Grange’s letters were not agreeable to the English agents. To accept his explanation would have been to admit that, as he very clearly hinted, the defection was not on his side, but on that of the English Government, which, now that it had Mary in its power, was working as persistently and as unscrupulously as ever the Guises had done, to reduce Scotland to political dependence and subjection, and was consequently losing the confidence and alienating the sympathy of many of those who had been staunch supporters of the English alliance so long as they recognised in it a guarantee of their own liberty. Randolph’s reply, written on the first of May, ignored the important point, and confined itself to the secondary matters mentioned by Grange. The writer expressed his satisfaction at learning the Governor’s determination to maintain the King’s authority, but professed his inability to understand the meaning of the proviso ‘until the same be taken away by order of law.’ He justified the severe treatment of Maxwell on the ground that he had received and maintained the Queen of England’s rebels; and, as to the liberation of the Castle prisoners, he oracularly pronounced that Kirkcaldy would some day repent it. He avoided expressing either belief or incredulity in respect of the bestowal and acceptance of the Priory of St Andrews, which the Laird had directly and emphatically denied, by bantering his ‘brother William’ about his unfitness to figure as an ecclesiastic. ‘It was indeed most wonderful unto me,’ he said, ‘when I heard that you should become a Prior. That vocation agreeth not with anything that ever I knew in you, saving for your religious life, led under the Cardinal’s hat, when we were both students in Paris.’ He concluded with a sarcastic allusion to Kirkcaldy’s letter to the Lord-Lieutenant. ‘The Earl of Sussex has made me privy to a very eloquent, fine-written letter of yours, which passes my wit to understand. Either you have lately altered your hand, your style, your manner, and your meaning, or used the pen of some fine secretary.’
Sussex’s reply was even less conciliatory. He considered the principal points raised by him to be utterly unanswered. He was quite aware that it was lawful for Kirkcaldy to use conference with the French or any other nation, but he remembered the time when he would not have dealt with them without the Queen of England’s knowledge and consent. As to the earnest desire that the Queen should take in hand the union of the nobility of Scotland, those words were very honourable but general, and yielded no ground to conceive the writer’s meaning in particulars. Referring to himself, he said that the course he had hitherto held consisted of two points: the one, to be revenged on such as had maintained the rebels of England; and the other, to continue by all means the good affection borne towards the Queen of England by many of the nobility of Scotland, of which number he had always accepted Grange to be a special person to be accounted of.
Perceiving from this that Sussex was not ‘fully satisfied with his last writing,’ Kirkcaldy informed him that he meant to send a special friend to let him know ‘his full intentions in all things.’ If this messenger was ever sent, the result of his mission was not satisfactory; for, on the 4th of May, the Lord-Lieutenant addressed what he himself called ‘a plain letter’ to the Lairds of Grange and Lethington. After reproaching them with the ingratitude of their conduct towards the Queen of England, he warned them that, if they continued in their course, he would take the field with all the forces at his disposal, and not fail to take that revenge which should be honourable for his Mistress.
Neither threats nor blandishments could avail to turn Kirkcaldy from the purpose which he had set himself. That which, to those who were anxious and impatient to have the weight of his influence and the support of his authority on their side, seemed the result of a halting policy, was due to his earnest and sincere desire to avert, if possible, an outbreak of hostilities. He still cherished a lingering hope that Elizabeth might adopt a course of action which would not oblige him wholly to cast aside his old sympathy with England. As late as the 5th of July, Randolph was able to say of him that ‘he doubted not of his honesty.’ If proof were required that the whole responsibility for the apparently vacillating conduct of those who, like Grange, put the welfare of their country above mere party considerations, lay with the English Queen, it could be adduced in the very words of her own agent. Writing to Sussex, Randolph did not hesitate to inform him that the public feeling was one of distrust in Elizabeth, ‘who so often changed her course.’ That, he said, was in almost every man’s speech, and preached in pulpit plainer than he listed to write.
About the middle of July, the King’s Lords, as the opponents of the exiled Queen were now called, took a step which did not augur well for the pacification of the country. They held a convention in Edinburgh, for the purpose of conferring the Regency on Lennox, who had practically been chosen by Elizabeth. He had been for years a pensioner on her bounty, and he was known to be wholly devoted to her interests.
If Grange had been actuated by the sentiments of hostility which some chose to attribute to him, he could have struck a decisive blow by bringing down the Tolbooth about the ears of those who were assembled within it with the intention of sanctioning and adopting a policy which he believed to be fraught with danger to Scotland. He contented himself, however, with absenting himself from the convention, to which he had been summoned, as a member of the Privy Council,—a dignity which he held in virtue of his office, as Provost of Edinburgh, and with refusing ‘to shoot off any piece of ordnance upon request, after the proclamation.’
Instead of giving Grange credit for his attitude of neutrality, Sussex chose to take umbrage at it. In another of those letters which he prided himself on writing ‘somewhat plainly,’ he reproached the Governor with inconsistency in professing to be ‘at the Queen of England’s devotion in all matters that might continue the amity between both realms,’ and yet refusing to join the Lords convened in Edinburgh. On the very same day, the Earl showed the sincerity of his own desire for amity by writing to Cecil, to suggest a pretext on which the West Borders of Scotland might be invaded, and the Scots weakened—a pretext which Elizabeth admitted that she ‘liked very well,’ and which, before long, was duly seized upon.
Throughout all this plotting and intriguing, the party which had Knox and the Presbyterian clergy at its head, still continued, in its hostility to Mary, to put faith in Elizabeth and her ministers. To the members of it, Grange’s policy caused the greatest anxiety, and the remonstrances which they deemed it their duty to address to their former champion were frequent and vigorous. Verse as well as prose was brought to bear upon him, and a ‘Hailsome Admonition,’ published by the balladist, Robert Semple, presumably about the beginning of September, when the interference of both France and Spain was feared, may serve to show the spirit of these exhortations. It opens with an ungrudging recognition of Grange’s services in the past:—
O Lamp of licht and peirless Peirll of pryse!
O worthy Knicht, in martiall deidis most ding![3]
O worthy wicht, most vailzeant, war, and wyse!
O Captaine, ay constant to the King!
O Lustie Lord, that will na wayis maling!
O Barroun bauld, of Cheualry the floure!
O perfyte Prouest, but maik into this Ring![4]
O gudely Grange, but spot vnto this houre!
After recapitulating Kirkcaldy’s exploits, the poet touches on a delicate subject—the disinterested policy of England—and indicates by his doubtless sincere belief in it, the real and essential cause of disagreement between Grange and his former associates.