he remained with him until ten o'clock, and then left him,
to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given in celebration
of the marriage of one of her favourite servants. At two o'clock in the
morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of Field
was blown to atoms.

Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree at some distance.
How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched by gunpowder, and how this
crime came to be so clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible to
discover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the deceitful character
of Elizabeth, have rendered almost every part of their joint history
uncertain and obscure. But, I fear that Mary was unquestionably a party
to her husband's murder, and that this was the revenge she had
threatened. The Scotch people universally believed it. Voices cried out
in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night, for justice on the
murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in the public places
denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as his accomplice;
and, when he afterwards married her (though himself already married),
previously making a show of taking her prisoner by force, the indignation
of the people knew no bounds. The women particularly are described as
having been quite frantic against the Queen, and to have hooted and cried
after her in the streets with terrific vehemence.

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife had lived
together but a month, when they were separated for ever by the successes
of a band of Scotch nobles who associated against them for the protection
of the young Prince: whom Bothwell had vainly endeavoured to lay hold of,
and whom he would certainly have murdered, if the EARL OF MAR, in whose
hands the boy was, had not been firmly and honourably faithful to his
trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he died, a
prisoner and mad, nine miserable years afterwards. Mary being found by
the associated lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent a prisoner
to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood in the midst of a lake, could
only be approached by boat. Here, one LORD LINDSAY, who was so much of a
brute that the nobles would have done better if they had chosen a mere
gentleman for their messenger, made her sign her abdication, and appoint
Murray, Regent of Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing and
humbled state.

She had better