So Patrick, Master of Gray3 returned to the left hand of the King of Scots – and it was not long before all Scotland was aware of it. The new hand bearing on the helm of the ship of state was not to be mistaken, a firm hand, assured as it was flexible – but flexible as is a Ferrara rapier blade.
The Chancellor, of course, remained the right hand of the Crown, the official agent of authority. That Lord Maitland of Thirlestane did not relish the return of his long-time foe went without saying: but he was too shrewd a man to fail to perceive that for the meantime he had been out-manoeuvred, and that he must bide his time if he would restore the situation. He made no secret of his distrust and dislike of the Master – but he did not deliberately put himself in the other's way or seek to provoke an open clash.
This situation was much facilitated by the immediate removal of the Court to Stirling. The very day after Patrick's arrival the move was made. James had always preferred Stirling to the Capital. He had been brought up there, in the castle of which Johnnie Mar's father had been Keeper; from there he was closer to his beloved Falkland, where this most unmanly of monarchs yet doted on the manly pursuits of the chase – hunting, hawking and coursing. Maitland, however, a Lothian man, had in the past years centred nearly all the agencies and offices of government, that were not there already, in the Capital; he was now more or less tied to Edinburgh – where also the Kirk leadership was ensconsed. All this the Master knew well, and had allowed for.
King, Queen and Court, therefore., travelled the thirty-five miles to Stirling, in the waist of Scotland, leaving the Chancellor and his minions behind. The young Queen, although nearly five years married, was still not nineteen, and looking somehow, with her great belly, even more physically immature than ever, however shrewd of eye and sharp of tongue. She rode, complainingly, in a horse-litter, with her ladies on palfreys all around her, a colourful, chattering, giggling throng. The King, all clumsy and excessive attention – for though he lacked enthusiasm as a husband, he had been anxiously awaiting this heir and proof of his manhood for years – kept close by. The Duke of Lennox also rode with the ladies, to be near Mary Gray, who carried her baby in a wicker pannier behind her. Mar, however, and most of his nobles, kept as far away as possible -with the Master of Gray circulating around all groups of the strung-out cavalcade, throughout the entire protracted journey like an elegant but genially authoritative sheep-dog. He was noticeably more welcome with the ladies than with the men. And he was very urgent that the escort of two hundred men-at-arms of the Royal Guard should maintain a tight circle at all times round the Queen's litter – although it seemed unlikely indeed that any kidnapping attempt could have been organised so quickly after this change of programme, and anyway it was notorious that members of the Royal Guard were usually the first to be suborned in any major conspiracy.
The journey was accomplished without either attack or premature birth, and the great fortress-castle of Stirling, towering above the climbing grey town and shaking its fist at all the frowning bastions of the Highland Line, received them into its security. But even before they reached it, Patrick Gray went to work, having a messenger despatched, in the King's name, to the young Earl of Argyll at his Lowland seat of Castle Campbell at Dollar, a dozen miles away, to summon him forthwith to his monarch's side. In the event, the young man was at Stirling soon after the King, and after being kept waiting for an hour or two was highly astonished to have James inform him in a fractious and preoccupied fashion – for he was distracted by the loss of a couple of sheets of his poem which must have been left behind at Holyroodhouse – that he was herewith appointed Lieutenant of the North, in the place of the Earl of Huntly, and was to be given a commission of fire and sword against that nobleman and his treasonable Catholic associates. More than this the bewildered youth could not get out of the King – whereupon Patrick took him in hand, explained the position privately and approximately, informed him that Maitland was plotting his downfall and the seizure of his lands, but that he, Gray, was his friend and had engineered this situation in order to bring to justice the murderers of the Earl of Moray, Argyll's cousin and guardian. This was the opportunity for which Clan Campbell had been waiting. Mac Cailean Mhor, to give him his proud Gaelic patronymic, set off for his West Highland fastnesses there and then, eyes glowing, to raise the clan, on the Master's assurances that he would inform his Campbell uncles, his present guardians, of what was toward.
Next day Patrick himself set off south-westwards, for Ayrshire, to inveigle, if he could, the Kennedys and their allies the Montgomeries and the Cunninghams, into the prompt armed service of the King. He promised that he would be back in three days at the latest.
Curiously enough, however, riding alone, once he was well clear of the Stirling vicinity, he turned his horse's head south-eastwards rather than south-westwards, towards the Border hills.
That same afternoon, whether as a result of the journey from Edinburgh or merely because of the fullness of time, Queen Anne's pains began. A strange young woman, she had had a number of false pregnancies, over which she had made the maximum fuss, setting her household by the ears; throughout the long period of this true pregnancy she had been difficult and demanding; but now, with the actual birth-throes upon her, she discarded all this, became calm and quietly assured, dismissed all her feather-headed and chattering ladies except the diffident young Lady Beatrix Ruthven who was her close friend and confidante, and Mary Gray whom she apparently trusted in an extremity, and sent for the midwife. To Mary she awarded the unenviable task of keeping her unsuitably interested and vocally anxious husband out of her chamber as much as possible.
Mary, therefore, spent much of the rest of the day and evening in an ante-room of the Queen's bedroom, discussing and indeed concocting poetry with King James, conceiving this to be the surest way of distracting his attention from what was going on next door. New stanzas were added to the natal epic – some of which pleased the royal composer so greatly that nothing would do but that they should be taken through forthwith and read to the labouring Queen, despite her evident lack of appreciation. James was also much interested in Mary's feeding of her own baby, which took place at intervals.
Inspiration in verse was still not quite exhausted when, at last, a child was born late that evening on the 17th of February 1594 – a son, somewhat weakly and small, but with none of the dire disabilities or deformities which the King, in moments of stress, had confessed to Mary as dreading, convinced as he was of the personal vendetta of Satan against himself, as Christ's Vicar and Vice-regent here upon earth.
