It was not to open warfare alone that Kirkcaldy’s enemies trusted to force him into subjection. Even before the resumption of hostilities, Morton had begun negotiations with the Queen’s Lords in other parts of the country. One after another, the Captain’s former associates fell away from him. Sir James Balfour was the first, Argyle, Huntly, Chastelherault, and the Hamiltons followed; and their submission made it hopeless and useless for the lesser men to stand out alone. By the beginning of April, the Privy Council was able to announce that ‘good peace was restored over all the country, the Castle of Edinburgh excepted.’
From another quarter too, there fell an unexpected blow. Through the treachery of his own wife, James Kirkcaldy, who had hitherto successfully acted as his brother’s agent with the Court of France, was captured, together with a considerable sum of money, which Mary had supplied from her dowry, and on which the Castilians were depending. Within the Castle, Maitland was as firm and uncompromising as the Governor himself; indeed, his enemies attributed the obstinate resistance of the soldier to the ‘enchantment’ cast over him by the statesman. But though the Secretary’s mental vigour was undiminished, his bodily health was so shattered that, when it was intended to discharge the heavy ordnance, he had to be carried down into the low vault of ‘David’s Tower,’ as he could not ‘abide the shot.’
For all this, there was no wavering on the part of Kirkcaldy. He felt the fullest confidence as to his ability to hold out, so long as he had Morton alone to deal with; and he believed that fear of irritating the French Court, and unwillingness to incur the heavy expenses of sending a siege train to Scotland might yet deter Elizabeth from lending active assistance to the Regent. In spite of the besiegers’ utmost efforts to prevent him, he continued the work of fortifying the Castle with earth, stone, and timber; and indeed, in his determination to ‘give the Earl of Morton and all his men of war enough to do to wait upon him,’ he omitted nothing that experience could suggest or courage carry out, to add to the natural strength of the fortress.
Unfortunately for the Captain, the six or seven score fighting men that made up his garrison were not all animated with the same spirit. Not one of them had ever stood a siege before, and the hardships which they had to undergo were beginning to tell on them both morally and physically. Obliged, with but little intermission, to fight their guns by day, and by night to repair the damage done to their outworks, and having to subsist on the one pint of water and the scant rations of salt-beef that Lady Kirkcaldy distributed to them daily, ‘they were all ill-like in the face with over-working or watching.’ They were beginning to feel too that there was no remedy or recompense to be looked for at Grange’s hands; and some of them, indeed, were already anxious to make terms for themselves. As the Captain’s increasing watchfulness left them no opportunity of communicating directly with the enemy, they cast a letter enclosed in a glove over the walls, trusting to the finder to take it to those for whom it was intended. It contained a request that, if there were any hope of mercy for the garrison, a certain sign should be made in a certain place, and they would come forth. On the part of Morton, nothing was left undone to foster this spirit of mutiny; and his secret agents were not only authorised to promise a free pardon in his name, to such as were already planning to desert from the Castle, but also to bribe the others, by distributing two thousand crowns amongst them.