ABSTRACT
The Ruthven Raid was a 10-month coup d’état that comprised the seizure of James VI by a coalition of nobility, at the end of August 1582 and his forcible captivity, first outside Perth and then in Stirling and Holyrood, until the end of May 1583. The main targets of the ‘Raiders’ were James’ French cousin, Esmé Stewart, Sieur d’Aubigny and Duke of Lennox, and Captain James Stewart of Ochiltree, the short-lived Earl of Arran. These two men had gradually wrested power from the regent James Douglas, Earl of Morton between 1578 and 1581, and their regime had grown increasingly rapacious of the lands and goods of others and increasingly disdainful of the Protestant and presbyterian settlement in the Scottish Kirk. The Raid resulted in Lennox’s permanent expulsion from Scotland (he left the country on 21 December and died in Paris in May of the following year), while Arran was held in close imprisonment at Ruthven Castle until 2 December and on his release was not allowed in the presence of the king. James accomplished his escape by arranging an extended progress and hunting trip to Linlithgow and Falkland in May 1583; while at the latter he made a daring flight on horseback to St Andrews, where he closed himself up in the castle of a slightly bemused Archbishop Patrick Adamson and held a convention to arrange his liberty.
