ous enough to appear before the council and solemnly to affirm, what everybody knew to be false, that he had had no concern in the slaying of Rizzio. He incurred the vindictive hatred of all who had been his confederates in the commission of that act. But Mary took no pains to conceal, she rather took pains to manifest publicly, her thorough dislike and contempt for him. He was despised and shunned by all. The birth of his son, afterwards James VI. of Scotland and James I. of England, which took place in Edinburgh Castle, on the 19th of June, 1566, did not affect the relations of his parents to one another. The repugnance with which Mary regarded Darnley was known to everybody, and was reported to foreign courts. Another fact is her growing fondness for Bothwell, which was, also, a matter of common observation, and was manifested by unmistakable signs. Bothwell was a brave, adventurous, resolute man, with some exterior polish acquired at the court of France, but unscrupulous and unprincipled. Though connected with the Protestant side, he had stood faithfully by the Queen Regent, Mary's mother, and by Mary herself. He had taken no part in the murder of Rizzio, but on that occasion had himself escaped from Holyrood, and had lent her timely and effective assistance. Although the fact is still questioned by Mary's enthusiastic defenders, it is nevertheless established that her attachment to him grew into an overpowering passion.1 Bothwell had a wife to whom he had not long been married; Mary had a husband. Such were the hindrances in the way of their union. It was affirmed subsequently by Argyle and Huntley that they, together with Bothwell, Murray, and Lethington, used the disaffection of the Queen towards her husband as a means of obtaining her consent to the pardon and return of Morton and others, who were in banishment on account of their agency in the death of Rizzio.

1 Burton, iv. 324 seq.

THE MURDER OF DARNLEY.

378

They began by proposing to her a divorce, but "the one thing clear is that a promise was made to rid the Queen of her unendurable husband, and that without a divorce." 1 Morton was allowed to return, but refused to take an active part in the plot, unless he were furnished with a written authorization from Mary, which could not be procured.2 Murray claimed with truth that he never entered into an engagement for the murder of Darnley; but Lethington, according to the statement of Argyle and Huntley, had said that Murray would "look through his fingers"that is, stand off and not interfere. Whether Murray was aware of the plot, and was willing to have it succeed by other hands than his own, is a question, which cannot be determined. The Queen, just before, gave a striking proof of her affection for Bothwell by paying him a visit when he was ill, at the peril of her own life. Darnley had been taken ill and went to Glasgow, where he was cared for under the direction of his father, the old Earl of Lennox. The Queen announced her purpose to visit him. She made the visit, and after they met, a conversation occurred between Darnley and Crawford, a gentleman in the service of Lennox, whom the latter had instructed to observe and report whatever he saw and heard. The Queen had arranged with Darnley that he should be taken to Craigmillar Castle and there receive medical treatment. Both Crawford and Darnley expressed to one another their dislike of this arrangement, in such terms as imply a suspicion that evil, even murder, might possibly be intended. Darnley expressed to Mary his penitence, and his ardent desire for the restoration of the old relations between them. She met his advances apparently in a friendly spirit, and gave him fair promises. A few days later he was removed to Edinburgh, but in

1 See Burton, iv. 332 seq.

2 Morton, in the confession that he made before his execution, owned that he was urged by Bothwell to join in the plot, and said, as a reason for not revealing it to the Queen: "She was the doer thereof."

