for a protestant than your grace is for a papist, I am sure he will look through his fingers to our doings, saying nothing to the same." * The queen hinted at scruple and reluctance. Lethington concluded,—" Let us guide the matter, and you shall see nothing but what is approved in parliament." This conversation was natural, if applied in its literal meaning to a legal divorce, which it was commonly believed that Thornton had been sent by the queen to solicit at Rome. † That it related solely to such a proceeding, is apparent from the number of persons who were present; from the scruples spoken of, as founded on two opposite systems of religion; and from the reference to a parliamentary ratification. It was necessary, for the honour of the queen, that the proposition to which she patiently listened, and to which she annexed serious conditions, should have been in its nature innocent. Mary's objection to a legal divorce was, by either system of religion, very forcible: for, on catholic principles, there could hardly be any dissolution of marriage except as a consequence of a sentence pronouncing its original nullity, which would bastardise the prince; while, according to the creed of the Scottish reformers, a divorce, allowing the innocent party to marry, was scarcely allowed; and the capital punishment of the offender was proposed as a preferable remedy. The reference to parliament demonstrates that a legal divorce only was contemplated at Craigmillar, and indeed it is not credible that men of sound mind, however depraved, should, so soon after a hurried and superficial reconciliation, trust each other so far as to consult together about a project for the most hazardous of murders. In order to make Moray a party to a black project, blind zeal has represented this conversation as a proposal to put Darnley to death, without adverting to the improbabilities now mentioned, and without considering that such a supposition brings on the queen the imputation of having patiently listened to a plan for the murder of her husband.

Keith's App. 138. This is the account laid by the queen's friends, Huntly and Argyle, before Elizabeth.

+ Randolph to Cecil, 25th April, 1566. Robertson's App. xvi.

+ Knox's Confession of Faith, 1560, article "Marriage," "Spottiswood, 172.

But the conversation at Craigmillar, though it did not contemplate violence, is a decisive proof of the daring hopes of Bothwell, and of the irrecoverable alienation of the queen from her undeserving husband. On the 2d of December, Le Croc despairs of a good understanding between Darnley and Mary, without a special interposition of Providence. "The king," says he, "will not humble himself enough; and the queen cannot see a single nobleman speak to him without suspecting a contrivance."* The baptism of the young prince was performed at Stirling on the 17th day of December, with due solemnity and magnificence, before the earl of Bedford, who was sent by Elizabeth, and the count de Brienne, who was chosen by Charles IX., to represent their sovereigns at this august ceremony, which deeply interested nations. Darnley alone, though mocked with the royal title, was excluded from the christening of his son, by the discouraging treatment which he received from the queen, and the universal alienation of the nobility: he desired an interview with Le Croc three times on the day of the baptism; but Le Croc answered, that, seeing he was in no good correspondence with the queen, the ambassador was instructed by the most Christian king to have no conference with him." +

66

While Darnley was thus degraded in the eyes of his country and of Europe,-while he was treated as one who had forfeited the outward distinctions of a husband and a father, to say nothing of his dignity as a titular king,Bothwell had been chosen to receive the two ambassadors, and to direct the ceremonial of the christening; a choice which displeased the nobility.‡ Darnley left Stirling privately, and without taking leave of the queen, on the evening of the 24th of December, to take shelter from such public affronts in his father's house at Glasgow. At the same time, Mary passed, the festive season of

Le Croc_evidently ascribes the estrangement as much, at least, to the queen as to Darnley.

+ Le Croc's despatch, 23d Dec. 1566.

Sir John Foster to Cecil, 4th Dec. 1566. Robertson's App. xvii.

*

Christmas at Drummond Castle and Tullibardine, the residences of two noble families in the neighbourhood. On hearing that her husband was attacked by the smallpox, she sent her physician to him. The visit which she at length made to him occurred at a remarkable moment. Her first known separation from Bothwell was in the end of January, 1567. About the 20th of that month, we learn from lord Morton's dying confession, that Bothwell went to Whittingham, and proposed to Morton to take a part in the murder of the king; which Morton refused without a written order of the queen, from whom Bothwell alleged that he had a verbal authority to propose this crime. † On the 20th of January, Mary speaks to her minister at Paris of her husband in the following terms: "For the king our husband, God knows our part towards him, and his behaviour and thankfulness are likewise well known to God and the world: our subjects see it, and in their hearts doubtless condemn it." Within a day of writing this letter Mary went to Glasgow, to persuade her husband to accompany her to Edinburgh, necessarily with the appearance of perfect reconciliation, and probably with those professions of affection which, in so close a relation, were necessary to obliterate all the angry remembrances of a long and apparently eternal quarrel. It may be doubted whether there be any instance of heartfelt forgiveness by a proud and beautiful queen, who had suffered such indignities as Darnley poured on her during the murder of Rizzio. But if she abstained from retaliation, and had silenced vindictive passion, the merit of her magnanimity would be rather tarnished than brightened by an affectation of tenderness for the assassin of her minister and the slanderer of her own honour. Such forgiveness was rendered more difficult by the innumerable proofs of displeasure which seemed so many public pledges of her steadiness. If she ever remitted her dissatisfaction, it seems only to have been when she had a purpose to serve. Within a few

