Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/369

 637;, Memoirs, p. 37). Afterwards he was captured and sent a prisoner to Stirling Castle (ib. p. 38), but was released on 25 Oct. on condition that he should remain within the sheriffdom of Ayr (ib. p. 41). After the fall of Arran in 1586 he was taken prisoner by Lord Hamilton and sent to Edinburgh, but was there set at liberty (ib. p. 56). On 26 March 1587 he was sent to treat of a renewal of the league with France (, iv. 612); and on his return he accused the master of Gray of having endeavoured to obtain a knowledge of the letters with which he had been entrusted to France, of having trafficked with France and Spain for the subversion of religion, and of having consented to the death of Queen Mary. Both were thereupon committed to ward in the castle of Edinburgh, but after further hearing of the case Stewart was set at liberty, the master being found guilty (ib. p. 613;, Memoirs, p. 63; , ii. 373). In May 1588 he was commissioned to pursue John, lord Maxwell [q. v.], and, after capturing him in a cave on 5 June, obtained the surrender of the castle of Lochmaben on the 9th, when the captain, David, brother of Lord Maxwell, was hanged, with five of his men, before the castle gate (, iv. 678;, ii. 384;, p. 68). On 10 July 1588 he had a controversy, in the king's presence, with Francis Stewart Hepburn, fifth earl of Bothwell [q. v.], when each gave the other the lie; and, after the king crossed the Forth a brawl occurred on 30 July between them in the High Street of Edinburgh. Sir William stabbed one of Bothwell's followers, whereupon he was attacked by Bothwell, and, after being stabbed with a rapier, fled to a hollow cellar in the Blackfriars Wynd, where he was despatched (30 July 1588).

[Histories by Calderwood and Spotiswood; David Moysie's Memoirs and Sir James Melville's Memoirs in the Bannatyne Club.] 

STEWART, WILLIAM (fl. 1575–1603) of Houston, soldier and diplomatist, was, according to De Thou, an illegitimate son of some Scottish noble (, Marie Stuart, p. 100), but Douglas and others make him to be the younger son of Thomas Stewart of Galston by Isabel Henderson, his wife (, Genealogy of the Royal Family). Tytler, David Laing, and others confuse him with Sir William Stewart of Monkton (d. 1588) [q. v.] and with Sir William Stewart of Caverstoun, who was captain of Dumbarton castle from 1580 to 1585. According to Calderwood (iv. 448), Sir William of Houston ‘was, as is constantly reported, first a cloutter of old shoes. He went to the Low Countries first as a soldier, then as a captain, and last as a colonel.’ He is probably the ‘William Stewart, servant to Lady Lennox,’ who was reported (13 Oct. 1572) to be passing through Berwick prepared to give Burghley certain information (which he afterwards did give) regarding the proceedings of Du Croc in Scotland (Cal. State Papers, For.) He was certainly the Mr. William Stewart who despatched to Burghley from the Low Countries news of military affairs in the summer of 1575, and wrote from Rotterdam in the October of that year that he had received a commission from the Prince of Orange to serve with three hundred Scots, and therefore craved license to transport pikes and corslets from England, as he doubted if arms could be purchased at reasonable prices in his own country. In 1579–80 Colonel Stewart, who was for some time quartered at Brussels, had under his command eight companies (, Troubles, ii. 512, iii. 382). Great efforts were now being made by the Spaniards, in conjunction with Mary Stuart, to entice or bribe the Scots to abandon the service of the Dutch or to betray their fortresses. Balfour was reported to be already wavering; and Stewart, who was said to be much under the influence of Mary's ambassador at Paris (April 1580), was ‘to be sounded.’ The queen herself wrote (October 1581) to urge her Scottish friends to withdraw, and in particular promised Colonel Stewart a good pension in Scotland (Cal. State Papers, Spanish, iii. 27, 184). He had meanwhile married a Flemish wife, the widow of the Count of Mandercheit (, Les Huguenots, vi. 147). There is no evidence that Stewart accepted the bribe referred to, but within twelve months he made his appearance in Scotland, having for some reason forfeited his wife's dowry, and was acting contrary to expectation with the English and anti-catholic party which came into power after the Ruthven raid. He was appointed one of the commissioners at the general assembly of the kirk in 1582, and captain of the king's guard. In the following April he was sent with John Colville [q. v.] on an embassy to England, where he was well received by Queen Elizabeth, who presented him with a valuable chain. His object was to cement the friendship with England, and to procure, if possible, a large sum of money for James. Mauvissière, in his disgust, described him as ‘ung pauvre aventurier escossois,’ and discovered in him a passion for money-making. Some divergence in his policy from that of his colleague, Colville, soon made itself felt, and