The king had now again returned, under the influence of the cardinal, to the side of Rome. This prince, so thoughtless, hasty, violent, and unprincipled, bent before every breeze and changed his opinion and his will at a word from those who were about him. Money he wanted, and he would have received it from one party as readily as from another, from the nobles as well as from the priests: but the latter were more persevering and more skilful in finding out the crowns of which he had need. ‘They are always at the king’s ear,’ said Sadler, one of the envoys of Henry VIII. Sir James Hamilton, his treasurer, was at his left ear, and Beatoun, the cardinal, at his right. The treasurer had at that time received large sums from the cardinal for the king, and James, won by that argument, pronounced himself against the friends of the Reformation with the passion which he had before shown towards the prelates. Sir James Hamilton, brother of the earl of Arran, a man of dishonorable character, cruel, and the murderer of the earl of Lennox, was then invested by command of the king with functions resembling those of an inquisitor. ‘I charge you,’ said James, ‘to seize all persons suspected of heresy, and to inflict on them after judgment such penalties as they have deserved.’ In the excess of his popish zeal he exclaimed, ’Not a man of that sort shall find any mercy at my hands, not even my own son, if it were proved that he was in the number of the guilty.’ This declaration alarmed many. It was plain that an inquisitorial court was to be set up, and Hamilton was already preparing everything for that end. But on a sudden he was himself thrown into the prison in which he meant to confine the friends of the Reformation. Accused either justly or unjustly of treason, even of a conspiracy against the life of the king, he was arrested, and James, in his wrath, had him put to death in August 1540. [Sidenote: BIRTH OF A SON TO JAMES.] James spoke of his son. He had indeed a son, but one not old enough to excite any fears with respect to what he called heresy. The child was born on May 22, 1540, and had been named James after his father. ‘He is fair and lively,’ wrote the king to his uncle Henry VIII., ‘and will succeed to us and this our realm.’[233] Very proud of this son and of having an heir, he felt his crown to be more secure than ever,[234] and began to contemn the nobles. ‘They will no longer dare,’ said he, ‘to attempt anything against my house.’