VII. CHAP. than before the privy council, lest Balfour and Lethington should have withdrawn from justice, if their guilt were divulged. The originals and attested copies were transmitted, upon different occasions, by the regent to England; but another copy retained in Scotland, was afterwards exhibited, with the depositions of Hay and Ormiston, on the trial of Archibald Douglas in the justiciary court. That these were transmitted from England, and again returned, is an hypothesis which contains its own confutation; as Ormiston's, and the original of Hay's Deposition remained always in Scotland, and Elizabeth never would have furnished evidence to the disparagement of Morton, and against Douglas, whom she was willing to preserve. Undoubtedly, the first Declaration of Paris was alone produced, nor would James have consented, at the age of twenty, to criminate his mother by a public exhibition of the second Declaration in the justiciary court. But the opportunity to discredit the two Declarations, and to flatter James by a vindication of his mother's innocence, was too favourable to be omitted either by his ministers, 60 Whitaker, iii. 211. Ormiston's Confession was never sent to England. Attested copies of Hay's Depositions, &c. were produced at Westminster, but the originals remained in the justiciary office, though not engrossed in its books of adjournal. or by Douglas, an artful, experienced courtier, if the least presumption, or surmise of forgery had then existed. The, depositions, therefore, were produced, or tacitly authenticated in the justiciary court, almost twenty years after the murder was committed, when the regent had successively perished with their friends. But the judicial depositions were not inserted in Buchanan's Detection. A short abstract of the Confessions at the place of execution, was annexed to it by Wilson, as a full confutation of those pretended confessions to which Lesly had appealed under a fictitious name. CHAP. VII. testament ed confes 9. The supposed testament or confession, in Bothwell's which Bothwell, with his last breath, absolves or suppos the queen, and transfers the murder to her ac- sion, cusers, must not be omitted. After his flight from Dunbar by sea, he remained with Huntley and the Bishop of Murray in the north, till abandoned by both, and when refused admittance by Sir James Balfour's brother, into the castle of Kirkwall, he plundered the town, and retiring to Shetland, turned pirate for subsistence. Upon his escape from Grange in a single ship, he was seized for piracy on the coast of Norway, and when his person was recognised, he was kept in prison, where falling into a frenzy, after eight years close confinement, he died mad. Repeated applications from Murray, Lennox, and Elizabeth to the King of Denmark, were evaded CHAP. on the most frivolous pretexts: that as Bothwell was already acquitted, as he said himself, by a legal judgment, some previous security was necessary for an impartial trial before he could be delivered up. The true reason may be discovered in Mary's consanguinity to Frederick II. which determined the latter rather to retain Bothwell in perpetual imprisonment, than to confirm his cousin's infamy, by the surrender of her husband to the justice of his country; as his only defence, if brought to a public trial, was her June 1st, participation in his guilt. On receiving intelligence of his death, she wrote to Beton that he had made an ample confession both of her innocence and of his own offences, which was attested, signed and sealed in form of a testament, by those witnesses whose names she mentions; and as the evidence was of such importance against the calumnies of her enemies, she desired her ambassador by all means to ascertain the fact. She had therefore seen the Confession as it exists at present, of which the copy was communicated, (when, where, or to whom is uncertain) by a 1576. 61 See Appendix, No. XXIX. 62 By the marriage of James III. with Margaret of Denmark, her nephew Christian III. and James IV. were first cousins; his son Frederick II. and James V. were second cousins. Frederick and Mary therefore were, according to the Scottish phrase, second cousins once removed, or related, according to the canon law, in the fourth degree. VII. nameless merchant, worthy of credit, and the ori- CHAP. ginal at greater length in Latin and Danish, sealed with the seals of the Danish king, and of the witnesses whom she had named, would one day come to light to establish the innocence of the Scottish queen. Beton coldly July 30. replied, that he had heard long ago of Bothwell's death, since which the queen-mother, as he was told, had written to the French ambassador at Denmark, to transmit the testament in form, which had not been done; and he proposed to send Monceaux thither, if money could be procured. Six months afterwards he informed her January 4, that Gateley (Barclay of Gartley) had been im- 1576-7. prisoned on his arrival in Scotland, because he divulged what he had heard in London of Bothwell's testament; that Monceaux refused to undertake the journey without money; but that her son had seen the testament, and rejoiced at such a manifest declaration of his mother's innocence. About the same period she wrote to Beton that January 6. the King of Denmark, as she was informed, had transmitted Bothwell's testament to Elizabeth, who endeavoured to suppress it as much as possible; and that Monceaux's journey was unnecessary, since the queen-mother had sent thither to inquires. After her execution, Blackwood, in 1578, appealed for her innocence to Bothwell's testament, which the King of Denmark had See Appendix, No. XXX. VII. CHAP. transmitted to Elizabeth and to most of the princes ~in Christendom; and his authority was adopted A manifest forgery. by the interpolator of Camden, and improved by Turner, whom Crawford has transcribed in his spurious Memoirs. But the testament is a shallow forgery, of which Mary and Beton were both conscious; and Bothwell himself, as he died mad, was incapable of any genuine confession at his death65. When interrogated concerning his accomplices, and the authors of the murder, he names at random, not only Murray, Morton, Argyle, and Lethington, but Crawford and Glencairn, who were certainly innocent, Boyd, Buccleugh, and Grange, who were never suspected, and my "Lord Robert "abbe de St. Croix maintenant (1576) comte "des isles Orchades.' Lord Robert was created Earl of Orkney in August 15816; but Beton, who had heard, in 1567-8, of a grant which he had obtained of the earldom, or of the exchange of his abbacy with the Bishop of Orkney, imagined, in his letter to the Cardinal of Lorrain, that my Lord of Orkney who accompanied Grange in pursuit of Bothwell, was the earl in Jebb, i, 415. ii. 227. Camden's Annals, 121. Crawford's Memoirs, 46. 65 See Appendix, No. XXXI. 66 Till then he was uniformly styled Lord Robert, or Lord Robert of Holyroodhouse. Caligula, B. fol. 102, 121, 154, C. 6. |