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The Tudors and the Stuarts: Grange

When (as Miss Strickland relates) Mary fled from her capital to begin the disastrous campaign which closed at Carberry, most of her jewels were in Edinburgh Castle, and they remained there after the fortress surrendered to the Regent Moray. He gave it in keeping to Kirkaldy, of Grange, and when that mirror of Scottish knighthood, yielding to his own chivalrous impulses, and to the persuasive eloquence of Lethington, passed over to the queen's side on the death of Moray, the castle and its contents remained with him. During the three years it was held for the queen, her diamonds were the garrison's chief source of credit. In 1570 when Grange was straining every nerve to strengthen its defences, he seems to have sent some of the queen's jewels, dresses, and hangings to be sold in London. But the watchful ministers of the English queen not only stopped the sale, on the pretext that (as they affirmed) it was without Mary's consent, but ordered the articles to be detained. The English market being thus closed against him, Grange turned elsewhere. It is related that his brother appeared in Leith Roads, in a little bark, laden with munitions and stores bought in France with the price of a parcel of the queen's diamonds.