Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/203

 same time seized upon all the Scottish vessels, a great number of which had been lately fitted out, as we have stated, and were at this time in the English harbours and road-steads, confiscated the merchandise, and made the merchants and the mariners prisoners of war. This, while it added to the domestic miseries of Scotland, served also to fan the flames of dissension, which burned more fiercely than ever. The faction of the Cardinal and the Queen-dowager, entirely devoted to France, now sent ambassadors thither to state their case as utterly desperate, unless they were supported from that country. In particular, they requested that Matthew Earl of Lennox might be ordered home, in order that they might set him up as a rival to the Hamiltons, who were already the objects of his hatred, on account of their having waylaid and killed his father at Linlithgow.

Arran laboured to strengthen his party in the best manner he could; and for this end resolved to possess himself of the infant Queen, who had hitherto remained at Linlithgow in the charge of her mother the Queen-dowager. The Cardinal, however, was too wary to be thus circumvented, and assembling his faction, took possession of Linlithgow, where he lived at free quarters upon the inhabitants, on pretence of being a guard to the Queen. Lennox, in the meantime, arrived from France, and was received by the regent with great kindness, each of them dissembling the hatred he bore to the other, and having informed his friends of the expectations he had been led to form he proceeded to join the Queen at Linlithgow, accompanied by upwards of four thousand men. Arran who had assembled all his friends in and about Edinburgh for the purpose of breaking through to the Queen, now found himself completely in the background, having, by the imbecility of his character, entirely lost the confidence of the people, and being threatened with a law-suit by the friends of Lennox to deprive him of his estates, his father having married his mother, Janet Beaton, an aunt of the Cardinal, while his first wife, whom he had divorced, was still alive. He now thought of nothing but making his peace with the Cardinal. To this the Cardinal was not at all averse, as he wished to make Arran his tool rather than to crush him entirely. Delegates of course were appointed by both parties, who met at Kirkliston, a village about midway between Edinburgh and Linlithgow, and agreed that the Queen should be carried to Stirling; the Earl of Montrose, with the Lords Erskine, Lindsay, and Livingstone, being nominated to take the superintendence of her education. Having been put in possession of the infant Queen, these noblemen proceeded with her direct to Stirling Castle, where she was solemnly inaugurated with the usual ceremonies on the 9th of Sept. 1543. The feeble regent soon followed, and before the Queen-mother and the principal nobility in the church of the Franciscans at Stirling, solemnly abjured the protestant doctrines, by the profession of which alone he had obtained the favour of so large a portion of the nation, and for the protection of which he had been especially called to the regency. In this manner the Cardinal, through the cowardice of the regent, and the avarice of his friends, obtained all that he intended by the forged will, and enjoyed all the advantages of ruling, while all the odium that attended it attached to the imbecile Arran, who was now as much hated and despised by his own party as he had formerly been venerated by them. There was yet, however, one thing wanting to establish the power of the Cardinal — the dismissal of Lennox, who, though he had been greatly useful to them in humbling Arran, was now a serious obstacle in the way of both the Cardinal and the Queen-mother. They accordingly wrote to the king of France, entreating that, as Scotland had been restored to tranquillity by his liberality and assistance, he would secure his own good work and preserve the peace which he had procured, by recalling Lennox, without which it was impossible it could be lasting.