The people of Edinburgh, who had heard what turn the affair had taken, flocked out upon the roads to see the queen return. They lined the waysides to gaze upon the great cavalcade as it passed. The nobles who conducted Mary thus back toward her capital had a banner prepared, or allowed one to be prepared, on which was a painting representing the dead body of Darnley, and the young prince James kneeling near him, and calling on God to avenge his cause. Mary came on, in the procession, after this symbol. They might perhaps say that it was not intended to wound her feelings, and was not of a nature to do it, unless she considered herself as taking sides with the murderers of her husband. She, however, knew very well that she was so regarded by great numbers of the populace assembled, and that the effect of such an effigy carried before her was to hold her up to public obloquy. The populace did, in fact, taunt and reproach her as she proceeded, and she rode into Edinburgh, evincing all the way extreme mental suffering by her agitation and her tears.
She expected that they were at least to take her to Holyrood; but no, they turned at the gate to enter the city. Mary protested earnestly against this, and called, half frantic, on all who heard her to come to her rescue. But no one interfered. They took her to the provost's house, and lodged her there for the night, and the crowd which had assembled to observe these proceedings gradually dispersed. There seemed, however, in a day or two, to be some symptoms of a reaction in favor of the fallen queen; and, to guard against the possibility of a rescue, the lords took Mary to Holyrood again, and began immediately to make arrangements for some more safe place of confinement still.
Bothwell's retreat.
He is pursued.
Bothwell's narrow escape.
In the mean time, Bothwell went from Carberry Hill to his castle at Dunbar, revolving moodily in his mind his altered fortunes. After some time he found himself not safe in this place of refuge, and so he retreated to the north, to some estates he had there, in the remote Highlands. A detachment of forces was sent in pursuit of him. Now there are, north of Scotland, some groups of dismal islands, the summits of submerged mountains and rocks, rising in dark and sublime, but gloomy grandeur, from the midst of cold and tempestuous seas. Bothwell, finding himself pursued, undertook to escape by ship to these islands. His pursuers, headed by Grange, who had negotiated at Carberry for the surrender of the queen, embarked in other vessels, and pressed on after him. At one time they almost overtook him, and would have captured him and all his company were it not that they got entangled among some shoals. Grange's sailors said they must not proceed. Grange, eager to seize his prey, insisted on their making sail and pressing forward. The consequence was, they ran the vessels aground, and Bothwell escaped in a small boat. As it was, however, they seized some of his accomplices, and brought them back to Edinburgh. These men were afterward tried, and some of them were executed; and it was at their trial, and through the confessions they made, that the facts were brought to light which have been related in this narrative.
He turns pirate.
Bothwell in prison.
His miserable end.
Bothwell, now a fugitive and an exile, but still retaining his desperate and lawless character, became a pirate, and attempted to live by robbing the commerce of the German Ocean. Rumor is the only historian, in ordinary cases, to record the events in the life of a pirate; and she, in this case, sent word, from time to time, to Scotland, of the robberies and murders that the desperado committed; of an expedition fitted out against him by the King of Denmark, of his being taken and carried into a Danish port; of his being held in imprisonment for a long period there, in a gloomy dungeon; of his restless spirit chafing itself in useless struggles against his fate, and sinking gradually, at last under the burdens of remorse for past crimes, and despair of any earthly deliverance; of his insanity, and, finally, of his miserable end.