passed Dunbar in their way to the siege of Leith, the garrison fired upon them, but as in their march they kept near the walls of the Castle, few of the shots took effect.*

While the English were aiding the cause of the Reformers at the siege of Leith, the latter were busily employed in the destruction of palaces and abbeys. Bothwell, and the French Commandant of Dunbar, cut in pieces many straggling parties of the Scots and English, and more than once intercepted and seized the military chest when on its way from Berwick.†

The English and French ambassadors having met at Berwick for the purpose of negociating a truce, it appeared to be one great object of the Scottish nobility and people, to get the French garrisons sent out of the country. To propitiate both parties, concessions were made to the nobility and people, and part of the fortifications which had been recently built at Dunbar were to be razed, and no new building erected without the consent of parliament. And on the 16th July 1560, the English army, when on their way to Berwick, made it their business to see that the demolition of the fort, lately built in front of the Castle, should be put in execution.

In 1562, Lord Gordon, eldest son of the Earl of Huntly, was convicted of joining with his father in an enterprise against the Queen, and was condemned for high treason: the sentence was, however, commuted into imprisonment in the Castle of Dunbar.‡

On the assassination of David Rizzio by Lord Ruthven and others in Holyroodhouse, on Saturday 9th March 1566,|| Queen Mary, alarmed for her safety, left Edinburgh on the following Monday at midnight, in company

❤ Maitland.

+"Concessions granted by the king and queen to the nobility and people of Scotland," 3d July, 154,--Keith.

Ibid.

|| Original Hist. of Holyrood by the author, p. 137.

with Darnley, and proceeded to the Palace of Seton, whence she pursued her journey to the safer retreat of Dunbar Castle.

On the 16th March, Mary issued a proclamation from Dunbar, calling on the inhabitants of the sheriffdoms of Edinburgh, Haddington, Linlithgow, Stirling, Lanark, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Berwick, Lauder, &c. to meet her at Haddington, on Sunday the 17th, with eight "days provisions. After issuing this proclamation, the Queen sent orders to Lord Erskine to fire upon the associated Lords from the Castle of Edinburgh; and the Earl of Morton, Lord Ruthven, the Barons of Ormeston, Warrieston, &c. were immediately summoned to appear under pain of rebellion, but the two first fled to Newcastle, while the others sought refuge in the Highlands and on the border. The Queen thereafter returned to Edinburgh in triumph, with 8000 warriors in her train.

James Earl Bothwell, perhaps the second most powerful peer in Scotland, was appointed by the Queen in parliament to the captaincy and keeping of this fortress. He was cruel and ambitious, but not very penetrating, and his advancement in the state added to his presumption, which was encouraged by Murray, Morton, and Maitland, and induced him to aspire to the Crown. And it is evident they encouraged that fatal marriage, for the purpose of ruining both himself and the Queen, and thereby paving the way for their own exaltation in a regency.

On the 24th April 1567, Bothwell, with an army of 800 horse, seized upon the person of the widowed Queen "at Cramond Brig on her return from Stirling," accompanied by a slender retinue, and carried her off to the recesses of this Castle, in which his will was despotic law,-where villainous actions of every degree of guilt could be perpetrated with impunity,-as no human eye could witness them, or if they did, the tongue that told of them probably told no more. Here the Queen of Scots was subject to this ruffian many days. During all the time, (as she

afterwards feelingly complained,) not a sword was unsheathed, not a man stirred in her defence or for her rescue. But after her marriage with him, a thousand swords were drawn to drive her from the country and dethrone her; thereby intimating that she had been drawn by matchless artifice and force into a snare, from which she could not escape. The secrets of those awful days will never be known to this world; but no one can suppose, that he who had waded through seas of blood towards the attainment of his object, would in this instance stop short of any means, however base, to attain the summit of his guilty ambition. Be the means what they may, his victim entered those dark walls his prisoner, and she left them, a devoted slave, his will her law. She told no tales, she sought no vengeance. The foul deed was perpetrated, irrevocably perpetrated; before she left her prison walls, her fate was sealed. If word or deed revealed the secrets that had passed therein, or sought revenge, redress she could not have had. And she was ultimately induced to forgive the murderer of her husband, and ravisher of herself.

