in return an act of approval of his administration from the

parliament, and the royal pardon for any illegal acts he had committed. He retired to one of his country seats, and professed to devote himself to agriculture and gardening; but he was in reality busy plotting his return to power, which was soon accomplished by one of those violent revolutions common in Scottish history. The young earl of Mar, at his instigation, made himself master of the king's person and of the castle of Stirling, in which the king resided. A council was shortly after assembled at Stirling, of which Morton was chosen president; and the whole power of the state was speedily vested in his hands. His opponents had recourse to arms; but through the mediation of Bowes, the English ambassador, a reconciliation was effected. Athol died suddenly, not without suspicions of poison; his office of chancellor was bestowed upon Argyll, who in consequence became reconciled to his former rival; the Hamiltons were banished and their estates forfeited; and the authority of Morton seemed once more securely established. His final ruin, however, was close at hand. Two new court favourites, Monsieur D'Aubigny and Captain Stewart, succeeded in inflaming the mind of the king against his old servant; and one day at the council board Stewart suddenly appeared and accused Morton as an accessory to the murder of Darnley, the king's father—a crime of which no mention had been made in the indemnity granted to the earl at the termination of his regency. He was immediately arrested, and was soon after brought to trial; found guilty of the foreknowledge and concealment of, and being "art and part" in the king's murder; and executed, June, 1581, in spite of the urgent intercession and even menaces of Elizabeth in his behalf. Morton was one of the ablest, but most unprincipled statesmen of his day; courageous, crafty, cruel, treacherous, and avaricious, he certainly did not deserve that his hoary head should go down to the grave in peace. He left no issue.—J. T. MORTON, John, Cardinal, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor of England, was born in 1410 at Bere in Dorsetshire, the son of a gentleman of that county. He studied the civil and canon law at Oxford, and afterwards practised with distinction at Doctors commons. There he attracted the notice of Cardinal Bourchier, who recommended him to Henry VI., and he was made a member of the privy council, receiving also some valuable ecclesiastical preferments. Staunch to the Lancastrian cause, he was honoured by Edward IV. for his fidelity, appointed master of the rolls, bishop of Ely, and one of his executors. Richard III., failing to gain him over, imprisoned him. He escaped to the continent and joined the earl of Richmond, whom he aided in planning the expedition which resulted in the battle of Bosworth. Morton is even said to have been the author of the scheme for uniting the White and Red Roses, by the marriage of Henry VII. to Elizabeth of York. In the new reign he was made a cardinal, archbishop of Canterbury, and lord chancellor. During the thirteen years of his chancellorship he was Henry's prime minister, if not more: Lord Campbell compares him to Cardinal Richelieu. From his activity in promoting Henry's fiscal exactions he was never popular with the people. He died in September, 1500. Morton was a man of great ability and learning, and in his private life of unsullied reputation. There is a eulogium on him in the Utopia of Sir Thomas More (q.v.), who was a page in his household, and whose Life of Richard III. is sometimes said to have been written by Morton, and not merely from reminiscences of his conversation. His name survives in the great cut or drain, twelve miles in length, through the fens from Peterborough to Wisbeach, made entirely at his expense when he was bishop of Ely, and still known as Morton's Leame.—F. E. MORTON, Samuel George, distinguished as an ethnologist and cranioscopist, was a physician of Philadelphia. He lost his father early; his mother, who was a member of the Society of Friends, educated him in strict conformity with the principles of that sect. She married again when Morton was about thirteen, and from his stepfather he received some instruction in mineralogy and geology, branches of science which in after life commanded much of his attention. It appears that he was destined for mercantile pursuits; but finding them uncongenial to his tastes, he turned his attention to medicine, and became a pupil of Dr. Joseph Parrish, one of the leading physicians of Philadelphia. Dr. Parrish although unconnected with any public institution, had a large class under his tuition, and he had associated with himself several young physicians as teachers of medical science. One of these was Dr Richard