English: It was in front of the entrance to St. Salvator's Chapel in in 1528 that Scotland's first Lutheran preacher, Patrick Hamilton, was burned at the stake after being tried as a heretic on the orders of Archbishop James Beaton. After the execution one of Beaton's retinue is alleged to have counselled him,

"If ye will burn them, let them be burned in deep cellars, for the reek [smoke] of Master Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon."

The lesson was lost on his nephew, Cardinal David Beaton. Eighteen years later, in 1546, he condemned the Protestant preacher George Wishart to the same fate, an act for which he was murdered in a revenge attack by a group of angry Protestants. These events signalled the start of the open hostilities that culminated in the Scottish Reformation of 1560.