For the forcible suppression of the new opinions the cardinal needed the unflinching support of his sovereign, and he spared no efforts to gain him over completely to his side, and to detach him from his nobility,--turbulent and self-willed, but fondly clinging to what remnants of liberty were still left to them,--and to alienate him from his uncle, not unfrequently well-meaning but always over-impetuous, and often in his later years selfish and untrustworthy. There was much in the king's character to encourage such efforts. With good natural abilities and a frank and amiable disposition, he had for their own selfish ends been encouraged by his early guardians in sensual pleasures, and never to the last freed himself from his evil habits. "Dissolute as a man, prodigal as a king, and superstitious as a Catholic, he could not but easily fall under the sway of superior minds,"[46] who undertook to free him from the worries of business, to provide him with money, and to regard his failings with indulgence, and on easy terms to absolve him from those grosser excesses which could not fail at times to trouble his conscience. These things Betoun and his clerical party endeavoured to do; and, lest he should be tempted to follow the example of his uncle, and appropriate the property of the monasteries and other religious institutions, or set the church lands to feu, as he had threatened, they once and again presented lists to him of those who were suspected of heresy, urging that they should be prosecuted without delay, and their goods, on conviction, be escheated to the Crown. They made large contributions from their own revenues to aid him in the wars with England, which obedience to their counsels had brought on him. They procured dispensations from the papal court to enable his sons, though illegitimate and infants, to hold any ecclesiastical benefices inferior to bishoprics, and on reaching a certain age to hold even the highest offices in the church. In this way they largely added to his revenues during the minority of his sons, and buoyed him up with the hope that when these sons came to years, and were formally invested with their dignities, he would have wealthy allies on whom he could thoroughly depend in his contests with his nobles. [Sidenote: James the Fifth.]