and with Argyll,
Chatellerault, Glencairn, and a host of other Protestant lords, had
risen in arms against his sovereign and her consort. But Mary had chased
her rebel brother and his fellows over the border into England, and by
this very action, taken for the sake of her worthless husband, she sowed
the first seeds of discord between herself and him. It happened that
stout service had been rendered her in this affair by the arrogant
border ruffian, the Earl of Bothwell. Partly to reward him, partly
because of the confidence with which he inspired her, she bestowed
upon him the office of Lieutenant-General of the East, Middle, and West
Marches--an office which Darnley had sought for his father, Lennox.
That was the first and last concerted action of the royal couple.
Estrangement grew thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew
so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet--for the Queen had
still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown
matrimonial--begin to dwindle.

At first it had been "the King and Queen," or "His Majesty and Hers";
but by Christmas--five months after the wedding--Darnley was known
simply as "the Queen's husband," and in all documents the Queen's name
now took precedence of his, whilst coins bearing their two heads, and
the legend "Hen. et Maria," were called in and substituted by a new
coinage relegating him to the second place.

Deeply affronted, and seeking anywhere but in himself and his own
shortcomings the cause of the Queen's now manifest hostility, he
presently conceived that he had found it in the influence exerted upon
her by the Seigneur Davie--that Piedmontese, David Rizzio, who had come
to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a starveling minstrel in
the train of Monsieur de Morette, the ambassador of Savoy.

It was Rizzio's skill upon the rebec that had first attracted Mary's
attention. Later he had become her secretary for French affairs and the
young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of France, grew
attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth and turbulent land
over which a harsh destiny ordained that she should rule. Using his
opportunities and his subtle Italian intelligence, he had advanced so
rapidly that soon there was no man in Scotland who stood higher with
the Queen. When Maitland of Lethington was dismissed under suspicion of
favouring the exiled Protestant lords, the Seigneur Davie succeeded him
as her s