Beaton, or BETHUNE, DAVID, Cardinal and Primate of Scotland, was a younger son of John Beaton of Balfour, in Fife. Born in 1494, he was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, and afterwards studied theology and law at Paris. His tact and general abilities recommended him to the Duke of Albany, regent during the minority of James V., who in 1519 appointed him resident for Scotland at the French court. In 1525 he took his seat in the Scots parliament as abbot of Arbroath; his uncle, James Beaton, on being translated three years before from the archbishopric of Glasgow to St Andrews, having resigned to him that abbey, with half the rents. In 1528 Beaton was appointed Lord Privy Seal, and he is said to have been the adviser of James V. in instituting the College of Justice or Court of Session in Scotland, the idea of which was suggested by the constitution of the parliament of Paris. Beaton subsequently was twice sent ambassador to France, to negotiate James's two marriages. During his residence at the French court, he was admitted to all the privileges of a French citizen, and in 1537 was appointed by Francis I. Bishop of Mirepoix in Foix. After his return, he became coadjutor to his uncle in the see of St Andrews, and in 1538 was by Pope Paul III. elevated to the dignity of a cardinal. On his uncle's death in 1539, he succeeded him as Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland, and soon commenced a persecution of the Reformers, already numerous and increasing. That he might be invested with supreme authority in all matters ecclesiastical, he obtained from the pope the appointment of legatus a latere in Scotland, and induced the king to institute a Court of Inquisition, to inquire after heretics in all parts of the kingdom. To maintain the French influence, and prevent all danger to the Catholic Church in
Scotland from a friendly connection with England, he contrived to frustrate a proposed meeting of King James with his uncle, Henry VIII., and even prevailed on the former to declare war against England. On James's death, after the disastrous overthrow of the Scots at Solway Moss (1542), Beaton produced a forged will, appointing himself and three others regents of the kingdom during the minority of the infant Queen Mary. The nobility, however, rejected the fictitious document, and elected the Earl of Arran regent, who then professed the reformed faith. Beaton next month was arrested and imprisoned, accused, among other charges, of a design to introduce French troops into Scotland, in order to stop the negotiations then in progress with Henry of England for a marriage between the young Prince of Wales and Queen Mary. He was soon after liberated, and reconciled to the regent, whom he induced to abandon the English interest, and publicly to abjure the reformed religion. On the young queen's coronation in 1543, Beaton was again admitted of the council, and appointed chancellor. During a provincial council of the clergy held at Edinburgh, at which he presided, he caused the celebrated preacher, George Wishart (q.v.), to be apprehended at Ormiston, and conveyed to the castle of St Andrews, where he was burnt at the stake, Beaton and other prelates witnessing his sufferings from a window. A conspiracy having been formed against him, at the head of which were Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes, and Kirkcaldy of Grange, Beaton was assassinated in his own castle of St Andrews, 29th May 1546. Though endowed with great talents, Beaton possessed little learning, and the ascription of certain works to him rests on no valid authority. Haughty, cruel, and intolerant, he was also licentious in the extreme. He had six natural children, three sons and three daughters—the latter married into families of distinction. One of his sons turned Protestant. The popular feeling about his death is expressed in the lines attributed to Sir David Lyndsay: 'Although the leon is weel away, The deed was foully done;' and Knox speaks of the assassination as a 'godly fact.'
There is a Life of Beaton by Herkless (1891); see also SCOTLAND, Vol. IX, p. 243; JAMES V.; MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, and works there cited; KNOX, and P. H. Brown's John Knox (1895).