Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/323

 place in the very front rank of those who have wielded supreme power in Scotland. ‘The regent,’ writes Huntingdon to Sir Thomas Smith, ‘is the most able man in Scotland to govern; his enemies confess it’ (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1575–7, entry 299). ‘His fyve years,’ writes James Melville, ‘were estimed to be als happie and peacable as euer Scotland saw; the name of a papist durst nocht be hard of; there was na a theiffe nor oppressor that durst kythe’ (Diary, p. 47). The sense of security was greatly increased by Morton's contempt for personal danger. Though he knew that he was the object of the concentrated hate of the catholic world, he walked about the streets of Edinburgh without a guard, and on his estate at Dalkeith pursued almost alone the sport of hunting or fishing (‘Occurrents in Scotland,’ August 1575, Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1575–7, entry 294; and in Burghley State Papers, ii. 283). A matter which occupied much of his attention was the pacification of the borders, the tedious difficulties connected with which can only be understood by a study of the records of the privy council (Register, vols. ii. and iii.). To accomplish this effectually it was not sufficient to aim at the extinction of thieving and plunder in Scotland and the suppression of internecine feuds, but to come to an agreement as to the cessation of the petty border wars. Accordingly, on 25 Oct. 1575 a special act was passed against ‘ryding and incursions in Ingland,’ and to aid in carrying the act into effect a taxation of 4,000l. was granted by the estates, one half of the sum being raised by the spiritual estate (ib. ii. 466–9). Probably the immediate cause of the act was a dispute between Sir John Forster, English warden, and Sir John Carmichael, which led to blows, resulting in the death of Sir George Heron. The incident caused a furious outbreak of remonstrances on the part of Elizabeth, whose anger Morton succeeded in appeasing partly by a gift of choice falcons, which led to a saying among the borderers, that Morton for once had the worst of the bargain, since he had given ‘live hawks for a dead heron’ (see numerous letters regarding this affair in the Cal. State Papers, Scot. Ser. and For. Ser. from July to October 1575). The principal means employed by Morton to punish crime, treason, injustice, and nonconformity to the protestant faith, was the infliction of fines, levied by itinerant courts called justice eyres—a method which had the advantage of helping to refill the almost empty coffers of the government. (The fullest account of the methods employed by Morton to raise money is, in addition to Reg. P.C., the Historie of James Sext, but the author of the ‘Historie’ is strongly biassed against Morton.) One important tendency of his resolute administration was towards the extinction of the irresponsible authority of the nobles, ‘whose great credit’ Killigrew had already noted as beginning to ‘decay in the country,’ while the ‘barons, boroughs, and such like take more upon them’ (Killigrew to Burghley, 11 Nov. 1572). Morton, however, chiefly relied upon the friendship of the ‘artificers’ in the towns, shrewdly calculating that they outnumbered the other classes as ten to one (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1575–1577, entry 294). The sincerity of his desire to establish the government on a new and firm basis was evidenced by his appointment of a commission to prepare ‘a uniform and compendious order of the laws’ (ib. entry 82), an enlightened purpose which his premature death unhappily indefinitely postponed.

Morton's ecclesiastical policy was shaped in a great degree by his relations with Elizabeth. The dream of his life was a protestant league with England preparatory to a union of the two kingdoms under one crown. Though an adherent of Knox he was destitute of religious dogmatism. His strength lay in the fact that he was severely practical. The introduction of the ‘Tulchan’ episcopacy in January 1572 was chiefly a clever expedient to enable the nobles to share in ecclesiastical spoils; but Morton now endeavoured to convert this sham episcopacy into a real one. His desire, says James Melville, was to ‘bring in a conformitie with England in governing of the kirk be bischopes and injunctiones, without the quhilk he thought nather the kingdome could be gydet to his fantasie nor stand in guid aggriement and lyking with the nibour land’ (Diary, p. 35). His efforts to perpetuate the episcopal system led to very severe friction between him and the assembly of the kirk, and to the preparation by the kirk in 1578 of the ‘Second Book of Discipline,’ but by ingenious expedients Morton succeeded in postponing a final settlement of the questions raised. In his policy towards the kirk he made Elizabeth his model, and warmly resented the pretensions of the kirk to interfere in civil matters. He ‘mislyked,’ says James Melville, ‘the assemblies generall and wuld haiff haid the name thereof changit’ (ib. p. 47). In fact, he studiously ignored their proceedings whenever they sought to encroach beyond the strictly spiritual sphere. The regency of Morton is thus notable in the initiation of the two great controversies of Scottish ecclesiasticism—that in regard to episcopacy, and that as to the power of the civil magistrate in religion. The assembly made strenuous efforts to