David Beaton

Cardinal David Beaton was a Scottish churchman, diplomat and statesman who became archbishop of St Andrews and a leading defender of Scotland’s alliance with France. He opposed Protestant reform and resisted English attempts to dominate Scotland during the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Beaton ordered the execution of the Protestant preacher George Wishart and was assassinated in St Andrews Castle in 1546. His career stands at the centre of the political and religious conflict that preceded the Scottish Reformation.

In Nigel Tranter’s 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. In Nigel Tranter’s James, by the Grace of God, David Lindsay and David Beaton, his trusted advisers since childhood, must help him recognise manipulation, master the competing Hamilton and Douglas interests and establish the authority of the crown. David Beaton is treated fictionally in Nigel Tranter’s Riven Realm, Nigel Tranter’s Rough Wooing, Steven Veerapen’s The Abbey Close, Steven Veerapen’s The Cradle Queen, and Steven Veerapen’s The Royal Burgh.