eir
contract of marriage which made their joint signature necessary to all
documents of state issued under the sign manual. She despatched to
France a special envoy, the Bishop of Dunblane, with instructions
setting forth at length the unparalleled and hitherto ill-requited
services and merits of Bothwell, and the necessity of compliance at once
with his passion and with the unanimous counsel of the nation--a people
who would endure the rule of no foreign consort, and whom none of their
own countrymen were so competent to control, alike by wisdom and by
valor, as the incomparable subject of her choice.

These personal merits and this political necessity were the only pleas
advanced in a letter to her ambassador in England. But that neither plea
would avail her for a moment in Scotland she had ominous evidence on the
thirteenth day after her marriage, when no response was made to the
usual form of proclamation for a raid or levy of forces under pretext of
a campaign against the rievers of the border. On June 6th Mary and
Bothwell took refuge in Borthwick castle, twelve miles from the capital,
where the fortress was in the keeping of an adherent whom the diplomacy
of Sir James Melville had succeeded in detaching from his allegiance to
Bothwell. The fugitives were pursued and beleaguered by the Earl of
Morton and Lord Hume, who declared their purpose to rescue the Queen
from the thraldom of her husband. He escaped, leaving her free to follow
him or to join the party of her professed deliverers.

But whatever cause she might have since marriage to complain of his
rigorous custody and domineering brutality was insufficient to break the
ties by which he held her. Alone, in the disguise of a page, she slipped
out of the castle at midnight, and rode off to meet him at a tower two
miles distant, whence they fled together to Dunbar. The confederate
lords on entering Edinburgh were welcomed by the citizens, and after
three hours' persuasion Lethington, who had now joined them, prevailed
on the captain of the castle to deliver it also into their hands.
Proclamations were issued in which the crime of Bothwell was denounced,
and the disgrace of the country, the thraldom of the Queen, and the
mortal peril of her infant son were set forth as reasons for summoning
all the lieges of the chief cities of Scotland to rise in arms on three
hours' notice and join the forces assembled against the one common
enemy. News of his approach reached