Upon the 7th day of October 1566 years, our sovereign lady, accompanied with the nobility of this realm, departed of Edinburgh towards Jedburgh, to hold a justice eyre there, which was proclaimed to be held upon the eighth day of the same month. Upon the same day, James, Earl Bothwell ... being sent by our sovereigns to bring in certain thieves and malefactors of Liddesdale to the justice eyre ... chanced upon a thief called John Elliot of the Park.... The said earl shot him with a dagg {pistol} in the body.... The said John perceiving himself shot and the Earl fallen, he went to him where he lay, and gave him three wounds, one in the body, one in the head, and one in the hand; and my lord gave him two strokes with a hanger, ... and the said thief departed, and my lord lay in swoon, while his servants came and carried him to the Hermitage.... _FROM JEDBURGH TO HERMITAGE_ Upon the fifteenth day of the said month of October, our sovereign lady rode from Jedburgh to the Hermitage {about 30 miles}, wherein my Lord Bothwell was lying in mending of his wound, and spake with the same earl, and returned again the same night to Jedburgh. _Nau's Memorials_, p. 30. The Earl of Bothwell was so dangerously wounded in the hand that every one thought he would die. He thought so himself. Such being the case, her Majesty was both solicited and advised to pay him a visit at his house, called the Hermitage, in order that she might learn from him the state of affairs in these districts, of which the said lord was hereditary governor. With this object in view, she went very speedily, in the company of the Earl of Moray and some other lords, in whose presence she conversed with Bothwell for some hours, and on the same day returned to Jedburgh. _BUCHANAN'S VERSION_ Buchanan on the Ride to Hermitage. _Detection._