All that remained was to reduce the Castle. Its defenders numbered less than two hundred men. The city and the surrounding country were--as far as preaching and praying went--vehemently anti-Marian. The Regent had now no other military task on his hands. Elizabeth might well complain when she was told that unless she sent an army and paid the Scotch Protestants to co-operate with it, the Castle could not be taken. For some time she resisted this thoroughly Scotch demand. But at last she yielded to Morton’s importunity. Sir William Drury marched in from Berwick, did the job, and marched back again (May 1573). Among the captives were the brilliant Maitland of Lethington, once the most active of Anglophiles, and Kirkaldy of Grange, who had begun the Scottish Reformation by the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and had taken Mary prisoner at Carberry Hill. A politician who did not turn his coat at least once in his life was a rare bird in Scotland. Maitland died a few days after his capture, probably by his own hand. Kirkaldy was hanged by his old friend Morton. By taking Edinburgh Castle Elizabeth did not earn any gratitude from the party who had called her in. What they wanted, and always would want, was money. Morton himself, treading in the steps of his old leader Moray, remained an unswerving Anglophile. But his coadjutors told the English ambassador plainly that, if they could not get money from England, they could and would earn it from France. Elizabeth’s councillors were always teasing her to comply with these impudent demands. If there had been a grown-up King on the throne, a man with a will of his own, and whose right to govern could not be contested, it might have been worth while to secure his good-will by a pension; and this was what Elizabeth did when James became real ruler of the country. But she did not believe in paying a clique of greedy lords to call themselves the English party. An English party there was sure to be, if only because there was a French party. Their services would be neither greater nor smaller whether they were paid or unpaid. The French poured money into Scotland, and were worse served than Elizabeth, who kept her money in her treasury. It was no fault of Elizabeth if the conditions of political life in Scotland during the King’s minority were such that a firmly established government was in the nature of things impossible.