BEATON or BETHUNE, DAVID (c. Scot tish cardinal and archbishop of St. Andrews, was a younger son of John Beaton, of Balfour, in the county of Fife. He was educated at the universities of St. Andrews and Glasgow, and studied civil and canon law in Paris. About this time he was presented to the rectory of Campsie by his uncle James Beaton, then archbishop of Glasgow. When James Beaton was translated to St. Andrews in 1522 he resigned the rich abbacy of Arbroath in his nephew's favour. Beaton was sent by King James V. on various missions to France, and in 1528 was appointed keeper of the privy seal. He took a leading part in the negotiations connected with the king's marriages, first with Madeleine of France, and afterwards with Mary of Guise, and was consecrated bishop of Mirepoix by King Francis I. in Dec. 1 S3 7. On Dec. 20, 1538 he was appointed a cardinal priest by Pope Paul III., under the title of St. Stephen in the Coelian Hill, and on the death of Archbishop James Beaton in 1539 he was raised to the primatial see of Scotland.
Beaton used his influence over King James to draw closer the French alliance and refuse Henry VIII.'s overtures to follow him in his religious policy. On the death of James in Dec. 1542 he attempted to assume office as one of the regents for the infant sovereign, Mary, founding his pretensions on an alleged will of the late king; but the earl of Arran was declared regent by the estates. The cardinal was, by order of the regent, committed to the custody of Lord Seaton ; but he was soon again at liberty and at the head of the party opposed to the English alliance. Arran, too, was soon won over to his views, dismissed the Protestant preachers by whom he had been surrounded, and joined the car dinal at Stirling, where in Sept. 1543 Beaton crowned the young queen. In the same year he was raised to the office of chancellor of Scotland, and was appointed protonotary apostolic and legate a latere by the pope. His strenuous opposition to the plans of Henry VIII. for the subjugation of Scotland would have earned him the lasting gratitude of his countrymen, had not resistance to English influence involved resistance to the reformers in the Church, whose ultimate victory has obscured the cardinal's gen uine merits as a statesman. The popular accounts of the persecu tion for which he was responsible are no doubt exaggerated, and it sometimes ceased for considerable periods. One of his most celebrated victims was George Wishart, an eloquent preacher who was protected by several barons of the English faction. These barons, with Wishart as a willing agent, were engaged in a plot to assassinate the cardinal who, perhaps, suspected Wishart's knowl edge of it, and in any case was not sorry to have an excuse for seizing him. For some time he was unsuccessful ; but at last, with the aid of the regent, he arrested the preacher and carried him to his castle of St. Andrews. On Feb. 28, 1546, Wishart was brought to trial in the cathedral before the cardinal and other judges, the regent declining to take any active part, and, being found guilty of heresy, was condemned to death and burnt.
The death of Wishart produced a deep effect on the Scottish people, and the cardinal became an object of general dislike, which encouraged his enemies to proceed with the design they had formed against him. The conspirators, the chief of whom were Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, and William Kirkcaldy, of Grange, contrived to obtain admission into the castle at St. Andrews at daybreak on May 29, 1546, and murdered the car dinal under circumstances of horrible mockery and atrocity.
As a statesman Beaton was able, resolute, and in his general policy, patriotic. As an ecclesiastic he maintained the privileges of the hierarchy and the dominant system of belief conscien tiously, but sometimes with cruelty. His immoralities, like his acts of persecution, were exaggerated by his opponents; but his private life was undoubtedly a scandal to religion. The author ship of the writings ascribed to him in several biographical notices rests on no better authority than the apocryphal statements of Thomas Dempster.
Beaton's uncle, JAMES BEATON, or BETHUNE (d. , arch bishop of Glasgow and St. Andrews, was lord treasurer of Scot land before he became archbishop of Glasgow in 1509, was chan cellor from 1513-26, and was appointed archbishop of St. Andrews and primate of Scotland in 1522. He was one of the regents dur ing the minority of James V., and was chiefly responsible for this king's action in allying himself with France and not with England. He burned Patrick Hamilton and other heretics.
This prelate must not be confused with another, JAMES BEATON or BETHUNE (1517-1603), the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Glasgow. A son of John Bethune, of Auchmuty, and nephew of Cardinal Beaton, James was a trusted adviser of the Scottish regent, Mary of Lorraine, widow of James V., and a determined foe of the reformers. In 1552 he was consecrated archbishop of Glasgow, but from 156o until his death he lived in Paris, acting as ambassador for Scotland at the French court.
See John Knox, Hist. of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. D. Laing (1846-64) ; John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St. Andrews, Hist. of the Church of Scotland (Spottiswoode Soc., 1847-51) ; Art. in Dict. of Nat. Biog., and works there quoted; and A. Lang, Hist. of Scotland, vols. i. and ii. (I 9oo—o2) .