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 of some letters which proved that the Catholic earls, Huntly and Errol, were intriguing with Spain. The offence was lightly passed over, but when the earls, with Crawford and Montrose, drew to a head in the north, James, with much more than his usual spirit, headed the army which advanced against them: they fled from him near Aberdeen, surrendered, and were for a brief time imprisoned. As nobody knows how Fortune's wheel may turn, and as James, hard pressed by the preachers, could neglect no chance of support, he would never gratify the Kirk by crushing the Catholic earls, by temperament he was no persecutor. His calculated leniency caused him years of trouble. Meanwhile James, after issuing a grotesque proclamation about the causes of his spirited resolve, sailed in October to woo a sea-king's daughter over the foam, the Princess Anne of Denmark. After happy months passed, he wrote, "in drinking and driving ower," he returned with his bride in May 1590.