Darnley left the court in one of his sullen moods in December, 1566, and shortly after was stricken with smallpox at Glasgow. Notwithstanding his past ingratitude and infidelity, Mary, on hearing of his misfortune, sent her own physician to attend him, and a little later, having proceeded to Glasgow herself, brought him back with her to Edinburgh. Not yet being free from infection, he was placed in a house known as the Kirk O’Field, on the outskirts of the city. Mary visited him frequently and, as far as could be judged from outward signs, a complete reconciliation was effected. But the evil genius of the Stewarts again held sway. On February 10th, about 3 o’clock in the morning, the Kirk O’Field was blown into the air with gunpowder, and the mortal career of Darnley, who had just turned his twentieth year, was brought to a tragic close. Suspicions pointed to Bothwell as the author of the crime. The Earl of Lennox, Darnley’s father, sued for a trial. Bothwell promptly offered himself up, and, being tried before his peers, was acquitted. I have now arrived at the most complicated question in Mary’s history, and before offering an opinion on the events that ensued, I shall mention some of them in chronological order. Bothwell was acquitted on April 12th; on April 24th, Mary, while returning from a visit to her child at Stirling, was intercepted by him, and--willingly or unwillingly--carried off to the Castle of Dunbar. Twelve days afterwards, a promise of marriage having first been obtained from her, she was brought back to Edinburgh by Bothwell and lodged in the Castle. Eight days later she was married to Bothwell in Holyrood, before a Protestant minister. These events have all along been interpreted in two widely different senses. One interpretation makes Mary an accomplice in the murder of her husband; the other makes her an innocent but injured woman. The historians hostile to her, catching their inspiration from the pages of George Buchanan, maintain that previously to Darnley’s murder, she was familiar beyond due measure with Bothwell; that when she visited Darnley at Glasgow, it was as the agent of Bothwell to enveigle the intended victim to where he could be conveniently dispatched; that the reconciliation was feigned on her part; that when the murder was accomplished, she used her authority to shield Bothwell; and, finally, that she was carried off by him according to her own desire.