adviser who was not friendly to the Church, but
those who displaced Morton and brought him before long to the scaffold
were its determined and avowed enemies. During the few years with which
we have to deal in this chapter, the Government was directed by two men
whose character and policy were detested by the nation, and who filled
up their short tenure of power with as many exasperating acts of
despotism as it was possible to crowd into it. The more prominent of the
two, Esme Stewart, a kinsman of the King, cousin of his father Darnley,
was a foreigner and had been trained in the French Court. He had a brief
and inglorious career in Scotland. He had no sooner joined the King's
Council than he became the master of its policy, being the first of the
_gratae personae_ who in succession established themselves in the Court
of James and brought him under their control. There is little wonder
that the boy-king, who had passed through the stern hands of George
Buchanan and had spent his time for the most part with men of our
austere Scottish character, should have felt the seductiveness of the
gay foreigner 'with his French fasons and toyes.' Esme Stewart had not
been long in the country before James began to decorate him with honours
and enrich him with gifts of lands and money. He was created Duke of
Lennox and made Lord High Chancellor, in which latter capacity he had
the custody of the King's person--a pawn which in this reign was often
decisive in the contest for political supremacy. He soon filled the
Court with men of his own stamp. One of these, only second to himself in
influence with the King, was another Stewart--James, the infamous son of
Lord Ochiltree. Like his patron, James Stewart soon received high
promotion, being made Earl of Arran.

Lennox had come to Scotland as an emissary of the French Government and
as an agent of the Guises, in order to induce James to break off his
alliance with England in favour of the old alliance with France, and to
restore the Roman Church in the country; but the ministers having become
informed of his designs, raised such a storm against him that he was
driven to make a public renunciation of Popery, and obliged to prosecute
his mission by more cautious and circuitous methods than he intended to
use. Lennox's evil influence on James in ecclesiastical affairs soon
became apparent. On the See of Glasgow becoming vacant, the benefice
was appropriated by himself and the title bestowed