al upon his
acquittal. On the 24th April he seized the person of the queen as she
was travelling from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, and Mary married him on the
15th May. _Mense malum Maio nubere vulgus ait._ The nobles almost
immediately raised a rebellion, professedly to deliver the queen from
the thraldom of Bothwell. On June 15th she surrendered at Carberry Hill,
and the nobles disregarded a pledge of loyalty to the queen given on
condition of her abandoning Bothwell, alleging that she was still in
correspondence with him. They now accused her of murdering her husband,
and imprisoned her in Lochleven Castle. The whole affair is wrapped in
mystery, but it is impossible to give the Earl of Morton and the other
nobles any credit for honesty of purpose. There can be little doubt that
they used Bothwell for their own ends, and, while they represented the
murder as the result of a domestic conspiracy between the queen and
Bothwell, they afterwards, when quarrelling among themselves, hurled at
each other accusations of participation in the plot, and their leader,
the Earl of Morton, died on the scaffold as a criminal put to death for
the murder of Darnley. This, of course, does not exclude the hypothesis
of Mary's guilt, and while the view of Hume or of Mr. Froude could not
now be seriously advanced in its entirety, it is only right to say that
a majority of historians are of opinion that she, at least, connived at
the murder. The question of her implication as a principal in the plot
depends upon the authenticity of the documents known as the "Casket
Letters", which purported to be written by the queen to Bothwell, and
which the insurgent lords afterwards produced as evidence against
her.[77]

Moray had left Scotland in the end of April. When he returned in the
beginning of August he found that the prisoner of Lochleven, to whom he
owed his advancement and his earldom, had been forced to sign a deed of
abdication, nominating himself as regent for her infant son. On the 15th
August he went to Lochleven and saw his sister, as he had done after the
murder of Rizzio, when she was a prisoner in Holyrood. Till an hour past
midnight, Elizabeth's pensioner preached to the unfortunate princess on
righteousness and judgment, leaving her "that night in hope of nothing
but of God's mercy". It was merely a threat; Mary's life was safe, for
Elizabeth, roused, for once, to a feeling of generosity, had forbidden
Moray to make any attempt on th