James V., after he had shaken off the Douglases and become "a free king,"
had to deal with a political and religious situation, out of which we may
say in the Scots phrase, "there was no outgait." His was the dilemma of
his father before Flodden. How, against the perfidious ambition, the
force in war, and the purchasing powers of Henry VIII., was James to
preserve the national independence of Scotland? His problem was even
harder than that of his father, because when Henry broke with Rome and
robbed the religious houses a large minority, at least, of the Scottish
nobles, gentry, and middle classes were, so far, heartily on the anti-
Roman side. They were tired of Rome, tired of the profligacy, ignorance,
and insatiable greed of the ecclesiastical dignitaries who, too often,
were reckless cadets of the noble families. Many Scots had read the
Lutheran books and disbelieved in transubstantiation; thought that money
paid for prayers to the dead was money wasted; preferred a married and
preaching to a celibate and licentious clergy who celebrated Mass; were
convinced that saintly images were idols, that saintly miracles were
impostures. Above all, the nobles coveted the lands of the Church, the
spoils of the religious houses.

In Scotland, as elsewhere, the causes of the religious revolution were
many. The wealth and luxury of the higher clergy, and of the dwellers in
the abbeys, had long been the butt of satire and of the fiercer
indignation of the people. Benefices, great and small, were jobbed on
every side between the popes, the kings, and the great nobles. Ignorant
and profligate cadets of the great houses were appointed to high
ecclesiastical offices, while the minor clergy were inconceivably
ignorant just at the moment when the new critical learning, with
knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, was revolutionising the study of the
sacred books. The celibacy of the clergy had become a mere farce; and
they got dispensations enabling them to obtain ecclesiastical livings for