120 JEROME CARDAN 



due. The Archbishop's offer was indeed magnificent in 

 its terms. Funds would be provided generous enough 

 to allow the physician to travel post the whole of the 

 journey, and the goodwill of all the rulers of the states 

 en route would be enlisted in his favour. Cassanate 

 finishes by fixing the end of January 1552 as a con- 

 venient date for the rendezvous in Paris, and, as time 

 and place accorded with Cardan's wishes, he wrote to 

 Cassanate accepting the offer. 



The Archbishop of St. Andrews was John Hamilton, 

 the illegitimate brother of James, Earl of Arran, who had 

 been chosen Regent of the kingdom after the death of 

 James V. at Flodden, and the bar sinister, in this case 

 as in many others, was the ensign of a courage and 

 talent and resource in which the lawful offspring was 

 conspicuously wanting. Any student taking a cursory 

 glance at the epoch of violence and complicated intrigue 

 which marked the infancy of Mary of Scotland, may 

 well be astonished that a man so weak and vain and 

 incompetent as James Hamilton albeit his footing was 

 made more secure by his position as the Queen's heir- 

 presumptive should have held possession of his high 

 dignities so long as he did. Alternately the tool of 

 France and of England, he would one day cause his 

 great rival Cardinal Beatoun to be proclaimed an enemy 

 of his country, and the next would meet him amicably 

 and adopt his policy. After becoming the partisan of 

 Henry VIII. and the foe of Rome, he finally put the 

 coping-stone to his inconsistencies by becoming a con- 

 vert to Catholicism in 1543. But in spite of his 

 indolence and weakness, he was still Regent of Scotland, 

 when his brother, the Archbishop, was seized with that 

 attack of periodic asthma which threatened to change 

 vitally the course of Scottish politics. A very slight 



