History Of Scotland Vol. 2 - Part 7

( Originally Published 1909 )

Oppressive Regency of Morton—He sets the Example of the Tulchan Bishops, and thereby offends the Church—Tyrannizes over the Nobility—Disobliges the young King—Battle of Reedsquair—The King desires to assume the Government Morton offers no Opposition, but resigns the Regency, receiving in return an Act of Indemnity—He surrenders the Castle of Edinburgh—Retires to Dalkeith, and builds a Castle at Droich-holes in Tweedale—Meditates, however, the Resumption of his Power—Instigates the Earl of Mar to take Stirling Castle from his Uncle, and thus acquires Possession of the King's Person and the supreme Place in the Privy Council—Argyle and Athole levy Forces against Morton, but an Accommodation is agreed upon—Two Favorites arise at Court—The Character of the Duke of Lennox—That of Stewart, afterward Earl of Arran—Morton's invidious Persecution of the Hamiltons—Morton is impeached by Ste wart—Tried, condemned, and executed

THE kingdom of Scotland, exhausted both in property and population, might have enjoyed a state of repose similar to the stupefaction of an exhausted patient, had it not been disturbed by the arbitrary and oppressive actions of the regent. Though affecting zeal for the Protestant doctrines, he disobliged the Church of Scotland by a device which he had invented to secure in the hands of the secular nobility the lands and revenues of the Catholic clergy. For this purpose he nominated to the archbishopric of St. Andrew's a poor clergyman named Douglas, taking his obligation to rest satisfied with a very small annuity out of the revenues of the see, and to account for the residue to his patron, the regent himself. This class of bishops, instituted for the purpose of cloaking some powerful lay lord in the enjoyment of the emoluments of the see, was facetiously called Tulchan1 prelates; and both the clergy and their hearers execrated Morton's avarice, which had introduced the simoniacal practice.

The nobility were no less irritated against the regent and his authority. The Earls of Argyle and Athole having quarrelled with each other, and arming on both sides, the regent, by a very judicious exercise of the royal power, compelled them to disband their forces. But while Morton meditated how he might render their discord profitable to himself, by bringing a charge of treason against two such powerful potentates, they discovered his purpose, and, reconciled by mutual danger, united their interest against the regent and his power. In short, Morton, confident in the support of Queen Elizabeth, became careless of maintaining favor with the youthful king, or popularity with the Scottish nation; and he had not held the regency for five years when a scheme was laid to deprive him of it. A chance rendered doubtful his receiving aid even from England.

The long slumbering spirit of hostility between the kingdoms broke out during his regency with an explosion so sudden that it had wellnigh cost Morton, the most devoted of Elizabeth's partisans, the forfeiture of her protection. On the 3d of May, 1575, a march meeting for the redress of mutual grievances was held between Sir John Foster, warden of the west marches of England, a particular favorite of Elizabeth, and Sir John Carmichael, an esteemed follower of the Regent Morton, whom he had named keeper of the middle marches of Scotland. The wardens, each sup-ported by the most warlike clans of their districts, met at a place called the Reedsquair, on the frontier between the kingdoms, and near the source of the water of Reed. The persons against whom the English had made complaints had been delivered up according to custom; but when the same justice was demanded on the Scottish part, there was an individual malefactor missing. Carmichael demanded delivery of the man with some warmth. Foster answered haughtily, and bid him match himself with his equals. This spark was enough to produce a blaze in an atmosphere so inflammable. The men of Tynedale, the fiercest of the English borderers, shot off a volley of arrows among the Scottish, who, surprised and greatly inferior in numbers, began to retreat. At this moment the array of the citizens of Jed-burgh was discovered advancing to the place of conflict: the ranks of the Scots were restored; and the parties joined battle with the slogan, or war-cry, of "To it, Tynedale!" answered by that of "Jeddart's here!" The English arrows were requited by a volley of bullets, the Scots being superior in firearms. The fortune of the day was effectually turned: the English retired, rallied, and finally fled, leaving their leader, Sir John Foster, with Sir Cuthbert Collingwood, and other gentlemen of distinction, prisoners. Sir George Heron of Chipchase, with several other Englishmen, were slain.

