of attainder on that account. Without summoning them to trial, or examining a single witness to prove the charge, this attainder was now thought sufficient to subject them to all the penalties which they would have incurred by being formally convicted. The earls of Morton, Mar, and Eglinton, together with the lords Ruthven, Boyd, and Cathcart, received a commission to seize their persons and estates. On a few hours warning, a considerable body of troops was ready, and marched towards Hamilton in hostile array. Happily, the two brothers made their escape, though with great difficulty. But their lands were confiscated. The castles of Hamilton and Draffan besieged; those who defended them punished. The earl of Arran, though incapable, from his situation, of committing any crime, was involved, by a shameful abuse of law, in the common ruin of his family; and as if he, too, could have been guilty of rebellion, confined a close prisoner. These proceedings, so contrary to the fundamental principles of justice, were all ratified in the subsequent parliament.

Morton seems at this time, to have thought himself secure; but his security was not well founded. He had weathered out one storm, had crushed his adversaries, and was again in possession of the sole direction of affairs. But as the king was now of an age, when the character and dispositions of the mind begin to unfold themselves, and to become visible, the smallest attention to these might have convinced him, that there was reason to expect new and more dangerous attacks on his power. James early discovered that excessive attachment to favourites which accompanied him through his whole life.

These concurred in employing their whole address to undermine Morton's credit, which alone obstructed their full possession of power. And as James had been bred up with an aversion for that nobleman, who endeavoured rather to maintain the authority of a tutor, than to act with the obsequiousness of a minister, they found it no difficult matter to accomplish their design. Morton, who could no longer keep the king shut up within the walls of Stirling castle, having called a parliament to meet at Edinburgh, brought him thither. James made his entry into the capital with great solemnity; the citizens received him with the loudest acclamations of joy, and with many expensive pageants, according to the mode of that age.

These demonstrations, however, of the people's love and attachment to their sovereign, encouraged the favourites to continue their insinuations against Morton; and as the king now resided in the palace of Holyrood-house, to which all his subjects had access, the cabal against the earl grew daily stronger, and the intrigue which occasioned his fall ripened gradually.

Morton began to be sensible of his danger, and endeavoured to put a stop to the career of Lennox the favourite's preferment, by representing him as a formidable enemy to the reformed religion, a secret agent in favour of popery, and a known emissary of the house of Guise. The clergy, apt to believe every rumour of this kind, spread the alarm among the people. But Lennox, either out of complaisance to his master, or convinced by the arguments of some learned divines, whom the king appointed to instruct him in the principles of the protestant religion, publicly renounced the errors of popery in the church of St. Giles, and de

clared himself a member of the church of Seotland, by signing her confession of faith. This, though it did not remove all suspicions, nor silence some zealous preachers, abated, in a great degree, the force of the accusation.

On the other hand, a rumour prevailed that Morton was preparing to seize the king's person, and to carry him into England. Whether despair of maintaining his power by any other means, had driven him to make any overture of that kind to the English court, or whether it was a calumny, invented by his adversaries to render him odious, cannot now be determined with certainty. As he declared at his death, that such a design had never entered into his thoughts, the latter seems to be most probable. It afforded a pretence, however, for reviving the office of lord chamberlain, which had been for some time disused. That honour was conferred on Lennox. Alexander Erskine, Morton's capital enemy, was his deputy; they had under them a band of gentlemen, who were appointed constantly to attend the king, and to guard his

person.

Morton was not ignorant of what his enemies intended to insinuate, by such unusual precautions for the king's safety. And as his last resource, applied to Elizabeth, whose protection had often stood him in stead in his greatest difficulties. In consequence of this application, Bowes, her envoy, accused Lennox of practices against the peace of the two kingdoms, and insisted, in her name, that he should instantly be removed from the privy council. Such an unprecedented demand was considered by the counsellors as an affront to the king, and an encroachment on the independency of the kingdom. They affected to call in question the envoy's powers, and upon that pretence refused him farther audience. He retired in disgust, and

without taking leave. Sir Alexander Home was sent to expostulate with Elizabeth on the subject. After the treatment which her envoy had received, Elizabeth thought it below her dignity to admit Home into her presence. Burleigh, to whom he was commanded to impart his commission, reproached him with his master's ingratitude towards a benefactress who bad placed the crown on his head, and required him to advise the king to beware of sacrificing the friendship of so necessary an ally to the giddy humours of a young man, without experience, and strongly suspected of principles and attachments incompatible with the happiness of the Scottish nation.

This accusation of Lennox hastened, in all probability, Morton's fall. The act of indemnity, which he had obtained when he resigned the regency, was worded with such scrupulous exactness, as almost screened him from any legal prosecution. The murder of the late king was the only crime which could not, with decency, be inserted in a pardon granted by his son. Here Morton still lay open to the penalties of the law, and captain Stewart, who shunned no action, however desperate, if it led to power or to favour, entered the council-chamber while the king and nobles were assembled, and falling on his knees, accused Morton of being accessory, or, according to the language of the Scottish law, art and part, in the conspiracy against the life of his majesty's father, and offered, under the usual penalties, to verify this charge by legal evidence. Morton, who was present, heard this accusation with firmness; and replied with a disdainful smile, proceeding either from contempt of the infamous character of his accuser, or from consciousness of his own innocence, "that his known zeal in punishing those who were suspected of that detestable crime,

might well exempt himself from any suspicion of being accessory to it; nevertheless he would cheerfully submit to a trial, either in that place or in any other court; and doubted not but his own innocence, and the malice of his enemies, would then appear in the clearest light." Stewart, who was still on his knees, began to inquire how he would reconcile his bestowing so many honours on Archibald Douglas, whom he certainly knew to be one of the murderers, with his pretended zeal against that crime. Morton was ready to answer. But the king commanded both of them to be removed. The earl was confined, first of all, to his own house, and then committed to the castle of Edinburgh, of which Alexander Erskine was governor; and as if it had not been a sufficient indignity to subject him to the power of one of his enemies, he was, soon after, carried to Dunbarton, of which Lennox had the command. A warrant was likewise issued for apprehending Archibald Douglas, but he, having received timely intelligence of the approaching danger, fled into England.

The earl of Angus, who imputed these violent proceedings not to hatred against Morton alone, but to the ancient enmity between the houses of Stewart and of Douglas, and who believed that a conspiracy was now formed for the destruction of the whole name, was ready to take arms in order to rescue his kinsman. But Morton absolutely forbade any such attempt, and declared that he would rather suffer ten thousand deaths, than bring an imputation on his own character by seeming to decline a trial.

Elizabeth did not fail to interpose, with warmth, in behalf of a man who had contributed so much to preserve her influence over Scotland. The late transactions in that kingdom had given her great uneasiness. The power which Lennox had acqui