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They came at once, and the four made an odd group as they stood there in the firelit gloom of that November day the lovely young Queen, so frail and wistful in her high-backed chair; the stalwart, arrogant Bothwell, magnificent in a doublet of peach-coloured velvet that tapered to a golden girdle; Argyll, portly and sober in a rich suit of black; and Maitland of Lethington, lean and crafty of face, in a long furred gown that flapped about his bony shanks.
The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life the continual tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were familiar in the mouths of all.
Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those stern peers who counselled with her upon the most effectual way of having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man's peace why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high ground as her judges?
Then came the Queen "with no little worldly pomp," and took the chair between those two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."
During the next fifteen years the reign of James, and his struggle for freedom from the Kirk, was perturbed by a long series of intrigues of which the details are too obscure and complex for presentation here. His chief Minister was now John Maitland, a brother of Lethington, and as versatile, unscrupulous, and intelligent as the rest of that House.
"It was never my own death I wished when a man stood in my road to aught I craved," he said, lowering his voice, for Maitland of Lethington now restored to his secretaryship was writing at a table across the room, and my Lord of Argyll was leaning over him. She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes startled. "What devil's counsel do you whisper?" she asked him.
The letters and sonnets were forgeries. Maitland of Lethington may have forged the letters; Buchanan, according to some, the sonnets. Whoever forged them, Buchanan made use of them in his Detection, knowing them to be forged. 2nd. Whether Mary was innocent or not, Buchanan acted a base and ungrateful part in putting himself in the forefront amongst her accusers.
Between February and May 1563, the Cardinal of Lorraine had reopened an old negotiation for wedding the Queen to the Archduke, and Mary had given an evasive reply; she must consult Parliament. In March, with the Spanish Ambassador in London, Lethington had proposed for Don Carlos.
No clan was so strong as the warlike brethren who would have avenged the Reformer, and who probably would have been backed by Elizabeth. Again, though he was estranged from Moray, that leader was also, in some degree, estranged from Lethington, who did not allow him to know the details of his intrigues, in France and England, for the Queen's marriage.
The "Castilian" chiefs wished him no harm, they would even shelter him in their hold, but they could not be responsible for his "safety from the multitude and rascal," in the town, for the craftsmen preferred the party of Kirkcaldy. Knox had a curious interview in the Castle with Lethington, now stricken by a mortal malady.
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