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 unanswerable 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. Scotland, was doubtless a most unexpected impediment. John Craig, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, was commanded to publish the banns. His first objection was founded on the rumour that she was imprisoned and ravished by Bothwell. The justice clerk, who was second criminal judge of the kingdom, came to him "with a letter signed by the queen, declaring that she was neither ravished nor detained captive." The intrepid preacher nevertheless urged to the council the rape of the queen, and the suspicion of the king's murder, which this marriage would confirm. On occasion of his almost forced conformity, he declared from the pulpit, that "he abhorred and detested the marriage, as hateful in the sight of the world.” * On the day of the nuptials (15th May), about three months after the murder of Darnley, one month after the pretended trial of Bothwell, and within nine days after his collusive divorce from a lawful wife, this marriage was solemnised, in virtue of banns which had been accompanied by a declaration from the clergyman who published them, that the union would be evidence of the wedded parties being accomplices in the murder of the husband of one of them. So headlong was the passion of the queen for Bothwell, who was a professed protestant, that she consented to wed him only by the rites of the reformed religion, – though she considered these rites as no more than badges of an adulterous union, instead of having the marriage repeated according to the ceremonial of the catholic church, as she had done in her nuptials with Darnley. + A casket containing a correspondence purporting to be carried on by Mary with Bothwell, which, if genuine, establishes her guilt, was said to be seized by the insurgents on the 20th of June, 1567. The genuineness of these letters, and their irresistible force as evidence against the queen, have been already demonstrated by Mr. Hume and Mr. Robertson, and most + Melville, 181. * Archbishop Spottiswood, 203. of all by Mr. Laing, who, in the acuteness with which he employs the rules of historical criticism, is not inferior to either. The proofs of Mary's guilt are her own acts. It suffices here to observe, that these documents were seen at Edinburgh, at York, and at Westminster, by hundreds of persons, friends as well as foes to Mary, but most of whom knew her handwriting; and yet that proof of their forgery, which must have been easy, was then never attempted: that they relate to a succession of minute facts, multiplying beyond calculation the means of detecting imposture: that the letters only serve the purpose of an accuser by hints and allusions such as would be found in genuine correspondence, not by those clear and positive manifestations of guilt by which an eager partisan betrays his forgeries: that they are full of inimitable proofs of burning passion, of which the extreme grossness, in such an age, and from such parties, is rather a corroboration of their truth than a difficulty in the way of assenting to it. There is a species of secondary, but very important, evidence relating to Mary's criminality, on which a few additional sentences may be excused. The silence of a contemporary like Castelnau, who was friendly to her, and who had opportunities of knowing the facts, is very significant. The silence of Melville, her personal attendant and confidential servant, whose brother attended her to her last moment; and of Spottiswood, her grandson's chancellor, and the head of the Scottish church, is still more conclusive; because it is accompanied by admissions, such as those regarding the pretended rape, which are irreconcileable with the supposition of her innocence, and evidently show that none of these respectable writers entertained any doubt of her guilt. The testimony of De Thou is, perhaps, the strongest instance among the secondary proofs. The president De Thou is the most upright of historians. He was a tolerant catholic in an age in which all parties were persecutors. No effort, no labour, and scarcely any reasonable expense, seemed to this conscientious historian too great a price for truth. He adopted, in the main, the narrative of Buchanan; which was doubtless, in some measure, recommended to him by the genius and eloquence of that illustrious man.* But he tells us himself that he had most diligently enquired of the catholic refugees from Scotland in France, who, in a manner decisive of the whole question respecting the queen, assured him that Moray, notwithstanding his fatal errors in religion, was a man without ambition or avarice; most averse to wrong others; distinguished by courage, gracious manners, active benevolence, and an innocent life.+ In 1605, Camden, at the suggestion of James I., entered into a correspondence with De Thou, warning the historian of the necessity of circumspection in his narrative of Scottish affairs, and confirming his opinion that the king was incensed at his illustrious preceptor Buchanan. De Thou, with courageous honesty, answered, that he was unwilling to give needless offence, and wished to relate events simply without angry language: but that he deemed the concealment of truth to be as much a crime in an historian as the promulgation of falsehood; and that the calmest account of such a deed as the death of Darnley would, he feared, be as really offensive to the enemies of Buchanan as the eloquent relation of that great man. As the representation of Camden had in no respect shaken the conviction of De Thou, the British monarch soon after employed an advocate of more fame to convert the obstinate historian. This was the famous Genevese Isaac Casaubon, one of the most celebrated scholars who had appeared since the revival of letters, on whom James bestowed the prebends of Canterbury and Westminster, with a pension, then "Acerbius hæc *Thuani Historiar. sui Temporis, lib. xl. c. 13-24. fortasse a Buchanano scripta et audio discipulum præceptori ob id succensere, et tamen quia gesta sunt CITRA FLAGITIUM dissimulari non possunt." Thuan. to Camden, Feb. 1605. Thuani Historiæ Successus apud Jac. I. art. v. in the supplementary (viith) volume of Carte's edition of Thuanus. Thuan. to Camden, Aug. 1606. Carte's Thuanus, vii. u. s Id. |