sioned to convoy a message to the lords of the Council, but in reality sent to keep a strict watch on the proceedings of both them and the regent. He was met at Berwick by Sir James Makgill, lord clerk-registrar, and Sir James Melville, sent by the two parties, those most desperate against the queen, and those inclined to more moderate measures. Makgill urged on Murray the absolute necessity of his accepting the regency; but the hypocritical statesman professed to have many scruples, and rode on.
At the Bound Rode, a line separating the two countries, he found 400 noblemen and gentlemen assembled to receive him. They rode on with him to Whittingham, where Morton and Maitland also received him. Only eighteen months before, the death of Darnley had been planned by Bothwell and these very men, and afterwards the resolution communicated to Murray. He had now reaped the benefit of the deed from which he had seemed to keep aloof; and on Morton and Maitland congratulating him on the success of their plans, the pious Murray now expressed deep horror of the deed and declared his resolution to take vengeance for it.
On arriving in the capital, he was received by the assembled population of nobles, clergy, and commons, with enthusiastic acclamations, for they all looked to him as the man who was to establish all their claims, to fix Protestantism as the established faith, to give the clergy confirmation of the Church property, to please the people by maintaining a noble guardianship of their infant king, and to sanction all the revolutionary measures by his near kinship to the king they had set up and the queen they had put down. Such was his pretended conscientiousness, that he would decide on nothing till the whole history of the late transactions, with all the proofs, had been duly laid before him, and he had had time to weigh them well. The evidences of Mary's guilt were spread before him; and so well did he act his part, that the deep and practised Throckmorton was satisfied that he was proceeding on most sincere and honourable motives. The English minister promised his best endeavours to reconcile his mistress to the new state of things; De Lignerolles anticipated no lasting difficulties on the part of France; the opposition of the Hamiltons appeared to melt away; and the conscientious Murray at length expressed himself almost persuaded to accept the regency. Only one point repelled him: the resignation of the crown, the transfer of it to her son, and his own appointment as regent, he said, was asserted to have been extorted by force. If that were the fact, nothing could induce him to accept the office, and he demanded to see the queen and learn from her own lips the truth. This demand appeared to startle the lords, for Murray had expressed to Throckmorton, if not to others, much pity and concern for his sister; but he had no doubt expressed himself otherwise to some of the lords, for, after a seeming reluctance, his request was conceded.
On the l5th of August, Murray made this visit, and was accompanied by Lindsay, Morton, and Atholl. This interview was one of the most painful which history can show. Murray was all that he was through the generosity of his unhappy sister. Throughout her life she had delighted to honour, to elevate, to enrich him. She had to the last moment demonstrated her confidence in him, and though he had stood aloof in the days of her indignities and distress, she had yet placed him, by her own free-will—for she had offered that before called on to sign the three documents—in the post of supreme authority. A noble-minded man, with the firmness and authority of Murray, would now have repaid all these benefits; and, if he could not restore his only sister, he might have shielded her from insult, and made her retirement as easy as possible.
Mary received the deputation with natural agitation. She complained passionately and with tears of the wrongs she had suffered, and then, taking Murray aside, she conjured him to be candid with her, and to let her know what her enemies intended and what he intended. But the brother, who had basked in the sunshine of her prosperity, who had so lately even professed to be her warm and stanch friend, was now cold, gloomy, and reserved. After supper she again conversed with him in private; she appealed to him as a brother, her only friend, her only near relative, and conjured him, if he could not make up his mind to serve her, at least to let her know his will. She told him that he was her only dependence; and if he did not stand by her, where was she to look? Any man of ordinary feeling, thus appealed to by an affectionate sister, who had covered him with benefits, and who had never, whatever was her guilt, sinned against him, would have felt bound to alleviate her suffering as much as possible, if he could not have removed it altogether. But this heartless man only wished to secure at her expense the utmost advantage to himself. He, therefore, commenced a ruthless examination of her past life, and drew as foul and revolting a picture of it as his powers of mind enabled him. It was done more, says Throckmorton, in the spirit of an ascetic confessor than a counsellor, much less a brother. The murder of Darnley, the plain guilt of Bothwell, her criminal passion for him, her obstinate refusal to surrender him, the shameful parade of this before all the people, their consequent utter and hopeless alienation, the proofs of all this from her own letters, and the determination of the lords to bring her to mortal punishment for it, were all piled upon her outraged and affrighted soul with a pitiless cruelty which overwhelmed her in agony and despair. It was in vain that she interrupted him to protest, to deny, to explain, he went on in merciless rigour with his narrative; and when, crushed by the recital and the menaced doom, she appealed, in terms that might have softened a tiger, to him for succour and protection, he coldly bade her look to God for mercy, and withdrew to his chamber.
The next morning, having allowed a night of inconceivable horror to subdue her to his mood, when she sent for him, he assumed a more conciliating tone; professed that he would do everything in his power to save her life—nay, he would even sacrifice his own for it; but then he reminded her that he had to contend with every party in the nation, with the lords, the Church, and the people. He warned her, therefore, that if she attempted to escape, or to intrigue with the French or English Government, or retained her stubborn attachment to Bothwell, no effort of his could save her. If, on the contrary, she was careful to avoid correspondence with England and France, expressed sincere penitence, and abandoned Bothwell, she had much to hope for as far as life was concerned,
