For ten days Bothwell kept Mary in Dunbar "sequestrated," in her own words, "from the company of all her servants, and others of whom she might have asked counsel, and seeing those upon whose counsel and fidelity she had before depended, already yielded to his appetite, and _so left alone, as it were, a prey to him_."[82] Closely shut up as she was, she long hoped that some of her more loyal nobles would exert themselves to procure her deliverance. But not one of them stirred in her behalf, for Bothwell was at this time dreaded or courted by all of them, and finding the person of the Queen thus left at his disposal, he did not hesitate to declare to her, that he would make her his wife, "who would, or who would not,--yea, whether she would herself or not."[83] Mary, in reply, charged him with the foulest ingratitude; and his conduct, she told him, grieved her the more, because he was one "of whom she doubted less than of any subject she had."[84] But he was not now to be driven from his purpose. He spent his whole time with Mary; and his whole conversation was directed to the one great object he had in view. He called to his aid every variety of passion; sometimes flinging himself at her feet, and imploring her to pardon a deed which the violence of his love had made imperative; and, at other times, giving vent to a storm of rage, and threatening dishonour, imprisonment, and death, if she hesitated longer to comply with his demands. Mary herself is the best chronicler of these distracting scenes, although it must be observed, that she did not write of them till Bothwell had achieved his purpose; and consequently, making a virtue of necessity, she was anxious to place them in as favourable a point of view as possible. "Being at Dunbar," she says, "we reproached him the honour he had to be so esteemed of us, the favour we had always shewn him, his ingratitude, with all other remonstrances which might serve to rid us out of his hands. Albeit we found his doing rude, yet were his answer and words but gentle, that he would honour and serve us, and would noways offend us, asking pardon of the boldness he had taken to convoy us to one of our own houses, whereunto he was driven by force, as well as constrained by love, the vehemency whereof had made him to set apart the reverence, which naturally, as our subject, he bore to us, as also for safety of his own life. And then began to make us a discourse of his whole life, how unfortunate he had been to find men his unfriends whom he had never offended; how their malice never ceased to assault him on all occasions, albeit unjustly; what calumnies they had spread of him, touching the odious violence perpetrated in the person of the King our late husband; how unable he was to save himself from the conspiracies of his enemies, whom he could not know by reason that every man professed himself outwardly to be his friend; and yet he found such hidden malice