d herself the wife of an assassin and a coward, the
breach ensued which was sometimes dissembled but never repaired.
Three months later their son was born, but Darnley was not present at
the christening. His enemies advised the Queen to obtain a divorce,
but she objected that it would injure the prospects of her son.
Maitland then hinted that there might be other ways of getting rid of
him. Mary did not yield consent; but the idea once started was
followed up, and the king was doomed to death by what was called the
Bond of Craigmillar.

At the end of 1566 he fell seriously ill at his father's house at
Glasgow. Mary came, spent three days with him, and an explanation
took place, amounting apparently to a reconciliation. Darnley was
taken to Edinburgh, and lodged about a mile from Holyrood, at
Kirk-o'-Field, where he was repeatedly visited by the queen. On the
night of 9th February she went away to attend a ball, and three hours
after she had left him his house was blown up, and he was found in the
garden, strangled. Nobody doubted at the time, or has ever doubted
since, that the crime was committed by the Earl of Bothwell, a rough
and resolute soldier, whose ambition taught him to seek fortune as a
supporter of the throne. He filled Edinburgh with his troops, stood
his trial, and was at once acquitted. Thereupon his friends, and some
who were not his friends, acting under pressure, resolved that he
should marry the queen. As a widow, she was helpless. Bothwell
possessed the energy which Darnley wanted, and, as he was a
Protestant, the queen would be less isolated. He had killed her
husband; but then her husband was himself a murderer, who deserved his
fate. Bothwell, encouraged by many of the Lords, had only executed
justice on a contemptible criminal. There was a debt of gratitude
owing to him for what he had done.

Public decorum forbade that the queen should ostensibly accept the
offer of a man who made her a widow ten weeks before. Therefore
Bothwell waylaid the queen at the Brig of Almond, some miles from
Edinburgh, dispersed her attendants, and carried her off to Dunbar.
There was a difficulty about the marriage, because he was married
already. He now procured a divorce, and, ten days after the outrage
at Almond Brig, they reappeared at Edinburgh. The queen publicly
forgave Bothwell for what he had done, made him a duke, and, on 15th
May, three months after the explosion at Kirk-o'-Field, married