ueen Mary.
Frank Bothwell was driven into his perilous courses by a charge of
practising witchcraft against the King's life. Absurd as this sounds,
Bothwell had probably tried it for what it was worth. When he was
ruined, pursued, driven, child of the Kirk as he seemed, into the
Catholic faction, his old accomplice, Colville, took a solemn farewell of
him. 'By me your lordship was cleared of the odious imputation of
witchcraft . . . but God only knows how far I hazarded my conscience in
making black white, and darkness light for your sake' (September 12,
1594). {198}

After Bothwell, when he trapped the King by aid of Lady Gowrie (July
1593), recovered power for a while, he defended himself on this charge of
witchcraft. He _had_ consulted and employed the wizard, Richard Graham,
who now accused him of attempting the King's life by sorcery. But he had
only employed Graham to heal the Earl of Angus, himself dying of
witchcraft. Bothwell was charged with employing a retainer, _Ninian_
Chirnside, to arrange more than twenty-one meetings with the wizard
Graham; the result being the procurement of a poison, 'adder skins, toad
skins, and the hippomanes in the brain of a young foal,' to ooze the
juices on the King, 'a poison of such vehemency as should have presently
cut him off.' Isobel Gowdie, accused of witchcraft in 1622, confessed to
having employed a similar charm. {199a} All this Bothwell, instructed by
Colville, denied, but admitted that he had sent Ninian Chirnside twice to
the wizard, all in the interests of the dying Earl of Angus. {199b}

This Chirnside, then, was a borderer prone to desperate enterprises and
darkling rides, and midnight meetings with the wizard Graham in lonely
shepherds' cottages, as was alleged. He could also sink to blackmailing
the orphan child of his 'brother,' Logan of Restalrig.

To go on with Sprot's confessions; he had forged, he said, receipts from
Logan to the man named Edward or Ned Heddilstane for some of the money
which Heddilstane owed him. For these forgeries his client paid him
well, if not willingly. Sprot frequently blackmailed Ned, 'whenever he
want siller.'

It must be granted that Sprot was a liar so complex, and a forger so
skilled (for the time, that is), that nothing which he said or produced
can be reckoned, as such, as evidence. On the other hand, his power of
describing or inventing scenes, real or fictitious, was of high artistic
merit, so that he appear