A day out in Edinburgh recently and walking through the Cowgate, I passed this sign.
Few figures in sixteenth-century Scotland aroused stronger opinions than Cardinal David Beaton. To his supporters he was a skilled diplomat and defender of Scotland’s independence and Catholic faith. To his enemies he was a corrupt churchman whose death marked the beginning of the Scottish Reformation.
Born around 1494 into the powerful Beaton family of Fife, David Beaton rose rapidly through the Church and royal administration. Educated at St Andrews University and in France, he became an accomplished diplomat, serving James V before being appointed Cardinal in 1538, making him Scotland’s most influential churchman - and a very wealthy man. The house referred to above was only one amongst many which he owned.
Beaton was also Archbishop of St Andrews and it was as such that we were told about him in primary school – for I grew up in St Andrews, Scotland. His Bishop's palace was St Andrews Castle, the ruins of which were very exciting to visit especially because of its long siege tunnel.
Beaton was a determined opponent of Protestant reform and a staunch defender of Scotland’s alliance with France. These policies brought him into direct conflict with Henry VIII, who had broken with Rome and sought to dominate Scotland through the proposed marriage of his son Edward to the infant Mary, Queen of Scots – both of whom were only small children at the time.
Henry regarded Beaton as one of his greatest obstacles. English agents closely followed the Cardinal’s activities, and the English government viewed him as the chief architect of resistance to English influence in Scotland.
Determined that the marriage would happen, Henry conducted a campaign of raids into Scotland known as the Rough Wooing. He also had a number of Scottish supporters, referred to as his 'pensioners' who he paid for their backing.
Cardinal Beaton, as he moved around his domain, was aware of how vulnerable he was. Here's an exert from my novel, The Castilians which explains more fully.
Out Bethia goes into the twilight in time to see Cardinal Beaton’s entourage returning to St Andrews. He’s not there, no doubt ridden ahead with his guard of soldiers tight about him, the townsfolk made to line the streets and bow as he passes. The baggage train, although well guarded, will travel too slow for his safety. She’d heard it was recently attacked but, not finding the Cardinal, the ruffians indulged in a spot of thievery, stealing a chest full of gold coin.
A small crowd is still there. They’ve seen it many times, for the Cardinal never travels lightly, but the wonder of the long line of carts carrying food, fine wine, bedding, clothing, silver plates, fuel, a hundred servants both French and Scots, and the final crowning glory, his four- poster bed perched upon a broad cart, never fails to entertain – although she can hear angry muttering too. She turns to leave, after the passing of the bed, and finds the lanky figure of her brother behind her, his face dark with anger.
‘You know it is his fault.’
‘What is?’ she says, wearily. She’s cold, and in no mood to stand listening to another of Will’s rants, as well as fearful someone might overhear him.
‘Come, let me show you.’
He turns and marches for home and she trails behind. Waving her to wait, he disappears up the spiral to the attics. She stands warming herself, her back to the fire, longing for the unseasonably wintry May to pass. She can hear Will rummaging in the room above, boards creaking, and then he’s thundering back down the stairs, bursting into the room waving a paper.
He kicks the door shut, flapping it in front of her face.
It’s a notice. She can see the hole where it was once pinned to a church door or a tree, or, most likely, a Mercat cross. She tilts it, trying to read in the firelight.
‘You may thank your Cardinal for this...’ it begins.
She looks at Will questioningly.
‘When Henry Tudor’s troops sacked Haddington and all the other towns, and even burnt the kirk at St Monans, over the past two years, they left a notice each time with these words,’ he explains.
She feels the fear, like a punch to her belly. ‘And how is it that the King of England invades our country and it becomes the fault of our Cardinal, who has been the great defender of Scotland? Take care, Will, this is anglophile talk, and treason forby.’
‘It was us who broke the treaty promising our infant queen in matrimony to King Henry’s son,’ he mumbles, looking down at his feet.
‘It is a too rough wooing of our wee Queen Mary,’ she says angrily.
‘Why can’t you understand Bethia – we must have reform of the church, and Cardinal Beaton blocks it. And he’s all about supporting French interests, for they align with his own.’
She reaches up and touches his face. ‘Will, please don’t listen to those lairds. Father says they are not good men.’
He knocks her hand away and leaves the room, slamming the heavy door behind him.
Cardinal Beaton is most widely remembered for ordering the execution of the reformer George Wishart for heresy. Wishart was burned outside the walls of St Andrews Castle in March 1546. According to some accounts, Beaton watched the execution from a castle window, wrapped against the cold. Yet he did order that Wishart, once he was tied at the stake, be draped in gunpowder so when the fire caught it would explode and Wishart's torment would be over swiftly.
One of the reasons Beaton had Wishart killed was Wishart's advocacy, amongst other ecclesiastical reforms, for the right of clergy to marry. The Cardinal staunchly defended the principle of clerical celibacy and yet had a long term relationship with Marion Ogilvy with whom he had eight children.
Increasingly fearful for his life, Cardinal Beaton ordered the strengthening of St Andrew's Castle defences. In late May 1546, barely three months after Wishart's death, a group of Protestant lairds, taking advantage of the work being carried out, disguised themselves as stone masons and entered the castle in the early morning.
Taken unawares, Beaton was stabbed to death in his chamber and his naked body hung from the ramparts so that all would know that these men were now in control. They called themselves The Castilians, as in holders of the castle – hence the title of my book.
In school, we were always told the men who took the castle were the good guys because they were the Protestants. But many were in the pay of Henry VIII and they ran amok in St Andrews during the fourteen months in which they held the castle.
These dramatic events form the backdrop to my novel The Castilians, which follows ordinary men and women of St Andrews caught up in the chain of events that led to Beaton's assassination and the long siege which followed.
To Protestant reformers, Beaton was a symbol of corruption and tyranny. Modern historians tend to see a more complex figure: an able diplomat, a determined statesman, a flawed churchman and a man attempting to preserve a political and religious order that was already beginning to collapse.
Nearly five centuries after his death, Cardinal Beaton remains one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the Scottish Reformation.
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