236.

There was then only one medical practitioner in Scotland.-Scaligerana, † State Trials, i.

+ Keith.

weeks of the day when the French minister pronounced her resentment to be inflexible, she gave marks of reconciliation. If she was really reconciled, the striking appearance of hypocrisy in her conduct render her the most unfortunate of women; if she feigned reconciliation for sinister ends, it must be owned that her fault had no extenuation, and that the only excuse for speaking of her in lenient language must be found in the glimpse of her succeeding misfortunes which shoots across the story of her transgressions, and checks the pen about to relate them in more adequate language.

On the 31st of January, 1567, Mary brought her husband to Edinburgh. Representing Craigmillar as too distant, and Holyrood House as too noisy a dwelling for an invalid, she placed him in a lone house, called the Kirk of Field, situated in the fields to the southward of the city, not far from the spot which the southeast angle of the university now occupies. After his arrival, Darnley (says sir James Melville) suspected that the earl of Bothwell had some enterprise against him.* Here Mary paid him frequent visits, and caused a bed-chamber to be fitted up for herself under his apartment, where she sometimes slept.

On the evening of Sunday the 9th of February, being attended by Bothwell and other courtiers, she remained there till after ten o'clock, when she returned to the palace to be present at a masque given on occasion of the marriage of Margaret Carwood, one of her attendants, to Bastien, a French servant. Between two and three o'clock the inhabitants of Edinburgh, then a small town, were suddenly awakened by a tremendous shock, as it seemed to them, of thunder and earthquake. As soon as the day dawned, it was discovered that the king's house had been blown up, and his body carried to a little distance from it, where it was found without any external marks of violence.†

Melville, 174.

The first account ascribed the death of Henry to the explosion, (letter of Mary to the archbishop of Glasgow, 11th Feb. 1567. Keith, pref. viii.) It was afterwards thought more probable that he was suffocated, and

On the 10th the privy council published a proclamation, offering a reward of 20007. sterling to any one who could discover the murderers. In six days after,

The privy

The

a bold placard was affixed on the walls throughout the city, charging the murder on Bothwell and those among his followers who were afterwards ascertained to have shared his guilt, and expressly accusing the queen as having been a party to this deed of blood. council required the accusers to come forward. anonymous writer was James Murray*, a brother of sir William Murray, of Tullibardine; and he replied, in a second placard, that he was ready to appear on the following Sunday, with four witnesses, if the money were deposited in safe hands, and if Bastien and Joseph Rizzio were apprehended and committed to prison: so general and immediate was the outcry against Bothwell, and so early did it extend to Mary. The council did not choose to risk an answer. The earl of Lenox wrote a letter to Mary demanding the trial of the murderers of his son almost on the same day with Murray's second placard; and soon after desired that a meeting of the nobility and of the other estates should be held at the time of the trials. On the 17th of March, after an evasive and unfriendly correspondence, Lenox required the apprehension of Bothwell, with his partisans Balfour, Chalmers, and Spence; to whom were added three of the queen's servants, Bastien, Bordeaux, and Joseph Rizzio, the brother of David. On the 24th, she answered this letter unsatisfactorily, passing over in silence the requisition to commit the accused, and informing Lenox that the trial was to be held on the 12th of April; which was accordingly done fourteen days after, in an age when it was the common course to give forty days' notice to all parties

carried out before the explosion; which was designed to conceal the manner of his death. Mr. Hume inclines to the former opinion, which has the difficulty of supposing that a hody thrown on the ground by such a shock should have received no outward hurt. On the other hand, it does not seem that the explosion could conceal the suffocation, or indeed answer any purpose. Perhaps the most reasonable explanation is, that some part of what is attributed to deep design ought to be ascribed to the confusion incident to a criminal enterprise.

* James Murray, of Purdoves.- Douglas Peer. of Scotland (Wood's ed.), 1. 146.