Angry mutterings and sinister rumours were heard on all sides. It was safer for both that until a divorce between Bothwell and his wife had been granted the queen should be kept in security within his own fortress of Dunbar.
Before the queen's so-called abduction, Bothwell had begun steps to obtain the two decrees needful for his divorce. In the civil commissary court action was taken ostensibly at the instance of Bothwell's wife, while in the catholic consistorial court it was taken at the instance of Bothwell. Collusion between the parties was almost self-evident. On 3 May the civil court pronounced sentence of divorce against Bothwell, on the ground of adultery, but according to catholic practice a divorce on the ground of adultery amounted only to separation, and did not permit the divorced person to marry again. The ground on which divorce was sought in the catholic court was that before his marriage he had committed fornication with his wife's near kinswoman, and thus brought himself within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity. When the sentence of divorce was passed on 7 May it was falsely stated by the court that no dispensation which would, according to the catholic canons, have made the marriage indissoluble, had been obtained before the marriage. As a matter of fact, Archbishop Hamilton, who pronounced the divorce, had himself procured such a dispensation before the marriage. Buchanan, in his ‘Detection,’ asserts that ‘all the while they kept close the pope's bull, by which the same offence was dispensed with.’ Within recent years this dispensation has been discovered at Dunrobin, whither it was apparently carried by Lady Jean Gordon, who afterwards in 1573 married Alexander, eleventh earl of Sutherland (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. p. 177). It has, therefore, been argued (see Dr. James Stuart, A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Queen of Scots) that since, according to catholic law, the marriage could not be annulled, Mary, when she married Bothwell, must have known that the ceremony was an empty form. On the other hand, it has been urged that the conditions on which the dispensation was granted were never fulfilled, inasmuch as the marriage was not celebrated in the face of the church (see Colin Lindsay, Mary Queen of Scots and her Marriage with Bothwell, 1883). The court, however, appear to have made no reference to the irregularity of the ceremony, but only to the absence of the dispensation. Possibly Mary sincerely believed that a decree of divorce pronounced by a catholic court absolved her from responsibility.
The divorce was speedily followed by the queen's marriage. On 3 May (Diary of the Scottish Commissioners; or 6 May, according to Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 110) Bothwell and the queen returned from Dunbar to Edinburgh. They entered by the West Port, ‘and raid up the bow to the Castle, the said Erle Bothwill leidand the quenis Majestie by the bridill as captive’ (ib. p. 111). On the 8th, the day after sentence of divorce was pronounced by the catholic court, she was proclaimed in the palace of Holyrood to be married to Bothwell, and on the following day she was proclaimed in St. Giles's Church. John Craig, the minister who proclaimed the banns, took, however, ‘heaven and earth to witness that he abhorred and detested that marriage’ (Declaration in Anderson's Collections, ii. 281). On the 12th the queen passed from the castle to the palace of Holyrood, stopping by the way at the court of session, where she made what was styled the ‘declaration of the queen's liberty,’ in which, while referring in mild reprehensory terms to her abduction, she stated that ‘her highness stands content with the said earl, and has forgiven and forgives him and all other his complices.’ On the same evening he was made Duke of Orkney and Shetland with ‘great magnificence,’ the queen herself placing the ducal coronet on his head. On the 14th she formally subscribed her approval of the bond which had been given by the nobles to Bothwell in Ainslie's Tavern, and on the same day the marriage contract was signed. The marriage took place on the following day (15 May 1567) in Holyrood Palace before a gathering of the more subservient of the nobles. It was celebrated according to the protestant form, the officiating clergyman being Adam Bothwell, protestant bishop of Orkney. Probably one of Bothwell's motives in declining to have the marriage performed also according to catholic rites was to convince the protestants that protestantism was safe in his hands. To the king of France he sent with the queen's messenger, who announced the marriage, a short note couched in terms at once respectful and self-respecting. To Elizabeth he adopted an equally friendly and respectful, but a somewhat more self-assertive tone, frankly stating that he was well aware of the bad opinion she entertained of him, but protesting that it was undeserved, and expressing his readiness to do the utmost to preserve the amity between the two kingdoms.
Bothwell's avowed forcible abduction of the queen gave the nobles an almost providential excuse for interfering with his projects. They had promised to support him only on condition that he had the queen's consent, and by carrying her ostensibly by
