All the next day, and for many days after, consternation reigned in the
streets of the city, and horror sat shuddering in all her
dwelling-places. Multitudes stood in amazement from morning to night
around the palace; for the Earl of Bothwell was within, and still
honoured with all the homages due to the greatest public trusts. Ever
and anon a cry was heard, "Bothwell is the murderer!" and the multitude
shouted, "Justice, justice!" But their cry was not heard.
Night after night the trembling citizens watched with candles at their
casements, dreading some yet greater alarm; and in the stillness of the
midnight hour a voice was heard crying, "The Queen and Bothwell are the
murderers!" and another voice replied, "Vengeance, vengeance!--Blood for
blood!"
Every morning on the walls of the houses writings were seen, demanding
the punishment of the regicides--and the Queen's name, and the name of
Bothwell, and the names of many more, with the Archbishop of St Andrews
at their head, were emblazoned on all sides as the names of the
regicides. But Bothwell, with the resolute bravery of guilt in the
confidence of power, heeded not the cry that thus mounted continually
against him to Heaven, and the Queen feigned a widow's sorrow.
The whole realm was as when the ark of the covenant of the Lord was
removed from Israel and captive in the hands of the Philistines. The
injured sought not the redress of their wrongs; even the guilty were
afraid of one another, and by the very cowardice of their distrust were
prevented from banding at a time when they might have rioted at will.
What aggravated these portents of a kingdom falling asunder, was the
mockery of law and justice which the court attempted. Those who were
accused of the King's death ruled the royal councils, and were greatest
in the Queen's favour. The Earl of Bothwell dictated the very
proceedings by which he was himself to be brought to trial,--and when
the day of trial arrived, he came with the pomp and retinue of a
victorious conqueror--to be acquitted.
But acquitted, as the guilty ever needs must be whom no one dares to
accuse, nor any witness hazards to appear against, his acquittal served
but to prove his guilt, and the forms thereof the murderous
participation of the Queen. Thus, though he was assoilzied in form of
law, the libel against him was nevertheless found proven by the
universal verdict of all men. Yet, in despite of the world, and even of
the conviction recorded within their own bosoms, did the infatuated Mary
and that dreadless traitor, in little more than three months from the
era of their crime, rush into an adulterous marriage; but of the
infamies concerning the same, and of the humiliated state to which poor
Scotland sank in consequence, I must refer the courteous reader to the
histories and chronicles of the time--while I return to the narrative of
my grandfather.
When the Earl of Bothwell, as I have been told by those who heard him
speak of these deplorable blots on the Scottish name, had been created
Duke of Orkney, the people daily expected the marriage. But instead of
the ordinary ceremonials used at the marriages of former kings and
princes, the Queen and all about her, as if they had been smitten from
on high with some manifest and strange phrenzy, resolved, as it were in
derision and blasphemy, notwithstanding her own and the notour popery of
the Duke, to celebrate their union according to the strictest forms of
the protestants; and John Knox being at the time in the West Country,
his colleague, Master Craig, was ordered by the Queen in council to
publish the bans three several Sabbaths in St Giles' kirk.
On the morning of the first appointed day my grandfather went thither; a
vast concourse of the people were assembled, and the worthy minister,
when he rose in the pulpit with the paper in his hand, trembled and was
pale, and for some time unable to speak; at last he read the names and
purpose of marriage aloud, and he paused when he had done so, and an
awful solemnity froze the very spirits of the congregation. He then laid
down the paper on the pulpit, and lifting his hands and raising his
eyes, cried with a vehement sadness of voice,--"Lord God of the pure
heavens, and all ye of the earth that hear me, I protest, as a minister
of the gospel, my abhorrence and detestation of this hideous and
adulterous sin; and I call all the nobility and all of the Queen's
council to remonstrate with her Majesty against a step that must cover
her with infamy for ever and ruin past all remede." Three days did he
thus publish the bans, and thrice in that manner did he boldly proclaim
his protestation; for which he was called before the privy council,
where the guilty Bothwell was sitting; and being charged with having
exceeded the bounds of his commission, he replied with an apostolic
bravery,--
"My commission is from the word of God, good laws, and natural reason,
to all which this proposed marriage is obnoxious. The Earl of Bothwell,
there where he sits, knows that he is an adulterer,--the divorce that he
has procured from his wife has been by collusion,--and he knows likewise
that he has murdered the king and guiltily possessed himself of the
Queen's person."
Yet, notwithstanding, Mr Craig was suffered to depart, even unmolested
by the astonished and overawed Bothwell; but, as I have said, the
marriage was still celebrated; and it was the last great crime of
papistical device that the Lord suffered to see done within the bounds
of Scotland. For the same night letters were sent to the Earl of Murray
from divers of the nobility, entreating him to return forthwith; and my
grandfather, at the incitement of the Earl of Argyle, was secretly sent
by his patron Glencairn to beg the friends of the state and the lawful
prince, the son whom the Queen had born to her murdered husband, to meet
without delay at Stirling.
