son was born to his
wife, and in the face of his previous protestations he was induced to
acknowledge himself the father. But, as Murray and his partisans
returned to favor and influence no longer incompatible with that of
Bothwell and Huntly, he grew desperate enough with terror to dream of
escape to France. This design was at once frustrated by the Queen's
resolution. She summoned him to declare his reasons for it in the
presence of the French ambassador and an assembly of the nobles; she
besought him for God's sake to speak out, and not spare her; and at last
he left her presence with an avowal that he had nothing to allege.

The favor shown to Bothwell had not yet given occasion for scandal,
though his character as an adventurous libertine was as notable as his
reputation for military hardihood; but as the summer advanced, his
insolence increased with his influence at court and the general aversion
of his rivals. He was richly endowed by Mary from the greater and lesser
spoils of the Church; and the three wardenships of the border, united
for the first time in his person, gave the lord high admiral of Scotland
a position of unequalled power. In the gallant discharge of its duties
he was dangerously wounded by a leading outlaw, whom he slew in single
combat; and while yet confined to Hermitage castle he received a visit
of two hours from the Queen, who rode thither from Jedburgh and back
through twenty miles of the wild borderland, where her person was in
perpetual danger from the free-booters whom her father's policy had
striven and had failed to extirpate.

On January 22, 1567, the Queen visited her husband, who was ill at
Glasgow, and proposed to remove him to Craigmillar castle, where he
would have the benefit of medicinal baths; but instead of this resort he
was conveyed on the last day of the month to the lonely and squalid
shelter of the residence which was soon to be made memorable by his
murder. Between the ruins of two sacred buildings, with the town hall to
the south and a suburban hamlet known to ill-fame as the Thieves' Row to
the north of it, a lodging was prepared for the titular King of
Scotland, and fitted up with tapestries taken from the Gordons after the
battle of Corrichie. On the evening of Sunday, February 9th, Mary took
her last leave of the miserable boy who had so often and so mortally
outraged her as consort and as queen. That night the whole city was
shaken out of sleep by an explosion o