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" Among the noblemen whose names constantly meet our eye" [1560-1535], was one" * * * "whose after career jus- tifies us in selecting him, and indulging him with a more special notice James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the descendant of a long line of illus- trious ancestry, succeeded, in 1556, to the estates and honors of his fiither, Patrick, and although a member of the Reformed Church, attached himself finally to the party of the Kegent, in opposition to the rebellious Murray, being appointed by her lieutenant general of her forces and honored with special marks of her favor and approbation ; hut Ms LOYALTY at length compelled Ms retreat into France. There he entered into the service of Mary, was constituted Captain of the [Royal French] Scottish Guard, and obtained several marks of distinc- tion for his enterprise and valor, and on his return to Scotland, 1560 [with the Queen I was noted by Throckmorton as a 'glorious, rash and hazardous young man,' whose motions were to be watched, and whose actions were to be feared by his foes. Although a firm and consistent Protestant, refusing even to sacrifice in form to the religious notions of his queen, yet his loyalty and consistency, — the more remarkable when contrasted with the duplicity and villainy of many of those around him — procured him the favor of his ifueen. But Murray was his enemy, and summoned him to a public trial, on a charge of having conspired against his life, and as Murray came to the place appointed for the trial with a body of five thousand men, Bothwell thought it most prudent to avoid the impending danger by departure from the country. AVhen, however, a short lapse of time had exposed to Mary the baseness other brother, and when, unmindful of the favor and .advancement which he owed to her, he had taken up arms to oppose her marjiage, she began to per- ceive how little weight was to be accorded to the assertions of such an accuser; and, recalling Bothwell from his exile, she placed him at the head of the royal troops ;— - * * raised to the lienor and 101 love had been was then unknown ; one report averred her to be a French princess, and tlte Maoister Absalom Beyer slirewdly dignity whicli his past service and loyalty well deserved, while his ac- cuser, Murray, was suffering in exile the merited punishment of his treason. To attempt to sketch the character of Bothwell, is to tread on ground so insecure and so disputed, that prudence would induce an abstinence from so dangerous a theme, but justice Jtan Tdgh claims to be regarded; and, even at the risk of offending the deeply-rooted prejudice of many, I shall venture upon the attempt. Setting aside, for the moment, the truth of his assumed participation in the murder of Darn- ley, [Scoto-Brittanicus alludes to "his supposed share;" in that evil deed,] * * * we shall, I think, see nothing in his general character which will merit the extreme oblocpiy which has been cast upon it ever since the age in whicli he lived. Bravery, beyond the reach of doubt; loyalty which could never be shaken by the JdgJiest teinp- tations which were offered fur its desertion ; and fidelity to all the t7-usts which were reposed in him, are elements of character which certainly deserve some portion of our respect. But it would be useless and un- candid to deny that these high qualities were clouded by many faults, even if they were not obscured by weighty crimes. An ambition which was jealous of the sliglitest obstacle to its advance ; a degree of political recklessness which was, unfortunately, very characteristic of the Scot- tish aristocracy in that age, and which was augmented, if not caused, by the license which they permitted to themselves in [their] depredations upon the church, and which led them to look with some degree of contempt upon religion itself; and a want of scruple with regard to the means which he employed for the attainment of the objects he desired, are very dark traits in his disposition, and were, unhappity, not pecu- liar to himself But to Mary none of these less favorable characteristics were likely to become known. The mutual position in which they were placed exhibited to her only his loyalty, his courage and his fidelity ; and she liberally rewarded these : while she would have shrunk from the contemplation of the other elements of his disposition." Buckingham's "Mary Stuart" (1., 91-t)5). Bothwell must have been a very lovable man, since women once in love with him never ceased to feel the warm- est interest in his fortunes, and continued to be not only his friends, but his agents for the furtherance of his interests." 102 guesses, that this means no olliei- than the Dauphiness, Mary Stuart — but of this more anon. ''There was noAV a dash of the cynic in his nature, and he was fast schooling himself to consider wonien merely what he was in his gayer moments, habitually averring them to be, the mere instruments of pleasure, and tools of ambition. "The unhappy influence of that ill-placed or ujirequited love, had thrown a long shadow on the career of Bothwell; and as the sun of liis fortune set, that shadow grew darker and deeper. But there were times, when his cooler reflection had tamed his wild impulses, that a sudden act of generosity and chivalry would evince the greatness of that heart, which an unhappy combiiuition of circumstances, a prospect the most alluring that ever opened to man, and the influence of evil counsel spurring on a restless ambition, hurried into those dark and terrible schemes of power and greatness that blighted his name and fame forever!" Buckingham adds (1,215), "Bothwell Avas a man whose early career should have led us to hope for a blighter close, and whose character is one of the darkest mysteries which history presents to our contemplation. His unconquerable fidelity to his sovereign, amid all temptations which surrounded him, had procured so large a share of her favor, that it was not very w^onderful that he should have dared to aspire even to the highest honor, and look to her hand as the reward of his long and loyal service.'' It is all well eiiongh for niodeniized manhood in swal- low tails and white chokers, who scarcely enjoy a real movement of the soul thronghout their money-seeking or money-wasting existences, or mawkish sentimental woman- hood cramped within their Worth-stayed dresses, to sit in judgment upon Bothwell. But where is the man who, to 108 attain the woman he lovet; — for hjve covers all — would not sweep a rival from his path as quickly as an insect, if he dared. The trouble with Botliwell was. lie made a blun- der.* As was said of the '•'•Massacre of St. Bartholomew " and the '•'Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,'' and the "Military Execution of Glencoe," and the "'Assassination of the Duke d'Enghien, " they M'ere w-orse tlian crimes, they were stupid blunders. Had Botliwell been a refined Italian or Frenchman, he "would have accomjjlished tlie same result without noise and without display. Darnley would suddenly and simply have ceased to be. T^nfortunately, they did not know how to do those things properly in Scotland. They were bunglers, hacking an enemy, or rival, or oppressor to pieces, as they did Archbishop Sharpe even as late as 1679. Morton was the only one who seems to have profited by Continental examples. Mar dined with him oiie day, and after his meal felt uncomfortable and died, vacating the Re- gency in favor of his host. The Earl of Atholl supped with Morton 24th April, 1578, and, curious coincidence, likewise died of indigestion next day. Perhaps the copper casseroles were not cleansed of verdigris, or a toadstool got among the * Until within two days before the murder, Bothwell wished to do it decently, with cold steel, and openly, "a la Caesar Borgia," the boldest of executives when any one stood in the way ; but his associates in- duced him to change his intention, (A. S. M. S., I., 891). Why ? That the explosion of the powder might blurt out the truth and burthen Bothwell, not them, with an universal obloquy undeserved, as can be proved — which has lasted until this very day. i04 mushrooms. Bothwell was rutler in liis ministrations, but the object and end M^ere the same. Why overwhehn him with obloquy and let Bothwellhaugh, Kircaldy, Crawford, Morton and an hundred others go free. Tlie fact is he blundered, and ISTemesis did not mitigate a pang to the mortal or his memory. He is the Qildipus of modern trag- edy in his suifering and the CEgisthus of evnl repute. Vis- conti does not receive the thousandth part of the execra- tion heaped upon, liini and yet the Italian was as fiendishly cruel to women as to men. Bothwell intended to blow up one, and Yisconti tortured hundreds to death and had them torn Avith his bloodhounds or crushed in his iron telescop- ing prisons. The Milanese is scarcely alluded to, and the Scotchman is damned in prose, poetry, ronuince and history. He is a j^erfect victim of the bitterest "Irony of Fate." " Happy is the man," exclaims Virgil, "'who is skilled in tracing effects up to their causes." Equally happy should be the author who honestly endeavors to do so, and is enabled to embody, agreably, the results of his labors. This is strictly apposite to the consideration of Bothwell. The cause of the obloquy heaped upon the "fair," "the great" "Erie" w^as, in the first instance, his original suc- cess against the finally triumphant party, especially in winning tlie hand of Mary, and in the second his failure to maintain himself in the possession of what he had so boldly M'on. As Kant remarks, "Success is justly considered the it-st of merit, even where it is attributable to an unworthy 105 origin," literally "To have the conclusion right is the chief point (requisite), even if it may be done (reached) from false premises." Victor Hugo is more generous and honest, but less worldly-wise. He declares that "History is the mere dupe of Success." While so many regard Mary Stuart as resembling "The White Devil," of Webster's Tragedy of " Yittoria Corom- bona," first printed in 1612, others, as numerous, seem to contemplate Bothwell, as displayed in the character of "Schedoni, the Monk," in Miss Radcliffe's novel, "The Italian," published in 1797. "The White Devil of Venice," in the opinion of Charles Lamb, " sets off a bad cause so speciously, and pleads with such an innocent boldness, that we seem to see that matchless beauty of her face which inspires such gay confidence into her, and are ready to expect when she had done her pleadings, that her very judges, her accusers, the grave ambassadors who sit as specta- tors, and all the court, will rise and make proffer to defend her in spite of the utmost conviction of her guilt." On the other hand, the Monk is " as strongly drawn a charac- ter as ever stalked through the regions of romance, equally de- testable for the crimes he has formerly perpetrated and those which he is willing to commit ; formidable from his talents and . energy ; at once a hypocrite and a profligate, unfeeling, unre- lenting, and implacable. The romance in which he dominated abounds — according to Sir Walter Scott — with " the new and powerful machinery afforded by the Popish religion, when es- tablished in its paramount superiority and thereby [the author] had at her disposal monks, spies, dungeons, the mute obedience 14 106 of the bigot and the dark and domineering spirit of the crafty priest." Any sucli implication on Bothwell is cruel ! These references to works of fiction are the more justifi- able as there are many facts elicited in them that escape historians or are neglected as unimportant ; whereas they are tlie solvents of much that is otherwise either sealed or misunderstood.'* The great Prussian general, von Moltke, * There are two tragedies of the time of Elizabeth, "Ardenof Feversham," 1592, and "The Warning to Fair Women," 1599, which seem to have been founded on the results of the connection between Mauy and Bothwell — pronounced in the Scottish dialect, "Bothel." The former is sometimes attributed to Shakespeare. It was translated into German by Tieck. A tragedy on the same subject was composed by George LiJlo, 1693-1739. Arden was a gentleman of Feversham, who was murdered by his wife, Alicia, and her paramour, Mosby. In " The Warning to Fair Women," a London merchant is murdered in like manner as Arden and Darnley, by his wife and her lover. Both- well's temptation is exemplified in the lines of Shakespeare's poem, " A Lover's Complaint," "O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies In the small orb of one particular tear." — one of the many tears shed by Mary over the conduct of the ill-condi- tioned and ungrateful Darnley, the more fearful in their effects on Bothwell since the latter were augmented by the belief that he had been supplanted in his suit and hopes by the successfnl rival who caused them to be shed. Again, in " The Maid's Tragedy," 1619, Beaumont and Fletcher may have derived their inspiration from a perusal of the famous "Casket Letters," from Mary to Bothwell, in portraying the character of Uvadne, "Her naked, unblushing impudence," says Haz- litt, "her utter insensibility to any motive but her own pride and incli- nation — her heroic superiority to any signs of shame or scruples of con- science are well described." 107 declares that ]3oets alone confer abiding fame, and it is very likely that a more truthful record of Bothwell will survive in verse and romance than in works styled history which, as a rule, are mere exliibitions of party spirit and prejudice. Swinburne, in his " Chastelard " and "Bothwell," is just towards the latter and affords a fair idea of his love, rise and fall ; and White Melville, in his novel, ' ' The Queen' s Maries," exhibits more evidences of close search for facts in connection with the Earl than the majority of historians. The same remark holds better in respect to James Grant's " Bothwell," and he refers to incidents in James Hepburn's early manhood which have been neglected by almost every authority, and yet they colored his whole after-life. That Bothwell, sent out to France in 1558 by the Queen Regent, fell in love with Mary Stuart before she married the Dau- phin, is alluded to in chronicles of the day, and also that he was not the desperate man he afterwards became until Darnley made his appearance and crushed for the nonce his hopes. It is very remarkable that Catherine de Medicis, while rejecting the divine truths of revelation, caused seas of blood to be shed in the religious struggles she fomented and was a firm believer in astrology. The royal sorceress one day consulted her favorite seer as to the fate of Mary Stuart. ISTostradamus answered, "I perceive blood," and predicted that the young Queen would be a victim to the fatal heritage of her race. When Mary was about sixteen 108 years old, and when as yet she was scarcely betrothed in form to the Dauphin, Bothwell, in the course of one of his numerous voyages between Scotland and the Continent, saw " Za Beinette cC Ecosse " and fell in love with her. He was then about twenty-two years of age, and although any suit at that time was hopeless for him, he was always true to this love at first sight. After the death of her hus- band, Francis, the two noblemen who afterwards success- ively became her husbands, visited her in France. Darnley was scarcely more than a boy, but Bothwell, already, in 1560 exhibiting rare ability, had become a man of mark. He remained in attendance upon Mary for upwards of four months, and she consulted him continually on matters of the highest importance and placed implicit reliance in his judgment. Agnes Strickland, with whom the Earl is no favorite, admits that he undoubtedly possessed literary talent and sufficient political importance to merit the closest supervision of the English ambassador in France, who notified his government that he exhibited qualities of the highest order, on which account it behooved his ad- versaries to keep a sharp eye upon him [III., 159-60]. He had already lost the sight of one eye (the left), but neither in a dishonorable manner nor in the course of a piratical cruise, as is almost invariably charged. The wound which destroyed its vision was received in a personal encounter [v. 228. 2] with Cockburn of Ormiston, when, in November, 1559, he tore the English subsidy from that agent of the 109 Rebel or Confederate Lords. Althongli the sight was gone, the organ was apparently uninjured, and the scar which re- mained, so far from being unsightly, was becoming to the martial visage of a born soldier. Miss Strickland, besides acknowledging his cultivation and capacity, is likewise forced to concede that Bothwell, in his hatred to Romanisnj, was a staunch Reformer, and so determined in his principles that, in spite of his ardent love for Mary, the Queen, could never induce him to concede the slightest conformity to the observances of the creed of which she — except when under his influence — was so devoted and zealous a member. One of the charges brought against Bothwell, after he accompanied Mary back to Scotland, was that he intended to slay Murray and carry off Mary and wed her. It is a great pity he did not execute this plan, if he in reality enter- tained it (see 35-36, and note supra). Was there anything surprising in Bothwell' s hatred of Murray, who had been and was his life-long bitterest enemy and a cold-blooded vil- lain, neither more nor less, in every M'^ay, towards man and woman, where it served his purposes. If no other proof existed of this charge, his treatment of Christian, the Countess and unfortunate heiress of Buchan, would establish the fact. Having first sought the young lady's hand, he stripped her of her large possessions, and when he had im- poverished her and enriched himself, he forced her to marry his uterine step-brother, far beneath her in rank. In this connection it is curious to learn that Murray's no brother, another bastard ofJames Y., John, Prior of Col- dingham, married Bothwell's sister, and Bothwell himself, after Darnley's pnblic marriage, married Jane Gordon, daughter of tlie Roman Catholic Earl of Huntly, whom he, as a Protestant, assisted Murray to ruin when the latter was the Prime Minister of Mary. The political vagaries of this jDeriod are utterly incomprehensible. Diabolical is almost too polite a term to apply to them. They present no redeeming aspect. Whatever apparent or real temporary animosity Maiy at any period displayed towards Bothwell was entirely due to tlie influence of Murray, which was succeeded by the inexpli- cable ascendancy of Rizzio ; that was especially due to the fact that he was a secret agent of the Jesuits and the Pope. He it was engineered the courtship of the papist, Darnley, who made his appearance at a time wdien Bothwell was under a cloud, through the machinations of Murray and his own tendency to frolic. Those prejudiced against Both- well conceal that Murray wanted to poison him. Napoleon remarked, on the way to Marengo, that if he was killed at that time, his career, brilliant as it had been, would not fill ten pages of history. The whole story of the gradual conquest and dominion of the Saxons in Eng- land is confined in ordinary histories to about as many pages as it occupied centuries. The same remarks apply to the narrative of a great many historical phases, but not to the case of Mary Stuart. Tlie most important portion Ill of her career fills only a little over two years; yet it lias been the subject of hundreds of volumes, and has enlisted the pens of some of the ablest writers in every language. Why ? !N"ot for the reason th^t most people supjDose ; but be- cause she was an agency to throw down the past, control the j)resent and assist in erecting the future. She M^as the socket- joint on which turned the fate of the Reformation in the Brit- ish Isles. Yes, and thus in many respects, upon her and Both well, pivoted the impulse, if not all the future of Anglo- Saxondom — which completes the whole of — humanity. The fact that portentous events did hinge upon her in- volves inevitably the close consideration of Bothwell. If Mary was the first, Bothwell was the second great quantity in the equation of the times, and their intimate connection lasted, clearly visible, but a little over a year ; recognizably but little over two years, although percept- ibly to close observation for a much longer period. As the crisis of the fortunes of Mary and of Scotland occurred within the two years of the intimate relations of Mary with Bothwell, this it is makes him so important a factor in the eifects developing therefrom, which were gradually felt in ever-increasing circumference, until it may be said that, like the circle in the water, cited as a parallel by Shaks- peare, the ripple set in motion by the loves of Mary and Bothwell have broken and to-day break, according to times, places, and circumstances — upon the horizon, nearer or farther, of human development. 112 Raumer — as quoted — .justly observed that there are fated individuals — using the word fated in an unhaj^py sense — and fated families. This remark might be extended to embrace fated nations and fated races. Mary Stuart's life was one tissue of mistakes. These errors were neither her fault nor her crime. E'very human heing is a product, and the elements which entered into her creation produced effects such as must inevitably result from an amalgama- tion like to theirs in any power, so to speak, exerting the influence of a sovereign, as pertinently observed by the au thor of " The Modern Hagar " on the death of a child im- mediately after its birth, "A chain of evil that might have war^^ed souls for a century — unto the third and fourth generation — was broken in the welding." BotliM^ell was a much nobler product than Mary. His antecedents were better. The Hepburns were greater men in their sphere than the Stuarts in theirs, although the lat- ter occupied a higher one, a throne. Mary's race or com- ponents were bad on both sides and in every direction. This was clearly demonstrated in the author's "Study," ' ' Mary, Queen of Scots. ' ' Both well' s father was a wild slip, " a gay Lothario," but not worse than his compeers. His grandfather was a grand character. The record of his mother, Agnes Sinclair, ' ' a virtuous lady of the highest rank" (A. S. — Y. 229, 1) is unstained. She was divorced by a self-seeking husband, planning for a higher, but not a bet- ter mate, the Queen -Dowager -Regent, Mary of Lorraine. 113 Agnes lived a good wife ever, an affectionate niotlier, care- ful of tlie interests of her only son, and died, leaving all she possessed to his illegitimate son (Schiern, 4-53.). His legitimate daughter by Qneen Mary disappeared, of her all certain traces — as has been shown — ^have been lost. Agnes Strickland (Q. of S. — Y. 316) connnenting on this birth uses very unsatisfactory language, " There is no sub- stantial reason to believe, * * ^- j^\^q^ Mary ever gave birth to any other child " than James VI. "Substantial!" What does she mean by this? She can- not disprove it, and equally credible witnesses affirm it. Throckmorton mentions her pregnancy as admitted by her- self. Miss Strickland (IV. 53) mentions her " painful and dangerous illness" at Lochleven, "exactly nine months from the period," Both well is charged to have forced her in Dunbar Castle, and the good and virtuous Castlenau and Le Laboureur, Counsellor and Almoner to the King of France, attest the existence, fate and demise of a daughter. All the evidence against the birth of this unhappy child is ne- gatwe ; all the proof in favor of it is positive. In a court of justice which of these pleadings would prevail? Throck- morton had no interest in misrepresenting Mary's admis- sion of her pregnancy. Miss Strickland, a panegyrist and partial advocate, concedes the painful illness at the natural epoch, and also eulogises Castlenau as honest, wlio, the latter, furnishes us with the evidence of the birth. Where bigotry and prejudice and interest combine to deny a fact 15 114 which disinterested records confirm, whoever doubts the hitter rtinks liiniself with the former, who belong to the class who ''neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." God bless the good mothers : like Both well's, Agnes Sinclair, wlioever is blessed with such is blessed indeed ! In many respects Bothwell w^as an eminent man. He was a brave soldier and a capable leader. The French ambassador, du Croc, a veteran, admired his dispositions for the last battle he set in array. He was a statesman, indeed, for his times, and as a politician he would have ranked with the highest if he had been less honest. He was a patriot in the best sense of the word, devoid of hypocrisy and a believer in the religion, or rather creed, he had chosen without aflfectation or cant. As a subordi- nate he was an extraordinary example of fidelity amid almost universal faithlessness. His was a lovable nature, and powerful in inspiring a corresponding passion. "I held the Queen in no captivity [at Dunbar], hut I loved and honored her with such Jtum ility as she deserved^ ' ' are the words of Bothwell, when with years and captivity he had time for refiection and had no reason to misrepre- sent the slightest fact. It is curious how much can be proved through the self- contradicting testimony of his traducers. Their evidence de- monstrates the falsehood of Buchanan's inconsistent un- truths and Brantome's prejudiced Gallic misrepresentation. 