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was at last apprehended at Dysart, Fifeshire, in the
year 1558, by Sir George Strachan and Sir Hugh
Turrie, two priests, emissaries of John Hamilton,
Bishop of St. Andrews and primate of Scotland, and
lodged in safe custody in the castle of St. Andrews.
Having thus secured the offender, their best policy
was to obtain his recantation; and to obtain this, both
promises and threats were held out. If he refused to
abandon his pernicious tenets he was menaced with
torture and death, while his recantation was to be re-
warded with the comfortable portion of a monk for
life in the abbey of Dunfermline. But Walter Mill was
equally inaccessible to these alternatives, and nothing
remained but to bring him to trial and punishment.
For them, they must have felt it to be a fatal remedy,
as every martyrdom had only spread abroad more
widely the doctrines of the Reformation, and brought
themselves into deeper hatred and contempt. Why
had they disturbed him at all? Had they not better
have left him alone? But the first steps had com-
mitted them to the whole process, and it was now
too late to recede from it.
The trial was accompanied with sufficient pomp
and circumstance, as if to make the guilt of the
heretic more impressive; but it was thereby only the
more regarded as an act of the church, and therefore
a proof of its thorough and hopeless corruptedness.
There were assembled as judges: the Bishops of St.
Andrews, Moray, Brechin, Caithness, and Athens;
the abbots of Dunfermline, Lindores, Balmerino,
and Cupar; the provost and principal officials of the
university, and a number of friars Black and Gray.
The meeting was held in the metropolitan church of
St. Andrews on the 2Oth of April, and Walter Mill
brought in to undergo his trial. For the purpose of
being examined, his appointed place was the pulpit
of the church; but the old man was so enfeebled with
his load of years, his trials in wandering from place
to place, and the sufferings he had undergone since
his imprisonment, that he was unable to climb to
the bar without support. It was also feared that
his voice would be too weak to be heard; but to the
confusion of his judges and the joy of the friends of
the Reformation, his utterance was in such clear,
trumpet-like tones, as rang and re-echoed through
the large building. On entering the pulpit he knelt
and prayed, but in this act of devotion he was rudely
interrupted by Sir Andrew Oliphant, one of the
bishop's priests, who exclaimed, "Sir Walter Mill,1
arise, and answer to the articles, for you hold my
lords here over-long." The other, when he had
finished his prayer, meekly answered, "We ought
to obey God more than men. I serve one more
mighty, even the omnipotent Lord; and whereas
you call me Sir Walter, my name is Walter and not
Sir Walter. I have been too long one of the pope's
knights. Now, say what thou hast to say."
Oliphant now proceeded to the articles of accusa-
tion, and these with Mill's answers were as follows:—
"What think you of the marriage of priests?"
"I hold it a blessed bond; for Christ himself
maintained it, and approved it, and also made it free
to all men. But you think it not free to yourselves;
you abhor it; and in the meantime you take other
men's wives and daughters, and will not keep the
bond that God hath made. You vow chastity and
break the vow. St. Paul would rather marry than
burn, the which I have done; for God never forbade
marriage to any man whatever might be his state or
degree."
1 The title of knighthood was at this time bestowed upon the
secular priests in Scotland, as also that of Mass or Mess
(French, Messire), which last was sometimes continued to the
parish minister long after the abrogation of Popery.
"You say there are not seven sacraments."
"Give me the Lord's supper and baptism, and
take you the rest and divide them among you; for
if there be seven, why have you rejected one of them,
to wit, marriage, and give yourselves to slanderous
and ungodly whoredom?"
"You are against the blessed sacrament of the
altar, and you assert that the mass is wrong and is
idolatry."
"A lord or a king sendeth, and calleth many to
a dinner; and when the dinner is in readiness, he
causeth to ring a bell, and the men come to the hall,
and sit down to be partakers of the dinner; but the
lord turning his back upon them, eateth all himself,
and mocketh them:—so do ye."
"You deny the sacrament of the altar to be the
very body of Christ, really in flesh and blood."
"The scripture of God is not to be taken carnally
but spiritually, and standeth in faith only. And as
for the mass, it is wrong; for Christ was once offered
on the cross for man's trespass, and will never be
offered again, for then he ended all sacrifice."
"You deny the office of a bishop."
"I affirm that those whom ye call bishops do no
bishop's works, nor use the offices of bishops as Paul
commandeth (writing to Timothy); but live after
their own sensual pleasure, and take no care of the
flock; nor yet regard they the word of God, but
desire to be honoured, and called 'my lords.'"
"You spake against pilgrimage, and called it a
pilgrimage to whoredom."
"I affirm that, and say, it is not commanded in
Scripture; and that there is no greater whoredom in
any places than at your pilgrimages, except it be in
common brothels."
"You preached secretly and privately in houses,
and openly in the fields."
"Yea, man, and on the sea also, sailing in a ship."
"Will you not recant your erroneous opinions?
For if you will not, I will pronounce sentence against
you."
"I am upon a charge of life and death; I know I
must die once, and therefore, as Christ said to Judas,
'Quod facis, fac cito.' Ye shall know that I will not
recant from the truth, for I am corn, I am not chaff:
I will not be blown away with the wind, nor burst
with the flail, but will abide both."
Such were the principal charges against Walter
Mill, to which other and more trivial matters were
added, to aggravate his guilt and justify his condem-
nation. Already, however, he had spoken enough
to satisfy the most merciless inquisitors. He had
denounced clerical celibacy with severe but honest
warmth, and their ears must have tingled at the
justice of his words. He had denied the seven
sacraments, the real presence in the eucharist, the
office of a bishop as then held and exercised, the
efficacy of pilgrimages—the principal doctrines into
which the popular theology of Scotland had now
shrivelled as a preparative for its extinction—and
boldly avowed his readiness to die for the testimony
he had delivered. Nothing remained but to pass
sentence upon him, that he should be delivered to
the temporal judge to be burned as a heretic, and
this doom was accordingly pronounced by Sir An-
drew Oliphant, who had conducted the accusation.
But on this occasion the ghostly judges were sadly
at fault, for the secular means of the heretic's punish-
ment were found wanting. Patrick Learmont, the
provost of St. Andrews and Stewart of the bishop's
regality, to whom the office of temporal judge be-
longed, refused to have any share in the proceedings;
the whole town were indignant and cried out against
the sentence; and the bishop's servants could not get