and half French. A fortnight after Carberry Hill, Sir William Drury wrote that already the question was asked of every man, ' Was he a Hamilton or a Stuart.' "The Hamiltons could not digest that the Prince should be at the devotion of England;' and there was a strong anti-English faction at their back: while Morton, Athol, Ruthven, and Mar were utterly opposed to them; if the Prince died, these noblemen would have the crown go to Darnley's younger brother; and Drury thought it would prove hard for Scotland to nourish both families.'1 And, again, the difficulties were scarcely less in making a fair inquiry into the circumstances of the murder. The world demanded an investigation; yet if the investigation was more than a form, the names of four or five of the most powerful men in the country could hardly fail to be compromised. Sir James Balfour made no secret of his own share in the crime. He too, like the rest, was furious at having been taken in by Bothwell and the Queen; and he earned his own pardon by surrendering Edinburgh Castle to the Lords, and by a frank confession of all that he knew. 'The Queen,' he said, 'one day sent for him, and after a few flattering words expressing the confidence which she placed in him, said that she could never forgive the King for his ingratitude, and for the death of David Rizzio; he had become so hateful to her that she could not bear the sight of him; she wished to have him killed, and she 1 Drury to Cecil, June 29, and July 1: MSS. Border. desired Balfour's assistance.' Balfour, according to his own story, had replied, that in any other matter he would gladly serve her, but that to kill a king was more than he dared.' The Queen said that with her sanction he might do it; she was his sovereign and he was bound to obey her. He again declined, and then she said he was a coward, and if he betrayed her confidence it should cost him his life.1 This account fell in but too well with what was already known; but the Lords, bad and good, working together for their several ends, were obliged to shield those who, like Balfour, were ready to desert to them; and it was no less necessary to conceal the evidence which implicated Argyle and Huntly. An open and candid exposure of the whole truthsuch an exposure as would have satisfied the demands of Elizabeth, or have acquitted the Confederates before the bar of posterity for their treatment of their own sovereign-was believed to be impossible. 1 The Catholic correspondent of | cargase dello. A lo qual el habia de Silva is the authority for Sir respondido que en cualquiera otra James Balfour's confession. The cosa le serviria como era obligado, exact words are worth preserving. mas que en esto no lo podia hacer por ser su marido tenido y publicado por Rey. E que le habia replicado que el lo debia y podia hacer por su mandado, que era su Reyna natural; y que escusandose otra vez, le habia dicho que lo dexaba de hacer de cobarde y no por otro respeto, y que le mandaba su pena de muerte que no descubriese á nadie lo que le habia dicho.'-De Silva to Philip, September 6: MSS. Si 'El qual declaró que la Reyna le habia mandado llamar un dia aparte, y le habia dicho despues de haber encarecido la confiança que del tenia, que ella estaba muy indignada del Rey por la muerte del secretario David, y por la gran ingratitud que con ella habia usado; y assi le tenia tan aborrecido que no podia verle, y estaba determinado de le hacer matar, y que lo queria executar por su mano, y le pedia y mandaba se en mancas. Meanwhile the body of the people, untroubled by difficulties of this kind, yet made unjust too on their side by the violence of religious fanaticism, had fastened the guilt exclusively on Mary Stuart. They had learnt from Knox that Papistry was synonymous with devilworship. The Queen, long hateful to them as the maintainer of Romish enormities, had now, like another Jezebel, shown herself in her true colours; and as she had been a signal example of the moral fruits of her creed, so they desired to make her as signally an example in her punishment. No sooner had she been despatched to Lochleven, than Glencairn, with a party of Calvinist zealots, purged the chapel at Holyrood of its Catholic ornaments, melting down the chalices, and grinding the crucifixes to powder; while the alleys and wynds of Edinburgh were searched from loft to cellar, and such servants of the palace or followers of Bothwell as were found lurking there were seized and brought to trial. Sebastian, whose marriage on the night of the murder had been the excuse for the Queen's departure from the house at Kirk o' Field, was one of the first to be taken, and it is to the credit of his examiners, considering the temper of the times, that he was acquitted. Blackadder, it has been seen, was convicted, hanged, and quartered in a few hours. Powrie and Patrick Wilson were examined under torture.1 They confessed to their own share in 1 The council order the said per. | the verity, provided always that this sons to be put in the irons and tor- cause being for a Prince's murder, ments for furthering of the trial of ❘ be not taken as a precedent in other the murder, and were reserved-probably because they knew no dangerous secrets-to keep their evidence available. On the 20th of June Sir James Balfour placed in the hands of the Confederates a body of documents, which for the first time revealed to many of them the inner history of the whole transaction. The Earl of Bothwell, on leaving Edinburgh for the Borders, had left in Balfour's hands the celebrated casket which contained the Queen's letters to himself, some love sonnets, the bond signed at Seton before his trial, and another, probably that which was drawn at Craigmillar after the Queen's illness. The casket itself was a silver enamelled box, one of the treasures which Mary Stuart had brought with her from France. She had bestowed it upon her lover, and her lover in return had made use of it to preserve the proofs that he had been acting in the murder only as the instrument of his mistress, and with the authority of half her council.1 Being of infinite importance to him, he sent Dalgleish, one of his servants, from Dunbar after his flight from Carberry Hill, to fetch it. Balfour gave it to Dalgleish, but sent private word to the Confederates, who captured both the prize and its bearer. That the Queen had in some way and to some degree been an accomplice in the murder was already evident cases.' Sitting of the Lords of own advocate. The only point on which a question can be raised, is the exact nature of its contents.-See the statement of Lord Herries, KEITH, vol. i. p. 683, note. to all the world, except perhaps to Elizabeth. But her relations with Bothwell, the terms on which she had placed herself with him while she was still encumbered with a husband, the treachery, for which 'infernal' is not too hard an epithet, with which she had enticed him to the scene of his destruction, and the secret history of her capture at the Bridge, though conjectured too accurately by popular suspicion, had not as yet been distinctly known, and the proofs of these things laid out in deadly clearness acted on the heated passions of the Lords like oil on fire. Even unscrupulous politicians like Maitland, who had seen no sin in ridding the world of a vindictive unmanageable boy, might feel anger, might feel in a sense legitimate indignation, when they perceived the villany to which they had lent themselves. They might have experienced too some fear as well as some compunction, if, as Lord Herries said, the casket contained the Craigmillar bond, to which their names remained affixed. This at least it was necessary to keep secret, and uncertain what to do they sent one of their number in haste to Paris to the Earl of Murray, to inform him of the discovery of the letters, and to entreat him to hurry back immediately.1 1 The theory that the letters were | the first heat and confusion of the forged in the later maturity of the revolution-at a time when the Conconspiracy against the Queen falls federates were endeavouring if posasunder before the proof that the sible to screen the Queen's reputation contents of the most important of if she could be induced to abandon them were known to Murray before Bothwell. On his way through Lonhe left France. If forged, therefore, don at the end of July, Murray saw the letters must have been forged in the Spanish ambassador, and de |