115 When, in 1563, Bothwell, like Harold, the great son of God- win, was driven to an inimical shore by a tempest — in the same manner as the grand Saxon had been — he M^as unjustly seized and unrighteously imprisoned by the mean Eliza- beth. Just like Bothwell, the subsequent victor of Stam- ford Bridge and the victim of Sanguelac was dishonorably trepanned by William the Conqueror. Mary Stuart exer- cised efficient influence for the man she loved ; Edward the Confessor had not or did not exert any in favor of the Thegn, in whom he trusted implicitly, even while he did not feel for him any aftection. At this time the English agent, Eandal, or Randolph, who especially had occasioned Bothwell' s detention, writes to Cecil, dated Edinburgh, 3d June, 1563 "I beseech your grace, send him where you will, only not to Dover Castle, not so much for fear of my aged mother, but my sister is young and has many daughters.'' JSTow does it stand to reason that a man, stig- matized by Buchanan as resembling "an ape in fine clothes," and by Brantome as "the ugliest and awkward- est man ever seen," could have been dangerous among women of rank ? A second Englishman— another of the accredited meddlers in Scottish affairs, who was particu- larly hostile to Bothwell — Sir William Drury, Ma*iting to Cecil, charges the Earl with "inordinateness toward wo- men." When illicit connections occur betM^een cultivated men and women in the higher ranks of society, as a rule, the man is not the seducer, but the seduced. To this rule P 116 there are exceptions ; but in this case, as in all others, the exceptions prove the rule. Respectable people, so styled, condemn the man because it is the fashion to do so and suits the purposes of moralists. Again, mannerism is very frequently mistaken for immorality, and the refinement of courtesy — sometimes styled gallantry — for absolute vice. The judgment of this world is almost always fallacious. The proverb, "there is no smoke without fire," is about as true in its general application as many of the compre- hensive adages wliich will not bear critical investigation. There may be a huge column of smoke with a very little fire, and a fearful conflagration with hardly any visil^le smoke. Kindle a small fire, and heap damp combustibles upon it without preventing the circulation of air, and it will send up a veritable pillar of smoke which can be seen for miles. Haul together hundreds of loads of dry brush, apply the torch to windward, and in a few minutes a con- flagration \vill ensue which will snap out tongues of flame laterally that make it perilous to stand in the vicinity, and shoot u]3 a pillar of fire that often rivals in altitude the or- dinary evolutions of smoke. The author has burned huge piles of damp leaves and vegetable matter, and also thou- sands of loads of brush, green and dry, in clearing up ex- tensive woodlands throughout a period of forty years, and knows these parallels to be correct and these facts to be true. Identical deductions hold good with regard to the passions of individuals. The same decision in the Court 117 of Love will not apply with justice to scarcely any two cases brought before it. " The mind hath a thousand eyes, The heart but one ; Yet the life of a whole life dies When love is done." But, to cease from moralizing at large, and to return to the immediate consideration of Bothwell. Let us see what unprejudiced gentlemen wrote about him at the age of twenty-eight to thirty. At the same time while Eandolph was persecuting Both- well so bitterly, one of the young Earl's keepers in Eng- land, Sir Henry Percy, recommended liim to Cecil, with the testimony that "he is very wise, and not the man he was reported to be." " His behavior has been courteous and honorable, keeping his promise. " ( " Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series," 1563, p. 129 ; 1561-5, p. 83. Sir John Forster also writes at that time to Cecil, that Both- well, ' ' all time of his abode here, behaved himself as to him appertained." ("Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series," 1561-5, p. 75.) It is a strong point in his favor — however the over-vir- tuous may desire to reject the evidence — his mistresses, even after the more intimate tie had been severed, con- tinued to the last most faithful and active instruments for the advancement of his fortunes. It is, indeed, very interesting to discover how women. 118 once in love with Botliwell, never lost their interest in him, and absolutely, contrary to the rule in such cases, be- came his most faithful agents in furthering his plans. For instance, if there is any truth in the private records of the times, Lady Reres, one of his intimates, was his most effectual ally in bringing him and Queen Mary together. She was the daughter of the Earl of Angus, and cousin of the Earl of Morton. Her sister, Margaret Douglas, known as Lady Buccleuch, wife of Sir Walter Scott, of Buccleuch (according to Froude, IX., 7 (2), see Scheirn, 53 (3 and 4), 54 (2), 55 (1) ), was another of the many chere amies of the Earl, and also influential between the Queen and him, so much so, indeed, that she was accused of accomplishing her purposes by witchcraft, a charge which, by-the-bye, was likewise brought against the Earl, and urged vindictively against him by Buchanan, the Scotch ambassador to Frederick II. of Denmark, when Botliwell' s extradition was the subject of so much negotiation and pressure by the Regency of Scotland and the Government of England. It is still more curious to observe how every writer, even those the most abandoned to their Scottish Mariolatry, when conscience and circumstances compel them to admit the merits of Botliwell, fall back on the scurrilous Bu- chanan, " the prince of literary prostitutes," to neutralize their unwilling praise with his calumnies, or else refer to an inimical witness, Brantome, who it is not certain (Burton, lY., 174, and others), ever saw Botliwell with his own e^^es. 119 " James Hepburne, Earl of Botliwell, though some of the leading features of his character had hardly shown themselves at the period of which we speak [1561, when Mary returned to Scotland], merits, nevertheless, from the part he subsequently acted, especial notice at present. He had succeeded his father in his titles and estates in the year 1556, when he was five or six and twenty years of age. [This is a gross error; he was only nineteen or twenty. He was born in 1536 or 1537, and only nineteen or twenty at the time referred to, and but fifty when he died.] He enjoyed not only large estates, but the hereditary oflices of Lord High Admiral of Scot- land, Sherifii" of Berwick, Haddington and Edinburgh, and Baillie of Lauderdale. With the exception of the Duke of Chatelherault, he was the most powerful nobleman in the Southern districts of Scotland. Soon after coming to his titles he began to take an active share in public business. In addition to his other oflices, he was appointed the Queen's Lieu- tenant on the Borders, and Keeper of Hermitage Castle, by the Queen Regent, to whom he ahoays remained faithful, in oppo- sition to the Lord James [Murray], and what was then termed the English faction. He went over to France on the death of Francis II., to pay his duty to Mary, and on his return to Scot- land was by her intrusted with the discharge of an important com')nission regardhig the government. Though all former dif- ferences were now supposed to have been forgotten, there was not, nor did there ever exist, a very cordial agi'eement between the Earls of Murray and Bothwell. They were both about the same age, but their dispositions were very different. Murray was self-possessed, full of foresight, prudent and wary. Both- well was bold, reckless and extravagant. His youth had been devoted to every species of dissipation ; and even in manhood he seemed more intent on pleasure than on business. This was / / 120 a sort of life which Murray despised, and perhaps he calculated that Bothwell would never aim at any other. But, though guided by no steady principles, and devoted to licentiousness, Bothwell was, nevertheless, not the mere man of pleasure. He was all his life celebrated for daring and laioless exploits^ and vanity or passion were motives whose force he was never able to resist. Unlike Murray, who, when he had an end in view, made his advances toward it as cautiously as an Indian hunter, Bothwell dashed right through, as careless of the means by which he was to accomplish his object as of the consequences that were to ensue. His manner ivas of that /rank, open, and tmcalculatijig kind, which frequently catches a superficial ob- server. They who did not study him more closely were apt to imagine that he was merely a blustering, good-natured, vio- lent, headstrong man, whose manners must inevitably have de- generated into vulgarity, had he not been nobly born and ac- customed to the society of his peers. But much more serious conclusions might have been drawn [as in regard to Julius Caesar] by those who had penetration enough to see under the dark cloak of dissoluteness in which he wrapped himself and his designs." Bell, perhaps, sought to do Bothwell justice, but his de- sire to clear Lis heroine, Mary, would not permit him to do so. To tell the truth, Bothwell stands erect and promi- nent in his better qualities among his contemporaries. He resembles a grand, polished and ornamented shaft, which has retained its perpeiidicidar amid similar erections, its fellows of even date, which, shaken by a moral and politi- cal earthquake, if not thrown dowai, lean in one direc- tion or anotlier, or lie prostrate in the mire of their meaner 121 characteristics, or half hidden amid the rank and dank growth of their vices and their crimes. He was certainly more honest and more bold than his only real rival in poM^er and influence, the sly, self-seeking Murray, the pet of the clergy. Besides this Stuart, there is no other Scot- tish nobleman who deserves to be named in the same breath with Bothwell. Agnes Strickland, who is positively wicked at times in her vituperation and misrepresentation of Bothwell, is, nevertheless, compelled to make admissions in his favor, which neutralize volumes of abuse. She says (I., 139-140), " Covetousness was not his besetting sin," and that he "had refused to enrich himself with English bribes when deprived of all his living in Scotland." Of what other Scottish noble but he could the same be said? What does this mean ? He was unalterably true in good or evil estate to his sovereign, his government and his country. "How- ever deserving of censure, he had resisted every tempta- tion either to act as the secret service man of England or to trouble Mary's government by raising a revolt against her in [his own territories] Liddesdale, during his imprisonment at Berwick, which he might well have done ; his forbear- ance was deservedly appreciated by his sovereign." {I hid 229.) "As LONG AS HE [BothwcU] REMAINED FAITHFUL TO HIS DUTY, SHE [Mary] was safe." (1566, I hid 351.) To impugn his complete intrepidity is to descend to the mean- est vilification, of the lowest. If he had not been consum- 16 122 mately brave and expert in tlie management of arms, why was he always ready to venture his person in the fiekl ? and if he was simply a braggart, why did the men he chal- lenged always shirk or refuse, or slink out of the encoun- ter, as did the miserable Morton, at Carberry Hill ? The atrocious abuse of Bothwell does not hang together. It would contradict, or stultify itself if prejudice had not pet- rified itself into something insoluble to proof and reason. In 1565, amid her 18,000 men, '-'- of Loyal friends^ the Queen, could really count on none hut Bothwell, young Athol^ and perhaps Huntly^ the rest were as like to turn against her as to stand hy her.'''' (Froude, VIII., 213-14). This makes Mary's conduct at Carberry Hill utterly beyond the grasp of common sense. In allowing herself to be separated from Bothwell she abandoned everything trust- worthy. It was sheer insanity. Ernesto. — " 'T is true He thither came a private Gentleman, But young and brave, and of a Family Ancient and Noble as the Empire holds. The Honours he has gained are justly his ; He purchas'd them in War ; thrice has he led An Army 'gainst the Rebels, and as often Return'd with Victory ; the world has not A truer Soldier, or a better Subject." O T w A V ' s Tragedy , ^^The Orphan." — " Ha ! not love her ! Witness, ye heav'ns, if e'er was love like mine I Witness, ye hours, that saw my joys and pains ! My joys and pains that were for her alone. When I stood wond'ring at her awful beauties, Gaz'd on her eyes, or languish'd on her lips, Did she e'er joy, but I was all in raptures. Or ever grieve, but I was all in tears ?" 1ARD Barford's Tragedy, ^''Virgin Queen." "iT^q. " Love, like a wren upon the eagle's wing. Shall perch superior on Ambition's plume, And mock the lordly pa.ssion in its flight." Ja.mes Darcv's Tragedy, ^''Love and Ainhiticn," 1732. HE difficulties of presenting a concise and, witlial, a clear statement of facts, were admitted by the celebrated Pascal, mas- ter of his langnasje, as he remarks at the end of Letter XVI. of his famons "Pro- vincials," "I have made this disserta- tion longer hecause I did not have time nor leisure to make it shorter.'''' In any event could he have made it more concise without obscuring its clearness. 123 124 Terence, 1900 years before, said, "There maybe too much, even of a good thing." The Imman brain is very mnch like the human stomach. Good writing and good health depend very much on the digestive and assimilative powers of these organ s. To receive facts or food and so digest either that the one will turn what it has taken in into ex- cellent writing, or the other into perfectly healthy blood, is what few mortal brains or stomachs are capable of doing. These remarks are particularly pertinent to the considera- tion of the case of Bothwell and his times ; and the results of a careful analysis will prove most conclusively the truth of Shakespeare's idea, that "pleasant vices become scourges." James the Fifth, the "King of the Com- mons," was very common or indiscriminate in his loves. Among his illegitimate children, the best known is James, the Prior of St. x\ndrews, better known as the Earl of Moray, or Murray. As a physiognomist remarks, after studying his portrait, " His face gives him away," i. olicy in 1563, "when she was not under the influence of the violent attachments to which she afterwards yielded." 153 sick-bed another woman. Botliwell left his conch — to which the w^onncl received in her service had consigned him — and, only half recovered, hastened to her side ; Darn- ley also came. How was each one received? There is no doubt as to the difference. From this time forward Both- well rose privately and pnblicly in her esteem ; and, as Botliwell rose, Darnley fell, stumbled, j)lunged into the pit his follies, cowardice and debaucheries had dug for him, and lost his life. Was BothM'ell to blame that he deliv- ered the nation and its queen from such a compound of ambition and imbecility ! Since the beginning of the M^orld history teems with similar instances. Is left-handed Ehud blamed for slaying the tyrant Eglon ? Was not Jehu ex- alted, for the destruction of Ahaziah and Jezebel ? Are not Harmodius and Aristogiton honored for killing one of the Pisistratidse, oj^pressors of Athens ? Is not Brutus hailed as "the Last of the Romans," although he struck down his benefactor, Julius Csesar ! The Roman Catholics glorified with blasphemous honors the monk Clement, who emulated Ehud in killing Henry III. ; and is not Charlotte Corday almost sanctified by the best of people for stab- bing Marat ? Did. Botliwell intend to do more than either one of these, and w^as he not incited to do whatever he did by the preachings of Knox, the founder of the Scot- tish Church, and his coadjutors in the work of reforma- tion ? It is now positively known that Darnley did not lose his life either through the means employed by Both- 20 154 well or at Lis hands. Darnley was slain by Arcliibald Douglas, cousin to Darnley, and relative and confidant of Murray and Moi-ton. Out upon sucli injustice ! It was to the interest of Murray's party to throw tlie guilt upon Bothwell, to ruin him, to persecute him to his life's end, to defame his memory, and to hand him down as the vilest criminal in Scotland, whereas he v.ias the only rkai. man of his ge7ieratio)i. As was said of the great Hohenstaufen emperor, '' Frederick II., with many of the noblest Cjuali- ties which could captivate the admij-ation of his own age, ill some respects might appear misplaced, and by many centuries prematurely born." Or, again, "In all ages there have been false [undeserved] reputations, founded on some individual judgment, whose authority has pre- vailed without examination, until, at last, criticism dis- cusses, the truth penetrates, and the phantom of prejudice vanishes. Such has been the reputation of" James Hep- burn. ' ' But the eye of Providence, which sees everything from eternity, perceives all this ; and that same Provi- dence disposes everything she has predestinated, in the or- der it deserves. As Homer says of the sun, it sees every- thing and hears everything. ' ' Bothwell, as a politician, was too honest for his time, or any time. He served through loyalty, true to his motto, "Kiip Trest" ("Be Faithful"), through sheer loy- alty to the Queen-Dowager and purest loyalty, fondest love (in many ways the terms are synonymous) to Mary, 155 Queen and woman. The scales of his magnanimity, ad- justed to weigh most precious objects, were incompetent to w^eigh the sordid, soul-less creatures with whom lie had to \vork, wdiose religion, patriotism and honor were founded on greed. With all his experience and educa- tion he did not appreciate that all revolutions were founded on personal interests, pecimia^ money and lands. If he had lived to this day he would have seen this truth confirmed. The Netherlanders, who stood fiery death and fiercer torture because it reached individuals, or only a por- tion of the j)opulation, not the wdiole, would not stand the "tenth penny," Alva's alcohala, because it afi'ected every one — every one felt and no one could avoid the extortion. The people of the Thirteen Colonies rebelled because the Mother Country justly sought to impose upon them a small portion of the burden of the expense of their defence against the French and savages. The South took up arms to carry their "peculiar institution," Slavery, on to Free Soil, and protect their property and trafiic in human chattels. So it has been and so it ever wall be. The Scotch no- bility w^ anted to retain wdiat they had gripped, and acquire more of the confiscated Church lands, and Bothwell sought to curb their growing power, to maintain the royal author- ity, and to administer justice without regard to creed or greed. It is susceptible of proof that he did this almost wdthout reward, and even at last with no adequate com- 156 pensation from tins source. All tliat lie held lie inherited from his great-grandfather, tlie first Earl Patrick, except his government of Edinburgh Castle and the Castlery of Dun- bar, which were the recompense of his mighty fidelity; he " Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power ;'' — he, who never placed his neck in the yoke of a Knox — who, lording so long over the consciences of Scotland, thought enough of his own ajjpetites and interests to share at sixt}^ the matrimonial yoke with a rich and noble maiden of fifteen ; — he, who planted himself as a barrier to the ag- gressions of the "Lords of the Congregation;" who had he but filled the maws of this hungry pack with plunder, or reduced them to beggary, and given their possessions to a new tribe of "wild (Nepaul) dogs'" and jackals, and had he been contented with the woman, Mary, he might have con- tinued to live on and to love. He fell and lost all because he M^as a patriot without groveling objects. Had he left the administration and its advantages to the vile aristo- cracy whose mouths watered for the latter alone, as hun- gry wolves contemplate a flock of fat sheep, he would not have been branded as a "pirate,'' and died in exile and captivity. He sought at once to love the Queen as a "real man," and to govern the country as a real ruler. In Scot- land two such roles^ in his day, were incompatible. Love brims earth's cup. Let mortals be content with that. If the goblet of life be filled with that draught, pure and com- 157 plete, none other will be conceded. The law of compensa- tion will yield no more because, with means to live, For- tune can bestow no more. Wreathe the cup with the most exquisite wild flowers grown amid the thorns along the path of life, and Fate may smile and bless the gift. En- crust the chalice with gems, and at once it becomes the coveted prize of the envious, the sensual and the violent, or the prey of the stealthy or the rapacious robber, ■ " Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are." ' This is Love's house, and this is Love's hour of bliss ; Through the dark grove her windows shine like stars ; List to those flute-players, mark well the bars Of that sweet prelude, each note like a kiss That longer grows and tenderer, till you miss The music in the passion. Nothing jars On soul or sense : no fateful boding mars Joy's perfectness ; what end shall be of this ? Love hath her day, but Love's day vanisheth ; Vacant her chambers now, below, above ; Her flutes no longer breathe melodious breath ; Dark are her windows now as is the grove ; And echoes of the falling feet of Death Reverberate through the emptj' house of Love." ^^Lovrs Day." — T/ie Academy. T is impossible, without entering into the most minnte details and at length, to fur- nish to readers any adequate idea of the utter villainy of the principal Scotch no- bility in the time of Mary. They had scarcely signed the Bond at the celebrated Ainslie [Annesley] Supper, 19th April, 1567,* urging the Queen to marry Bothwell, and sol- * But what was the jjurport of this celebrated Bond '? The writers — after rehearsing the facts which we have already detailed, that the Earl of Bothwell, having been openly calumniated as guilty of the death 158 159 emnlj pledging "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors," their complete support to her and to him, if the marriage did follow, than — even before the nuptial of the late King, as well by placards over the city as by the letters of the Earl of Lennox, had been tried and found innocent by the noble- men, his peers, appointed to conduct the inquest — declare that the no- bleness of Ids lineage, the magnitiide of his services, and their oion friend- ship towards him in all times past, together toith that common bond of interest tcihich unites all noblemen together, as equally subject to the cal- umnies of their enemies, and the vain bruits of the common people, in- duce them to come forward and avouch his perfect innocence, and to promise upon their faith and honor, andtruthin their bodies as they are noblemen, and as they shall answer to God, to defend him in all time to come against all, whosoever they may be, who shall utter slander against his name ; and, moreover, considering that the Queen was without a husband, and that none could be found so fitting for that dignity as him- self, they promise to sustain him in his endeavors to perfect such a marriage, and to render him all assistance against any who shall endeavor to oppose or to j^revent it. [If there were no evident tokens of Mary's fondness and partiality for Bothwell, why should he have been selected for so high a dignity and reward ?] And should they violate their solemn promise, thej^ call down upon their own heads the vengeance of posterity, and beseech that they may " never have Reputatioun or Credite in na Tyme heiraftir, but be accounted unworthie and faithles Traytors." The annals of history are filled with many sad and melancholy instances of human treacherj'' and human crime, and our own [English] na- tion has not been free from such blots upon its brilliant escutcheon ; but when we see the same men who have thus, under the most solemn obligations which can bind the mind of man, dedicate their lives, their fortunes and their honor to the support and defence of a single man, and the furtherance of his marriage with their Queen, de- claring a few sh,ort months afterwards that he was undoubtedly guilty of the perpetration of the crime, from the imputation of which they there declared him free, and averring that their sovereign, " by hir un- 160 Iviiot was tied — tliey were making aiTangements for an- other "Bond" to pull down tlie Earl and rnin the Queen. (See Letter of the British spy and tool, Kircaldy of Grange, to tlie English Earl of Bedford, dated the next day, 20th of April, 1567.) Burton (IV., 235) states that they were concerting their plans for this infernal treachery before the marriage, 15th May, 1567. That is to say they had handicapped the Aiiislie-Tavern-Bond by another, cal- culated to annul their pledges, which had been freely and unreservedly given a few weeks previously. Among the excuses they alleged to whitewash themselves for rising against Bothwell and the Queen, was the charge that the former intended to get possession of the young prince (after- wards James YI. ) and make way with him, to assure to him- self and to his issue the Crown and the Succession in Scot- land. That such issue there would be, Mary herself deemed probable. (Froude, IX., 65.) This lame attempt at exon- gocllie and dishonorable proceeding iii a pr i veil mariage with him sodden- lie and unprovisitlie," was proved beyond a doubt to have participated in that crime, the whole dark array of human guilt seems brightened by the contrast, and the vile act of pertidy stands forth the blackest in the annals of our race. Bright, indeed, was the spirit of prophecy which illuminated their minds when they penned those last words of their sa- cred Bond, when they declared that, if they violated that pledge, they should " nevir have Reputatioun or Crediie in na Tyme heiraftir, but he &ccowQie(\. umcortJde and faitJdes Trayfors." Their own lips have pronounced the verdict on their fame, and posterity shall con- tirm the awfnl sentence for the profit and edification of an admiring world." ("Memoirs of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland," by L. Stan- hope F. Buckingham. London, 1844, pp. 177-80. 