Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Poems of Alexander Montgomerie

MONTGOMERIE IN THE SCOTTISH LAW COURTS. 277
Erskine, however, is to be permitted to enjoy the temporalities of
the see until Betoun’s restoration is ratified by Act of Parliament. On
the day following this entry in the ‘Privy Council Register,’ Forster
wrote to Walsingham: “ I thinke your honour hathe knowledge
that the Bischope of Glasgow is restored by opyn proclamatioun
at Edinburgh to the said bischoprick, and is appoynted by the
Kinge to be his ambassadour in France as he was in his late
mother’s tyme.” Four months later Parliament assembled. Whether
it was because the King was apprehensive of some difficulty in
getting the estates to acquiesce in Betoun’s restoration, or because
a compromise had been forced upon him, the fact remains that in
July a measure was introduced and passed, which, although its
immediate purpose was to reinstall Betoun, does not mention his
name or his office. Later on we shall see that Erskine took full
and successful advantage of the ambiguity thus created. The bill,
which passed in July, took the form of a general ratification of the
Acts of Pacification, passed in 1573, and of Abolition, passed in the
interests of the Ruthven Raiders in 1585. These measures rescinded
in general terms sentences of foirfaltour and barratrie passed at
various times previous, and extending in their operative power
to the date of Queen Mary’s return to Scotland on August 19,
1561. But in the Act of Abolition of 1585 Betoun is by name
expressly exempted from its provisions. With the obvious purpose
of getting over this difficulty, a clause is accordingly inserted in
the July Act of 1587 explicitly stating that the Acts of 1573 and
1585 shall apply “without ony maner of exceptioun, a)?er of personis
or crymes, except as sal be exceptit in the present act.” That
this Act was interpreted at the time as applying to Betoun is shown
by the fact that before the session of Parliament closed applica¬
tions were lodged on behalf of certain individuals to whom grants
out of the bishopric had previously been made, craving that the
restoration of Betoun might not interfere with their existing rights.
Meantime it would seem that Erskine had been persuaded or
forced into acquiescing in this plan for placing Betoun again in
the see of Glasgow. The party to which he belonged was not now
all powerful as it had been at the time of his appointment in Decem¬
ber 1585, and James would be freer to take his own way. There
were, however, ties of intimacy between Erskine and the King, going
back to James’s boyhood, before he had assumed the duties of his
royal office in 1579 ; and while it was necessary for the scheme which
Carthusians in Paris.” He became Queen Mary’s ambassador at the French
Court. As late as 1569 he is referred to in charters as Archbishop of Glasgow
in absentia. Sentence of barratrie was passed upon him on September 19, 1570.
On February 12, 1573, he is denounced (along with others) in the 1 Register of the
Privy Council ’ as a rebel and a traitor. On November 9 of the same year James
Boyd of Trochrig was appointed Archbishop of Glasgow. Boyd died in 1581.