The Governor selected John Rough for his chaplain and Thomas Williams for his preacher, both ardent Reformers. The Acts of the previous reign against heresy were modified to the extent that men suspect of heresy might enjoy office, and heretics were accorded more merciful treatment. Moreover, an Act of Parliament (March 15th, 1543) permitted the possession and reading of a good and true translation of the Old and New Testaments. But the masterful policy of Henry VIII. and the weakness of the Governor brought about a change. Beaton was released from Blackness and restored to his own Castle of St. Andrews; the Governor dismissed his Reformed preachers; the Privy Council (June 2nd, 1543) forbade on pain of death and confiscation of goods all criticism of the mediæval doctrine of the Sacraments, and forbade the possession of heretical books. In September, Arran and Beaton were reconciled; in December, the Parliament annulled the treaties with England consenting to a marriage between Edward and Mary, and the ancient league with France was renewed. This was followed by the revival of persecution, and almost all that had been gained was lost. Henry's ruthless devastation of the Borders did not mend matters. The more enlightened policy of Lord Protector Somerset could not allay the suspicions of the Scottish nation. Their "little Queen" was sent to France to be educated by the Guises, "to the end that in hir youth she should drynk of that lycour, that should remane with hir all hir lyfetyme, for a plague to this realme, and for hir finall destructioun."[286]
But if the Reformation movement was losing ground as a national policy, it was gaining strength as a spiritual quickening in the hearts of the people. George Wishart, one of the Wisharts of Pittarrow, who had fled from persecution in 1538 and had wandered in England, Germany, and Switzerland, returned to his native country about 1543, consumed with the desire to bear witness for the Gospel. He preached in Montrose, and Dundee during a visitation of the plague, and Ayrshire. Beaton's party were anxious to secure him, and after a preaching tour in the Lothians he was seized in Ormiston House and handed over to the Earl of Bothwell, who, breaking pledges he had made, delivered him to the Cardinal; he lodged him in the dungeon at St. Andrews (end of Jan. 1546), and had him tried in the cathedral, when he was condemned to the stake (March 1st, 1546).