161 eration falls to the ground, since it is known that their threefold treason was determined at least a week before either the Queen or Both well had manifested the faintest design — or, according to any evidence, entertained the slightest idea — of asking or seeking the guardianship of the Royal child. They had no reason for their suspicions except the suggestion of their own guilty minds, sufficient- ly capable of engendering such a criminal plot. Whatever course he followed, Bothwell's objective had always been, and was, a grand one. Primarily it was the good of his country, and the hope of bringing order out of chaos. Secondly, it was the possession of Mary Stuart, the object of "the overpowering force of love [which] had already swept away his long tried fidelity." (Buckingham, I., 182.) It is a pity Bothwell had not eaten freely of " Ant's Eggs," which, according to popular superstition, "are an Antidote to Love." Even in this, however, his design was invested with a certain nobility of purpose. Erom her hand he hoped to receive the sceptre, and from his mar- riage with her derive the legitimization of an authority which would enable him to bless Scotland with something like a stable and efficient government. That he loved Mary as no other man ever loved her, and that she loved him — as much as her Stuart-Guisan nature — spasmodical- ly and sporadically — would allow, and as she loved no other man, is susceptible of the clearest proof, except to those who resemble the Papists and Southern Rebels, and 21 162 Hre positively iiiial)le to see the truth through the atmo- spliere of their interests and their ignorance, their preju- dices and their passions. Mary Stuart's life — to repeat — was one tissue of mis- takes. She started out with the grand error of making Elizabeth her enemy by a public claim to the Crown of England. She endeavored to excuse this on the ground that the act was not he]' own., but that of her father-in- law, Henry 11. , King of France. This would be a plaus- ible explanation if she had not adhered to the assumption throughout life, and when she was entirely independent of all control. This obstinac}^ brought her to the scaffold. Moreover, her indiscretions — beginning as soon as her first husband, Francis, died — were unintermittent. (Burton, TV. , 172-8. ) She was a perfect ' ' Medusa among Beauties. ' ' Everyone of her lovers in succession came to a terrible end ; with one exception, the noble d'Amville. He alone, in time, had the strength of soul to break the spell. From Chastelard to Babington, to love Mary Stuart, or to be fa- vored by her, was equivalent to a sentence of death. Just consider the list after her return to Scotland ; for uncer- tainty — like one of the dense fogs of the land of her nativ- ity — invests the period of her widowhood in France. She must have in reality possessed the fabulous "Capon's stone," capable of ensuring love. Even the vile Murray expiated his brief intervals of favor by assassination. Chas- telard, by the hands of the executioner, heads the death- 163 roll ; Sir John Gordon, avowedly the handsomest man in Scotland, was decapitated in her presence ; Rizzio was basely and barbaiously mnrdered at her knees, her second husband abetting and assisting ; Darnley was strangled, NOT hilled hy mi explosion^ and not hy Bothwell ; Both- well, after fearful vicissitudes, perished in confinement ; the Earl of Arundel died in the Tower and the Duke of Nor- folk on the block there ; the Earl of Northumberland lost his head by the axe at York ; and the Earl of "Westmore- land died in poverty and exile. As for minor victims to her fascination, the rack, the noose, the axe and the gibbet were their inevitable fate. Mary Stuart's mother, Mary of Guise, Queen -Do wager- Regent, trusted implicitly in Bothwell. Mary herself ac- corded to him her fullest confidence in emergencies, from the first time they met at Joinville. Had she remained faithful to these first impressions, all would have gone well. Knox would have sanctioned and blessed the union of the Queen and his hereditary chief, to whom he ever, with more or less fondness, inclined, and the Keformers, as a body, in spite of the rascality of their lords, would have followed the anointed of the great Scottish Reformer and the most consistent Protestant of the whole nobility. But, unfortunately, she allowed herself to be beguiled by the arch-hypocrite Murray, and he led her astray and plunged her deeper and deeper into the fatal slough of his arts, or lured her into the meshes of his boundless ambition. 164 Althous^li a bigoted Roman Catholic, among her first acts, after her return to Scotland, was to assist her in- triguing relative to ruin the House of Huntley, the i3rinci- pal prop of her creed. What for ? To build uj) the fortunes of her false brother, who was her most truculent enemy, and thus, by the spoliation of her staunchest friends, to found and fence the fortunes of her bitterest enemies. Unless she had so greatly enriched Murray, he could not have compassed her downfall. Had she mar- ried Bothwell when she returned to Scotland, all would have gone well. He was a Protestant who, while unshak- able in his convictions, was wholly destitute of bigotry. He would have rallied the Calvinistic pack to her support — the hungry and remorseless pack, which, allowed to fol- low Murray's lead, hunted Mary to her doom. She passed over devoted fidelity when it might have proved her sal- vation, and was caj)tured — "captured" is the only word applicable — by the "mere external graces and accomplish- ments" of a courtly but " silly young fool," and soul-less, " well-made, long lad " — an innnature man, just as fit to be a king-consort as the astute Murray was to be a subject. The " deejD-seeing ecclesiastic," Mary's uncle, the Cardi- nal de Lorraine, sent two confidential messengers to his niece, and implored her, through Roullart, to give up Darn- ley "if she valued her future happiness," styling him, with astonishing perspicacity, " im gentil hiitaudeau'*'' (an obsolete epithet of contempt equivalent to a "high- 165 born, quarrelsome coxcomb") " umiieet in any respect to be her consort." Unfortmiately things had gone too far. Darnley ah-eady possessed her person. Handfasted to him in the beginning of April, 1565, she learned too late the truth of her relative's judgment. She was already sur- feited with him when the mistress, in fact, — by a sort of brutal usage or custom in Scotland — became the fully legal- ized wife, on the 29th of July following. For this outrage on manners and morals, her church — the Eoman Catholic, a church which is never false to its Jesuit creed, expedien- cy, that the end justilies the means — and the Papal agent, Rizzio, are alone responsible. All this time her heart of hearts belonged to Bothwell. This cannot be proved by di- rect, however demonstrable by indirect, evidence. At the public marriage with Darnley (Froude, YIIL, 190) — "For some strange reason," the Queen appeared " at the altar in a mourning dress of black velvet, such as she wore the doleful day of the burial of her husband [Francis]. Whether it was an accident — whether the doom of the house of Stuart haunted her at this hour with its fatal foresliadowings — or whether sitn- ply for a great political purpose^ she was doing an act which IN ITSELF SHE LOATHED, it is impossible to tell ; but that black drapery struck the spectators with a cold, uneasy aioeP The public marriage witli Darnley evoked from its originator and manipulator, Rizzio, the secret agent of the Papacy, "the exultant exclamation, ''Te Demn laudainus* — it is done, and cannot be broken." Blind fool! He praised God for what ? For bringing about his own down- 166 fall and death ! He did not foresee that, within eight months, Darnley wonld compass his murder. Nor did he foresee that a week after Both well would be summoned home, destined to avenge him on Darnley, and overturn all for which the exultant Piedmontese had labored and was to suffer. In "Mary, Queen of Scots, a Study," and in "James Hepburn, Earl of Both well, a (the first) Vindication," sufficient has been said in detail of the removal of Darnley. All that seems needful in this immediate connection is to repeat that "Mary was thrust more and more into the arms of Both well " (page 49, supra) from the moment he returned home to her support. By handfasting she became the legalized or morganatic mistress of Darnley early in April, 1565 ; by choice she was the chere-aynie of Both- well (Dargaud), before Darnley was a year older, perhaps much sooner. That Sir Walter Scott, with all his chivalric admiration of Mary Stuart, did not believe in her innocence is admit- ted by the Queen's warmest advocates. That slie lured Darnley — once, and for a short period, the object of a fren- zied passion — to his doom is undoubted. The more the facts are studied, the more conclusive must be the judg- ment of the impartial against hei". Amid the direct and circumstantial evidence, her letters (known generally as the "Casket Letters") to Bothwell are tlie most impor- tant proof. 167 In spite of all the voliinies published and testimony that has accumulated, in almost every language of Europe, to prove that the "Casket Letters" and Sonnets and Docu- ments found in the Silver Box, belonging to Both well, and delivered over to his enemies by the double traitor, Bal- four — are forgeries, the writer reiterates, after more care- ful consideration, that tlieiT authenticity is undoiihted. After over two years' study of all tlie testimony, pro and con, his verdict — that of no incompetent critic — must be that they carry within themselves inherent proof that they are not inventions^ except in the primary sense of the word — i. (3., they M^ere accidentally discovered. To emphasize, the CasJcet Letters are not forgeries. Those documents are not anomalies. Many women in diiferent classes of life, in more or less polished language, have addressed letters to their lovers as full of passion as those of Mary, demon- strating as complete surrenders of heart and soul to the object of their love, to whom they had abandoned them- selves and devoted themselves whether for good or for evil. They are exactly such communications as would be sent to a Bothwell, now idolized by a Mary Stuart hating a Darnley, a detested and detestable husband, than whom a meaner creature never lived ; and, as she did write them, they clear up every difficulty which appears to invest the otherwise enigmatical tie that bound the Queen and the Earl to each other with mysterious intensity. They prove, moreover, that in whatever degree Bothwell was criminal 16S in blasting away the obstacle, Darnley, between Mary and himself, she, in an equal if not a greater degree, was guilty as instigatoi', perhaps ; as accomplice, assuredly ; as spy and lure, certainly ; as a receiver of whatever was acquired by the crime, a partner from first to last, at every step, in every degree, in every phase, and in every particular ac- tion. Among other arguments urged that Mary did not compose or write these letters, &c., is their orthography, calligraphy, language, style, and sentiment. ]S^o one wrote more unevenly in every respect than she did at different times. In a little French work entitled, "The Art of Judging the Characters of Men and Their Handwriting," is shown a letter of Mary Stuart, "who at times wrote ele- gantly, though usually in uneven lines ; when in haste and distress of mind ; in several letters during her imjDrisonment v^A\\Qhl\-v?i\Q YQSiA much the contrary ;'''' i. e.^ not elegantly or as ordinarily. This is another strong proof of the authen- ticity of Mary's letters to Both well, which were indited both "m haste and distress of mind," or j^erturbation of mind (D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature, " lY., 47). As fur- ther proof against her see the curious inedited holograph letter recently discovered, among others of Mary, in the Charter Room of the Earl of Moray, Donibristle House, to the Commendator of St. Colmes Inch, in a mixed dialect of English, Scotch and French. Although a perfectly original document from the hand of the Queen, it is admitted by Agnes Strickland, her too ^partial biographer, to be " al- 169 most as unintelligible as if written in Welsh," It M'-as indited during Mary's captivity at Bolton Castle, in Eng- land, and is dated 23d July, 1568. Sncli spelling as this epistle exhibits is incomprehensible in a woman of the Queen's capabilities, education, and opportunities. The best proof against Mary is feminine nature in general, and her own in particular, and there is nothing in any of the papers, charged to be hers, in prose or poetry, that is not strictly consistent with both. It seems almost impossible for a student of this period to tear himself away from discussing the validity of the Casket Letters and Documents. To a person of experi- ence, a man of the world, they can-y within themselves every proof of their authenticity. This internal evidence, again, is corroborated by external circumstances. Whoever denies that Mary's infatuation or passion for Bothwell is not demonstrated by them, as well as by her open conduct, is either too prejudiced to judge fairly, or too ignorant of women and the world to be competent to judge at all. Here, apparently out of place in this connection, it seems pertinent to anticipate in regard to the charge of Both- well' s unkindness to Mary, after their public marriage, a similar rule of investigation must be applied. If Bothwell and Mary's connection dated back for the long period alleged, and as good as proven — although a Scotch jury might let them oif with the dubious verdict of "guilty, but not proven" — a comparison of testimonies will demon- 170 strate that tlieir honsyinoon was only nominal^ and that, since the edge of possession had long since been turned, it was no honeymoon — in the real sense of the word — at all. Bothwell knew Mary and her failings or proclivities, and since it is admitted that strong love and fierce jealousy are inseparable, this conjunction of excitations, together with the difficulties of his situation, may have made the Earl-Consort less gentle than a "spoiled beauty" was willing to submit to without grievous complaint. The conditions of conrting and of marriage, differ vastly in the great majority of cases. Marriage, according to the proverb, "is the Grave of Love." Moreover, Mar}' was easily discomposed. When crossed, and when in that condition of mind, and in her condition of body — all proved by her faintings and other unmistakable signs — she doubtless used strong phrases not meant in earnest, however forcibly expressed. People undertake to apply to her case rules ot judgment which are altogether inapplicable in the nature of things and to women, from queen to quean : since all women in love are alike, whether crowned or in rags. Moral laws and conventional restraints are all very well in the abstract, but whoever has been behind the scenes and seen the litter-strewn corners of life is well aware that a writer must have been very much of a Bohemian, who undertakes to write on subjects that lie entirely be- yond the area of the dignity of parlor manners and the ]^roprieties of full-dress-parade or fashionable receptions. 171 Burton {TV., 228-' 9) assures us that : "• The beginning of their wedded life [puhlicly accepted as such] resembled that of any innocent young couple, affluent in the sources of magnificence and luxury.* They were a good * " Some business had to be clone, however, and, among other thnigs, came up the proper diplomatic communication of the events to foreign Courts. A long document of extreme interest contains her instructions to AVilliam Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, sent as a special envoy to France to convey the intelligence and make suitable explanations. This document is curiously wavering and inconsistent. It begins with a eulogistic biography of her husband — what the French would call an eloge. His great services and merits are set forth at length ; and since it has to be admitted that he was sometimes under the cloud of the royal displeasure, this is attributed to the envyings that ever dog high merit, and are successful for a time in obscuring it. In this portion of the document it is made clear that Bothwell amply deserved his prefer- ment. "Having shown what she had done was exactly what in justice and duty she should have done, she next tells how the surrounding condi- tions coerced her, so that, as a political necessity, she could not do otherwise. She found that his eminent services to the state and to her own person had not been achieved without exciting ambitious thoughts. She saw the somewhat audacious tenor of these, and tried to adminis- ter a judicious check to them. She failed. There was another element besides ambition which made him rash and headstrong in his acts — a devouring love for her. These combined motives conduced to rash acts, which brought her into his power. Then, when she considered her position, it was not merely that she was at the mercy of a man ex- ulting in the consciousness of unparalled hei'oism and statesmanship, and frantically in love with herself, but her whole nature was with him. She referred to the Bond signed at the notable [Ainslie] supper as a great demonstration of the chiefs of the state, such as a sovereign cannot without danger resist. The current in Bothwell's favor was so .strong that not one man in Scotland appeared to stand up for her. Then she bethought herself if she was right in her obstinate resistance. She be- 172 deal seen in public, and frequently rode together in much bra- very. Stories were told how when he, still preserving the etiquette of sovereign and subject, would attend her cap in hand, she would playfully snatch it and place it on his head. It may, indeed, be counted one of the most remarkable pheno- mena of the whole situation that one of the subtlest and acutest women ever born should, in her fool's paradise, have been totally unconscious of the volcano she was ti'eading on." Any man of the world who has seen much of life, and been behind the scenes, must know that just such letters as are at- tributed to Mary Stuart have been written under similar cir- gan to yield to the wishes of her people, and at the same time her heart relented to the merits and the deep affection of her lover. Further, wearied out by the turbulence of the country she was to rule over, she feels how great a relief it will be to herself, how great a gain to law and order, that she shall have for her husband a man who has coimnand in his nature^ and can be trusted to rule her tierce subjects. These, in- deed, would never ' digest a foreign husband ;' and of her own sub- jects 'there was none, either for the reputation of his house or for the worthiness of himself, as well in wisdom, valiantness, as in all other good qualities, to be preferred or yet compared to him whom we have taken.' Again the document takes a twist. There must be something said to palliate the extraordinary haste in this royal marriage. Such alliances were generally aflairs on which a sort of congress of friendly royalties deliberated. It was but common decorum that she should have consulted the King of France, the Queen Mother, her uncle, the Cardinal, and some others. Here, again, she throws the blame on the importunity of her lover and the impatient pressure of the ruling powers of the country. Then, as if the writer felt alarm that what she said in her own vindication must react against the other, she pleads vehemently that all her friends must be the friends of him who is in- separably joined to her. The past is past. If he has been to blame, it was because his devotion overcame his discretion.'" (Burton's '" History of Scotland." Vol. IV., pages 229-230.) 173 curastances by passionate women to the objects of inordinate and illicit affection again, and again, in exevy age. Human nature never changes. The mode of expression, perhaps, may vary Avitli the times, but the ideas are always identical. Froude has been charged with bigoted prejudice against Mary. Even that does not invalidate his facts. Before those can be disregarded they must be disproved. All the advocates and champions who have come forward to exonerate Mary are no more than knight errants fighting windmills, unless they can demonstrate that he falsified the records. Examine his chapter xvi., vol. ix. The English Lords who considered these letters were convinced that Mary wrote them. Burton, (iv., xlvii., 278,) draws a conclusion, which is the only explanation of Mary's "giving in" and sign- ing her abdication at Loch Leven. He says that it was her knowledge of the existence of these letters that cowed her, and not the brutal conduct of the Rebel Lords that induced her to set her seal to her oAvn unthi-oning. Mary's friends admit that Bur- ton is fair, and, yet, Burton is more severe in his measured lan- guage than Froude in his asperity, and the former's arguments that the Casket Letters are genuine are not only unanswerable, but convincing. There is no question but that Bothwell was the master spirit. Still Mary was the temptress. A careless study of her character finds traits which at first seem incompa- tible with the spirit of the letters; but a closer analysis proves that her true character is revealed in them. The want of re- finement on which her friends found their denial is due to the time and not to her, and, being consistent with the time, do not invalidate the fact that a Queen wrote them. Another founda- tion on which her defenders build high is that she was a poet of ability. She was not ; and it is very doubtful if the prettiest verses attributed to her were not written at a later date by a bright Frenchman, in the same way that the noted wit. 174- Rougemont, manufactured bon-mots for the Count d' Artois, and that Canibronne uttered a filthy word which Victor Hugo transmuted into a deathless, despairing outburst of heroism. Whether Mary did or did not write the few Hnes of her " Adieu to France," or other poetry attributed to her, had she not been a Queen, her versification would be deemed by an accomplished editor worthy of the waste basket. The " Casket Letters" are those of a passionate woman, loathing her husband and loving another man. They are as true to nature as a howl to a wolf or a roar to a lion. Whether or not Bothwell deserved such self-abandonment is something that cannot be brought into the question. Love is blind ; Love is lunacy ; and to discover why any woman loves any man a Votitrance^ is a question as impossible to solve as to comprehend hieroglyphics without a key to them. Mary Stu- art, of a "tough, healthy nature," which could accommodate itself to the brutality of her captivity at Loch Leven — " a lusty princess " — a full blooded woman, disgusted with an eiFeminate, debauched, " beardless Adonis," who caught her truant fancy, and yielded to the heroic roughness of the real man, Bothwell, in herself furnislies the clearest elucidation and the completest proof that the Casket Letters and Sonnets are genuine.* "Amour ! Amour quand tu nous tiens, On peut bein dire : Adieu prudence !" In this connection, the remark of the author of the "Heir of Redcliffe " is pertinent: "Hearts can find * Casket Letters. — xlrnold Gsdeke, Professor of History in tlie University of Heidelberg, in liis " Maria Stuart," published in 1879, in his text proper, Appendixes I., H., IH., has gone into a thorough analysis and examination of the Casket Letters, and his conclusions fully endorse the views expressed by the author. 175 more ways than you dream of" [to communicate their sentiments], "we had only to meet for the magnetism of mind to be felt." Exactly so ! It was this magnetism of mind first drew Bothwell and Mary together, and it breathes or influences or manifests itself throughout the "Casket Letters and Sonnets." Mary appears in them as vividly present in spirit as if she spoke them in person. People talk about the impassioned tone of the Casket Let- ters. Men and women felt and wrote four hundred years ago just as they feel and write to-day. Read Perkin Warbeck's love epistle to his ladye love, the " White Rose of Scotland," in 1493 [see author's "Bothwell, a Vindication," page 11] and Otway'a love-letter to his mistress — composed under similar circum- stances to those of Bothwell and Mary — two hundred years ago, of which the following is a transcript. Do Mary Stuart's Casket Letters breathe more fervent, absolute passion or aifec- tion, term it what you will ? To Madam: My Tyrant: — I endure too much Torment to be silent, and have endur'd it too long not to make the severest complaint. I love you, I dote on you ; Desire makes me mad, when I am near you ; and Despair, when I am from you. Sure, of all Miseries, Love is to me the most intolerable : It haunts me in my Sleep, perplexes me when waking ; every melancholy Thought makes my Fears more powerful ; and every delight- ful one makes my Wishes more unruly. In all other uneasy Chances of a man's Life, there is an immediate Recourse to some kind of Succour or another : In Wants we apply ourselves to our Friends ; in Sickness to Pliysicians : But Love, the Sum, the Total of all Misfortunes, must be endur'd with Silence ; no Friend so dear to trust with such a Secret, nor Remedy in Art 176 so powerful as to remove its Arguish. Since tlie first day I saw you, I have hardly enjoyed one Hour of perfect Quiet. I lov'd you early ; and no sooner had I beheld that soft bewitching Face of yours, but I felt in my Heart the very Foundation of all my Peace give way : But when you became another's, I must confess that I did then rebel, had foolish Pride enough to promise myself I would in Time recover my Liberty : In spight of my enslav'd Nature, I swore against myself, I would not love you : I affected a Kesentment, stifled my Spirit, and would not let it bend so much as once to upbraid you, each Day it was my chance to see or to be near you : With stubborn Suflfer- ance, I resolved to bear, and brave your Power: Nay, did it often too, successfully. Generally with Wine, or Conversation I diverted or api)eas'd the Demon that possessed me ; but when at Night, returning to my unhappy self, to give my Heart an Account why I had done it so unnatural a Violence, it was then I always paid a treble Interest for the short moments of Ease, which I had borrow'd ; then every treacherous Thought rose up and took your part, nor left me 'till they had thrown me on my Bed, and open'd those Sluices of Tears, that were to run till Morning. This has been for some years my best Condition : Nay, Time itself, that decays all things else, has but increas'd and added to my Longings. I tell it you, and charge you to believe it, as you are generous (which sure you must be, for every thing, except your Neglect of me, persuades me that you are so) even at this time, tho' other Arms have held you, and so long trespass'd on those dear Joys that only were my Due. I love you with that Tenderness of Spirit, that Purity of Truth, and that Sincerity of Heart, that I could sacrifice the nearest Friends, or Interests I have on Earth, barely but to please you: If I had all the World, it should be yours ; for with it I could be but miserable, if you were not mine. I appeal to yourself 177 for Justice, if through the whole Actions of my Life, I have done any one thing that might not let yxDu see how absolute your au- thority was over me. Your Commands have been always sa- cred to me ; your Smiles have always transported me, and your Frowns aw'd me. In short, you will quickly become to me the greatest Blessing, or the greatest Curse, that ever Man was doomed to. I cannot so much as look on you without Confu- sion ; Wishes and Fears rise up in War within me, and work a cursed Distraction thro' my Soul, that mixst, I am sure, in time have wretched Consequences: You only can, with that bead- ling Cordial, Love, assuage and calm my Torments ; pity the Man then that would be proud to die for you and cannot live without you, and allow him thus far to boast too, that (take out Fortune from the Balance) you never were belov'd or courted by a Creature that had a nobler or juster Pretence to your Heart, than the Unfortunate (and even at this time) weeping Otway. 