his place. But Catherine de Medici and Charles had written to tell her that if she did not exert herself to discover and punish the assassin, she would cover herself with infamy, and that she could expect for the future no friendship or support from France. In that direction there was little to be looked for: so the Queen gathered up her nerves, resolving to trust her own resources, and to defy the world and its opinion. As a preparation for the trial, she placed in Bothwell's hands the castles of Edinburgh, Blackness, and Inchkeith. Dunbar he held already, and Dumbarton was to be given to him as soon as he could collect a sufficient force to hold it. Another placard, accusing him, was hung up on the Tolbooth door. The supposed author, a brother of Murray of Tullibardine, was proclaimed traitor. The ports were watched for him, and any shipper' who should carry him out of the kingdom was threatened with death. That Bothwell could be found guilty was certainly never contemplated as a possible contingency, for it was no longer a secret that the Queen meant to marry him as soon as he could be separated from his wife. The preliminaries of the divorce were being hurried forward, and Lady Both 1 Don Francis de Alava to Philip | she should not only think herself II. March 15: TEULET, vol. i. 2 The Queen-mother and the French King did also write very sorely to the Queen, assuring her that if she performed not her promise in seeking by all her power to have the death of the King their cousin revenged, and to clear herself, dishonoured, but to receive them for 4 Royal Proclamation, March 12: ANDERSON. well, in fear of a worse fate for herself, had been induced to sue for it. A plea was found in Bothwell's own iniquities; and that no feature might be wanting to complete the foulness of the picture, his paramour, Lady Buccleuch, was said to be ready, if necessary, to come forward with the necessary evidence.1 The moral feeling of the age was not sensitive. The Tudors, both in England and Scotland, had made the world familiar with scandalous separations; and there were few enormities for which precedents could not be furnished from the domestic annals of the northern kingdom. Yet there was something in the present proceeding so preposterous, that even those most callous in such matters were unable to regard it with indifference. The honour of the country, the one subject on which Scottish consciences were sensitive, was compromised by so monstrous an outrage upon decency. The Queen's political prospects would be ruined, without any one countervailing advantage whatever, if it was allowed to take place. There was no national party to gratify, no end to gain, no family alliance to support or strengthen the Crown. Such a marriage under such circumstances would simply be a disgrace. It would be at once the consummation of an enormous crime, and a public defiant confession of it in the face of all men. 1 For the divorce between Both- | him.'-Drury to Cecil, March 29: well and his wife this is arranged, Border MSS. And again: 'It is that the same shall come of her- thought that the Lady of Buccleuch, alleging this-that she knoweth he if need be, will affirm he hath so hath had the company of the Lady done.'-Same to same, April 13: Buccleuch since she was married to Ibid. The murder itself might have been got over, and the private adultery, even if it had been discovered, might have been concealed or condoned. But to follow up the assassination of her husband by an open marriage with the man whom all the world knew by this time to have been the murderer, was entirely intolerable. In such hands the baby-Prince would be no safer than his father, and one murder would soon be followed by another. When it became certain that so extraordinary a step was seriously contemplated, Sir James Melville says,' that 'every good subject who loved the Queen had sore hearts.' Lord Herries, the most accomplished of her friends, a man of the world, who saw what would follow, was the first to hasten to her feet to remonstrate. The Queen received him with an affectation of surprise. She assured him that there was no such thing in her mind,' and he could but apologize for his intrusion and retire from the Court at his best speed, before Bothwell had heard what he had done. Melville himself tried next, and he received opportune assistance from a quarter to which of all others Mary Stuart could least afford to be indifferent. Thomas Bishop, her agent in England, of whom we shall hear again, and who was eventually hanged, being at this moment the expositor of the feelings of the leading English Catholics, wrote a letter to Melville, which he desired him to show to the Queen. 'It was reported in England,' Bishop said, 'that 1 Memoirs of Sir James Melville. her Majesty was to marry the Earl Bothwell, the murderer of her husband, who at present had wife of his own, and was a man full of all sin. He could scant believe that she would commit so gross an oversight, so prejudicial every way to her interest and to the noble mark he knew she shot at. If she married that man she would lose the favour of God, her own reputation, and the hearts of all England, Ireland, and Scotland.' Thus armed, Sir James Melville, ever Mary Stuart's best adviser and, even when she went her own wilful way, the first to conceal her faults-entered his sovereign's presence and placed the letter in her hands. She read it, but she was in no condition to profit by it. She refused to believe that the letter had been written by Bishop. She said it was a device of Maitland's 'tending to the wreck of the Earl Bothwell,' and she sent for Maitland and taxed him with it. He, of course, assured her that he had nothing to do with it. His opinion she already knew, and he did not care to press it further. He told Melville that he had done more honestly than wisely, and that if Bothwell heard of it he would kill him. 'It was a sore matter,' said Melville, 'to see that good Princess run to utter wreck, and nobody to forewarn her of her danger.' He once more protested to her that the letter was genuine, and that, whoever wrote it, it contained only the deepest truth. 'He found she had no mind to enter upon the subject.'1 1 Memoirs of Sir James Melville. There was nothing more to be done. He did not then know the extent to which she had committed herself, and he and her other friends could but stand by with folded hands and wait the result. The Earl of Lennox, encouraged by the promises extorted by Killigrew, after a fortnight's silence, accepted the Queen's challenge to name the persons whom he accused. He specified Bothwell, with two of his followers; Sir James Balfour and four foreigners, palace minions-Bastian, whose marriage had been the excuse for the retreat of the Queen from Kirk o'Field, John de Bourdeaux, Joseph Rizzio, the favourite's brother, and Francis, one of Mary Stuart's personal servants. She replied that the Lords would in a few days assemble at Edinburgh. The persons named in his letter should then be arrested and abide their trial; and Lennox himself, if his leisure or commodity might suit,' was invited to be present.1 The A trial of some sort could not be avoided. question now was, in what form it would be best encountered. Argyle, Huntly, Maitland, the Archbishop of St Andrews, and several others were in Bothwell's power. Unless they consented to stand by him, he held their signatures to the Craigmillar bonds, and could produce them to the world. Yet feeling, as he could not choose but feel, the ticklish ground on which he stood with them-feeling too, perhaps, that there was no permanent safety for him as long as he remained so Mary Stuart to the Earl of Lennox, March 23: KEITH. |