ce, or rather increase, of her hatred
towards her husband.[*] That young prince was reduced to such a state
of desperation by the neglects which he underwent from his queen and
the courtiers, that he had once resolved to fly secretly into France or
Spain, and had even provided a vessel for that purpose.[**] Some of
the most considerable nobility, on the other hand, observing her rooted
aversion to him, had proposed some expedients for a divorce, and though
Mary is said to have spoken honorably on the occasion, and to have
embraced the proposal no further than it should be found consistent
with her own honor and her son's legitimacy,[***] men were inclined to
believe, that the difficulty of finding proper means for effecting that
purpose, was the real cause of laying aside all further thoughts of
it. So far were the suspicions against her carried, that when Henry,
discouraged with the continual proofs of her hatred, left the court and
retired to Glasgow, an illness of an extraordinary nature, with which
he was seized immediately on his arrival in that place, was universally
ascribed by her enemies to a dose of poison, which, it was pretended,
she had administered to him.

* Melvil, p. 66, 77.

** Keith, p. 345-348.

*** Camden, p. 404. Goodall's Queen Mary, vol. ii. p. 317.

While affairs were in this situation, all those who wished well to
her character, or to public tranquillity, were extremely pleased, and
somewhat surprised, to hear that a friendship was again conciliated
between them, that she had taken a journey to Glasgow on purpose to
visit him during his sickness, that she behaved towards him with great
tenderness, that she had brought him along with her, and that she
appeared thenceforth determined to live with him on a footing more
suitable to the connections between them. Henry, naturally uxorious, and
not distrusting this sudden reconciliation, put himself implicitly into
her hands, and attended her to Edinburgh. She lived in the palace of
Holyrood House; but as the situation of the palace was low, and the
concourse of people about the court was necessarily attended with noise,
which might disturb him in his present infirm state of health, these
reasons were assigned for fitting up an apartment for him in a solitary
house at some distance, called the Kirk of Field. Mary here gave him
marks of kindness and attachment; she conversed cordially with him; and
she lay some nights in a room below