In the meantime, Mary had written to the Laird of Grange, complaining of the harsh treatment to which she had been subjected, and protesting against the breach of faith of which she was the victim. His answer was to the effect that he himself had already reproached the Lords with their conduct towards her, but that they had shown him a letter of hers to the Earl of Bothwell, in which ‘Among many other fair and comfortable words,’ she promised never to abandon or forget him. ‘That,’ he said, ‘had stopped his mouth.’ He went on to express his wonder that her Majesty could consider herself wedded to a man who had but recently married another woman, and deserted her without any just ground. He besought her ‘to put him clean out of mind, seeing otherwise she could never get the love or respect of her subjects, nor have that obedience paid her, which otherwise she might expect;’ and he added ‘many other loving and humble admonitions, which made her bitterly to weep; for she could not do that so hastily, which process of time might have accomplished.’ Judging that the most practical means of destroying Bothwell’s influence would be to get possession of his person--a measure which had been strangely and, indeed, suspiciously neglected at Carberry--and to bring him to justice, Sir William readily accepted the command of an expedition having for its object the capture of the Earl. After Carberry, the Duke of Orkney had betaken himself to his dukedom, which had not yet seen its new master. Having met with a very hostile reception at the hands of Gilbert Balfour, the keeper of Kirkwall, he went over to Shetland, where the more friendly bailiff, Olaf Sinclair, supplied him with provisions. The two vessels with which he had come from the south being but small, he got possession of two Hanseatic ships, the _Pelican_ and the _Breame_. After forcibly seizing them and casting out their cargoes on the shore, as Geert Hemelingk related, he had obliged the two German skippers to sign a contract, so as to give his act of violence the appearance of a legitimate transaction, and had begun a piratical cruise amongst the islands. He was reported to have killed the Bishop of Orkney’s son and put all his servants out of the castle. On the 12th of August, Kirkcaldy, with whom was Sir William Murray of Tullibardine, received seabrieves, ‘for the seeking, searching, and apprehension of the Earl of Bothwell and his accomplices.’ Exactly a week later, he set sail for Dundee, fully determined to give the pirate Earl no chance of escape. In a letter to Bedford, written immediately before his departure, he said: ‘And for my owne part, albeit I be no gud seeman, I promess unto your Lordship, gyf I may anes encounter hym, eyther be see or land, he shall either carie me with him, or else I shall bryng him dead or quick to Edinburgh.’