The Earl of Morton had no sooner assumed the reins of government, than
his vigorous talents began to be felt. The chief strength of Mary’s
friends was in Edinburgh Castle, held for her by Kirkaldy of Grange.
All the means at the Regent’s command proving insufficient to reduce
this fortress, he obtained from England an army of 1500 men, commanded
by Sir William Drury, and provided with artillery. The castle stood a
siege of three weeks, and was then obliged to yield (May 29, 1573).
With mean vindictiveness, Morton sent the gallant Kirkaldy to the
gallows. Maitland of Lethington might have shared the same fate, if
it had not been anticipated either by a natural death or suicide. The
other chiefs of the queen’s party were spared. After this event, the
friends of Mary could no longer make an appearance anywhere in her
favour. The new government remained triumphant, and peace was restored
to a bleeding and exhausted country.
Morton was, on the whole, a serviceable, though not a just or clement
ruler. It was his policy, arising from his love of money, to punish his
adversaries rather by fines than bloodshed. All the persons of note
who had befriended the queen, he caused to give security for their
future behaviour. The smallest offence forfeited the pledge, and the
cautioners were then mulcted without mercy. Under this ruling passion,
he tampered with the coin, sold justice, and cheated the church of its
revenues. It was supposed that he had concealed large treasures in his
castle of Dalkeith; but we have no certain account of their ever being
found, and probably the popular notions on the subject were exaggerated.
Under Morton, a slight move was made towards the establishment of a
kind of episcopacy in the church, though the persons he appointed to
the sees were mere creatures who consented to be receivers of the
revenues on his account. The general feeling of the people continued
to be decidedly in favour of the simple presbyterian polity, and the
Regent’s interference with the purity of that system was one cause
of his loss of popularity, and of his subsequent ruin. While the
recognised champion of the Protestant interest in Scotland, and, as
such, the _protégé_ of Elizabeth, he disliked the presbyterian clergy.
He not only refused to countenance by his presence any of their
assemblies, but ‘threatened some of the most zealous with hanging,
alleging that otherwise there could be no peace or order in the
country.’[83] The noted efforts of King James to bring the church into
a prelatic conformity with England, had in reality an exemplar in the
doings of the Regent Morton.
Meanwhile the young king was reared in great seclusion in Stirling
Castle, under the care of the celebrated scholar George Buchanan. His
acquirements, at a very early age, were such as to raise great hopes
of his future rule. Killegrew, the English ambassador, reports having
heard him, at eight years of age, translate the Bible, _ad aperturam
libri_, from Latin into French, and from French into English, ‘so
well as few men could have added anything to his translation.’ But,
in reality, his character was a strange mixture of cleverness and
weakness, of wit and folly. His greatest deficiency was in a courageous
will to pursue the ends of justice. He could clearly enough apprehend
the disease, and speak and write about it plausibly; but he could do
little towards its cure, because he shrank from all strong measures
except against poor and inferior people, and those who had wounded his
own pettier feelings.
The regency of Morton came to a premature conclusion in consequence of
a combination raised against him by the Earls of Athole and Argyle;
and James became nominally the acting ruler (March 1578), ere he had
completed his twelfth year.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1572.