MARY and her husband were leading the life familiarly known as cat and dog; but the cat was in this instance getting rather the best of it. She would not allow him to be present at the christening party given in honour of their little son, and he was never permitted to hold the baby, or enjoy any of those privileges of paternity which are rather honorary than agreeable to the individual by whom they are exercised. In ordering a dinner or forming a Cabinet his wishes were equally disregarded, and if he happened to have objected to a particular dish he was very likely to be told there was nothing else in the house; while Murray, Bothwell, and Huntley, whom he hated, were appointed to the ministry. It was at length determined to get him entirely out of the way; and, as he happened to have taken the small-pox, it was agreed that he should sleep out, on account of the baby, who, though very soon cowed in his alter life, had not undergone the process of vaccination, for the simple reason that Dr. Jenner had not invented it. Darnley had consequently a bed at a lonely house called the Kirk-a-field, where he was taken in only that he might be the more effectually done for by his enemies.

An explosion was heard in the middle of the night, and on the next morning the house was found in ruins, with Darnley doubled up under a tree at some considerable distance. It was reported that lightning had been the cause of the event; but it is not likely that lightning would have known how to conduct itself with such precision as to have carried Darnley out of a three-pair of stairs window, and lay him down at a considerable distance from the house, without breaking a bone, or inflicting a bruise of any description whatever. There is every ground for suspicion that Bothwell and his colleagues were instrumental to Darnley's death; but in order to throw dust—or gold dust—in the public eye, they offered a reward of £2,000 for the murderers. This liberality was cheap enough, for they knew they could not be called upon to pay any reward, they being themselves the parties for whom they advertised. A paper war was nevertheless commenced upon the walls, in which the murderers were advertised for on one side, and pointed out by name upon the other, when fresh rewards were offered, and the bill-stickers warned to beware of the libel they were helping to disseminate. At length, such a stir was created, that, on the 12th of April, 1567, Bothwell was put upon his trial, when by some wilful negligence the counsel for the prosecution had no brief, and was of coarse unable to offer any evidence. The accused was accordingly acquitted, and the ends of Justice were defeated in a manner that sometimes prevails in our own day, by an omission to instruct counsel; which seems to be a failing that may at least claim the merit of antiquity.

Though Bothwell was not to be executed for his crime, he was destined to be married; which, next to the capital penalty, was perhaps the highest he could pay, particularly as Mary, who had already seen out a couple of husbands and a favourite, was the lady destined for his future partner. Bothwell had the audacity to give a supper at a tavern in Edinburgh, at the close of the session of Parliament—an entertainment somewhat similar to our ministerial whitebait arrangement at Blackwall—when he drew from his pocket a recommendation of himself as a fitting husband for the Queen of Scotland. Eight bishops, nine earls, and seven lords, most of whom were under the influence of toddy, which turned them into toadies of Bothwell, affixed their names to the document; and armed with this instrument, he, at the head of a thousand horse, effected the forcible abduction of Mary on her way from Stirling Castle. An elopement on such an extensive scale was something very unusual, even in those days of extravagance, and it has been doubted whether it was with Mary's own consent that Bothwell ran away with her. It is, however, indisputable that after making him Duke of Orkney on the 12th of May, she married him on the 15th, and a number of fresh raps from Knox followed, as a matter of course, the imprudence she had been guilty of. Her subjects took so much offence at this proceeding, that they rose against her; and Bothwell, abandoning her to her fate by flying to Denmark, left her to settle the matter as she could with her own people. A defenceless woman, and a female in distress, was of course impotent against an army of raw Scotchmen—whose rawness is so excessive, that they can very seldom be done—and Mary was consigned as a prisoner to the island of Lochleven. It may be as well to dispose of Bothwell at once, before we proceed; and, having traced him to Denmark, we meet him picking up a scanty subsistence by doing what we are justified in terming pirates' work in general. The badness of business or some other cause ultimately turned his head, and we find him subsequently an inmate of an asylum for lunatics. Here he took to writing confessions; but some of them were so vague, and all of them so contradictory, that, recollecting the horrid story-teller Bothwell was known to be, we are at a loss to decide how much credit may be attached to his statements. If, as a general rule, we may believe half what is said, we shall believe nothing that Bothwell has told us; for he has himself contradicted one half of his own story, and the other moiety must be struck off in pursuance of the principle we have just been adverting to. The fact of his death, not having come from his own mouth, may, however, be safely relied upon.

