Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/347

Rh the bridle, and his followers throwing away their spears, to show that she was unconstrained; and in this fashion they rode up to the Castle of Edinburgh. As soon as tidings of her seizure had arrived, her friends offered to arm for her rescue; but to this she answered, that though taken against her will, and compelled to spend several days in the Castle of Dunbar with Bothwell, she had found no cause of complaint. This was not all; for she now presented herself before the nobles, expressed her satisfaction with Bothwell's conduct, and declared that, high as she had raised him, she meant to promote him higher still. Accordingly, on the 12th of May, seven days after her return to Edinburgh, she created him Duke of Orkney, and placed the coronet on his head with her own hands; two days afterwards she signed the contract of marriage, and on the succeeding day the marriage ceremony was performed in Holyrood, at four o'clock in the morning. And this after three short months of widowhood! Well might the people shudder, especially when they remembered the disgusting mixture of tragedy and farce with which it had been preceded. And still the nobles were silent under a deed that soiled, nay, besmeared the escutcheons of Scottish knighthood and nobleness with a universal reproach, which all the rivers of their land could not wash away. Only one man, and he, too, a minister of peace, had courage to speak out. This was John Craig, pastor of the High Church of Edinburgh, and colleague of John Knox, who was now absent. On being commanded to proclaim the banns between the queen and Bothwell, he steadfastly refused until he had been allowed to confront the parties in presence of the Privy Council; and when this was granted, he there charged the Duke of Orkney with the crimes of rape, adultery, and murder. This being done, he proclaimed the banns, as he was bound to do, but not without a stern remonstrance. "I take heaven and earth to witness," he exclaimed before the congregation in the High Church, "that I abhor and detest this marriage as odious and slanderous to the world; and I would exhort the faithful to pray earnestly that a "union against all reason and good conscience may yet be overruled by God, to the comfort of this unhappy realm."

Bothwell had now attained an elevation at which himself might well have been astounded. Sprung from no higher origin than that of the house of Hailes, and but the fourth of his line who had worn the title of earl, he was now the highest of Scotland's nobles, and, what was more, the sovereign of its sovereign. She to whom he was united had been Queen of France, the most powerful of kingdoms, and was the unquestioned heir to England, the richest of sovereignties. She who had been sought in vain by the proudest princes of Europe had come at his call, and co-operated in humble compliance to his exaltation, and submitted to be his leman before she became his bride. And yet even this did not satisfy him; for on the very day after their marriage she was heard to scream in her closet, while he was beside her, and threaten to stab or drown herself. He persisted from day to day in arrogant conduct, more befitting a sated voluptuary or merciless taskmaster than a newly-mated bridegroom; and Mary, otherwise so proud and impatient, submitted with spaniel-like docility, while her affection seemed only to increase in proportion to the growth of his brutality. Strange love of woman's heart! and strange requital of a love so misplaced! She was all the while writing to France, to Rome, and England, announcing her marriage, describing her happiness in having such a husband, and craving the favour of these courts in his behalf. She even declared before