ell invited any one of the nobles to single
combat, but Mary forbade the acceptance of the challenge. Meanwhile,
during the negotiations, the queen's troops had been deserting; a
surrender became inevitable, and Bothwell returned to Dunbar, parting
from Mary for ever. Subsequently Bothwell left Dunbar for the north,
visited Orkney and Shetland, and in July placed himself at the head of a
band of pirates, and after eluding all attempts to capture him, arrived
at Karm Sound in Norway. Here he was confronted by his first wife or
victim, Anne Thorssen, whose claims he satisfied by the gift of a ship
and promises of an annuity, and on his identity becoming known he was
sent by the authorities to Copenhagen, where he arrived on the 30th of
September. He wrote _Les Affaires du comte de Boduel_, exhibiting
himself as the victim of the malice of his enemies, and gained King
Frederick II.'s goodwill by an offer to restore the Orkneys and
Shetlands to Denmark. In consequence the king allowed him to remain at
Copenhagen, and refused all requests for his surrender. In January 1568
he was removed to Malmoe in Sweden. He corresponded frequently with
Mary, but there being no hopes whatever of his restoration, and a new
suitor being found in the duke of Norfolk, Mary demanded a divorce, on
pleas which recall those of Henry VIII. in the matter of Catherine of
Aragon. The divorce was finally granted by the pope in September 1570 on
the ground of her prenuptial ravishment by Bothwell,[6] and met with no
opposition from the latter. After the downfall of Mary, Bothwell's good
treatment came to an end, and on the 16th of June 1573 he was removed to
the castle of Dragsholm or Adelersborg in Zealand. Here the close and
solitary confinement, and the dreary and hopeless inactivity to which he
was condemned, proved a terrible punishment for the full-blooded,
energetic and masterful Bothwell. He sank into insanity, and died on the
14th of April 1578. He was buried at the church of Faareveille, where a
coffin, doubtfully supposed to be his, was opened in 1858. A portrait
was taken of the head of the body found therein, now in the museum of
the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland. His so-called death-bed
confession is not genuine.

He left no lawful descendants; but his nephew, FRANCIS STEWART HEPBURN,
who, through his father, John Stewart, prior of Coldingham, was a
grandson of King James V., and was thus related to Mary, queen of Scots,
and the rege