Meanwhile his chief advisers--d'Aubigny, now Duke of Lennox, and James Stewart, the destroyer of Morton, now, to the prejudice of the Hamiltons, Earl of Arran--were men whose private life, at least in Arran's case, was scandalous.

If Arran were a Protestant, he was impatient of the rule of the pulpiteers; and Lennox was working, if not sincerely in Mary's interests, certainly in his own and for those of the Catholic House of Guise.

At the same time he favoured the king's Episcopal schemes, and, late in 1581, appointed a preacher named Montgomery to the recently vacant Archbishopric of Glasgow, while he himself, like Morton, drew most of the revenues.

Hence arose tumults, and, late in 1581 and in 1582, priestly and Jesuit emissaries went and came, intriguing for a Catholic rising, to be supported by a large foreign force which they had not the slightest chance of obtaining from any quarter.

Archbishop Montgomery was excommunicated by the Kirk, and James, as we saw, had signed "A Negative Confession" (1581).
In 1582 Elizabeth was backing the exiled Presbyterian Earl of Angus and the Earl of Gowrie (Ruthven), while Lennox was contemplating a _coup d'etat_ in Edinburgh (August 27).