23 " I woke With his last word, And cried through tears and with uplifted hands: ' Come back, beloved ; why to distant lands Row thy lone way ? Oh ! come and breathe again Thy perfumed words, spoke this time not in vain. Come back !' but the wide vales Return my yearning cry: *■ Come back I' but far he sails ; He heeds not my sad cry. ' Oh ! come again, great stranger ; why depart ? Come back to heal my pierced, anguished heart.' I saw his airy skiff Sail up beyond the sea, Far o'er a cloudy cliff That overhung the sea. And never may return the rapture of my dream ? And never may I hear or know of him ? ' Come, oh ! come to rae, — Oh ! hush, envenomed sea.' ' Farewell, [Marie], to thee.' Would God I had awoke Before my heart was broke." —All the Year Round. " But now the hand of Fate is on the curtain, And gives the Scene to light." Drvden. Note. — If repetitions present tlieinselves in these successive chapters they are not the result of inadvertence, but intention ; endeavors to im- press certain proofs and arguments the more forcibly, in order to make more appreciable the evidence in Bothwell's favor, and render more secure Ms acquittal or exoneration. 1T8- HE chronic condition or malady of the Scottish nation throughout the greater part of the • XVI. century was little better than that of Mexico after it was emancipated from the Spanish yoke, a constant and hot fever of revolution. After the death of James V., father of Mary, the Reformation, which had been kept down more particularly by Cardinal Beatoun, began to acquire a relative strength, such as it actually possessed in no other country. It grew stronger and stronger with every succeeding year, until it might have wrested the power from the Queen-Dowager, Mary of Guise, had it not been for the military intervention of the French. To the assistance of the Reform party Queen Elizabeth sent a fleet, under one of the ablest seamen and soundest commanders of the day, Admiral Winter, and an army under an excellent soldier and wise leader, Lord Grey. Between them the French were expelled. To this war, as regards the French fleet, as to previous and subse- quent ones with the same nation and others, especially with Spain, would apply the motto of the medal struck to commemorate the overthrow of the Invincible Armada:* * Divine Order. — " How often might a man, after he hath jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose ? And may not a little book be as easily made by chance, as this great volume of the world ? How long might a man be sprinkling colors upon a can- vas with a careless hand before they could happen to make the exact picture of a man? And is a man easier made by chance than his picture ? How long might twenty thousand 180 ''Afflavit Deus et dissipantur. (God the Almighty blew, And the Armada went to every wind.)" "Well might the poet sing : " Thank him who isled us [English] here, and roughly set His Saxon in blown seas and storming showers." Just preceding their expulsion of the French the Queen- Dowager died, displaying at her end a policy which, if it had been exhibited at an earlier date, might have made the royal cushion of her daughter nmcli easier for its occu- pant. It was exactly the policy of Alexander Jannseus, King of Judea, in regard to the Pharisees, his life-long enemies and victims. His death-bed astuteness (B. C. 78) left his family in the possession of an authority which otherwise certainly would have been disputed. The enforced withdrawal of the French from Scotland, under the impulsion of England, very much resembled that of the forces of Louis Napoleon, three hundred years after- wards, from Mexico. In 1560 the English said "Go!" and the French went. In 1865 the re-united United States notified the French "Either go, or — !" that is, more imperatively "Go!" and without the necessity of the application of force, they went. As in 1560 in Scotland, so in 1865 in Mexico, the departure of the French left the popular party in blind men which should be sent out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury Plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army ? And yet this is much more easy to be managed than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world." Archbishop John Tillotson. 181 the ascendant. When Mary returned, in 1561, the "Lords of the Congregation " exercised the controlling power. Her acceptance of Murray, their leader, enabled her to tide over the first four years of her administration in a sort of sul- len peace. Her sex and her graces, and her very impotence, had a great deal to do with the meanwhile acquiescence in her authority. As long as there was no king, and Murray controlled events, there was no actual outbreak. ISfo doubt the courage, ability and fidelity of Bothwell acted as a bal- ance-wheel, even in a so-shackly-piece of machinery. To use a very strong, but vulgar expression, Mary, undoubt- edly, felt a "sneaking kindness " for the Earl from the first time that they were thrown together after the death of her husband, Francis II., at the time (1560) when he was sent out by her mother, Mary of Guise, to France on a political mission. Bothwell had experienced the same love at first sight for her, when they met before the be- trothal in 1557-'8. This afiection was growing stronger and stronger, and might have resulted in a union which would have consolidated the monarchy, when Darnley made his appearance, and with his airs and graces ' ' cap- tured" the Queen. Mary was a "lusty princess," to use the expression of Froude (YIII.. 25), and her passionate nature took fire from the appejtizing "long lad." Through the intermediation of Rizzio, who, by the elevation of Darnley, expected to fortify his own influence, and that of his church, Mary became in fact, although not in law, 183 Darnley's bed-fellow. Altliougli this surrender of her person was not generally known, there were surmises of the true condition of affairs, and the niutterings of a storm were soon heard ominously. By the time that Mary was ready to marry Darnley, officially and publicly, she was not only tired of him, but evinced it.* (See 163, Su- pra, &c.) The Kelbrm party now rose in arms, but the enthusi- asm of the nation for their charming Queen, engineered by Bothwell, who she herself selected as her military represen- tative, her soldierly J.Zi^e/' -Ego^ conjured the menacing tem- pest, and those who had evoked it, after what was styled the "Run-about-raid," — sometimes styled, also, the "Round- about-raid" — were forced to take refuge in England. Had they not possessed the support of Elizabeth, man- ipulated with dexterity by her astute Ministry — than whom abler political pilots never conned and steered a ship of state — Mary might now have enjoyed some years of * " The sage and moderate statesman, Castelnau de Mauvissiere, was sent to Scotland to keep matters quiet, and a better messenger for such a purpose could not be found. Grave, conscientious, friendly and peaceful, he was beyond his age, and was peculiarly free of the impul- sive, warlike and ostentatious propensities which have characterized his countrymen in all ages. " It is signiticant that in the same memoir in which he describes the beginning of her headlong career (1565), he mentions Bothwell as her right-hand man, and likely to be made lieutenant-general of the king- dom — so ostensibly began this man's disastrous influence." (Burton, IV., 127-'8.) 183 tranquillity — that is, if she had a bold sagacious Bothwell by her side, instead of a cowardly imbecile, Darnley. Through the latter s brutish stupidity and insane jealousy of E-izzio, who had engineered his elevation, a new con- spiracy or " Bond " was formed against the Italian, which was aimed as well at Mary. It is pretty evident that if Mary, seven months gone with child, had perished at the same time with her Italian favorite, it would not have pained or disappointed the conspirators. If she had per- ished there and thus, Darnley would have been a feeble obstacle to the ulterior plans of the Murray party. Mary was a hardy creature and she survived the shock, to which ordinary women would have succumbed. Between her cajolery of Darnley, and the promptings of Bothwell, she again triumphed in the spring of 1566, as she had in the summer of the previous year. Darnley' s betrayal of his associates, through the subtle influence of Mary, made the conspirators, who had thus become the victims of his trea- son to them — though not by any means through his loyalty to his wife — his implacable enemies. Mary, who had long given her implicit confidence, as well as her affection, to Bothwell, now threw herself completely into his stalwart arms (see 49, supra). This was a result, of which to avert the possibility, for political reasons, Mary had brought about the marriage between the Earl and Jane Gordon, sister of the Earl of Huntley, and daughter of the great 184 Earl Huntley, whom she liad wickedly sacrificed, in 1563, to the fox-wolf-cnnning-and-voracity of Murray. It would have been far better for Mary Stuart if her sur- render of herself to the real man, Both well, had occurred before she threw herself at tlie head of the imitation of manhood, the immature Darnley. In the former case her passions would have been gratified without breach of law, and the law would have given her a support in the columnar Both well, which she could not have found in any other mate. The fierce blaze of the mutual craving of Mary and Bothwell, fanned by her increasing aversion to her husband, which seems to have gradually inspired her with a disgust at times amounting to loathing, re-awakened in Bothwell all his original passion and wildest hopes. These hopes devel- oped into the only real crime which is chargeable to him throughout life, the getting rid of Darnley, in order that he might occupy his every place. When Bothwell had been nearly killed in the performance of his duty as War- den of the Borders or Marches, and Mary flew as a dis- pairing sweetheart to the bedside of a severely wounded lover, the curtain rose on the first scene of a tragedy which closed with the ruin of both. From this time for- ward momentous events succeeded each other with a rap- idity almost unparalleled. To get rid of Darnley, and insure himself the sole possession of Mary, and to become king-consort, and through this ownership and elevation to acquire influence and authority to restore peace and 185 prosperity to his country — certainly a most landable mo- tive — Bothwell joined hand for the nonce with the Murray faction, and Mary lierself became a co-conspirator with her most dangerous enemies to free herself for good and all of the hated and hateful creature who stood between her and her love. The relations between herself and Bothwell are clearly set forth in the papers found in the " Silver Casket," already considered at length. (See pages supra.) Mary's de23ortment towards Darnley rendered him con- temptible, and his own attitude made liim detestable and dispicable in the eyes of all. How he strayed oif to Glasgow and fell sick, according to some surmises from an insufficient dose of poison — such as, in 1582, sufficed for the removal of the third Regent, the "good(?) Earl of Mar ;" — or was stricken down by afoul disease — said to have been brought back from America by the Spaniards ; or Italy, by the French, 1492-'7 — or by the small-pox ; whatever was the cause, he was dangerously ilL There is little doubt that Darnley had a reasonable presenti- ment that, if he remained in Scotland, he was sure of but a very short lease of life. He had threatened to fly the country and take refuge in France. Such a step would have traversed the hopes of Mary, the desire of Bothwell, and the plans of the conspirators. Mary's objective was a union with Bothwell; Bothwell' s the possession of Mary, and, with her, kingly power, and, with both, the restoration of Scottish affairs, and their establishment upon a sound 24: 186 basis. Mary's views were simply those of a -woman in love ; those of Botliwell of a man in love, but also of a states- man, a general, a governor, and a patriot. The other con- spirators looked farther ahead than either to their own ag- grandisement at the expense of both. Could they manage it so that Botliwell, with Mary as his decoy and accom- plice, should, with their help, succeed in murdering Darn- ley ; then these confederated rebel lords, acting with the support of public opinion and the clergy, calculated to bring about a cataclysm which would sweep a"way both Mary and Both well, if the Queen took advantage of the death of Darnley to marry the generally accepted mur- derer. In this manner only could the great Earl be hurled from his pride of place. This was the project of the rebels, and it was based on their idea that, in getting rid of him, they demolished the greatest obstacle to their immediate and eventual suc- cess, seeing that he was the ablest and most powerful personality in Scotland. Feeling certain that Mary must be involved in his ruin, Murray and his peers, or rather assist- ants and "seids," could thereupon seize the reins of gov- ernment, exercise an authority akin to royal and divide the sj^oils. They realized the words of the Psalmist, '^ Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." They suc- ceeded, but Nemesis avenged all. "While their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the 187 chosen men of Israel." [Scotland]. Mary got her man ; Bothwell grasped for one month the Royal power; Mm-- ray, Lenox, Mar, Morton, in succession, became Regents and perished ; meaner agents mounted higher steps of the ladder of j)referment and gain ; and yet, by poetical as well as prosaic justice to each, became applicable the words of St. Luke in regard to the exulting Herod, "The Lord smote him, * * * and he gave up the ghost. " It is curious how differently the judgment apparently opposite or applicable to different individuals will be warped to condemn the one, to absolve another, to miti- gate the penalty of a third, or, with a recommendation to mercy, excuse a fourth. If ever a human being lived who deliberately toled a confiding fellow-creature within reach of the deadly blow of a paramour — for after mak- ing every excuse and pleading every justification for him, Bothwell was a paramour in the present meaning of the word — Mary Stuart was the guilty one. He was her paramour in the remote sense of the word, which did not imply originally all that it does now, and he was the same in a bad sense.* Time, place, and circumstance, *The following eonvorsation from Dr. John Moore's "Zeluco" (1789), shows the same contradictory judgments upon Mary, one hun- dred years ago, as had already ruled, pro and con, for two hundred years and still rule throughout the world : " ' In what did he [Buchanan, the Historian] ever shew any want of honesty?' said Buchanan. 'In calumniating and endeavoring to blacken the reputation of his rightful sovereign, Mary, Queen of Scots,' 188 noble thoughts, great plans, patriotic objects, besides un- doubted affection, were his justification. He was a man of one absorbing idea. It was gratified. He ought to have been satisfied. His honeymoon was a realization of the magnificent story, " One of the Nights of Cleopa- tra," that wild concei^tion of Theophile Gautier. Both- well was the hero of Scottish history, Meiamoun of Egyptian romance. The latter a noble, fearless, Egyptian gentleman — became reckless in his infatuated love for Cleopatra. Fortune vouchsafed the successful revelation of his passion ; and the Queen rewarded his audacity with a night's possession of herself, with the proviso that, with the ensuing dawn, her audacious admirer should drink a deadly poison. Meiamoun willingly consents. He enjoyed and he perished. Both well was more favored. Instead replied Targe, ' the most beautiful and accomplished princess that ever sat on a throne.' * * * * * * " ' I fear you are too nearly related to the false slanderer whose name you bear !' said Targe. 'I glory in the name ; and should think myself greatly obliged to any man who could prove my relation to the great George Buchanan !' cried the other. ' He is nothing but a disloyal calumniator,' cried Targe, ' who attempted to support falsehoods by forgeries, which I thank heaven, are now fully detected !' ' You are thankful for a very small mercy!' resumed Buchanan, 'but since you provoke me to it, I will tell you in plain English that your bonnie Queen Mary was the strumpet of Bothwell, and the murderer of her husband !'" Moore, in his " Fables," remarks of Mary very much as Shake- speare of Cressida : "Tier very sTioe 7ia/) power to worinciy 189 of a niglit, Fate generously conceded a month. He likewise enjoyed, and to him the result was worse than the fatal draught provided by the daughter of Ptolemy. Mary lured Darnley into the death-trap. Goodhall declared, one hundred years ago, that Bothwell did not, murder Darnley, but that the same men-devils, who de- liberately slew Rizzio, avenged the Italian by slaying the ai'ch-plotter and tool, Darnley ; he, who was as criminal in his Judas' kiss, which signalled the death of the arrogant musician-mini ster-of-state on the night of the 9th-10th March, 1566, as Mary was guilty with a like Judas' kiss on the night of 9th — lOth February, 1567. It might be said her kiss served as the signal, as it were, for her revenge and her emancipation. The fiction generally accepted as absolute truth by the whole reading ]3ublic, with the exception of a few critics, sets forth that Darnley perished by the explo- sion of a comparatively small amount of powder, emptied loosely into the room sometimes occupied by the Queen, and underneath the one in which Darnley slept. Undoubtedly Bothwell intended the accomj)lishment of the death of Darnley by blowing up the house, but erred in his cal- culations, because at that day, and especially so in Scot- land, the explosive properties of gunpowder seem to have been very little understood. Loose powder, even in a very large quantity, would not have blown a stone building so solidly built as houses were then constructed — especially such an one as the Kirk of Field is described to 1 90 have been — all to pieces. It would have simply wrecked the interior, lifted off the roof, blown out doors and windows, and shattered everything except the floors and arches. In such a case^ had Darnley'' s death resulted from the pow- der deposited loosely hy BothweWs agents^ his corpse must have been hlachened^ charred and mutilojted. This was not the case, hut exactly the contrary. His body was found, without a sign of violence, tuw hundred and forty feet from the building, which was bloivn all to pieces. How is this to be accounted for \ Thus ! Before Both- well' s servants had brought thither, into the " Kirk-o- Field," a single grain of powder, mines had been laid under the house, their chambers heavily charged ; and everything thoroughly looked to. BotliM^ell's co-conspira- tors determined that there should be no failure, while they arranged matters so cleverly that the whole odium of the crime would fall upon the Earl, who was to profit imme- diately by it, they themselves indirectly. In any event, Darnley was to die. They would see to that. How then was it that the victim's body was found not singed, nor blurred, nor mutilated, so far from the house. Darnley, with a presentiment of evil, did not go to bed that night as promptly as usual, but sat up reading the Bible with his body-page, Taylor, who was found, near him, dead also. Alarmed at strange or unusual noises, which fell with startling and ominous force upon his sensitive hearing, attentive and suspicious, he fled from the house with Tay- 191 lor, before the explosion. His hopes of escape, however, were all in vain, since the house was entirely surrounded by the conspirators. This has been demonstrated at length in the author's "Vindication" of the Earl, published, at length, in the United Service^ for September and October, 1882. Darnley and his page were caught by Sir Archibald Douglas, his kinsman, and others, assisting, and, after a violent struggle, strangled. The victim plead for mercy in piteous language, which was overheard and recorded, and struggled for his life with all the strength of a young and desperate man. The clothes of Douglas were all grimy with mire in consequence. Why, then, should Both- well dream that his preparations had slain Darnley ? He could not have seen what occurred, because high walls rose between him and the crime. He did not. He was com- pletely justified in always protesting his innocence. Why has so much abuse been poured out on Bothwell for his "supposed" murder of Darnley and so many excuses found for the public assassination of Cardinal Beatoun, by the Calvinists, 28th May, 1516, the sainted {sic) Kirkaldy participating and all the Reformers approving, and of Arch- bishop Sharpe by the Covenanters, 1st May, 1679. "The law and the testimony" must apply equally in all three cases. He intended that Darnley should be killed, and Mary approved of it, but neither were aware that their co-con- spirators had previously mined the house scientifically, and had surrounded the premises with a cordon of vigilant and 192 determined would-be mm-derers. Tliese did the deed. Why ? Because these luen-devils were resolved that not only one but three were to be sacrificed. Darnley on the spot, and afterwards Bothwell, and then Mary, through the eftects of the murder done by them upon the first named. After Darnley was dead and Bothwell and Mary driven into exile, or thrown into prison, or cast into the grave, then would come the seizure of the government and the division of the spoils. Darnley was the dupe in all and of all ; Mary was the lure ; Bothwell was the instrument and the dupe of Murray and his faction ; and all three were vic- tims in turn, and those who victimized perished, one by one, each in his turn, all without warning and without mercy. "Life's a bondage to the 'tickers' stern, immutable decrees."* Darnley was dead. Between Bothwell and Mary the only barrier remaining was extremely slight, and very easily removed. As heretofore shown, Bothwell in the pre- vious year had induced Mary to revive the ancient juris- diction of the Roman Catholic Consistorial Courts, which had been charged with trying the pleas of consanguinity ac- knowledged by that creed as valid reasons for divorce. This Roman Catholic Court was re-created or revived 33d De- cember, 1556. As Bothwell was married to Jane (Irving, * " My personal despair extended itself to all creation, and the law of fatality arose before me in such appalling aspect tliat my reason was sJiaken by it.''' Geokge Sand. 193 in his "Eminent Scotsmen," 227, styles her Elizabeth) Gordon, ou the 24tli February, 1566, any one not wilfully blind must acknowledge that, even at the time of the nuptials, or very soon after, Bothwell was looking forward to find means to bring about a union with Mary, He seemed to be convinced that in espousing Jane Gordon he was tying a knot which would be readily unloosed through her complaisant disposition " for a consideration." Cas- telnau, the French Ambassador, perceiving already, in September, 1565, that Mary had resolved upon following the dictates of her own passion, while he describes the beginning of her headlong career, he mentions "Bothwell as her right hand man, and likely to be made Lieutenant- General of the kingdom — so, ostensibly, began this man's disastrous influence." (Burton, TV., 128-9.) In the au- thor's two former works on Mary and Bothwell, sufficient attention has been j^aid to the details of occurrences be- tween the death of Darntey, 9th February, 1567, and Mary's third marriage with Bothwell on 15th May follow- ing. The latter was acquitted on his trial before the Privy Council and a Jury of his Peers, 12th April, 1567, and their verdict was ratified by the Scottish Parliament on the 14th of the same month. On the 19th, Bothwell gave a grand supper at the famous Annesley (Ainslie, Anslee) Tavern to the highest nobility and the first men of the country. Before the guests separated, the famous Bond was subscribed — Murray's signature assuredly heading 25 194: the list (Buckiiigliam T., 172-4), although, with his nsual duplicity, he was not present at the entertainment — declar- ing Botliwell'.s innocence and urging his marriage with the Queen. On the 21st April, with her own connivance and approbation, Mai-y was met aud escorted bj Bothw^ell to Dunbar. There altogether willingly or unwillingly, as her foes or her friends allege, the same intimate rela- tions at once existed, oi* Avere entered into, between Mary and Bothwell as, two years previously, between Mary and Darnley, after she had "handfasted " herself to the latter nearly four months before the public celebration of their uniou. Tw^o strong points in favor of Bothwell' s action, as consistent with Mary's wishes and careful collusion, are alw^ays ignored by her friends in treating of wdiat they elect to style her "■ ravishing " — which was simply conduct- ing her with the honor of a great lord and the humility of a grand lover to one of the chief military strongholds and. royal residences of the kingdom. First, Agnes Strick- land, and all her associates, in whiteM-ashing Mary, dwell on the fact that the Queen w\as slightly attended when Bothwell met her at the appointed place, as agreed upon betw^een them, and consequently could not resist him, and that there was no escort of 300 horsemen, as alluded to in the Casket Letter, styled "Supposititious." These cham- pions ignore sJte did have an escort of 300 the ^previous day^ but managed to dismiss, or get rid, of tlien:i, that there might not be the slightest obstacle to traverse Bothwell' s 195 nominal seizure, or to justify her in making even a seem- ing opposition. Mary has been defended with all the sub- tlety of criminal lawyers' exhausting casuistry to save a criminal, whereas Bothwell has scarcely found an advocate who would dare to enter a plea in his favor. Second, Schiern (242-6), who is no enemy of Mary, here steps in most opportunely with an argument which, supported as it is by documentary and circumstantial evidence, seems to be unanswerable. "This impression was, however, soon forced to give way before the opinion which subsequently prevailed in Scot- land, according to which no doubt could be entertained, even from the beginning, that what Bothwell had under- taken was