A Stake in the Kingdom

David Beaton is the seventh son of the impoverished Laird of Balfour, with little prospect of land or wealth and an unrelenting determination to rise. Intelligent, forceful and largely untroubled by scruples, he uses education, diplomacy and the Church as instruments of advancement. His ascent carries him from a younger son’s obscurity to the cardinalate and the centre of government, where he becomes one of the ablest statesmen—and the effective political master—of James V’s Scotland.

Beaton is no cloistered churchman. He is an accomplished fighter, a persuasive negotiator and a lover of power, luxury and women, equally capable of courage and ruthless calculation. His defence of Scotland’s independence and of the Catholic establishment brings him into conflict with reformers, rival nobles and the pro-English faction. Each success enlarges his authority but also the circle of men who hate him, making his eventual violent reckoning the price of the formidable stake he has claimed in the kingdom.