In retaliation Arran occupied and stripped his castle at Crichton, whereupon Bothwell in November sent Arran a challenge, which the latter declined.
In 1577 Crichton was undoubtedly in Paris, but his career on the continent is difficult to follow.
Urquhart (in his Discovery of a most exquisite jewel) states that while in Paris Crichton successfully held a dispute in the college of Navarre, on any subject and in twelve languages, and that the next day he won a tilting match at the Louvre.
There is, however, no contemporary evidence for this, the only certain facts being that for two years Crichton served in the French army, and that in 1579 he arrived in Genoa.
In the second, which took place in the Church of St John and St Paul, and lasted three days, he undertook to refute innumerable errors in Aristotelians, mathematicians and schoolmen, to conduct his dispute either logically or by the secret doctrine of numbers, &c. According to Aldus, who attended the debate and published an account of it in his dedication to Crichton prefixed to Cicero's "Paradoxa" (1581), the young Scotsman was completely successful.
