Walter Milne

Walter Milne (died April 1558), also recorded as Mill or Myln, was the last Protestant martyr to be burned in Scotland before the Scottish Reformation changed the country from Catholic to Presbyterian.

Yet, says Foxe, 'when he began to speak he made the church to ring and sound again with so great courage and stoutness that the Christians which were present were no less rejoiced than the adversaries were confounded and ashamed.

'[3] So far from pretending to deny the accusations against him, he made use of the opportunity boldly to denounce what he regarded as the special errors of the Romish church; his trial was soon over, and he was condemned to be burnt as a heretic on 28 April 1558.

According to George Buchanan, the commonalty of St. Andrews were so offended at the sentence that they shut up their shops in order that they might sell no materials for his execution; and after his death they heaped up in his memory a great pile of stones on the place where he was burned.

After John Knox preached in June 1559 in St. Andrews his famous sermon on "cleansing of the temple" that began the Scottish reformation, "by order of the magistrates the churches were stripped of the monuments of 'idolatry' which were ceremoniously burned on the spot where Myln had suffered.

The Martyrs' Monument, St Andrews, which commemorates Milne and three other martyrs: Patrick Hamilton , Henry Forrest , and George Wishart .
Window in Edinburgh Castle 's Great Hall. George Wishart (c.1513 – 1 Mar 1546), John Craig (1512-1600), James Guthrie (1612? – 1 Jun 1661)