Mary remained at Stirling after the ambassadors had gone, but in the dismal weather of the middle of January she departed with her son for the capital.[40] Two months afterwards the Prince was carried back to Stirling Castle by the Earls of Huntly and Argyll, and placed in the charge of John, Lord Erskine, by this time Earl of Mar.[41] Meanwhile Darnley had perished at Kirk-of-Field, and Bothwell was plotting for his marriage with the Queen. Shortly before the consummation of that union, Mary paid her last visit to Stirling. She came with the natural desire to see her son and possibly with the object of removing him from the castle. The child, however, remained in the faithful hands of Mar, and in a few days the Queen, on her homeward journey, was intercepted and carried off by Bothwell. The marriage was celebrated in Holyrood Palace in May, 1567; but the ambitious and unscrupulous nobleman, not satisfied with being the husband of his sovereign, sought to gain possession of the person of the Prince, in order, as Sir James Melville says, to “warrant him fra revenging of his father’s death.” Mar, however, distrusting the Queen and regarding Bothwell as a murderer, refused to allow the Prince of Scotland to pass into even his own mother’s keeping. The Stewarts were an unhappy race, but James V. and Mary had the saddest lives of all. He was gifted with a joyous nature and a genuine love of justice, and yet when only thirty years old he died of a broken heart. She was endowed with beauty, vivacity, generosity and courage, but these brought her sorrow, captivity and death. The national disaster at Flodden Field was to a great extent responsible for those unhappy reigns. The country was crippled by the heavy blow and was more at the mercy of the English Crown than in the days of the early Stewarts. This was especially the case in James V.’s time, for his weariness of life was chiefly due to despair of being able to combat Henry’s schemes.