Then follow the dangerous illness of Mary, the aggravating and fatal misconduct of Darnley, the poor queen's mental suffering and anxiety, the preliminary plotting by Murray, Maitland, Argyll, and Huntly to put Darnley out of the way, the signing of the bond among them for the murder of the "young fool and tyrant," and the insidious attempt by these scoundrels to entrap the poor heart-broken Mary into some such expression of impatience or violence against Darnley as would enable them to set up the charge of guilty knowledge against her. The conspirators themselves have put on record the noble and Christian reply of Mary Stuart, "I will that ye do nothing through which any spot may be laid on my honor or conscience; and therefore, I pray you, rather let the matter be in the state that it is, abiding till God of his goodness put remedy thereto." Following upon the baptism of the infant prince, who afterward became James VI. of Scotland, came the unfortunately too successful endeavors of Murray, Maitland, Bothwell, and Queen Elizabeth to obtain the pardon of the Riccio murderers. Poor Mary's political success would have been assured if she had possessed but a small share of Elizabeth's hardness of heart and vindictiveness. Always generous, always noble, always forgiving, she allowed herself to be persuaded to grant a pardon to these villains--seventy-six in number--excepting only George Douglas, who stabbed Riccio in presence of the queen, and Ker of Faudonside, who held his pistol at her breast during the perpetration of the murder. This ruffian remained safely in England until Mary's downfall, when he returned to Scotland and married the widow of John Knox. It was about this period that Buchanan was extolling to the skies, in such Latin verses as those beginning "Virtute ingenio, regina, et munere formæ Felicibus felicior majoribus," the virtues of a sovereign whom he afterward told us every one knew at the time to be a monster of lust and cruelty! His libel was written when Mary was a fugitive in England, to serve the purposes of his employers, who had driven her from her native kingdom. The most assiduous of her flatterers as long as she was on the throne, he pursued her with the malice of a demon when she became a helpless prisoner. His slanders were addressed not to his own countrymen, for whom they would have been too gross, but to Englishmen, for the great majority of whom Scotland was a _terra incognita_. His monstrous fictions were copied by Knox and De Thou, and later by Robertson, Laing, and Mignet, who, while using his material, carefully abstained from quoting him as authority. Mr. Froude, the author of that popular serial novel which he strangely entitles _The History of England_, with delicious _naïveté_ declares his belief in the truth of Buchanan's _Detection_, and makes its transparent mendacity a leading feature of his work.