quiescat in pace sung for his soul. Because the weather was hot,' says the pitiless Knox, 'and his funeral could not suddenly be prepared, it was thought best to bestow enough of great salt upon him, a coffin of lead, and a corner in the bottom of the Sea Tower, to await what exequies his brethren the bishops would bestow upon him.'[1]
Thus perished David Beton, and with him the cause of the Papacy in Scotland. The national faction survived his death. Mary of Guise and her friends continued to lean upon France, and the ancient religion appeared for a few years longer to maintain itself at their side. But the spirit of Romanism as a living superstition was extinguished with its latest representative; and the mass was no longer the expression of a true inward belief. Those who professed to be the friends of the Church shared with its enemies in its present plunder. In a few years the once beautiful fabric lay prostrate in confused ruin.
- ↑ As an immediate consequence, a popular outbreak and a pillage of the religious houses was looked for. On the 11th of June or July (the record is ambiguous), 'My Lord Governour, with advice of the Queen's Grace and lords of the council, understanding that through the occasion of this troublous time, and great inobedience made both to God and man in the committing of divers enorme and exorbitant crimes, it is dread and feared that evil-disposed persons will invade, destroy, cast down, and withhold abbeys, abbey places, kirks, as well parish churches as other religious places, priories of all orders, nunneries, chapels, and other spiritual men's houses, against the laws of God and man, and incontrair the liberty and freedom of holy kirk, for the eschewing of such inconvenients, it is statute and ordained that letters be directed into all parts of the realm, with open proclamation and charge to all our Sovereign Lady's lieges, that nane of them take on hand to cast down or destroy any such places ordained for God's service or dedicated to the same, under the pain of tinsall of life, lands, and goods.'—Acta Parliamentorum Mariæ, 1546.
