with Donald Dubh. They failed, and Donald died, without legitimate
issue, at Drogheda. The Macleans, Macleods, and Macneils then came into
the national party.

In September 1545 Hertford, with an English force, destroyed the
religious houses at Melrose, Kelso, Dryburgh, and Jedburgh. {96}
Meanwhile the two Douglases skulked with the murderous traitor Cassilis
in Ayrshire, and Henry tried to induce French deserters from the Scottish
flag to murder Beaton and Arran.

Beaton could scarcely escape for ever from so many plots. His capture,
in January 1546, of George Wishart, an eminently learned and virtuous
Protestant preacher, and an intimate associate of the murderous, double-
dyed traitor Brunston and of other Lothian pietists of the English party;
and his burning of Wishart at St Andrews, on March 1, 1546, sealed the
Cardinal's doom. On May 29th he was surprised in his castle of St
Andrews and slain by his former ally, Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes,
with Kirkcaldy of Grange, and James Melville who seems to have dealt the
final stab after preaching at his powerless victim. They insulted the
corpse, and held St Andrews Castle against all comers.

How gallant a fight Beaton had waged against adversaries how many and
multifarious, how murderous, self-seeking, treacherous, and hypocritical,
we have seen. He maintained the independence of Scotland against the
most recklessly unscrupulous of assailants, though probably he was rather
bent on defending the lost cause of a Church entirely and intolerably
corrupt.

The two causes were at the moment inseparable, and, whatever we may think
of the Church of Rome, it was not more bloodily inclined than the Church