Note 48 — Part I. Historical.

Lord Maxwell had been banished the realm for the slaughter of the Laird of Johnstone; but returning into Scotland in 1612, he had sought and obtained the hospitality of his friend the Earl of Caithness, whose countess was Lord Maxwell's cousin. In the hope of obtaining a reward from the king and favour from the Court and Privy Council, this Earl of Caithness, with the aid of Captain George Sinclair, delivered Lord Maxwell to the Council, and he was hanged at Edinburgh in the year 1613.

In the account given of this treacherous transaction by Sir Robert Gordon, it is mentioned that Captain George Sinclair was at that time "preparing himself for Sweden," and that the earl had sent him into Caithness to seize Maxwell, "under pretence of taking up men for his voyage to Sweden." The historian adds, that while the Earl of Caithness never obtained his expected reward, Captain George Sinclair "came to his deserved end" in Norway; and his version of the affair is, that as Sinclair "would not be persuaded by Colonel Ramsay to stay for him until he could be ready also to go," "he went forward with Captain Hay into Sweden," and so ran "headlong to his own destruction."—("History of the Earldom of Sutherland.") His brother, John Sinclair, was killed in the same year (1612) at Thurso.

Sir Robert Gordon is, however, not quite reliable in his account of that transaction, for he says that George Sinclair, "hearing of the wars then likely to fall out, and which ensued shortly between the Kings of Denmark and Sweden, he gathered together 150 men in Caithness. Having made up this company, he joins with Colonel Ramsay and Captain Hay to go into Sweden." The Calmar War commenced in the spring of 1611, a year before the levies were made in Scotland; and we have seen that Sinclair had arranged with Lieutenant-Colonel Ramsay and Captain Hay to raise one hundred men each (the strength of a company of infantry in those days), and that only three hundred men were landed by them in Romsdalen.