he spent almost a
year in taking care of his health; then he went into the army, with some
French auxiliaries, newly arrived in Scotland, to learn the military
art: But that expedition proving fruitless, and those forces being
reduced by the deep snow of a very severe winter, he relapsed into such
an illness as confined him all that season to his bed. Early in the
spring he was sent to St. Andrews, to hear the lectures of John Major,
who, though very old, read logic, or rather sophistry, in that
university. The summer after, he accompanied him into France; and there
he fell into the troubles of the Lutheran sect, which then began to
increase. He struggled with the difficulties of fortune almost two
years, and at last was admitted into the Barbaran college, where he was
grammar professor almost three years. During that time, Gilbert Kennedy,
earl of Cassils, one of the young Scottish nobles, being in that
country, was much taken with his ingenuity and acquaintance; so that he
entertained him for five years, and brought him back with him into
Scotland.

Afterwards, having a mind to return to Paris to his old studies, he was
detained by the king, and made tutor to James his natural son. In the
mean time, an elegy made by him, at leisure times, came into the hands
of the Franciscans; wherein he writes, that he was solicited in a dream
by St. Francis, to enter into his order. In this poem there were one or
two passages that reflected on them very severely; which those ghostly
fathers, notwithstanding their profession of meekness and humility, took
more heinously, than men (having obtained such a vogue for piety among
the vulgar) ought to have done, upon so small an occasion of offence.
But finding no just grounds for their unbounded fury, they attacked him
upon the score of religion; which was their common way of terrifying
those they did not wish well to. Thus, whilst they indulged their
impotent malice, they made him, who was not well affected to them
before, a greater enemy to their licentiousness, and rendered him more
inclinable to the Lutheran cause. In the mean time, the king, with
Magdalen his wife, came from France, not without the resentment of the
priesthood; who were afraid that the royal lady, having been bred up
under her aunt the queen of Navarre, should attempt some innovation in
religion. But this fear soon vanished upon her death, which followed
shortly after.

Next, there arose jealousies at court about