In the following April, a commission, consisting of the Earl Marischal, the bishops of Aberdeen and Moray, with three others, was sent to investigate the occurrence on the spot. They cautiously reported thus: ‘We find by all likelihood that the fire whereby the house was burned was first raised in a vault, wherein we find evidences of fire in three sundry parts; one at the furthest end thereof, another towards the middle, and the third on that gable which is hard by the hole that is under the bed which was in the chamber above. Your good lordships will excuse us if we determine not concerning the fire whether it was accidental or of set purpose by the hand of man; only this much it seemeth probable unto us, after consideration of the frame of the house and other circumstances, that no hand from without could have raised the fire without aid from within.’ For a year the Council did nothing, being utterly at a loss as to what they should do; but public indignation, and the desire to bring home the guilt to the criminals—if guilt there were—had not abated, and, stimulated by a message on the subject from the king, the Council actually resolved to devote one day every week to further investigation. At the same time, John Meldrum was ordered to be tried by torture. In August 1632, John Tosh, master of the household at Frendraught, was brought to the bar of the Court of Justiciary on the charge of setting fire to the vault from within. It was pleaded for him that, having endured the torture of the ‘boots,’ and thereafter of the ‘pilniewinks’ or thumbikins, and having on oath declared his innocence, he could not be put to further trial; and this plea was sustained. In August 1633—nearly three years after the fire—John Meldrum of Reidhill was put upon his trial, charged with having set fire to the vault from the outside. It was urged against him, that he had associated himself with James Grant, the notorious robber, in order to wreak his vengeance on Frendraught; that he had threatened to do Frendraught an evil turn some day; and being asked how, had said that the laird would be burned; and that he had been seen riding towards Frendraught Castle on the evening before the fire. It was suggested that he had set fire to the vault by throwing combustibles, such as powder, brimstone, and pitch, through the narrow slits that served as windows. On such evidence as was offered against him, no jury at the present day would convict. The assumption that fire had been introduced from the outside was directly against the conclusion of the Council’s commission; and Meldrum’s counsel insisted on the impossibility of kindling a fire in a vault to which the only access from the outside was by narrow slits piercing a wall ten feet thick. Nevertheless, Meldrum was convicted, and hanged.