Regarding this act of Parliament, Agnes Strickland, the English historian, says: “The facts chronicled in the parliamentary record, which are officially attested by the signature of James Makgill of Rankeillour, the clerk-register, demonstrate at once the falsehood of his patron, the Earl of Murray’s journal, of Buchanan’s ‘Detection’ and history of Mary’s reign, of the absurd paper published by Murray under the name of ‘French Paris’s Second Confession,’ and the supposititious letters produced by Morton for the defamation of the queen. These are all refuted by the act of Parliament, which asserts the treasonable constraint that was put on the queen’s will; and that act, be it remembered, was framed, and more than that, proclaimed by the heralds in the ears of the people, six months after the date assigned by Morton to the discovery of the letters which he produced as evidences of a guilty collusion and correspondence between the queen and Bothwell. The act was framed within seven months after the offence was perpetrated; and it behooved to be correct, because several persons assisted in that Parliament, as Huntley, Lethington, Sir James Melville, and others, who were not only present when the abduction was effected, but were carried away with their royal mistress as prisoners to Dunbar.” Now let it be remembered that these witnesses for her innocence were, with the exception of the faithful Sir James Melville, and perhaps one or two others, no friends of Mary, Queen of Scots, but were the very parties in league with the English cabinet for her overthrow; and as Bothwell was not in this league, but was plotting only for his own scheme of being raised to the throne by marriage with Mary Stuart, these framers of this act of Parliament, exonerating Mary and denouncing Bothwell, were not acting through favor of her; and therefore this strong and overwhelming evidence comes from her very foes.