she left the close hot atmosphere of the Castle, and at
the end of July, attended by her cavalier, she spent her
days upon the sea or at the Castle of Alloa on the Forth.
She had condescended to acquaint Darnley with her in-
tention of going, but with no desire that he should ac-
company her; and when he appeared uninvited at Alloa
he was ordered back to the place from which he came.
'The Queen and her husband,' wrote the Earl of Bed-
ford on the 3rd of August, ‘agree after the
August.
old manner. It cannot for modesty nor for
the honour of a Queen be reported what she said of him.'1
Sir James Melville, who dreaded the effect in England
of the alienation of the friends of Lady Lennox, again
remonstrated and attempted to cure the slight with
some kind of attention. But Melville was made to feel
that he was going beyond his office; in her violent
moods Mary Stuart would not be trifled with, and at
length he received a distinct order to be no more fami-
liar with the Lord Darnley.'" Water parties and hunt-
ing parties in the Highlands consumed the next few
weeks. Though inexorable towards her husband the
Queen, as the summer went on, found it necessary to take
her brother into favour again, and to gain the confidence
of the English Protestants by affecting a readiness to
be guided by his advice. Maitland's peace had been
made also, though with more difficulty. Bothwell, who
was in possession of his estates, refused to part with them;
and in a stormy scene in the Queen's presence Murray

1 Bedford to Cecil, August 3: Cotton. MSS. CALIG. B. 10.
2 MELVILLE's Memoirs.

told him that twenty as honest men as he should lose their lives ere he reft Liddington.'1 The Queen felt however that her demand for recognition in England would be effective in proportion to the unanimity with which she was supported by her own nobility; she felt the want of Maitland's help; and visiting her resentment for the death of Rizzio on her miserable husband alone, she was ready to forget the share which Maitland had borne in it, and exerted herself to smooth down and reconcile the factions at the Court. She contrived to bring Maitland, Murray, Argyle, and Bothwell secretly together; the matter in dispute' was talked over and at last amicably settled."

The

From Maitland to Morton was a short step. lords now all combined to entrcat his pardon from the Queen, and in the restoration to favour of the nobles whom he had invited to revenge his own imagined wrongs, and had thus deserted and betrayed, the miserable King read his own ruin. One after another he had injured them all; and his best hope was in their contempt. Even Murray's face he had good cause to dread. He with Rizzio had before planned Murray's murder, and now seeing Murray at the Queen's side he let fall some wild passionate words as if he would again try to kill him. So at least the Queen reported, for it was she who carried the story to Murray, and willed the Earl to speer it at the King;' it was believed afterwards that she desired to create a quarrel which would.

1 Advertisements out of Scotland, August, 1566: MS. Rolls House. 2 Maitland to Cecil, September 20: MS. Ibid.

rid her of one or both of the two men whom she hated worst in Scotland. But if this was her object she had mistaken her brother's character; Murray was not a person to trample on the wretched or stoop to ignoble game, he spoke to Darnley 'very modestly' in the Queen's presence; and the poor boy might have yet been saved could he have thrown himself on the confidence of the one noble-hearted person within his reach. He muttered only some feeble apology however, and fled from the Court 'very grieved.' He could not bear, so some one wrote, 'that the Queen should use familiarity with man or woman, especially the Lords of Argyle and Murray which kept most company with her.'1

Lennox, as much neglected as his son, was September. living privately at Glasgow, and between Glasgow and Stirling the forlorn Darnley wandered to and fro, misliked of all,' helpless and complaining, and nursing vague impossible schemes of revenge. He had signed the articles by which he bound himself to maintain the Reformation; he now dreamt of taking from Mary the defence of the Church. He wrote to the Pope and to Philip complaining that the Queen of Scots had ceased to care for religion, and that they must look to him only for the restoration of Catholicism. His letters, instead of falling harmless by going where they were directed, were carried to Mary, and might have aggravated her animosity against him had it ad

1 Advertisements out of Scotland, August, 1566: MS. Rolls House.

mitted of aggravation. Still more terrified, he then thought of flying from the kingdom. The Scotch council was about to meet in Edinburgh, in the middle of September; the Queen desired that he would attend the session with her; he refused, and as soon as she was gone he made arrangements to escape in an English vessel which was lying in the Forth. In a sort of desperation' he communicated his project to the French ambassador, du Croq, who had remained after the Queen's departure at Stirling. He told him it seems. that he should go to the Scilly Isles; perhaps like Sir Thomas Seymour with a notion of becoming a pirate chief there. When du Croq questioned him on his reasons for such a step, he complained that the Queen would give him no authority;' 'all the lords had abandoned him, he said; he had no hope in Scotland and he feared for his life.'

Better far it would have been had they allowed him to go, better for himself, better for Mary Stuart, better for human history which would have escaped the inky stain which blots its page; yet his departure at such a time and in such a manner would attract inconvenient notice in England-it would be used in Parliament in the debate on the succession. Du Croq carried word to Mary Stuart. Lennox, after endeavouring in vain to dissuade him, wrote to her also in the hope that he might appease her by giving proofs of his own loyalty; and Darnley, finding his purpose betrayed, followed the French ambassador to Edinburgh, and on the evening of the 29th of September presented himself at the gates

of Holyrood. He sent in word of his arrival-but he said he would not enter as long as Murray, Argyle, and Maitland were in the palace. The Queen went out to him, carried him to her private apartments, and kept him there for the night. The next morning the council met and he was brought or led into their presence. There they sat—a hard ring of stony faces: on one side the Lords of the Congregation who had risen in insurrection to prevent his marriage with the Queen, whom afterwards he had pledged his honour to support and whom he had again betrayed-now, by some inexplicable turn of fortune, restored to honour while he was himself an outcast; on the other side Huntly, Caithness, Bothwell, Athol, the Archbishop of St Andrew's, all Catholics, all Rizzio's friends, yet hand in hand now with their most bitter enemies, united heart and soul to secure the English succession for a Scotch Princess, and pressing with the weight of unanimity on the English Parliament; yet he who had been brought among them in the interest of that very cause was excluded from share or concern in the prize; every noble present had some cause of mortal enmity against him; and as he stood before them desolate and friendless he must have felt how short a shrift was allowed in Scotland for a foe whose life was inconvenient.

The letter of the Earl of Lennox was read aloud. Mary Stuart said that she had tried in vain to draw from her husband the occasion of his dissatisfaction; she trusted that he would tell the lords what he had concealed from herself; and then turning to him with