When it was found that no punishment was to follow that "enormitie and fearful attemptal," but that "nightly masking" and riotous behaviour continued, some of the lords took the matter in their own hands, and a great band known as "my Lord Duke his friends" took the causeway to keep order in the town. When the news was brought to Earl Bothwell that the Hamiltons were "upon the gait," there were vows made on his side that "the Hamiltons should be driven not only out of the town but out of the country." The result, however, of this sudden surging up of personal feud to strengthen the bitterness of the quarrel between licence and repression, was that the final authorities were roused to make the fray an affair of State; and Murray and Huntly were sent from the abbey with their companies to stop the impending struggle. These sudden night tumults, the din of the struggle and clashing of the swords, the gleaming torches of the force who came to keep order, were sights very familiar to Edinburgh. But this fray brings upon us, prominent in the midst of the nightly brawls, the dark and ominous figure whose trace in history is so black, so brief, and so disastrous--once only had he appeared clearly before, when he intercepted in the interest of the Queen Regent the money sent from England to the Congregation. Now it is in a very different guise. Bothwell, as probably the ringleader in the disorders of the young nobles, was apparently the only person punished. He was confined to his own lodging, and it was apparently at this time that he sought the intervention of Knox, who seems to have been the universal referee. Knox gladly granted his prayer for an interview, which was brought him by a citizen of Edinburgh, with whom the riotous Earl had dealings. No doubt the Reformer expected a new convert; and indeed Bothwell had his preliminary shrift to make, and confessed his repentance of his previous action against the Congregation, which he said was done "by the entysements of the Queen Regent." But the Earl's object was not entirely of this pious kind. He informed Knox that he had offended the Earl of Arran, and that he was most anxious to recover that gentleman's favour, on the ground, apparently, that a feud with so great a personage compelled him to maintain a great retinue, "a number of wicked and unprofitable men, to the utter destruction of my living."