, translator of the Bible.

Late in the autumn of 1527 Hamilton returned to Scotland, living up to his convictions. He went first to his brother's house at Kincavel, near Linlithgow, where he preached frequently, and soon afterwards he married a young lady of noble rank; her name is unrecorded. David Beaton, avoiding open violence through fear of Hamilton's high connections, invited him to a conference at St Andrews. The reformer, predicting that he was going to confirm the pious in the true doctrine by his death, accepted the invitation, and for nearly a month was allowed to preach and dispute, perhaps in order to provide material for accusation.

Trial and martyrdom

After he was burned at the stake it was said that Hamilton's face appeared above the spot where he was executed.

The spot is today marked with a monogram of his initials set into the cobblestones. If you stand on the spot of these initials and look towards the wall of St Salvador's, you can see an imprint of a face in the stone, said to be that of Patrick Hamilton. Undergraduate suspicion runs that as Hamilton was dying he threatened that any future student who stood on the spot would fail their final exams. The only way that this bad luck can be reversed is by taking part in the annual May Dip on the 1st May at Castle Sands.

His courageous bearing attracted more attention than ever to the doctrines for which he suffered, and greatly helped to spread the Reformation in Scotland. It was said that the "reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all it blew on".^[4] His martyrdom is unusual in that he was almost alone in Scotland during the Lutheran stage of the Reformation. His only book, Loci communes, known as "Patrick's Places", set forth the doctrine of justification by faith and the contrast between the gospel and the law in a series of clear-cut propositions. It is to be found in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments.

See also

• Scottish Reformation

References

Bibliography

• Rainer Haas, Franz Lambert und Patrick Hamilton in ihrer Bedeutung für die Evangelische Bewegung auf den Britischen Inseln, Marburg (theses) 1973

External links

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