told him that the Earl, understanding that he had letters for the Queen, advised him to go away and return in the evening; 'the Queen was so molested and disquieted with the business of that day, that he saw no likelihood of any time to serve his turn till after the Assize.' He argued with the man, but to no sort of purpose. The gate was thrown back, and the quadrangle and the open space below the windows were fast filling with a crowd, through which there was no passage. Troopers were girthing up their saddles and belting on their sabres; the French guard were trimming their harquebusses, and the stable-boys leading up and down the horses of the knights. The Laird of Skirling, Captain of the Castle under Bothwell, strode by and told the guide that he deserved to be hanged for bringing English villains there; and presently the Earl appeared, walking with Maitland. The officer was chafing under ‘the reproaches' of the 'beggarly' Scots, who were thronging round him and cursing him. They fell back as Bothwell approached, and he presented his letter. The Earl perhaps felt that too absolute a defiance might be unwise. He took it, and went back into the Palace, but presently returned and said, 'that the Queen was still sleeping; it would be given to her when the work of the morning was over.' A groom at this moment led round his horse-Darnley's horse it had been, and once perhaps, like Roan Barbary, 'ate bread from Richard's royal hand!' The Earl sprang upon his back, turned round, and glanced at the windows of the Queen's room. A servant of the French ambassador

touched the Englishman, and he too looked in the same direction, and saw the Queen 'that was asleep and could not be disturbed,' nodding a farewell to her hero as he rode insolently off.1

So went the murderer of Mary Stuart's husband to his trial, followed by his Sovereign's smiles and attended by the Royal guard; and we are called upon to believe that the Queen, the arch-plotter of Europe, the match in intellect for the shrewdest of European statesmen, was the one person in Scotland who had no suspicion of his guilt, and was the victim of her own guileless innocence. Victim she was, fooled by the thick-limbed scoundrel whom she had chosen for her paramour, duped by her own passions, which had dragged her down to the level of a brute. But the men were never born who could have so deceived Mary Stuart, and it was she herself who had sacrificed her own noble nature on the foul altar of sensuality and lust.

As the Earl passed through the outer gate, a long loud cheer rose from the armed multitude. Four thousand ruffians lined the Canongate, and two hundred Hackbutters formed his body-guard as he rode between the ranks. The high court of justice-so called in courteous irony-was held at the Tolbooth, where he alighted and went in. His own retainers took possession of the doors, 'that none might enter but such as were more for the behoof of one side than the other.' 2 There were still some difficulties to be overcome, and

1 Drury to Cecil, April: Border | the 9th volume of Mr Tytler's HisMSS. Printed in the Appendix to tory of Scotland. 2 Ibid.

the anxiety to prevent a prosecutor from appearing was not without reason. The court could not be altogether packed, and there might be danger both from judges and from jury.1 The Earl of Argyle presided as hereditary Lord Justice, and so far there would be no difficulty; but there were four assessors, one or more of whom might prove unmanageable if the case went forward-Lord Lindsay, Henry Balnavis, the Commendator of Dunfermline, and James McGill, the Clerk of the Register. On the jury were the Lord of Arbroath, Chatelherault's second son and presumptive heir of the House of Hamilton, and the Earl of Cassilis (the original of Walter Scott's Front de Bouf'). These would be true to Bothwell through good and evil. But the Earl of Caithness, the chancellor of the Assize, was doubtful; Lord Maxwell had been Darnley's special friend, and Herries was truer to his mistress than to the dark man whom he feared as her evil genius.2

At eleven o'clock the Earl took his place at the bar. No trustworthy account has been preserved of the appearance of the man. In age he was not much past

1 Drury to Cecil, April -: Border | MSS. Printed in the Appendix to the 9th volume of Mr Tytler's History of Scotland.

2 The jury consisted of the Earls of Caithness, Rothes, and Cassilis, the Lord of Arbroath, Lords Ross, Sempell, Maxwell, Herries, Oliphant, and Boyd, the Master of Forbes, Gordon of Lochinvar, Cock

burn of Lanton, Somerville of Cambusnetham, a Mowbray, and an Ogilvy. Morton had been summoned, but had refused. He would have been glad to please the Queen, he said, but for that the Lord Darnley was his kinsman he would rather pay the forfeit.'-Drury to Cecil, April -: Border MSS.

thirty. If the bones really formed part of him which have been recently discovered in his supposed tomb in Denmark, he was of middle height, broad, thick, and, we may fancy, bull-necked. His gestures were usually defiant, and a man who had lived so wild a life could not have been wanting in personal courage; but it was the courage of an animal which rises with the heat of the blood, not the collected coolness of a man who was really brave.

He stood at the bar 'looking down and sadlike.' In the presence of the machinery of justice his insolence failed him; the brute nature was cowed, and the vulgar expression 'hangdog' best described his bearing. One of his attendants, Black Ormiston, who had been with him at Kirk o' Field, 'plucked him by the sleeve.' 'Fye, my Lord,' he whispered, 'what Devil is this ye are doing? Your face shaws what ye are. Hauld up your face, for God's sake, and look blythly. Ye might luik swa an ye were gangand to the dead. Alac and wae worth them that ever devysit it. I trow it shall gar us all murne.'

'Haud your tongue,' the Earl answered; 'I would not yet it were to do. I have an outgait fra it, come as it may, and that ye will know belyve.'1

The Clerk of the court now began to speak. 'Whereas Matthew, Earl of Lennox,' he said, 'had delated the Earl Bothwell of the murder of the late King, her Majesty, by advices of council and at the instance

1 Confession of the Laird of Ormiston: PITCAIRN, vol. i. p. 512.

of the Earl Bothwell himself, had ordained a court of Justiciaries to be held in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh for doing justice upon the said Earl, and the Earl of Lennox was required to appear and prove his charge.'

The indictment followed. It had been drawn with a grotesque contrivance to save the consciences of such among the jury as were afraid of verbal perjury, for it charged the Earl with having committed the murder on February 9th; and whatever was the way in which Darnley was killed, the deed was certainly not done till an hour or two after midnight. Of this plea it will be seen that the Lords on the panel were not ashamed to avail themselves when afterwards called to account for their conduct.

Bothwell, of course, pleaded not guilty. Lennox was called, and did not answer; and the case would have collapsed, as every one present probably desired, when a person appeared whose part had not been arranged in the programme. Lennox was absent, but one of his servants, Robert Cunningham, ventured into the arena instead of him, and, rising among the crowd, said:

My Lords, I am come here, sent by my master, the Earl of Lennox, to declare the cause of his absence this day. The cause of his absence is the shortness of the time, and that he is denuded of his friends and servants who should have accompanied him to his honour and surety of his life; and he, having assistance of no friends but himself, has commanded me to desire a sufficient day, according to the weight of the cause