Mention has already been made of Robert Lesley of Findrassie, the most relentless of all the creditors, who, according to Sir Thomas Urquhart's account of matters, made life bitter for him, and defeated his many schemes for the benefit of the human race. The injurious proceedings of this man form a subject which our author can never leave for any length of time, and to which it is necessary for his biographer to revert occasionally. His unfortunate debtor found a certain grim satisfaction, as well as an opportunity for gratifying his taste for genealogical research, in tracing Robert's descent from a celebrated murderer--that Norman Lesley whose hands were dipped in the blood of Cardinal Beaton. It is certain, however, that there was no real foundation for this opinion.[75] Unless Robert Lesley is a much-maligned man, his conduct towards the son of his patron was both rapacious and ungrateful. On one occasion at least he acted in a very high-handed manner. "With all the horse and foot he was able to command," says Sir Thomas, "he came in a hostile manner to take possession of a farm of mine called Ardoch; unto which ... he had no more just title then [than] to the town of Jericho mentioned in the Scriptures; and at the offer of such an indignity to our house, some of the hot-spirited gentlemen of our name would even then have taken him, with his three sons, bound them hand and foot, and thrown them within the flood-mark, into a place called the Yares of Udol, there to expect the coming of the sea in a full tide, to carry him along to be seized in a soil of a greater depth, and abler to restrain the insatiableness of his immense desires, then [than] any of my lands within the shire of Cromartie." Sir Thomas, according to his own account, hindered the perpetration of this violence, and gave his enemy and those who accompanied him "a pass and safe-conduct to their own houses."[76]