ders were prepared to resist any ulterior designs of Bothwell in connection with the visit of the queen to Jedburgh (Illustrations of the Reign of Mary, p. 164). Sir James Melville mentions that a plot projected by Bothwell and Huntly for the murder there of the Earl of Murray was frustrated by the arrival of Home with an armed force (Memoirs, p. 173). Home's name was absent from the bond signed in Ainslie's Tavern, Edinburgh, in favour of the marriage of Mary to Bothwell.
After the marriage Home joined the confederate nobles. When Mary and Bothwell reached Borthwick Castle, they made a fruitless endeavour to come to an agreement with him (Herries, Memoirs, p. 92). On the night of 10 June 1567 he, in company with the Earl of Morton, surrounded Borthwick Castle in the darkness with eight hundred men to effect Bothwell's capture; but Bothwell escaped through a postern gate, and Home and Morton, without venturing to take the queen prisoner, returned to the main body of the confederates at Edinburgh. Along with Morton he commanded the van of the confederates at Carberry Hill, and he and Morton received the queen when she surrendered herself to the lords. On the day following her entry into Edinburgh an attempt was made to raise a tumult to aid her escape; but this Home prevented by keeping the streets clear for three hours (Calderwood, Hist. Church of Scotl. ii. 364). Home signed the order for the committal of the queen to Lochleven. According to Morton he was present at the opening on 21 June of the silver casket containing the letters from Mary to Bothwell (Declaration of Morton in Henderson's Casket Letters and Mary Queen of Scots, p. 115). On 12 July Maitland conducted Throckmorton, the English ambassador, to Home's fortress of Fast Castle, Berwickshire. There Throckmorton, Home, and Maitland conferred together (Cal. State Papers, Scott. Ser. i. 251), and Home afterwards escorted Throckmorton back to Edinburgh with four hundred men. He was one of those who received the queen's demission of her crown, and whom she constituted a council of regency. At the coronation of the young prince James at Stirling on 26 July, Home, with Morton, took on his behalf the oath to maintain the protestant religion. On the escape of Queen Mary from Lochleven, Home foiled an attempt of the Hepburns to hold Dunbar Castle in her behalf, and at the head of six hundred spearmen fought in the van against her at the battle of Langside, 13 May 1568. According to Sir James Melville, who styles him the ‘worthy Lord Hume,’ he fought on foot with pike in hand very manfully, and was when struck down helped up ‘by the laird of Sesford, his gud brother.’
At the beginning of January 1569 Home informed the governor of Berwick that certain Liddesdale men lay in wait on the borders for the regent Moray, who was returning from the Westminster conference. Home thus saved the regent from almost certain capture (Calderwood, ii. 476). According to Lord Herries, Maitland of Lethington, when accused of the murder of Darnley, was brought to Edinburgh and committed to the charge of Home, who, on the presentation of a counterfeit order signed by the regent, delivered him to Kirkcaldy of Grange, captain of the castle of Edinburgh (Memoirs, p. 118). Calderwood affirms, on the other hand, that Maitland was committed to the care of Alexander Hume of North Berwick (Hist. ii. 505).
Before long Home rejoined the party of Mary. The causes and circumstances of his defection from the party of James VI and the regent are somewhat obscure; but after Bothwell's flight the chief reason for his hostility to Mary was removed. According to his own deposition (printed in Henderson, Casket Letters, pp. 117–19), which seems substantially true, he offended the regent Moray after Maitland's apprehension by expressing disapproval of the regent's treatment of Maitland, but was afterwards on friendly terms with the regent, and did not leave the party of the king till Moray's death (January 1569–70). The occasion of his defection was, he stated, ‘the skaith he sustenit of england.’ Home signed the letter to the queen of England praying her to enter ‘in such conditions with the queen's Majestie as may be honourable for all parties’ (Calderwood, ii. 547–50), and he also attended a conference of the queen's friends held at Linlithgow on 10 April (ib. p. 553). Sir James Melville states, however, that Home did not openly dissever himself from the party of the king till ‘the Erle of Sussex entred in the Merse with his forces, and tok [20 April 1570] the castell of Hom and Fals castell, full of richese and precious movables’ (Memoirs, p. 228). Calderwood mentions that the capture of Home's castle by the English was quite contrary to Home's expectation; for he ‘looked for greater favour at their hands, knowing them [Sussex and Drury] to have secretly espoused the cause of Mary's friends in England’ (Hist. ii. 562). Buchanan, who gives an identical version of the matter, affirms that Home, forsaken by all his friends and relations, ‘came with one or two in his company to Edinburgh, and shut up himself as a recluse in the castle
