A mission was sent from Holyrood, including James's handsome new
favourite, the Master of Gray, with his cousin, Logan of Restalrig, who
sold the Master to Walsingham. The envoys were to beg for Mary's life.
The Master had previously betrayed her; but he was not wholly lost, and
in London he did his best, contrary to what is commonly stated, to secure
her life. He thus incurred the enmity of his former allies in the
English Court, and, as he had foreseen, he was ruined in Scotland--his
_previous_ letters, hostile to Mary, being betrayed by his aforesaid
cousin, Logan of Restalrig.

On February 8, 1567, ended the lifelong tragedy of Mary Stuart. The
woman whom Elizabeth vainly moved Amyas Paulet to murder was publicly
decapitated at Fotheringay. James vowed that he would not accept from
Elizabeth "the price of his mother's blood." But despite the fury of his
nobles James sat still and took the money, at most some 4000 pounds
annually,--when he could get it.

During the next fifteen years the reign of James, and his struggle for
freedom from the Kirk, was perturbed by a long series of intrigues of
which the details are too obscure and complex for presentation here. His
chief Minister was now John Maitland, a brother of Lethington, and as
versatile, unscrupulous, and intelligent as the rest of that House.
Maitland had actually been present, as Lethington's representative, at
the tragedy of the Kirk-o'-Field. He was Protestant, and favoured the
party of England. In the State the chief parties were the Presbyterian
nobles, the majority of the gentry or lairds, and the preachers on one
side; and the great Catholic families of Huntly, Morton (the title being
now held by a Maxwell), Errol, and Crawford on the other. Bothwell (a
sister's son of Mary's Bothwell) flitted meteor-like, more Catholic than
anything else, but always plotting to seize James's person; and in this