They exacted their fees to the last farthing, an especially odious one being the claim of the priest to the best cow on the death of a parishioner.

As a consequence the parsons and monks were hated by the laity.
Humanism shed a few bright beams on the hyperborean regions of Dundee and Glasgow.

Some Erasmians, like Hector Boece, prepared others for the Reformation without joining it themselves; some, like George Buchanan, threw genius and learning into the scales of the new faith.
The unlearned, too, were touched with reforming zeal.

Lollardy sowed a few seeds of heresy.

About 1520 Wyclif's version of the New Testament was turned into Scots by one John Nesbit, but it remained in manuscript.
In the days before newspapers tidings were carried from place to place by wandering merchants and itinerant scholars.