1566.—December 23. Restoration of the Consistorial Jurisdiction of the Archbishop of St. Andrews.
Laing, II., 77. from Privy Seal Record, bk. 35, fol. 99.
A letter made restoring and reproving our sovereign's well beloved and trusty councillor, John, Archbishop of St. Andrews, primate and legate of Scotland, to all and sundry his jurisdictions as well upon the south as north sides of the Forth within the diocese of St. Andrews, which pertained to the Archbishopric of the same, to be used by him and his commissaries in all time coming in the same manner and form of justice as it is now used.... At Stirling, this xxiii day of December, the year of God, 1566 years.
[The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts had been abolished in 1560. It was the Archbishop who pronounced the sentence of divorce between Bothwell and his wife, either in virtue of this general warrant, or by means of a special commission to try the case. On the one side, this restoration of the Consistorial Court is regarded as pointing to Mary's collusion with Bothwell, while controversialists, on the other side, would connect it with the proposal, made at Craigmillar, of a divorce between Mary and Darnley.]
DARNLEY FALLS ILL