his friends, but had of late, from some private grudge, become cold towards him. Some altercation of course ensued, and they parted in mortal enmity; the Cardinal determined secretly to take off, or to imprison Norman, with his friends the Lairds of Grange, elder and younger, Sir James Learmont, provost of St Andrews, and the Laird of Raith, all whom he feared, and Norman resolved to slay the Cardinal, be the consequences what they would.
The Cardinal was in the meantime in great haste to repair and strengthen his castle, upon which a large number of men were employed almost night and day. The conspirators having lodged themselves secretly in St Andrews on the night of May the twenty-eighth, 1546, were, ere the dawn of the next morning, assembled to the number of ten or twelve persons in the neighbourhood of the castle, and the gates being opened to let in the workmen with their building materials, Kircaldy of Grange entered, and with him six persons, who held a parley with the porter. Norman Leslie and his company having then entered, passed to the middle of the court Lastly came John Leslie and four men with him, at whose appearance the porter, suspecting some design, attempted to lift the drawbridge, but was prevented by Leslie, who leaped upon it, seized the keys, and threw the janitor himself headlong into the ditch. The place thus secured, the workmen, to the number of a hundred, ran off the walls, and were put forth at the wicket gate unhurt. Kircaldy then took charge of the privy postern, the others going through the different chambers, from which they ejected upwards of fifty persons, who were quietly permitted to escape. The Cardinal, roused from his morning slumbers by the noise, threw up his window and asked what it meant. Being answered that Norman Leslie had taken his castle, he ran to the postern, but, finding it secured, returned to his chamber, drew his two-handed sword, and ordered his chamberlain to barricade the door. In the meantime, John Leslie demanded admittance, hut did not gain it till a chimneyful of burning coals was brought to burn the door, when the Cardinal or his chamberlain (it is not known which) threw it open. Beaton, who had in the mean time hidden a box of gold under some coals in a corner of the room, now sat down in a chair, crying, " I am a priest, I am a priest; you will not slay me." But he was now in the hands of men to whom his priestly character was no recommendation. John Leslie, according to his vow, struck him twice with his dagger, and so did Peter Carmichael; but James Melville, perceiving them to be in a passion, withdrew them, saying, "This work and judgment of God, although it be secret, ought to be gone about with gravity." Then admonishing the Cardinal of his wicked life, particularly his shedding the blood of that eminent preacher, Mr George Wishart, Melville struck him thrice through with a stag sword, and he fell, exclaiming, "Fie, fie, I am a priest, all's gone!" Before this time the inhabitants of St Andrews were apprized of what was going on, and began to throng around the castle, exclaiming, "Have ye slain my Lord Cardinal? What have ye done with my Lord Cardinal?" As they refused to depart till they saw him, his dead body was slung out by the assassins at the same window from which he had but a short time before witnessed the burning of Mr George Wishart Having no opportunity to bury the body, they afterwards salted it, wrapped it in lead, and consigned it to the ground floor of the sea tower, the very place where he was said to have caused Rogers the preaching friar to be murdered.
In this manner fell Cardinal David Beaton, in the height of prosperity, and in the prime of life, for he had only reached the fifty-second year of his age. His death was deeply lamented by his own party, to whom it proved an irreparable loss, and the authors of it were regarded by them as sacrilegious assassins, but by numbers, who, on account of difference in religion, were in dread of their lives from his cruelty, and by others who were disgusted by his insufferable
