[A1571/9/21]*[print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
The lords sitting as they did previously.
[A1571/9/22]*[print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
The which day the noblemen and others underwritten were nominated to be of our sovereign lord's privy council, they are to say: the earls [Archibald Campbell, earl of] Argyll, [John Graham, earl of] Montrose, [Alexander Cunningham, earl of] Glencairn, [David Lindsay, earl of] Crawford, [Hugh Montgomery, earl of] Eglinton, [Gilbert Kennedy, earl of] Cassilis, [Robert Douglas, earl of] Buchan, [George Sinclair, earl of] Caithness and [William Keith, lord Keith], master of Marischal; lords [Robert Sempill, lord] Sempill, [Patrick Lindsay, lord] Lindsay [of the Byres], [John Lyon, lord] Glamis, [Robert Boyd, lord] Boyd and [Alan Cathcart, lord] Cathcart; [Adam Bothwell], bishop of Orkney, [George Douglas], commendator of Arbroath, [David Erskine, commendator of] Dryburgh and [Mark Kerr, commendator of] Newbattle, together with [James Douglas, earl of Morton], chancellor, [William Ruthven, lord Ruthven], treasurer, [Sir William Murray of Tullibardine], comptroller, [William Maitland of Lethington], secretary, [George Buchanan], keeper of the privy seal, [Mr James MacGill of Nether Rankeilour], clerk register, [Sir John Bellenden of Auchnoull], justice clerk, [Robert Crichton of Eliock and John Spence of Condie], advocates, and [Thomas Hepburn], master of requests.
[A1571/9/23]*[print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
The nobility and estates of this realm of Scotland presently convened in parliament at Stirling, in the fear of God and the lawful obedience of the king, our sovereign lord, to all persons now remaining in the burgh and castle of Edinburgh.
7 September 1571
Albeit we might lay forth before your eyes particularly how evil you have deserved of the commonwealth of this our native country wherein you were born, in that you have been the very instruments and occasion both of your own trouble and punishment and also of the great calamity that our whole country and poor people thereof have and daily do sustain through this unnatural war and civil discord, yet not meaning to irritate you by repetition of things displeasing (which to our grief are very many), and whereof we doubt not your own consciences accuse you, but rather intending by giving you this wholesome admonition to discharge us first to God and next before the world that we have sought you to be won, through which, in case by your own obstinate wilfulness you taste the utmost of the plague and punishment, it may be rightly judged to be in your own default. This consideration has moved us by this letter to require you to consider with yourselves, in common and every one in particular, the ground and circumstances of the cause and quarrel that you pretend your own present condition, with whom it is that you contend and what probably must be the end of all. The ground is touching the deprivation of the king, our sovereign lord, from his crown and royal authority diverse times intended by some of you, and yet by God's providence always disappointed for the cause. Amongst you are men that were as earnest to promote it as any other, and by the same diverse of you acquired honour, good report and benefit; but since you rejected his highness's obedience, you have found your reward reproach, obloquy and hurt, and your intentions often times frustrated. As to your oppression of that town where the seat of justice should remain, for the benefit of the whole subjects, you have not only thereby impoverished the inhabitants of the town, but have made yourselves contemptible to this whole nation. And now you have to lay your account whether the few number of you remaining there shall conquest and overthrow us all, or if by likelihood we be not more able to make you conformable. Your contention is for displacing of the king, our sovereign lord, some of you being the chief instruments of his promotion; and the greatest part of you all having promised and sworn obedience to him, he is (you see) the rising sun and shortly will be able, God willing, to determine this quarrel himself by course of age. And the end must be either he is to be obeyed and peace and justice restored in this commonwealth, or then the force of you now compassed within that town and castle must undo him, whose subjects we profess ourselves, and consequently exterminate us and our posterities. What ground you build on in your enterprise, or what certainty you can look for by the course you run, let every one of you consider by himself and look upon the inconveniences of this war, if it shall continue, and of the fruits that peace and justice would bring. Call also to your remembrance the desolation that has been in other regions next to us these last years through wars, as well foreign as internal, and yet are the same at this day for the most part quiet and peace restored, either by victory or then the weakest has yielded to tolerable conditions. Take heed whether you maintain that cause by your proper force or not, or what ability had you to contend in it if the king's house and ammunition were not at your devotion. To be short, this realm may no longer sustain this contempt, rebellion and confused state, but either must the king, our sovereign lord, and his authority be obeyed, that town of Edinburgh set at liberty and the seat of justice restored to the universal commodity and ease of the subjects, or then must we give our lives and employ our friends and substance in the quarrel. And as we have orderly proceeded heretofore by law against you, so before the just execution thereof, which we cannot, nor may not, leave undone, we have thought suitable to give you this admonition, that you may in time eschew the eminent peril and danger approaching; which advice, if you follow, then will we travail so far as in us shall lie for your relief and safety. And if our admonition is rejected, then we protest that as you yourselves have been and are the occasion of all the evil and extremity that has followed your obstinacy and contempt, so whatsoever harm or inconvenience happens to any of us in prosecution of this just cause, that our bloods and hurt be required at the hands of you and your posterities.
