Spiritually, the Church was bankrupt. As one example of how badly its sanctions were abused, in 1532, King James V, while only twenty, “had wrung permission from the Pope . . . to appoint three baby sons, all illegitimate, to be titular abbots of Kelso and Melrose, priors of St. Andrews and Pittenweem, and abbot of Holyrood respectively; a fourth was later made prior of Coldingham and a fifth abbot of the Charterhouse.
