When all things were ready prepared for performing this cruel fact ... the Queen, for manners' sake, after supper, goes up to the King's lodging. There being determined to show him all the tokens of reconciled good will, she spent certain hours in his company, with countenance and talk much more familiar than she had used in six or seven months before. At the coming in of Paris, she broke off her talk and prepared to depart. This Paris was a young man born in France, and had lived certain years in the houses of Bothwell and Seton, and afterwards with the Queen. Whereas the other keys of that lodging were in custody of the King's servants, Paris, by feigning certain fond and slender causes, had in keeping the keys which Bothwell kept back, of the back gate and the postern. He was in special trust with Bothwell and the Queen, touching their secret affairs. His coming (as it was before agreed among them) was a watchword that all was ready for the matter. As soon as the Queen saw him, she rose up immediately, and feigning another cause to depart, she said, "Alas! I have much offended toward Sebastian this day, that I came not in a mask to his marriage." This Sebastian was an Avernois {Auvergnois}, a man in great favour with the Queen, for his cunning in music, and his merry jesting, and was married the same day. The King thus left, in manner, alone, in a desolate place, the Queen departs, accompanied with the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Cassilis, that attended upon her. After that she was come into her chamber, after midnight, she was in long talk with Bothwell, none being present but the captain of her guard. And when he also withdrew himself, Bothwell was there left alone, without other company, and shortly after retired into his own chamber. He changed his apparel, because he would be unknown of such as met him, and put on a loose cloak, such as the Swartrytters[18] wear, and so went forward through the watch to execute his intended traitorous fact. The whole order of the doing thereof may be easily understood by their confessions who were put to death for it.
Bothwell, after the deed was ended that he went for, returned, and as if he had been ignorant of all that was done, he gat him to bed. The Queen, in the meantime, in great expectation of the success, how finely she played her part (as she thought) it is marvell to tell; for she not once stirred at the noise of the fall of the house, which shook the whole town, nor at the fearful outcries that followed, and confused cries of the people (for I think there happened her not any new thing unlooked for) till Bothwell, feigning himself afraid, rose again out of his bed, and came to her with the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Athole, and with the wives of the Earls of Mar and Athole, and with the Secretary. There, while the monstrous chance was in telling, while every one wondered at the thing, that the King's lodging was even from the very foundation blown up in the air, and the King himself slain; in this amazedness and confused fear of all sorts of persons, only that same heroical heart of the Queen maintained itself, so far from casting herself down into base lamentations and tears, unbeseeming the royal name, blood, and estate, that she matched, or rather far surmounted all credit of the constancy of any in former times. This also proceeded of the same nobility of courage, that she sent out the most part of them that were then about her, to inquire out the manner of the doing, and commanded the soldiers that watched to follow, and she herself settled her to rest, with a countenance so quiet, and mind so untroubled, that she sweetly slept till the next day at noon. But lest she should appear void of all naturalness at the death of her husband, by little and little, at length she kept her close, and proclaimed a mourning not long to endure.
MARY ON THE MURDER
Mary's Description of the Murder.
Queen Mary to the Archbishop of Glasgow, February 11 [10?], 1567. Keith's History, vol. i. p. 101.
A PLOT AGAINST BOTH KING AND QUEEN
We have received this morning your letters of the 27th January by your servant Robert Dury, containing in one part such advertisement as we find by effect over true. Albeit the success has not altogether been such as the authors of that mischievous fact had preconceived in their mind, and had put it in execution, if God in His mercy had not preserved us and reserved us, as we trust, to the end that we may take a rigorous vengeance of that mischievous deed, which as it should remain unpunished, we had rather lose life and all. The matter is horrible and so strange as we believe the like was never heard of in any country. This night past, being the 9th February, a little after two hours after midnight, the house wherein the King was lodged was in an instant blown in the air, he lying sleeping in his bed, with such a vehemency, that of the whole lodging, walls, and other, there is nothing remained, no, not a stone above another, but all carried far away or dashed in dross to the very ground-stone. It must be done by force of powder, and appears to have been a mine. By whom it has been done, or in what manner, it appears not as yet. We doubt not but according to the diligence our Council has begun already to use, the certainty of all shall be used shortly; and the same being discovered, which we wot God will never suffer to lie hid, we hope to punish the same with such rigour as shall serve for example of this cruelty to all ages to come. Always whoever have taken this wicked enterprise in hand, we assure ourselves it was dressed as well for us as for the King; for we lay the most part of all the last week in that same lodging, and were then accompanied with the most part of the Lords that are in this town that same night at midnight, and of every chance tarried not all night, by reason of some mask in the Abbey: but we believe it was not chance, but God that put it in our head. We despatched the bearer upon the sudden, and therefore write to you the more shortly....
NAU'S ACCOUNT OF THE MURDER
Nau's Memorials, p. 33.
He {the King} went to Glasgow, where he was seized with the small-pox. He sent several times for the Queen, who was very ill, having been injured by a fall from her horse at Seton. At last she went, stayed with him, and attended him on his return to Edinburgh.... On his return to Edinburgh, the King lodged in a small house outside the town, which he had chosen in the report of James Balfour and some others. This was against the Queen's wishes, who was anxious to take him to Craigmillar, for he could not stay in Holyrood Palace lest he should give infection to the Prince. On his own account, too, he did not wish any one to see him in his present condition.... While he was in this house, the King was often visited by the Queen, with whom he was now perfectly reconciled. He promised to give her much information of the utmost importance to the life and quiet of both of them.... He warned her more particularly to be on her guard against Lethington, who, he said, was planning the ruin of the one by the means of the other.... That very night, as her Majesty was about to leave the King, she met Paris, Lord Bothwell's valet-de-chambre, and noticing that his face was all blackened with gunpowder, she exclaimed in the hearing of many of the lords, just as she was mounting her horse, "Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!" At this he turned very red.