into his office a man at his own devotion. She refused, therefore, to dismiss Lethington, although advised to do so by the King and the Lords; for he was a man of understanding, experienced in the ways of the country, and of whom-if the truth be told-she stood much in need. And further, as there was no proof of the charge against Lethington, she caused him to be recalled shortly afterwards, trusting more than he deserved to his good qualities and his loyalty to herself."1

The Earl of Bothwell had returned to Scotland when Moray deserted his sister; and the stormy and masterful temper of the Border chief was another element of mischief, another danger to Mary and the State. James Hepburn was not a man of any true political capacity; yet the force of his character had been generally recognised; and both Moray and Maitland had felt that so constant an enemy of the English alliance should if possible be kept at a prudent distance from the Court. "He is as mortal an enemy to our nation," Randolph had reported, "as any man alive;" and if such a man was allowed to worm himself into Mary's confidence

1 History of Mary Stuart, by | edited by the Rev. Joseph Claude Nau, her Secretary Stevenson, S.J., who considers (1883), p. 20. Nau's manu- it authentic, and as possibly script has been admirably dictated by Mary herself.

he might work a world of mischief. There had been, however, no noticeable intimacy between the Border Earl and the Queen. His contemporaries allege that he was ill-favoured, if not positively ugly; and, at any rate, he was old enough to be her father. It was his political influence that was dreaded; and up to the day of the Darnley murder there is, so far as I know, no hint or suggestion in any contemporary writing that he was the Queen's favoured lover. Years before he had been rude and unmannerly and Mary had resented his language; but now when the nobles in whom she had confided had proved faithless, when Moray, and Ruthven, and Morton, and Grange, and Maitland had successively deserted her, she was thrown back upon the party in which the sentiment of personal loyalty was strong; and in this party Bothwell was a power. It was an immense misfortune for Mary that in the unsettled state of the country an unprincipled ruffian like James Hepburn should have been able to force himself to the front; but his advancement can hardly be imputed to her as an offence, or even as a fault.1

The stars were fighting against her: misad

1 It may be added that most of the offices which Bothwell held had either come to him

by a sort of hereditary title, or had been obtained at an earlier period.

venture succeeded misadventure; and-to crown all-at this difficult juncture, at this crisis of her fate, Mary's health gave way. The birth of her child was followed by a period of prolonged prostration. Her constitution was somewhat peculiar, there was in her case an unusually close connection between mind and body. Any strong or sudden emotion was certain to produce a violent physical reaction. She was naturally robust and her spirit was invincible; but there was somewhere a flaw in the organism,-vexation or displeasure being not unfrequently followed by fainting fits that would last for hours. All these constitutional symptoms were aggravated after her confinement. Melville

says that though of a quick spirit, she was "something sad when solitary"; and, surrounded for the most part of her life by turbulent and treacherous nobles, the sense of isolation must have been often excessive. Hitherto she had borne herself with eminent cheerfulness and splendid intrepidity; but during 1566 she seems for the first time to have lost heart. A vivid realisation of the cruel and unscrupulous forces by which she was surrounded, and with which she had to contend, had been forced upon her by the "tragedies" she had witnessed. "I could wish to have died," she said to Le Croc after the illness at Jedburgh. There can be no doubt that

Darnley's crass ingratitude and ineptitude had wounded her deeply; but we may fairly assume that had she been in her usual health she would not have allowed his misconduct to hurt her, as it did. She was morbid and spiritless, the mental reflecting the physical depression. Those about her recognised the change. "The Queen breaketh much," Drury wrote, " and is subject to frequent fainting fits." She had been all her life at home in the saddle; and when in October she rode from Jedburgh to the Hermitage, she failed to remember that she was still unfit for a ride which a year before would have been well within her powers. Nau says expressly that she had not then recovered from the effects of her confinement. "On the day following her ride she was seized by a pain in the side which kept her in bed. It proved to be a severe attack of the spleen, which had troubled her during the previous week, and to which pain in the side she had been more or less subject ever since her confinement." On this occasion she was at the point of death. "So severely was she handled, that every one thought she would die. was very sharp, and was

The pain in her side accompanied by fre

quent vomiting of blood."2 The Jesuit father

1 Nau's Memorials, p. 31.

2 Edmund Hay's Narrative. Nau, p. cxliii.

one of the noble family of Erroll-from whose narrative these words are taken, attributes her illness to anxiety about the reception of the Papal Nuncio; but it is more probable, as Lethington suggests, that she was worried into the fever which so nearly proved fatal by the mental distress occasioned by Darnley's misconduct,-the fatigue of the ride no doubt rendering the attack more acute. "The occasion of the Queen's sickness"-Maitland wrote-" so far as I can understand, is due to thought and displeasure; and I trow by what I could wring further of her own declaration to me, the root of it is the King. For she has done him so great honour without the advice of her friends, and contrary to the advice of her subjects, and he on the other hand has recompensed her with such ingratitude, and misuses himself so far toward her, that it is a heartbreak to her to think that he should be her husband; and how to be free of him she has no outgait." This was in October; in December Le Croc wrote to Beaton;-"The Queen is at present at Craigmillar, about a league distant from this city. She is in the hands of the physicians, and I do assure you is not at all well; and I do believe the principal part of her disease to consist of a deep grief and sorrow. Nor does

1

1 Lethington to Beaton, 24th October 1566. Tytler, v. 364.