This execrable deed gave rise to various suspicions and conjectures, which, while they glanced at the queen from her new sentiments with regard to her husband, were, with a general consent, directed toward Bothwell. A proclamation was issued from the throne, offering a considerable reward for the murderer. Neither the power and greatness of Bothwell, nor his favor with the queen, secured him from the indignant sentiment of the nation. He had a mock trial, in which he was acquitted. The queen, on a journey from Edinburgh to Stirling, to visit her son, was seized by a party of Bothwell's and conducted a prisoner to his castle at Dunbar. Here he prevailed on her to marry him, and on her subsequent appearance in public she was received with a sullen and disrespectful silence by the people. The transactions which had passed during the last three months in Scotland were beheld by Europe with horror and detestation. The murder of the king, the impunity with which his assassins were suffered to escape, and the marriage of the queen with the man accused of being their chief, were a series of incidents, which, for their atrocity and rapid succession, were scarcely to be paralleled in the pages of history. A general infamy fell upon the Scotch nation, which was regarded, from these circumstances, as a people void of decency, humanity, and honor. [Illustration: Mary Stuart and Rizzio.] The discontented nobles confederated together and flew to arms. Bothwell and Mary were unable to stem the opposition; she surrendered to her enemies, and was conducted a captive to the castle of Lochleven. Mary had for some weeks suffered the terrors of a prison; of her deliverance there seemed to be but little prospect; no one had appeared as her defender or advocate. Thus solitary, deserted, and distressed, her persecutors reckoned on her fears and on her sex. Lord Lindsay, the fiercest zealot of the party, was employed to communicate their plan to the queen, and to obtain from her a subscription to the papers with which he was charged. In the execution of his commission, he spared neither harshness nor brutality; certain death was offered to the unhappy victim, as the alternative of her refusal. Thus urged, she yielded to the pressure of circumstances, and put her signature to the papers presented to her by Lindsay. By one of these papers she resigned the crown, renounced all share in the government, and consented to the coronation of the young king. By another, she appointed Murray to the regency, and vested him with the powers and privileges of the office. Pierced with grief, and bathed in indignant tears, she signed the deed of her own humiliation, and furnished to her adversaries the instrument of her abasement.