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"What occasion was there for him to volunteer sending men to support Sir William Wallace? and how durst he bring ruin on Bothwell Castle, by collecting unauthorized by my brother, its vassals for so dangerous an experiment?" Murray started at these unexpected observations.
This execrable deed gave rise to various suspicions and conjectures, which, while they glanced at the queen from her new sentiments with regard to her husband, were, with a general consent, directed toward Bothwell. A proclamation was issued from the throne, offering a considerable reward for the murderer.
They started at sight of Helen, but Wallace in a few words related the cause of her appearance, and the portentous letter was laid before them. All were acquainted with the handwriting of Lord March, and all agreed in attributing to its real motive his late solicitude to obtain the command of the Lothians. "What!" cried Bothwell, "but to open his castle gates to the enemy!"
He had been accused in 1562 of a plot to seize the Queen and put her into the keeping of Earl of Arran, whose pretensions to her hand ended only when his insanity could no longer be concealed. Another new adherent was the son of the late Earl of Huntly, to whom the forfeited honors of his house were restored a few months before the marriage of his sister to Bothwell.
To free himself from Darnley he seized on the hatred which the lords whom Darnley had deserted and betrayed bore to the king. Bothwell joined Murray and the English ambassador in praying for the recall of Morton and the exiles.
And as the fall of Bothwell had given to the insurgents all the courage of which it had deprived his comrades, the issue of this partial contest did not remain long undecided.
Accordingly, as the queen was returning from Stirling to Edinburgh some days after the scenes we have just related, Bothwell suddenly appeared at the Bridge of Grammont with a thousand horsemen, and, having disarmed the Earl of Huntly, Livingston, and Melville, who had returned to his mistress, he seized the queen's horse by the bridle, and with apparent violence he forced Mary to turn back and follow him to Dunbar; which the queen did without any resistance a strange thing for one of Mary's character.
"Your ladyship means Sergeant Francis Stewart, whom we call Bothwell?" said Claverhouse, smiling. "The truth is, he is a little too rough in the country, and has not been uniformly so amenable to discipline as the rules of the service require. But to instruct me how to oblige Lady Margaret Bellenden, is to lay down the law to me.
This very minute she may be My God, think of the danger she runs!" Blythe shook his head. "She's safe till Bothwell gives the word. Not one of his fellows would dare lift a hand against her. The captain would shoot him like a dog." "And Bothwell himself?" "She's safe yet, Jack. He's playing for the treasure and to marry her, too.
The King's forces assembled to meet them, 10,000 well-disciplined troops, with a complete train of field artillery. What chance had the Covenanters against such a force? Nevertheless, they met at Bothwell Bridge, a few miles west of Hamilton. The Covenanters, notwithstanding their inferior force, resisted the cannonade and musketry of the enemy with great courage.
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