It was, however, only four days after the death of Morton, and while his blood was still fresh upon the streets, that the man who had brought him to the block passed through the gay scenes of a marriage. Captain Stuart--for Scottish history can scarcely be induced to recognise him as Earl of Arran--had formed a shameful connection with a lady of high birth and rank now figuring at the Scottish court. Born Elizabeth Stewart, as daughter of the Earl of Athole, she had first been wife of Lord Lovat--then, after his death, wife of the Earl of March, brother of the Regent Lennox. Her intrigue with Captain James, her divorce of the Earl of March on alleged reasons which history would blush to mention, her quick-following marriage to Arran while in a condition which would have given her husband a plea of divorce against herself, and this occurring so close to the time when Arran had shed the blood of his great enemy, form a series of events sufficient to mark the character of the court into which the young king had emerged from the strictness of Presbyterian rule. When the lady brought her husband a son in the subsequent January,[126] the king was invited to the baptism, and we only learn that he was prevented from attending in consequence of a temporary quarrel which had by that time taken place between Lennox and Arran. A contemporary writer, speaking of the countess, calls her ‘the maistresse of all vice and villany,’ and says she ‘infectit the air in his Hieness’ audience.’ He accuses her of controlling the course of justice, and alleges that she ‘caused sundrie to be hanged that wanted their compositions, saying: What had they been doing all their days, that had not so much as five punds to buy them from the gallows?‘--_Cal._ The Presbyterian clergy regarded the frivolity of Lennox and Mombirneau, their foreign vices and oaths, joined to the coarser native profligacy of Arran and his lady, as forming a bad school for the young king. A love of amusement and buffoonery he certainly contracted from this source; but it is remarkable that he was not drawn into any gross vice by the bad example set before him. * * * * * [Sidenote: NOV.] At this time, upwards of twenty years after the Reformation, it was still found that ‘the dregs of idolatry’ existed in sundry parts of the realm, ‘by using of pilgrimage to some chapels, wells, crosses ..., as also by observing of the festival-days of the sancts, sometime namit their patrons; in setting furth of banefires, [and] singing of carols within and about kirks at certain seasons of the year.’ An act of parliament was now passed, condemning these practices, and imposing heavy fines on those guilty of them; failing which, the transgressors to endure a month’s imprisonment upon bread and water. * * * * * [Sidenote: 1582. JUNE.]