He was a younger son of John Beaton of Balfour in the county of Fife, and is said to have been born in 1494. 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. About this time he was presented to the rectory of Campsie by his uncle, James Beaton, then Archbishop of Glasgow. When James Beaton moved to St Andrews in 1522 he resigned the rich abbacy of Arbroath in his nephew's favour, under reservation of one half of the revenues to himself during his lifetime. Beaton's ability and the patronage of his uncle ensured his rapid promotion. He was sent by King James V of Scotland on various missions to France, and in 1528 was appointed keeper of the privy seal.
He took a leading part in the negotiations connected with the king's marriages, first with Madeleine of France, and afterwards with Mary of Guise. At the French court he was held in high estimation by King Francis I, and was consecrated bishop of Mirepoix in Languedoc in December 1537. On December 20, 1538 he was appointed a cardinal by Pope Paul III, under the title of St Stephen in the Coelian Hill. He was the only Scotsman named to that office by an undisputed right, Cardinal Wardlaw, Bishop of Glasgow, having received his appointment from the anti-pope Clement VII. On the death of Archbishop James Beaton in 1539, the cardinal became Archbishop of Scotland.
Beaton was one of King James's most trusted advisers, and it was mainly due to his influence that tile king drew closer the French alliance and refused Henry VIII's overtures to follow him in his religious policy. On the death of James in December 1542 he attempted to assume office as one of the regents for the infant sovereign Mary, founding his claim on an alleged will of the late king; but he was disregarded, and the Earl of Arran, heir to the throne, was declared regent. The cardinal was, by order of the regent, committed to the custody of Lord Seaton; but his imprisonment was nominal, and he was soon at liberty, leading a party opposed to the English alliance. Arran was soon won over to his views, dismissed the preachers by whom he had been surrounded, and joined the cardinal at Stirling, where in September 1543 Beaton crowned the young queen.
In the same year he was raised to the office of chancellor of Scotland, and was appointed protonotary apostolic and legate by the pope. Beaton would not confine himself to secular politics, which were inextricably interwoven with the religious controversies of the time, and resistance to English influence involved resistance to the activities of church reformers, whose ultimate victory obscured the cardinal's genuine merits as a statesman. Beaton had shared in the efforts of the hierarchy to suppress the reformed doctrines, and pursued the same line of conduct even more systematically after his elevation to the primacy.
The popular accounts of the persecution for which he was responsible are no doubt exaggerated, and it sometimes ceased for considerable periods so far as capital punishments were concerned. His activities were tolerated until George Wishart became a victim. Wishart had returned to Scotland, after an absence of several years, about the end of 1544. His sermons produced a great effect, and he was protected by several barons of the English faction. These barons, with the knowledge and approbation of King Henry, were engaged in a plot to assassinate the cardinal, in which Wishart may have been a willing agent. The cardinal perhaps suspected Wishart's knowledge of the plot, and was not sorry to have an excuse for seizing one of the most eloquent supporters of the new opinions. Having succeeded, with the aid of the regent, in arresting the preacher, he took him to his castle of St Andrews. On February 28, 1546 Wishart was tried in the cathedral before the cardinal and other judges, the regent declining to take any active part, and, being found guilty of heresy, was condemned to death and burnt.
The death of Wishart produced a deep effect on the Scottish people, and the cardinal became an object of general dislike, which encouraged his enemies to proceed against him. He seems to have under-estimated his danger, the more so since his power had never seemed more secure. He crossed over to Angus, and took part in the wedding of his illegitimate daughter with the heir of the Earl of Crawford. On his return to St Andrews he took up his residence in the castle. The conspirators, led by Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, and William Kirkaldy of Grange, managed to obtain admission at daybreak of 29 May 1546, and murdered the cardinal with great atrocity.
As a statesman Beaton was able, resolute, and in his general policy patriotic. As an ecclesiastic he maintained the privileges of the hierarchy and the dominant system of belief conscientiously, but always with harshness and sometimes with cruelty. His immoralities, like his acts of persecution, were exaggerated by his opponents; but his private life was scandalous, though no worse than that of most of his order at the time. The authorship of the writings ascribed to him in several biographical notices rests on no better authority than the apocryphal statements of Thomas Dempster.
See John Knox, Hist. of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. David Laing (1846-1864); John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, Hist. of the Church of Scotland (Spottiswoode Soc., 1847-1851); Art. in Dict. of Nat. Biog and works there quoted; and Andrew Lang, Hist. of Scotland'', vols. i. and ii. (1900-1902).
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