Ibid. Cotton Lib. fol. 316. Copy of a Relation of the Earl of Bothwell's Declaration at his Death, by one that was present. Le comte de Bothuel malade a l'extremité, au Titus C. 7. chateau de Malmay, a verifié ce qui s'ensuit. L'Evesque de Scone, avec quatre grands Seigneurs, à sçavoir, les Seigneurs Berin Gowes du chateau.de Malmay, Otto Braw du chateau d'Ottenbrocht, Paris Braw du chateau de Vescut, et M. Gullunstarne du chateau de Fulcenstere, avec les quatre bailifs de la ville, prierent le dict comte de declarer librement ce qu'il sçavoit de la mort du feu Roy Henry, (Darnley) et des autheurs d'icelle, comme il vouloit repondre devant Dieu au jour du jugement, la où toutes choses, tant cachées soyent elles, seront manifestées. Alors le comte remonstrant pour sa grande foiblesse qui le detenoit, qu'il ne pouvoit discourir tout ce qu'il en sçavoit par lui-même, affirma la Reine innocente de la ditte mort; lui seul, ses parents, et quelque noblesse autheurs d'icelle. Estant derechef prié des dicts Seigneurs, de declarer quelques uns, nomma my lord Jacques comte de Morray, my lord Robert Abbé de Sainte-Croix, * These names are apparently fictitious. There was no such bishoprick as Scone, which is comprehended in the diocese of Opælac, one of the four bishopricks into which Norway was divided. I believe there is no such town or castle as Malmay either in Norway or in Denmark. Neither the situation of Malmay, nor the date of the confession, nor the name of the merchant upon whom the whole depends, is once specified; and after a very formal attestation by Both (maintenant comte des Isles Orchades) tous deux freres bastards de la Reine, les comtes Argueil, Crauford, Glencarn, Morton, my lord Boyd, les Barons de Ledington, Buccleugh et Grange. Poursuit après, comme par enchantement, auquel dès sa jeunesse, à Paris et aillieurs il s'estoit beaucoup addoné, il avoit tiré la Reine à l'aymer, soy depestrant de sa femme. Le mariage consommé, cherchoit tout moyen à faire mourir le petit prince, et toute la noblesse qui n'y vouloit entendre. Après, comme (il) avoit debauché deux filles d'un grand Seigneur de Danemarque, les menant en Escosse, et deux autres d'un grand Seigneur de la ville de Lubecque, soubs ombre de mariage avec leur filles, et tant d'autres filles nobles, tant en France que Danemarque, Angleterre, et Escosse demandant pardon à Dieu, recevant sont corps estant attenué, mourut. Tout cecy, plus à plein, a esté escrit en Latin et Danois, signé du scel du roy de Danemarque et des assistants surnommez, et viendra quelque jour en lumiere, pour averer l'innocence de la Reine d'Escosse. L'adjointe copie ayant esté donné par un marchand digne de foy, assistant alors à la derniere attestation du dict comte. well, signed or sealed by the King of Denmark, and nine witnesses, we are shuffled off with a copy, donné par un marchand digné de foy. No. XXXI. Vol. II. Page 52. BUCHANAN, Melvil, and Spottiswood assure us, that Bothwell died mad, and the two last, writing after James had passed a winter in Denmark, must have known the fact. Turner, in order to authenticate the confession, first asserted, in 1588, that Bothwell's madness was a fiction of Buchanan's; and Whitaker believed, on the authority of Goodall, that he lived at large, unconfined, in Denmark. But the History of James VI. informs us, that he was committed to close prison till his death; the Summarium de Morte Mariæ, published 1587, mentions that" in Dania captus, amens obiit" (Jebb, ii. 166), and Thuanus assures us, seemingly from particular information, that as soon as discovered, he was imprisoned at Dracholm, "in arctissimis vinculis, in quibus cum accusatus esset ab amicis cujusdam nobilis virginis Norvegicæ, quam ante plures annos, pacto matrimonio violatam, alia super indueta, deseruerat, post decennium, accedente amentia, dignum flagitiosa vita exitum habuit,” ii. 551. The Norwegian lady whom he had debauched when betrothed to her some years before, and deserted for another, explains a passage in Buchanan, that before his marriage with the queen, duas uxores adhuc vivas habuit, tertiam ipse nuper suum fassus adulterium, dimisisset; (Lib. xviii. 