Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/520

 500 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 45. 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. Both well 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 further share in the conspiracy. On the 1 4th of January the Queen brought the Prince to Edinburgh ; on the 2oth 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 ; 2 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 Iqnd^jyhere herjriends meet those who condemn her with charges of falsehood and forgery. The evidence is neither conflicting nor insufficient : the dying deposi- tions of the instruments 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 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.