done in consequence of an agreement with Mary. His conduct was more precisely accomited for at the time in three ways. It was, in Scotland, an old practice that papers were drawn up, by which any one obtained pardon for crimes, this was done so that only the chief crime was expressly mentioned, while merely a clause was added, describing in general tei-ms what oifences tlie per- son concerned had besides committed. Buchanan accord- ingly holds that as the murderers of the King, and especi- ally Bothwell, were afraid that there might come a time when it would be seriously resolved to punish them for the deed, they had found out that by the help of such a clause they would be able to get the crime pardoned, the express mention of which in a document might appear as 196 dangerous to the perpetrators as it would be unseemly for the j)ardoner. The murder of the Queen's husband could not be mentioned, but another crime of high treason, which was less odious, must be found out, under screen of which the murder of the King, as by a piece of sophis- try, could be concealed and forgiven. An attack ujDon the Queen's exalted person was such an aggravated crime, and therefore nothing more fitting for the purpose could be contrived than that feigned abduction. Others explained the strange transaction by alleging that its design was to stop the mouths of those who had long thought that the Queen stood in a too intimate relation to the Earl. More natural than both far-fetched explanations is that which, while still seeing in the abduction merely a j)reconcerted piece of acting, interpreted it as a direct result of an im- moderate love for Both well, which made her impatiently long to be able to call him her own. As they who favor this mode of explaining the hurried marriage proceed upon the supposition that the passion had long hefore led Mary to give herself up to the Earl., so one of her later defenders believes that he is able to exj^ose the foolishness of any such explanation by asking the question : ' ' Where was the necessity for a precipitate marriage at all ? AVas Mary so eager to become Both well's wife, with whom she indeed had. long been indulging in an illicit intercourse, that she could not wait the time demanded by common decency to wear her widow's garb for Darnley? Was she 197 really so entirely lost to every sense of female delicacy and public sliame — so utterly dead to lier own interests and reputation — or so very scrupulous about a little longer continuing her unlicensed amours, that, rather than suffer the delay of a few months, she would thus run the risk of involving herself in eternal infamy?" These questions are not without force for those against whom they are directed ; hut, if the relation he apprehended someiohat di-fferently, it loould he possible to meet them. There is vyitli regard to the ahduction, and the sid)sequent sudden marriage, a circumstance which is not ordinarily taken into consideration in this connection, but to which we might refer as an answer. Immediately after Mary'' s third marriage her opponents declared that she had again hecome pregnant, and, when the Queen was confined a prisoner at Lochleven, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who had been sent by Elizabeth to Scotland to negotiate her release, wrote in a letter from Edinburgh, of 18th July, 156Y, to his mistress : ' I have also persuaded her to con- form herself to renounce Botliw^ell for her husband, and to be content to suffer a divorce to pass betwixt them ; she hath sent me word that she will in no ways consent unto that, but rather die, grounding herself upon this reason, taking herself to be seven weeks gone with child ; by re- nouncing Bothwell, she should acknowledge herself to be wath child of a bastard, and to have forfeited her honor, which she will not do to die for it.' Might not Mary, 198 under tJie supposition of which she niakes mention^ have at this time or earlier Jjelieoed her pregnancy to he of older date? And, if the Queen Lad such fear after Darn- ley's death, niight not Bothwell then have found the final encouragement to venture on abduction, and the Queen afterwards an incentive for not at this time rejecting his hand? Even if the abduction to Dunbar had not taken place with the Queen's will, yet the opposition which she there exhibited to Bothwell was, at all events, so small in comparison with her former brave behavior during the catastrophe which put an end to Rizzio's life, that this weakness becomes the weightiest — and properly the only incontrovertible — reason for assuming an earlier and more inti/mate nnderstanding between her and tJte Earl than she has plainly admitted. AVhen some one mentioned to David Hume that a new treatise had been published, the author of v\diich was believed to have successfully vindi- cated Mary, the historian only asked : *• Has he also proved that the Queen did not marry Bothwell V and, when no affirmative answer could be given, he signified that the attempt had failed. ' ' (Schiern' s ' ' Bothwell, ' ' 2-1:2-' 6. ) To confirm Professor Schiern' s view, turn to Raumer (" Queen Elizabeth and Qneen Mary," Letter xxviii., 1569. Edition of 1836, p. 161). '•'■ iWary never spohe decidedly respecting the murder of Darnley and her connection with BothiLiell^ or produced any fact in support of her innocence. When Sir Francis IvnoUys at length plainly 199 put the question to her, she answered, as usual, in some general expressions, and began to weep ; on this he broke off the subject." For whatever reasons, she changed her views, if she did do so. Lady Lennox, Darnley's mother, in 1570, believed Mary " indisputably guilty," and Mary's ambassador, the Bishop of Ross, when the terrors of death were upon him, "and while making a clean breast of it, he admitted to Dr. Wilson her [Mary's] share of the murder of Darnley." This admission is pass-key to all the rest. On the 27th April, the Roman Catholic Consistorial Tribunal was authorized to entertain an action of divorce by Bothwell against his wife. The proceedings began 5th May, and judgment was given in his favor on the 7th. Whoever presumes to question Mary's complicity in the whole matter is simply ignorant that, to accomplish this "Mary had to come personally forward and issue a special authority to that end" (Burton, lY., 221). Li the mean- while Bothwell' s wife sued for a divorce against her hus- band, before the Protestant Civil Court, on the ground of adultery, which was almost simultaneously granted on the 3d May. On the 5th April — mark this! — Sir James Mac- intosh says that the suit of the Countess of Bothwell against her husband "commenced almost 07i the day wliich the Queen specified as that on which she alleged she had Ijcen violated hy Bothvjell.'''' (Buckingham I., 197.) Mary and Bothwell were married according to both 200 the Protestant and Roman Catholic rites. Bothwell's ^ biographer, Schiern, who examined all the evidence on this disputed point, says the doiible marriage presents perfectly clear proof (p. 258 and note 1) that it was so celebrated according to the Reformed and Romanist man- ners. Buckingham (I., 200-'2) is equally explicit, and endeavors to explain it on the plea of compulsion. Other historians concur. How any doubt could have arisen or a mistake have occurred can be easily explained. Bothwell had always refused to allow the Roman Catholic clergy to interfere in his affairs, and, therefore, his Protest- ant rites were public, although, perhaj^s, to satisfy the preju- dices of his bride, he consented to permit a more private marriage according to the Roman Catholic form. Can anything be more sly than Romanism ? and Buckingham clears it up by stating ' ' they were married according to the forms of both churches, by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, and a Catholic priest whose name has not been recorded." Bothwell's attitude, as soon as he became lord of the land, was noble. His announcement of the accomplished fact to Charles IX. of France was dignilied and M^orthy of his new position. What he wrote to Elizabeth of Eng- land was almost haughty and defiant. His letter to her like " His tread rings iron, as to battleward." The Murray faction had now attained their object. According to their rejpresentations^ Bothwell had long 201 been Mary's paramour: lie and he alone had murdered her husband Darnley ; Mary was his accomplice ; immedi- ately after the murder she had hastened to bring about a divorce — before a court constituted or revived by her Koyal authority, and especially called upon by herself to act in this case — between Bothwell and his wife ; and she, an adulteress and the accomplice of the murderer, had pro- fited by his deed to marry within ten days after the di- vorce, an adulterer, an assassin, and a regicide. What is more, these noble conspirators accused her and her hus- band of not only being desirous of getting possession of her son by Darnley, the royal infant afterwards James VI., but even of attempting to poison him. This crime, of ' ' burking " little James YI. , was the very one Doctor Story confessed to in 1570. '' It was nothing else than making M^ay with the little King of Scots, in the belief that with his life would be removed the principal obstacle to his mother's [Mary's] marriage with some Catholic prince." (Froude, X. , 94. ) All of Bothwell and Mary' s accusers were themselves the originators, abettors, executives of the crimes they charged upon the Queen and her consort, who only acted in accordance with their desires, their sugges- tions and in furtherance of their ends. Such treachery, hypocrisy, betraying and sacrificing is scarcely recorded elsewhere in history. Grant that Mary and Bothwell were guilty, what were their accusers ? Bothwell's crime, if he was as culpable as charged against him, was the 26 202 single one that can he brought against himself throughout, for his era, an nnnsually loyal and honorable career. Mnrray, Knox's sainted Murray, had been the contriver and instigator of crime after crime for the past seven years. He had kept his fingers ont of the fire, but he had looked through his fingers at the execution of every guilty deed which lie had instigated. As an example of an honest man and a faitliful subject, as a brother and a minister of state, he was a consummate fraud. Plis co- adjutors, co-consj^irators, accomplices, instruments, asso- ciates, were, according to poor Hamlet's expression, "as foul as Vulcan's stithy." In comparison to Murray's particular friend, Morton,* the concrete of corruption, Bothwell was a miracle of virtue, and, indeed, among the black flock of ravens which joined in hoarse congratula- tion over the corpse of Rizzio and rejoiced over the stark body of Darnley, Bothwell, amid such a repulsive brood, was exactly what Petrick styled him, that ^'' rara ams^ a * The best evidence of the popular opinion in England as to the especial guilt of Morton is to be found in the many plays of the actual and succeeding periods, in which Mary Stuart is introduced. Several instances have already been adduced : the following is even more pertinent. It is from J. Bank's "■Albion Queens.'" NoRB'OLK {speaks). " Now, only now's the time ; the traitor Morton, The false, usurping Regent, is returned, With all the magazine of hell about him. The Queen, my lovely Albion Queen's in danger ; And if thou wilt not straight advise thy friend, Mary 's undone, and Norfolk is no more." 203 WHITE CROW." Mary had scarcely been united to tlie con- sort selected and urged upon lier by her chief nobility— a consort whom they had solemnly pledged themselves to sustain against all enemies — than the very magnates who signed the Ainslie "Bond" in favor of the man of her choice and of her marriage with him, entered into a new "Bond" to destroy both. The falsity of their excuses for this was as vile in itself as consistent with their hypocrisy and villainy. Among other charges they al- leged that they bonded to 23rotect their infant king, and only rose against him because Bothwell had demanded the custody of the baby prince, whereas the whole of their action was inimical to him before Bothwell had even inti- mated anything which could be construed into a desire that the royal child should be delivered to his care. Hitherto, as a rule, with a few honorable exceptions, writers who have treated of the principal events in the life of Bothwell constitute a chorus of different voices or tones, which in its union of effect is damnatory. This is the more surprising as every one of the singers has to de- pend on the same score or authorities in producing his music. And, yet, although the general result is adverse, the testimony emanating from the majority of composers unfavorable or partially favorable to him is anything but depreciative. In no event of his life is he made to appear so badly as at Carberry Hill; and, yet, even then, the French Ambassador, Du Croc, who disliked Bothwell, is 204 compelled to admit, in his record of this Sunday spectacle, that Both well had not only jDrofited by his military studies and experience, but by his early training in the "human- ities." " I cannot hut say that I sato a great captain p^'esent hhnself with the utmost confidence, and one who led his troops with bravery and prudence.'''' How certain Bothweli still was of the issue of the day at the departure of Du Croc, he also showed, when, on seeing his foes cross the stream, he advised this mediator " to imitate him wlio wished to estabUsh peace and friendship between the armies of Scipio and Hannibal when these two armies were about to come to blows, just as the two before them were going to do, but who, when he could do nothing and was unwilling to take part with either side, chose for himself a place as a spectator, and thus became wit- ness of the grandest sight which he had ever seen ; if Du Croc would now do the same he woidd never live to witness a greater entertainment, for he should see them fight bravely." Despite this acknowledged capacity for leadership of Bothweli, it would have been impossible for a Frederic the Great to fight against a superior force, even as to numbers, of comparatively trained soldiers, variously estimated at from two to four thousand — under commanders of con- siderable experience — with a kernel of two hundred Arque- busiers constituting the Queen's body-guard, and another small troop of his own personal followers, backed by a rabble not more nmnerous than the array of old soldiers opposed to them. 206 The majority of historians, poets and romancers com- bine to accnse Bothwell of want of courage in abandoning Mary at Carberry Hill. Aytonn, who, in his poem, "Bothwell," is cruel enough to write (Part vi., xl,,) " Was it a dream ? Or did I liear A yell of scorn assail my ear, As frantic from the host I rode? The very charger I bestrode Rebelled in wrath against the rein, And strove to bear me back again ! Lost, lost ! I cared not where I went — Lost, lost ! and none were there, Save those who sought in banishment A refuge from despair." — in his note to this stanza, the same author is compelled to admit, contradicting himself (258), "I must do Both- well the justice to say : * * * ^' His challenges loere not mere hravado^ but he ivas almost insanely anxious to meet Morton in single eomhat. Bothwell was a man of great physical courage, v:hich is more than can he said of the adversary [Morton, the Ahitophel of the period] whom he selected.'''' * *"I have endeavored, as nearly as poetical requirements would al- low, to follow history accurately. I interpret the events thus. Bothwell, by carrying Mary otf to Dunbar, at once consummated his own ruin. His fellow-conspirators might easily have rescued her from his hands ; but their object was to have her ma/rried to him, so they delayed. After the marriage had taken place, they lost no time, but strengthened themselves by calling in the aid of such of the Border barons as re- garded with jealousy the increasing power of the House of Hepburn. They could also depend upon the assistance of the craftsmen of Edin- burgh, a body trained to the use of arms, and not degenerate from ' 206 The real facts of the case are these. Bothwell and Mary advanced to Carberry Hill with a force of abont 2500 their fathers, who had fought valiantly at Flodden. Bothwell, on the other hand, had none beyond his own troopers in whom he could place perfect reliance. The royal summons had brought to Dunbar many of the East-Lothian barons, headed by Lords Seton, Tester and Borthwick ; but they were not partisans of Bothwell, and came simply on account of the Queen. Bothwell was perfectly aware of this, and of the Queen's desire to escape, if possible, from his hands ; and that knowledge accounts for his behavior. I shall quote one more from Melville : " 'Both armies lay not far from Carberry : the Earl of Bothwell's men camped upon the hill, in a strength very advantageous ; the Lords encamped at the foot of the hill. And albeit her Majesty there. I cannot call it her army, for many of those who were with her were of opinion that she had intelligence with the Lords, especially such as were informed of the manj^- indignities put upon her by the Earl of Both- well since their marriage. * * * Thus part of his own company detested him ; other part of them believed that her Majesty would fain have been quit of him but through shame to be the doer of the deed di- rectly herself.' * ■" * "'I must do BotJmell the justice to say that, from all the accounts extant, his challenges were not mere bravado, but that he teas almost insanely anxious to meet Morton in single combat. Both- well was a, man of great physical courage [" gifted with superhuman dar- ing" — Lamartine], ichich is more than can be said for the adversary whom he selected, who was very glad to accept of Lord Lindsay of the Byres as his substitute ; but a duel under such circumstances would have been ridiculous. Mary Avanted to be rid of Bothwell, and signfied as much to the Lords who came in obedience to her summons ; but, with that noble spirit which was always her characteristic, she refused to make any terms with the confederated nobles until Bothwell's retreat was secured. Then, and not till then, she took an everlasting farewell [ut- terly false aud unsusceptible of proof] of the man who, instigated by others, worse traitors than himself, had achieved her ruin. Her [fiend- ishly treacherous] reception in the camp of the confederates does not fall within the scope of the poem." Aytoun's "'Bothwell.'''' 2or militia and some 200 regular musketeers. The traitor lords confronted him with a sui3erior number of compara- tively trustworthy troops. Le Croc, the French Ambassa- dor, a competent judge, admits that Bothwell with his motley array displayed admirable generalship. Le Croc had so little friendly feeling for Bothwell that he refused to be present at his marriage to the Queen. Consequently any commendation from him is the highest praise, and can be relied upon. Had Bothwell attacked at once, now that the little armies were looking each other in the face, it is most likely that he would have been victorious. Unfortun- ately Mary insisted upon negotiations ; hours were wasted ; her "following" without food as without discipline, be- came tired with waiting, degenerated into an armed mob, took possession of some wagons loaded with wine, drank freely upon empty stomachs, got drunk, and were soon beyond control. The last envoy of the confederate lords, Kirkaldy of Grange, deluded Mary with his specious reputa- tion for chivalry, and she determined to trust him, to her ruin. Bothwell, with his common sense, saw through the trickery and ordered a musketeer to shoot him. If ever a wise end could justify violent means, Bothwell was right. He wanted to kill Melville under similar circumstances, and he was wise also in that case, as it " turned out. Mary interposed, saved Kirkaldy, blasted her own life and character, as well as that of Bothwell, and ruined both. It is sometimes best to violate the laws of propriety when 308 those ill the right are dealing with others altogether in the wrong. Rapin is very clear on these points. Mary always ruined her own canse by obstinacy and precipitation. Bothwell's error in taking the field at tliis time, arose from courage and consciousness of right. The meeting and parting at Carberry Hill has never as yet, as a whole^ been clearly stated or fairly told. Bothwell's M^orst enemies admit that he was very anxious to meet Morton at Carberry Hill. The miscreant would not figlit. Lindsay offered to take his place, but the Queen forbade the combat. Bothwell certainly had a right to choose his opponent, and the husband of a Queen was justified in selecting as his antagonist the chief among his foes, particularly when that chief was the arch-traitor both to himself and to his wife, one in whose blood he had threatened to wash his hands if he had the opportunity. If Bothwell had not perfectly understood Ivirkaldy, it might have been a dishonorable act to shoot a parliament- ary acting under a flag of truce. But, Mall any military man deny that, if an envoy is using his immunity from peril or prison to deceive, a general who grasps the situ- ation, who knows that the success of the operation will depend on the triumph of tlie deception, and that it is likely to succeed through the ignorance and weakness of a coadjutor — can, in such a case, any military man deny the right of a commander to dispose, summarily, of an indi- 209 vidual seeking to betray under a flag of truce, and thus, by shooting the intriguer, frustrate the intended treach- ery ? "Fraud vitiates every contract," says the law. Bothwell knew Kirkaldy of okl, saw through and through the man, felt he was no better than a traitor, and the event proved that Bothwell' s judgment was correct. O wonderful "Book of books" and exponent of common sense, the Bible ! what marvelous revelations it discovers of the workings of the human heart. Hebrews (XII., 17) says of Esau, "He found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." Kirkaldy afterwards, carried away by the demoniac fascination of Mary's charms,* repented of his conduct towards the Queen, and became her champion, and Morton, become Regent, of whom he was the tool in this Sabbath-betrayal on Carberry Hill, got hold of him after he surrendered to the Engliah, and, soldier as he undoubtedly was, denied him a sol- dier's death, and hung him like a felon. * " Oh, the horrid little monster that I am. Why can't I help it? / verily believe I shall flirt in my shroud, and, if I were canonized, my first miracle would be, like St. Philom67ia^s, to make my own relics pre- sentable. — " Hopes and Fears," by the ai;thor of the " Heir of Red- clyffe." Authorities in the Author's Possession. Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons. Vol. I. London, 1798. Aytoun, W. E. Bothwell. Edinburgh, 1856. Balmanno, Mrs. Pen and Pencil. New York, 1858. Bekker, Dr. Ernst. Maria Stuart — Darley — Bothwell. Giessen, 1881. Benger, Miss. Mary, Queen of Scots. 2 vols. London, 1823. 27 210 Boulding, J. Grimsett. Mary, Queen of Scots. A Tragedy. London, n.d. Brown, James H. Scenes in Scotland. Glasgow, 1833. Buchanan, George. Detection of Mary, Queen of Scots. London, 1721. Buchanan's History of Scotland. 2 vols. London, 1733. Buckingham, L. S. F. Mary Stuart. 2 vols. London, 1844. Burton, John H. History of Scotland. 8 vols. Edinburgh, 1873. Burton, John, H. The Scot Abroad. New Ed. Edinburgh, 1881. Campbell, Hugh. Case of Queens Mary and Elizabeth. London, 1825. Chalmers, George. Mary, Queen of Scots. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1822. Cunningham, A. Mary, Queen of Scots. London, 1838. Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature. Vol. V. New York, 1875. Dargaud, J. M. Marie Stuart. 2 vols. Paris, 1850. Ebner-Eschenbach. Marie, Freifrau. Aphorisms. Trans, by Mrs. Wister. Eminent Scotsmen. (Society of Ancient Scots.) London, 1821. Froude, James A. History of England. 12 vols. New York, 1875. Gaedeke, Arnold. Maria Stuart. ' Heidelberg, 1879. Gauthier, Jules. Marie Stuart. 3 vols. Paris, 1869. Grant, James. Bothwell. London, n. d. Grant, James. Mary of Lorraine. London, n. d. Harpers' Monthly. Mary, Queen of Scots. February, 1873. Hosack, John. Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers. 2d. ed. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1870. Irving, Joseph. Eminent Scotsmen. Paislej^, 1881. King and the Commons; Cavalier and Puritan Songs. Edited hj Morley. New York, 1869. Labanoff, Prince Alex. Lettres de Marie Stuart. 7 vols. Londres, 1844. La Collection des Portraits de Marie Stuart. St. Petersbourg, 1856. Lamartine, Alphonse de. Mary Stuart. Boston, 1881. Leadei', J. D. Mary, Queen of Scots, in Captivity. Sheffield, 1880. Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots. Agnes Strickland. 3 vols. London, 1843. Life of the Regent Moray. Edinburgh, 1828. Lingard, John. History of England. Vol. V. Paris, 1840. MacLeod, Donald. Mary, Queen of Scots. New York, 1857. Marie. Queen of Scots. From the Latin, n. d. Meline, James F. Mary, Queen of Scots. New York, 1872. Melville, J. G. Whyte. Queen's Maries. London, n. d. Mignet, M. Marie Stuart. 2 vols. Paris, 1854. Mignet, M. Mary Stuart. 2 vols. Translation of preceding. 211 Opitz, Theodor. Maria Stuart. 2 vols. Freiburg, 1879. Petit, M. Marie Stuart. 2 vols. 4to. Patrick, Dr. Phil. A. Zur Geschichte des Grafen Botliwell. St. Peters- bourg, 1874. Petrick, Dr. Phil. A. Briefe der Kdnigin Maria Stuart an Bothwell und deren Unechtheit. St. Petersbourg, 1873. Portraits of Illustrious Personages. London, n. d. Schiller, Frederick. Mary Stuart. London, 1854. Schiern, Frederick. Life of Bothwell. Edinburgh, 1880. Scribner's Monthly. Mrs. Oliphant's Mary, Queen of Scots. Scottish Biographical Dictionary. (Scoto-Brittanicus.) Edinburgh, 1822. Scott, Sir Walter. Scotland. Vol. II. Philadelphia, 1830. Scott, Sir Walter. Monastery and Abbot. Philadelphia, 1852. Smith, Rev. James. The Coming Man. 2 vols. London, 1873. Strickland, Agnes. Mary, Queen of Scots. 3 vols. Bohn, London, 1873. Stuart, John. Lost Chapter in History of Queen Mary Recovered. Edinburgh, 1874. Swarbreck, S. D. Sketches in Scotland. Folio. London, 1839. Swinburne. Chastelard. New York, 1866. Swinburne. Bothwell. 2 vols. London, 1875. Swinburne. Mary Stuart. New York, 1881. Teulet, M. Lettres de Marie Stuart. Paris, 1859. 8vo. Townend, William. Descendants of the Stuarts. London, 1858. TurnbuU, William. Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots. London, 1845. Tyng, Rev. S. H. Recollections of England. London, 1847. Von Raumer, Frederick. Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots. London, 1836. Von Raumer, Frederick. History of the 16th and 17th Centuries. 2 vols. London, 1835. Von Raumer, Frederick. England during the 16th., 17th and 18th Cen- turies. 2 vols. London, 1837. Wiesener, L. Maria Stuart et Bothwell. Paris, 1863. Yonge, C. M. Unknown to History. New York, 1882. Besides a number of other well-known standard historical and bio- graphical works on Mary Stuart, John Knox, the Regent Murray, &c., &c., in the different public libraries in the city of New York, and various biographical sketches in German, French and English, published in Europe and America. 212 Omission. Note to page 175 supra, second paragraph. — In " Both- well ; a Vindication," page 11, was furnished a copy of a Love Letter, penned in 1492; and in the present work, page 175-7, supra, the copy of another Love Letter, written about 1700. Here, subjoined, is the copy of a Royal Love Letter, indited in 1613, by the " Foremost man of all this Modern World," Gustaf Adolf, to his sweetheart, the lovely Ebba Brahe, at the age of nineteen, a chere amie, out of whose posses- sion he was basely tricked. The three are worthy of comparison. " Stockholm, 5th April, 1618. " Most Noble Damsel, adored of my heart, WHOM I love most IN THIS WORLD : "I have received your loving letter, by which you tell me you liave submitted to the good pleasure of your father, at my request, with which T must content myself Praying God to bend in grace your heart, that you think always on me, and remember the faithful love I bear you ; and that you may never be persuaded that I think of another than you. Oh, may you pray God, as well as I, that He may let us live to see the day which may bring me the soft consolation and to you the joy. To his guidance — tlie Holy and Almighty — I commend you, faithful and tender ; and myself to your breast, so noble and faithful. — I, to my dying day, oh, cherished maiden of my heart, your faithful and attached kinsman. G. A. R." Horace Marryat's " One Year in Sweden," Vol. I., page 392. Bothweil's Book-Stamp. " The word ! Do you remember, Meister? I told you then, that you had found the right one. * * But you look like a happy man, and to what do you owe it ? To the Wo7-d^ the only right word : 'Art ! ' " He let her finish the sentence, then answered gravely : " There is still a loftier word, noble lady ! Whoever owns it is rich indeed. He will no longer wander — seek in doubt." "And this is ? " she asked incredulously, with a smile of superior knowledge. " I have found it," he answered firmly. "• It is ' Love ! ' " Sophonisba bent her head, saying softly and sadly, " Yes, yes ; Love ! " George Eber's ^^A I'Vord^ only a Word" page 348. ^^But^ mortal pleasure^ what art thou in truth ? The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below." Caimpbell. " Discarding modern historians, who in too many instances do not seem to entertain the slightest scruple in dealing with the memory of the dead." * * * "/ (i„i not ashamed to own that I have a deep regard for the memory of [Bothwell] Lord Dufidee — a rega'rd founded on the firm belief in his pi/ldic and private virtues^ his high and chivalrous ho?tor^ and his iDisliaken loyalty to his sovereign. But those feelings, however strong, would never lead me to vindicate an action of wanton and barbarous cruelty, or even attempt to lessen the stigma by a frivolous or dishonest excuse. No cause was ever efiFectually served by mean evasion, any more than it can be promoted by unblushing exaggeration or by gross perversion of facts." Wm. E. Aytoun, ''^ Regarding John Graham^ of ClaverJiouse^ l'iscoii?it of Dzindee." "Women are the priestesses of Predestination. D'IsRAELi's ^''Coningsby." " The man who [like Bothwell] anticipates his century is always persecuted when living and is always pilfered [robbed of his credit] when dead." D'Israeli's ^''Viviaii Gray^ ''^With hitn his Fortune played as with a hall., She first has tossed him up, and now she lets him fall." I'erscs on I\Iedallion of Count Griffenfeld, Royal Librai-y^ Copenhagen. "//f will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country [or as in the margin, ' the captivity of a man '] : there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house. And I will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall he pull thee down." [What could be more apposite to the end of Bothwell than these verses.] Isaiah, xxii., 18, ig. "■ The black earth yawns, the mortal disappears." Tennyson's ^^Ode on the Death of the Dzike of IVellijzgton." 28 213 214 O anticipate, for the j)iirpose of making a point, Bothwell's enemies depict him — the Hereditary Lord Iligli Admiral of his native reahu, born in one of the grandest ancestral strongholds and cas- tellated mansions in Clydesdale ; the theme of the historian, the poet and the minstrel ; celebrated in the words of a ditty known during the Crusades, from the Atlantic to the Dead Sea, " Bothwell Bank thou bloomest fair" — Bothwell Castle on the Clyde. as dying a maniac in chains, in a loathsome Danish cell. This statement is founded on malice, forgery and ignorance. jSTotwithstanding all the efforts of indi- viduals and governments, of learning and industry, a 215 screen, as impenetrable as the "Veil of Isis," fell over the last years of "the great" "Scotland's proudest Earl." His principal advocate, Petrick, says, '■^ Then suddenly — (referring to the autnmn of 1571) — all is silent ! a great gap of four years occurs : — for what reason ?" There is a solution and a plausible one. For six years the Danish government "had been tormented by the demands of Queen Elizabeth [of England] and the [successive] Ke- gents of Scotland for the deliverance of Bothwell into their hands." Worn out with communications, reclama- tions and declamations, Frederic II. " allowed the report of Bothw^elPs death to be circulated, and so put an end to all the w^orry on the subject." This accounts for the doubts as to whether Bothwell died in 1575, according to Petrick, or in 1577 or 1578, according to Schiern and others. One sad fact is certain. He realized the words of the Prophet, Isaiah, xv., 9-10, in regard to the once mighty Belshazzar, "Thou shalt not be joined with them [thy forefathers and thy peers] in burial." Belted Earl and husband of a queen, his corpse rests in an unknown grave and foreign land. Bothwell, from the fall of 1567 until his decease — wdienever it occurred — was "a prisoner of Hope" in the hands of Frederic II., King of Denmark. This monarch was a curious character. He was at once the protector of Bothwell and his custodian — whether at the last a severe or a lenient jailor nothing is definitely known. Falsehoods on the subject have been propagated industri- 216 oiisly, but notliing trustworthy. That Frederic allowed him, for years, pocket money, respectful attendance, company and corres2^ondence, and sufficient means to dress in accordance with his rank and enjoy good cheer is certai m. In I^ovember, 1567, the king styles Both well " Our particular Favorite" (Shiern, 332). In January, 1568, Bothwell was living in Co- penhagen, without anxieties for the future. When transfer- red to Malmo, it was still a sort of honorable confinement. His apartment was stately for the time. Even after this, ^t^ -^ down to 1571, velvet and silk were furnished for his attire, and his residence in Malmo, except as to duress, was any- thing but derogatory. He was purely a prisoner of State and of consideration. It was not until the 16th of June, 1573, that he was transferred to Dragsholm. Even then, it is very doubtful if his confinement was as strict as repre- 217 . sented. It is questionable if his treatment in Zealand was more rigorous or galling than that of Mary in England. According to inspiration, Jeremiah was promised again and again, as the recompense for his own unmerited suifer- ings, undergone in obedience to his call, that his life should be spared. "Thy life shall be as a 'prej unto thee; because thou hast put thy trust in me, saith the Lord." If life is a boon, and if the wise king was justified in saying, "A living dog is better than a dead lion" — in that while there is Life there is Hope — Bothwell was cer- tainly better off in comfort and safety in Penmark than either one of his enemies perishing in their prime and power by violent ends — deaths* culminating in horror with the burning alive at the stake of the Scottish Lion King at Arms ; sacrificed thus on his return to Scotland from his mission to Denmark to solicit the extradition of Both- well, because on the voyage home he had learned too much of the villainy of Murray and his associates. A moral lesson is conveyed by a time-table presenting the miserable and often horrible manner in which those who persecuted Bothwell went to their last account. It is very comfort- * It is more than remarkable how every one, of greater or lesser note, who persisted in aspiring to the hand of Mary, came to grief. The most extraordinary instance is that of Erik, King of Sweden, who, on hearsay evidence, became completely enamored of her, and made expensive preparations for a voyage to Scotland to prosecute his suit in person. Biit the fate of her other admirers came to him, and he ended his life, after many weary woeful years of imprisonment in a vile dungeon, by poison in a plate of pea-soui3. 218 ing to his friends and admirers to learn this. The author has derived the greatest satisfaction from the investigation of each successive terrible and untimely catastrophe. Extracts from Marrjat's "Jutland and the Danish Isles" [Vol. I., 408-19], appended as a I^oteto subsequent pages, will serve to present a mingling of fact and fable in regard to Bothwell's last imprisonment and sepulture, which is about as true as tradition^ generally is — that is to say, there is a basis of fact, but the superstructure is almost all fable. * Scarcely any man living has had opportunities more ample than the author to become acquainted with the untrustworthiness of popular tradition. In tracing back the history of a neighborhood it was pain- ful to observe the discrepancies manifested in the recollections of the "oldest inhabitant" in contiguous localities. "Memory is atten- tion," and it is seldom that individuals pay attention to anything that is not of immediate personal interest to themselves. All the passions and all the weaknesses influence memory. People hear what their elders gabble, then talk the matter over and garble it to suit them- selves, and transmit a tissue in which truth is like the Bean in a huge " Twelfth Cake." The bean is there, but a hundred slices may be cut before one reveals its presence. The author once sought out a road which, about seventy years since, was a main route between two fre- quented settlements, one a little port. A number had heard of it, a dozen pointed out depressions which indicated where it must have been located, but only one man could trace it. Why'/ In his youth he had worked upon it. No one but the author had ever thought it worthy of inquiry. The informant is extremely aged, the investigator is over sixty; in a few years both will have passed away, and after them every- thing in regard to the case in question will be mere surmise. So it is as to the last days of Bothwell. Horace Marryat advances as a proof that the corpse, which he claims to be Bothwell's, was really so — "a pearl embroidered cushion [pillow], a mark of rank," among the dead of the sixteenth century, "was found in the Scottish earl's 219 In permitting Botliwell to leave lier at Carberrj Hill — when the winning cards were still in her hands and retreat to Dunbar w^as by no means hopeless, nor even uncertain (Wiesener, 408)* — with reinforcements coming up, which coffin." Even this is apocryphal — mere report, as worthless as tra- dition ever turns out to be. As "belted Earl," as mighty Magnate, as Hereditary Lord High Admiral of a realm, as Lieutenant General and military Alter Ego of a sovereign, as her husband, he was "the observed of all observers !" " 'Tis ' great' to hear the passer by say. There he goes ! That's lie !" Greatness in a measure is proved when "the world is singling you out and indicating you." As a prisoner, in a foreign land, in a remote castle, on a sea-surrounded islet, Bothwell was buried alive, forgotten. * That Bothwell, with his acknowledged ability, could have eftected a retreat to Dunbar, a fortress impregnable to everything the Rebel Lords could have brought, or kept, together against it, which in itself alone would have insured ultimate success, is demonstrable by a hun- dred parallel operations. {Declaration of the Earl of Bothwell, ad- dressed to the King of Denmark. Agnes Strickland's " Lettei-sof Mary Queen of Scots," II., 324) .AH it required was military ability, coolness and intrepidity. He possessed all three (see pages 48-'9, supra). The Queen's Body Guard, of Hackbutteers, the men-at-arms of David Home of Wedderburn and of John of Blackadder, Bothwell's own Borderers and the three falconets (light field artillery) with their "constables, "would have been amply sufficient to cover a withdrawal of less than twenty miles, especially after impending night set in. The effect upon a fight, at this date, of a few trained musketeers, was almost incalculable. With a few efficient cavalry in support they could have turned this "Black" Sabbath into a bright Sunday. Witness the victory won, in a disadvant- ageous position on the Gelt, near Naworth Castle, in Cumberland, Eng- land, 19tli February, 1570, by Lord Hunsdon over Lord Dacre. The latter had 5,000 certainly as good troops as the "Bonded" Lords ; the former 1,500, but among these were the trained " Berwick harquebuss- men." The volleys of the latter staggered and demoralized the bold Dacre Borderers, horse and foot, and then Hunsdon fell on them with a 220 would have assured a victory to Mary, this determination of the Queen to separate her fortunes from her husband has always, and in some degree, justly been brought for- squadron of horse — such as those under Wedderburn and Blackadderat Carberiy Hill — and the rebel armament " went to water." To show the effect of coolness coupled with capacity, recall an incident in the life of Sir Andrew Murray of Botiiwell, son of the favorite colleague of Wallace, Regent of Scotland. " He was in the Highlands, in 1336, with a small body of followers, when the King of England came upon him with an army of twenty thousand. The Regent heard the news, but, being then about to hear mass, did not permit his devotions to be interrupted. When the mass was ended, the people around him pressed him to oi'der a retreat : ' There is no haste,' said Murray, composedly. At length his horse was brought out, he was about to mount, and all expected that the retreat was to commence. But the Regent observed that a strap of his armor had given way, and this interposed new de- lays. He sent for a particular coffer, out of which he took a jjiece of skin, and cut and formed with his own hand, and with much deliber- ation, the strap which he wanted. By this time, the English were draw- ing very near, and, as they were so many in number, some of the Scot- tish knights afterwards told the historian who narrates the incident, that no space of time ever seemed so long to them as that which Sir Andrew employed in cutting that thong of leather. Now, if this had been done in a mere vaunting or bragging manner, it would have been the be- haviour of a vain-glorious fool. But Sir Andrew Murray had already fixed upon the mode of his retreat, and he knew that every symptom of coolness and deliberation which he might show would render his men steady and composed in their turn, from beholding the confidence of their leader. He at length gave the word, and, jDutting himself at the^ head of his followers, made a most masterly retreat, during which the English, notwithstanding their numbers, were unable to obtain any advantage over him, so well did the Regent avail himself of the nature of the ground."' A parallel to this is the British General Crawford's coolness, during the Peninsular War, under Wellington, in Spain, in quietly 221 ward as an argument that she had ceased to love him, if she ever did care passionately for him.* Here once more Mary's principal biographer and advocate can be cited against herself and client, admitting (II., 83-'4) that the Queen could be "ungrateful and unreasonable," subject to "strange infatuations;" "had taken her resolution" — devoid of conmion sense, and blind and deaf to the les- stopping bis retreat to trice up and flog delinquents in face of the superior forces of the pursuing Fi'euch, pressing hard upon his rear guard, and so close upon him that spent shots sometimes fell among those present at the punishment. Sir Henry Clinton, the Royal Commander against the Colonies, 1777-82, owed his rise and rank to his successful retreat with a comparative handful], in the face of the French, during the "Seven Years' War" in Germany; and the same was the case with the noble Fraser, killed, under Burgoyne, in the Bat- tle of Bemis Heights or Second Saratoga, 7th October, 1777. Had he survived, and if Burgoyne had listened to his advice, the wrecks of the invading force might have been able to withdraw into Canada, under the cover of the famous Light Infantry, which Fraser knew how to handle so admirably. The military murder by Morgan's sharpshooters forbade the experiment. Lord Clive, one of the greatest born-generals who ever illustrated the Annals of War, gained all his successes in India — such as Arcot, Arnee, Cowerepauk, Seviavaram, Plassey, &c. — victories which laid the basis of the vast dominion of Great Britain in that Asian peninsula — against greater odds than Bothwell had to con- tend with, even after his Militia — Temporary or Feudal Levies — had failed him and flunked. *Mary "was impulsive, hot-headed, warm-hearted, and in her virtues and her faults essentially a woman. She fell over head and ears in love with Bothwell, and, as is often the case when this occurs to a woman, allowed her individuality to be absorbed in his, and became for a time a mere tool in his hands. With the exception of this episode, she conducted herself very properly." ("Mary and Elizabeth," in Truth, London, Thursday, 11th January, 1883.) 29 222 sons of experience — "before she asked advice." If slie had only shown a small portion of the energy she displayed eight months before, when, in the rongh antumn weather, through a diflficult country, and dangerous population, she rode on horseback fifty miles, thither from Jedburgh and back to visit her lover, previously wounded in her service, in Hermitage Castle — his headquarters as Warden of the Hermitage Castle. Marches, (see article "Jedburgh Abbey," Saturday Review^ 30th September, 1882, page 439), Carberry Hill would have been a decisive triumph, instead of a dis- astrous and disgraceful catastrojDlie. It was simply the effect of cause ; the inevitable quantities uniting in the product : Ate and Fate ! If readers would study 223 the most flattering stories of her friends in the light of reason, not feeling, they wonld find enough therein, to condemn their heroine and absolve Both well. Fronde's (YII., 369) exposition of her character is masterly, and its correctness is established more and more by comparison and investigation. If this stood alone there w-ould be difficulty in meeting it.* Rarely, perhaps, has any woman combined in herself so many noticeable qualities as Mary Stuart; with a feminine in- sight into men and things and human life, she had cultivated herself to that high perfection in v/hich accomplishments were no longer advantitious ornaments, but were wrought into her organic constitution. Though luxurious in her ordinary habits, she could share in the hard field-life of the ln;ntsman or the soldier with gracefid cheerfulness; she had vigor, energy, tenacity of purpose, with perfect and never-failing self-possession (?) and, as the one indispensable foundation for the effective use of all other qualities, she had indomitable courage. She wanted none either of the foculties necessary to conceive a great purpose, or of the abilities necessary to execute it, except, perhaps, only this— that while she made politics the game of her life, it was * To show how fallible, after all, Agnes Strickland — the accepted biographer par excellence of Mary, Queen of Scots — proves herself to be, page 119, Note l,Vol. III., of her "Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots," she states that Bothwell was the author [of the French translation] of the Latin Libel (upon Mary) of Buchanan, styled his '■'Detectioy Such a mistake is not only wicked, inexcusable and absurd, but not more so than many of the epithets Miss Strickland applies to Bothwell and her inconsistent remarks upon him. When this " Detectio'''' appeared, Bothwell was already a captive in Denmark, and no one charges him, after that period, with any reflection upon his ill-fated but false consort. 224 a game only [like the battles of Pyrrhus], though played for a high stake. In the deeper and nobler emotions she had neither share nor sympathy . Here lay the vital difference of character between the Queen of Scots and her great rival, and here was the secret of the difference of their fortunes. In intellectual gifts Mary Stuart was at least Elizabeth's equal ; and Anne Boleyn's daughter, as she said herself, was " no angel." But Elizabeth could feel like a man an unselfish interest in a great cause ; Mary Stuart was ever her oicn centre of hope^ fear or interest. She thought of nothing., cared for nothing^ exceptt as linked vjith the gratification of some ambition., some desire, some humor of her own, and thus Elizabeth was able to over- come temptations before Avhich Mary fell. * * While her sister of England was trifling with an affection for which foolish is too light an epithet, Mary Stuart, when scarcel}^ more than a girl, was about to throw herself alone into the midst of the most turbulent people in Europe, fresh emerged out of revolu- tion, and loitering in the veiy rear of civilization ; she going among them to use her charms as a spell to win them back to the Catholic Church, to weave the fibres of a conspiracy from the Orkneys to the Lands End; prepared to wait, to control herself, to hide her purpose till the moment came to strike, yet with a purpose fixed as the stars to trample down the Reform- ation, and to seat herself at last on Elizabeth's throne. " "Whatever policy," said Randolph of her, " is in all the chief and best-practiced heads in France, whatever craft, false- hood or deceit is in all the subtle brains of Scotland, is either fresh in this Avoman's memory or she can fette it with a wet finger." (Froude, VII., 369.) She was deluded by Kirkaldy, as she had often been before by Murray ; but her first act, after she discovered the 225 awful mistake she had made in disregarding her husband's counsels, was to write to him, and send him a purse or sum of gold. She again wrote to him from Lochleven ; she refused to separate her fortunes from his ; her thoughts dwelt constantly upon him ; and the very night of her escape from Lochleven, "while the men were stretching their aching legs, Mary Stuart was writing letters." To whom ? To her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, in Paris, for assistance, and to her lover and husband, Bothwell. She sent the Laird of Ricarton, a kinsman of Bothwell, to raise the Hepburns, united to the "great Earl" by family and feudal ties, and make a dash on Dunbar to secure a port for the arrival of himself and of succor from France, and, when that port of entry was secured, to go on to Bothwell and tell him that she was free. Bothwell himself wrote to Frederic that he M^as on his way to Scotland, to raise men and money, when he was "treach- erously captured" in Carmo-sund. Ricarton did "go on," and found Bothwell in his confinement at Mal- mo. Another account says, as soon as she breathed the air of freedom, she despatched a messenger to find Both- well, wherever he might be, and announce the happy tid- ings of her release, and summon him to her side, whence he never should have been permitted, for her security and honor, to depart. Agnes Strickland, color blind as to every shade which could relieve or glorify the portrait of Bothwell, says that on her flight from Langside, Lord 226 Herries wanted Mary to take refuge in Earlston Castle, a stronghold belonging to Both well ; that Mary became greatly agitated, burst into tears, and refused, "as if fearing to encounter her evil genius in his form, and pre- fering to brave any other peril than that of meeting him again." This is a puerile idea, and unworthy anything but the pen of a woman fighting to rehabilitate one of her sex, and, in so doing, so bitterly prejudiced as to foi'get the very characteristics of a such peculiar specimen of her sex as Mary. Consistent with their nature, it is likely Mary's love for Eothwell was so strong in her bosom, that she could not bear to tread the halls without him that once she had trodden with him in happier days. There is no greater "sufiering" — exclaims Dante — "than to recall past happiness amid present wretchedness." Finally, to demonstrate the fallacy, if not wickedness, of all this mis- representation of Mary's feelings for Bothwell to screen and excuse the Queen, even as late as the spring of 1571, when she was at Sheffield, she was in correspondence with him in Malnjo, and had written, herself, to Frederic II., entreating him not to listen to the pursiiasion of the Scottish envoy, Buchanan, laboring with so much enmity and earnestness against her husband. The correspondence must have been patent, for Buchanan told Cecil that, "if he took the trouble, he might intercept some of her letters." That Lord Boyd, in 1569, obtained Bothwell's consent to the dissolution of his marriage, to enable Mary to marry 227 ISTorfolk, shows that the intercourse between the Earl and Queen, by letter and messenger, was still permitted. The fact is, Frederic's whole treatment of Bothwell was regu- lated by the probabilities of Mary's restoration to her throne. It was not until her case seemed desperate that Bothwell was finally immured, if he was ever actually thrown into a dungeon, which is very questionable. What became of Bothwell after they parted, forever on earth, at Carberry Hill, Sunday, 15th June, 1567, is soon told. He returned unmolested to Dunbar, and re- mained there for several weeks undisturbed, although he did not confine himself to the fortress, but cruised about in the Frith of Forth, even penetrating beyond Edinburgh to the neighborhood of Linlithgow, to hold a meeting with Lord Claude Hamilton. Of his political