The prisoners were sent to the regent at his castle of Dalkeith. Morton immediately set himself to anticipate the consequences of Elizabeth's resentment. He loaded the English captives with attention and kindness, and dismissed them with honor and without ransom. Gifts, too, were also bestowed, to assuage their angry feelings; but as Scottish falcons were among the presents bestowed on them, a facetious Scottish borderer could not help asking them the insulting question, whether they did hold themselves kindly treated since they got live hawks for dead Herons?

Elizabeth was incensed, but saw the right was with the Scottish; and was besides aware that it was not her interest to break terms with her friend and faithful vassal, the re-gent. Sir John Carmichael was despatched to England, to make his own defence, where he was honorably received and safely dismissed. This skirmish was the last of any note between the nations of England and Scotland;

Meantime the intrigues against Morton, at the Scottish court, continued to proceed. James VI., now twelve years of age, March 4, 1578, was easily inspired with the idea that he was fit to take the sceptre into his own custody; and, encouraged by the suggestions of those around him, resolved to summon a general council of his nobles to put an end, by their sanction, to Morton's regency. The nobility attended the king's summons with such readiness as to show they were both numerous and powerful enough to second the wishes of the sovereign. Marton, surprised at the explosion of this confederacy, made far less resistance to it than could have been expected either from a statesman of his experience 'or from a warrior of his talents and resources. It seems that he thought it most prudent to give way to the first impulse of his enemies; and keeping upon his guard, and attending to the safety of his person, was determined to wait until opportunity should offer of recovering his power by some revolution as secret and sudden as that which had deprived him of it.

With this view, he retired into the castle of Lochleven, choosing that strength for his safety which had lately been the prison of Queen Mary : here he was visited by his own allies of the Douglas family and others who had remained attached to his government. In the meantime the king summoned a parliament, or rather a council of his nobles, to which those who were opposed in politics to Morton, with an equally great number who conceived they had reason to complain of his personal severity or injustice to them, re-sorted, in hopes of redress or revenge. On this assembly many of Morton's friends also gave attendance, and, in appearance at least, deserted the sinking cause of their old leader.

The young king's government being thus apparently strong, he caused it to be intimated to Morton that it was his purpose to deprive him of his regency, and call him to account for his conduct while he held the office. Intimidated by these threatened measures of severity, Morton carried his submission to this new party in the State further perhaps than he had himself originally intended. On March 12, 1578, he went to Dalkeith, and thence to Edinburgh, in company with the Lord Glammis, the new chancellor, and Lord Herries, the peers by whom the king had intimated his unfavorable intentions; and rendered himself a personal witness of the proclamation of the king's acceptance of the government into. his own hands. Morton conducted himself, apparently, in the most dutiful manner: perceiving, as he said, "that wisdom and goodness which did perpetually in-crease in the king, and fully supplied the defect of years," he voluntarily resigned to him his full power and authority as regent. By this submissive conduct the earl obtained one advantage which he probably considered as of great consequence. An act of indemnity was passed in his favor, which, in the fullest and most ample form, pardoned the Earl of Morton whatever acts of illegal violence he had committed in the exercise of his authority, and ratified in the king's name his whole conduct as regent. No precaution was omitted which could render this act of indemnity so ample and explicit as hereafter to afford the late regent an effectual protection against any future accusation founded upon delicts committed during his government or in ascending to it. Nevertheless, we shall find that the intended security was not fully obtained.

The castle of Edinburgh was still in the hands of the regent, who was well inclined to have kept that fortress under his own power, and would willingly have had the king take up his lodgings within its ramparts. As this, however, would have been voluntarily to continue under the tutelage of the Earl of Morton, James would not give ear to the proposal unless the castle should be surrendered to such keeper as he should himself appoint; and Morton found it necessary, after some show of defence, to yield up that key of the metropolis to the lawful sovereign.

