The abbot of Paisley was admitted to intimacy with the regent. He might converse with him at any time, and he undertook to break down bit by bit the evangelical views of Arran and to sunder his connexion with England. First of all, it was necessary to get rid of the two evangelical chaplains. The two priests therefore began, immediately after their arrival, to disparage the preaching of Williams and Rough. The abbot of Paisley had always some fault to find. ‘Their sermons,’ said he to his brother, ‘are heretical and scandalous.’ The latter, naturally weakminded, let himself be caught. Williams was ordered to put an end to his preaching, and he set out for England. Rough was sent to preach in Kyle, where for some time there had been lovers of the Bible. This was not enough. The men of sound judgment and genuine piety who were about the regent, and who had contributed to the general prosperity and peace, must also be removed out of the way. What terrors, what promises, ‘what boxes full of enchantments,’ says Knox, these two priests had brought with them from France, no one could tell. Be it as it may, some were got rid of by crafty expedients, others by false insinuations. ‘If you remain, your life is at stake,’ they said to them. At the same time the partisans of the clergy, who had till then held themselves aloof from the court, winged their way thither like ravens to the carrion.[292] One day when there was a great gathering at Holyrood, and the regent saw around him at the same moment both the faithful attendants who had deserved well of their country and the fanatical supporters of the cardinal, one of the latter cried out in a voice loud enough for Arran and all present to hear him, ‘My lord governor and his friends will never be at ease nor quietness till that a dozen of these knaves that abuse his grace be hanged.’[293] After that, people saw the men whose labors had been so useful to Scotland,--Durham, Borthwick, Bothwell, the laird of Grange, Balnaves, Ballanden[294] and Sir David Lyndsay,--withdraw from the court, while he who had threatened them with the gallows received a pension for his insolent speech. The liberation of the cardinal could be no longer deferred. He was imprisoned at Dalkeith on January 26, was removed thence to Seaton, next to Blackness castle on the Forth, and finally to St. Andrews, the seat of his archbishopric. There he was set at liberty at the request, especially, of the queen-mother, who had never ceased her intercession for him.[295] Once free, this arrogant man, exasperated by the affront which had been offered him, thought only of recovering his own power and of reëstablishing the cause of the papacy. [Sidenote: INTRIGUES OF BEATOUN.]