JEROME CARDAN 131 



power. His cruelties were borne in mind by the re- 

 formers when they got the upper hand. In 1563 he 

 was imprisoned for saying mass. In 1568 Mary, after 

 her escape from Loch Leven, gave the chief direction of 

 her affairs into the hands of the Archbishop, who was 

 the bitter foe of the Regent Murray. Murray having 

 defeated the Queen's forces at Langside, Hamilton took 

 refuge in Dumbarton Castle, which was surprised and 

 captured in 1571, when the Archbishop was taken to 

 Stirling and hanged. In the words of the Diurnal of 

 Occurrants : " as the bell struck six hours at even, he 

 was hangit at the mercat cross of Stirling upon a 

 jebat." x His enemies would not let him rest even 

 there, for the next day, fixed to the tree, were found the 

 following verses : 



" Cresce diu, felix arbor, semperque vireto 

 Frondibus ut nobis talia poma feras." 



To return to Cardan. Having at last won from his 

 patient leave to depart, he set forth laden with rich gifts. 

 In Scotland, Cardan found the most generous pay- 

 masters he had ever met. In recording the niggard 

 treatment which he subsequently experienced at the 

 hands of Brissac, the French Viceroy, he contrasts it 

 with the liberal rewards granted to him in what must 

 then have been the poorest of the European kingdoms ; 2 

 and in the Preface of the De Astrorum Judiciis (Basel, 



1 Scotichronicon, vol. i. p. 234. Larrey in his History of England 

 seems to have given currency to the legend that Cardan foretold 

 the Archbishop's death. " S'il en faut croire ce que 1'Histoire nous 

 dit de ce fameux Astrologe, il donna une terrible preuve de sa science 

 a 1'Archeveque qu'il avoit gueri, lorsque prenait cong de lire, il lui 

 tint ce discours : ' Qu'il avoit bien pu le guerir de sa maladie ; mais 

 qu'il n'e"toit pas en son pouvoir de changer sa destine'e, ni d'empecher 

 qu'il ne fut pendu.'" Larrey, Hist, d 1 Angleterre, vol. ii. p. 711. 



2 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxii. p. 101. 



