Auchinleck survived this accident, and we find him in the ensuing March in the hands of the Earl of Arran, and put to the torture, in order to extort from him a confession of certain crimes with which he was charged, but which he denied. He took a part in the affair of the Raid of Ruthven in August 1582. When the Earl of Arran on that occasion, hearing of the king’s being secluded in Ruthven House, came to try if he could gain access to him, ‘the Earl of Gowrie met him at the gate, and had straightway killed him, if George Auchinleck had not held his hand as he was about to have pulled out his dagger to have stabbed him.’--_H. of G._ * * * * * [Sidenote: 1580-1. JAN. 28.] A Confession of Faith was this day subscribed by the king, his household and courtiers, including Lennox, and many of the nobility and other persons, professing ‘the religion now revealed to the world by the preaching of the blessed evangel,’ and solemnly abjuring all the doctrines and practices of the Romish Church.[117] [Sidenote: JAN. 29.] This day, Sunday, there were gay doings in the boy-king’s court of Holyrood, namely, running at the ring, justing, and such-like pastimes, besides sailing about in boats and galleys at Leith.--_Cal._ The reader must not be too much surprised at this occurring the day after the signing of a solemn confession of the Protestant faith. The truth seems to have been this: the signers signed under the pressure of a party they had some interest for the moment in gratifying or blinding, and the accepters of the document were content with the fact of the signing, without regard to the too probable hypocrisy under which it took place. It is not uncommon for professions to be only a symptom of the reality of the opposite of what is professed. * * * * * [Sidenote: 1581. MAR. 11.] The ex-Regent now lay a hopeless prisoner in Dumbarton Castle, chiefly occupied, we are told, in reading the Bible, which, though he had forced the people to buy it under a penalty, he had hitherto much neglected himself. One of his servants, named George Fleck, ‘was apprehended in Alexander Lawson’s house [in Edinburgh], together with the said Alexander, not without their own consents, as was alleged, to reveal where the Earl of Morton’s treasure lay. The bruit [rumour] went--when the boots were presented to George Fleck, that he revealed a part of the treasure to be lying in Dalkeith yard, under the ground; a part in Aberdour, under a braid stone before the gate; a part in Leith. Certain it is, he [the earl] was the wealthiest subject that had been in Scotland for many years.’--_Cal._