Balcarras was taken and confined, first in his own house, and then in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.
But to seize Dundee was not so easy an enterprise.

As soon as he heard that warrants were out against him, he crossed the Dee with his followers, and remained a short time in the wild domains of the House of Gordon.

There he held some communications with the Macdonalds and Camerons about a rising.

But he seems at this time to have known little and cared little about the Highlanders.

For their national character he probably felt the dislike of a Saxon, for their military character the contempt of a professional soldier.