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 2000l. sterling to any one who could discover the murderers. In six days after,

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. The privy 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 dif ficulty of supposing that a body 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.), i. 146.

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,

excited sus

reserve of Robert Melville, the Scotch envoy, picions 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. 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. But 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

* Melville,

+ Idem.