The New International Encyclopædia/Maitland, William

MAITLAND, William (1528?-73). A Scotch statesman, better known as ‘Secretary Lethington.’ He was the eldest son of Sir Richard Maitland (q.v.), of Lethington. He was educated at Saint Andrews and on the Continent, and quickly displayed great aptitude for a political career. He became a convert to the Reformed doctrines about 1555, but could not have been a violent partisan, since in 1558 he was appointed Secretary of State by Mary of Guise. In the tollowing year, however, he openly joined the lords of the congregation, and was one of the Scotch commissioners who met the Duke of Norfolk at Berwick to arrange the conditions on which Queen Elizabeth would give them assistance. In 1561, after the arrival of Queen Mary from France, he was made an extraordinary Lord of Session. He strongly objected to the ratification of Knox’s Book of Discipline, and in 1563 conducted the prosecution raised against Knox for treason; from this time he appears to have split with the Reformers. In 1564 he held a long debate with Knox on the claims of the Reformed Church to be independent of the State In 1566 he took part in the plot against Rizzo, after whose assassination he was proscribed and obliged to seek shelter for some months in obscurity. He was cognizant of Bothwell’s scheme for the murder of Darnley; yet when he saw the hopeless nature of Bothwell’s designs, he immediately joined the confederacy of the lords. While Mary was still a prisoner at Lochleven he is said to have written to her offering his services, yet he was present at the coronation of King James VI., 1567; and although he secretly aided in the escape of the Queen, he fought against her on the field of Langside. In 1568 he accompanied the regent Murray to the conferences held at York regarding the Scottish Queen; but even here he tried to further her interests, and is said to have been the first to propose to the Duke of Norfolk a union between him and Mary. The Scottish lords felt that he was a dangerous enemy to the commonwealth, and in 1569 he was arrested at Stirling for complicity in Darnley’s murder, but was liberated shortly after by an artifice of Kirkaldy of Grange. After the murder of the regent Murray he and Kirkaldy became the leaders of the Queen’s party, in consequence of which he was declared a rebel, deprived of his offices and hands by the regent Morton, and besieged, along with Kirkaldy, in Edinburg Castle. After a long resistance, the castle surrendered, and Maitland was imprisoned in Leith, where he died (1573). Buchanan drew his character with a severe pen in The Chameleon. Consult: Chalmers, Life of Mary, Queen of Scots (3 vols., London, 1822); Skelton, Maitland of Lethington (London, 1887-88).