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 distinguished by his gentleness, self-denial, and piety. But these were the very qualities that now marked him out as a victim; and the imperious Arran did not hesitate to threaten that, though his head were as big as a hay-stack, he would make it fly from his shoulders. Lawson knew that his life was aimed at, and, like several of his brethren thus circumstanced, he fled to England, and took up his residence at London, in one of the lanes leading from Cheapside. But the uncongenial climate, and, above all, the defection of many of his flock during his absence, so heavily afflicted him, that he fell into a disease, of which he died in little more than a month. Upon his death-bed, the English who visited him were edified with his pious remarks, which they carefully treasured tip for their families and acquaintances; and his last prayers were for mercy to those who would neither enter the kingdom of God themselves, nor suffer others to enter therein. And will it be believed that Patrick Adamson, the man for whom in especial he had so prayed, conceived the idea of perverting such a death-bed to his own political purposes? But so it was. He sat down with the pen of a ready writer, and composed an elaborate testament in Lawson's name, in which the dying man was made to abjure all his Presbyterian principles, to grieve over them as deadly sins, to recommend the government of the church by bishops, and enjoin implicit obedience to the king's authority. It was indeed a bold exploit in literary forgery; but, at this period and afterwards, when the pen outran the activity of the press, and communities were so separated, it was easy to make a fraud of this kind, where the locality was transferred to London, to pass current in the streets of Edinburgh. There is no doubt that thus the archbishop had calculated; but, like many very cunning people, he, in this instance, betrayed himself by his over-scrupulous dexterity, and wove the web so finely, that in many places it was quite transparent. Thus, not content with making Lawson recant all the principles of his well-spent life with a hurry that was inconceivable, and laud Episcopal rule with an unction and earnestness which the Archbishop of Canterbury himself could not have surpassed, he also made him, in exhorting his old co-presbyters, to vent a malignity of sentiment, and drolling bitterness of satire, such as, whether living or dying, Lawson could not and would not have used. But it fortunately happened that proof still stronger than inferential evidence was at hand, to convict this impudent forgery; for Lawson himself had written his last testament, which was witnessed with the honoured names of Andrew Melville, James Carmichael, John Davidson, and Walter Balcanquhal.

After his return from England, Adamson did not lie idle; he zealously joined the king and Arran in their persecution of the best adherents of the kirk, under which, not only the principal ministers, but also the chief of the nobility, were fugitives in England. His pen also was soon in requisition for a more dignified work, at least, than that of blackening the memory of a departed brother; it was to advocate, defend, and justify certain obnoxious measures of James and his favourite, that had passed through the parliament in 1584, and were generally unpopular, both on account of their anti-presbyterian spirit in religion, and their despotic tendencies in civil rule. This task Adamson accomplished, and with such plausibility and ingenuity, that his apology was not only in high favour with the king, but widely popular in England, so that it was inserted in the appendix of Holinshed's History as a true picture of the religious state of Scotland. But this was not his only reward. Although he was still a suspended presbyter, with his trial by the General Assembly hanging