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 Gordon imprisonment in the castle of Edinburgh from October to March, he was forced to pay a heavy fine, was deprived of the governorship of Orkney, and, though allowed to retain the office of chancellor, had to deliver up the seal to De Roubay, a Frenchman, who was appointed to act as vice-chancellor. The severity of the punishment inflicted on him can only be accounted for by jealousy of the extraordinary power wielded by him in the north. His rule there was much more formidable than that of Argyll in the west, for it embraced a rich tract of lowland territory, including the city of Aberdeen, from which he obtained a large revenue; and he appears to have made special efforts to render himself within his own territory practically independent of the crown.

As a special friend of James V and of Cardinal Beaton, Huntly was naturally biassed towards catholicism; but the severity of the queen regent induced him to abandon it for a short period at the very moment when its fate in Scotland was trembling in the balance. He kept always a watchful eye on the queen regent's attempts to render herself independent of the nobles, and build up a monarchical power on the model of that of France. When she proposed to levy a yearly taxation for the maintenance of a standing army, he persuaded the nobility to resent it, as tending to diminish their authority and ‘drawe the whole government of the realm to the French.’ In the conflict with the lords of the congregation he therefore did not take so prominent a part as, from his catholic sympathies, he would otherwise have done. When the lords in June 1559 were preparing to besiege the city of Perth, he headed a deputation to induce them to delay the assault; but, as his remonstrances were unheeded, he left the city before the assault took place. Subsequently he headed a deputation from the queen regent to confer with the lords at Prestonpans. When the lords on 24 July signed the articles agreeing to vacate Edinburgh on certain conditions, Huntly and James Hamilton, duke of Chatelherault, agreed to undertake to join the lords if the queen regent ‘broke any one joyt of the appointment then made’ (ib. p. 379). While the queen regent's party held Edinburgh, he endeavoured to persuade the reformers to permit mass to be said before and after their sermons, but, finding that they would not agree, promised that they should be in no way molested (ib. p. 391). Ultimately the reformers appear to have worked successfully on his jealousy of the queen regent's ambition; for in January 1559-60 he sent the Earl of Sutherland to promise them in his name all assistance (, State Papers, i. 685), and on the ground that the introduction of French soldiers by her was dangerous to the independence of Scotland, he with the Duke of Chatelherault subscribed the treaty of Berwick between the lords and Queen Elizabeth (, ii. 53). On 25 April 1560 he joined the camp of the congregation at Leith (Randolph to Norfolk, 25 April, Cal. State Papers, Scott. Ser. i. 144), and on the 27th signed a bond for the defence of the reformed doctrines and the expulsion of the French. He had, however, taken good care to stipulate that he should be continued in supreme authority in the north as heretofore, and that none of the escheated ecclesiastical lands within the shires of Aberdeen, Banff, Moray, Nairn, and Inverness should be disposed of without his consent and advice (‘The Requests of the Earl of Huntly to the Lords,’ printed in History). The defection of Huntly broke the power of the queen regent, and inflicted a blow on the catholic cause from which it never recovered. The queen regent, at her deathbed interview with Argyll and others, asserted that but for Huntly she would have come sooner to an agreement with the lords; but such a statement is opposed to all other evidence, and only indicates how deeply she was offended at Huntly's desertion.

Huntly's support of the reformers was merely a temporary expedient to secure his independent authority in the north of Scotland. Throckmorton, writing to Cecil 4 May 1561, refers to his ‘doubleness and covetousness;’ and while seeming to ‘approve’ of the mission of Lord James Stuart to the north for the destruction of the ‘monuments of idolatry’ (, Works, ii. 168), it was afterwards proved that he had preserved at his mansionhouse at Strathbogie the utensils of Aberdeen Cathedral, that they might be restored when catholicism was again established. On the death of Francis II of France, Mary's husband, Huntly sent Leslie, afterwards bishop of Ross, to France, to induce Mary on her return to Scotland to land at Aberdeen, where he promised to have twenty thousand men at her disposal to convey her to Edinburgh (, p. 294;, ii. 121). During the absence of Lord James Stuart in France Huntly also formed a plot for the seizure of the castle of Edinburgh; but news of his intentions reaching the protestants, it was prevented (, ii. 156). On the arrival of Mary he was chosen a lord of the privy council (Reg. Privy Council Scotl. i. 157), but whatever encouragement he may have privately received from Mary and the Guises, no special marks of favour were publicly bestowed on him. Apparently Mary had meanwhile 