hinds' wives and bairns, which were not responsal to our sovereign lord gif he had taken deforce." He made a request that they should "send for Andrew Wood in Pittenweem, John Brown of Anstruther, the laird of Balcasky, or some other responsal persons, to stop him, so that he might indorse his deforcement and depart, which they plainly refused." The request was about as reasonable as if a gentleman, knocked down by a ragged ruffian, were to ask him to get some capitalist, able to pay respectable damages, to come and aid in the operation. The prior, meanwhile, came to the assistance of his subordinates, and put himself at the head of a truly formidable array: three hundred men, who "with hagbuts, culverings, cross-bows, hand-bows, spears, halberts, axes, and swords, came in arrayed battle, with convocation and ringing of their common bell," and, falling on the messenger's party, "shot divers pieces of artillery at them." The ecclesiastical people were removed to their own court, so that we lose trace of the proceedings against them. Some of the laymen were charged with the slaughter of the messenger's followers, and others outlawed for failing to appear. The same Spartan brevity that characterises the early portions of the criminal records, sometimes reduces the history of bloody family feuds, the particulars of which might fill volumes of romance, to the most tantalising dimensions. They are rather inventoried or enumerated by head-mark, than even recorded, and generally present no more satisfactory detail than the following:-- "1554, Oct. 26.--Robert Henry, alias _Deill amang us_, convicted of art and part of the cruel slaughter of Thomas Bissate, young laird of Querrel. Beheaded." "1532, July 3.--Rolland Lindesay, Alan Lokhart of Lee, and William Mosman, convicted of art and part of the cruel slaughter of Ralph Weir. Beheaded." That one of the parties might be a magistrate administering the law, was no impediment to the prosecution of a feud, but rather served to give solemnity and importance to the perpetration of some act of vengeance: thus-- "1527, October 8.--George Ramsay of Clatty, John Betoune of Balfour, James Betoune Of Melgum, John Grahame of Claverhouse, and others, found caution to underly the law at the first Justice Aire of Fife, for convocation of the lieges, to the number of 80 persons, and in warlike manner invading John Lord Lindesay, Sheriff of Fife, in the execution of his office, in a fenced court within the Tolbooth of Cowper, the doors being shut, and the assize inclosed; and for breaking up the said doors."