been only a contrivance, in order to afford
a pretence for indirectly remitting a crime, of which it would have
appeared scandalous to make openly any mention.[***]

* Melvil, p. 80.

** Spotswood, p. 202.

*** Anderson, vol. iv. part ii. p. 61.

These events passed with such rapidity, that men had no leisure to
admire sufficiently one incident, when they were surprised with a
new one equally rare and uncommon. There still, however, remained one
difficulty which it was not easy to foresee how the queen and Bothwell,
determined as they were to execute their shameful purpose, could find
expedients to overcome. The man who had procured the subscription of the
nobility, recommending him as a husband to the queen, and who had acted
this seeming violence on her person, in order to force her consent, had
been married two years before to another woman; to a woman of merit, of
a noble family, sister to the earl of Huntley. But persons blinded by
passion, and infatuated with crime, soon shake off all appearance of
decency. A suit was commenced for a divorce between Bothwell and his
wife; and this suit was opened at the same instant in two different, or
rather opposite courts; in the court of the archbishop of St. Andrew's,
which was Popish, and governed itself by the canon law; and in the
new consistorial or commissariot court, which was Protestant, and was
regulated by the principles of the reformed teachers. The plea advanced
in each court was so calculated as to suit the principles which there
prevailed; in the archbishop's court, the pretence of consanguinity was
employed, because Bothwell was related to his wife in the fourth degree;
in the commissariot court, the accusation of adultery was made use
of against him. The parties, too, who applied for the divorce, were
different in the different courts: Bothwell was the person who sued
in the former; his wife in the latter. And the suit in both courts was
opened, pleaded, examined, and decided, with the utmost precipitation;
and a sentence of divorce was pronounced in four days.[*]

* 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