‘In effect, his majesty’s words came true; for the same month, about the end of the parliament (September 3), there came to Striviling in the night, ere the nobility or town knew, the Earl of Huntly, the queen’s lieutenant, Claud Hamilton, with the Lairds of Buccleuch and Ferniehirst, who, ere day brake, had possessed themselves of the town, crying “God and the Queen!” so that those that were for the King and his Regent could not, for the multitude of enemies, come to a head. Wherever they could see any that belonged to the Regent, him they killed without mercy. The Regent being taken prisoner by the Laird of Buccleuch, and horsed behind him, ane wicked fellow lift up his jack, and shot him through the body with a pistol.... [On a counter-surprise, the queen’s party] departed the town immediately. The Earl of Mar was declared Regent, and concluded the parliament. This was the hole which the young king did see in the parliament, although he meant nothing less.’--_Bal._ * * * * * [Sidenote: NOV. 10.] Robert Lord Boyd entered this day into a bond of _manred_ with William Fairly, brother of David Fairly of that Ilk. Manred, properly, is a service of allegiance; but in Scotland it had come, in the course of time, to be an agreement, sometimes between a great man and a less, sometimes between two or more equally great men, to stand by each other in all contingencies of war and law, excepting only (and perhaps it was but a hypocritical exception) where the king’s majesty and his commands were concerned. It was an arrangement dictated by the exigencies of a rude time, when law was but partial and uncertain in its actings, and natural feeling often called for something being done, whether the law would or no. As something not very consonant with good government, or even such attempts at the same as might be made in those days, manred had been denounced by a statute so long ago as 1457, when it was enacted ‘that nae man dwelling within burgh be fund in manrent, nor ride in rout in feir of weir with nae man, but with the king or his officers, or with the lord of the burgh.’ But acts of parliament were voices crying in the wilderness in Scotland, and manred still continued to have its place in the economy of life in this age. [Sidenote: 1571.] On this occasion, William Fairly binds and obliges himself to be ‘man and subject servant’ to Lord Boyd and his heirs, ‘aefaldly and truly to serve them upon their retinue and expenses in household and out of household, as best sall please them in all their affairs, and as weel in defence as pursuit, with whom or against whom it sall happen them to have action and ado,’ the king excepted. He is likewise to help them with his good counsel, ‘and sall never hear nor know their hurt, damage, nor skaith, in ony sort, but sall diligently sift out the same, and mak true declaration thereof.’