Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. IIVarious
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. II
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
"After that unfortunate battle of Langside, the said Lord George Seton
was forced to fly to Flanders, and was there in exile two years, and
drove a wagon with four horses for his subsistence. His picture in that
condition," adds the quaint, kindred biographer of the noble family of
Seton, "I have seen drawn, and lively painted, at the north end of the
long gallery in Seton, now overlaid with timber. From Flanders, the said
Lord George went to Holland, and there endeavored to seduce the two
Scots regiments to the Spanish service, upon a design thereby to serve
his sovereign the queen, the king of Spain being very much her friend.
Which plot of his being revealed, the states of Holland did imprison
and condemn him to ride the cannon; but by the friendship and respect
the Scotch officers had to him, he was by them set at liberty,
notwithstanding this decision of the States."[6]
Lord Seton outlived these troubles, he was preserved to enjoy the reward
of his integrity after those who pursued his life had been successively
summoned to render up an account of the manner in which they had
acquired and acquitted themselves of their usurped authority, till all
were clean swept away. It is a remarkable fact that the most relentless
of the persecutors of their hapless sovereign, Mary Stuart, especially
those who for a brief period were the most successful in their ambitious
projects, Murray, Lennox, Marr, Lethington, and Morton, all by violent
or untimely deaths preceded their royal victim to the tomb.
James VI. testified a grateful sense of the services Lord Seton had
rendered to queen Mary, by preferring him and his sons to the most
honorable offices in his gift.
Mary herself rewarded George Douglas to the utmost of her power, in
various ways, but above all by facilitating his marriage with a young
and beautiful French heiress of high rank, to whom he had formed an
attachment, and as his poverty was the only obstacle to this alliance,
she generously enabled him to make a suitable settlement on his bride
out of a portion of her French estates, which she assigned to him for
this purpose by deed of gift. "Services like his," as she wrote to her
uncle, "ought never to be forgotten."
A simple black marble tablet in the chancel of Edensor Church, to the
left of the altar, marks the grave of John Beton, on which a Latin
inscription records the fact, "that he died at Chatsworth, in his
thirty-fourth year, worn out with the fatigues and hardships he had
encountered in the service of his royal mistress," adding as his best
and proudest epitaph, "that he had assisted in delivering that
illustrious princess from her doleful prison in the Laga Laguina."
(Lochleven.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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