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JAMES V.AND THE REFORMATION.
The new times were at the door.

In 1425 the Scottish Parliament had forbidden Lutheran books to be imported.

But they were, of course, smuggled in; and the seed of religious revolution fell on minds disgusted by the greed and anarchy of the clerical fighters and jobbers of benefices.
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.