king. The queen promised to acquiesce, and she held a moment's conversation with Bothwell, gave him her hand, and followed Grange; Bothwell turning his horse's head and riding off in another direction. Mary did not follow Grange far till she saw Bothwell out of danger, when she reminded him that she relied on the assurances of the lords, on which Grange, kissing her Majesty's hand, took her horse by the rein, and led her towards the camp. On reaching the lines, the confederate lords received the queen on their knees, and vowed to obey and defend her as loyally as ever the nobility of the realm did her ancestors; but they very soon showed the hollowness of these professions, and the common soldiers assailed her ears with the most opprobrious language.
The very first wish that Mary expressed, that of communicating with the Hamiltons, who had advanced, as if to her aid, as far as Linlithgow, they refused. Indignant at this conduct, Mary asked them whether that was keeping their word, and how they dared to treat her as a prisoner? They returned her no answer. She then called for Lord Lindsay, noted for his fierceness, and desiring him to give her his hand, she said, "By this hand I will have your head for this." The speech was imprudent, for now the confederates, by letting Bothwell escape, had got rid of the danger of their exposure as accomplices in the murder of the king, for Bothwell held the bond signed by them; and this no doubt actuated them to let him escape, whose murder of the king they proclaimed as the cause of their rising.
The unfortunate queen at every step learned more plainly her real situation, and the faith which she was to put in these nobles. She was conducted like a captive into Edinburgh, the soldiers, with the vilest language, constantly waving before her eyes the banner on which was painted the murdered king. The mob was crowding round in thousands, shouting and yelling in execration, and the women heaped on her all the coarsest epithets of adulteress and murderess. On arriving in the city, instead of conducting her to her own palace, the perjured nobles shut her up as a solitary prisoner in the house of the provost, not even allowing her to have her women to attend her; and in the morning she was greeted by a repetition of the scenes of the previous day—the same hideous banner was hung out opposite her window, and the yells of the mob were furious. Driven to actual delirium by this treatment, she rent the clothes from her person, and almost naked attempted to speak to the raving populace. This shocking spectacle roused the sympathy of the better class of citizens, and they determined on a rescue of the insulted queen, when the heartless nobles removed her to Holyrood. There they held a council, and concluded to send her prisoner to Lochleven Castle, at Kinross, under the stern guardianship of Lindsay and the savage Ruthven.
Mary's journey to her prison was but a continued course of the same popular insult which marked her passage from Carberry Hill to the capital. She was mounted on a sorry hack, and exposed all the way to the gaze and the reproaches of the mob. Kirkaldy of Grange, who had pledged his word for her honourable treatment, remonstrated against this gross violation of their duty, but they put into his hand a letter which they said Mary had written to Bothwell whilst in their hands, declaring that she would never desert him. This was, in all likelihood, a forgery; for Mary could have little opportunity for writing or sending such a letter; and the character of these men, traitors to their sovereign from the first and most innocent part of her reign, warrants us in believing them quite ready for the commission of all such frauds.
On securing the queen in this prison, the confederates wrote to Elizabeth and to the King of France to justify themselves. They assured Elizabeth that their only object in taking up arms was to punish Bothwell—an object which they notoriously avoided by letting him escape. They declared, moreover, that they had never for a moment dreamt of crowning the young prince; and they finished with their usual postscript of wanting more money, on the receipt of which they pledged themselves to throw overboard all the tempting offers of France. To the King of France, who was anxious to have the prince sent to him to be brought up, they held out encouraging hopes of compliance, but took care to give him only words till they heard what Elizabeth would do: and they pressed Murray and Lennox to hasten to Scotland.
On the 20th of June the confederates professed to have made a grand discovery—namely, a silver casket belonging to Bothwell, and containing certain sonnets and love-letters from Mary to Bothwell, completely decisive of her guilt. This casket, we shall find, came to play a conspicuous part in the after history of the Scottish queen. The whole story is suspicious; and though the lords dispatched George Douglas, one of their number, on a special mission to the Earl of Bedford on the very day of the alleged discovery, no mention is made of it at this period in the correspondence with Cecil.
Elizabeth had a difficult game to play under the present circumstances of Scotland, but she played it with her usual duplicity. She openly protested against the violation of the prerogatives of their sovereign by the lords, but privately she supported them. She was quite aware that the lords had no intention of restoring Mary to her liberty and throne, and, therefore, she could with perfect security urge them to do so; and could sympathise with Mary in her letters to her. She furnished Robert Melville with despatches suited to each party, the confederates and the queen, and sent that double-faced man home with them. She also sent Sir Nicholas Throckmorton soon after to Edinburgh as her ambassador. There the confederates were busy pretending to bring the murderers of the king to justice. They seized three: one Captain Cullen, a daring tool of Bothwell's, who they boasted had confessed all, but who does not seem to have been brought to trial; probably they were afraid that he might prove too much. Another, Captain Blackadder, they tried and executed, but he died protesting his innocence, and revealing nothing; and the third, one Sebastian de Villours, a foreigner, was discharged.
The public were not likely to be satisfied by these proceedings, nor the Hamiltons, who claimed the throne next to Mary and her issue, and who might probably hope that if the young prince was sent for protection to France, and Mary was reinstated, they might secure the chief power, for the Duke of Chatelherault, their head, made no secret of attempting the liberation of the queen. They were joined by Argyll, Huntley, Herries, Crawford,
