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BEATON, JAMES, Archbishop
of Glasgow, was the second of the seven sons of John Beaton, or Bethune of
Balfour, elder brother of Cardinal Beaton. He received the chief part of
his education at Paris, under the care of his celebrated uncle, who was
then residing, in the French capital as ambassador from James V. His first
preferment in the church was to be chanter of the cathedral of Glasgow,
under Archbishop Dunbar. When his uncle attained to nearly supreme power,
he was employed by him in many important matters, and in 1543, succeeded
him as Abbot of Aberbrothick. The death of the Cardinal does not appear to
have materially retarded the advancement of his nephew; for we find that,
in 1552, he had sufficient interest with the existing government, to
receive the second place in the Scottish church, the Archbishopric of
Glasgow, to which he was consecrated at Rome. He was now one of the most
important personages in the kingdom; he enjoyed the confidence of the
governor, the Earl of Arran; his niece, Mary Beaten, one of the "Four
Maries," was the favourite of the young Queen Mary, now residing in
France; and he was also esteemed very highly by the Queen Dowager, Mary of
Lorrain, who was now aspiring to the Regency. During the subsequent
sway of the Queen Regent, the Archbishop of St Andrews enjoyed her highest
confidence. It was to him that she handed the celebrated letter addressed
to her by John Knox, saying with a careless air, "Please you, my
lord, to read a pasquil." In 1557, when the marriage of the youthful
Mary to the Dauphin of France was about to take place, James Beaton,
Archbishop of St Andrews, stood the first of the parliamentary
commissioners appointed to be present at the ceremony, and to conduct the
difficult business which was to precede it. He and his companions executed
this duty in a most satisfactory manner. After his return in 1558, he
acted as a Privy Councillor to the Queen Regent, till she was unable any
longer to contend with the advancing tide of the Reformation. In November,
1559, his former friend, the Earl of Arran, who had now become a leading
reformer, came with a powerful retinue to Glasgow, and, to use a delicate
phrase of the time, "took order" with the Cathedral, which he
cleared of all the images, placing a garrison at the same time in the
Archbishop’s palace.. Beaton soon after recovered his house by
means of a few French soldiers; but he speedily found that neither he nor
his religion could maintain a permanent footing in the country.
In June, 1560, the Queen
Regent expired, almost at the very moment when her authority became
extinct. Her French troops, in terms of a treaty with the Reformers,
sailed next month for their native country, and in the same ships was the
Archbishop of Glasgow, along with all the plate and records of the
cathedral, which he said he would never return till the Catholic faith
should again be triumphant in Scotland. Some of these articles were of
great value. Among the plate, which was very extensive and rich, was a
golden image of Christ, with silver images of his twelve apostles. Among
the records, which were also very valuable, were two chartularies, one of
which had been written in the reign of Robert III., and was called,
"The Red Book of Glasgow." All these objects were deposited by
the Archbishop in the Scots College at Paris, where the manuscripts
continued to be of use to Scottish antiquaries up to the period of the
French Revolution, when, it is believed, they were destroyed or dispersed.
Beaton was received by Queen Mary at Paris, with the distinction due to a
virtuous and able counsellor of her late mother. On her departure next
year, to assume the reins of government in Scotland, she left him in
charge of her affairs in France. He spent the whole of the subsequent part
of his life as ambassador from the Scottish court to his most
Christian Majesty. This duty was one of extreme delicacy during the brief
reign of Queen Mary, when the relation of the two courts was of the most
important character. Mary addressed him frequently in her own hand, and a
letter in which she details to him the circumstances of her husband’s
death, is a well known historical document.
It is not probable that
Beaton’s duty as an ambassador during the minority of James VI. was any
thing but a titular honour; but that prince, on taking the government into
his own hands, did not hesitate, notwithstanding the difference of
religion, to employ a statesman who had already done faithful service to
the two preceding generations. James also, in 1587, was able to restore to
him both his title and estates as Archbishop of Glasgow; a proceeding
quite anomalous, when we consider that the presbyterian religion was now
established in Scotland. The Archbishop died, April 24, 1603, in
the eighty-sixth year of his age, and a full jubilee of years from
his consecration. He had been ambassador to three generations of the
Scottish royal family, and had seen in France a succession of six kings,
and transacted public affairs under five of them. He also had the
satisfaction of seeing his sovereign accede to the English throne. James
learned the intelligence of his death while on his journey to London, and
immediately appointed the historian Spottiswoode to be his successor in
the cathedral chair at Glasgow. Archbishop Spottiswoode characterizes him
as "a man honourably disposed, faithful to the Queen while she lived,
and to the King her son; a lover of his country, and liberal, according to
his means, to all his countrymen." His reputation, indeed, is
singularly pure, when it is considered with what vigour he opposed the
reformation. He appears to have been regarded by the opposite party as a
conscientious, however mistaken man, and to have been spared accordingly
all those calumnies and sarcasms with which party rage is apt to bespatter
its opponents. Having enjoyed several livings in France, besides the less
certain revenues of Glasgow, he died in possession of a fortune amounting
to 80,000 livres, all of which he left to the Scots College, for the
benefit of poor scholars of Scotland; a gift so munificent, that he was
afterwards considered as the second founder of the institution, the first
having been a bishop of Moray, in the year 1325. Besides all this wealth,
he left an immense quantity of diplomatic papers, accumulated during the
course of his legation at Paris; which, if they had been preserved to the
present time, would unquestionably have thrown a strong light upon the
events of his time.
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