How men stood to each other is clear from the fact that on the one side Darnley and his father linked themselves with the Catholic party--they were said to have adopted a plan of seizing the government, in the Queen's despite, in the name of her new-born son[221]--while on the other side the rest of the barons pledged themselves not to recognise him but only the Queen. A league was already concluded between some of them, originating with Sir James Balfour (who had been marked out for death by the halter in Holyrood), to rid the world by force of a tyrant and enemy of the nobility, against whom men must secure their lives. Thus all was in preparation for a fresh catastrophe; a new personal relation of the Queen brought it to pass. Among the nobles of Scotland James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, was especially distinguished for a fine figure, for youthful strength, intrepid manly courage, proved in a thousand adventures, and decided character. Though professedly a Protestant, he had attached himself to the Regent without wavering, and assured the Queen of his assistance while she was still in France. Can we wonder if Mary, under the pressure of the party combinations around, needing before all things a friend personally devoted to her, sought for support in this tried and energetic man? As she in general prized nothing more highly than bold and valiant deeds, she had often told him how much she admired him; but yet more than this,--we cannot doubt that she let herself be drawn into a passionate connexion with him. Who does not know the sonnets and the love-intoxicated letters she is believed to have addressed to him? I would not say that every word of the latter is genuine; through the several translations--from the French original (which is lost) into the Scotch idiom, from this into Latin, and then back into French as we now have them--they may have suffered much alteration: we have no right to lay stress on every expression, and interpret it by the light of later events: but in the main they are without doubt genuine: they contain circumstances which no one else could then know and which have since been proved to be true; no human being could have invented them.[222] It does not seem as if Mary's fondness for Bothwell was returned by him in the same degree: in her letters and poems she is constantly combating a rival, to whom his heart seems to give the preference. This was Bothwell's own wife whom he had only shortly before married: she stayed with him for a time in the neighbourhood of the court, but he took care that the Queen knew nothing of her being there. As he was before all things ambitious and desirous of power, he only cared for the Queen's love and the possession of her person so far as it would enable him to share her authority and to obtain the supreme power in Scotland. But for this another thing was necessary; the King must be removed out of the way. As Darnley had once joined Riccio's political enemies in the Holyrood