of a trial for treason. A fortnight was thus left to a father to prepare for the prosecution of the assassins of his son; while Bothwell, the known leader of these assassins, sat in the council which appointed the day of trial *, and lived openly in the residence of the queen, whether at Seaton or at Edinburgh. Her servants, who were publicly charged as his accomplices, were at large in the palace: there seemed little hope of even a semblance of justice in a prosecution thus hurried on against culprits so powerful or so protected.

Yet Mary was not left without warning: her faithful servant, archbishop Beaton, in a letter to her from Paris, on the 9th of March (which must have been before her when she fixed the collusive trial) addressed her in language of affectionate fervour, to the following effect:“Madam,—You are wrongfully calumniated as the prime mover of all the evil done in Scotland, which is said to be by your command. From what your majesty writes to me yourself, I can conclude nothing but that, since God has preserved you to take a rigorous vengeance, if it be not actually taken, it appears to me better in this world that you had lost life and all. Alas! madam, all over Europe, there is no subject so common as your majesty and your realm; and it is for the most part interpreted in the most sinister sense. I beseech you to establish that reputation which has hitherto prevailed of your virtue: otherwise I fear that this is but the first act of a tragedy; which I pray God to avert."+ Had it been possible that a woman of Mary's understanding was only an instrument in the hands of her secret enemies, the honest voice of her faithful servant must have awakened her to a sense of her danger. The tidings of the murder were accompanied at London by the imputation of the crime to Bothwell. The unexpected

See the list of privy counsellors present on that day, in Anderson's Collections, i. p. 50.; extracted verbatim from the records of the Scottish privy council.

+ Keith, pref. ix., somewhat modernised, and with the omission of what seems unimportant.

Cabala, 125. Cecil to sir Thomas Smith at Paris, 20th February, 1566.

reserve of Robert Melville, the Scotch envoy, excited suspicions among the English ministers. Cecil mentions to Norris, then at Paris, some days later, that the placards involved the queen, in language which the wary statesman held best to be suppressed.* "Common speech," he adds, " touches Bothwell and Huntly, who remain with the queen;" and, on the 21st of March, he informs the same minister, that "common fame in Scotland continueth upon Bothwell, and the queen's name is not well spoken of." On the 9th of March, Lenox so strongly felt his helpless situation as to implore the aid of Elizabeth, whom he had little reason to consider as a friend. Elizabeth, when she discerned that there was an intention to defeat his just resentment by a pretended trial, and to consummate the dishonour of the queen of Scots by an unhallowed marriage, addressed a letter to Mary, which does credit to the writer, and aggravates the guilt of her to whom it was written in vain :— "For the love of God, madam, exert your prudence and sincerity, so that the world may with reason clear you of a crime so enormous that, if you were guilty, it would degrade you from the rank of a princess. Speaking to you as I should to a daughter, I declare that I should rather prefer for you an honoured grave than a spotted life." || Nor was this all. Of Mary's friends, the most experienced and sagacious was sir James Melville, "true to his queen, but not a slave of state,"—who, of all the writers of that age, has made the nearest approach to impartiality. Though he was too honest to deny the queen's share in the death of her husband, his conviction, which was proved sufficiently by his silence, did not extinguish his loyal attachment. He showed to her a letter from Bishop, one of her most zealous partisans in Eng*Cabala, 125. Cecil to sir Thomas Smith at Paris, 20th February, 1566. + Ibid. His letter is in the State Paper Office.

But

The letter is written in French. The word rendered "degrade," is "esboyer;" which, according to an ancient French dictionary, is derived from boyaux," and must have signified ejection, in a coarse sense. how far its original grossness may have been mitigated by the usage of that age, it is impossible now to determine.

Elizabeth to Mary, after alluding to her letters by Le Croc about three weeks before, which, from the allusion, must have been of the same tendency, though perhaps less decisively expressed. Robertson's App. xix.

land, in which it was said, "that it was rumoured that she was about to marry Bothwell, the murderer of her husband; which he could not believe, by reason of her noble wit and qualities. If she marries him, she will lose the favour of God, her own reputation, and the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland."*

Maxwell, lord Herries, a chivalrous loyalist, who kept the field for Mary in her most adverse and hopeless fortunes, at this crisis proved still more his inflexible attachment by the tender of wholesome and unacceptable counsel. Throwing himself at Mary's feet, he told her of the reports that Bothwell had murdered the king, and that she was about to marry the murderer; imploring her majesty to remember her honour and dignity, and the safety of the prince, which would all be in danger if she married the earl of Bothwell. +