The die of the Queen of Scots was now cast. Amidst many difficulties, while under Bothwell's thraldom and Maitland's delusion, she chose to marry that miscreant as the least difficulty, having previously created him Duke of Orkney. On the 15th of May 1567, they were married in the Palace of Holyrood by Adam Bothwell, bishop of Orkney, amidst few spectators. The whole country, as might well be imagined, was thrown into great agitation by these extraordinary occurrences, and the insurgents raised great clamour, from the effects of which the Queen thought it prudent to take refuge in Dunbar Castle. Lord Hume had already taken arms and pursued them to Bothwell's Castle of Borthwick, from which he made his escape; Mary in disguise following him as far as Black-Castle, and from thence to Dunbar. She was at length joined by such considerable forces as enabled her to take the field. The Queen took post on Carberry hill, and the insurgents headed by Morton and Athol drew up in front of the

royal army. The fate of Carberry is well known; Bothwell withdrew himself, and the Queen went over to the insurgent army, "on an assurance of them honouring and obeying her as their sovereign." The Queen, instead of being conveyed to her palace of Holyrood, which lay on the direct road from Carberry hill, was conducted through the streets of Edinburgh, and to the Provost's house, covered with dust, and loaded with every possible indignity by the infuriated populace. It is said, on making her appearance at one of the windows, sympathy obtained the ascendancy, and she would have been rescued, had not the conspirators, apprehending her deliverance, consented to remove her to Holyrood, which was accordingly done on the evening of the same day; but to prevent the possibility of a rescue, she was afterwards conveyed in disguised apparel, and sent to repent her indiscretions in the picturesque solitudes of Lochleven Castle, while active measures were taken for the apprehension of her husband.

The Earl of Bothwell, who had retired from the field almost alone, fled straight to Dunbar Castle, where he remained till 26th June, as appears from an order of Morton and his council for "summoning the keeper of Dunbar Castle to surrender the same, because the Earl of Bothwell was reset and received within the said Castle."* Sometime after, as high admiral of Scotland, he went to sea with some few ships under his command, and cruised along the northern coast until the 11th August, when a commission was issued to Murray of Tullibardine, and Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, to pursue the Earl of Bothwell by sea and by land with fire and sword.

In the remote region of the Orkneys, he for sometime subsisted by pursuing piratical practices. Kirkaldy of Grange, in a ship called the Unicorn, followed by some other vessels, so closely pursued him, that when the vessel which carried Bothwell escaped by the north passage of

* Edmonston's Zetland, p. 89.

Bressa sound, Kirkaldy came in by the south, and continued to chase to the northward. When his enemies were gaining fast upon him, and his capture appeared inevitable, Bothwell's pilot, who was well acquainted with the course, continued to sail close by a sunken rock, which he passed in safety, and Kirkaldy sailing nearly in the same direction, but unconscious of the hidden danger, struck his vessel against it and was wrecked; the rock, which is seen at low water, is still called the "Unicorn" from this circumstance. After having eluded the vigilance of his pursuers, he was taken by a crew of Norwegians, while endeavouring to make prize of a Turkish vessel, and carried to Denmark. Here he paid the price of his crimes, by languishing out the residue of his days in a loathsome dungeon, confessing his guilt in his dying moments, and exculpating the Queen from being privy to the death of her husband Darnley.

Having followed the fate of the flagitious Bothwell to its miserable close, we now pursue the remaining history of Dunbar Castle.

Soon after this Murray laid siege to the Castle of Dunbar, and the governor seeing no hopes of relief, surrendered it on favourable terms. The great guns were all dismounted and carried to the Castle of Edinburgh, and this and several other castles were ordered to be "dismantled on account of their ruinous state and great charge to government, and also to prevent them being used as places of refuge to an enemy," and an act of parliament was accordingly passed for that purpose. Dunbar is famous as the scene of a battle fought between the Scots army, commanded by Lesley, and the English, when they were defeated by Cromwell on 3d September 1650.†

On the following day, Cromwell addressed a letter to

*Melville's Memoirs. Hist. of Dunbar, p. 210.

+ It is remarkable that his principal victories at Dunbar and Worcester happened on the 3d September, and finally his death on that memorable day.