the ceremony; but Elizabeth suggested that it might be CHAP X used for the next child.'1 1566 James. The time had been when these things would have satis- December fied Mary Stuart's utmost hopes, and have filled her with exultation. Her thoughts, interests, and anxieties were now otherwise occupied. On the 15th, at five in the even- Baptism of ing, the Prince was baptized by torch-light in Stirling Chapel; the service was that of the Catholic Church; the Archbishop of St. Andrew's-the most abandoned of all Episcopal scoundrels-officiated, supported by three of his brethren. The French ambassador carried the child into the aisle; the Countess of Argyle, the same who had been present at Ritzio's murder, held him at the font as Elizabeth's representative; and three of the Scottish noblemen-Eglinton, Athol, and Ross-were present at the ceremony. The rest, with the English ambassador, stood outside the door. It boded ill for the supposed reconciliation, that the Prince's father, though in the castle at the time, remained in his own room, either still brooding over his wrongs, and afraid that some insult should be passed upon him, or else forbidden by the Queen to appear. Morton and As soon as the baptism was over the suit for the restoration of Morton was continued: Bedford added his intercession to that of Murray; Bothwell, Athol, and all the other noblemen joined in the entreaty; and on Pardon of the 24th the Queen with some affectation of reluctance terror of gave way. George Douglas, who had been the first to Darnley. strike Ritzio, and Falconside, who had held a pistol to her breast, were alone excepted from a general and final pardon.2 Under any circumstances it could only have been with 1 Instructions to the Earl of Bedford going to Scotland.-KEITH. 2 Bedford to Cecil, December 30.-Scotch MSS. Rolls House. 1566 CHAP X terror that Darnley could have encountered Morton and young Ruthven; but the conversation at Craigmillar, December which had stolen into England, had been carried equally to his own ear. He knew that the pardon of Ritzio's murderers had been connected with his own destruction; and a whisper had reached him also of the bond which, though unsigned by the Queen, had been drawn by her own device.' So long as Morton remained in exile he could hope that the conspiracy against him was incomplete. The proclamation of the pardon was his deathknell, and the same night-swiftly, 'without word spoken or leave taken-he stole away from Stirling, and fled to his father.' Darnley flies from is taken ill. 1 That at such a crisis he should have been attacked by Stirling and a sudden and dangerous illness was, to say the least of it, a singular coincidence. A few miles from the castle blue spots broke out over his body, and he was carried into Glasgow languid and drooping, with a disease which the court and the friends of the court were pleased to call small-pox. There for a time he lay, his father absent, himself hanging between life and death, attended only by a few faithful servants, while the Queen with recovered health and spirits spent her Christmas with Bothwell at Drummond Castle and Tullibardine, waiting the issue of the disease. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, the King after a few days was reported to be slowly recovering. Either the natural disorder was too weak to kill him, or the poison had failed of its work. The Queen returned to Stirling the favourite rode south to receive the exiles on their way back from England. In the yard of the 1 Deposition of Thomas Crawford.-Scotch MSS. Rolls House. hostelry of Whittingham,' Bothwell and Morton met; CHAP X and Morton, long after-on the eve of his own execu- 1567 tion, when to speak the truth might do him service January where he was going, and could do him no hurt in this world-thus described what passed between them :"The Earl of Bothwell,' said Morton, proposed to me Bothwell the purpose of the King's murder, seeing that it was the murder of Queen's mind that he should be taken away, because she blamed the King of Davie's slaughter more than me.' Morton, but newly come from one trouble, said that he was in no haste to enter into a new,' and required to be assured that the Queen indeed desired it. Bothwell said he knew what was in the Queen's mind, and she would have it done.' 'Bring me the Queen's hand for a warrant,' Morton said that he replied, ' and then I will answer you.' 1 Rash and careless as Mary Stuart's passion made her, she was not so blind to prudence as to commit her signature, as her husband had done. Bothwell promised that he would produce an order from her, but it never came, and Morton was saved from farther share in the conspiracy. On the 14th of January the Queen brought the Prince to Edinburgh; on the 20th she wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow at Paris complaining of her husband's behaviour to her, while the poor wretch was still lying on his sick bed; and about the same time she was rejoined by Bothwell on his return from the Border. So far the story can be traced with confidence. At this point her conduct passes into the debateable land, where her friends meet those who condemn with charges of 1 The Earl of Morton's confession.-Illustrations of Scottish History, p. 494. 2 The Queen of Scots to the Archbishop of Glasgow, January 20.—KEITH. proposes the Darnley to Morton. CHAP X falsehood and forgery. The evidence is neither conflict1567 ing nor insufficient: the dying depositions of the instruJanuary ments of the crime taken on the steps of the scaffold, the 'undesigned coincidences' between the stories of many separate witnesses, with letters which after the keenest inquiry were declared to be in her own handwriting, shed a light upon her proceedings as full as it is startling ; but the later sufferings of Mary Stuart have surrounded her name with an atmosphere of tenderness, and half the world has preferred to believe that she was the innocent victim of a hideous conspiracy. The so-called certainties of history are but probabilities in varying degrees; and when witnesses no longer survive to be cross-questioned, those readers and writers who judge of truth by their emotions, can believe what they please. To assert that documents were forged, or that witnesses were tampered with, costs them no effort; they are spared the trouble of reflection by the ready-made assurance of their feelings. The historian who is without confidence in these easy criteria of certainty can but try his evidence by such means as remain. He examines what is doubtful by the light of what is established, and offers at last the conclusions at which his own mind has arrived, not as the demonstrated facts either of logic or passion, but as something which after a survey of the whole case appears to him to be nearest to the truth.1 1 The story in the text is taken from the depositions in ANDERSON and PITCAIRN; from the deposition of Crawford, in the Rolls House; and from the celebrated casket letters of Mary Stuart to Bothwell. The authenticity of these letters will be discussed in a future volume in connexion with their discovery, and with the examination of them which then took place. Meantime I shall assume the genuineness of documents, which, without turning history into a mere creation of imginative sympathies, I do not 1567 January Stuart The Queen then, after writing the letter of complaint CHAP X against her husband to the Archbishop of Glasgow, suddenly determined to visit his sick bed. On Thursday the 23rd of January she set out for Glasgow attended Mary by her lover. They spent the night at Callendar to- visits gether.' In the morning they parted; the Earl re- Glasgow. turned to Edinburgh; Mary Stuart pursued her journey attended by Bothwell's French servant Paris, through whom they had arranged to communicate. The news that she was on her way to Glasgow anticipated her appearance there. Darnley was still confined to his room; but hearing of her approach he sent a gentleman who was in attendance on him, named Crawford-a noble, fearless kind of man-to apologize for his inability to meet her. It seems that after hearing of the bond at Craigmillar he had written some letter to her, the inconvenient truths of which had been irritating; and she had used certain bitter expressions about him which had been carried to his ears. His heart half sunk in him when he was told that she was coming; and Crawford Darnley at feel at liberty to doubt. They come to us after having passed the keenest scrutiny both in England and Scotland. The handwriting was found to resemble so exactly that of the Queen, that the most accomplished expert could detect no difference. One of the letters could have been invented only by a genius equal to that of Shakspeare; and that one, once accomplished, would have been so overpoweringly sufficient for its purpose, that no forger would have multiplied the chances of detection by adding the rest. The inquiry at the time appears to me to supersede authoritatively all later conjectures. The ELIZ. II. English Council, among whom were 1. When Bothwell was conducting A A |