Captain Craigengelt

29 May 1546 The murder of Cardinal Beaton at Saint Andrews Castle.

On this day, four hundred and seventy five years ago, Protestants broke into Saint Andrews Castle, surprised Cardinal Beaton, murdered him, and took over the castle. Their appeals to Henry VIII for support were ignored.

The macabre murder of Cardinal Beaton by Julia Morrison

Cardinal David Beaton.

On 29 May 1546, Cardinal David Beaton was murdered in Saint Andrews Castle.

Cardinal Beaton was the last Scottish Cardinal prior to the Reformation. This was a challenging and deadly time to be the senior leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland. Uncover the story of how he made his enemies and what happened after his death.

Privileged beginnings

Born near Glenrothes in Fife in in 1494, Beaton would go on to be a cardinal, Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Chancellor of Scotland.

The career path of the church was never far away as his uncle was James Beaton, the Archbishop of Glasgow, who in 1522 appointed him Abbot of Arbroath Abbey.

Aged 28, David Beaton became Abbot of Arbroath Abbey. Historic Environment Scotland.

Thanks to his uncle’s influence, Beaton’s rise to power was rapid and he was selected by James V as Ambassador to France on multiple occasions before being appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1528. He was eventually to become one of the King’s most trusted advisors.

A position of power

Beaton played a key role in arranging the two marriages of James V. Importantly, both marriages were to Catholic families of the French nobility. The matches were designed to forge closer links with France. The first of these marriages was to Madeleine of France, the daughter of King Francois I of France. When Madeleine died in 1537, Beaton was instrumental in organising James’s second marriage to Mary of Guise.

An ambitious man, Beaton continued to amass power. In 1538 Pope Paul III made him a Cardinal. In the same year he was appointed to assist his uncle in Saint Andrews in a role known as ‘coadjutor’. When his uncle died the following year Beaton became Archbishop.

The coronation of Mary Queen of Scot’s with Cardinal Beaton officiating. Historic Environment Scotland.

In 1542, James V died following the Battle of Solway Moss. The throne of Scotland passed to his 6-day-old daughter, Mary. As Mary was just an infant, regents would have to look after Scotland until she came of age. Beaton swiftly produced a document, allegedly from the King, suggesting Beaton should be one of the regents.  This document was largely suspected of being forged. The following month, Beaton was appointed Chancellor of Scotland by the Earl of Arran. Again, there was some suspicion that Beaton may have put pressure on the Earl to select him.

Making enemies

In what was an extremely politically turbulent period in Scottish history, Beaton was a very powerful man and gained himself a lot of enemies. As Chancellor of Scotland, Beaton enforced harsh penalties for heresy which made him very unpopular.

Both he and Mary of Guise championed the maintenance of the Catholic faith and a closer alliance with France instead of Protestant England. Henry VIII very much saw Beaton as a thorn in his side for his policy in Scotland.

Furthermore, Beaton fathered a number of illegitimate children. He had eight children with a woman called Marion Ogilvy. She was his wife in all but name for two decades. It’s widely accepted that he also had children outside of this relationship. His conduct in his personal life is perhaps more shocking to a modern audience, but it was likely still frowned upon in his lifetime.

The Cardinal was also known to be spending vast sums of the church’s money as if it were his own. Having achieved much of his power through his uncle and after appointing his children to various well-paid positions in the church, many saw him as an embodiment of all that was corrupt and needed changed within the church.

In 1545, Beaton instructed the arrest of the Protestant preacher George Wishart who was a close mentor of John Knox. On 1 March 1546 in Saint Andrews Castle, Beaton had Wishart burned at the stake for heresy. This was the final straw for a lot of Protestants and prompted a savage retaliation.

Assassination

At dawn on 29 May 1546, a number of Fife lairds, frustrated with Beaton on both personal and religious grounds, entered Saint Andrews Castle.

Reconstruction illustration showing how St Andrews Castle might have looked around 1520. Historic Environment Scotland.

The group, led by Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, snuck into the castle disguised as masons. They executed the Cardinal and then hung his naked body in a pair of sheets from the castle walls, before throwing it into the castle’s notorious bottle dungeon.

In his ‘Historie of the Reformatioun of Scotland’, John Knox tells how Beaton’s corpse was kept in the dungeon at Saint Andrews Castle covered in salt to ‘keip him frome stinking’. It is not known where his remains were finally buried.

The aftermath

Outraged by the Cardinal’s assassination, Marie de Guise sent her troops to regain control of the castle from the Protestant Garrison.

The siege that followed, led by the Regent Arran on behalf of Marie de Guise, caused extensive damage to Saint Andrews Castle. It also resulted in the creation of the castle’s most remarkable features. In October of 1546 Regent Arran’s troops began digging a mine in order to undermine the Fore Tower or enter the castle. In retaliation, the Protestant garrison began digging a countermine. These underground passages of medieval siege warfare are unique.

The mine at St Andrews Castle. Historic Environment Scotland.

