I. MARY STUART IN SCOTLAND. Part V., Blackwood's Magazine,

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From Blackwood's Magazine.
MARY STUART IN SCOTLAND.

THE CONSPIRACIES OF THE NOBLES.

II.
DARNLEY.

had an audience of the queen. Lethington spoke for the rest. They could not disguise from her or from themselves, he said, that the king's conduct had become intolerable. His evil example was hurt. ful to the whole realm; and he might at THE favorite castle of Mary Stuart any moment do her and them an evil turn, occupies a commanding position on the for which it would be difficult to find a road to Dalkeith. Facing Arthur's Seat, remedy. Would she agree to a divorce? flanked by the Pentlands, it crowns the Mary listened in silence; at last she relow ridge that lies between the two.plied that if a lawful divorce, which would Though close to the capital-so close not prejudice her son's rights, could be that the chimes of St. Giles's bells are obtained, she might possibly be induced clearly heard of a summer night-the to comply with their advice. But it was castle is in the open country, and the possible, she added, that Darnley would breeze that blows round its turrets is fresh reform; he might have another chance; and keen. From the battlements the out- and she herself in the mean time could look is wide, — the great Lothian plain, visit her friends in France. Then Lethwith glimpses of shining sea and shadowy ington, speaking for the others, said: moorland, stretching away to the horizon." Madame, we that are here, the principal It was here that the political movement of your Grace's nobility and Council, will against Darnley first took shape. The substantial accuracy of the narrative of the events that occurred at Craigmillar during the last days of November or the first days of December, 1566-prepared by Huntly and Argyll — has not been seriously impeached.

"Ma

find the means that your Majesty shall be quit of him without prejudice of your son; and although my Lord of Moray be little less scrupulous for a Protestant than your Grace is for a Papist, I am assured that he will look through his fingers thereto, and will behold our doings, saying nothArgyll was in bed, when early in the ing against the same." The queen anmorning of a December day Moray and swered, "I will that ye do nothing whereby Lethington entered his room. They came any spot may be laid to my honor or conto ascertain whether he would assist them science, and therefore I pray you rather in procuring the pardon of Morton from let the matter be in the state it is, abiding the queen. Morton had been banished till God in His goodness provide a remebecause he had aided Moray and his dy. Thinking to do me service," she friends to return to Scotland, and they felt added, "the end may not be conformable that they would be ungrateful if they left to your desires, on the contrary, it may him to suffer for the good offices he had turn to my hurt and displeasure.". rendered them. Argyll having intimated dame," said Lethington, "let us guide the that he was willing to assist, on the under-matter among us, and your Grace shall standing that Mary would not be offended, see nothing but what is good and lawful Maitland suggested that the best means and approved by Parliament." to secure her acquiescence was to find Moray did not venture to allege that he some means by which she could be di- was not present at the Craigmillar confervorced from Darnley, who had behaved so ence. On the contrary, he expressly adbadly to her in so many ways. Argyll did mitted that he was there. He had given not see how this could be effected, but Elizabeth, he afterwards explained, his Lethington assured him that a separation own version of what took place at the could be arranged. Huntly was sent for, interview, and (he continued) whoever afand, his consent having been secured, firmed that he was privy to any unlawful they went together to the room occupied or dishonorable purpose, or that he atby Bothwell, with whom the matter was tached his signature to any band subagain discussed. Then the five Moray, scribed at Craigmillar, spoke wickedly and Maitland, Argyll, Huntly, and Bothwelluntruly. It will be observed that Moray's

reply is in no respect inconsistent with | nerveless, shattered condition for some the "protestation,' it does not traverse time. Moved, it may be, by his entreaties any one of the specific averments made (for it seems probable that he had asked by Argyll and Huntly. It need only be her to come to him), the queen went to added that if the conference at Craigmillar Glasgow, and in the course of a few days is evidence against Mary (to the effect that they returned to Edinburgh together. she consented to the murder of Darnley), The young prince was at Holyrood; and it is precisely to the same effect evidence as the disease from which Darnley was against Moray. The objects of the con- suffering was understood to be infectious, ference were either lawful and honorable, | he was taken (though Mary herself was or unlawful and dishonorable. If they anxious that he should go to Craigmillar) were lawful and honorable, neither Mary to the Kirk o' Field, a house which had nor Moray is compromised by what took | belonged to one of the monastic orders, place; if they were unlawful and dishon- and which, Knox asserts, had been lately orable, they incriminate the one exactly bought by "Master James Balfour." Melin the same sense that they incriminate ville says that it was a place of good air, the other.