357) and suggested the crimes in his confession, that he had debauched a Danish lord's two daughters, and two daugh ers of a lord at Lubeck, &c. His body was greatly swelled in summer, 1575 (Murden, 285); and he seems to have died about the end of that year. His age has been strangely controverted. Buchanan, by a mistake of the name, had represented James instead of Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, as the rival of Lennox for the queen regent's hand; and Tytler concluded that Bothwell, who courted the mother in 1544, must have been an old man, upwards of sixty, when he married the daughter in 1567. Tytler, 3d edit. 281. The mistake had been previously corrected by Thomas Crawford (Notes on Buchanan, 141), and by Ruddiman (Buchanani Opera, i. 452); but when the late Lord Hailes discovered that Patrick, Bothwell's father, died in September, 1556, and that Mary herself observes of Bothwell ten years afterwards, "Begynand from his verie youth, and first entres to this realme immediatelie after the deceis of his father," (Hailes's Remarks 173. Anderson i. 89) Lord Elibank and Tytler adopted another conclusion; that Buchanan described Bothwell, when courting the queen regent, in 1544, by an anticipation of his future titles, and that he was at least forty-four years of age when he married the queen. Lord Elibank's Letter to Lord Hailes, p. 30. Tytler, ii. 155. It is sufficient to state an answer, the words omitted by both these writers in their quotation from Buchanan: "Accessit æmulus Jacobus Hepburnus comes Bothwelliæ, &c. Is enim ab Jacobo quinto relegatus, ac statim, eo mortuo domum reversus, eisdem artibus reginæ viduæ nuptias ambiebat," &c. Lib. xvi. p. 285. The Earl of Bothwell, whom James had banished in 1537, was Patrick, the earl formerly imprisoned, in 1531, and divorced from his wife most proba bly after his return from exile, and before he paid his addresses to the queen regent. Goodall, ii. 319. Bothwell's mother was alive at the murder of Darnley (Paris's First Confession), and Bothwell himself, if born when his father was banished, might be about twenty years of age at his father's death, and about thirty-one on his marriage with the queen. From her own words quoted above, he appears to have returned from abroad, immediately after his father's death; and if Thuanus's story be true, I conceive that he was then (1556) in Denmark or Norway, where he married and deserted his first wife for another: since it is certain that he passed through England to France on his banishment, in 1563. Douglas, in his peerage, creates an intermediate Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, who was married to a daughter of Alexander, Master of Hume, and died in 1534. In 1519 we discover a Master of Hailes, by Buchanan, called James Hepburn, who assassinated David Hume, Prior of Coldingham, to whose sister he was married. Buchanan, 260. Lesly, 371. Pitscottie, 131. Crawford's Notes on Buchanan, 126. David Hume, Prior of Coldingham, was the youngest son of Alexander, Master of Hume, to whose daughter this James Hepburn, commonly called Master of Hailes, (Crawford, ibid.) was certainly married. Yet it is equally certain that there was no intermediate earl between Adam, the second Earl of Bothwell, who was killed at Flodden, and Patrick the third earl, who died at Dumfries in September 1556. Crawford's Notes on Buchanan, passim. Tytler, ii. 401. See an accurate genealogy of the family in Chalmers's Caledonia, ii. 447. 9, where Bothwell himself is rendered forty-one years of age at his marriage with Lady Jean Gordon, in 1566, on a supposition, which is quite arbitrary, that |
