make good their demands that Morton should retire to his ‘own dwelling-place,’ and that the king should be delivered to Alexander Erskine to be kept in the castle of Edinburgh (ib. 419), but through the interposition of Bowes, the English ambassador, an agreement was arrived at, signed by the young King James on 15 Aug., to the effect that Mar should remain in charge of the king at Stirling, a section of the rival faction being, however, added to the council (ib. 425). On 5 March 1578–9 it was re-enacted by the council that none should repair armed within the castle of Stirling while the king was there, Mar being authorised to apprehend all such persons (Reg. Privy Council Scot. iii. 105). On the 16th an act was passed exonerating him and his family for their care of the king in the past, and making arrangements for attendance on the king during excursions (ib. 112–14). In April Mar gave a banquet to the king and nobility in token of general reconciliation (Historie of James Sext, 174), but the effect of it was sadly frustrated by the sudden death of Atholl after his return from the banquet, the general suspicion arising that he had died from poison. In view of the approaching departure of the king from Stirling Castle, Mar, on 8 Aug. 1579, received an attestation that he and his family had in all points performed their duty in his tutelage and in the keeping of the castle (ib. 200). With other nobles he accompanied the king in his journey from Stirling to Holyrood on 29 and 30 Sept. (Calderwood, iii. 457). In April 1580, word having been brought to the king while on a hunting expedition that Morton intended to carry him to Dalkeith, he galloped back to Stirling Castle (Arrington to Burghley, 4 April 1580). Shortly after his return thither Mar was informed of a plot of Lennox, to which Sir Alexander Erskine was affirmed to be privy, to invade the royal apartments and carry off the king to Dumbarton. The 10th of April was said to be the night fixed on, but Mar stationed soldiers without and within the royal apartments, and in the morning refused admittance to the suspected nobles (Arrington to Burghley, 16 April 1580). Mar, having been supposed to be concerned in the former plot, presented on 20 April a supplication to the council, protesting that he had never persuaded or pressed the king in regard to residence or anything else beyond his own goodwill, but had always besought him to follow the advice of his council, and more particularly that his removing to Edinburgh and retiring from Edinburgh ‘was by advice of his counsale and na instigation of the earl or his.’ To the truth of this declaration James testified ‘in the faith and word of a king,’ and it was confirmed by an act of the council (Reg. iii. 282). Mar remained true to Morton in the midst of the intrigues by which his influence was now threatened, and, after Morton's sudden apprehension on the charge of being concerned in Darnley's murder, assisted the Earl of Angus in arranging with Randolph, the English ambassador, a plot against Lennox. The hesitating attitude of Elizabeth when the time for action arrived induced Mar to abandon it, and to come to an understanding with Lennox (see narrative of Randolph's negotiation in Scotland, printed in appendix to Tytler's Hist. of Scot.) On this account, as well as probably also from the respect entertained for him by the king, he escaped the sentence of forfeiture passed against the other nobles who had supported Morton, but nevertheless Lennox refused any alliance with him, and he was excluded from the counsels of the king. In August 1582 a rumour, whether true or false, arose that Lennox intended to commit to ward Mar and other protestant lords, and ‘also afterwards to hasten the death of the principals of them, on the charge of a conspiracy against the king and himself’ (Bowes to Walsingham, 15 Aug. 1582, in Bowes, Correspondence, 177). The rumour hastened if it did not occasion the execution of the conspiracy. By the ‘raid of Ruthven’ on 15 Aug. Mar, Gowrie, and others, either through force or persuasion, brought the king from Perth to Ruthven Castle, and removed him from the influence of Lennox and Arran. Learning that Arran, who was at Kinneil, intended to attempt the rescue of the king, Mar, with sixty horse, set out to intercept him at Kinross (Moysie, Memoirs, 37; Calderwood, iii. 637). Arran sent the bulk of his men under the command of his brother, Colonel William Stewart, and with the utmost haste, accompanied by only two attendants, proceeded by a near route to Ruthven, but his followers were attacked from an ambush by Mar and Sir William Douglas and completely routed, while Arran, as soon as he arrived at Ruthven to demand an audience of the king, was apprehended. On 30 Aug. the king was brought from Perth to Mar's castle at Stirling, having previously been induced to make a declaration that he was not being held in captivity (Calderwood, iii. 640). About the same time the protestant noblemen subscribed a bond to ‘remain with his majesty until the abuses and enormities of the commonwealth should be redressed’ (ib. 645). On 19 Oct., at a convention of estates held at Holyrood in presence of the king, the ‘raid of Ruthven’ was declared to be ‘gude, aufauld, trew,
