Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/821

Rh to him, being made known to Mary, whose feelings were warm and impetuous, she forgot her wrongs, and flew to his succour, nursing him herself with great tenderness, and in his promises of repentance and amendment, seeming to forget his faults. On his convalescence, he was removed to Kirkafield, a retired situation, which was recommended on account of quiet and good air. Here one night, 1567, during the absence of the queen, who was gone to be present at the marriage of one of her servants, he was murdered, by his apartment being blown up with gunpowder.

That Mary did not bring the conspirators to justice, has been alledged against her; but she had little power amidst the nobility; and it appears highly probable, if not an absolute fact, that the Lord Bothwell, who was first accused, had for his judges those who had instigated him to take part in the plot, the earls of Murray and Morton, who suggested to him the seizure and marriage of the queen. He accordingly got her into his power, and the outcries of the people, against the indignities and injuries she suffered, as well as the sonnet attributed to her afterwards by the conspirators themselves, which the letters contradict, shew that she was taken without her own consent; and the marriage, which soon took place on her return to Edinburgh, was not only necessary to her wounded honour; but, as she was yet in his power, and her nobles signed a paper to recommend it to her, she had no means to resist a step so fatal to her reputation and her future peace. Bothwell, who was a protestant, by profession, would not permit the marriage to be solemnized according to her faith, which Mary was very tenacious of, but in her present humbled state could not insist on.