Bothwell, in the mean time, kept as quiet as possible, attending, as usual, at court, and taking care always to be present at the meetings of the Privy Council. But he had lighted a torch which was not to be extinguished, till it had blazed over Scotland, and kindled his own funeral pyre. On whatever grounds the suspicion had gone abroad, (and it is difficult to say why public attention should so soon have been directed to him as the perpetrator of the late murder, unless we suppose Murray, or some of his other accomplices, to have been now eager to publish his guilt, in order to accomplish his ruin), it is at all events certain, that in a few days after the proclamation for the discovery of the assassins had been issued, a placard was set up at night, on the door of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, in which it was affirmed, that the Earl of Bothwell, together with a Mr James Balfour, a Mr David Chalmers, and a Mr John Spence, were the persons principally concerned in the crime, and that the Queen herself was "assenting thereto." It might be reasonably concluded, that no notice whatever would be taken of an anonymous paper thus expressed; but the Queen, even although it insultingly accused herself, was so anxious to have the matter of the murder investigated, that she caused another proclamation to be issued, without waiting for the advice of her Privy Council, desiring the author of the placard to divulge his name, and promising that if he could show there was any truth in any part of his averment, he should receive the promised reward.[63] A second placard was stuck up in answer, requiring the money to be lodged in honest hands, and three of the Queen's servants, whom it named, to be put in arrest; and undertaking, as soon as these conditions were complied with, that the author and four friends would discover themselves. This was so palpable an evasion, that it of course met with no attention. To suppose that Government would take upon itself the charge of partiality, and place the public money in what an anonymous writer might consider "honest hands," was too grossly absurd to have been proposed by any one who really wished to do his country a service.