The offence was lightly passed over, but when the earls, with Crawford and Montrose, drew to a head in the north, James, with much more than his usual spirit, headed the army which advanced against them: they fled from him near Aberdeen, surrendered, and were for a brief time imprisoned.

As nobody knows how Fortune's wheel may turn, and as James, hard pressed by the preachers, could neglect no chance of support, he would never gratify the Kirk by crushing the Catholic earls, by temperament he was no persecutor.

His calculated leniency caused him years of trouble.
Meanwhile James, after issuing a grotesque proclamation about the causes of his spirited resolve, sailed in October to woo a sea-king's daughter over the foam, the Princess Anne of Denmark.

After happy months passed, he wrote, "in drinking and driving ower," he returned with his bride in May 1590.
The General Assembly then ordered prayers for the Puritans oppressed in England; none the less Elizabeth, the oppressor, continued to patronise the plots of the Puritans of Scotland.

They now lent their approval to the foe of James's minister, Maitland, namely, the wild Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, a sister's son of Mary's Bothwell.