hwell confessed that he had had criminal
intercourse with a relative of his wife, and the Archbishop of St.
Andrews, the same who had taken up his abode in that solitary house at
Kirk of Field to be present at Darnley's death, pronounced the marriage
null. The case was begun, pushed on, and decided in ten days.

As to the second obstacle, that of the violence used to the queen, Mary
undertook to remove it herself; for, being brought before the court,
she declared that not only did she pardon Bothwell for his conduct as
regarded her, but further that, knowing him to be a good and faithful
subject, she intended raising him immediately to new honours. In fact,
some days afterwards she created him Duke of Orkney, and on the 15th of
the same month--that is to say, scarcely four months after the death of
Darnley--with levity that resembled madness, Mary, who had petitioned
for a dispensation to wed a Catholic prince, her cousin in the third
degree, married Bothwell, a Protestant upstart, who, his divorce
notwithstanding, was still bigamous, and who thus found himself in the
position of having four wives living, including the queen.

The wedding was dismal, as became a festival under such outrageous
auspices. Morton, Maitland, and some base flatterers of Bothwell alone
were present at it. The French ambassador, although he was a creature of
the House of Guise, to which the queen belonged, refused to attend it.

Mary's delusion was short-lived: scarcely was she in Bothwell's power
than she saw what a master she had given herself. Gross, unfeeling, and
violent, he seemed chosen by Providence to avenge the faults of which
he had been the instigator or the accomplice. Soon his fits of passion
reached such a point, that one day, no longer able to endure them, Mary
seized a dagger from Erskine, who was present with Melville at one
of these scenes, and would have struck herself, saying that she would
rather die than continue living unhappily as she did; yet, inexplicable
as it seems, in spite of these miseries, renewed without ceasing, Mary,
forgetting that she was wife and queen, tender and submissive as a
child, was always the first to be reconciled with Bothwell.

Nevertheless, these public scenes gave a pretext to the nobles, who
only sought an opportunity for an outbreak. The Earl of Mar, the young
prince's tutor, Argyll, Athol, Glencairn, Lindley, Boyd, and even Morton
and Maitland themselves, those eternal accomplices of Bot