The court of France saw so clearly her ruin approaching, that they despatched Villeroi to her to wean her from her passion for Bothwell, by the lure of other alliances. In spite of the unwonted frankness of Elizabeth's expostulations,-unmoved by the affectionate entreaties of Beaton,-untouched by the generous fidelity of Herries,-deaf to the sage counsel of Melville,-without regard to the general indignation of Scotland, England, and Europe, she persisted in her pursuit with a headlong precipitation which only a frantic passion could beget, and which there are not many examples of the strongest passion having ever inspired. On the 12th of April the shameless mockery of Bothwell's acquittal was performed, after a protestation by the prosecutor that he had neither time to collect evidence, nor assurance of safety if he attended; the jury also protesting that they could not be answerable for their verdict if erroneous, inasmuch as no prosecutor appeared, and no witnesses were called. On the 14th (only two months after the murder), Bothwell bore the sword of state before Mary at the opening of parliament; which laboured to give popularity to the government by a general toleration of protestants, but at the same time deprived the + Idem.

* Melville.

earl of Mar of the castle of Edinburgh, to place it in hands supposed to have been imbrued in Darnley's blood, and passed over in profound silence the murder of that unhappy man; whilst they made it an offence punishable with death to write or affix placards defaming the queen: which last provision, after the reference of Lenox to the placards, was in effect an act of indemnity for the murder, and an edict of proscription against the prosecutors.*

Lenox, considering himself as no longer safe at home, fled for refuge into England. Moray, slow to resist his sister, and incapable of countenancing her desperate measures, obtained leave to go abroad. He went to France before the meeting of parliament; an unanswer◄ able proof that he had then formed no ambitious designs, which, if he had harboured them, a sagacious man would never leave at the mercy of others, who might have employed his machinery for their own elevation. That he preferred France, notwithstanding the distance and the influence of the queen, to England, is also a conclusive circumstance; for in France he might have been detained by the Guisian princes, if they had deemed it necessary for the safety of their niece.

In the evening of the day of the dissolution, Bothwell, after supping with a considerable body of the nobility and gentry at a tavern, declared that the queen was desirous of an assurance from them that her marriage with him would be supported by her nobility. † In consequence of this declaration, which they considered as conveying the queen's command, the meeting subscribed a bond, by which they notified their consent to that union, and bound themselves to maintain it. The majority, who were of Bothwell's party, acted conformably to the interests of their faction: but the few protestants must have been biassed by a base fear, or a baser servility.

*The proceedings of this parliament in Act Parl. Scot. ii. 545-591. +"Which letter he purchased (obtained), giving them to understand that we were content therewith."- Keith, 309. Instructions to bishop of Dumblane, ambassador in France.

Three days afterwards, Bothwell, at the head of 1000 horse, seized the queen on the road from Stirling, taking hold of her bridle, with a show of conducting her as a prisoner to the castle of Dunbar. Sir James Melville, one of her attendants, tells us that Bothwell's officer, who made him prisoner, alleged "that the whole was with her consent *;” a plain enough intimation of his own judgment, in a case where so indulgent a writer must have hinted a doubt if he had felt it. It was the universal opinion that "she patiently suffered herself to be led where her lover listed." + In fact, she offered no opposition, raised no impediment, uttered no complaint; though Huntly, Lethington, and Melville were brought with their mistress to Dunbar. “None doubted that it was done with her own liking and consent." + On the 26th, while she was at Dunbar, proceedings for a divorce between Bothwell and lady Jane Gordon, whom he had espoused only two years before, were begun in the protestant court by lady Jane for his adultery, and in the archiepiscopal court by him for consanguinity without a papal dispensation. Both these fraudulent suits were hurried through in ten days. § A tale of personal violation was spread from Dunbar, to persuade the public that the queen was cut off from all honourable retreat. The proceeding for the divorce on account of adultery, formally at the instance of the lady Bothwell, was, with singular immodesty, commenced almost on the day which the queen specified as that on which she alleged that she was violated by Bothwell. In this manner did the consciousness of guilt betray persons of no common penetration into the accumulation of pretexts, the violation and the divorce, of which the latter rendered the former so superfluous, as to convert it into a wanton breach of the most vulgar decency. One honest man then appeared, who, in the midst of the general corruption and pusillanimity of

* Melville, 177.

+ Hist. of James VI, 9.

Spottiswood, 202. The last of these witnesses, who was primate and chancellor under her grandson, is of great weight. Whoever believes that the arrest and rape were simulated, can hardly refuse his assent to the imputation of the greater crimes to the queen.

Spottiswood.