to oppose the murder of Rizzio, he had made great way in the queen's
favour; to her party he himself appeared to be really attached, to
the exclusion of the two others, the king's and the Earl of Murray's.
Bothwell was already thirty-five years old, head of the powerful family
of Hepburn, which had great influence in East Lothian and the county
of Berwick; for the rest, violent, rough, given to every kind of
debauchery, and capable of anything to satisfy an ambition that he did
not even give himself the trouble to hide. In his youth he had been
reputed courageous, but for long he had had no serious opportunity to
draw the sword.

If the king's authority had been shaken by Rizzio's influence, it
was entirely upset by Bothwell's. The great nobles, following the
favourite's example, no longer rose in the presence of Darnley, and
ceased little by little to treat him as their equal: his retinue was cut
down, his silver plate taken from him, and some officers who remained
about him made him buy their services with the most bitter vexations.
As for the queen, she no longer even took the trouble to conceal her
dislike for him, avoiding him without consideration, to such a degree
that one day when she had gone with Bothwell to Alway, she left there
again immediately, because Darnley came to join her. The king, however,
still had patience; but a fresh imprudence of Mary's at last led to the
terrible catastrophe that, since the queen's liaison with Bothwell, some
had already foreseen.

Towards the end of the month of October, 1566, while the queen was
holding a court of justice at Jedburgh, it was announced to her that
Bothwell, in trying to seize a malefactor called John Elliot of Park,
had been badly wounded in the hand; the queen, who was about to attend
the council, immediately postponed the sitting till next day, and,
having ordered a horse to be saddled, she set out for Hermitage Castle,
where Bothwell was living, and covered the distance at a stretch,
although it was twenty miles, and she had to go across woods, marshes,
and rivers; then, having remained some hours tete-a-tete with him, she
set out again with the same sped for Jedburgh, to which she returned in
the night.

Although this proceeding had made a great deal of talk, which was
inflamed still more by the queen's enemies, who chiefly belonged to the
Reformed religion, Darnley did not hear of it till nearly two months
afterwards--that is to say, when Bothwell, co