_Fifth_, What was done with the letters immediately after Morton and the other Lords got possession of them? Bothwell had been already accused of the murder of Darnley; his former acquittal had been declared unjust; he had been separated from the Queen; and she herself had been sequestrated in Loch-Leven, until the whole affair should be duly investigated. Surely, then, the discovery of these letters would be regarded with signal satisfaction, and the associated Lords would lose not a moment in announcing their existence to the nation, as the best justification of their own proceedings. They had sent Mary, it is true, to Loch-Leven, somewhat precipitately, five days before they were aware of her enormous guilt; but if their own ambition had prompted that step, they would now be able to free themselves from blame, and would silence at once the boldest of the Queen's defenders. As it appears by the records, that a meeting of Privy Council was held on the 21st of June, the very day after Dalgleish was seized, we shall surely find that all the papers were produced, and their contents impressively recorded in the Council-books. Nothing of the kind took place; and though Morton was present at the meeting, not a single word was said of the letters.[216] Again, on the 26th of June, an act was passed for sanctioning the imprisonment of the Queen in Loch-Leven, and a proclamation issued for apprehending the Earl of Bothwell; but though the latter was accused of having "treasonably ravished" the person of her Highness the Queen, and also of being the "principal author of the late cruel murder," no hint was given of the evidence which had been recently discovered against him, and which, indeed, had it been in their possession, would have directly contradicted the assertion, that Bothwell had been guilty Of "treasonable ravishment," or of keeping the Queen in "thraldom and bondage;" for it would have appeared, that he had obtained her previous consent for every thing he had done.[217] Between this date and the 11th of July, several other meetings of Council were held, and acts published, but not a whisper was heard concerning these important letters. When Sir Nicolas Throckmorton was sent by Elizabeth, as her ambassador into Scotland, the Lords presented him, on the 11th of July, with a formal justification of their doings; but, in all that long and laboured paper, the letters were never once alluded to. On the contrary, in direct opposition to them, such passages as the following occur more than once:--"How shamefully the Queen, our Sovereign, was led captive, and, by fear, force, and (as by many conjectures may be well suspected) other extraordinary and more unlawful means, compelled to become bed-fellow to another wife's husband, and to him who, not three months before, had in his bed most cruelly murdered her husband, is manifest to the world, to the great dishonour of her Majesty, us all, and