Harlan, a zoologist of some reputation, with whom Morton formed an intimate acquaintance. By Dr. Harlan, Morton was introduced to the Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia; and arriving at his majority in 1820, he received the degree of M.D. in March, and was elected a member of the academy in April of the same year. He soon after visited Europe, studied and graduated in Edinburgh, spent a winter in clinical study in Paris, and travelled in Italy. In 1824 he returned to Philadelphia, where he commenced practice. His scientific pursuits were for several years principally geological. Amongst other works on that subject, he published a series of papers in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences and Silliman's Journal, on the organic remains in the cretaceous formations of New Jersey and Delaware, which considerably enhanced his reputation. These papers were commenced in 1828, and the series closed in 1846. During this time he was largely engaged in practice, and several works on medicine and anatomy also appeared from his pen. For some years he lectured on anatomy in conjunction with Dr Parrish, and in 1839 he was elected to fill the chair of anatomy in Pennsylvania college. As an anthropologist his career may be dated from 1830, when he delivered an introductory lecture on the different forms of skull exhibited in the five races of men. Finding it impossible to obtain specimens to illustrate this lecture, he determined on making a collection himself. This afterwards became one of the leading objects of his life, and he was so successful that at the time of his death his museum contained nine hundred and eighteen human crania of different nations, ancient and modern. His great work on the forms of the skull in the American nations, "Crania Americana," appeared in 1839. In it he advanced the opinion that the aboriginal American races differ from all others, not excepting the Mongolian; and that the American nations, excluding the Polar tribes, are of one race but of two families. This work was succeeded in 1844 by one on the skulls of the ancient and modern Egyptians, "Crania Ægyptiaca." One of the principal conclusions he arrives at is, that the ancient inhabitants of the valley of the Nile were of a Caucasian stock. It is scarcely necessary to state that the opinions advanced in both these works cannot in the present state of knowledge be accepted as proved. Dr. Morton was president of the Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia, and a fellow of the College of Physicians of that city. He died in Philadelphia, after five days' illness. May 15, 1851.—F. C. W. MORTON, Thomas, of the same family as the cardinal, was born at York in 1564. Taking his degree of B.D. at St. John's college, Cambridge, in 1598, he became rector of Long-Marston, near York, and was soon afterwards chaplain to the earl of Huntingdon, lord-president of the Council of the North. The succeeding lord-president, earl of Sheffield, had an opportunity of estimating Morton's high ability in a public conference which was held with two popish recusants at the manor-house at York. After a journey to Germany and Denmark as chaplain to the English ambassador, Morton proceeded D.D. in 1606, and soon afterwards received the deanery of Gloucester, from which he was removed to that of Winchester in 1609. About 1610, in which year he was made a prebendary of York, he formed an acquaintance with Isaac Casaubon, which continued until the death of that illustrious scholar, to whose memory Morton erected a monument in Westminster abbey. In 1616 he was appointed bishop of Chester; and three years afterwards he published a defence of the innocency of the three ceremonies of the Church of England, a work intended to remove the scruples of the nonconformists in his diocese. A far more famous production of the bishop's was the declaration, drawn up by command of the king, which is known as the Book of Sports (1618). Translated to Lichfield and Coventry in 1618, and to Durham in 1632, he suffered much during the great civil war, but was at last allowed to retire to the house of Sir Christopher Yelverton in Northamptonshire, acting as tutor to that gentleman's son Henry. Henry, himself famous in after years, had an affectionate regard for his venerable teacher, whom he maintained after Sir Christopher's death. Bishop Morton reached the great age of ninety-five, dying in 1659. His life was written by Dr. Barwick, dean of St. Paul's.—W. J. P. MORTON, Thomas, a dramatist of signal popularity in his day, was born in Dorsetshire in 1764. He was intended for the bar, but forsook law before he was called, and devoted himself to dramatic composition, in which he was very successful. In his evidence given before the select committee of the house