him in company at the time, all hatred conceived by her Majesty, for the taking and imprisoning of her at the time aforesaid."* All these preparations having been made, Mary at length became the wife of Bothwell, he having been previously created Duke of Orkney. Even in the celebration of the marriage ceremony, the despotic power which Bothwell now exercised over the unhappy and passive Queen, is but too evident. She, who had never before failed, in a single instance, to observe the rites of her own faith, however tolerant she was to those who professed a different persuasion, was now obliged, in opposition to all the prejudices of education, and all the principles of her religion, to submit to be married according to the form of the Protestant church. Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, who, though holding an Episcopal order, had lately renounced that heresy, and joined the Reformers, presided on the occasion. The marriage took place, not at mass in the Queen's chapel, but in the Council Chamber, where, after a sermon had 'been delivered, the company separated, with little demonstrations of mirth. + * ANDERSON, vol. i. p. 87, + History of James VI, p. 10; KEITH, p. 386; MELVILLE, p. 78; WHITTAKER, vol. iii. p. 127, et seq. Upon this subject, Lord Hailes has judiciously remarked:"After Mary had remained a fortnight under the power of a daring profligate adventurer, few foreign princes I would have solicited her hand. Some of her subjects might still have sought that honour, but her compliance would have been humiliating beyond measure. It would have left her at the mercy of a capricious husband,—it would have exposed her to the disgrace of being reproached, in some sullen hour, for the adventure at Dunbar. Mary Melville, who came to court the same evening, mentions some particulars, which shew how the dissolute Bothwell chose to spend his time :"When I came to the court," he says, "I found my Lord Duke of Orkney sitting at his supper. He said I had been a great stranger, desiring me to sit down and sup with him. The Earl of Huntly, the Justice-Clerk, and diverse others, were sitting at the table with him. I said that I had already supped. Then he called for a cup of wine, and drank to me, that I might pledge him like a Dutchman. He made me drink it out to grow fatter, for,' said he, the zeal of the commonweal has eaten ye up, and made ye lean.' I answered, that every little member should serve to some use; but that the care of the commonweal appertained most to him, and the rest of the nobility, who should be as fathers to it. Then he said, I well knew he would find a pin for every bore. Then he discoursed of gentlewomen, speaking such filthy language, that I left him, and passed up to the Queen, who was very glad at my coming." * Such was the man who was now inseparably joined to Mary, and who, by fraud and villainy, had made himself, for the time, so absolute in Scotland, that her possession of the throne of her ancestors, nay, her very life, seems to have depended upon his will and pleasure. - was so situated, at this critical period, that she was reduced to this horrid alternative, either to remain in a friendless and most hazardous celibacy, or to yield her hand to Bothwell." Remarks on the History of Scotland, p. 204. MELVILLE, p. 178. CHAPTER VI. THE REBELLION OF THE NOBLES, THE MEETING AT CARBERRY HILL, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. MARY's first step, after her marriage, was to send, at her husband's desire, ambassadors into England and France, to explain to these courts the motives by which she had been actuated. The instructions given to these ambassadors, as Buchanan has justly remarked, and after him the French historians De Thou and Le Clerc, were drawn up with much art. They came, no doubt, from the pen of Bothwell's friend, Secretary Maitland; and they recapitulate so forcibly all the Earl's services, both to Mary and her mother, enlarge so successfully upon his influence in Scotland, his favour with the nobility, and their anxiety that he should become king; and finally, colour so dexterously his recent conduct, that after their perusal, one is almost induced to believe that the Queen could not have chosen a better husband in all Christendom. Of course, Mary would herself see them before they were despatched, as they are written in her name; and the consent she must have given to the attempt made in them to screen her husband from blame, confirms the belief that she did not plan, along with him, the scheme of the abduction; for she would, in that case, have represented, in a much stronger light, the consequences necessarily arising from it. If she had consented to such a scheme, it must have been with the view of making it be believed that her marriage with a suspected murderer (suspected at least by many, though probably not by Mary herself) was a matter of necessity; and she could never have been so inconsistent as labour to convince her foreign friends, that, though violence had been used in the first instance, she had ultimately seen the propriety of voluntarily becoming Bothwell's wife. It was her sincere and laudable desire, now that she was married, to shelter her husband as much as possible; and, conscious of her own innocence, she did not anticipate that the measures she took in his behalf might be turned against herself. It should indeed be distinctly remembered, in tracing the lamentable events which followed this marriage, that though force and fraud were not perhaps employed on the very day of its consummation, yet that they had previously done their utmost; and that it was not the Queen who surrendered herself to Bothwell, but Bothwell who forced himself upon the Queen. Though Mary attempted to conceal her misery from the prying eye of the world, they who had an opportunity of being near her person easily saw that her peace of mind was wrecked. So little love existed either on the one side or the other, that even the days usually set aside for nuptial rejoicings, were marked only by suspicions and wranglings. They remained together at Holyrood from the 15th of May to the 7th of June; but, during the whole of that time, Bothwell was so alarmed, lest she should yet break from him, and assert her independence, that he kept her "environed with a continual guard of two hundred harquebussiers, as well day as night, wherever she went ;" and whoever wished an audience with her, "it behoved him, before he could come to her presence, to go through the ranks of harquebussiers, under the mercy of a notorious tyrant, -a new example, wherewith this nation had never been acquainted; and yet few or none were admitted to her speech, for his suspicious heart, brought in fear by the testimony of an evil conscience, would not suffer her subjects to have access to her Majesty as they were wont to do."* The letter from which these passages are quoted, deserves, at this period of Mary's history, every attention, for it was written, scarcely two months after her marriage, by the Lords who had associated themselves against Bothwell, but who had not yet discovered the necessity of implicating Mary in the guilt with which they charged him. The declarations, therefore, they then made, contrasted with those which ambition and selfishness afterwards prompted, prove their sincerity in the first instance, and their wickedness in the last. They firmly believe," they say, "that, whether they had risen up against her husband or not, the Queen would not have lived with him half * Letter from the Lords of Scotland to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, in KEITH, p. 417. |