Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/212

 boundless, for he took into his hands the entire management of the affairs of the kingdom, civil and ecclesiastical, and treated the English ambassador as if he had been a sovereign prince. He made no scruple of sowing discord among his enemies, that he might reap security from their disputes. His jealousy of the governor [Arran] was such, that he kept his eldest son as a hostage in his house, under pretence of taking care of his education. In point of chastity he was rery deficient; for, though we should set aside as calumnies many of those things which his enemies have reported of his intrigues, yet the posterity he left behind him plainly proves that he violated those vows to gratify his passions, which he obliged others to hold sacred on the penalty of their lives. In a word, bad his probity been equal to his parts, had his virtues come up to his abilities, his end had been less fatal, and his memory without Flemish. As it is, we ought to consider him as an eminent instance of the frailty of the brightest human faculties, and the instability of what the world calls fortune."

He wrote, according to Dempster, "Memoirs of his own Embassies," "A Treatise of Peter's Primacy," and "Letters to several Persons."

, uncle to the preceding, and himself an eminent prelate and statesman, was a younger son of John Beaton of Balfour, in Fife, and of Mary Boswell, daughter of the Laird of Balmouto. Having been educated for the church, he became, in 1503, provost of the collegiate church of Bothwell, by the favour, it has been almost necessarily supposed, of the house of Douglas, who were patrons of the establishment. His promotion was very rapid. In 1504, he was made Abbot of the rich and important abbacy of Dunfermline, which had previously been held by a brother of the king; and in 1505, on the death of his uncle, Sir David Beaton, who had hitherto been his chief patron, he received his office of High Treasurer, and became, of course, one of the principal ministers of state. On the death of Vaus, Bishop of Galloway, in 1508, James Beaton was placed in that see, and next year he was translated to the archiepiscopate of Glasgow. He now resigned the Treasurer's staff, in order that he might devote himself entirely to his duties as a churchman. While Archbishop of Glasgow, he busied himself in what were then considered the most pious and virtuous of offices, namely, founding new altarages in the cathedral, and improving the accommodations of the episcopal palace. He also entitled himself to more lasting and rational praise, by such public acts as the building and repairing of bridges within the regality of Glasgow. Upon all the buildings, both sacred and profane, erected by him, were carefully blazoned his armorial bearings. During all the earlier part of his career, this great prelate seems to have lived on the best terms with the family of Douglas, to which he must have been indebted for his first preferment. In 1515, when it became his duty to consecrate the celebrated Gavin Douglas as Bishop of Dunkeld, he testified his respect for the family by entertaining the poet and all his train in the most magnificent manner at Glasgow, and defraying the whole expenses of his consecration. Archbishop Beaton was destined to figure very prominently in the distracted period which ensued upon the death of James IV. As too often happens in the political scene, the violence of faction broke up his old attachment to the Douglasses. The Earl of Angus, chief of that house, having married the widow of the king, endeavoured, against the general sense of the nation, to obtain the supreme power. Beaton, who was elevated by the Regent Albany, to the high office of Lord Chancellor, and appointed one of the governors of the kingdom during his absence in France, attached himself to the opposite faction of the Hamiltons under the Earl of Arran. On the 29th of April, 1520, a convention having been called to compose the differences of the two parties, the Hamiltons appeared in military guise, and seemed prepared to vindicate their supremacy