in their train were set at liberty; then, ten days afterwards,
Bothwell and the queen, perfectly reconciled, returned to Edinburgh
together.

Two days after this return, Bothwell gave a great dinner to the nobles
his partisans in a tavern. When the meal was ended, on the very same
table, amid half-drained glasses and empty bottles, Lindsay, Ruthven,
Morton, Maitland, and a dozen or fifteen other noblemen signed a bond
which not only set forth that upon their souls and consciences Bothwell
was innocent, but which further denoted him as the most suitable husband
for the queen. This bond concluded with this sufficiently strange
declaration:

"After all, the queen cannot do otherwise, since the earl has carried her
off and has lain with her."

Yet two circumstances were still opposed to this marriage: the first,
that Bothwell had already been married three times, and that his three
wives were living; the second, that having carried off the queen, this
violence might cause to be regarded as null the alliance which she should
contract with him: the first of these objections was attended to, to
begin with, as the one most difficult to solve.

Bothwell's two first wives were of obscure birth, consequently he scorned
to disquiet himself about them; but it was not so with the third, a
daughter of that Earl of Huntly who been trampled beneath the horses'
feet, and a sister of Gordon, who had been decapitated. Fortunately for
Bothwell, his past behaviour made his wife long for a divorce with an
eagerness as great as his own. There was not much difficulty, then, in
persuading her to bring a charge of adultery against her husband.
Bothwell 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 deat