The late regent, thus reduced to the state of a private nobleman, took up his residence at his strong castle of Dalkeith, within about six miles of Edinburgh; where he apparently busied himself with his private affairs, and the management of his extensive estates. About this time, too, he constructed amid the mountains of Tweedale a house of strength or of retreat, called Droich-holes. It is a large and massive building, strongly situated, and so fortified that the regent might have defended it with safety, in case of emergency, until he should receive relief from his friends in England; he did not, however, live to complete this edifice, of which the frowning ruins still remain, the singular relics of a castle which was never completed or inhabited.

The general opinion of the mode in which the late regent passed his time was expressed by the name of The Lion's Den, which the common people bestowed upon the castle of Dalkeith. The lords who had succeeded to the management of the State entertained the same terror of Morton's secret intentions as was expressed by the common people in the name which they gave to his habitation : all expected the moment when the old lion should again burst from his retirement and make the kingdom tremble at his roar.

Accordingly it appears that Morton secretly engaged a part of the family of Mar and their dependents to resume forcible possession of the king's person. This was to be accomplished in an enterprise which Morton so conducted that it opened the way to the restoration of his own power, although at first it had the appearance only of a feud- between the young earl and his uncle, Alexander Erskine. The Countess of Mar and the young earl had seen with impatience Alexander, called the Master of Mar, act as governor of the castle and guardian of the king's person, and they were easily instigated to an attempt to deprive their relative of the power of exercising those honorable offices which belonged to the nephew by hereditary right. Their suspicions were grossly unjust; for there is no reason to believe that Alexander Erskine was moved by other than the fairest motives in acting in behalf of his nephew, a youth who was not twenty. They found ready acceptance, however, with an ambitious woman and a petulant youth. But Morton, it has been supposed, persuaded the Earl of Mar to seize upon Stirling, that he himself might find the opportunity once more to obtain possession of the king's person. He proposed to remove James, it was said, from Stirling to his own family stronghold of Lochleven Castle, the jail successively of the dethroned Mary and the betrayed Northumberland, where Morton might hope to detain the king's person in honorable captivity until he should attain to perfect age, or for as much longer a space as he himself should be disposed to rule in his name. In this plot Morton engaged the Earl of Mar and his mother; and so far as the seizure of Stirling Castle the enterprise succeeded with perfect ease. The uncle had no suspicion of his nephew or. sister-in-law, who found, therefore, little difficulty in gaining possession of a fortress garrisoned by their own followers, who yielded ready obedience to their young lord and his mother. Thus the insurgents, or rather Morton, by whose counsel they acted, made themselves again masters of the king's person, expelling from the fortress the Earl of Argyle, Alexander Erskine, called the Master of Mar, and others who had been active in the measures against Morton. And thus this wily politician, having resumed his seat in the privy council, soon obtained the complete ascendency in that body, and was again placed at the head of affairs in Scotland.

But the Earl of Morton's power was too generally dreaded to enable him with ease to re-establish the fabric which had been already so sorely shaken. He felt that the parliament which had been summoned would not be satisfied without the king's presence, and that any attempt to remove James's person to the lake surrounded tower of Lochleven must necessarily be regarded as an act of open rebellion. On the other hand, to trust James in the metropolis, where Morton was conscious of his own unpopularity, was to give the king an opportunity, supported as he was sure to be by the citizens, to throw off his yoke and destroy his authority forever.

The Earl of Morton endeavored to compromise these difficulties by a proclamation changing the place of convening the parliament from Edinburgh to Stirling, where the possession of the castle gave him the means of detaining the king within his power. Athole, Argyle, and the other enemies of Morton, arose in arms against this proposal. "The king," they said, "was once more the prisoner of a Douglas, who meant to seclude him from the rest of the nobility, and detain him in captivity, while he ruled under his name."

They speedily raised about four thousand men, at the head of whom they asserted that they meant to fight for the liberty of the sovereign. The king, like his grandfather James V. in the same circumstances, was obliged to lend his name to proclamations, and troops marched, as if by his authority, against the noblemen to whom in his heart he wished success, and whose insurrection he considered as good service. The Earl of Angus, Morton's nephew, advanced against Argyle and Athole, at the head of forces equal to their own. A bloody battle and the renewal of the civil wars seemed to be impending.

