tations which could be made to her,
this criminal and infatuated woman replied by marrying Bothwell three
months after the death of her husband. She now attempted by the most
artful sophistries to justify her conduct to the courts of France and
England: but vain was the endeavour to excuse or explain away facts
which the common sense and common feelings of mankind told them could
admit of neither explanation nor apology. The nobles conspired, the
people rose in arms against her; and within a single month after her
ill-omened nuptials, she saw her guilty partner compelled to tear
himself from her arms and seek his safety in flight, and herself reduced
to surrender her person into the power of her rebellious subjects.

The battle of Langside put all the power of the country into the hands
of the insurgent nobles; but they were much divided in opinion as to the
use to be made of their victory. Some wished to restore Mary to regal
authority under certain limitations;--others wanted to depose her and
proclaim her infant son in her place;--some proposed to detain her in
perpetual imprisonment;--others threatened to bring her to trial and
capital punishment as an accessary to the death of the king. Meantime
she was detained a prisoner in Loch Leven castle, subjected to various
indignities, and a prey to the most frightful apprehensions. But there
was an eye which watched over her for her safety; and it was that of
Elizabeth.

Fears and rivalries, ancient offences and recent provocations,--all the
imprudence which she had censured, and all the guilt which she had
imputed, vanished from the thought of this princess the moment that she
beheld a woman, a kinswoman, and, what was much more, a sister-queen,
reduced to this extremity of distress, and exposed to the menaces and
insults of her own subjects. For a short time the cause of Mary seemed
to her as her own; she interposed in her behalf in a tone of such
imperative earnestness, that the Scotch nobles, who feared her power and
sought her friendship, did not dare to withstand her; and in all
probability Mary at this juncture owed no less than her life to the good
offices of her who was destined finally to bring her, with more
injustice and after many years of sorrow, to an ignominious death.

It was not however within the power, if indeed it were the wish, of
Elizabeth to restore the queen of Scots to the enjoyment either of
authority or of freedom. All Scotland seemed at this