f another on her ruins. If we may not say
that he had sold himself to France--which had pensioned him with a rich
bishopric and helped him to his honours--we must say he had lived so
long in it, and had got so enamoured of it, that he was at any rate
three parts French, and all popish. He had mingled not only with her
scholars but with her nobles, loved and determined to imitate their ways
even down to their scandalous laxity of morals and merciless treatment
of so-called heretics. He made no earnest effort to reform the old
church, and so help her to weather the gathering storm; and it was not
till towards the close of his life that he laid out on the building of
St Mary's College part of the money which his uncle had carefully
hoarded for that purpose.

[Sidenote: The Cardinal and James V.]

For the forcible suppression of the new opinions the cardinal needed the
unflinching support of his sovereign, and he spared no efforts to gain
him over completely to his side, and to detach him from his
nobility,--turbulent and self-willed, but fondly clinging to what
remnants of liberty were still left to them,--and to alienate him from
his uncle, not unfrequently well-meaning but always over-impetuous, and
often in his later years selfish and untrustworthy. There was much in
the king's character to encourage such efforts. With good natural
abilities and a frank and amiable disposition, he had for their own
selfish ends been encouraged by his early guardians in sensual
pleasures, and never to the last freed himself from his evil habits.
"Dissolute as a man, prodigal as a king, and superstitious as a
Catholic, he could not but easily fall under the sway of superior
minds,"[46] who undertook to free him from the worries of business, to
provide him with money, and to regard his failings with indulgence, and
on easy terms to absolve him from those grosser excesses which could not
fail at times to trouble his conscience. These things Betoun and his
clerical party endeavoured to do; and, lest he should be tempted to
follow the example of his uncle, and appropriate the property of the
monasteries and other religious institutions, or set the church lands to
feu, as he had threatened, they once and again presented lists to him of
those who were suspected of heresy, urging that they should be
prosecuted without delay, and their goods, on conviction, be escheated
to the Crown. They made large contributions from their own revenues to
aid