a nephew of Henry VIII. for her king--should follow her example, was
anxious to have in that country one man who should be absolutely
devoted to him. David Betoun offered himself. The pope created him
cardinal in December 1538, and thenceforth the _red_--a colour
thoroughly congenial with him--became his own, and, as it were, his
symbol. Not that he was by any means a religious fanatic: he was versed
neither in theology nor in moral philosophy. He was a hierarchical
fanatic. Two points, above all, were offensive to him in evangelical
Christians: one, that they were not submissive to the pope; the other,
that they censured immorality in the clergy, for his own licentiousness
drew on himself similar rebukes. He aimed at being in Scotland a kind of
Wolsey, only with more violence and bloodshed. The one thing of moment
in his eyes was that everything in church and state should bend under a
twofold despotism. Endowed with large intelligence, consummate ability,
and indomitable energy, he had all the qualities needed to ensure
success in the aim on which his mind was perpetually bent without ever
being diverted from it. Passionately eager for his projects, he was
insensible to the ills which must result from them. One matter alone
preoccupied him, the destruction of all liberty. _The papacy divined his
character and created him cardinal!_"[40]

This is one of the few attempts made fairly to estimate the character of
the man whom one party seemed to have thought they must make out to be a
very monster of iniquity, and of whom the other party seemed to have
felt that the less they said the better; and to a certain extent
D'Aubigne's estimate is correct, but it requires to be supplemented. The
cardinalate was rather eagerly sought by him and his friends on the
ground of what he had already done, and was expected yet to do, for pope
and king, than voluntarily offered by the pope. Two, if not three,
letters, extremely urgent, were written regarding it by the king to the
pope, to the King of France, and to Cardinal Farnese, in the favour of
all of whom he stood high.[41] The pope consented to bestow on him the
cardinalate he so much coveted; but the office of legate _a latere_,
without which the other was rather an office of dignity than of power,
was not granted till 1544,[42] by which time neither the papacy nor any
others needed to divine his character. Betoun was a man not only of
large intelligence, high ability, unremitting e