Many eminent and pious men supported the cause of the earl of Arran. One of his first acts was to appoint as his chaplains, on the recommendation of those supporters, two ministers who preached the pure Gospel. A former Dominican, Thomas Guillaume (or Williams), who had been very eminent in his order, having been converted by the Word of God, had thrown off his cowl. He was called to preach at Edinburgh. The soundness of his judgment, the purity of his doctrine, the force of his eloquence, and the clearness of his exposition of Scripture, together with a certain moderation in controversy, attracted a crowd to his preaching. The regent associated with him another evangelical minister, John Rough. He had entered a convent at seventeen years of age, had twice visited Rome, and having been painfully shocked by what he had seen there, he had embraced the Reformation. Less of a scholar than Guillaume, he was more simple-minded, and more ardent against superstition and impiety, and against the authority of the pope. Arran, urged on by his evangelical friends, sent his faithful ministers into various parts of the kingdom. Among their numerous hearers was Knox, and it was while listening to Guillaume that the great reformer began to be acquainted with the beauty of evangelical truth.[273]

But while those who had their hearts opened to the truth received with joy the words of the two chaplains, the monks, the priests, and all the friends of the papacy attacked them vehemently. ‘Heresy! heresy!’ cried a Franciscan named Scot; ‘Guillaume and Rough will carry the governor unto the devil.’ And all the monks and sacristans took up the cry, ‘Heresy!’ A man named Watson, of the household of the bishop of Dunkeld, composed a satirical ballad against the chaplains and the regent which had a great vogue. The cardinal on his part was moving heaven and earth, and worried Arran to silence the two preachers. ‘All these men,’ says Knox, ‘roupit [croaked] as they had been ravens, yea rather they yelled and roared as devils in hell.’ For the moment, these cries were futile. The divine Word prevailed.

PROPOSAL OF HENRY VIII.

While these things were passing in Scotland, Henry VIII. was fully occupied in England. The death of James had startled him, and his first thought had been that the succession must fall to him. He would unite the two kingdoms, and it would be an immense advantage to Great Britain to be all under one government, and that his own. To this end a marriage should be concluded between his son Edward, aged five years, and the young Queen of Scotland, aged a few days. He lost no time in sending for the most notable of the Scottish captives to Hampton Court palace, where he was then residing. The earls of Cassilis and Glencairn, and the Lords Maxwell, Fleming, and Grey, men who only a few days before had been made a spectacle to the populace of London, appeared before him. He stated to them his project. ‘God,’ said he, ‘now offers you a most favorable occasion for establishing agreement and peace in Great Britain. Let a contract be concluded between your queen and my son. I offer to set you at liberty if you will pledge yourselves to do all you can to get the consent of the regent and of the other nobles of Scotland to this marriage.’ The project highly pleased the lords, for they saw in it a certain means of obtaining not only liberty for themselves, but a lasting peace for their country. Agreement was made that the Queen Mary should marry the prince Edward when she was ten years old. After this conference the noble prisoners set out, December 29, on their way to Scotland, to secure the success of their scheme.

