his wife being a gentlewoman honourably descended being sister to the right Honourable Earl of Athol, and to Sir Patrick Murray Knight; she being both inwardly and outwardly plentifully adorned with the gifts of grace and nature: so that our cheer was more than sufficient; and yet much less than they could afford us. There stayed there four days, four Earls, one Lord, divers Knights and Gentlemen, and their servants, footmen and horses; and every meal four long tables furnished with all varieties: our first and second course being three score dishes at one board; and after that always a banquet: and there if I had not forsworn wine till I came to Edinburgh I think I had there drunk my last.
The fifth day with much ado we gate from thence to Tarnaway, a goodly house of the Earl of Murrays,[1] where that Right Honourable Lord and his Lady did welcome us four days more. There was good cheer in all variety, with somewhat more than plenty for advantage: for indeed the County of Murray is the most pleasantest and plentiful country in all Scotland; being plain land, that a coach may be driven more than four and thirty miles one way in it, alongst by the sea-coast.
From thence I went to Elgin in Murray,[2] an ancient City, where there stood a fair and beautiful church with three steeples, the walls of it and the
