understanding with the Catholic earls, whom he merely did not wish to
estrange hopelessly, was punished by a sanctified plague. On July 24,
1593, by aid of the late Earl Gowrie's daughter, Bothwell entered
Holyrood, seized the king, extorted his own terms, went and amazed the
Dean of Durham by his narrative of the adventure, and seemed to have the
connivance of Elizabeth. But in September James found himself in a
position to repudiate his forced engagement. Bothwell now allied himself
with the Catholic earls, and, as a Catholic, had no longer the prayers of
the preachers. James ordered levies to attack the earls, while Argyll
led his clan and the Macleans against Huntly, only to be defeated by the
Gordon horse at the battle of Glenrinnes (October 3). Huntly and his
allies, however, dared not encounter King James and Andrew Melville, who
marched together against them, and they were obliged to fly to the
Continent. Bothwell, with his retainer, Colville, continued, with
Cecil's connivance, to make desperate plots for seizing James; indeed,
Cecil was intriguing with them and other desperadoes even after 1600.
Throughout all the Tudor period, from Henry VII. to 1601, England was
engaged in a series of conspiracies against the persons of the princes of
Scotland. The Catholics of the south of Scotland now lost Lord Maxwell,
slain by a "Lockerby Lick" in a great clan battle with the Johnstones at
Dryfe Sands.

In 1595, James's minister, John Maitland, brother of Lethington, died,
and early in 1596 an organisation called "the Octavians" was made to
regulate the distracted finance of the country. On April 13, 1596,
Walter Scott of Buccleuch made himself an everlasting name by the
bloodless rescue of Kinmont Willie, an Armstrong reiver, from the Castle
of Carlisle, where he was illegally held by Lord Scrope. The period was
notable for the endless raids by the clans on both sides of the Border,
celebrated in ballads.