won by a place in his household. The powerful earl of Argyll and Atholl, a Stuart and Roman Catholic, united with Alexander Erskine, governor of Stirling, who now had the custody of the young king, and others in a league which received so much support that Morton bent before the storm and offered to resign. He surrendered the castle of Edinburgh, the palace of Holyrood, and the royal treasures, retiring to Lochleven, where he busied himself in laying out gardens. But his ambition could not deny itself another stroke for power. Aided by the young earl of Mar, he got possession of Stirling Castle and the person of the king. Civil war was avoided only by the influence of Sir Robert Bowes, the English ambassador. A nominal reconciliation was effected, and a parliament at Stirling introduced a new government. Morton, who secured an indemnity, was president of the council, but Atholl remained a privy councillor in an enlarged council with the representatives of both parties. Shortly afterwards Atholl died of poison, it was said, and suspicion pointed to Morton. His return to power was brief, and the only important event was the prosecution of the two Hamiltons, who still supported Mary and saved their lives by flight to England. The final fall of Morton came from an opposite quarter. In September 1579 Esmé Stuart, the king’s cousin, came to Scotland from France, gained the favour of James by his courtly manners, and received the lands and earldom of Lennox, the custody of Dumbarton Castle, and the office of chamberlain. One of his dependants, Captain James Stuart, son of Lord Ochiltree and brother-in-law of Knox, had the daring to accuse Morton at a meeting of the council in Holyrood of complicity in the murder of Darnley, and he was at once committed to custody. Some months later Morton was condemned by an assize for having taken part in that crime, and the verdict was justified by his confession that Bothwell had revealed to him the design, although he denied participation in its execution. He was executed by the maiden—a guillotine he had himself brought from England—on the 2nd of June 1581.
The attainted earldom of Morton passed by charter at his death to a grandson of the 3rd earl, John, 7th Lord Maxwell (1553–1593), who had previously claimed the title. In 1586, however, the attainder was rescinded in favour of Archibald Douglas, 8th earl of Angus (q.v.), a nephew of the 4th earl. Various earls of Morton have now to be distinguished.
Sir William Douglas (d. 1606), who ranks as 6th or 7th earl of Morton, was the 4th earl’s near kinsman, being the son of Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven (d. 1547), and was closely associated with him in his career, the two men being occasionally confused in the histories. He was the custodian at Lochleven Castle of Queen Mary. By the 4th earl’s will he succeeded in 1588 to the earldom of Morton, on the death of Archibald, 8th earl of Angus; but Lord Maxwell’s title of Morton, which had been revoked in 1585, was revived in 1587 and 1592, so that both men were in possession, and a conflict arose. Sir William Douglas was succeeded by his grandson William (1582–1649), known as 7th or 8th earl of Morton, lord high treasurer of Scotland, a zealous Royalist, who on the outbreak of the Great Rebellion provided £100,000 for the cause by selling his Dalkeith estates to the Buccleuch family; and though John, 8th Lord Maxwell (c. 1586–1613), also claimed the earldom, he was attainted in 1609 and his rights then failed, his titles and estates being restored in 1618 to his brother Robert, with the title of earl of Nithsdale (1620) in lieu of Morton. Among later earls of Morton mention may be made of James (1702–1768), 14th earl (or, as sometimes numbered, 16th), who became president of the Royal Society (1764), and was a distinguished patron of science, and particularly of astronomy. In 1746 he visited France, and was imprisoned in the Bastille, probably as a Jacobite. The present earl of Morton is his descendant.
