[5] He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, and in his sixteenth year was sent to Paris, where he studied civil and canon law.

[citation needed] In December 1537 Beaton was made Bishop of Mirepoix in Languedoc on the recommendation of King Francis I, and consecrated the following summer.

[citation needed] Relations became strained between James V and his uncle, Henry VIII of England, who sought to detach the Catholic Church in Scotland from its allegiance to the Holy See and bring it into subjection to himself.

He based his claim on an alleged will of the late King; but the will was generally regarded as forged, and The 2nd Earl of Arran, heir presumptive to the throne, was declared regent.

Dated 14 December 1542 in the King's bedchamber at Falkland Palace, it was witnessed by James Learmonth of Dairsie, Master Household; Henry Kemp of Thomastoun, Gentleman of the Chamber; Michael Durham, the King's doctor; John Tennent, William Kirkcaldy of Grange, Master Michael Dysart, Preceptor of St Anthony's at Leith; John Jordan, Rector of Yetham; Francis Aikman, perfumerer, and others at the bedside.

[7] By order of the Regent, Beaton was committed to the custody of Lord Seton,[6] and imprisoned at Dalkeith Palace and then Blackness Castle.

[8] With Beaton out of power, the Anglophile party persuaded Regent Arran to make a marriage treaty with England on behalf of the infant Queen, and to appoint a number of Protestant preachers.

The treaties signed at Greenwich in July 1543 stipulated that Mary would be accompanied by an English nobleman/gentleman (and his wife) until she was ten years old and afterwards would reside in England until the time of her marriage.

[citation needed] In December 1545 Beaton arranged for the arrest, trial and execution of Protestant preacher George Wishart, who on 1 March 1546 was strangled and afterwards burned.

Leslie, Kirckcaldy, and Peter Carmichael of Balmadie used their daggers to stab the cardinal to death, mutilated the corpse, and hung it from a castle window.

[12] At the time it was widely believed that his death was in the interests of Henry VIII of England, who regarded Beaton as the chief obstacle to his policy in Scotland; the cardinal's murder was certainly a significant point in the eventual triumph of Protestantism north of the Border.

Furthermore, the double standard, under which the Cardinal prosecuted Protestants who advocated the marriage of the clergy for heresy, yet lived in blatant violation of his own vow of clerical celibacy, proved highly damaging in the long run to the Catholic Church in Scotland.