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* Anderson, vol. ii. p. 280.

The divorce being thus obtained, it was thought proper that Mary should be conducted to Edinburgh, and should there appear before the courts of judicature, and should acknowledge herself restored to entire freedom. This was understood to be contrived in a view of obviating all doubts with regard to the validity of her marriage. Orders were then given to publish in the church the banns between the queen and the duke of Orkney; for that was the title which he now bore; and Craig, a minister of Edinburgh, was applied to for that purpose. This clergyman, not content with having refused compliance, publicly in his sermons condemned the marriage, and exhorted all who had access to the queen, to give her their advice against so scandalous an alliance. Being called before the council to answer for this liberty, he showed a courage which might cover all the nobles with shame, on account of their tameness and servility. He said that, by the rules of the church, the earl of Bothwell, being convicted of adultery, could not be permitted to marry; that the divorce between him and his former wife was plainly procured by collusion, as appeared by the precipitation of the sentence, and the sudden conclusion of his marriage with the queen; and that all the suspicions which prevailed with regard to the king’s murder, and the queen’s concurrence in the former rape, would thence receive undoubted confirmation. He therefore exhorted Bothwell, who was present, no longer to persevere in his present criminal enterprises; and turning his discourse to the other counsellors, he charged them to employ all their influence with the queen, in order to divert her from a measure which would load her with eternal infamy and dishonor. Not satisfied even with this admonition, he took the first opportunity of informing the public, from the pulpit, of the whole transaction; and expressed to them his fears that, notwithstanding all remonstrances, their sovereign was still obstinately bent on her fatal purpose. “For himself,” he said, “he had already discharged his conscience; and yet again would take heaven and earth to witness that he abhorred and detested that marriage as scandalous and hateful in the sight of mankind; but since the great, as he perceived, either by their flattery or silence, gave countenance to the measure, he besought the faithful to pray fervently to the Almighty that a resolution, taken contrary to all law, reason, and good conscience, might, by the divine blessing, be turned to the comfort and benefit of the church and kingdom.” These speeches offended the court extremely; and Craig was anew summoned before the council, to answer for his temerity in thus passing the bounds of his commission. But he told them, that the bounds of his commission were the word of God, good laws, and natural reason; and were the Queen’s marriage tried by any of these standards, it would appear infamous and dishonorable, and would so be esteemed by the whole world. The council were so overawed by this heroic behavior in a private clergyman, that they dismissed him without further censure or punishment.[*]

* Spotswood, p. 203. Anderson, vol. ii. p. 280.

But though this transaction might have recalled Bothwell and the queen of Scots from their infatuation, and might have instructed them in the dispositions of the people, as well as in their own inability to oppose them, they were still resolute to rush forward to their own manifest destruction. The marriage was solemnized by the bishop of Orkney, a Protestant, who was afterwards deposed by the church for this scandalous compliance. Few of the nobility appeared at the ceremony: they had most of them, either from shame or fear, retired to their own houses. The French ambassador, Le Croc, an aged gentleman of honor and character, could not be prevailed on, though a dependent of the house of Guise, to countenance the marriage by his presence.[*] Elizabeth remonstrated, by friendly letters and messages, against the marriage.[**] The court of France made like opposition; but Mary, though on all other occasions she was extremely obsequious to the advice of her relations in that country, was here determined to pay no regard to their opinion.

The news of these transactions, being carried to foreign countries, filled Europe with amazement, and threw infamy, not only on the principal actors in them, but also on the whole nation, who seemed, by their submission and silence, and even by their declared approbation, to give their sanction to these scandalous practices.[***] The Scots who resided abroad met with such reproaches, that they durst nowhere appear in public; and they earnestly exhorted their countrymen at home to free them from the public odium, by bringing to condign punishment the authors of such atrocious crimes. This intelligence, with a little more leisure for reflection, roused men from their lethargy; and the rumors which, from the very beginning,[****] had been spread against Mary, as if she had concurred in the king’s murder, seemed now, by the subsequent transactions, to have received a strong confirmation and authority.

