and received the lands and earldom of Lennox, the custody of Dumbarton Castle, and the office of chamberlain. The young James VI was declared to have reached his majority and formally began his personal rule with some ceremony in Edinburgh in September 1579, and the period of the Regents was concluded. On 31 December 1580, an associate of Lennox, James Stuart, Earl of Arran, son of Lord Ochiltree and brother-in-law of John Knox, had the daring to accuse Morton at a meeting of the council in Holyrood of complicity in the murder of Darnley, and he was at once committed to custody in Holyroodhouse and taken to Dumbarton Castle in the Lennox heartland. Some months later Morton was condemned by an assize, presided over by John Graham, Lord Hallyards, for having taken part in Darnley's murder, and the verdict was justified by his confession that the Earl of Bothwell had revealed to him the design, although he denied participation, "art and part", in its execution. Execution Morton was brought to Edinburgh on 30 May 1581 and confined in the house of Robert Gourlay on the Royal Mile around 100m from his execution site. He was accompanied by a servant, William Stewart, who witnessed that he slept well on the night after he was condemned. Before his execution Morton made a confession in a conversation with John Durie and Walter Balcanquhall. He was executed on 2 June 1581, attended by James Lawson of St Giles. The method of his execution was the Maiden, an early form of guillotine modelled on the Halifax gibbet. According to tradition, he brought it personally from England, having been "impressed by its clean work", but doubt has been cast on this. It was actually ordered to be made by Edinburgh's Town Council in 1564. David Hume of Godscroft appears to have initiated the Morton legend in his History of the House of Douglas (1644). Morton's corpse remained on the scaffold for the following day, until it was taken for burial in an unmarked grave at Greyfriars Kirkyard. His head, however, remained on "the prick on the highest stone", (a spike) on the north gable of the ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh (outside St Giles Cathedral) for eighteen months, until it was ordered to be reunited with his body in December 1582. Morton's final resting place is reputedly marked by a small sandstone post incised with the initials