sepa

more bracing for an invalid than HolyThe Craigmillar conference took place rood. Some rooms were prepared for the during the first week of December, 1566; king, and a bedroom was fitted up for the in the early morning of 10th February, queen, which she occasionally occupied 1567, the Kirk o' Field, where Darnley during the ten days that intervened. On slept, was blown into the air. It is hardly the evening of Sunday the 9th of Februto be denied that the two events ary, a large quantity of powder was conrated by barely two months stand to veyed into the house by Bothwell's retaineach other in the relation of cause and ers. It has been said that it was deposeffect. But with the Craigmillar confer- ited in the queen's sleeping-room; but as ence the direct evidence against the queen the house was torn up from the foundacloses; the proof that connects her with tions "dung in dross to the very ground the murder is henceforth circumstantial stone - it appears more probable that (or inferential) only; and it may be said the greater part of it, at least, had been with some confidence that the clumsy ca- placed in one of the cellars. "The train tastrophe that ensued was directed neither of gunpowder inflammit the haill timber by the keen brain of Maitland, nor by the of the house, and trublit the walls thereof, deft hand of Mary. The doom which the in sic sort that great stanes of the length peers had virtually pronounced was car- of ten foot, and of the breadth of four foot, ried out; but Bothwell's vulgar violence were found blawin frae that house a far and headstrong passion converted what way." As eminently characteristic of the might have been regarded as a quasi-judi- parsimonious spirit of this penurious cial execution into a midnight outrage. queen

It is unnecessary to linger over the incidents of a tragedy that has become one of the commonplaces of history. A few of the salient facts, however, brought to gether into orderly sequence, may prove serviceable to the reader.

Darnley, on quitting Stirling, after the baptism of the infant prince, was seized with what appears to have been smallpox. Some writers have assumed that poison had been administered to him by Mary; others have asserted, with greater probability, that his constitution had been impaired by his excesses, and that the poison was in his blood. He lay at Glasgow in a

"economical even in the prodigality of her vices " - it has been asserted by Buchanan that on the previous evening the good bed on which she had slept was by her direction taken away, and an inferior one put in its place. After supper she went to visit the king, and returned about eleven o'clock to the palace, where a masked ball was being held. After Darnley's death it became the cue of those who had been hitherto his most bitter enemies to speak well of him. He had repented, they said, of his early irregularities, and had sought refuge in the consolations of religion. There is a letter by Drury, written about the end of April, iù

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torious. The evidence, however, is all the other way, -until after Darnley's death there is not a scrap of writing showing that such an impression prevailed. The legend was of later growth, and with much else may be traced to the industrious animosity of the man who had been her pensioner, and who at the close of the year which according to his view had been spent in the shameless gratification of unlawful passion "They seemed to fear nothing more than that their wickedness should be unknown " had celebrated her virtues in choice Latin. The air, however, was thick with rumors of treachery, and once, or more than once, Mary had been warned that the ear intended to carry her off. She treated the warnings with characteristic impatience, refusing to believe that a faithful servant of the crown could so readily forget his duty to his mistress. There can be little doubt that

which it is stated that on the night of his | it is not now easy to ascertain. Buchanan murder, Darnley, before he went to sleep, alleges that they had long been on terms repeated some verses of the fifty-fifth of criminal familiarity; and that Mary's psalm. The sense of approaching doom partiality for the lusty Borderer was nomay have been hanging over the victim; his illness may have steadied and sobered him; but the excessive felicity, the suspicious appropriateness, of the selection is apt to provoke incredulity. About two or three o'clock next morning the Kirk o' Field was blown into the darkness. Upon the tenth day of Februar, at twa hours before none in the morning, there come certain traitors to the said Provost's house, wherein was our sovereign's husband Henrie, and ane servant of his, callit William Taylour, lying in their nakit beds; and there privily with wrang keys opnit the doors, and come in upon the said prince, and there without mercy wyrriet [strangled] him and his servant in their beds; and thereafter took him and his servant furth of the house and cast him nakit in ane yard beyond the thief raw, and syne come to the house again and blew the house in the air, so that there remainit not ane stane upon aneuther un-even before the meeting of the Parliament destroyit." This narrative is taken from the "Diurnal of Occurrents; Robert Birrel has another version: "The house was raised up from the ground with poudor; the King's chamberman, named John Taylor, was found with him lying in ane yard dead under ane tree; and the King, if he had not been cruelly, werriet with his ain garters, after he fell out of the air, he had lived." The wretches who were engaged in the business appear to have lost their heads, and the precise manner in which Darnley met his death is not certainly known. The streets were deserted; Bothwell was tried for the murder on the citizens were in bed; even in the pal- the 12th of April, and on the evening of ace the masque was over, and the lights the 19th the memorable supper at Ainswere out. Only in the lodging of the Arch-lie's tavern took place. The supper apbishop of St. Andrews a lamp had been pears to have been attended by all the burning all night—so those in the higher influential members of the Parliament, parts of the town declared until, on the which on that day closed its sittings. Afexplosion, it was suddenly extinguished. ter supper, Bothwell laid before the asThe archbishop lived close to the Kirk o' sembled peers a paper which he asked Field, and Buchanan suggests that he was them to sign. The peers, with the excep. watching-well knowing what was on tion of Lord Eglinton, who "slipped away," complied with the request; and men like Argyll, Huntly, Cassilis, Morton, Boyd, Seton, Semple, and Herries at

hand.

At what particular moment Bothwell was induced to raise his eyes to the queen

in April, the great Border chief had been in communication with several of the leading nobility on the subject of the queen's marriage. A few of the honester of their number appear to have been startled by the man's presumption; but the rest either openly approved or silently acquiesced. Such a plot was of course very welcome to the faction which traded on the dishonor of the queen. The least clear-headed among them could not fail to perceive that were Mary forced into a union with Bothwell, her authority would be at an end.