Excerpt from Register of the Minister Elders and Deacons of the Christian Congregation of St. Andrews, Vol. 1: Comprising the Proceedings of the Kirk Session and of the Court of the Superintendent of Fife Fothrik and Strathearn, 1559-1600

Black and Grey Friars, and was likewise the seat of Scotland's oldest University. Here, in the national headquarters of the Papacy, the reformed opinions had been introduced and nourished by a devoted band of martyrs and confessors, five of whom had been burned to ashes in presence of the citizens in the vain hope of suppressing the living doctrine they taught. The fruit of the seed sown by Paul Craw in the first half of the fifteenth century may have been scanty, but his labours helped to prepare the unpromising and uncongenial soil, which was so vigorously cultivated by Patrick Hamilton, during his brief but ardent ministry in the earlier part of the next century, and whose efforts were aided by the secret importation of Tyndale's translation of the New Testament. From the hour of Master Patrick's martyrdom the cause for which he died took such deep root that all efforts to extirpate it only hastened its spread and triumph. The cruel death of George Wishart was speedily followed by that of his relentless persecutor, with whom fell the political power of the Papacy in Scotland. The public preaching and disputations of Knox and Rough in St. Andrews, in the summer of 1547, in some respects more resembled the work of autumn than of spring time, but that season was short. The heroic martyrdom of Walter Mill in 1558, however, wonderfully hastened the ripening process, and when Knox returned to the city in June 1559 the harvest was ready.

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