In July 1547, the French Navy arrived to assist Marie de Guise. The Protestant rebels finally surrendered after the castle was bombarded from the sea by French naval forces.

Beaton would be the last Scottish Cardinal before the Scottish reformation. His murder was a significant milestone in the power struggle between Protestant and Catholic forces as each sought to claim Scotland.

About Author

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Julia Morrison

Julia works in the Digital Team of Historic Environment Scotland coordinating the social media and blog content. She wishes there were more hours in the day to explore Scotland’s fascinating history and heritage!

Cardinal David Beaton was the son of John Beaton 6th of Balfour, the nephew of Archbishop James Beaton of Glasgow and Saint Andrews, the uncle of Archbishop Jame Beaton of Glasgow father-in-law of David Lindsay, 10th Earl of Crawford and the first cousin once removed of James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Hamilton, Duke of Chatelherault and Regent of Scotland.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kLX4hGJqaCs
Cardinal David Beaton.
St Andrews Castle has a violent and grisly history! The castle’s “bottle dungeon” is a dank and airless pit cut out of solid rock below the north-west tower. It housed local miscreants who fell under the Bishop’s jurisdiction as well as several more prominent individuals such as David Stuart, Duke of Rothesay in 1402, Duke Murdoch in 1425, and Archbishop Patrick Graham, who was judged to be insane and imprisoned in his own castle in 1478. (Too dark to film bottle dungeon!) There has been a fortification of some sort on this site since the 12th century. The castle was built as a defensive residence by Bishop Rodger. It has 400 hundred years of violent history and was destroyed and rebuilt many times. Incorporated into the Fore Tower are the remains of the Gate Tower built in 1200. It fell to the English in 1296, during which improvements were made in preparation to receive England`s King Edward. The Scots retook the castle in 1314 and dismantled it as part of Robert the Bruce`s policy of slighting castles. Bishop William Lamberton made repairs to the castle from 1315 to 1320. In 1330 the castle again fell to the English. In 1337 the castle was recaptured by Sir Andrew Moray, Regent of Scotland, in a siege that lasted three weeks. The Scots destroyed the castle so that it would be unusable therefore preventing it from falling into English hands. It lay in ruins until the end of the 14th century when Bishop Walter Trail ordered the castle to be rebuilt. He died here in 1401. It became the residence of the most powerful church leaders in Scotland. James I received his education from Bishop Henry Wardlaw here. Bishop Wardlaw was the founder of Scotland`s first University in 1410. In 1521 Archbishop James Beaton began refortification of St. Andrews to withstand artillery fire. In 1537, he named his nephew, David, his appointed successor. In 1538, David became Archbishop of St. Andrews and a Cardinal of the Church. Patrick Hamilton learned the teachings of Martin Luther and studied in Paris before he returned to the University at St. Andrews to teach. A supporter of the new reformation views, the Archbishop of St. Andrews had him arrested for heresy. Found guilty he was asked to recant, refusing to do so he was sentenced to death. “On a cold, wintry day in February 1528, Patrick was burned at the stake outside St. Salvator`s Church. The difficulty of lighting the fire and the need to relight it several times prolonged the agony of his death for over six hours. It is said that the reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it blew, and, also, that an image of his face appeared miraculously on one of the stones on the clock tower as he died.” The Archbishop of St Andrews, Cardinal David Beaton (1494-1546), had the Protestant Preacher, George Wishart, taken to North Street in March 1546, where he was tied to a stake and burned alive. It is said Beaton watched this gruesome event from the comfort of the Bishop`s Castle. This made him many enemies. It was not long after Preacher Wishart`s execution a group of Fife Lairds, who were Protestants, entered the castle dressed as workmen and found Beaton asleep in his bed (May 1546). His slain body was hung, naked, from the battlements of castle`s Tower House. “And so like a butcher he lived, and like a butcher he died, and lay seven months and more unburied, and at last like a carrion was buried in a dunghill.” The rebels held the castle for about a year, during which time the Earl of Arran held siege on the castle inflicting extensive damage. The castle was bombarded by cannon fire. He had guns mounted on the towers of St. Andrews Cathedral and St. Salvator`s Church. He finally defeated the rebels, one of whom was John Knox, with the arrival of the French fleet adding more cannons to the artillery`s fire power. Archbishop John Hamilton succeeded Cardinal Beaton. Again the task of rebuilding the castle had begun. Upon his release, Knox returned to Scotland more dedicated than ever to the Protestant cause. In 1559, his preaching during the Reformation roused the fanatics in the mob to the point where they ransacked both the castle and Cathedral, eventually destroying them both. The Act of Annexation turned the castle and it`s land over to the Crown in1587. It then fell to ruin and in 1654 it was dismantled supplying building material for the harbour walls. A mine and countermine had been dug from inside the castles grounds. Rediscovered in the 1900`s during local construction, was a large chamber where a underground battle had taken place. Further excavation uncovered a countermine with several false starts, making these siege works the finest of its kind in Europe. Today’s visitors are able to make their way down the countermine and into the mine, though it’s not somewhere for those with claustrophobia!

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