Henry, however, did not yet feel himself secure, and he wanted to have the young queen in his own hands and some others with her. He had no confidence in Scotland, knowing how easily she might tack about: and he was afraid of the cardinal’s cleverness. Consequently, on January 9 he wrote to viscount Lisle, then lord warden of the military frontiers of England. ‘It is essential,’ said he, ‘to get the child, the person of the cardinal, and of such as be chief lettes of our purpose, and also of the chief holds and fortresses into our hands.’[274] Henry’s fears were not without foundation. At the moment of James’s death everyone foreboded a war with the powerful King of England. But the Scottish lords whom Henry had set at liberty arrived on January 24. They were accompanied by the earl of Angus and his brother, Sir George Douglas, who had long endured the life of exiles in England. These lords hastened to fulfil the commission of Henry VIII. On their admission to the council, of which the regent was president, they laid before it the proposal of marriage between the heirs of the two crowns. The earl of Arran and the great majority of the members of the council appeared to be favorable to it; but the cardinal, supported by the queen-mother, strenuously opposed it. In their judgment nothing was more dangerous for Scotland, nothing could be more offensive to France and to Rome. Now Mary of Guise and Beatoun were the representatives of these powers. The more chance there seemed to be of the adoption of the proposal by the council, the more Beatoun struggled and the more vehement the resistance he offered to it. He incessantly interrupted the debate: he put questions to other members: he thus hindered them from speaking and made the taking of votes altogether impossible.[275] The majority of the council revolted against conduct so unparliamentary, which did not allow them the free exercise of their right. The other members, and especially the Scots who were just come from England, were indignant. The latter conceived a bold design which did not occur to anyone else. They would turn the cardinal’s insolence to account in getting him wholly set aside. It was proposed that Beatoun should be excluded from the assembly and confined in an apartment of the palace until the votes had been collected. This plan was at once voted and carried out.[276] What a blow for this proud priest! He, primate, cardinal, legate of Rome, the most important personage of the realm, as he thought, to find himself excluded from the council and treated as a prisoner! He was not even to regain his liberty very soon. Never, perhaps, had any assembly struck so unlooked for a blow. The Scottish lords had arrived January 24, and the discussion and exclusion of the cardinal certainly took place on the 25th or 26th. The prelate was removed to the prison at Dalkeith.[277] The earls of Huntley, Murray, and Bothwell demanded his liberation and offered themselves as his bail, but they did not succeed in obtaining it. The voting resulted in a resolution in favor of the marriage and of the union with England; it only remained for parliament to confirm it.

RESULTS OF BEATOUN’S ARREST.

The Scottish lords who had returned from England, above all the earl of Angus and his brother, had learnt during their sojourn in London not to spare the cardinals and other Romish dignitaries. The stormy presumption of the cardinal in the council had been the occasion of the measure adopted against him; but these lords perfectly understood that unless the cardinal were kept in confinement there could be no religious nor even civil liberty in the land. ‘It is not possible,’ says Calvin, ‘to deprive an able and powerful tyrant of his supremacy except by first taking away his arms and bringing against him a force superior to his own. He will never quit his post of his own accord.’[278] Sir George Douglas, brother of Angus, went to Berwick where Lord Lisle was stationed, and pointed out to him that in sending the cardinal to prison they had given him certain proof of their activity. Lisle immediately reported it to the Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law of Henry VIII.[279] All the friends of the Gospel, and even the Scottish political party, looked on that measure as a great deliverance. Beatoun, however, was not surrendered to Henry VIII., as he had required him to be.

It is hardly possible to imagine the effect produced in Scotland by this bold deed. The bishops and the priests as soon as they heard of the extraordinary proceeding were beside themselves. All the clergy, struck with horror, at once adopted the same course as they would have done if Scotland were laid under an interdict by the pope. The churches were closed, religious services were suspended, and the priests refused to discharge any of their functions. One might have conjectured that some appalling crime had been committed, and that the whole nation was excommunicated. A funereal veil hung over Scotland. The Romish clergy accused those who had laid hands on the cardinal not only of injustice but of sacrilege. The people, submissive in some places to the bidding of their priests, and even many lords, cried out with the others. Argyle left Edinburgh, retired to his estates, and assembled his clan. Lord Lisle wrote to London, February 1, ‘Since the cardinal was seized, no one in Scotland can get a priest to sing masse, to christen or bury.’[280]

PARLIAMENT AT EDINBURGH.

The Scottish Parliament was to open at Easter, and the moment was approaching. Instead of one there would be (so to speak) two parliaments. The party of the opposition, the earls of Huntley, Argyle, Murray, and Bothwell, a very great number of barons, knights, bishops, and abbots, met at Perth a week before the day of convocation, and having drawn up certain articles, they sent them to the regent and his council by the hands of the bishop of Orkney and Sir John Campbell, uncle to the earl of Argyle. Let the cardinal, they said, be set at liberty; let the New Testament be interdicted; let the regent confer with us on all affairs of the realm, and let other ambassadors be sent to the King of England, charged with a quite different mission from that which has been determined on. The regent by the advice of his council declined to accede to ‘demands so unreasonable.’ The next step, immediately taken, was to send a herald-at-arms to Perth, to summon the lords who were there to Edinburgh, under penalty of treason, to discharge their duties. This citation took effect. The earl of Murray, the bishops, and abbots arrived on the eve of the opening of parliament. The other lords presented themselves later. Argyle alone remained on his estates. His two uncles, however, offered excuse for him, on the ground of ill health.[281]