Both parties were, however, unwilling to plunge once more into the state of civil confusion, war, and bloodshed, from which the country had so lately emerged. They made an agreement upon the field of expected battle, by which the enterprise of Argyle and Athole was acknowledged as good service: the earls were themselves received into the king's presence, and some alterations were made in the privy council, by which an accommodation of parties seemed for the time to have taken place.

By this coalition, Morton's scheme of retaining the king under his separate and sole guardianship was rendered altogether abortive. James was, it is true, still hampered and limited by the influence of Morton in his councils; but after this union of parties the earl was no longer possessed of his former despotic authority.

The king himself had tasted the sweets of independence, and longed to regain it. If he himself had been indifferent upon so interesting a subject, there were two persons who shared his secret thoughts, upon whom he had conferred a species of unlimited confidence, and who, for the preservation of their own power and court interest, lost no opportunity to animate his displeasure against the veteran statesman who had twice reduced his sovereign to a species of nullity. These were men of very different talents and-character, agreeing only in their apparent attachment to the person of the sovereign and their enmity to the Earl df Morton.

The first of them in rank was Esme Stewart, termed the Lord d'Aubigne. He was the son of a second. brother of Matthew, earl of Lennox, and consequently near cousin to the king by his father, Lord Darnley. Lord Esme was a graceful, well-accomplished gentleman, and had been educated in France,. where he professed the Catholic religion, which, however, when he came to Scotland, he exchanged for the Protestant faith. Notwithstanding his conversion he had never the good fortune to obtain the belief of the Scottish churchmen in his sincerity. They considered him as having professed himself a Protestant rather from temporal policy than religious motives, and they dreaded his intimacy with, and influence over, the king, as likely to be secretly employed in behalf of the court of France and the Church of Rome. In temper the young favorite was candid, liberal, generous and well-disposed, but he was entirely ignorant of Scottish affairs, and unable to decide as a statesman in public business of any kind. This young nobleman the king raised by hasty steps to the highest pinnacle of promotion, until he became Duke of Lennox, captain of the royal guard, first lord of James's bedchamber, and lord high chamberlain; offices which required his constant attendance on the king, and invested him in a great measure with the protection of the royal person.

The Duke of Lennox's associate in the king's favor was a man of meaner birth and pretensions, yet by no means, as has been surmised, of ignoble lineage : he was James Stewart, usually called Captain Stewart, the second son of Lord Ochiltree, a family of some distinction among the numerous branches which claimed alliance with the royal house.

Stewart had those talents which are generally supposed to make way for their possessors at a court. He was ambitious to the highest degree, yet capable of stooping in order to catch an opportunity to rise: he was bold, daring, profligate, and unscrupulous, and possessed the art of making his own insinuations, however wicked and unprincipled, accept-able to men of better minds and morals than himself ; and among such were to be reckoned the king and the Duke of Lennox. No religious feelings of any kind shackled the boldness of this adventurer's attempts; and he was equally devoid of that steady sagacity and respect for general opinion which often serves instead of a conscience to such politicians as are not fortunate enough to have any. It was he who animated both the king and Lennox to the violent proceedings against Morton, and promoted other steps which were less justifiable, either upon the score of justice or expediency.

It cannot be supposed that a statesman so sagacious as Morton was unaware of the peril to his own power attending the rise of these two young men, who must necessarily have felt the existence of his authority as tending to eclipse that of the monarch and their own. But he no longer possessed that unlimited ascendency by which he had the power of excluding from the king's company and intimacy any per-son whose favor might awaken his jealousy. He was obliged to keep measures with the monarch and with his favorites, the rather that he knew himself obnoxious to the courtiers in general, and especially to some of his own former friends. He was compelled, therefore, to witness the growth of a party who he was conscious looked upon him with jealous hatred, and loaded him with odious imputations.

A circumstance, probably casual, afforded ground in that suspicious age for much clamor against him this was the death of the Earl of Athole, the chancellor, appointed to that high office upon the slaughter of Lord Glammis, who was slain in a fray between his domestics and those of the Earl of Crawford. Athole's decease took place shortly after a banquet given by Mar and Morton, chiefly to the statesmen of the opposite faction, and was, therefore, almost of course ascribed to poison. No inquiry was made; but the belief that Athole had died by Morton's crime was generally entertained.

