Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/303

A.D. 1546.] the conversion of these lands. It is his death which now cries for vengeance on thee. We are sent by God to inflict the deserved punishment. For here, before the Almighty, I protest that it is neither hatred of thy person, nor love of thy riches, nor fear of thy power, which moves me to seek thy death; but only because thou hast been, and still remainest, an obstinate enemy to Christ Jesus and his holy Gospel." With that he plunged his sword repeatedly into his body, and laid him dead at his feet.



By this time the workmen and attendants of the cardinal had spread the alarm through the town. The great bell was rung; the citizens rushed to the castle demanding the cardinal, but were told by Norman Leslie that they were a set of unreasonable fools to demand an audience of a dead man; and with that he hung the bleeding body on the wall, tied to a sheet and bade them go, every man about his business; having verified to the awe-struck multitude the words of Wishart at his execution, when seeing Beaton watching his approaching death from the castle, he said to the officer commanding the guard, "Captain, may God forgive yonder man who lies so proudly on the wall: within a few days he shall be seen lying there in as much shame as he now shows pomp and vanity." The conspirators having done their work, wrote to King Henry, in whose employ they were, informing him of the deed being accomplished, and offering to hold the castle for him.

In the whole round of history there is no transaction in which the evidence has been so clearly and fully preserved as this of the murder of Beaton, by the order of Henry VIII., through the agency of Sir Ralph Sadler, and by the hands of the men held in pay for this especial