Among numberless skirmishes, surprises, and barbarous ravagings which marked the struggle between the friends of the queen and those of the infant king, was an affair of several parts or acts in this and the ensuing month. Lord Maxwell being contracted in marriage to a sister of the Earl of Angus, the lady’s relation, the Earl of Morton, proposed to give a banquet on the occasion at Dalkeith Castle. The wine required at the feast was to be brought in carts from Leith, together with some venison and a quantity of silver plate. Kirkaldy and his friends in the castle hearing of this, sent out a party of horse, which surprised Morton’s servants, and took as spoil the materials of the proposed banquet. Morton who, it was said, smarted more from the loss of the plate than the killing of a few of his servants in the struggle, immediately sent a party to requite Kirkaldy’s attack by laying waste his estate in Fife. Kirkaldy, again, repaid these attentions by sending a party a few nights after to set fire to the town of Dalkeith. On this occasion, he killed ten of Morton’s people, and took nine prisoners. ‘In their return [they] perceived fifty-sax horses from Dalkeith to Leith, passing laded with ale; they brake the barrels, and made prey of the horses, and brought into Edinburgh many kye and oxen forth of that lordship for supply of their scant and hunger.’--_H. K. J._ ‘These three scuffles went all under one name, and were ever after called _Lord Maxwell’s Handfasting_.’[79] * * * * * [Sidenote: 1572. MAR.] The condition of the ordinary places of worship in this time of civil war is sketched in the _Lamentation of Lady Scotland_, printed by Lekprevik in 1572. ‘The rooms appointit people to consider, To hear God’s word, where they suld pray together, Are now convertit in sheep-cots and faulds, Or else are fallen, because nane them uphalds. The parish kirks, I ween, they sae misguide, That nane for wind and rain therein may bide: Therefore nae pleasure tak they of the temple, Nor yet to come where nocht is to contemple, But craws and dows, cryand and makand beir, That nane throuchly the minister may hear. But feathers, filth, and dung does lie abroad, Where folk should sit to hear the word of God; Whilk is occasion to the adversaries, To mock and scorn sic things before your eyes. Thus to disdain the house of orison, Does mak folk cauld to their devotion; And als they do disdain to hear God’s word, Thinking the same to be ane jesting bourd; They go to labour, drinking, or to play, And not to you,[80] upon the Sabbath day.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: 1572.]