direction of the ablest masters. In 1535 he was sworn a member of the privy council. When the king in the following year left suddenly for France, Huntly was one of those whom he informed of the destination and purpose of his journey, and whom he appointed a council of regency until his return with his bride, the Princess Madeline, in May 1537. In the following July the Master of Forbes was, on the accusation of Huntly, condemned and executed for conspiring some years previously to shoot the king as he passed through Aberdeen. Buchanan asserts that the charge was concocted by Huntly, and the jury corrupted by him, but there is no extant evidence bearing on the subject. About this time Huntly received the important appointment of lieutenant of the north, and in 1540 he accompanied the king in his journey to the western isles. In 1542 he was appointed captain-general of a force raised to oppose Sir Robert Bowes [q. v.], captain of Norham, who with a force of three thousand, including the Earl of Angus and other Scottish rebels, had penetrated into Teviotdale. With the assistance of Lord Home, Huntly totally defeated the English force at Hadden Rig on 24 Aug., taking Bowes and other persons of note prisoners. When the Duke of Norfolk, with an army of thirty thousand, advanced to revenge the defeat, Huntly with less than ten thousand kept him at bay, not permitting him to advance more than two miles on the Scottish side of the Tweed. Being thus occupied, he was not present at the disaster of Solway Moss, the news of which had a fatal effect on the king. Huntly was one of the four persons named as regents in the king's will produced by Cardinal Beaton (Knox, i. 93; Keith, i. 64), but asserted by the Earl of Arran to have been forged. When the cardinal was arrested, 20 Jan. 1542-3, Huntly with others offered themselves as his surety, and demanded that he should be set at liberty. Huntly also held a meeting at Perth to concert measures for this purpose (Angus to Lord Lisle, 16 March 1542-3), but finding resistance to the regent vain, he was one of the first of the discontented nobles to give in his adherence. After the escape of Beaton, he organised with him the conspiracy by which the infant queen and her mother were seized at Linlithgow and carried to Stirling. On a reconciliation taking place between Arran and Beaton, Huntly attended the coronation of the infant princess at Stirling on 9 Sept. He was also appointed lieutenant-general of the north and of Orkney and Shetland, of which position he took advantage so as greatly to increase the power and wealth of his house. In 1544 he raised a large force, with which he crushed an insurrection of the Camerons and Macdonalds of Clanranald; and after the bloody conflict at Loch Lochy, in which the clan Fraser were nearly annihilated by the Macdonalds, he advanced into Lochaber, and inflicted severe punishment on the Macdonalds and other unruly clans.
After the murder of Cardinal Beaton, Huntly was, on 5 June 1546, chosen to succeed him as lord high chancellor (Reg. Privy Council, i. 24), and was also appointed a privy councillor. On the invasion of England by the Duke of Somerset in September 1547, he was one of the chief commanders of the forces raised to oppose him. To ‘avoid the effusion of christian blood,’ he offered to ‘encounter him twenty to twenty, ten to ten, or even man to man,’ but Somerset declined the challenge. In the battle of Pinkie which followed, Huntly was in the command of the rear, who, according to Herries, ‘fled at the first charge, and were the occasion of the ruin of the whole army’ (Memoirs, p. 20). Huntly was one of those taken prisoner, and was conveyed to London, but in 1548 returned to Scotland. Knox alludes to a current rumour that he obtained his freedom by ‘using policy with England’ (Works, i. 213), and in this instance rumour was correct. He obtained license from the Duke of Somerset to depart to Scotland, on promising to return in two and a half months (Covenant between the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Huntly in ‘Gordon Papers,’ Spalding Club Miscellany, iv. 144-6); but the license was merely to cover his proceedings in furthering the views of England, and he was not bound to return (Indenture, 6 Dec. 1547-8,ib. pp. 146-8). He did not, however, long persist in supporting the English policy, and at the parliament held in the abbey of Haddington on 1 July 1548 (Acta Parl. Scot. ii. 481) voted for the marriage of the Princess Mary with the dauphin of France. Shortly afterwards he was made a knight of the Cockle (order of St. Michael) by the French king. Previous to this he had, on 13 Feb. 1548-9, received a grant of the earldom of Moray, and on 26 May a charter of hereditary baliary of all the lands in the bishopric of Aberdeen. He was present at the trial of Adam Wallace at Edinburgh for heresy in 1550, and is represented by Knox (Works, i. 238-40) as taking a prominent part in the proceedings. In September of the same year he accompanied the queen dowager on a visit to her daughter in France (ib. p. 241). Shortly after the queen dowager assumed the regency, in 1554, he fell into disgrace, ostensibly for remissness in quelling a rebellion of the Clanranalds. After suffering#