[A1571/9/24]* [print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
Forasmuch as the troubled state of this realm being considered, and the great hurt that the commonwealth sustains through the fortification and holding of the burgh and castle of Edinburgh against our sovereign lord and his authority by a few number of declared traitors, rebels and conspirators, through whose shameful defection from their due obedience, against their faith, promise and allegiance, a dangerous civil war is raised within the bowels of this realm, the chief town is occupied by men of war, the honest inhabitants, some banished, some imprisoned and some retained in most straight thraldom and slavery, the seat of justice destroyed, the members thereof dispersed, and lastly, the late Matthew [Stewart], earl of Lennox, lord Darnley, our sovereign lord's lawful tutor and regent to his majesty, his realm and lieges, is shamefully murdered and cut away after he had yielded his body in their treasonable hands and had promise of his life to be safe, and nothing left unattempted that may bring the whole estate in extreme disorder and confusion, through which neither the king's authority can be obeyed, justice administered nor the good subjects may live quietly upon their own if remedy be not provided. And considering likewise that seeing the nobility, estates and good subjects of this realm have, in all past ages, preserved the same from foreign conquest and valiantly defended the liberty to this time, it were now to their great ignominy and against their honours if a few number of corrupted members, polluted with heinous and odious crimes and worthily cut off from the society of noblemen and honest men as now known in their own colours, should be permitted to continue in their outrage, rebellion and treasonable attempts, to the subversion of the whole estates of our realm. And therefore, agreeing with one voice and consent of the nobility and estates of this realm, that the commonwealth in default of government shall not decay, John [Erskine], earl of Mar, lord Erskine is burdened with the office of regency to our sovereign lord, his realm and lieges; and he, with others of the nobility and estates of this realm, has deliberated and concluded to set the said burgh of Edinburgh at liberty, and, for recovery thereof, to hazard their lives and bestow their goods, through which it is needful that our sovereign lord's subjects be convened by proclamation to this effect; and therefore ordains letters to be directed to officers of arms, sheriffs in that part, charging them to pass to the market crosses of the burghs of Kincardine, Forfar, Perth, Cupar in Fife, Kinross, Clackmannan, Stirling, Linlithgow, Leith, the Canongate for Edinburgh, Haddington, Duns, Lauder, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Lanark, Dumfries, Wigtown, Kirkcudbright, Ayr, Irvine, Renfrew and Dumbarton, and there, by open proclamation in our sovereign lord's name and authority, command and charge all and sundry earls, lords, barons, landed men and freeholders dwelling within the bounds of the sheriffdoms of Kincardine, Forfar, Perth, Fife, Kinross, Clackmannan, Stirling, Linlithgow, Edinburgh principal and within the constabulary of Haddington, Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Lanark, Dumfries, Wigtown, Ayr, Renfrew and Dunbarton, stewartries of Strathearn and Menteith, Kirkcudbright and Annandale and bailiaries of Kyle, Carrick and Cunninghame, as well to burgh as to land, within regality as royalty, that they and each one of them, in their most warlike and substantial manner, with forty days' victuals and provision after their coming, and with pavilions and carriages to lie on the fields, address them to convene and meet my lord regent's grace at Leith on 1 October 1571, and to await and attend as they shall be commanded for setting forth of our sovereign lord's authority and service, in assuaging of the burgh of Edinburgh and restoring the same to the former liberty, and to remain for that effect during the space of forty days after their coming, under the pain of loss of life, lands and goods.†