On December 4, the Lords of the Privy Council, ‘and other barons and men of judgement,’ met in Edinburgh. They were mainly members of the Protestant Left.[256] Their Declaration (to be reported presently) was the result, they tell us, of several days of reasoning and debate. Nor is it surprising that they found themselves in a delicate posture. Some of them had been in the conspiracy; others had signed the request to Bothwell that he would marry the Queen, and had solemnly vowed to defend his quarrel, and maintain his innocence. Yet if they would gain a paper and Parliamentary security for their lives and estates (subject to be attainted and forfeited if ever Mary or her son came to power, and wished to avenge Darnley’s murder and the Queen’s imprisonment), they must prove that, in imprisoning Mary, they had acted lawfully. This they demonstrated, though ‘most loth to do so,’ by asking Parliament to approve of all their doings since Darnley’s death (which included their promise to defend Bothwell, and their advice to Mary to marry him). And Parliament was to approve, because their hostile acts ‘was in the said Queen’s own default, in as far as by divers her private letters, written and subscribed with her own hand, and sent by her to James, Earl Bothwell, chief executor of the said horrible murder, as well before the committing thereof as thereafter, and by her ungodly and dishonourable proceeding in a private marriage with him; ... it is most certain that she was privy, art and part, and of the actual device and deed of the forementioned murder, ... and therefore justly deserves whatsoever has been attempted or shall be used toward her for the said cause....’ From the first, it seems, ‘all men in their hearts were fully persuaded of the authors’ of the crime. Bothwell, to be sure, had been acquitted, both publicly and privately, by his peers and allies. Moray had invited an English envoy to meet him, at a dinner where all the other guests were murderers. People, however, only ‘awaited until God should move the hearts of some to enter in the quarrel of avenging the same’--which they did by letting Bothwell go free, and entrapping Mary! The godly assemblage then explains how ‘God moved the hearts of some.’ The nobles were ‘in just fear’ of being ‘handled’ like Darnley, ‘perceiving the Queen so thrall and bloody’ (_sic_: probably a miswriting for ‘blindly’) ‘affectionate to the private appetite of that tyrant,’ Bothwell. The Council thus gave the lie to their own repeated averments, that Bothwell caused Mary to wed him by fear and force. Now she is gracefully spoken of as ‘bloody affectionate.’ It will be observed that, like Moray earlier, they here describe Mary’s Letters as ‘signed.’ The Casket Letters (in our copies) are unsigned. The originals may have been signed, they were reported to La Forest to be signed as late as December, 1568.