h 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 Bothwell, rose,
they said, to avenge the death of the king, and to draw the son from
hands which had killed the father and which were keeping the mother
captive. As to Murray, he had kept completely in the background during
all the last events; he was in the county of Fife when the king was
assassinated, and three days before the trial of Bothwell he had asked
and obtained from his sister permission to take a journey on the
Continent.

The insurrection took place in such a prompt and instantaneous manner,
that the Confederate lords, whose plan was to surprise and seize both
Mary and Bothwell, thought they would succeed at the first attempt.

The king and queen were at table with Lord Borthwick, who was
entertaining them, when suddenly it was announced that a large body of
armed men was su