Captain Thomas Crawford of Jordanhill led a daring night escalade of Dumbarton Rock in April 1571, one of the most remarkable special operations of the sixteenth century. Crawford had obtained detailed intelligence from a deserter about a climbable route up the western face of the rock. He led about a hundred men in darkness, carrying ladders, up the sheer basalt cliffs. Guards who might have given the alarm were found to be asleep or drunk. The garrison was overwhelmed before it could resist. Archbishop John Hamilton — the leading Marian churchman and the man who had arranged the Regent Moray's assassination — was caught in the castle and subsequently hanged at Stirling, denying the Marians their most senior clerical leader.
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