I have heard some murmuring ... that there be some surprise to be trafficked in your country, but he {the Spanish ambassador} would never let me know of any particular, only assured me he had written to his master to know if by that way he can try any further, and that he was advertised and counselled to cause me haste toward you herewith.... Finally, I would beseech your Majesty right humbly to cause the captains of your guard be diligent in their office; for notwithstanding that I have no particular occasion wherein I desire it, yet can I not be out of fear till I hear of your news.... And so I pray the eternal Lord to preserve your Majesty from all dangers, with long life and good health.
The Visit to Glasgow and the Murder.
Buchanan's Detection (First Scots translation, in Anderson's Collections, vol. ii. pp. 17-24).
[Buchanan's account of Queen Mary's visit to Glasgow should be supplemented by a comparison with Crawford's "Deposition" ([pp. 208-213]), with the Glasgow Letter ([pp. 167-182]), and with the passage from Nau's "Memorials" on [p. 111.]]
Herself goes to Glasgow; she pretends the cause of her journey to be to see the King alive, whose death she had continually gaped for the month before. But what was indeed the true cause of that journey, every man may plainly perceive by her letters to Bothwell. Being now out of care of her son, whom she had in her own ward, bending herself to the slaughter of her husband, to Glasgow she goes, accompanied with the Hamiltons, and other the King's natural enemies.
KIRK-OF-FIELD
Bothwell, as it was between them before accorded, provides all things ready that were needful to accomplish the heinous act; First of all, a house, not commodious for a sick man, nor comely for a King, for it was both riven and ruinous, and had stood empty without any dweller for divers years before, in a place of small resort, between old falling walls of two kirks, near a few almshouses for poor beggars. And that no commodious means for committing that mischief might be wanting, there is a postern door in the Town Wall, hard by the house, whereby they might easily pass away into the fields. In choosing of the place, she would needs have it thought that they had respect to the wholesomeness. And to avoid suspicion that this was a feigned pretence, herself the two nights before the day of the murder, lay there in a lower room, under the King's chamber. And as she did curiously put off the shows of suspicion from herself, so the execution of the slaughter she was content to have committed to another.
THE QUEEN GOES TO HOLYROOD
About three days before the King was slain, she practised to set her brother, Lord Robert, and him at deadly feud, making reckoning that it should be gain to her, whichsoever of them had perished. For matter to ground their dissension, she made rehearsal of the speech that the King had had with her concerning her brother; and when they both so grew in talk, as the one seemed to charge the other with the lie, at last they were in a manner come from words to blows. But while they were both laying their hands on their weapons, the Queen feigning as though she had been perilously afraid of that which she earnestly desired, called the Earl of Murray, her other brother, to the parting, to this intent, that she might either presently bring him in danger to be slain himself, or in time to come to bear the blame of such mischief as then might have happened....
THE MURDER