One of Morton’s first cares, after the surrender of Edinburgh Castle, was to demand that the jewels which Queen Mary was known to have left there when she fled from her capital, should be delivered up to him. His greed, however, was doomed to disappointment. The greater part of the treasure upon which he was so characteristically anxious to lay hands, had already been disposed of. Indeed, the Queen’s diamonds had been the chief source of the garrison’s credit during the three years that the Castle was held for her. In 1570 several objects of value had been sent by Kirkcaldy to be sold in London. Elizabeth, however, had got information, and not only stopped the sale, but ordered the articles to be detained. The Governor met with better success in France; and when, in the following spring, his brother arrived in Leith with munitions and stores, it was commonly reported that they had been purchased with the price of some of Mary’s diamonds. The next year, another parcel of jewels was said to have been sold to a secret agent of Queen Elizabeth’s for two thousand five hundred pounds. At various other times, objects of value had been given in pledge to merchants and others for moneys advanced to supply the needs of the beleaguered garrison. There was consequently but little left at the time of the surrender; but to prevent even that from falling into Morton’s hands, some of it had been hidden in a crevice of the Castle rock. A confession having been extracted from Morsman to the effect that at the last moment he had made over certain valuables to Kirkcaldy, the Governor was called upon to restore them. He replied that he had, indeed, got some gear in an evil favoured clout, but did not see what it was, and had thrown it into an open coffer in his room. He protested that he had taken nothing out of the Castle but the clothes on his back and four crowns in his purse. From the moment that Grange and Lethington surrendered as prisoners to the English, Morton resolved that their lives should pay the penalty of their open defiance of his authority, and he did not hesitate to declare that he thought them ‘fitter for God than for this world, for sundry considerations.’ He accordingly demanded that they should be given over to him; and after some hesitation real or pretended, Elizabeth granted his request. Whilst she still seemed to be wavering the two prisoners wrote the following appeal to Burghley:--