About the 5th November she returned from Jedburgh to a village called
Kelso, and there she received letters from the King. When she had read
these in the presence of the Regent, the Earl of Huntly, and the
Secretary, with a sad countenance, she said that unless by some means
she were freed from the King her life would not be worth living; and
that if it could be done in no other way, rather than live in such
misery, she would take her life with her own hand.... When, about the
end of November, she came to Craigmillar, a castle about two miles from
Edinburgh, she commenced a similar conversation in the presence of the
Earl of Moray (afterwards Regent, and now himself dead), the Earl of
Argyle, and the Secretary. She mentioned what seemed to her a
satisfactory plan. She projected a suit of divorce against the King, and
doubted not but that it could easily be done, since they were in that
degree of consanguinity which is forbidden by Canon Law for the
contraction of matrimony, although they had been by letters easily
exempted from that law. At this point some one raised an objection,
that, if it were so managed, their son would be illegitimate, being born
out of matrimony, and the more so that neither of the parents was
ignorant of the causes that rendered the marriage null. She considered
that reply for a little, and recognised its truth. Not daring to enter
upon a scheme which would thus affect her son, she abandoned her project
of a divorce, nor did she ever afterwards let slip any opportunity of
getting rid of the King, as may be readily gathered from what remains to
tell.
_The Protestation of the Earls of Huntly and Argyll, 1568, Goodall's
Examination_, vol. ii. pp. 316-321, from Cott. Lib. Calig.,
vol. i. p. 282.
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