THe MarriaGE OF JOHN, Lord MAXxweELt. 123 
The Earl of Morton, Chancellor and afterwards Regent, 
was the uncle of the bride, being her father’s younger brother. 
He was also the uncle, by marriage, of the bridegroom. He 
had married the youngest of the three daughters and co-heirs 
of James Douglas, third Earl of Morton, a marriage to which 
he owed his title and his castle and lands of Dalkeith. Lord 
Maxwell’s mother was the second of these co-heirs, and after 
the execution of his uncle, the Regent Morton, in 1581, he 
succeeded in getting himself created Earl of Morton and in 
obtaining some of the Morton lands, a business which led to 
much trouble later on, owing to the subsequent rescinding of 
the Regent’s forfeiture. 
The rest of the career of this Lord Maxwell or Earl of 
Morton is related in Sir William Fraser’s Book of Carlave- 
vock and in the Dictionary of National Biography. His end 
came some twenty years or more after his marriage with 
Elizabeth Douglas, when he was defeated and slain by his 
hereditary foes, the Johnstones, at Dryfesands, near Locker- 
bie, in December, 1593. In the Book of Carlaverock there 
appears a letter from Lord Herries, dated 11th December, 
1593, inviting Sir John Maxwell of Pollok to the ‘‘ buriall "’ of 
Lord Maxwell ‘‘ vpon Soneday, the penult of December 
instant,’’ and no doubt some sort of funeral celebration was 
held on that day at the family burial-place at Lincluden. No 
‘* buriall,’’ however, took place; for some years iater, on the 
16th February, 1597-8, the Privy Council considered complaints 
that had been made that the ‘* bodyis of umquhile James, Erll 
of Murray, and Johnne, Lord Maxwell,’’ had been ‘‘ sa many 
yeiris unburyit, to the offens of God and sclender of his 
worde.’’ The Council ordered the representatives of those 
lords to cause them to be ‘‘ bureyit in the accustumat buriall 
placeis of thair predicessouris, within twentie dayis nixt 
eftir thay be chargeit thairto, under the pane of rebellion and 
putting of thame to the horne.’’!! The Earl of Moray men- 
tioned was the “‘ bonnie Earl of Moray,’’ who, like Maxwell, 
had come to a violent end, having been killed by his enemy, 
11 R.P.C., vol. v., pp. 444-445, 
