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Patrick Hamilton (1504 - February 29, 1528) was a Scottish churchman and Reformer.
The second son of Sir Patrick Hamilton, well known in Scottish chivalry, and of 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. He was most likely educated at Linlithgow. In 1517 he was appointed titular abbot of Ferne, Ross-shire; and it was around that time that he went to study at the University of Paris; his name is found in an ancient list of those who graduated there in 1520. It was in Paris, where Martin Luther's writings were already exciting much discussion, that he first learned the doctrines he would later uphold. From Alexander Ales we learn that Hamilton subsequently went to Leuven, attracted probably by the fame of Erasmus, who in 1521 had his headquarters there.
Returning to Scotland, Hamilton selected St Andrews, the capital of the church and of learning, as his residence. On June 9, 1523 he became a member of the University of St Andrews. 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. There Hamilton attained such influence that he was permitted to conduct as precentor a musical mass of his own composition in the cathedral. But the reformed doctrines had now obtained a firm hold on the young abbot, and he was eager to communicate them to his fellow-countrymen. 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, first visiting Luther at Wittenberg, and afterwards enrolling himself as a student, under Franz Lambert of Avignon, in the new University of Marburg, opened on May 30, 1527 by Philip, landgrave of Hesse. Hermann von dem Busche, one of the contributors to the Epistolae obscurorum virorum, John Frith and William Tyndale were among those he met there.
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
At length, he was summoned before a council of bishops and clergy presided over by the archbishop; there were thirteen charges, seven based on the doctrines affirmed in the Loci communes. On examination Hamilton maintained their truth. The council condemned him as a heretic on all thirteen charges. Hamilton was seized, and, it is said, surrendered to the soldiery on an assurance that he would be restored to his friends without injury. The council convicted him, after a sham disputation with Friar Campbell, and handed him over to the secular power, to be burned at the stake as a heretic outside the front entrance to St Salvator's Chapel. The sentence was carried out on the same day lest he should be rescued by his friends. 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". His martyrdom is unusual in that he represented in Scotland almost alone 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.
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Reference
1504 births | 1528 deaths | Christian martyrs | People executed for heresy | University of St Andrews alumni
"Patrick Hamilton (martyr)"