Accordingly, with the flower of their vassals and retainers, besides
Argyle and Glencairn, came many of the nobles; and having protested
their detestation of the conduct of the Queen, they entered into a
Solemn League and Covenant, wherein they rehearsed, as causes for their
confederating against the misrule with which the kingdom was so humbled,
that the Scottish people were abhorred and vilipendit amongst all
Christian nations; declaring that they would never desist till they had
revenged the foul murder of the King, rescued the Queen from her
thraldom to the Earl of Bothwell, and dissolved her ignominious
marriage.
The Queen and her regicide, for he could not be called her husband, were
panic-struck when they heard of this avenging paction. She issued a bold
proclamation, calling on her insulted subjects to take arms in her
defence, and she published manifestoes, all lies. She fled with Bothwell
from Edinburgh to the castle of Borthwick; but scarcely were they within
the gates when the sough of the rising storm obliged him to leave her,
and the same night, in the disguise of man's apparel, the Queen of all
Scotland was seen flying, friendless and bewildered, to her sentenced
paramour.
The covenanting nobles in the meantime were mustering their clans and
their vassals; and the Earls of Morton and Athol having brought the
instrument of the League to Edinburgh, the magistrates and town-council
signed the same, and, taking the oaths, issued instanter orders for the
burghers to prepare themselves with arms and banners, and to man the
city walls. The whole kingdom rung with the sound of warlike
preparations, and the ancient valour of the Scottish heart was blithened
with the hope of erasing the stains that a wicked government had brought
upon the honour of the land.
Meanwhile the regicide and the Queen drew together what forces his power
could command and her promises allure, and they advanced from Dunbar to
Carberry Hill, where they encamped. The army of the Covenanters at the
same time left Edinburgh to meet them. Mary appeared at the head of her
troops; but they felt themselves engaged in a bad cause, and refused to
fight. She exhorted them with all the pith of her eloquence;--she wept,
she implored, she threatened, and she reproached them with cowardice,
but still they stood sullen.
To retreat in the face of an enemy who had already surrounded the hill
on which she stood was impracticable. In this extremity she called with
a voice of despair for Kirkcaldy of Grange, a brave man, whom she saw
at the head of the cavalry by whom she was surrounded, and he having
halted his horse and procured leave from his leaders, advanced toward
her. Bothwell, with a few followers, during the interval, quitted the
field; and, as soon as Kirkcaldy came up, she surrendered herself to
him, and was conducted by him to the headquarters of the Covenanters, by
whom she was received with all the wonted testimonials of respect, and
was assured, if she forsook Bothwell and governed her kingdom with
honest councils, they would honour and obey her as their sovereign. But
the common soldiers overwhelmed her with reproaches, and on the march
back to Edinburgh poured upon her the most opprobrious names.
"Never was such a sight seen," my grandfather often said, "as the return
of that abject Princess to her capital. On the banner of the League was
depicted the corpse of the murdered king, her husband, lying under a
tree, with the young prince, his son, kneeling before it, and the motto
was, 'Judge and revenge my cause, O Lord.' The standard-bearer rode with
it immediately before the horse on which she sat weeping and wild, and
covered with dust, and as often as she raised her distracted eye the
apparition of the murder in the flag fluttered in her face. In vain she
supplicated pity--yells and howls were all the answers she received, and
volleys of execrations came from the populace, with Burn her, burn her,
bloody murderess! Let her not live!"
In that condition she was conducted to the provost's house, into which
she was assisted to alight, more dead than alive, and next morning she
was conveyed a prisoner to Lochleven Castle, where she was soon after
compelled to resign the crown to her son, and the regency to the Earl of
Murray, by whose great wisdom the Reformation was established in truth
and holiness throughout the kingdom--though for a season it was again
menaced when Mary effected her escape, and dared the cause of the Lord
to battle at Langside. But of that great day of victory it becomes not
me to speak, for it hath received the blazon of many an abler pen; it is
enough to mention, that my grandfather was there, and after the battle
that he returned with the army to Glasgow, and was present at the
thanksgiving. The same night he paid his last respects to the Earl of
Murray, who permitted him to take away, as a trophy and memorial, the
gloves which his Lordship had worn that day in the field; and they have
ever since been sacredly preserved at Quharist, where they may be still
seen. They are of York buff; the palm of the one for the right hand is
still blue with the mark of the sword's hilt, and the fore-finger stool
is stained with the ink of a letter which the Earl wrote on the field to
Argyle, who had joined the Queen's faction; the which letter, it has
been thought, caused the swithering of that nobleman in the hour of the
onset, by which Providence gave the Regent the victory--a conquest which
established the Gospel in his native land for ever.