treaty of marriage. These dignitaries soon after left the country, accompanied by their retinues, all except about sixteen persons, male and female, who remained about the Queen's person. The Scotch chroniclers are inhospitably particular in recording that, during the time they staid in the country, they put it to an expense of twelve hundred merks daily; which was too immense an expenditure, over and above the usual costs of the court, to be long tolerable. Nothing else is remarkable about James's marriage, except that Elizabeth sent an ambassador to congratulate him on the event, and to carry presents to his wife. The ambassador was the same person * who had sat as chancellor on the jury which condemned his mother to the block; a proof striking, above all others, of what I have oftener than once had to point out in the course of this narrative, the want of delicacy-the total insensibility to all that is now called good taste, which characterized the age. The Earl of Worcester. He brought a cloak finely trimmed round, and set with rich jewels; a carcanet with pearls, a tablet, and a clock. CHAPTER VI. TURBULENCE OF THE EARL OF BOTHWELL AND THE CLERGYPOETICAL EXERCISES-DEATH OF THE EARL OF MORAY. 1589 1591. THE first year of James's married life was spent in some degree of quiet. Neither the nobility nor the ministers troubled him much during that period. It was not to be expected, however, that he could remain long unannoyed by one or other of these turbulent bodies. In the spring of 1591, an individual of the former class began a series of disturbances, which embittered the King's life for several years. This was Francis Earl of Bothwell, his illegitimate cousin, and the nephew of the former and more infamous Earl of the same title. Bothwell had been concerned in the intrigues which the Earl of Huntly, and some others of the Scotch nobility, carried on with the Spanish government, for furthering the object of the Invincible Armada; and in May 1589, he had been regularly condemned as guilty of treason on that account; though the King, from anxiety to keep on good terms with the Catholics, hung up the process against him and his accomplices. Bothwell was a man of exceeding violent passions. In the summer of 1589, he had received some contumelious language from Sir William Stuart, who was then in high favour, from his activity in suppressing the Catholics of the south of Scotland. As this language was given in the King's presence, he did not resent it on the instant; but he openly vowed to be revenged. Some days after, happening to meet Sir William on the principal street of Edinburgh, he drew his sword, and called to him to stand to his defence. A conflict took place, in which the servants joined. Stuart soon lost his sword, in consequence of a thrust by which he killed one of Bothwell's retinue. He, then fled to a cellar in the neighbourhood, whither Bothwell pursued him, and there killed his defenceless antagonist by re peated wounds. Strange to say, the King, from his peculiar situation, was unable to take any legal cognizance of this atrocious homicide. He was even obliged to make this very nobleman, within a few months, one of his regents to govern the country during his absence in Denmark. It is not now easy to discern, through the involved politics of James's court, how he at length came to look upon Bothwell as an enemy to his person. It is generally thought that Chancellor Maitland was the cause of his ruin, from dread of his turbulent and ambitious character. But, probably, the Earl had also offended James by some assumptions on the score of his descent; for although the King was, by his genealogy, the undoubted heir of both Scotland and England, yet he was induced, by the disposition which the Ca tholics and dissenters manifested to set aside his succession, to dread every sort of pretender, however absurd his claims. Perhaps, after all, the more probable way of accounting for the disgrace of Bothwell, is to give credit to the charges brought against him by Maitland, and for which he ostensibly suffered, that he consulted with necromancers and witches, for the purpose of destroying the King, and procuring his own exaltation. It was his own constant declaration that he was innocent of any such offence; and the scepticism of later historians, in inducing them to scoff at witchcraft, has led them also to write as if there could have been no such thing as consulting with persons professing the art. But, as it is now known that both Bothwell and his son were, at a later period, noted for using such arts, * and as instances are on record of persons of equal. ly good condition consulting sorcerers more than a century later, there seems to be no reason on that account for supposing his crime fictitious.-But this is a subject which will require to be treated at some length. One of the most prominent charges brought a gainst the intellect of King James, is his belief in witchcraft; and an allusion to his famous book on Dæmonology, is a favourite way of pointing an epigrammatic sentence against him. Many who never read his book take it upon them, from the changed opinions of the age regarding witchcraft, to sneer at him for giving his countenance to so base a superstition. But, how easy it is for a small mind, amidst the means and appliances of a late age, to assume a superiority over the picture of a great one struggling with the sloughs and shadows of a former and darker time! * See Mr Sharpe's Introduction to Law's Memorialls., The true way of considering the case is this. There are some matters of opinion, in which no mind is in advance of its age. Witchcraft was one of these till within the last hundred years. It is quite observable, that all the best informed intellects, both in Scotland and in England, sanc tioned that superstition, down to the time of the Revolution. The cause is the same with that which renders a great mind equally capable of religious fervour, with the meanest and most con fined. Wherever it is looked upon as a duty to exempt any thing from the ordinary modes of reasoning, then no wonder that all kinds of intellect alike receive it without hesitation. Such was the case with witchcraft about two hundred years ago: it was an essential thing in the religious creed of all orders of the people; to deny it was blasphemy, or at least disrespect for the dicta of Scripture. Surely it is a very strange thing, that a man who fulfilled in his life and opinions the whole idea of a good Christian, according to the views entertained of that character in his own time, should, at the distance of two hundred years, have so much discounted from his merit on one hand for superstition, so much on another for ignorance, and thus be left with a miserable fragmentary re version of what was originally a very good re pute! But, while James merits this general exculpation from the charge of undue superstition, the 'Dæmonologie' which he compiled on the subject, is in itself a very strong particular one. This work is by no means, what is generally supposed, a treatise written as a piece of special pleading, to prove the existence of witchcraft, and to impress |