Preached to the healthy and the sick

GEORGE Wishart, pictured, was from Pittarow House in the Laurencekirk area and studied theology in Leuven in the Netherlands, where he received his Master’s degree in 1532 before taking up a post in Montrose as a school teacher.

When the Bishop of Brechin heard that Wishart was teaching young men to read the Bible in its original Greek language, he was furious.

Wishart fled to Bristol, where he got in trouble for his preaching, and he spent the next three years in Switzerland and Germany.

In 1543, Wishart returned to Scotland where he preached in

Montrose, Dundee and Ayrshire. Opposed to Wishart was Cardinal David Beaton who was a powerful figure in that time.

The cardinal’s vigilance was unremitting and he served Wishart with an order forbidding him to preach.

Again, Wishart was forced to flee for his life, this time to Ayrshire.

Meanwhile, a terrible plague broke out in Dundee. In 1544, he returned to minister to the spiritual needs of the people and stood on the town’s port or entrance named after him in the Cowgate to preach to the healthy but troubled citizens within the town, and the sick outwith its walls. Not content with preaching, he also visited plague victims and tended to the poor.

Cardinal David Beaton sent a priest called John Wighton to kill Wishart.

Wighton was foiled and only Wishart’s influence prevented the crowd killing the priest.

An attempt by the cardinal to ambush Wishart outside Montrose also failed.

Wishart withdrew to Edinburgh where his preaching influenced John Knox but he was seized near Haddington by the Earl of Bothwell in 1546 and handed over to Cardinal Beaton.

He was i mprisoned i n St Andrews Castle and charged with preaching heretical doctrines.

It was Beaton himself who pronounced sentence of death by burning.