from the attempts of that audacious
man, had obliged the nobility to take arms, and oppose his criminal
enterprises; that after Mary, in order to save him, had thrown herself
into their hands, she still discovered such a violent attachment to him,
that they found it necessary, for their own and the public safety,
to confine her person during a season, till Bothwell and the other
murderers of her husband could be tried and punished for their crimes;
and that during this confinement she had voluntarily, without compulsion
or violence, merely from disgust at the inquietude and vexations
attending power, resigned her crown to her only son, and had appointed
the earl of Murray regent during the minority.[**]

* Anderson, vol. iv. part ii. p. 52. Goodall, vol. ii. p.
128. Haynes, p. 478.

** Anderson, vol. iv. part ii. p. 64, et seq. Goodall, vol.
ii. p. 144.

The queen's answer to this apology was obvious: that she did not know,
and never could suspect, that Bothwell, who had been acquitted by a
jury, and recommended to her by all the nobility for her husband,
was the murderer of the king; that she ever was, and still continues
desirous, that, if he be guilty, he may be brought to condign
punishment; that her resignation of the crown was extorted from her
by the well-grounded fears of her life, and even by direct menaces
of violence; and that Throgmorton, the English ambassador, as well as
others of her friends, had advised her to sign that paper, as the only
means of saving herself from the last extremity, and had assured her,
that a consent, given under these circumstances, could never have any
validity.[*]

So far the queen of Scots seemed plainly to have the advantage in the
contest; and the English commissioners might have been surprised that
Murray had made so weak a defence, and had suppressed all the material
imputations against that princess, on which his party had ever so
strenuously insisted, had not some private conferences previously
informed them of the secret. Mary's commissioners had boasted that
Elizabeth, from regard to her kinswoman, and from her desire of
maintaining the rights of sovereigns, was determined, how criminal
soever the conduct of that princess might appear, to restore her to the
throne;[**] and Murray, reflecting on some past measures of the English
court, began to apprehend that there were but too just grounds for these
expectations. He believed that Mary, if he w