MORTON, JOHN (c. 1420–1500), archbishop of Canterbury, cardinal and statesman, belonged to a family which had migrated from Nottinghamshire into Dorset, and was born either at Bere Regis or Milborne St Andrew. Educated at the neighbouring Benedictine abbey of Cerne and at Balliol College, Oxford, he graduated in law, and followed that profession in the ecclesiastical courts in London, where he attracted the notice of Archbishop Bourchier. He is said (Dict. Nat. Biog.) to have been “at once admitted to the privy council”, but probably this is a mistake for the ordinary council, of which Morton might well have been made a member when he was appointed master in chancery and chancellor of the duchy of Cornwall. He received a good deal of ecclesiastical preferment from the Lancastrian party, was present, if he did not fight on the losing side, at the battle of Towton in 1461, and was subsequently attainted by the victorious Yorkists. He lived with the exiled court of Margaret of Anjou at Bar until 1470, and took an active part in the diplomacy which led to the coalition of Warwick and Clarence with the Lancastrians and Louis XI., and indirectly to Edward IV.’s expulsion from the throne. Morton landed with Warwick at Dartmouth on the 13th of September 1470, but the battle of Tewkesbury finally shattered the Lancastrian hopes, and Morton made his peace with Edward IV., probably through the mediation of Archbishop Bourchier.
In March 1473 Morton was made master of the rolls, and Edward found employment for his diplomatic talents; he was sent on a mission to Hungary in 1474, and was one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Pecquigny in 1475. In 1479, after receiving a number of minor ecclesiastical promotions, he was elected bishop of Ely. He was one of the executors of Edward IV.’s will in 1483, and the story of the future Richard III., while preparing Morton’s arrest, joking with him about the strawberries the bishop grew in his garden at Holborn is well known and apparently authentic. Oxford University in vain petitioned for Morton’s release, and after some weeks in the Tower he was entrusted to the duke of Buckingham’s charge at Brecknock. Here Morton encouraged Buckingham’s designs against Richard, and put him into communication with the queen dowager, Elizabeth Woodville, and with Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond. He escaped from Brecknock Castle to Flanders, avoided Buckingham’s fate, and devoted his energies during the next two years to creating a party in England and abroad in the interests of the earl of Richmond.
When Richmond secured the crown as Henry VII. Morton became his principal adviser. He succeeded Bourchier as archbishop of Canterbury in 1486 and Alcock as lord chancellor in 1487; and he was responsible for much of the diplomatic, if not also of the financial, work of the reign, though the ingenious method of extortion popularly known as “Morton’s fork” seems really to have been the invention of Richard Fox (q.v.), who succeeded to a large part of Morton’s influence. Morton no doubt impressed Lancastrian traditions upon Henry VII., but he cannot be credited with any great originality as a statesman, and Henry’s policy was as much Yorkist as Lancastrian. The fact that parliament continued to meet fairly often so long as Morton lived, and was only summoned once by Henry VII. after the archbishop’s death, may have some significance; but more probably it was simply due to the circumstance that Morton’s death synchronized with Henry’s achievement of a security in which he thought he could almost dispense with parliamentary support and supplies. As an ecclesiastic Morton followed orthodox Lancastrian lines: in 1489 he obtained a papal bull enabling him to visit and reform the monasteries, and he proceeded with some vigour against the abuses in the abbey of St Albans. In 1493 he was created a cardinal, and in 1495 was elected chancellor of the university of Oxford. He encouraged learning to the extent of admitting Sir Thomas More into his household, and writing a Latin history of Richard III., which More translated into English. He constructed “Morton’s Dyke” across the fens from Wisbech to Peterborough, repaired the episcopal palace at Hatfield and the school of canon law and St Mary’s Church at Oxford. He died at Knole on the 12th of October 1500, and was buried in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral.
Besides the authorities cited in the Dict. Nat. Biogr, see the recently published calendar of Patent Rolls, 1461–1485, passim; W. Busch, England under the Tudors (1892); J. Gairdner, Henry VII. (1889) and Lollardy and the Reformation (1908), and Political History of England, vols. iv. and v. (Longmans). (A. F. P.)
MORTON, JOHN MADDISON (1811–1891), English playwright, was born at Pangbourne, on the 3rd of January 1811. He was the author of Box and Cox (1847) and a number of other farces. In later life, however, he failed to maintain his success, and eventually became a Charterhouse pensioner, dying on the 19th of December 1891.
His father, Thomas Morton (1764?–1838), also a well-known
