Among numberless skirmishes, surprises, and barbarous ravagings which
marked the struggle between the friends of the queen and those of the
infant king, was an affair of several parts or acts in this and the
ensuing month. Lord Maxwell being contracted in marriage to a sister of
the Earl of Angus, the lady’s relation, the Earl of Morton, proposed to
give a banquet on the occasion at Dalkeith Castle. The wine required
at the feast was to be brought in carts from Leith, together with some
venison and a quantity of silver plate. Kirkaldy and his friends in
the castle hearing of this, sent out a party of horse, which surprised
Morton’s servants, and took as spoil the materials of the proposed
banquet. Morton who, it was said, smarted more from the loss of the
plate than the killing of a few of his servants in the struggle,
immediately sent a party to requite Kirkaldy’s attack by laying waste
his estate in Fife. Kirkaldy, again, repaid these attentions by sending
a party a few nights after to set fire to the town of Dalkeith. On this
occasion, he killed ten of Morton’s people, and took nine prisoners.
‘In their return [they] perceived fifty-sax horses from Dalkeith to
Leith, passing laded with ale; they brake the barrels, and made prey
of the horses, and brought into Edinburgh many kye and oxen forth of
that lordship for supply of their scant and hunger.’--_H. K. J._ ‘These
three scuffles went all under one name, and were ever after called
_Lord Maxwell’s Handfasting_.’[79]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1572.