It was not less unfavorable to the safety of the late regent that he was supposed to lend himself to the aid of Elizabeth in a species of policy of which she was believed very capable. The purpose of securing James, the heir of her kingdom, in her own strong possession, and of governing Scotland by Morton, or by some other satellite of the English interest, was regarded as a course of policy which she was inclined to follow, and in which Morton, it was supposed, would have been a ready instrument of her pleasure. Measures were hastily taken to secure the king against the danger of his person being seized and sent to England by the contrivance of his too powerful minister, alleged to be the willing tool of so dangerous an ally. The office of lord high chamberlain, as the immediate guardian of the king's person, was revived, as we have seen, in the person of the Duke of Lennox; that of deputy chamberlain was granted to Alexander Erskine, the Master of Mar, and the command of the king's guard, reinforced and carefully cleared of all suspicious persons, was intrusted to Captain James Stewart, all of them enemies to the Earl of Morton.

Fortified by these circumstances the cabal of Morton's foes, for public and private reasons, became so strong that little was wanting save a plausible point of accusation upon which the late regent might be brought to capital trial.

The veteran statesman's own avarice and overweening arrogance had excited new odium ever since his accommodation with Argyle and Athole. The cause was as follows: Morton's ancient hereditary enemies of the House of Hamilton had begun once again to raise their heads, notwithstanding the severity with which they had been treated by the Regent Lennox, assisted by the forces of Elizabeth in the year 1575. The Duke of Chatelherault had been several years dead; his eldest son, the Earl of Arran, had showed symptoms of derangement early in Queen Mary's time, and had never since recovered from his mental disease; but the duke had two younger sons, John, who was in possession of the family property, and Claud, titular abbot of Paisley. Both, but especially the latter, had made a distinguished figure in the support of Queen Mary's cause during the civil wars; and Morton, whose revenge as well as avarice were insatiable, directed the most vindictive measures. Specious pretexts were found in their accession, which was more than suspected, to the murder of Regent Murray, who was shot by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, one of their kinsmen, and to that of Lennox at the raid of Stirling, where Lord Claud himself had been present, and which was said to be done by his express command. The deeds were no doubt culpable in proportion to the dignity of the high persons that were slain. Yet if such facts, occurring in the heat of so bloody a civil war, were allowed as fair subjects of prosecution after arms had been laid down on mutual agreement, it was clear that the wounds of internal discord could never have been stanched. Morton, however, having determined to avenge himself upon the devoted Hamiltons, proceeded against them as outlawed traitors, ravaging their estates, which he after-ward caused to be formally confiscated by parliament. The Lords John and Claud Hamilton escaped to England; and the alleged crime, of which they had neither been tried nor found guilty, was, with equal injustice and cruelty, visited upon their insane brother, the Earl of Arran, who had been all along in confinement, and had no accession to their guilt, even if in his disturbed state of mind he could have been made legally responsible for his actions. Doom of forfeiture was, nevertheless, pronounced against him; and this irregular and rapacious proceeding stirred up new enemies against Morton, who had already upon his hands a faction much stronger than he was able to contend with. All these lay waiting for a day of vindictive retaliation, which failed not at length to arrive.

We have said that Morton was covered, as if with a coat of mail, by the act of parliament which ratified the acts of his regency, and authenticated and pardoned all such breaches of law as he might have committed in the course of his government. But the ingenious hatred of Captain James Stewart discovered a flaw in this panoply. That Morton was in some degree associated with Bothwell in the murder of Henry Darnley had always been alleged; and it was positively given in evidence by those subaltern agents of Bothwell who died for the crime that Archibald Douglas, titular parson of Glasgow, the earl's relative and confidant, and a busy agent in many of the dark and bloody transactions of the time, was present at the guilty act. This was averred, with the addition of a precise circumstance, that Douglas, in his hurry to effect his escape, had left one of his slippers behind him. From this had been deduced as a consequence that Archibald's friend, relative, and patron, Morton, must have been a member of the conspiracy, the more especially as he continued to favor and protect his kinsman Douglas. Now the act of ratification and indemnity in favor of the Earl of Morton, while it contained the most copious remission of almost every other species of state crime, could not with decency have included a pardon, on the part of James, for the murder of his own father, and on this point, therefore, the late regent remained open to accusation and trial.

