Educated at Paris and Louvain, he came in contact with the criticism of Erasmus and the Lutheran controversy.

He next read at St Andrews, and he married.

Suspected of heresy in 1427, he retired to Germany; he wrote theses called 'Patrick's Places,' which were reckoned heretical; he was arrested, was offered by Archbishop Beaton a chance to escape, disdained it, and was burned with unusual cruelty,--as a rule, heretics in Scotland were strangled before burning.

There were other similar cases, nor could James interfere--he was bound by his Coronation Oath; again, he found in the bishops his best diplomatists, and they, of course, were all for the French alliance, in the cause of the independence of their country and Church as against Henry VIII.
Thus James, in justifiable dread of the unscrupulous ambition of Henry VIII., could not run the English course, could not accept the varying creeds which Henry, who was his own Pope, put forward as his spirit moved him.

James was thus inevitably committed to the losing cause--the cause of Catholicism and of France--while the intelligence no less than the avarice of his nobles and gentry ran the English course.
James had practically no choice.