projects at this time no record remains. Confiding the defence of Dunbar to his kinsman. Sir Patrick Whitlaw, he sailed thence, in the beginning of July, with two light vessels, and steered northward to visit his brother-in-law, Huntley, at Strath- bogie Castle, about ten miles south-by-west of Banff, to the eastward of the Moray Frith. His intention was, doubtless, to raise forces in the northeast and rencM^ the struggle. The Queen had many friends in that quarter ; adherents who did join her after her escape from Loch- leven, next year, 1568, and fought for her at Langside. Thence he proceeded to Spynie Castle, just north of Elgin, the residence of his aged great-uncle, Patrick Hep- 228 burn, Bisliop of Murray, by whom he was brought up. Here a project was entertained to murder Bothwell, and a proposition to this effect was made to the English ambassador, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, at Edinburgh. Whether the offer was rejected from policy or morality is not clearly shown. Some difficulty occurred, and Both- well is charged with having slain one of his illegitimate cousins, who, in conjunction with two Rokebys, English spies incited by greed, were plotting against him. The latter even offered to kill the Bishop as well as the Earl. Throckmorton seems to have objected to such a summary proceeding, because no advantage could be derived from the crime in favor of England and Elizabeth. Bothwell now determined to visit his dukedom of the Orkneys, and sailed for the chief town of the group, Kirkwall. The opinion of those who have investigated the matter with most attention is that Botliwell — after his failure to enlist the active co-operation of his brother-in-law, Huntley — intended to proceed to the Orkneys, gather what strength he could, and then, by the way of Sweden, pro- ceed to France to arouse the sympathies of Charles IX. — who, personally, was very friendly to him, and had con- fidence in the Earl based on his service as "Chamber- lain" at one time, and as "Captain of the Royal Scottish Body Guard," at another, — and derive from France, not only "the sinews of war," money, but actual military assistance. Fate, however, traversed all Bothwell' s bold 229 projects, and, at Kirkwall, lie was received with the treach- ery he had alwaj^s experienced from those he had bene- fited. His castellan, Gilbert Balfour, brother of Sir James Balfour, w^ho had betrayed him after his marriage, and delivered up Edinburgh Castle to the Rebels — both accom- plices in the murder of Darnley — turned the cannons of the place upon his feudal lord and benefactor. In conse- quence of this, Bothwell remained only two days in the port of Kirkwall, and then sailed northward to the Shet- lands. Here he met wath better treatment. The Bail- iii, Oiaf Sinclair, was a kinsman of the Earl's (now^ Duke) mother, Jane Sinclair. Olaf received him kindly, and the people furnished him supplies — a gratuity wdiich was afterwards made the excuse for an onerous tax. Mean- while, 19th August, Kirkaldy of Grange, Murray of Tul- libardine and the Bishop of Orkney, who had married Mary to Bothwell, sailed from Dundee with four ships of war, the best in Scotland, which, in addition to the sea- men, carried four hundred picked arquebusiers (mus- keteers) as marines. The three commanders had authority to bring BotliM^eli, if taken, to a summary trial, and exe- cute him. On the 25th August, 1567, the four pursuing ships sailed into Bressay Sound, on the shore of which stands Lerwick, the principal town of the Shetland group. At this date. Both well's squadron consisted of four small vessels, two of which he had brought from Dunbar, and two Hanseatic armed Pinks, "two-masted lesser war 30 230 ships," which he had hired at Sumburgh Head. One of these was named the "Pelican." Unconscious of danger, Both well's ships lay at anchor, and a large portion of their crews were on shore. Bothwell, himself, at the time was a guest of the Bailiff, Olaf Sinclair. Those in com- mand who had remained on board, cut their cables and put to sea, and made their way to Unst, the most north- erly of the Shetlands. In his pursuit, Ivircaldy ran his flagship, the "Unicorn," on a rock, and it M^ent down. Bothwell, meanwhile, made his way by land to the Yell Sound, and thence by w^ater to Unst, where he rejoined his ships. Thence he sent back one vessel to pick ujd his men who had been left on shore. With the other three he w^as overtaken, in the last days of August, by Kircaldy with his three remaining ships of w^T,r. A hard fight en- sued, which lasted for many hours. In the course of it the mainmast of Bothwell' s best ship was carried away by a cannon shot, and the south-west Mnnd swelling into a fierce gale j^ut an end to the conflict by dispersing the combatants. The Earl was driven with two of his vessels out into the Xorth Atlantic, and one was captured. Run- ning south-east-by-east before the quartering gale, Both- well soon traversed the 250 miles of ocean which separated the Shetlands from J^orway, and first made the Island of Carmoe, twenty miles north-west of Stavanger, and was piloted into the quiet waters of Carm or Carmoe Sound. The ships had scarcely cast anchor when the Dano-Nor- 231 wegian ship-of-war " Bjoriien," Captain Christern Aal- borg, made its appearance. By this Aalborg, Bothwell was " treacherously captured, " and carried into the port of Bergen. There his case was investigated by a commis- sion or jury, composed of four-and-twenty principal men of the town, of which the foreman was Dr. Jens Skelderup, Bishop of Bergen. (Gaedeke, 396.) By them he was fully acquitted of the charge of "piracy," with which his ene- mies had and have so consistently and falsely branded him. There is not the slightest basis for such a charge. This was about 2d September, 1567. After this, the Governor of Bergen Castle showed Bothwell great honor, and gave him a magnificent banquet. The Earl always mentions this governor with favor, and styles him "that good lord Erik Bosenkrands." Nevertheless, however courteously treated, Bothwell was, in fact, a prisoner, and when Cap- tain Aalborg sailed from Bergen, 30th September, for Co- penhagen, he carried Bothwell and some of his people with him. In the author's " Vindication " of Bothwell, he has furnished the dry details of the Earl's detention in Den- mark, of which the following is the summary : The king, Frederic II., would not consent to the extradition of Both- well at the urgent requests either of the usurping Scottish government or of Queen Elizabeth, nor would he let him go free. Comparing lesser things with grander, it was exactly the case of "The great Apostle" and the Koman Gov- ernor — "and Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, 232 left Paul bomid." Frederic II. and Bothwell never met, but corresponded. In a letter, dated 18tli November, 1567, tlie King designated Botliwell as "Our particular Favorite," and tlie Earl is syled in the correspondence, "the Scottish King," On receiving Bothwell's statement, Frederic allowed him to remain at Copenhagen, supply- ing him with apparel suitable to his i-ank and liberal entertainment. In January, 1568, when the pressure of the Scotch regency became stronger, Bothwell was transferred to Malmo Castle* — then in Denmark, now in Sweden — on the * " Malmo. — Soon clmrch-towers arise in tlie distance, shipping, and a harbor ; to the right stands a grim old castle, with staircase — gable and high-jiitched roof, encircled by moat and bastion — once the prison of Scotland's proudest earl, the bad and reckless Bothwell. [See engraving, Malmo-huus, page 316.] " An ancient plan of Malmohus is preserved in the archives of the Radhus, by refering to which we discover the 'corps de logis' to be the original palace of King Frederik II.'s time ; the remaining build- ings were added by Christian IV., as is testified by his cypher, en- twined with that of his queen, Anna Catherine, A. K. 1608. * * But, before searching out his prison, we must first turn to the story of Bothwell himself, according to the records (some sixty-eight in number) which still exist in the Royal Archives of Copenhagen. In the autumn of the year, 1567, Bothwell arrived at Copenhagen, where we find him, about the latter end of December, a prisoner in the king's palace. " Frederik was at that time absent from the capital, hunting at Frederiksborg, from whence he issued the following order to Biorn Kaas, the Seneschal of Malmo : " Frederik, &c. Be it known to you that we have ordered our well- beloved Peter Oxe, our man, councillor and marshal of the kingdom of Denmark, to send the Scottish earl, who resides in the castle of Copen- hagen, over to our castle of Malmo, where he is to remain for some 233 northern shore of the Sound, about opposite Copenhagen. As the greater part of this castle was subsequently des- troyed by fire, or "submerged in the stormy waves," time. We request of you, therefore, to have prepared that same vaulted room in the castle where the Marshal, Eyler Hardenberg, had his apart- ment, and to cover over with mason-work the private place in the same chamber; and, where the iron bars of the windows may not be suffi- ciently strong and well guarded, that you will have them repaired ; and when he arrives, that you will put him into the said chamber, give him beds and good eritertainment, as Peter Oxe will further direct and advise you ; and that you will, above all things, keep a strong guard, and hold in good security the said earl, as you may best devise, that he may not escape. Such is our will. " Written at Frederiksborg, 38th December, 1567." * * " We entered the square court of the castle, and * * inquired whether there still existed any ' vaulted rooms ' in the building of King Frederik II. time. In reply, we were informed that there were two large vaulted chambers on the ground floor, to one of which was attached a small square cabinet, scooped out in the thickness of the castle wall, towards the moat side. An exterior flight of steps led us to the entry of the chamber in which there is every reason to suppose that Both- well passed some five years — may be the most tranquil of his unquiet life. It is a lofty, oblong, vaulted room, some thirty feet in length, lighted by strongly-barred windows looking on the court. On opening the door of the square closet, the floor was still covered over with mason-work of a blackish stone, well-worn, and polished by the friction of ages — that long narrow pavement so generally used in buildings of the sixteenth century. We quitted the castle perfectly satisfied that we had found the ' vaulted chamber' we had come in search of — the state-room of early days, in which the husband of Scotland's queen, Frederik II.'s own kinswoman, was ordered to receive 'good treat- ment.'' On the head of Bothwell, as on that of Mary, rested a fearful accusation — that of murder — an accusation which Frederik II. was reluctant to credit, as he writes word in his letter to the infant James, then eighteen months old, in answer to an epistle penned by the hand 234 there is no certainty as to what portion was assigned as an abode for "the most distinguished state prisoner of Frederic II." It is supposed that he was located in a of Murray. The Danish sovereign refused to receive Bothwell into his presence ; but, thougli he ordered him to be kept a prisoner, he wished Mm to enjoy all the comforts and luxuries due to Ms rank and position, EVERYTHING SAVE LIBERTY, ' until his case could have better consider- ation.' Of the doings of Bothwell during his residence at Malmdhus, we know but little. Two days after his arrival (30th December, 1567 [10th January, 1568?] ) Peter Oxe writes from Copenhagen to the king to say that the Scottish earl desires to obtain a loan of 200 specie (£40), and to ask whether or not he shall advance it on the king's account ; and later, in a MS. register of expenses in the Royal Archives, is pre- served a statement, dated 2d March, A. D. 1569, which runs as follows : ' Likewise delivered to Bicm Kaas, our man, councillor, and seneschal, at our castle of Malmo ; according to order from our high steward aforesaid, English velvet and silk for 75 sp. 6 sk. (£15), of which we have made a present to the Scottish earl, who is imprisoned there.' It was during his imprisonment in Malmohus that Bothwell composed that narrative of the leading events which terminated in his flight from Scotland, in 1567, as well as of his subsequent adventures, known by the title of ' Les Affaires du Comte de Boduel,' forwarded by him to the Danish sovereign. The MS., entitled 'Les Affaires du Comte de Boduel,' now in the library of Stockholm, is a copy of the original in the handwriting of Dantzay, followed up by his own corres- pondence with the French king. Bothwell concludes his narra- tive in the following words: ' Cet ecrit une je prye estre delivre a sa Majeste a fin qu 'elle congnosse I'intention et finale voloute de la Royne Madame Marie qui estoit tellelment que je deborois demander a la Majeste de Dannemarch comme allie et coufedere de ladite Royne ayde faveur et adsistance tant de geus de guerre que de navires pour la de- livrer de la captivite ou elle est.' Lucky had it been for Frederik II. had Bothwell never set his foot on Danish ground, for never was poten- tate more tormented. First came monthly demands : vehement, and later even violent, from the Earl of Murray, for the handing over of 235 spacious apartment previously assigned to the governor — a large, oblong, vaulted hall, with windows to the south looking out upon the grand panorama of the Sound, re- the earl's person to his custody for capital punishment, with even hints of a little previous wholesome torture, such as boot, maiden, or some- thing worse. Our Virgin Queen, too, dictated four letters on the sub- ject to the Danish King, written in a pretty Italian hand, supposed to be that of Ascham, to not one of which did Frederik (wise man) deign a reply, at which neglect Elizabeth expressed herself much wounded, though in one of them, by way of a sop, she adds with her own royal pen, " Vestra bona soror et consanguinea." But she got no Bothwell all the same. Then Catherine de Medicis was sure to write, at least once a month, to her envoy, Charles de Dantzay, ' to insist that Both- well should not be given over to the Scotch.' As to Frederik himself, worried out of his senses, he was not at all inclined to deliver up his prisoner, and that for certain reasons of his own ; for Bothwell, in a letter dated 13th January (1568), had offered, if the king would procure ' la deliverance de Madame Marie la Reyne sa Princesse,' to cede to him the Orkney and Shetland Isles, a regretted appanage, long since severed from the Danish crown.* " As matters stood, therefore, it was perhaps as w*;ll to bear the worry, and see what might turn up later. So he unburdens his mind by writing to the German princes, his relations, explaining to them what he has done, why he has so acted, and asking their advice ; albeit, at the same time determined to follow his own inclination, whatever their answer might be. In the meantime Bothwell goes on drinking, carousing and receiving the visits of his Scotch friends, snapping his fingers at Queen Elizabeth and the Scottish peers, until the 16th of June (1573), when he is suddenly removed to the castle of Draxholm, in the * " Pour les frais qui y pourroyent estre faicts que je fisse offre a ladite Majeste de vandre les Isles d'Orquenay et de Schetland libres et quittes sans aucune empeschement a la couronne de Dannemarch et de Norwegue comme ils avoyent cydevant quelque tems este. "Presente a Helsingbourg an S. Peter Oxe et S. Jehan Fris Chan- celier, le 16th Janvier, 1568." 236 motely to the west on the Island Hven, the residence of Tycho Brahe ; nearer, on the Island of Salthom opposite, and Amager beyond, in fact, the whole interesting and island of Zealand. On the 28th of June following, Dantzay writes to his master, the King of France : ' Le Roy de Danemarck avoit iusques a piTt assez bien entretenu le Conte Baudouel, mais depuis pen de jours il I'a faut mettre en une fort maulvaise et estroite prison.' In addition to the testimony of Dantzay, the following entry has been lately dis- covered in a MS. of Karem Brahe, preserved in the library of Odense : 'In the year 1573, on the 16th of June, was the Scottish earl placed at Draxholm.' Scarce had the prisoner been removed when, on the 26th day of the same month, arrives a letter from the new Regen t, Morton, de- manding the deliverance of ' Damnatae memoriee parricidam nostram,' as he terms Bothwell, which, considering he had been himself a party to the murder of Darnley, is strong language, and with this epistle ter- minates the correspondence, for on the 24th of November following, Dantzay, after first announcing ' Au Roy — Sr Peter Oxe mourut le 24 jour d'Octobre,' continues, ' le Comte de Baudouel, Ecossais, est aussi decede,' and this report of the Earl's death was believed by Mary her- self, and generally credited throughout the whole of Europe, at the very time he was languishing in a damp unwholesome prison (?) of the Castle of Draxholm. It may be inferred that Frederik had been per- suaded by his new Minister, Walkendorf, a man not over-sci"upulous as to truth, to announce the death of his illustrious prisoner as the best answer to all the reiterated demands for his person, and thus putting an end to the vexed aflair for ever. From this date we hear no more of the Earl, until the record of his death on the 14th April, 1578 (?), and liis subsequent interment in the church of Faarveile. * * What was the cause of this sudden change in the treatment of the Scottish earl, so well entertained by the King of Denmark for the space of five years? The Protestants, and those who were hostile to Queen Mary's cause, will tell you that from the year 1572, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the feelings of the Lutheran ruler of the realm under- went a change towards his Roman Catholic kinswoman, and that Both- well to him was naught save the husband of Mary. The Roman 237 lively en^^l•ollS of the Danish capital not farther distant than from ten to twenty miles. Meanwhile the King took care that his food and clothes should be rich and ample. "He Catholics on their side assert, and that strenuously, the story of his confession to be true, in which lie 'malade a I'extremite au chateau de Malmay, declared la Royne iuuocente de la ditte mort — lui seul ses parens et quelque noblesse autours d'icelle.' The confession of Both- well, printed by Drummond of Hawthornden, 1625, has disappeared, as well as the other copies known to have existed former]y(?). The Danish archives lend no aid to the solution of the mystery. Frederik may have forwarded the original to Queen Elizabeth, the paper she ' kept quiet,' but uiJ to the lyresent time the jvoofs are wanting, and all is doubt and obscurity. How Malcolm Laiug can assert these names are appa- rently tictitious is surprising. In olden times Malmd, before ortho- graphy was settled, was written Malmoye, Malmoge as well as Malmay : all these terminations being different dialects of the word o or ey island Malm, sand (Moeso-Gothic) — «^ (island) being the real signification of the name. The Skane nobles were men of note and position, possessors of the lands and castles alluded to, lansmen and governors of fortresses and districts. The spelling of their names in Queen Mary's letter dif- fers from that of the documents preserved in the Scottish College at Paris, but this is not to be wondered at. I myself, in the 19th century, after two years' familiarity with the Danish language, should be sadly at a loss to write them down correctly from dictation. Though old Otto Brahe, father of the illustrious Tycho, was at that time gathered to his ancestors, yet the provinceof Skane was peopled by his descend- ants. But argue as you may — ^well or ill— until the missing document be forthcoming all will be vexatiou of spirit — so let the matter rest, and each man hold to his own opinion. " There is nothing more to relate, so let us bid adieu to the vaulted chamber in the degraded fortress of old Malmo-huus, once a prison, far too good and spacious for the most restless adventurer of his age, the husband of Queen Mary — James Erie Boithuille."— " One Year in Sweden," Vol. I., pages 3-20, by Horace Marryat. From the de Peyster Collection, in the New York Society Library. 31 238 was detained there [JVIalmo] as a State prisoner, indeed, but led a Inxurions life, and was treated far better than he deserved, being allowed the liberty of shooting and other recreations, while the King of Denmark ordered and paid for velvet dresses and other costly array for his use." When those " Titans of fraud " and crime, the Scottish authorities, empowered Colonel {^Ohrlst or Oherst) and Captain John Clark, a Scottish mercenary — nominally commanding, in 1564, 206 Scottish cavalry soldiers in the service of Denmark — to demand the extradition of Bothwell, Bothwell turned the tables upon Clai-k by shoM'- ing that when the Danish government sent Clark over to Scotland, in 1567, to enlist troops for its service, this agent was induced to expend the money entrusted to him for that special purpose for the benefit of the "Bonded" Lords in rebellion against Queen Mary and Bothwell, and actually inarshalled the soldiers, mustered in to serve Frederic, to fight against the Queen at Carberry Hill. Clark was sent before a court-martial, and, in spite of the remonstrances of Elizabeth and Murray, was found guilty, consigned to the same castle, Dragsholm, that eventually received Bothwell within its dragon ward, and died there, a prisoner, before his intended, victim. After this afi*air of Clark (1568-70), Frederic II. re- laxed the restraint on the Earl, and he was allowed full liberty within the precincts of the castle ; nay more, he "was allowed no small liberty in Malmo," dressing in 239 velvet and silk, and leading a tranquil, and by no means an unhappy life. In fact, except that he was not free (Wiesener, 505), "his life was that of a brilliant lord;" an existence far happier, perhaps, and certainly more com- fortable than that of the majority of jjotentates at this era. At a later date, it is said. Captain Clark became reconciled with Bothwell in Dragsholm, and together they drowned their cares and ennui in wine. This kind of liv- ing killed Clark in July, 1575, and seriously injured the health of Bothwell. •'i;bi5» All upon a summer sea Sailing in an argosy — Rebecs, lutes and viols sounding. While the ship o"er wavelets hounding. Skims the surface of the sea. ***** Stealing down a gloomy river. Where dull water-grasses quiver. From a barque come sounds of sorrow, Never ceasing with the morrow — Mournful barque upon the river. Sullen clouds obscure the moon. Darkness cometh all too soon ! Black the clouds and black the river. Black the barq'ue, and oh ! the shiver As it sinks beneath the moon ! — The Argosy. Act V. Scene Last. (Abbreviated.") [Carberrv Hill. A knoll, whence the prospect e.xtends to the westward and north- ward, looking over the nearer lines of the Queen's forces, and towards those, beyond. of the Confederate Lords. In the immediate rear stand three pieces of artillery, pointed at the latter, with a few '"Constables" in charge : of whom one, assigned to each gun, at intervals waves his linstock to keep the slow-match alight and ready for immediate use. Near these are groups of royal regular Hackbutteers, belonging to the Queen's body-guard, at ease, and parties of Border noblemen and their retainers, Jack- men, evidently as if just dismounted, and leaning on their long spears. In the front centre are Mary Stuart and Bothwell : and, to the right, but withdrawn a space, Kirkaldy of Grange. Behind the Queen is Captain Blackadder. one of Bothwell's subordinates, watching what is occurring in the enemy's ranks, and his remarks serve as an e.xplanation or Cho7-us^\ Blackadder. \_To BothiveU.] Hasten, my Lord, your colloquy : the foe Are striving to outflank us. Look, their horse To close the road to Dunbar, headlong spur. If fight 's the word, now is the time to fight. Lest we both lose advantage of the sun Full in their faces ; our position too ; And worst, if beaten, our retreat "s cut oft'. 240 241 Marv. [Continuing a conversation which had been going on before the scene opened. | I am resolv'd to trust Kirkaldy — BOTHWELL. Ah ! What glamour blinds thee, love ? Thou know'st him not ; The hireling spy and England's traitrous tool. He but deceives thee, with his specious tale ; His boasted chivalry is mere lacker. Beneath the semblance of the golden truth Is falsehood's foul and cheap-jack metal. Think » Ere you commit your fortune to such crew. [Bothwell breaks off suddenly, rushes to a Hackbutteer and, by signs and words inaudible to the spectators, directs hiirf to shoot Kirkaldy, who, shading his eyes against the declining sun, is looking in a different direction towards his own friends. Mary, moved by Bothwell's charges, seems lost for a moment in deep thought ; then suddenly perceives Bothwell's intention and throws herself between the musketeer and his aim. J Mary. What would'st thou do ? Bothwell, Slay the deceiving villain By whom you are infatuated, Mary. James, He "s under safeguard of my queenly word. And, though he were the very knave thou say'st, He must not die by an assassin shot. Bothwell. [With difficulty restraining himself, and making a gesture to the musketeer to " recover arms," returns to the Queen's side.] My love, my queen, my sweetheart and my life. Thy noble nature and thy native sense Are both the victims of this knave's device. Is it not better, here upon this field. To strike one blow for honor and thy crown Than thus abase thyself to traitors — yield Thy freedom, and perchance thy life, to those . j Who never yet have kept a single Bond Beyond the signing, had their purposes But borne their fruit perfidious. Hast thou not Prov'd me, as never yet woman prov'd man Or had the chance to do 't ? Have I not shown. By ev'ry thought, word, act, since manhood's dawn, That Truth and Bothwell were synonymous ? " Klip Trest ! " my motto — emblem of my life. Was I not faithful to my mother ; then With equal truth did I not turn to thee : Until thy love, enkindled at my own. Or my big love, inflam'd by thy bright eyes, Converted me from loyalty to Jove ? Have I e'er fail'd thee? Have I not been truth, Love, faith, devotion : all thy sex can ask ? And yet thou dost not trust me ; but prefer'st The specious promise of a hireling tongue ! Mary. I am lesolv'd to trust the Bonded Lords; Not, that I have lost faith in thee, mine own, But cause 't would seem as if by Fate impell'd, This is the wisest course and fits the time. A brief, sad parting and a better meeting May bring again a long and halcyon term. 242 BoTHWELL. No, no ! No, no ! I tell thee. No ! 