The next step was to force Mary to abdicate in favour of her infant son. (To use the child against the parent monarch had long been a favourite policy with the Scottish rebel lords.) A delegation was sent to her for that purpose, headed by Lord Lindsay, whom Sir Walter Scott calls "the rudest baron of that rude age"--fit agent for the tyrranous deed. Moved partly by fear that refusal would lead to a violent death, and partly by the previous representation of some of her friends that what she did under constraint could not bind her if she regained her liberty, Mary signed the cruel document-- "She wrote the words--She stood erect--a queen without a crown," and although prudence would prevent her from uttering them with her lips, we may be sure that in her heart she spoke the words attributed to her by the poet:-- "My lords,--my lords," the captive said, "were I but once more free, With ten good knights on yonder shore to aid my cause and me, That parchment would I scatter wide to every breeze that blows, And once more reign a Stewart queen o’er my remorseless foes." The next important visit the helpless Queen received in her prison was from the Earl of Moray. The cautious Earl had been absent in France during the troublous times that had elapsed since the murder of Darnley, but no doubt was well pleased with the success with which Morton and his associates had been advancing his cause. His sister was now dethroned, the infant James was crowned King, and he himself was named Regent. The goal of his ambition seemed near. He had returned to Scotland in time to receive the honours prepared for him, and--whatever his motives were--before formally accepting the Regency, he visited Mary in Lochleven Castle. It is thought by many that he paid this visit with a view to rendering his footing more secure, as he probably hoped that the prisoner, recognizing the helplessness of her condition, would ask him to accept the office of Regent. Depressed with the gravity of the trials she had just passed through, the tender-hearted Queen naturally hoped that her brother’s visit would bear some comfort to her lonely prison. But she was disappointed. Ambition (if nothing more) had expelled from Moray’s breast those feelings of natural tenderness with which we should presume every man to be moved towards a humiliated and afflicted sister. Even his friends are slow to commend his conduct on this occasion. "That visit" (writes Robertson, in the History of Scotland) "to a sister, and a queen in prison, from which he had neither any intention to relieve her, nor to mitigate the rigour of her confinement, may be mentioned among the circumstances which discover the great want of delicacy and refinement in that age." As long as the Queen was confined in Lochleven, her friends in Scotland were obliged to keep quiet, for it was intimated to them that if they attempted to liberate her, they would be presented with her head.