The book Arran; - Cook Clan

90 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
change in good time. Two sons of the Sheriff of Bute, who>
as we have seen, held lands in Arran, had seized the castle
of Brodick (Braidwik), slain its keeper George Tait, and
burned and destroyed ' the Castle and Place.' These were
Archibald and Robert Stewart, who thereafter found refuge
in Galloway, where their ' M'Dowell ' hosts were prosecuted
for hospitality to rebels ' at the horn.' ^
Of such diversions of the island loneliness a more serious
example of the external type has already been alluded to,
when the Earl of Lennox in 1544, acting for Henry viii.,
made his foray on the Firth of Clyde ; Lennox, too, having^
found himself politically outplayed by the Hamilton family.
One of his comrades on this occasion was a certain ' Thomas
Byschop,' who has reason later on to recall to the mind of
Queen Elizabeth's minister, William Cecil, his ' exploettes
(exploits) done at Arrane, Bewte, Dynnone in Argill,' for
which he was, at Boulogne, embraced by the fat king him-
self and accorded a pension. ^ Bishop, be it noted, was like
Lennox a Scot, being of Ochiltree in Ayrshire ; wherefore
he, too, like the Earl, was forfeited by the Scottish parliament,
a consolation which may or may not have reached
the ears of his victims. A like adventure is reported to
the Queen (Mary of England) in September of 1558, when the
Earl of Sussex proceeded with a squadron of ships from
Dublin to Kintyre, where he ' burned the hole Cantyre
from thens (he) went to Arren and did the lyke there,' and
so to the Cumbraes, sustaining, however, some loss by the
sudden rising of ' a terrybell tempeste,' ^ just as Hakon of
Norway had once done in the same season and place. The
houses and humble gear of a defenceless peasantry go up
in flames—these are the ' exploits '
; and the regardless
politicians and their tools fall into each other's arms with
1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. i. p. 139.
2 Calendar of State Papers, Scottish Series, vol. i. No. 1076.
3 Ibid., Irish Series (1609-73), p. 149.
;