James's relief and delight knew no bounds. Quite ignoring his exhausted wife, even before the child was properly wrapped and bound, he insisted on taking and parading the new-born Prince Henry throughout the castle, showing him to all whom he could find to look, courtiers, men-at-arms and servants alike, to the wailing not only of the infant but of the midwife and wet-nurse also. Mary, with Ludovick, accompanied the monarch on this tour, and indeed after some time she managed to prevail upon the exultant father to let her comfort the limp infant at her own breast. It demanded considerable dissuasion to prevent James from carrying out his heir to inspect the great bonfire which he had given immediate orders should be lit on the top-most tower of the castle, as signal to all the realm that a Prince of Scotland was born. If, throughout this perambulation, Ludovick was told once by his gleeful royal cousin that his eye was now put out, that he was fallen from high estate and no longer heir to the throne, he was told a dozen times. That the younger man was far from downcast, indeed even relieved, strangely enough did not commend itself to the other, either.
No one about the Court achieved bed until the early hours of the morning.
Next day brought to light a rift within the lute. James had had a nightmare. He had dreamed that the new prince had indeed been seized and spirited away from him, his mother playing a leading part in the abduction and going off with the kidnappers. Nothing would do now but that the precious infant should be delivered forthwith into the sure care of the Earl of Mar, to be kept in the most secure inner fastness of the fortress, with his wet-nurse. Queen Anne's indignation and protest at this decision was fierce but unavailing. She had already reverted from her excellent birth behaviour to the tantrums of the pregnancy period, and had taken a violent dislike to the wet-nurse, loudly declaring that the woman was a coarse and lowbred slut and that she should not be allowed to suckle the heir of a hundred kings. Mary Gray was to suckle the prince, she asserted, and although that young woman protested that she had her own child to feed and had not enough milk for both, the Queen was adamant. When confronted with James's fiat that the infant was to be put into Mar's keeping there and then, there was a major and unedifying scene, which ended with the King insisting on his decision, but agreeing that meantime Mary should act as foster-mother, despite the latter's objections.
So willy-nilly, Mary found, herself in the situation, absurd as it was unwanted, of ostensible foster-mother to the new prince, temporary link between the indignant Queen and her offspring, and repository of the sovereign's confidences. A new wet-nurse was found for the infant, of course – for despite the royal desires, even commands, she would by no means agree to taking over the nursing of the prince herself and handing over her own son to another's feeding. James and Anne were more openly estranged than ever they had been, the Queen pouring out her troubles in the reluctant ear of the Duke of Lennox especially – whilst the nation, by royal decree, made holiday in public rejoicing, ringing church-bells, lighting beacons and composing loyal addresses.
This was the state of affairs to which Patrick Gray returned after two days – undoubtedly to his entire satisfaction. Whilst sympathising with everyone's problems, he had an air about him as though matters could hardly have been bettered had he arranged them himself.
All was well with the Kennedy project, he reported. While the young Earl of Cassillis was under age, and his uncle and Tutor, Kennedy of Culzean was unpopular, the leadership of that warlike clan had been assumed by the Laird of Bargany, head of the next most senior branch, a forceful and ambitious man who had readily responded to the Master's approaches on the royal behalf, on promise of pickings from the estates of the Catholic Lords Maxwell and Sanquhar. Moreover Bargany's sister was Countess of Eglinton, mother of the boy Earl, chief of the Montgomeries. This latter family was linked with the Campbells of Loudoun, the south-western branch of the great Clan Campbell. These also the Master had called upon. One thousand men of Ayrshire would be ready to march within the week, two thousand in a fortnight, and more if required. With Argyll's Campbells and the Border moss-troopers of the King's firm friends the Homes, a force was being born sufficient to meet the Catholic threat.
This news was well received – but the difficulty now was for anyone to maintain a belief that any such threat really existed. As the days passed and no action developed, no signs of subversion appeared, men began to doubt. The Chancellor had always pooh-poohed it all; now he sent messages to James declaring that it was all a fantasy, an alarum perpetrated by the wicked Master of Gray for his own ends. Indeed he strongly advised the King to forbid this unwarranted and dangerous assembling of armed men forthwith, as a menace to the security of the realm. Who could tell what ill uses they might be put to -especially the cateran and barbarous Campbells? It was always easier to raise the Devil than to lay him again.
Patrick smiled, unruffled, at all this. Was his information apt to be mistaken, he demanded? It would be ignored at peril. Let His Grace call a parliament, he advised, at which the Catholic lords should be summoned to appear for trial of treason, of conspiring against the realm with the King of Spain, and with plotting against the King's life. Since Bothwell was still ostensibly a Protestant, let him be summoned on a different charge – that of receiving English support against his liege lord, of accepting English money and arms to equip his forces illegally assembled. That, which was truth, Patrick assured, as he knew on best authority, should serve the case. The alleged conspirators, if they were indeed innocent, would come to the parliament to proclaim their innocence. If they stayed away, they as good as admitted their guilt – and anyway could be proceeded against as disobeying the King's summons. liven Mait-land, who was a great parliament man, and the Kirk leaders whose policy was to strengthen their temporal power through parliament, could not disagree with this advice. It would takeat least a month to organise and stage a meeting of parliament, because of the distances to be travelled and the arrangements to be made. Patrick privately assured the King that things would, in fact, come to a head before the parliament could meet, and urged that the forces which he had been conjuring up for the royal protection should be maintained in immediate readiness to move.
Maitland was commanded to proclaim an assembly of the Estates of Scotland in parliament, and send out the summonses in the King's name.