While Mary was a prisoner at Lochleven, her subjects took advantage of her helplessness to make her sign her own abdication, and settle the crown on the head of her baby son, whose first caps had scarcely been laid aside when they had to be replaced by the royal diadem. Her half-brother, Murray, was appointed regent, and coming over to Scotland he was crowned at Stirling, where all who declared themselves sterling friends of poor Mary gave in their adherence to the new ruler.

There was staying with the governor of the prison a young hobble-dehoy of the name of George Douglas, who, being on a visit to his brother, was allowed the privilege of seeing the royal captive. Master George Douglas, in natural accordance with the sentimentality peculiar to seventeen, fell sheepishly in love with the handsome Mary. She gave some encouragement to the gawky youth, but rather with the view of getting him to aid her in an escape, than out of any regard to the over sensitive stripling. Going to his brother's bedroom in the night, the boy took the keys from the basket in which they were deposited, and letting Mary out, he handed her to a skiff and took her for a row, without thinking of the row his conduct was leading to.

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When she reached the shore she was joined by several friends, and marched, as the only lady among six thousand men, in the direction of Dumbarton. Murray, however, was instantly on the alert, and meeting her near Glasgow, he gave her such a routing, that she was glad to fly anywhere she could, to get out of the way of his rough treatment. After some little consideration she determined to make for England; and, throwing herself and retinue into a fishing-smack, she sailed smack for Workington, whence she resolved on walking to Carlisle, against the advice of her followers.

Though Elizabeth had expressed some sympathy towards Mary in her struggles, the English queen determined that her Scottish sister was not a person that could be received at the Court of a virgin—and such a virgin—sovereign. The unfortunate woman, who had come over for protection as a fugitive, was at once made a prisoner, first at Carlisle and then at Bolton, when she was virtually put upon her trial for the purpose of ascertaining whether she was good enough to be visited by that dragon of virtue, the chaste Elizabeth.

In order to inculpate the Queen of Scots, an old melodramatic incident, that then perhaps had the merit of novelty, was resorted to by Murray, who produced, towards the closing scene of the trial, a packet of letters, by which it was pretended that Mary had furnished proofs of her own share in the murder of her husband Darnley. It was not very likely that, if guilty, she would have taken the trouble to commit the fact to paper, or to leave the letters about; and it only wanted a dagger wrapped in rag smeared over with red ochre, to complete the melodramatic dÉnouement that Murray seemed anxious to arrive at. These "properties," if we may be allowed the expression, had an unfavourable effect upon Mary's cause, and a delay having taken place in the proceedings, Murray took advantage of it to offer to wash out the red ochre from the retributive rag, and throw all the letters in the fire, on condition of his being left to do as he pleased with the Scotch regency. To this proposition Mary refused to accede, and defied him to the proof of his charges, which were believed to be chiefly false; and she retaliated upon him by accusing him of having been accessory to the death of Darnley. As Elizabeth candidly acknowledged that she believed neither, she at first thought of punishing both; but at length Murray was furnished with means to return home, while poor Mary was conveyed to Tutbury in the county of Stafford, where it does not appear that even the old woman of Tutbury was allowed to be sometimes the companion of her captivity.

The royal prisoner was now under the supervision of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and was permitted, at last, to see a few visitors, several of whom were smitten by the charms of one who, though become a little passÉ, was, from the gentleness of her manners, always sure to be popular. Norfolk was so much taken with her that he offered her his hand, and promised to employ it in handing her on to the throne of England. As there was still an obstacle to the marriage, outstanding in the name of Bothwell, Mary could only consent, subject to that person's approval. The piratical business in Denmark having become slack, he was glad to take a small bonus to agree to a divorce, and an alliance between Norfolk and Mary, Queen of Scots, was understood, in private circles, to be one of the marriages in high life, which the season would soon see solemnised. Unfortunately for the parties interested, Mary had to send a remittance, in the year 1571, to some friends in Scotland, and the post being either irregular or untrustworthy, she had despatched the communication by hand, through one Banister, a confidential servant of the Duke of Norfolk.

Banister, who was not in the secret, went gaping about with the letter in his hand, and, thinking there was something mysterious about it, took it to Lord Burleigh, whose significant shakes of the head have earned him a note of admiration (!) in the pages of history. Burleigh, taking the letter in his hand, and placing his fore-finger on the side of his nose, began to wag his head from side to side, like the pendulum of a clock, as if he would be up to the time of day, according to his usual fashion; when, deliberately holding the letter up to the light, he, in the most ungentlemanly manner, perused every word of it.

