KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES _The following Volumes are now ready_:-- THOMAS CARLYLE. By HECTOR C. MACPHERSON. ALLAN RAMSAY. By OLIPHANT SMEATON. HUGH MILLER. By W. KEITH LEASK. JOHN KNOX. By A. TAYLOR INNES. ROBERT BURNS. By GABRIEL SETOUN. THE BALLADISTS. By JOHN GEDDIE. RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor HERKLESS. SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON. THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. GARDE BLAIKIE. JAMES BOSWELL. By W. KEITH LEASK. TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By OLIPHANT SMEATON. FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. OMOND. THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS. NORMAN MACLEOD. By JOHN WELLWOOD. SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor SAINTSBURY. KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By LOUIS A. BARBÉ. [Illustration: KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE BY LOUIS A. BARBÉ FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES PUBLISHED BY: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK] PREFACE THE materials available for a biography of Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange are very unequally distributed over the two portions into which his life naturally divides itself. For the first of them, I have been obliged to content myself with the rather meagre and fragmentary information to be gathered from the old chroniclers. As regards the incidents that occur during those earlier years, I cannot, therefore, claim much novelty for my sketch. By looking closely into dates, however, I have been able to rectify some minor details, and to set forth events in their proper sequence. On the second part of Sir William’s public career, the documents preserved in the Record Office throw considerable light. Some of them have been utilised, to a certain extent, in connection with the general history of the time; but, so far as I know, no attempt has yet been made to base on them a connected narrative of this important period of Grange’s life, or to draw from them an explanation of his policy. By using his own correspondence--both the letters which he wrote, and those which were addressed to him--I have endeavoured to represent the man as he wished to be understood by his contemporaries. It has not been my special object to justify Kirkcaldy’s conduct; but I am not without the hope that the impartial account of it which I have striven to give, may show how unfair it is to form an estimate of him from a consideration of the bare fact that he was, in turn, the champion of two conflicting parties. L. A. B. 8 WILTON MANSIONS, GLASGOW, _October 1897_. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE THE KIRKCALDYS 9 CHAPTER II THE TRAGEDY AT ST ANDREWS 18 CHAPTER III THE CONSPIRATORS AT BAY 26 CHAPTER IV IN FRANCE 41 CHAPTER V HOME AGAIN 53 CHAPTER VI THE UPROAR OF RELIGION 63