Patrick Hamilton

First Martyr of the Scottish Reformation, c. 1504–1528

Patrick Hamilton was born about 1504 of the royal blood of Scotland, a great-grandson of James II. As a boy he was made titular abbot of Fearn, whose revenues paid for his studies at Paris, where he took his master’s degree and read Luther’s writings in the years the Sorbonne condemned them.1 Back at St. Andrews he began to preach the new doctrine, and when Archbishop James Beaton moved against him early in 1527 he fled to Germany. At the new university of Marburg, under Francis Lambert, he “so profited in knowledge, and mature judgment in matters of Religion,” Foxe writes, that he was the first there to set up public theses on faith and works.2

Those theses became Patrick’s Places, the first doctrinal work of the Scottish Reformation, which John Frith put into English and Foxe printed in full.3 Its contrast of law and gospel is its best-remembered passage:

The law saith, pay thy dette. The Gospel saith, Christ hath paid it. The law saith, thou art a sinner, despair and thou shalt be damned. The Gospel saith, thy sins are forgiven thee, be of good comfort, thou shalt be saved.4 Patrick HamiltonPatrick’s Places

He came home in the autumn of 1527, preached in the country around his family’s house, and married. Early in 1528 Beaton invited him to St. Andrews for a conference, let him dispute openly for a month, and then tried and condemned him in a single day. He was burned that afternoon before the gate of St. Salvator’s College at the end of February 1528, about twenty-four years old. The fire had to be rekindled with green wood and took six hours.5 A witness said afterward that “the smoke of Mr. Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it did blow upon,” and Knox wrote that after his death “many began to call in doubt that which before they held for a certain verity.”6 Foxe dates his summons “the first day of March, 1527,” reckoning the year from March 25; and one map in the Christian History issue gives the year of his martyrdom as 1525, though the same issue elsewhere rightly gives 1528.7

Other Reformers   John Knox

Notes

  1. Hilda Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, chapter “Patrick Hamilton: Young Reformer of Scotland.” ↩
  2. John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 4th ed. (London: John Day, 1583), vol. 2, on “Patricke Hamelton”; Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Patrick Hamilton.” ↩
  3. Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Patrick Hamilton”; Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2, “A brief treatise of M. Patrick Hamelton, called Patrikes Places, translated into English by John Frith.” See John Frith. ↩
  4. Patrick Hamilton, Patrick’s Places, trans. John Frith, in Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2. ↩
  5. Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Patrick Hamilton”; Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2; “Patrick Hamilton,” Christian History issue “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation.” ↩
  6. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation.” See John Knox. ↩
  7. Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), vol. 2; Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation.” ↩