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He ascertained that Norfolk and Mary were contriving to drive Elizabeth from the throne, and the duke was accordingly brought to trial. The stupidity of his servants completed his ruin, for his secretary, instead of destroying the evidences of his master's guilt, had merely stowed them away under the door mats, and stuffed them among the tiles, so that the house from top to toe bore testimony to the guilt of its owner. He was beheaded in 1752, Elizabeth declaring, as she always did when it was too late, that she intended pardoning him, but that somehow or other her royal clemency was not forthcoming until it was too late to be of any use to its contemplated object.

The queen was urged by many of her admirers to get rid of Mary at once; but, as a cat delights to play with a mouse, Elizabeth seemed to take pleasure in exercising a feline influence over her unfortunate prisoner. The Protestant cause had, about this time, been violently assailed in France, and Elizabeth encouraged the departure of English volunteers to aid the French Huguenots. Among the British auxiliary legion that went forth on this expedition were, of course, a number of adventurers, but one of them in particular, was destined to cut a conspicuous figure in the history of his country. This was Walter Raleigh, who had been in the habit of huzzaing at every royal progress, and keeping up a loyal shouting at the side of the carriage of the queen, whenever he met it in the public thoroughfares. In her visits to Greenwich, Raleigh was often found waiting at the stairs to see her land, and on one occasion the queen was about to set her foot in a puddle, when the adventurer, taking off his cloak, converted it into a temporary square of carpeting, to prevent Elizabeth from making a greater splash than she intended, on her arrival at Greenwich. The cloak itself was of no particular value, and a little water was more likely to freshen it up than to detract from its already faded beauty; but the incident flattered the vanity of the queen, and it is said that she never forgot the delicate attention that Walter Raleigh had shown to her.

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In the year 1571 a rumour got into circulation that a match was on the tapis between Mary and the Duke of Anjou, one of the brothers of the French king; and though the report was unfounded, Elizabeth was so jealous of anyone marrying anybody but herself, that she, for about the twentieth time, threw herself into the European market, as an eligible investment for any one who would venture upon a speculation of such a very awful character. She sent over Walsingham as her ambassador, to see what could be done; but the Duke of Anjou, after sufficient negotiation to put an end to any match that might have been contemplated between Mary and himself, had the firmness to decline the honour of an alliance with Elizabeth. The aged angler next baited a hook for the young Duke of AlenÇon, the boy brother of the Duke of Anjou, but the friends of the child stepped in to prevent the sacrifice.

It was not long after the events we have described, that a conspiracy to take Mary out of prison, and put Elizabeth out of the world, was by accident discovered. One Babington, a man of ardent mind, was implicated in this disgraceful affair, which was discovered by the dangerous and irregular practice of thrusting letters through chinks in walls,—at a time, however, when the post-office arrangements were not so complete as to afford the comfort and convenience of a regular letterbox. Mary was undeniably implicated in the plot, which was so clumsily carried on that fourteen of the parties concerned were executed before she even knew that the scheme had been detected. She was taking an airing on a palfrey—one of those whose wretched trappings had made her think "comparisons are indeed odious," as she thought of her riding excursions in her dear France—when a messenger from the queen turned her horse's head towards Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire. Commissioners were instantly sent down to try her for conspiracy, and on the 25th of October, 1586, sentence was pronounced against her in the Star Chamber.

When Elizabeth heard the decision, she affected the utmost reluctance to sign the warrant for Mary's execution; and, indeed, this reluctance seems to have been somewhat sincere, for she wished the death of her rival without any of the odium attaching to a share in an act of so much cruelty. The English queen would have preferred that one of her subjects should have anticipated the effect of a death-warrant, by taking the life of Mary a little in advance; but no one was base or brutal enough to further the obvious wishes of the female tyrant. The signing of the warrant was performed amid sighs and tears, before Sir Robert Cary, Dame Gary, and the little Carys, when some of the children thought they recognised tears of sincerity falling from Elizabeth's eyes; but Mother Cary's chickens we must not depend upon. After some months of delay and duplicity, during which poor Mary was kept in a state of suspense more cruel than death itself, the warrant was signed; but Elizabeth endeavoured, as far as possible, to throw the blame on her ministers. This only aggravates her conduct, for her being ashamed of it, shows she was aware of its enormity, and that she did not consider herself to be merely performing an act of straightforward duty, though a painful one, in consigning to an ignominious death her sister sovereign. Mary was executed on the 7th of February, 1587, in the forty-fifth year of her age; and it is said that when the executioner held up her head by its auburn locks, they came off in his hand, and the grey stubble underneath proved too plainly that Mary had lived for many years a secret adherent to wig principles.