a Douglas
plot managed by Angus and Elizabeth. James Stewart of the Guard (now
Earl of Arran) was made prisoner; Lennox fled the country. In October
1582, in a Parliament at Holyrood, the conspirators passed Acts
indemnifying themselves, and the General Assembly approved them. These
Acts were rescinded later, and James had learned for life his hatred of
the Presbyterians who had treacherously seized and insulted their king.
{144}

In May 1583 Lennox died in Paris, leaving an heir. On June 27 James made
his escape, "a free king," to the castle of St Andrews: he proclaimed an
amnesty and feigned reconciliation with his captor, the Earl of Gowrie,
chief of the house so hateful to Mary--the Ruthvens. At the same time
James placed himself in friendly relations with his kinsfolk, the Guises,
the terror of Protestants. He had already been suspected, on account of
Lennox, as inclined to Rome: in fact, he was always a Protestant, but
baited on every side--by England, by the Kirk, by a faction of his
nobles: he intrigued for allies in every direction.

The secret history of his intrigues has never been written. We find the
persecuted and astute lad either in communication with Rome, or
represented by shady adventurers as employing them to establish such
communications. At one time, as has been recently discovered, a young
man giving himself out as James's bastard brother (a son of Darnley
begotten in England) was professing to bear letters from James to the
Pope. He was arrested on the Continent, and James could not be brought
either to avow or disclaim his kinsman!

A new Lennox, son of the last, was created a duke; a new Bothwell,
Francis Stewart (nephew of Mary's Bothwell), began to rival his uncle in
turbulence. Knowing that Anglo-Scottish plots to capture him again were
being woven daily by Angus and others, James, in February 1584, wrote a
friendly and compromising letter to the Pope. In April, Arran (James
Stewart) crushed a conspiracy by seizing Gowrie at Dundee, and then
routing a force with which Mar and Angus had entered Scotland. Gowrie,
confessing his guilt as a conspirator, was executed at Stirling (May 2,
1584), leaving, of course, his feud to his widow and son. The chief
preachers fled; Andrew Melville was already in exile, with several
others, in England. Melville, in February, had been charged with
preaching seditious sermons, had brandished a Hebrew Bible at the Privy
Council, had refused secul