Archibald became a favourite courtier of James VI. and Charles I., by the latter of whom he was raised to the peerage. He joined the anti-covenanting party, and endured some adversity in his latter days. * * * * * The carboniferous formation, as is well known, does not extend in Scotland beyond the Ochils; but in the remote county of Sutherland, on the coast at Brora, there is a patch of oolite, in the lower section of which is a workable bed of coal, between three and four feet thick. John, tenth Earl of Sutherland, had discovered this valuable deposit, but being cut off by poison (anno 1567), he had no opportunity of trying to turn it to advantage. The Sutherland estates were now under the management of a woman of some force of character, and who has by accident a place in our national history--Lady Jean Gordon. Being divorced by Bothwell, in order to admit of his marriage to Queen Mary, she had subsequently married one Earl of Sutherland, and become the mother of another, for whom she was now acting. By this clever countess the coal of Brora was for the first time worked, not merely for its use in domestic purposes, but as a means of establishing a salt-work. Some pans being erected by her ‘a little by-west the entry of the river,’ there was good salt made there, ‘which served not only Sutherland and the neighbouring provinces, but also was transported into England and elsewhere.’ This was a good effort, but, like all similar enterprises in that rude age, it met with interruptions. One vigorous renewed effort was made by the countess’s son, Earl John, in 1614. It was not, however, till our own time, when the first Duke of Sutherland spent £16,000 on the coal-works, and £2337 on the salt-works, that the original designs of Countess Jean could be said to be fully realised. The works are stated to have given forth twenty thousand tons of coal between the years 1814 and 1826.[237] * * * * * [Sidenote: JULY 10.] [Sidenote: 1598.] ‘... ane man, some callit him a juggler, playit sic supple tricks upon ane tow, whilk was fastenit betwixt the top of St Giles’s Kirk steeple and ane stair beneath the Cross, callit Josia’s Close head, the like was never seen in this country, as he rade down the tow and playit sae mony pavies on it.’--_Bir._ Practitioners of such dangerous arts were not uncommon in those days. The death, in Edinburgh, of one Kirkaldy, ‘who had before danced at the cock of the steeple [St Giles’s],’ is noted in the history of the civil broils of 1571.[238] Mr James Melville reports in 1600: ‘Being in Falkland, I saw a funambulus, a Frenchman, play strange and incredible proticks upon stented tackle in the palace close before the king, queen, and haill court.’ He adds the vulgar surmise of the day: ‘This was politickly done, to mitigate the queen and people for Gowrie’s slaughter.’