So very execrable were the politics of that time that even the process instituted by a son for obtaining the punishment of his father's murderer was conducted in a manner which allied it to the vulgar proverb that it was a staff discovered for the express purpose of beating a dog, or in plain English, that the charge was insisted upon not out of regard for Darnley's memory, or the lawful and natural desire of punishing his violent and cruel murder, but for the purpose of depriving the hated Earl of Morton of his estate, honors, and life.

The ready agent in this tragedy was Captain James Stewart, a man whom we have already described as being equally bold, profligate, and unconscientious. When the king was seated in full council he appeared before them, and, falling upon his knees, impeached the Earl of Morton as being art and part of (that is, accessory to) the murder of the late king, Henry Darnley, and offered to make good the charge, under the usual penalties if he should fail in his proof. Morton, with a disdainful smile, referred to the services which he had done the crown, and the severity with which he had prosecuted the murderers of Darnley, and offered to stand to his defence on that charge in any competent court. Stewart was about to reply, when the king imposed silence on both, and commanded Morton to be put into custody until an opportunity of trial should be given in due and lawful form. At the same time he directed a war-rant to be issued for the apprehension of Archibald Douglas, who fled into England, and thus escaped prosecution.

The Earl of Angus, Morton's nephew, seeing the violent course which was pursued against his uncle, offered to raise the forces of his family, and make a desperate attempt for his rescue. Morton, however, proudly forbade all armed interference, saying, he would perish a thousand times rather than it should be supposed he was unwilling to face a fair trial.

Elizabeth, also, who foresaw the loss she must sustain in a Scottish minister so accommodating and deferential to her will as the Earl of Morton, sent a threatening message to the king, by an ambassador of the name of Randolph. She remonstrated against the favor conferred upon young Lennox, desiring that he might be expelled from Scotland as an enemy to both countries. She demanded that Morton, Angus, and their followers, should be restored to 'honor and favor, and adopted, on the whole, a menacing tone of language, which she supported by a display of troops at Berwick and Northumberland, under the command of the Earl of Huntingdon and Lord Hunsdon.

These menaces were ill qualified to serve their purpose: they awakened the indignation of James, and roused the spirit of the Scottish nation. The king instantly assembled forces in his turn, and sent a messenger demanding to know explicitly whether the queen of England desired to have peace or war. Elizabeth, long accustomed to dictate in Scottish affairs, and to be obeyed without remonstrance, was not prepared for so spirited and independent an answer : she withdrew her troops from the frontiers, and left Morton to the fate which her. interference had probably accelerated.

The earl was brought to trial, under circumstances indicating an unusual contempt of the established forms of justice. During the proceedings against him, his accuser, James Stewart, by an act of royal favor, which seemed to prejudge the question between them, was advanced to the honor and estates of the Earl of Arran. There was some-thing very iniquitous in the manner by which he attained this dignity. The spoils in which the minion of James VI. thus dressed himself were the property and title of that unfortunate Earl of Arran, the custody of whom had been granted to the same James Stewart, with the burden of maintaining the insane earl out of his own estate; a burden which he had discharged in a manner scandalously parsimonious. By the oppressive proceedings of Morton himself against the whole family of Hamilton lately narrated, which extended as well against the lunatic earl as his brothers John and Claud, this earldom of Arran had become forfeited to the crown, although its possessor, even if he had been guilty of a crime, of which there was no prof attempted, could not in his state of mind have been a proper subject of punishment. And now, his title and fortune, of which he had been deprived by one rapacious minister, became the prey of another equally unjust and profligate.

