on his return to Scotland the colonel, who enjoyed the confidence of the king, became his chief instrument in effecting the counter-revolution which released James from the control of the Ruthven raiders, and brought back James Stewart, earl of Arran. The earl and the colonel, notwithstanding some jealousy between them, now governed the king and country, and incurred the fierce hostility of the church. Stewart was made a member of the privy council, and (July 1583) received a grant of the priory of Pittenweem. As captain of the guard he vigorously supported the king, besieged and captured the Earl of Gowrie [see Ruthven, William, first Earl of Gowrie], at Dundee, brought him to his trial at Edinburgh, helped to frustrate the attempt of the insurgent lords at Stirling, April 1584, and held Lord Maxwell in check on the south.
Fontenay reported to Mary Stuart that James, according to the king's own account, valued Stewart simply as a fighting man, and had said that the colonel, though devoid of intelligence or gift of speech, was a brave and faithful servant. On one occasion Stewart had forgotten himself, and the king brought him to his knees by threatening to reduce him to the coquin et bélître that he once was. Stewart, however, as the king must have soon discovered, possessed considerable diplomatic skill. At this moment he was bent on recovering his Flemish wife's property. He got the king to write on his behalf to Philip II, and he himself sent letters through Fontenay and Mary to Parma and Guise, as well as to the king of Spain; and he even induced Elizabeth to request as a favour from Mary Stuart that she should herself intercede for him with Parma, which Mary did on 13 May 1585 (Labanoff). Fontenay told Nau that Stewart would be on Mary's side, if not from good will, at least from self-interest: ‘this and money rule all the Scots nobles’ (Hatfield MSS. 15 Aug. 1584).
In November 1585 there occurred another coup d'état on the part of the banished lords; and with the help of John, lord Maxwell and earl of Morton [q. v.], who from personal reasons had momentarily joined their party, they made the king a prisoner at Stirling. The Earl of Arran was dismissed; the colonel lost his office of captain of the guard, and was given into the custody of Maxwell, who took him to Dumfries. Stewart quickly accommodated himself to the change of circumstances, made friends with Maxwell, reappeared for a short time at court to the disgust of the church party, and slipped away or was dismissed to the continent with a secret mission from James. He first appeared in Denmark, where he added the Danish king to the list of royal suppliants for the restoration of his wife's dowry; and in December 1586 he was in Paris closeted with Mendoza, to whom he explained that he came as a secret agent from the catholic earls, who were resolved with the aid of Spain to free the king from the hands of the English faction, to secure liberty of conscience for catholics, and finally to restore Scotland to the Roman church. To carry out this enterprise, said Stewart (and in this he was supported by the assurances of another catholic agent, Robert Bruce), it would only be necessary to kill four of the hostile lords—Angus, Boyd, Hamilton, and Mar. In return for aid they offered to molest the queen of England. ‘Stewart,’ wrote Mendoza to Philip, ‘is a catholic himself although a politique.’ It is not surprising after this to learn that the colonel was in great credit with Parma, and had at last recovered his wife's possessions. In the same year he was again in Denmark, busy apparently with James's matrimonial projects.
On his return to Scotland on the eve of the armada, Stewart found the king was no longer willing to give countenance to his Spanish intrigues; but Stewart, now bent on claiming from the Dutch the arrears of pay which he declared to be due to him for his former military services, persuaded the king to grant him letters of marque to enable him to extort forcible compensation from the Dutch merchants. The States-General, indignant at the audacity of these proceedings, sent envoys to Scotland with instructions to pass through London on their way. They were stopped by Elizabeth, who undertook to bring James to reason if they would leave the matter in her hands. Thus baffled, the Dutch despatched De Voecht and De Warck on a second mission direct to Leith, where they landed 17 May 1589. The result of the conferences which they held with James and his councillors, partly in the presence of Stewart, was not satisfactory to the Dutch, and a few years later they were compelled to pay to the colonel a large sum of money. No sooner had the envoys re-embarked than Stewart set sail for Aberdeen to join the earl marischal and others who were to complete the king's marriage with the Princess Anne. After many delays and adventures he finally commanded the six ships commissioned to bring back both king and queen from Denmark. His zeal in this matter raised him higher than ever in the king's favour. He became once more a member of the privy council, and in the summer of
