named JAMES: Elizabeth being his godmother,
though not present on the occasion. A
week afterwards Darnley, who had left Mary
and gone to his father's house at Glasgow,
being taken ill with the small-pox, she sent
her own physician to attend him. But there
is great reason to apprehend that this was
merely a show and a pretence, and that she
knew what was doing, when Bothwell, within
another month, proposed to one of the
late conspirators against Rizzio, to murder
Darnley, "for that it was the Queen's mind
that he should be taken away." It is
certain that on that very day she wrote to
her ambassador in France, complaining of
him, and yet went immediately to Glasgow,
feigning to be very anxious about him, and to
love him very much. If she wanted to get
him within her power, she succeeded to her
heart's content; for she induced him to go
back with her to Edinburgh, and to occupy,
instead of the palace, a lone house outside
the city called the Kirk of Field. Here, he
lived for about a week. One Sunday night,
she remained with him until ten o'clock, and
then left him, to go to Holyrood to be present
at an entertainment given in celebration of
the marriage of one of her favourite servants.
At two o'clock in the morning the city was
shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of
Field was blown to atoms.

Darnley's body was found next day lying
under a tree at some distance. How it came
there, undisfigured and unscorched by
gunpowder, and how this crime came to be so
clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible
to discover. The deceitful character of
Mary, and the deceitful character of Elizabeth,
have rendered almost every part of their joint
history uncertain and obscure. But, I fear
that Mary was unquestionably a party to her
husband's murder, and that this was the
revenge she had threatened. The Scotch
people universally believed it. Voices cried
out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead
of the night, for justice on the murderess.
Placards were posted by unknown hands in
the public places, denouncing Bothwell as the
murderer, and the Queen as his accomplice;
and when he afterwards married her (though
himself already married), previously making a
show of taking her prisoner by force, the
indignation of the people knew no bounds. The
women particularly are described as having
been quite frantic with their guilty Queen,
and to have hooted and cried after her in the
streets with terrific vehemence.

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This
husband and wife had lived together but a
month, when they were separated for ever by
the successes of a band of Scotch nobles who
associated against them for the protection of
the young Prince: whom Bothwell had vainly
endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he
would certainly have murdered, if the EARL
OF MAR, in whose hands the boy was, had
not been firmly and honorably faithful to
his trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell
fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and
mad, nine miserable years afterwards. Mary
being found by the associated lords to deceive
them at every turn, was sent a prisoner to
Lochleven Castle, which, as it stood in the
midst of a lake, could only be approached by
boat. Here, one LORD LINDSAY, who was so
much of a brute that the nobles would have
done better if they had chosen a mere gentleman
for their messenger, made her sign her
abdication, and appoint Murray, Regent of
Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her in a
sorrowing and humbled state.

She had better have remained in the castle
of Lochleven, dull prison as it was, with the
rippling of the lake against it, and the moving
shadows of the water on the room-walls; but
she could not rest there, and more than once
tried to escape. The first time she had nearly
succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own
washerwoman: when, putting up her hand to
prevent one of the boatmen from lifting her
veil, the men suspected her, seeing how white
it was, and rowed her back again. A short
time afterwards, her fascinating manners
enlisted in her cause a boy in the Castle,
called the little DOUGLAS, who, while the
family were at supper, stole the keys of the
great gate, went softly out with the Queen,
locked the gate on the outside, and rowed her
away across the lake, sinking the keys as they
went along. On the opposite shore she was
met by another Douglas, and some few lords,
and so accompanied rode away on horseback
to Hamilton, where they raised three
thousand men. Here, she issued a
proclamation, declaring that the abdication
she had signed in her prison was illegal, and
requiring the Regent to yield to his lawful
Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no
way discomposed although he was without an
army, Murray pretended to treat with her,
until he had collected a force about half
equal to her own, and then he gave her battle.
In one quarter-of-an-hour he cut down all
her hopes. She had another weary ride on
horseback of sixty long Scotch miles, and
took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence
she fled for safety to Elizabeth's dominions.

Mary Queen of Scots came to England—to
her own ruin, the trouble of the kingdom,
and the misery and death of many—in the
year one thousand five hundred and sixty-
eight. How she left it and the world, nineteen
years afterwards, we have now to see.

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