The "Reply" of Mary's Commissioners, to this feeble and disingenuous "Answer" of the Earl of Murray, was quite as candid as it was conclusive. It was stated for Mary, that, so far from having been aware, at the time of her marriage, that Bothwell was "known," or "affirmed," to be the "chief author" of the horrible murder committed on her late husband, she had seen him solemnly acquitted of all suspicion by a regular trial, according to the laws of the realm, and that most of her principal nobility had solicited her to accept of him as a husband, promising him service, and her Highness loyal obedience,--not one of them, either before or after the marriage, having warned her to avoid it, or expressed their discontent with it, till they suddenly appeared in arms;--that, at Carberry Hill, she willingly parted with Bothwell, as they themselves had seen; but that, if he were in truth guilty of the crimes imputed to him, which she did not then believe, they were to blame for permitting him to escape;--that, upon being taken into Edinburgh, where they had promised to reverence her as their Queen, she found herself treated as their captive;--that, so far from showing any persevering attachment to Bothwell, she repeatedly declared it to be her wish, that the estates of the realm should examine into all the charges which had been made against him;--that, notwithstanding, she had been forcibly carried off under shade of night, and imprisoned against her will in the Castle of Loch-Leven, where she was afterwards made to subscribe instruments of abdication, only through the fear of present death;--that, consequently, the pretended coronation of her son was an unlawful and treasonable proceeding, and the pretended nomination of the Earl of Murray as Regent, a proof of itself that force and fraud had been used; for, even supposing she had been willing to abdicate, if she had been left to her own free choice, there were others whom she would have preferred to appoint to the chief rule during her son's minority;--that, therefore, she required the Queen of England to support and fortify her in the peaceable enjoyment and government of her realm, and to declare the pretended authority usurped by others null from the beginning.[161]