stead of being taken to Craigmillar, or to Holyrood, he was conveyed to a place close to the city wall, called the Kirk-of-field, to an uninhabited house that belonged to Robert Balfour, a dependant of Bothwell, several rooms of which had been fitted up for the King's reception. The Queen slept several nights in the room under Darnley's apartment; but on Sunday evening, the 9th of February, 1567, she left his bedside to attend the festivities connected with the wedding of one of her servants at Holyrood. That night the house was blown up with gunpowder, which Bothwell and his followers had placed in the Queen's bedroom, under Darnley. His body was found at some distance from the house. Whether he was strangled, or otherwise killed, before the explosion or not, is still a controverted point. The conspirators had provided themselves with false keys and had deliberately perfected all their arrangements. Whether or not the Queen was privy to the murder, her conduct afterwards was sufficiently imprudent to confirm the worst suspicions. Bothwell, who was known to be the principal criminal, was shielded by a trial so conducted as to be nothing short of a mockery of justice. Instead of experiencing her displeasure, he rose still higher in her favor, and was honored with an accumulation of offices which rendered him the most powerful man in the kingdom. The next great event is the abduction of the Queen by Bothwell, who, at the head of a body of retainers, stopped her on her way, and without any resistance on her part, conducted her to Stirling Castle. Previously, at a supper which he gave in Edinburgh, possibly through the fear that he inspired, he had prevailed on most of the first men of Scotland to sign a paper recommending the Queen to marry him. In Mary's own account of her capture and of the occurrences at Stirling, she represents that force was

1 Melville says that everybody suspected Bothwell of the murder. Memoirs,

used, but merely to such a degree, and accompanied with such protestations of love-which had the more effect from her sense of the great services he had rendered her - that she could only forgive her suitor for this excess and impatience of affection. Sir James Melville, her faithful friend, who had warned her, at the risk of his life, against marrying Bothwell, was with her when she was stopped by him; and he dryly remarks that Captain Blackader, who captured him, told him " that it was with the Queen's own consent."1 Spottiswoode, who wrote his history at the request of James I., her son, says that "No men doubted but this was done by her own liking and consent." 2 Bothwell was divorced from his wife, and the public wedding that united him to the Queen followed. He now governed with a high hand. Mary herself, to her own cost, soon became more fully acquainted with his coarse and despotic nature, and was an unhappy wife. Meantime the principal barons were combining and preparing to crush Bothwell, and they entered into communication with Elizabeth, from whom they sought assistance. At Carberry Hill the forces of Bothwell and the army collected by the lords were arrayed against each other. But a battle was avoided by the surrender of Mary, after a long parley and in pursuance of an arrangement which permitted the escape of Bothwell. She was led to Edinburgh, and treated with. great personal indignity, especially by the people, who generally believed in her criminality. From there she was taken as a prisoner to Lochleven. The lords had intercepted a letter, as they asserted, from Mary to Bothwell, which showed that her passion for him had not abated. Sir James Melville, speaking of a letter to the Queen from the Laird of Grange, written at this time, says: "It contained many other loving and humble ad1 Memoirs, p. 158.

2 History of the Church of Scotland (Edinb. ed., 1851), ii. 51.

monitions, which made her bitterly to weep, for she could not do that so hastily which process of time might have accomplished," that is, "put him [Bothwell] clean out of mind." This is one among the abundant proofs that whatever constraint had been put upon her movements by Bothwell, the chain that bound her to him was the infatuation of her own heart.

The statements in the foregoing sketch rest upon evidence which is independent of the famous "casket letters" -the letters and love-sonnets addressed by Mary to Bothwell, together with contracts of marriage between them, which, it was alleged, were found in a silver casket, that Bothwell, after his flight, vainly endeavored to procure from the Castle of Edinburgh. If the casket letters are genuine, they prove incontestably that in the murder of Darnley, Mary was an accomplice before the act. The genuineness of them has been more or less elaborately discussed, and has been maintained by the most eminent historians, as Hume, Robertson, Laing, Burton, Mackintosh, Mignet, Ranke. Their genuineness has been defended lately by Mr. Froude, in his "History of England." The most acute of the writers on the other side is Mr. Hosack, the author of a recent work upon Mary and her accusers.2 No candid critic can deny, whatever may be his final verdict, that the letters contain many internal marks of genuineness which it would be exceedingly difficult for a counterfeiter to invent, and that the scrutiny to which they were subjected in the Scottish Privy Council, the Scottish Parliament, and the English Privy Council was such that, if they were forged, it is hard to account for the failure to detect the imposture. Moreover, the character of Murray, although it may be admitted that he was not the immaculate person that he is sometimes considered to have been, must have been black 1 Memoirs, p. 168.

2 Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers. By John Hosack, Barrister at Law. 2d edition. 2 vols. London, 1870.