Biggar and the House of Fleming

CHAPTER XXV.
Jjistorkal $iu3tdi£s xxf the Fleming Familtj-
Continued.
HE Castle of Dumbarton, situated on a lofty and
precipitous rock, and nearly surrounded by the
Firth of Clyde, was in early times deemed impreg-
nable. The use of battering artillery, at the time
of which we are now speaking, 1571, was as yet but httle
known, and a blockade seemed unavailing, after the abundant
supplies which the garrison had recently obtained from France.
Captain Thomas Crawford of Jordanhill, a keen partisan of the
Regent Lennox, was therefore entrusted with the apparently
desperate enterprise of taking the Castle by escalade, during
the darkness of night. He called to his aid the Laird of
Drumwhassal, a skilful and intrepid soldier, and several other
men of known courage, particularly a person of the name of
Robertson, who at one time had been a member of the garrison,
and was intimately acquainted with the fortifications and
acclivities of the rock. The party assembled at Glasgow on
the 2d of April 1571, and provided themselves with "ledderis,
coardis, crawes," and other necessary implements, and de-
spatched a few of their number to stop all travellers to the
west, so that no intelligence of the intended enterprise might
be conveyed to the Governor, Lord Fleming. Having ap-
pointed the Hill of Dumbuck, within a mile of Dumbarton, as
the general rendezvous, they set out by different routes about
an hour before sunset, and it was past midnight before they
reached the foot of the rock. " The geat with the gilteane
horn," as Richard Bannatyne styles Lord Fleming, and the
other inmates of the Castle, with exception of a warder or two,
had retired to rest, undisturbed by a single apprehension of an