'T would seem As if, on board a stout still lusty frigate, Because 't is slightly shatter'd by a squall. Thou would'st abandon ship and practic'd captain , To trust a pirate's skiff to save from storm That lowers, but has not burst. Oh ! Mary, Dost thou love me ? Mary. My acts are the best answer. I have gone through too much for thee to doubt it. • Oh, what have I not done to prove my love ? {^Wringing her hands.'] Oh, what have I not suffer'd to be thine ? BoTHWELL. Then, by the tie united us when twain. And by the two church rites that made us one, I do conjure thee, let me fight this day : Not like a felon bid me steal away, ^ever before has Bothwell quit the field, But all victorious or upon his shield. [Bothwell takes Mary's hand in his, and they stand thus, grasping each others hands, for some minutes ; then clasp each other in a sad but fierce embrace. He glues his lips to hers, then suddenly releases her, and, gazing, seems to discern that neither kisses nor caresses have changed her resolution. His eyes question her.] Marv. [Suddenly. 1 I am resolv'd to keep my word to Grange Bothwell. Oh, love ! my life ! Mary. {^Wiih a sad S7nilej\ Alas! we here must part; Part for a time, assur'd of future meeting. Bothwell. Wilt thou be true to me, and keep thy promise, So often seal'd with kisses, e'en beside The dead man's corse ; to ne'er even in thought, Nor word, nor bond, nor deed, annul nor weaken it ; Be my own Mary, till the whelming sea Or the cold earth put seal to either life ? Mary. I promise. Go ! Before it is too late, Take horse for Dunbar, ere the foeman's horse Cut in and make escape impossible. Bothwell. \\Vith desperation.'] Will you not fight, or let us fight ? Mary. Too late ! [Bothwell seizes her in his arms and kisses her wildly ; but, seeing that even in this supreme moment she makes a motion for Kirkaldy to approach, he suddenly releases her and strides to the left of the stage ; then turns, and perceives that Kirkaldy has drawn nearer to the Queen. Some one in the rear has given a signal to the enemy, and with- out, to the right, arise shouts, fanfares of trumpets and triumphant flams of drums.] Bothwell. [ To those without.] Ho ! To horse ! To horse ! Marv. [Giving her hand to Kirkaldy.] Come, Sir, let us go ! [These two last exclamations are simultaneous as the curtain falls. Rude, loud, triumphant music accompanies its descent, which gradually changes into softer and mournful notes, as the curtain again rises upon a double scene.] Fotheringay. 1 Dragsholm. Mary, with her head on the block, and Bothwell, lying dead the e-xecutioner standing over j upon the floor of his dungeon her with upraised axe. \ at Adelsborg. [Curtain falls again to sad music, which gradually changes into a symphony, as it rises on the reunion of Mary and Bothwell.] " James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell," an unpublished Tragedy. 243 UKE 16th, 1573, why does not appear, Bothwell was privately transferred to the Castle of Dragsholm* (Dragon's Island), now Adelsborg. Dragsholm appears to be an isthmus (island ?) between Seiro Bay, and the La(o)mme Fiorde, one of the arms of the Ise-Fiorde, on the north- west coast of Zealand, fifty-eight miles west of Copen- hagen, off the road between the seaport towns of Holbek, * Leaving the highroad from Copenhagen to Holbek, " before long the imposing Chateau of [Dragsholm, now] Adelsborg [the last place of confinement for Bothwell] apjjeared in sight, well placed among the surrounding woods, * * * in a private demesne. * * * As we approach the borders of the [tranquil] fiorde, on a little promontory jutting out into the sea, stands a v/hitewashed gabled church, and its spire of ancient date, simple and unadorned, but made to paint, the village Church of Faareveile, within whose walls repose [what are erroneously represented as] the mortal remains of the Earl of Both- well, the so-called [the third and best beloved] husband of Mary Stuart, who died a prisoner, some sa_v a maniac, within the walls of Draxholm, where he had been privately removed by the King of Denmark. * * The ancient castle of Draxholm, or Dragon's Island, was, in former days, the property of the Bishop of Roeskilde ; the huge mass of build- ings are still something ecclesiastical in their appearance, surrounded by a moat, and of no architectural beauty. The great tower [repre- sented] in the old engravings of Resen, was destroyed by the Swedes, in 1658 ; the chapel gutted during the War of the Counts, in 1533. It is the intention of [the present owner, I860,] Baron Zeutphen Adeler to restore [it] to its former state. * * Before we proceed to visit the church of Faareveile, I may as well explain [in my way] how Both- well came to end his days within the prison of the castle of Draxholm. " It was in the year 1567 that sentence of death was passed by the Scottish Parliament on the Earl of Bothwell, at that time resident in 244 to the east, and Kallundsborg, to the west. Faarev-eile, where the body of BothM^ell is said to liave been depo- sited, is on, or near by, the shore oftlie L(a)onime Fiorde. the Orkney IslandB, having under his command a squadron of five light-armed vessels of war, * « * Bothwell's squadron, endeavor- ing, during a terrific storm, to escajie from an armament sent in their pursuit [all mixed up, truth and error], two of his vessels managed to enter the harbor of Karmsund, in Norway. Bothwell here declared himself to be the husband of the Queen of Scots, and demanded to be conducted into the presence of the King of Denmark. Such is the account given by English historians. Now, however, that Bothwell is safe arrived in Norway, it is as well to consult the account given bj- the Danes themselves. In the "Liber Bergensis CapituW we find the following notice : " ' September 2, A.D. 156S [15(57], came the King's ship "David," upon which Christian of Aalborg was head man : she had taken prisoner a Count [Earl] from Scotland, of the name of Jacob Hebroe of Botwile, who first was made Duke of the Orkneys and Shetland, and lately married the Queen of Scotland, and after lie was suspected of having been in the counsel to blow up the King [Darnley] : they first accused the Queen, and then the Count, but he made his escape, and came to Norwa.y, and was afterwards taken to Denmark by the king's sliip " David [Bear]." ' The accusation of piracy made against the Scottish earl was never credited by Frederic II., or his advisers. Bothwell had hired two [two-masted, lesser war-ships, called] pinks, when in Shetland, of Gerhard Hemlin the Bremois, for fifiy silver dollars a month, com- manded by David AVodt, a noted pirate [privateer, or letter of marque, for the terms were then synonymous and expressed by the same word], in which he arrived on the coast of Norway, in a miserable plight, his own vessel [fiag ship] having returned to Shetland, with his valuables on T)oard, to fetch his peojile [and valuables]. Erik Rosenkrantz, the Governor [of Bergen], thought necessary to summon a jury of the most respectable people of the town, ' twelve brewers of the bridge,' to enquire into the Earl's case, and how it was he had become associated with so well-known a pirate. Some of the crew afiirmed they knew of 245 According to generally received accounts, Bothwell was plnnged into a dungeon. Tins is mere surmise. Nothing is positively known. no other captain than one Wodt, to whom the pink helonged. The commission add, that this Hamburger (as Bothwell styles him in his narrative) was a well-known pirate. " Still they suspected the Earl was about to go over to Sweden, a country at war with Denmark ; they accordingly recommend that he should take an oath that he would keep peace towards his Danish Ma- jesty's subjects, as well as towards all those who brought goods to his Majesty's dominions. On this account onlj' [a fear that the Earl was about to serve the Swedes, and not for piracy] Erik Rosenkrantz sends him a prisoner to Copenhagen. This was, no doubt, the origin of the accusation of 'piracy' made by the Earl of Murray [an unrelenting, malignant, personal foe] against Bothwell by the mouth of the infant king [James VI.], aged eighteen months. The Earl had come to raise men in the North to aid the royal [Mary's and his own] cause. Indeed, so satisfactory was his examination on this point, it is mentioned in the 'Liber Bergenisis' that, two days after his examination — " September 28th [1567], Erik Rosenkrantz gave to the Earl and his noblemen a magnificent banquet ; and, again, 'the Earl repaired to the Castle, and Erik received him with great honor.' * * * * " On the 30th September, comes our last notice : ' The Earl was con- ducted to a ship and led prisoner to Denmark, that is Malmo-huus. This assertion is not quite correct ; as Bothwell remained in Copen hagen until the 30th of December [until 10th January, 1568, if not later], when he was consigned to the custody of Biorn Kaas, Governor of Malmo-huus, together with his companion. Captain Clarke. Rere he remained, well treated, with a liberal allowance from the King of Den- mark, indulging in potations with his comrade, which later brought him to death's door. Many were the requests from the Queen of Eng- land and the Scottish Lords to Frederick, demanding that the Earl should be handed over to their custody, to which the Danish Sovereign always replied by a refusal. If they chose to proceed against him they were are at liberty so to do, but judged he must be by Danish 32 246 Even Agnes Strickland is forced to admit that the popu- lar tradition of Bothwell's madness is entii-ely without foun- dation, and that when at Dragsholm he w^as treated much laws. It is related how, after a season, being brought to a state of weakness from the effects of a dangerous illness, his conscience tor- mented by anguish and remorse [utterly false], he made, in the pre- sence of several witnesses, a confession of his share of Darnley's assas- sination, exonerating Queen Mary from any participation or know- ledge of his crime. Mary, in a letter to her Ambassador on the subject, writes the names of those before whom the attestation was made, to be : Otto Braw, of the Castle of Elcembre ; Paris Braw, of Vascu ; Monsieur Gullensterna, of the Castle of Fulkenster ; Baron Cowes, of Malinga Castle ; so Miss Strickland gives them. I have this morning consulted a Danish noMlier to see whether I can, among the manors once in possession of these families, find any names similar to those here given. The spelling is obscure, but really not worse than that of a foreigner of the 19th century, if he attempted to write down the names by ear. " Otto Braw, of the Castle of Elcembre, stands for Otto Brahe, of the Castle of Helsingborg, of which he was governor — father of Tycho Brahe. He died, however, in 1571. [It does not stand to reason that a corse was admitted as a subscribing witness, except in a blood-and- thunder drama, such as the Old Bowery ' Dead Hand.'] His son, Steen, was at that time alive, and resided near Malmo— indeed, the whole pro- vince of Skaane teemed with his family, lehnsmend and governors, tigh in authority. Paris Braw, of Vascu, I take to be Brahe, of Vidskovle, a chateau near Christianstad ; Gullensterna of Fulkenster, Gyldenstierne of Fuletofte, probably Axel, son of Mogens Gyldenstierne, Stadtholder of Malmo, and himself a Governor ; while for Baron Cowes, of Mal- inge, read Biorn Kaas, Governor of Malmo-huus, whose son, Jorgen, was possessor of Meilgarcf, in Jutland. " In the copy of Bothwell's confession, preserved in the Scotch Col- lege in Paris, these names are again differently written. The Swedes, to whom Skaane now belongs, possess again an orthography different 24Y better than he deserved ; perhaps not worse than Mary was by Elizabeth. Schiern has demonstrated witli greater clearness the utter falsity of the Confession attributed to from the Danes. You will not find Ihem written in two books alike. After a lapse of fifty years, nothing can be more puzzling. " It was in the year 1573, after the confession, that Bothwell was re- moved to Draxholni, and treated as a criminal ; though of that no docu- mentary evidence exists. * * * M. de Dantzay [The French am- bassador] writes word to Charles IX. that the King of Denmark, up to the present time, had well treated the Earl of Bothwell, but a few days since had caused him to be put ' en une fort maulvaise et estroite pri- son.' [This may simply refer to the strength of the Dragon Island keep and its loneliness, characteristics which would aftect the judgment and language of a Frenchman accustomed to court life and long resi- dence in a refined capital.] In the month of November, the same year [1573], he again announces, 'le Comte de Baudouel, Ecossais, est aussi decede.' Bothwell, however, did not die till April 19th, 1578. [Not so, 1575 : — 1578 is disproved by the very narrator further on.] Ac- cording to the chaplain of Draxliolm, Frederic, tormented by the de- mands of Queen Elizabeth and the Scotch Regents for his deliverance into their hands, allowed the report, of his death to be circulated, and so put an end to all the worry on the subject. " In the chronicle of Frederic II.'s reign, Resen, under the year 1578, after stating that Frederic II. caused the dead body of his father to be removed from Odense to Rosiklde, continues : ' At that very time the Scottish Earl Bothwell also died, after a long imprisonment at Drax- holm, and was buried at Faareveile.' That the Scottish Queen, in her damp prison of Fotheringay, receiving her intelligence in secret, should have been misinformed as to the christian names of the Danish noble- men who were summoned to the sick-bed of Bothwell, is not surpris- ing ; — such a confusion, too, as exists in these ancient geneologies ; such an intermarrying between the families of Kaas, Gyldenstierne, and Brahe ; such a changing and exchanging of manors by sale, by dowry, by gifte, maal and morgen gaffue (marriage settlement) — my head. 248 Bothwell. In all the antlientic papers known to have been written by hhn, he insists upon his innocence, and with equal force alleges the guilt of Murray and Morton, and before we had finished our researches, became a very chaos. [It was, the story shows it.] " The [supposed] prison of Bothwell is now the wine-cellar of the castle, and the iron ring, to which he is reported to have been attached a maniac [which is false], stands inserted in the wall, between two shelves of the wine-bins — on one lies crusty Port, in the lower Chateau Lafitte. What a tantalizing sight for his wine-loving spectre, should he by chance revisit the seat of his former prison ! Bothwell died at DraxJiolm two years after his removal thither [1573, conseciuently 1575, ?io^ 1578], and was interred in the parish church of Faareveile. *-:«•* On the iron-bound door [of the church] appears the dragon, titular patron, I suppose, of the place. The interior is simple, of good architecture, with pulpit and altar-piece of Christian IV. 's date, and in sound repair. -X- * * They raise a folding trap [since definitely closed] in the chan- cel ; a ladder leads to the vault below ; on the right lies a simple wooden coffin, encased in an o;iter one for protection ; the lid is removed, a sheet withdrawn, uncovered within which lies the mummy-corpse [this is altogether without ])roof and apocryphal] of Scotland's proudest Earl. The coffin in earlier times reposed in a vault of the chapel of the , Adeler family, but was removed by the baron to its present place for the convenience of those who desire to visit it without intruding on the dormitory of the family. It had always, for centuries, been known as the tomb of ' Grev. Bodvell" by sacristan and peasant. When the wooden coffin was first opened, the body was found enveloped in the finest linen, the head reposing on a pillow of satin (?) There w.\s NO INSOKIPTION. Now, I am no enthusiast, and take, matters quietly enough, but I defj' any impartial Englishman [a nationality most inimical to Both- well living and dead] to gaze on this body without at once declaring it to be that of an ugly Scotchman. [V ! V ! V ! Ridiculous assertion, and no proof whatever, as Schiern demonstrates.] It is that of a man about the middle height — and to judge by his hair, red mixed with 249 their associates. Even at Draxholm, it is stated that Both- well "nevertheless, got permission to go hunting." It is supposed that Frederic transferred the Earl from Malmo to Dragsholm to relieve himself from the annoyances of the applications made by the successive Regents of Scotland and the Queen of England. In her endeavors to injure Both- well with Frederic II. and retaliate upon the Earl in his dis- tress for his life-long patriotic refusals of her invitations to imitate Murray, Morton, Kirkaldy and others, and become. her tool, spy, and, like Murray, her "fawning spaniel," traitor to his country, she descended to the meanness of styling Darnley as "King," whereas she had hitherto re- fused him that title, both while living and when dead, grey, of about fifty years of age. The forehead is not expansive ; the form of the head wide behind, denoting bad qualities, of which Both- well, as we all know [how, by misrepresentation ? yes !] possessed plenty ; high cheek-bones ; remarkably prominent, long, hooked nose, somewhat depressed towards the end (this may have been the effect of emaciation) ; wide mouth ; hands and feet small, well shaped, those of a high-bred man. I have examined the records of the Scottish Parlia- ment, caused researches to be made at the British Museum — the cop3^ of his ' Hue and Cry' is not forthcoming ; no description of Bothwell exists [great error], save that of Brantome, who saw [is supposed to have seen] him on his visit to Paris, where he first met Mary, during, the lifetime of King Francis. * * Having first severed a lock of his red and silver hair as a souvenir, we let close the colfin-lid. * * Bothwell's life was a troubled one ; but, had he selected a site in all Christendom for quiet and repose in death, he could have found none more peaceful, more soft and calm, than the village church of Faar- veile." (Horace Marryatt's " Jutland and the Danish Isles ;" pp. 408-19. de Peyster Alcove, N. Y. Society Library.) 250 styling him in her correspondence "the dead gentleman," '''• le 7)iort gentilhomme'''' (Buckingham, I., 363-'4). Now she invoked vengeance upon Bothwell, as the cruel assassin of his relative and sovereign. And here it may be per- tinent to observe that Bothwell was of the noblest blue blood on all sides. He M^as as nearly related to Mary as he was to his divorced Mdfe, Jane Huntley, as he was descended from Joanna, daughter of James I., King of Scotland, and also from Queen Joanna, or Jane Beaufort, wife of James I., by her second husband, Sir James Stew- art, "the Black Knight of Lorn." That Bothwell was in any degree related to Darnley is not shown. When and where did Bothwell die? Many say in Malmo-huus. Sheer ignorance ! Shiern says 14th April, £^ ns-joj-j," 251 1578; Petrick in the beginning of November, 1575. Whether he died in 1575 or 1578 there is nothing posi- tive known of the details of his life after 1571.* Reader, have yon ever met with "Historic Doubts," * He made no Confession, he left no Testament inculpating himself or exonerating Mary in connection with the Darnley killing, and every- thing of the kind attributed to him are manipulations or forgeries. The best authorities now unite in conceding this. " Mary Stuart received the intelligence of Bothwell's decease" — says Gaedeke, 410 — "without being much moved at it ; passionate natures like hers have ever been wanting in feeling." Just so ! She was a heartless, although excitable woman. Now Bothwell, then Darnley ; now Bothwell then Norfolk, and then the Axe. Anathema upon her, she was unworthy of a " KEAL MAN." S'chiern, Petrick and others have shown that no amount of research can discover aiiy data to enable the biographer or antiquarian to lift even the lowest corner of the veil of doabt and ignorance which hangs over the last years of Bothwell. Schiern (386) corroborates Petrick. " The Earl's coffin was brought from Dragsholm to the nearest church at Faareveile. This church, which stands away from the village, on the west bay of Isefjord, in a lonely and quiet spot, the haunt of gulls and sea-fowl, is said to be the last resting-place of him who was the third and best loved husband of Scotland's Queen. "As tradition still points out in Dragsholm the room which was Bothwell's prison, so among the coffins in Faareveile church, it con- tinues to indicate one, without any inscription or adornment, as the coffin of the famous Scotsman. To ascertain the truth of the legend, the coffin was opened on the 31st of May, 1858, but without any posi- tive mark being seen that the corpse found in it was really Bothwell's." Marryat asserts that, unmistakably, the body he saw was that of an ugly Scotchman. Schiern explodes such a silly argument and asser- tion by citing the fact that "Bothwell was not the only Scotchman that was buried in Faareveile Church," and added the question, " How much of the 'ugliness' alleged here ought to be ascribed to the fact of the 252 or any one of the careful treatises written to prove tow unworthy of trust are generally received traditions and the majority of histories, so styled. Do you know ? Can you answer at once, Who was Joab? The author has asked this question indiscriminately many hundreds of times, and, except from a constant Bible reader, scarcely ever got a correct answer, if any at all, and yet Joab was the grand and able general of a great king, the fatlier of the wisest monarch that ever grasped a sceptre, and the story of Joab, David and Soloman is told in the Book read by all civilized people. Joab's dispositions and victory at Me- deba constitute an example of a class of peculiar battles, of which the latest was our Chancellorsville. Who was Simon Stevin of Bruges ? A Dutch mathematician, who was the first to throw light on the darkness which had brooded upon the world, for 1800 years, since Archimedes. Maurice of Nassau was the restorer of militai-y discipline ; Simon Stevin was his preceptor in military science, proper, body having passed three hundred years in the grave, it is certainly not so easy to determine." Wliy was not this tlie body of Captain Clark ? Marryat says that the corpse he saw was that of a man of middle size. This does not agree with the traditional full-length "col- umnar," "overtopping tall," portrait of Bothwell. The famous Prus- sian General, von Moltke, justly conceded that great men would not enjoy posthumous excellence and immortality without poets and his- torians. By impartial pens Bothwell was represented as a stalwart, columnar, martial figure, as a powerful and imposing military chief, whose resounding tread rang battleward. 253 castrematation.and engineering. Who was John Cavalier? A little Protestant baker's boy, in a small town among the monntains of Languecloc, who, at the age of twenty, made an army, equipped with weapons, mostly curiosi- ties preserved in old armories, until he wrested better from his foes. "With some three thousand peasants whom he had drilled, he held at bay sixty thousand regulars — veterans, volunteers and militia — and was a match in suc- cession for two Marshals of France, one of whom was the celebrated Yillars, wdio declared that his youthful op- ponent had performed "actions worthy of Caesar." He treated as equal with equal with this same Yillars, who was a local Alter Ego of Lonis XIY., and by keeping such a mass of the best French troops in check in south- ern France, Cavalier converted Marlborough's campaign, which culminated at Blenheim, 13th August, 1Y04, from a probabilit}^ into a certainty, that burst at once the bub- ble of French invincibility^ Bothwell belonged to this class of marvels. Henry Taylor, author of the wonderful dramatic poem, "Philip van Artevelde," tells us " The world knows nothing of its greatest men." "Such souls, Whose sudden visitations daze the world, Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind A voice that in the distance far away Wakens the slumbering ages." 33 254 Botliwell lived on, and died at Dragsholm (? 1575, '76 or '78) faithful to the motto of his house, " Kiip Trest ! " Dragsholm Cas1:le. Keep Trust! Be faithful! " A gentleman of credit, noble, honest,— As true as his own sword." His devotion, hoy and man, to Marj of Guise, Queen- Dowager and Regent of Scotland, was inviolate and in- violable, and when Queen Mary returned to Edinburgh she still found his loyalty so lofty and unchangeable, that "it seemed to partake of that devotion which shed a halo over the days of Chivalry." Botliwell committed the crime which, in this world, never receives any other than the enigmatic absolution accorded by Pope Pius III. to the 255 murderers of Cardinal Beatoun, "Remittimus irremisi- BiLE." '■'■ We pardon the deed wJiioh admits of no 2)av- don.'''' Bothwell's crime — sucli a deed — was failure, and, despite his loyalty, bravery, ability, patriotism and mani- fold other gifts, •' He left a name at which [his] world grew pale To point a moral, or adorn a tale." Bothwell's culmination or transit realized the language of Macbeth, about to perish : "Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, That strnts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more : it is a tale Told by an idiot full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." Bothwell's Book-Stamp, 256 APPENDIX. Arnold Gaedeke (Giessen, 1879,) on the Authenticity of tlie Casket {''GhatouUeTi") Letters, &c. Translated from the original German. The genuineness of these celebrated letters has so often been a subject of the most embittered controversy, and so many hypotheses of all sorts, made with such an ex- penditure of ability, have been advanced* concerning it, that a rehearsal of all the argu- ments brought out f.ir and against it, appears superfluous, especially since, to the opponents of their authenticity, little peculiarities and immaterial circumstances count for more than the most obvious deductions. The genumeness of the letters— in my opinion — if one excepts perfect verbal correctness, ^ no longer admits of a doubt. The attempts of the majority of recent writers must, decidedly, be rejected, J and the rather should this be done, that as good as nothing new is brought forward by them, as a basis for their views. 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