Archbishop of Glasgow, b. 1517; d. 24 April, 1603; the
son of James Beaton of Balfarg (a younger son of John Beaton
of Balfour) and nephew to Cardinal David
Beaton. He was elected to the archbishopric in
1551, on the resignation of the archbishop-elect Andrew
Gordon, and not being yet in priests's orders, he was ordained
in Rome, and consecrated there on the 28th of August, 1552.
For eight troublous years he administered the affairs of his
diocese and stood faithfully by the queen-regent, Mary of
Guise, in her dealings with the disaffected Scottish nobles,
who were plotting the destruction of the ancient Church in
order to enrich themselves with the spoils.
In March, 1539, we find
him assisting at the provincial council at Edinburgh summoned
by the primate, Archbishop Hamilton � the last assembly of
the kind which was to meet in Scotland for three hundred and
twenty-six years. The events of 1560, the treaty of alliance
with England against France, the commencement of the work of
destruction of cathedrals and monasteries, and, finally, the
death of the queen-regent, no doubt actuated Beaton in his
resolve to quit the distracted kingdom. He repaired to Paris,
taking with a great mass of the muniments and registers of his
diocese, and much church plate and other treasures, which he
deposited in the Scots College.
Queen Mary immediately
appointed him her ambassador at the French Court, and he
remained both up to her forced abdication in 1567, and during
the rest of her life, her most faithful friend and adviser. He
did not hesitate, after the murder of Darnley, to inform her
frankly of the dark suspicions attaching to her, and the
necessity of the assassins being punished.
On the 15th of February,
1574, Beaton's name appears at the head of the list of the
Catholic prelates and clergy declared outlaws and rebels by
the Scottish Privy Council; but he nevertheless continued to
enjoy in his exile the favour of the young king (James VI)
who, about 1586, appointed him, as the late sovereign had
done, ambassador at Paris. Beaton held several benefices in
France, including the income of the Abbey De la Sie, in Poitou,
and the treasurership of St. Hilary of Poitiers. His intimate
association with the House of Guise had naturally led him to
join with the League against Henry IV, and on its dissolution
he was threatened with banishment; but by the intervention of
Cardinals Bourbon and Sully and of the king himself, he was
allowed to remain in France, where he was regarded with the
greatest esteem.
Perhaps the most
remarkable testimony to the respect felt for his character in
Scotland is to be found in the fact that in 1598, nearly forty
years after the overthrow of the ancient Church, the
archbishop was formally restored, by an act of the Scottish
Parliament, to all his "heritages, honours, dignities,
and benefices, notwithstanding that he has never acknowledged
the religion professed within the realm". He survived to
witness, a month before his death, the union of the English
and Scottish crowns under King James. On the 24th of April,
1603, when James was actually on his way to London to take
possession of hew new kingdom, the archbishop died in
Paris, on the eighty-sixth year of his age, and half a century
after his episcopal consecration.
Beaton had lived in
Paris for forty-three years, and had been Scottish ambassador
to five successive kings of France. He was buried in the
church of St. John Lateran at Paris, his funeral being
attended by a great gathering of prelates, nobles, and common
people. The poetical inscription on his tomb eulogizes him, in
the exaggerated language of the times, as the greatest bishop
and preacher of his age in the whole world. A sounder estimate
of his worth is that of his Protestant successor in the See of
Glasgow, Spottiswoode, who describes him as "a man
honourably disposed, faithful to his queen while she lived and
to the king her son; a lover of his country, and liberal to
all his countrymen".
No breath of
scandal, in a scandalous age, ever attached to the honour of
his name or the purity of his private life. Beaton left his
property, including the archives of the Diocese of Glasgow,
and a great mass of important correspondence, to the Scots
College in Paris. Some of these documents had already been
deposited by him in the Carthusian monastery in the same city.
In the stress of the French Revolution many of these valuable
manuscripts were packed in barrels and sent to St. Omers.
These have unfortunately disappeared, but the papers left in
the college were afterwards brought safely to Scotland, and
are now preserved at Blairs College, the Catholic seminary
near Aberdeen.
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