But the little wee babe came to her back,
An forward it would be.
8 is 4 in the MS.
O.
“The unfortunate heroine’s name is Mary Moil”: Finlay, p. xix.
174
EARL BOTHWELL
‘Earle Bodwell,’ Percy MS., p. 272; Hales and Furnivall, II, 260.
Printed in Percy’s Reliques, with changes, 1765, II, 197, ‘The Murder of the King of Scots;’ with some restorations of the original readings, 1794, II, 200.
This ballad represents, 8, 13, that the murder of Darnley was done in revenge for his complicity in the murder of Riccio; in which there may be as much truth as this, that the queen’s resentment of Darnley’s participation in that horrible transaction may have been operative in inducing her assent—such assent as she gave—to the conspiracy against the life of her husband.
2. Darnley came to Scotland in February, 1565 (being then but just turned of nineteen), not sent for, but very possibly with some hope of pleasing his cousin, ‘the queen [dowager] of France,’ to whom he was married in the following July. His inglorious career was closed in February, 1567.