It is remarked by historians that Morton, with the credulity of that age, had an anxious recollection of an ancient prophecy, which declared "that the bloody heart should fall by the mouth of Arran." This the regent interpreted to mean the downfall of the Douglases, designed, as was usual in such vaticinations, by their well-known cognizance, and that by means of an Earl of Arran. This, it is said, was the reason for his pressing the unfortunate family of Hamilton, who were the legitimate proprietors of that title, almost to their total destruction: When, therefore, he heard that the earldom of Arran was conferred upon his accuser, Stew-art, he replied, with a surprised and desponding expression, "Is it even so? Then I know what I must expect.

When Morton was brought to his trial at Edinburgh, large bodies of men were drawn up in different parts of the city to overawe the friends of the accused. The records of the trial are lost, but there is evidence that the assize consisted in many instances of the earl's personal enemies; and that, although he challenged them on that score, his remonstrances were not attended to. His servants were also put to the torture in no common manner; for Arran thought it necessary, after the earl's execution, to sue out an immunity for the violence to which they had been subjected.

When Morton heard the indictment read he did not show surprise or emotion; but when the verdict of the jury brought him in guilty of concealing, or being art and part in the murder of Henry Darnley, he repeated, with considerable vehemence, "Art and part ! art and part ! God knows it is not so."

In his conferences with the clergy he more fully explained what he meant by this exclamation. He confessed to them that upon his (Morton's) return from England after his exile, for accession to Rizzio's death, the Earl of Bothwell had proposed to him, both personally and through the medium of his kinsman Archibald Douglas, to be concerned in the death of Darnley, assuring him it was a deed which had the queen's approbation. Morton stated that he had replied to this proposal, "that having so lately been released from a state of exile, he would not be implicated in such an important mat-ter unless Bothwell would produce to him the queen's sign-manual in warrant of the deed."—" The Earl of Bothwell," he said, "promised to produce him such an assurance, but never did so, and therefore he remained a stranger to the conspiracy; excepting that he knew generally that such an action was meditated by Bothwell and others."

The condemned earl was naturally asked by his reverend visitors why, having become privy to so horrible a conspiracy, he did not take measures for unfolding the plot and preventing its execution. "To whom," replied the earl, "should I have made the discovery? If to the queen, she was herself at the bottom of the deadly plot ; if to Lethington, or other statesmen of the time, they were accomplices to the execution; if to Darnley, he was a creature of so weak and fickle a temper that he would have communicated it to his wife, and in any case I should have been inevitably ruined." Thus far the apology seems reasonable, though it gives us a horrible idea of the court and councils of Scot-land at the time.

But Morton had less to answer when his ghostly assist-ants demanded of him why he continued to show friendship and favor to Archibald Douglas, who had acted on this occasion as the confidant of Bothwell, and was generally averred to have been personally present at the murder, and whom, notwithstanding, he created a judge of the court of session? Nor was any satisfactory reply, which could be consistent with Morton's pretended abhorrence of the tragedy of the Kirk of Field, ever returned to this question.

Sentence of death immediately followed upon the Earl of Morton's being found guilty. He slept soundly on the night previous to his execution, and went through the services of religion with apparent devotion. On the morning, having received intimation that all things were ready for the execution, "I praise God," said he, "I am ready likewise.

As the fallen statesman who had once been so preeminent was conducted to the cross of Edinbugh, which was the place of execution, the mendicants craved alms of him; and he was compelled to borrow the sum of twenty shillings Scots to obtain the means of bestowing it, so low were reduced those hoards of wealth, the amassing of which had been one of the principal causes of this great noble's catastrophe. He met his death with the same determined courage that he had often displayed in battle; and it was remarked with interest by the common people that he suffered decapitation by a rude guillotine of the period which he himself during his administration had introduced into Scotland from Halifax; it was called The Maiden.

It was never known in what way Morton's treasure had been disposed of : some traditions report it to be still in existence concealed among the vaults of the castle of Dalkeith; but a more probable rumor states it to have been delivered over to his nephew Angus, and by him expended in the support of those who, after the Raid of Ruthven, shared his exile in England. To this the earl is supposed to have alluded, June 2, 1581, when, paying out a final sum of money for the behoof of those distressed persons, he observed, "It was all gone at last; and that, considering by what means it had been amassed, he had never expected to see it produce so much good."