* Spotswood, p. 203. Melvil, p. 82.

** Keith, p. 392.

*** Digges, p. 14.

**** Melvil, p. 82. Keith, p. 402. Anderson, voL i. p. 128,
134, Crawford, p. 11. Keith, Pref. p. 9.

It was every where said, that even though no particular and direct proofs had as yet been produced of the queen’s guilt, the whole tenor of her late conduct was sufficient, not only to beget suspicion, but to produce entire conviction against her: that her sudden resolution of being reconciled to her husband, whom before she had long and justly hated; her bringing him to court, from which she had banished him by neglects and rigors; her fitting up separate apartments for him; were all of them circumstances which, though trivial in themselves, yet, being compared with the subsequent events, bore a very unfavorable aspect for her: that the least which, after the king’s murder, might have been expected in her situation, was a more than usual caution in her measures, and an extreme anxiety to punish the real assassins, in order to free herself from all reproach and suspicion: that no woman who had any regard to her character, would allow a man, publicly accused of her husband’s murder, so much as to approach her presence, far less give him a share in her councils, and endow him with favor and authority that an acquittal, merely in the absence of accusers, was very ill fitted to satisfy the public; especially if that absence proceeded from a designed precipitation of the sentence, and from the terror which her known friendship for the criminal had infused into every one: that the very mention of her marriage to such a person, in such circumstances, was horrible; and the contrivances of extorting a consent from the nobility, and of concerting a rape, were gross artifices, more proper to discover her guilt than prove her innocence: that where a woman thus shows a consciousness of merited reproach, and instead of correcting, provides only thin glosses to cover her exceptionable conduct, she betrays a neglect of fame, which must either be the effect or the cause of the most shameful enormities: that to espouse a man who had, a few days before, been so scandalously divorced from his wife, who, to say the least, was believed to have a few months before assassinated her husband, was so contrary to the plainest rules of behavior, that no pretence of indiscretion or imprudence could account for such a conduct: that a woman who, so soon after her husband’s death, though not attended with any extraordinary circumstances, contracts a marriage which might in itself be the most blameless, cannot escape severe censure; but one who overlooks for her pleasure so many other weighty considerations, was equally capable, in gratifying her appetites, to neglect every regard to honor and humanity: that Mary was not ignorant of the prevailing opinion of the public with regard to her own guilt, and of the inferences which would every where be drawn from her conduct; and therefore, if she still continued to pursue measures which gave such just offence, she ratified by her actions, as much as she could by the most formal confession, all the surmises and imputations of her enemies: that a prince was here murdered in the face of the world; Bothwell alone was suspected and accused; if he were innocent, nothing could absolve him, either in Mary’s eyes or those of the public, but the detection and conviction of the real assassin: yet no inquiry was made to that purpose, though a parliament had been assembled; the sovereign and wife was here plainly silent from guilt, the people from terror: that the only circumstance which opposed all these presumptions, or rather proofs, was the benignity and goodness of her preceding behavior, which seemed to remove her from all suspicions of such atrocious inhumanity; but that the characters of men were extremely variable, and persons guilty of the worst actions were not always naturally of the worst and most criminal dispositions; that a woman who, in a critical and dangerous moment, had sacrificed her honor to a man of abandoned principles, might thenceforth be led blindfold by him to the commission of the most enormous crimes, and was in reality no longer at her own disposal: and that, though one supposition was still left to alleviate her blame; namely, that Bothwell, presuming on her affection towards him, had of himself committed the crime, and had never communicated it to her; yet such a sudden and passionate love to a man whom she had long known, could not easily be accounted for, without supposing some degree of preceding guilt; and as it appeared that she was not afterwards restrained, either by shame or prudence, from incurring the highest reproach and danger, it was not likely that a sense of duty or humanity would have a more powerful influence over her.