They would doubtless have been content with a free Bible, free preaching and the sequestration of the goods of the religious orders.

Under George Wishart, who translated the First Helvetic Confession, [Sidenote: 1536 or 1537] the Kirk began to assume its Calvinistic garb and to take the aspect of a party with a definite political program.

The place of newspapers, both as purveyors of information and as organs of public opinion, was taken by the sermons of the ministers, most of them political and all of them controversial.

Of this party Beaton was the scourge.

He himself believed that in 1545 heresy was almost extinct, and doubtless his belief was confirmed when he was able to put Wishart to death.