Those who ventured on kidnapping flew at high game. A young or a superannuated king requiring the aid of able counsellors, nay, sometimes a monarch in the vigour of his power, would be the object of such an attempt. Among lesser personages, statesmen offensively powerful, dignified churchmen about to issue ecclesiastical censures, and judges of the Court of Session prepared to give adverse decisions, were in great request, and eagerly sought after. Alexander Gibson of Durie, for some time a principal clerk of session, and afterwards a judge in that court--lawyers know him as the author of a folio volume of reports of more than average unreadability--was a special victim, having been twice successfully spirited away. In 1604, George Meldrum, younger of Dumbreck, was tried for several acts of this description, of one of which Durie, then "ane of the clerks of our sovereign Lord's Council and Session," was a victim. Among those whom the kidnapper took to his assistance were--"John Johnston, called Swyne-foot," and some other worthies, comprehensively described as "ane company of common and notorious thieves, brigands, and murderers," who assembled "with swords, hagbuts, and pistolets." Durie was residing in St Andrews, and it appears that his enemy employed "ane fellow called Craik, the said George Meldrum's own man," to watch his motions. He was riding, as it would appear, on the bank of the Firth of Tay, opposite to Dundee, accompanied by a brother barrister and his servant, when the ambuscade "treasonably put violent hands on their persons," and "took them captives and prisoners." Their captor "reft fra them their purses, with certain gold and silver being therein, extending to the quantity of three hundred merks or thereby"--an act which the indictment reproachfully mentions as specially unworthy of "ane landed man." Meldrum proceeded with his captive through Fifeshire to Kinghorn, on the Forth; thence, crossing over to Leith, he marched through Edinburgh, "passing the palace gate of Holyroodhouse"--a circumstance to which the indictment alludes as a powerful illustration of the audacity of the transaction. The party then proceeded through Lothian and Tweeddale across the Border "unto England, to George Ratcliff's house, where they detained him captive and prisoner for the space of eight days or thereby."[12] Thus was this high official conveyed a distance of about a hundred miles, not only through the most populous and fertile part of the kingdom, but through the centre of the metropolis, under the very shadow of the throne; and that not by any of the great barons who could command an army of followers, but by a petty country gentleman, aided by a few Border freebooters. [12] Pitcairn, ii. 428.