with the sword. Beaton, their chief counsellor, sat in his house at the bottom of the Blackfriars' Wynd,[1] with armour under his robes, ready apparently to have joined the forces of the Hamiltons, in the event of a quarrel In this crisis, Gavin Douglas was deputed by his nephew the Earl of Angus, to remonstrate with the Archbishop against the hostile preparations of his party. Beaton endeavoured to gloss over the matter, and concluded with a solemn asseveration upon his conscience, that he knew not of it. As he spoke, he struck his hand upon his breast, and caused the mail to rattle under his gown. Douglas replied, with a cutting equivoque, "Methinks, my lord, your conscience clatters," as much as to say, your conscience is unsound, at the same time that the word might mean the undue disclosure of a secret. In the ensuing conflict, which took place upon the streets, the Hamiltons were worsted, and Archbishop Beaton had to take refuge in the Blackfriars' Church. Being found there by the Douglasses, he had his rochet torn from his back, and would have been slain on the spot, but for the interposition of the Bishop of Dunkeld. Having with some difficulty escaped, he lived for some time in an obscure way, till the return of the Duke of Albany, by whose interest he was appointed in 1523, to the metropolitan see of St Andrews. On the revival of the power of the Douglasses in the same year, he was again obliged to retire. It is said that the insurrection of the Earl of Lennox in 1525, which ended in the triumph of the Douglasses and the death of the Earl at Linlithgow Bridge, was stirred up by Archbishop Beaton, as a means of emancipating the King. After this unhappy event, the Douglasses persecuted him with such keenness, that, to save his Life, he assumed the literal guise and garb of a shepherd, and tended an actual flock upon Bogrian-Knowe in Fife. At length, when James V. asserted his independence of these powerful tutors, and banished them from the kingdom, Beaton was reinstated in all his dignities, except that of Chancellor, which was conferred upon Gavin Dunbar, the King's preceptor. He henceforward resided chiefly at St Andrews, where, in 1527, he was induced by the persuasions of other churchmen less mild than himself, to consent to the prosecution and death of Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr of the Scottish Reformation. He was subsequently led on to various severities against the reformers, but rather through a want of power to resist the clamours of his brethren, than any disposition to severity in his own nature. It would appear that he latterly entrusted much of the administration of his affairs to his less amiable nephew. The chief employment of his latter years was to found and endow the New College of St Andrews, in which design, however, he was thwarted in a great measure by his executors, who misapplied the greater part of his funds. He died in 1539.
BEATON, James, Archbishop of Glasgow, was the second of the seven sons of John Beaton, or Bethune of Balfour, elder brother of Cardinal Beaton. He received the chief part of his education at Paris, under the care of his celebrated uncle, who was then residing in the French capital as ambassador from James V. His first preferment in the church was to be chanter of the cathedral of Glasgow, under Archbishop Dunbar. When his uncle attained to nearly supreme power, he was employed by him in many important matters, and in 1543, succeeded him as Abbot of Aberbrothick. The death of the Cardinal does not appear to have materially retarded the advancement of his nephew; for we find that, in 1552, he had sufficient interest with the existing government, to receive the second place in the Scottish church, the Archbishopric of Glasgow, to which he was consecrated at Rome. He was now one of the most important personages in the kingdom; he enjoyed the confidence of the governor, the Earl of Arran; his niece, Mary Beaton, one of the "Four Maries," was the
- ↑ Lane.
