e chief parties were the Presbyterian
nobles, the majority of the gentry or lairds, and the preachers on one
side; and the great Catholic families of Huntly, Morton (the title being
now held by a Maxwell), Errol, and Crawford on the other. Bothwell (a
sister's son of Mary's Bothwell) flitted meteor-like, more Catholic than
anything else, but always plotting to seize James's person; and in this
he was backed by the widow of Gowrie and the preachers, and encouraged by
Elizabeth. In her fear that James would join the Catholic nobles, whom
the preachers eternally urged him to persecute, Elizabeth smiled on the
Protestant plots--thereby, of course, fostering any inclination which
James may have felt to seek Catholic aid at home and abroad. The plots
of Mary were perpetually confused by intrigues of priestly emissaries,
who interfered with the schemes of Spain and mixed in the interests of
the Guises.

A fact which proved to be of the highest importance was the passing, in
July 1587, of an Act by which much of the ecclesiastical property of the
ancient Church was attached to the Crown, to be employed in providing for
the maintenance of the clergy. But James used much of it in making
temporal lordships: for example, at the time of the mysterious Gowrie
Conspiracy (August 1600), we find that the Earl of Gowrie had obtained
the Church lands of the Abbey of Scone, which his brother, the Master of
Ruthven, desired. With the large revenues now at his disposal James
could buy the support of the baronage, who, after the execution in 1584
of the Earl of Gowrie (the father of the Gowrie of the conspiracy of
1600), are not found leading and siding with the ministers in a resolute
way. By 1600 young Gowrie was the only hope of the preachers, and
probably James's ability to enrich the nobles helped to make them stand
aloof. Meanwhile, fears and hopes of the success of the Spanish Armada
held the minds of the Protestants and of the Catholic earls. "In this
world-wolter," as James said, no Scot moved for Spain except that Lord
Maxwell who had first received and then been deprived of the Earldom of
Morton. James advanced against him in Dumfriesshire and caused his
flight. As for the Armada, many ships drifted north round Scotland, and
one great vessel, blown up in Tobermory Bay by Lachlan Maclean of Duart,
still invites the attention of treasure-hunters (1911).

THE CATHOLIC EARLS.

Early in 1589 Elizabeth became mistress o