owed his escape from the effects of his association with the catholic nobles; and as a proof of gratitude he ostentatiously made, on 9 Nov., a public repentance in the little kirk before noon, and in the great kirk after noon, promising to ‘prove another man in time coming’ (Calderwood, v. 68). He was already busy with eccentric schemes to improve his position.
In January 1590–1 Agnes and Richie Graham, the former ‘the wise wife of Keith,’ who were burned at Edinburgh for the practice of sorcery, asserted that Bothwell had consulted them about the date of the king's death, and had bribed them to make use of their arts to raise storms during the king's voyage from Denmark. According to Sir James Melville, Bothwell, on learning the charge, surrendered himself for trial, hotly denying the veracity of the devil's ‘sworn witches.’ The author of the ‘History of James Sext’ asserts that Chancellor Maitland instigated the charge, and was so hated by the nobility that they several times refused to assemble for Bothwell's trial (p. 242). The weak point in Bothwell's case was, as he subsequently confessed, that he had consulted the witches, although only (he affirmed) in regard to his own fortunes, without any reference to the king. On the king the accusations of the witches against Bothwell produced a deep impression, and probably strengthened that peculiar dread of him by which the king was haunted. On 21 June Bothwell escaped from the castle to which he had been committed by bribing the master of the watch, a gentleman named Lauder. Shortly after his escape he appeared at the Nether Bow, and promised any man a crown who would bid the chancellor come and take him (Moysie, Memoirs, p. 86). On the 24th he was put to the horn, but as he appeared to possess the sympathy of the greater part of the nobility, all efforts to effect his capture failed. On 6 July certain border lairds swore to pursue him under Lord Home (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iv. 648). But Home himself, ‘to his Majesty's greater contempt,’ joined Bothwell, and the king, resolving to take the field against him in person, ordered a special levy to be raised. On the 4th Bothwell was denuded of all his offices and dignities, and his castles were seized. The king was informed that Bothwell ‘was still a fugitive,’ but on the 7th he desisted from ‘riding towartis the Bordouris at this time’ (ib. p. 668)
In October 1591 Bothwell, enticed, he affirmed, by the chancellor Maitland, reappeared at Leith; but an attempt to capture him on the 18th failed, ‘notwithstanding all the haste the king made,’ and in spite of Bothwell's loss of ‘his best horse called Valentine.’ Emboldened by the king's supineness Bothwell sought on the evening of 27 Dec. to capture Holyrood Palace, where the king and queen, with the chancellor Maitland, were then residing. He had the assistance of about forty southern lairds and others (see list in Calderwood v. 141). Several within the palace knew of the plot. Entrance was gained by a back passage through the Duke of Lennox's stables. Bothwell's principal aim seems to have been the capture of Chancellor Maitland, and, according to Moysie, the intruders passed direct to the chancellor's door (Memoirs, p. 87). Alarmed by the cry of a boy, the chancellor withdrew to his inner chamber, and Bothwell, foiled for the moment, passed, after giving directions for breaking in the door of the apartment, towards the rooms of the king and queen. Failing to gain entry there, he is said to have called for fire. An inroad of the citizens, warned by the sound of the common bell, interrupted him. Overpowered by numbers, the conspirators extinguished the lights, and succeeded in the darkness in making their escape, with the exception of seven or eight, who were executed next morning. On 10 Jan. 1591–2 a proclamation was made against Bothwell, ‘thought to be penned by the king himself’ (Calderwood, v. 144), in which a reward was offered to any that would kill him. Nevertheless he remained unhurt in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and on the 13th the king was nearly drowned in some boggy ground while riding eastward from Holyrood to apprehend him (ib.)
With a view to obtaining the intercession of the kirk, Bothwell in April 1592 wrote to the ministers of Edinburgh that his intrigue with the Spaniards was not directed against their religion, but intended solely to avenge the death of Queen Mary; and secondly, that his foolish consultation with witches never touched the king, it being impossible that he could ‘hate where both benefits and blood compelled him to love’ (Letter printed ib. pp. 150–6). Chancellor Maitland, a notorious enemy of the kirk, was, he added, the sole accuser of himself and Home, in the hope that by destroying them he, ‘a puddock stool of a night,’ might take the ‘place of two ancient cedars.’ About 8 April the king, on learning that Bothwell had crossed the Tay at Broughty on his way to Caithness, suddenly left Edinburgh for Dundee. At a meeting of the parliament on 29 May James denounced Bothwell, and asserted that he aspired to the throne, although he was ‘but a bastard, and could claim no title to the crown’ (ib. p. 161). In the same parliament sentence of forfeiture was passed against Bothwell.
