We have seen that Mary, ever after Carberry, also inculpated Lethington, and vowed that she had something in black and white which would hang him. Something she probably did possess, but not a band signed also by Morton. Concerning the murder-band, Hay of Tala, before execution (January 3, 1568), ‘in presence of the whole people,’ named as subscribers ‘Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, Balfour, with divers other nobles.’[418] Hay saw their signatures, but not that of Morton. ‘He said my Lord Bothwell said to him that he subscribed the same.’ The Black Laird (December 13, 1573), when in a devout and penitent condition, said that Bothwell had shown him the contract, ‘subscribed by four or five handwrites, which, he affirmed to me, was the subscription of the Earl of Huntly, Argyll, the secretary Maitland, and Sir James Balfour.’ Ormistoun repeated part of the contents: the paper was drawn up by Balfour, a Lord of Session.[419] (See Introduction, pp. xiii-xviii.) Morton, we know, was accused of Darnley’s death, and arrested, at the end of December, 1580. Archibald Douglas was sought for, but escaped into England. Elizabeth sent Randolph down to save Morton: Hunsdon was to lead an army over the Border. Every kind of violence was designed, and forgery was attempted, but Randolph had to fly to Berwick, at the end of March. Meanwhile the arch traitor, Balfour, had been summoned from France, as an evidence against Morton. But he was not of much use. On January 30, 1581, he wrote from Edinburgh to Mary. He had arrived in Scotland on December 17, 1580, when he found Morton in the height of power. Balfour secretly approached James’s new favourite, Stewart d’Aubigny, recently created Earl of Lennox. By giving them information ‘_had from your Majesty’s self_, and partly by other intelligence which I knew and learned from others,’ he gave them grounds for Morton’s arrest. But Morton, he says, trusting to the lack of testimony from the absence of Archibald Douglas, boldly ‘denies all things promised by him to Bothwell in that matter,’ ‘except his signature to the band whereof I did send the copy to your Majesty.’ Now that was only ‘Ainslie’s band,’ made _after_ the murder, on April 19, 1567, to defend Bothwell’s quarrel. On an extant copy Randolph has written, ‘upon this was grounded thacusation of therle Morton.’[420] This was no hanging matter, and Balfour either had not or would not produce the murder band. He therefore asks Mary for further information: ‘all that your Majesty has heard or known thereinto.’[421]