prisons, released friends, dealt with wizards, aided by Lady Gowrie stole
into Holyrood, his ruling ambition being to capture the king. The
preachers prayed for "sanctified plagues" against James, and regarded
Bothwell favourably as a sanctified plague.

A strange conspiracy within Clan Campbell, in which Huntly and Maitland
were implicated, now led to the murder, among others, of the bonny Earl
of Murray by Huntly in partnership with Maitland (February 1592).

James was accused of having instigated this crime, from suspicion of
Murray as a partner in the wild enterprises of Bothwell, and was so hard
pressed by sermons that, in the early summer of 1592, he allowed the
Black Acts to be abrogated, and "the Charter of the liberties of the
Kirk" to be passed. One of these liberties was to persecute Catholics in
accordance with the penal Acts of 1560. The Kirk was almost an _imperium
in imperio_, but was still prohibited from appointing the time and place
of its own General Assemblies without Royal assent. This weak point in
their defences enabled James to vanquish them, but, in June, Bothwell
attacked him in the Palace of Falkland and put him in considerable peril.

The end of 1592 and the opening of 1593 were remarkable for the discovery
of "The Spanish Blanks," papers addressed to Philip of Spain, signed by
Huntly, the new Earl of Angus, and Errol, to be filled up with an oral
message requesting military aid for Scottish Catholics. Such proceedings
make our historians hold up obtesting hands against the perfidy of
idolaters. But clearly, if Knox and the congregation were acting rightly
when they besought the aid of England against Mary of Guise, then Errol
and Huntly are not to blame for inviting Spain to free them from
persecution. Some inkling of the scheme had reached James, and a paper
in which he weighed the pros and cons is in existence. His suspected