GAVIN DOUGLAS.

AMONG the most distinguished luminaries that marked the restoration of letters in Scotland, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, was Gavin Douglas, third son of Archibald, the Great Earl of Angus." He was born about the end of the year 1474, or the beginning of 1475. Being designed, by his father, for the church, he received as liberal an education as Scotland could then furnish, and is supposed to have afterwards made the tour of the Continent, to acquire a knowledge of the customs and manners of other nations, and to improve himself by an intimacy with their men of science and literature.

On returning to Scotland and entering into holy orders, his first preferment was to be Provost of the Collegiate Church of Saint Giles, in Edinburgh, a place, at that time, of great dignity and revenue. To this appointment, his family influence speedily added the rectory of Hawick* and the abbey of Aberbrothick. When installed into the rectory of Hawick, (1496,) he was but twenty-two years of age.

Already rector, provost, and abbot, at an age when men, now-a-days, are only leaving their alma-mater,

* Not Heriot, as stated in the Biographical Dictionary and other works.

A. S.

Douglas is thought to have shewn his fitness for those grave offices, by the sort of recreation to which he devoted the leisure hours of his priesthood. The first production of his muse was a translation of Ovid's Remedy of Love, and this he produced before 1501, within the first five years after his instalment as rector. He had, as Hume of Godscroft informs us, felt the effects of love, but "was soon freed from the tyranny of this unreasonable passion."

The Queen Mother, who was Regent of Scotland, during the minoriry of James V. and had married Douglas's nephew, the Earl of Angus, nominated Douglas, in 1514, to the Archbishopric of St. Andrew's; and, in a letter to the Pope, extolled him for his eminent virtue and great learning, and earnestly solicited his holiness to confirm her nomination. But instead of acceding to her request, the Pope granted a bull, appointing Forman, Bishop of Moray, to the vacant dignity; while, at the same time, the chapter, who approved of neither Douglas nor Forman, made choice of John Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrew's.

Douglas gained a step on his rivals, by what is generally considered a great step in law, obtaining possession. With a considerable body of retainers, he seized on the castle of St. Andrew's; but Hepburn, with a greater force, soon succeeded in expelling him, and retained the place till Forman appeared with the Earl of Home, and ten thousand men at his back, when he thought it prudent, for an annual consideration, to forego his pretensions, and allow the papal nominee to enter into undisturbed possession. Douglas, who is said to have been ashamed of the ungodly contest, made no attempt to revive his claims.

It

The queen mother, to console him for his disappointment, soon afterwards presented him to the bishopric of Dunekld; and for this preferment, she obtained, through the interest of her brother, Henry VIII. of England, a bull from Pope Leo X. But Douglas had again the misfortune to meet with a powerful competitor in the person of Stewart, brother to the Earl of Athol, who contrived to get himself elected by the chapter, and to obtain the countenance of the Duke of Albany, who had, in the meanwhile, superseded the queen in the regency; Douglas was even imprisoned by the regent for more than a year, on a charge of having acted illegally in procuring a bull from the Pope. was, indeed, true, that the Scottish parliament had already begun to shew their dislike to papal supremacy, by passing a regulatory act, which amounted nearly to a positive exclusion of the interference of the court of Rome in ecclesiastical appointments within the realm of Scotland; but the act had never as yet been rigidly acted upon. Douglas succeeded, at last, in making his peace with Albany, the regent, and, being set at liberty, was consecrated Bishop of Dunkeld. Athol's brother, however, was, by this time, in possession of the episcopal palace, and it was only by following an example, of which he once affected to be ashamed, and calling an armed force to his aid, that Douglas was able to force Stewart into a capitulation, similar to that by which Hepburn resigned the see of St. Andrew's. The bishop-elect, it is to be presumed, found the grapes of Fife sourer than those of Highland Tay.

In 1517, Douglas, now bishop of Dunkeld, accom

panied the Duke of Albany to Paris, when that nobleman was sent to renew the antient league between Scotland and France. After his return to Scotland, he made a short stay at Edinburgh, and then repaired to his diocese, where he applied himself diligently to the duties of his episcopal office.

Not long after, the French king having recalled the Duke of Albany to France, a contest for power arose between the Earls of Angus and Arran, which threw the whole kingdom into a violent commotion. A meeting of the contending parties and their friends was agreed to be held at Edinburgh, for the purpose of a conciliation of differences; but, distrustful of each other, they repaired to the place of congress as to a field of combat, attended by all the forces they could respectively muster. Bishop Douglas, who came to the meeting to assist his nephew, Angus, with his councils, fearful of the consequences of this hostile array, applied to Archbishop Beaton, who was the chief adviser of Arran, and earnestly solicited him, as a minister of peace, to assist in bringing about an amicable accommodation. Beaton, with disgraceful duplicity, protested, that he knew nothing of the intentions of the Hamiltons, as Arran and his followers were called, and that whatever they were, he had no power to prevent their being carried iuto effect. "By my conscience," exclaimed he, striking his hand with vehemence against his breast, “I know nothing of the matter." The violence of the stroke made a coat of mail, which the crafty prelate had concealed under his robes, resound, on which Douglas indignantly replied, "Your conscience, my lord, is not sound, for I hear it clatter." Beaton, in fact, knew

well, that the Hamiltons were determined on an appeal to arms, and had come himself prepared to take a disgraceful share in the affray. Douglas had not been long gone, before the archbishop was uncassocked, and in the streets fighting with Arran and his men against the followers of Angus; but, if we may judge by the event, a bishop praying is of more avail to a cause than a bishop fighting. Gavin Douglas, who is said to have retired to his closet to supplicate the God of battles in favor of his nephew, had soon the satisfaction of hearing the Douglas note of triumph swelling on his ear; the Hamiltons had been beaten, and more than sixty of them slain; Arran, their chief, escaped with great difficulty; while Beaton, the lamb in wolves' clothing, fled for shelter behind the high altar of Blackfriars' church, and would have fallen a prey to the fury of his pursuers, but for the interference of Bishop Douglas, who, hearing of the jeopardy in which the archbishop was, hastened to his rescue.

The same conduct which Bishop Douglas pursued on this occasion, he observed throughout the whole of the dissensions of this period, behaving," as we are told, "with that moderation and peaceableness which became a wise man and a religious prelate."

Party animosity, however, ran at length so high, that the Bishop found it prudent to retire to England. After his departure, a prosecution was commenced against him, and he was publicly proscribed by proclamation, as "having treasonably entered and designed to reside in England, joining himself to the public enemy of the kingdom after war was denounced, and that not only without licence and permission, but against the express orders of the governor." He was,