r favours, and the regent
returned home loaded with honours by Elizabeth, and attended by the most
illustrious of the English court, escorted by a strong guard to Berwick,
and arrived at Edinburgh on the 2d of February, where he was received
with acclamations of joy, particularly by the friends of the true
religion.

During his administration, many salutary laws in favour of civil and
religious liberty, were made, which rendered him more and more the
object of popish malice. At last they resolved at all events to take his
life; the many unsuccessful attempts formerly made, only served to
render them more bold and daring. Though the queen was now at a
distance, yet the found means to encourage her party, and perhaps the
hope of delivering her at length, gave strength to their resolution. One
James Hamilton of Bothwel-haugh, nephew to the arch-bishop of St.
Andrews, incited by his uncle and others, undertakes to make away with
the regent, when a convenient opportunity offered itself: He first lay
in wait for him at Glasgow, and then at Stirling, but both failed him;
after which, he thought Linlithgow the most proper place for
perpetrating that execrable deed; his uncle had a house near the
regent's, in which he concealed himself, that he might be in readiness
for the assassination. Of this design the regent got intelligence
likewise, but paid not that regard to the danger he was exposed to,
which he should; and would go no other way than that in which it was
suspected the ambush was laid; he trusted to the fleetness of his horse
in riding swiftly by the suspected place; but the great concourse of
people who crouded together to see him, stopped up the way. Accordingly,
he was shot from a wooden balcony, the bullet entering a little below
the navel, came out at the reins, and killed the horse of George Douglas
behind him: The assassin escaped by a back-door. The regent told his
attendants that he was wounded, and returned to his lodgings; it was at
first thought the wound was not mortal, but his pain increasing, he
began to think of death. Some about him told him, That this was the
fruit of his lenity, in sparing so many notorious offenders, and among
the rest his own murderer; but he replied, "Your importunity shall not
make me repent my clemency." Having settled his private affairs, he
committed the care of the young king to the nobles there present, and
without speaking a reproachful word of any, he departed this life on