The King, he writes, was warned by certain persons in the confidence of Montrose that Argyll and Hamilton were playing him false, and his leave was asked to bring them to justice. The majority of the nobles, he was told, were on his side, and ready, if he consented, to take the two traitors out of the reach of their retainers and lodge them securely in prison to await fair trial. While the King, doubtful of the chance of bringing their guilt home to such high offenders, was pondering these things, the two men (Lanark's name is not mentioned in Clarendon's story) suddenly and secretly left the capital on the plea that their enemies were plotting to murder them. Then followed a confused period of debates in Parliament, appointment of committees, examination of witnesses, charges and counter-charges, after which the fugitives returned to Edinburgh, acknowledging to the King that the danger, though assuredly no mere fancy, was perhaps less pressing than they had been led to believe; and so the trouble passed gradually away. Such in substance is Clarendon's original version of what is known in Scottish history as the Incident, and two centuries of research have enabled us to add little to it. But such is not the version that first appeared in Clarendon's pages. Twenty years after he had finished the greater part of the History of the Rebellion, he began, in banishment at Montpellier, to write the history of his own life. Many passages were subsequently transferred from the more private narrative to the pages of the History, and among them one in which Montrose's share in the Incident takes a new and startling complexion. He is now directly charged with offering to play the assassin. No authority is vouchsafed for the new story. For the old one Charles, and indirectly Montrose himself, stand sponsors. Clarendon did not live to finally revise the transcript of his History, and we can only therefore conjecture his reasons for changing an intelligible, if meagre, narrative of events, matching well with all that has been subsequently learned concerning them, for a grave personal charge which there is no tittle of evidence to prove. Such as it was, however, the History was published with all its imperfections on its head, nor did the world learn till more than a century later that there was another version of this strange story, clearing the memory of a brave and honourable man from an odious imputation.[10]