James Hepburne, Earl of Bothwell, though some of the leading features of his character had hardly shown themselves at the period of which we speak, merits nevertheless, from the part he subsequently acted, especial notice at present. He had succeeded his father in his titles and estates in the year 1556, when he was five or six and twenty years of age. He enjoyed not only large estates, but the hereditary offices of Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Sheriff of Berwick, Haddington and Edinburgh, and Baillie of Lauderdale. With the exception of the Duke of Chatelherault, he was the most powerful nobleman in the southern districts of Scotland. Soon after coming to his titles, he began to take an active share in public business. In addition to his other offices, he was appointed the Queen's Lieutenant on the Borders, and Keeper of Hermitage Castle, by the Queen Regent, to whom he always remained faithful, in opposition to the Lord James, and what was then termed the English faction. He went over to France on the death of Francis II. to pay his duty to Mary, and on his return to Scotland, was by her intrusted with the discharge of an important commission regarding the Government. Though all former differences were now supposed to have been forgotten, there was not, nor did there ever exist, a very cordial agreement between the Earls of Murray and Bothwell. They were both about the same age, but their dispositions were very different. Murray was self-possessed, full of foresight, prudent and wary. Bothwell was bold, reckless, and extravagant. His youth had been devoted to every species of dissipation; and even in manhood, he seemed more intent on pleasure than on business. This was a sort of life which Murray despised, and perhaps he calculated that Bothwell would never aim at any other. But, though guided by no steady principles, and devoted to licentiousness, Bothwell was nevertheless not the mere man of pleasure. He was all his life celebrated for daring and lawless exploits, and vanity or passion, were motives whose force he was never able to resist. Unlike Murray, who, when he had an end in view, made his advances towards it as cautiously as an Indian hunter, Bothwell dashed right through, as careless of the means by which he was to accomplish his object, as of the consequences that were to ensue. His manner was of that frank, open, and uncalculating kind, which frequently catches a superficial observer. They who did not study him more closely, were apt to imagine that he was merely a blustering, good-natured, violent, headstrong man, whose manners must inevitably have degenerated into vulgarity, had he not been nobly born, and accustomed to the society of his peers. But much more serious conclusions might have drawn by those who had penetration enough to see under the cloak of dissoluteness, in which he wrapped himself and his designs. With regard to his personal appearance, it does not seem to have been remarkably prepossessing.