[224] Melville to Cecil, July 1. Bain, ii. 343. [225] Bain, ii. 350, 351. [226] Bain, ii. 322, 360. [227] _Ibid._ 358. [228] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 297, 298. Keith, ii. 694, 700. [229] Already, on July 16, Mary had offered verbally, by Robert Melville, to the Lords, to make Moray Regent: or, failing him, to appoint a Council of Regency, Châtelherault, Huntly, Argyll, Atholl, Lennox, and, ‘with much ado,’ Morton, Moray, Mar, and Glencairn. But she would not abandon Bothwell, as she was pregnant. Throckmorton does not say that she now promised to sign an _abdication_. A letter of Mary’s, to Bothwell’s captain in Dunbar, was intercepted, ‘containing matter little to her advantage.’ It never was produced by her prosecutors (Throckmorton, July 18. Bain, ii. 355,356). Robert Melville, visiting her, declined to carry such a letter to Bothwell. See his examination, in Addit. MSS. British Museum, 33531, fol. 119 _et seq._ [230] Bain, ii. 367. [231] Bain, ii. 328. [232] _Ibid._ i. 346-348. [233] Bain, ii. 346. [234] _Ibid._ 354. July 16. [235] Alava to Philip, July 17. Teulet, v. 29. [236] De Silva, July 26, August 2. Spanish Calendar, i. 662, 665. I have occasionally preferred the Spanish text to Major Hume’s translations. See also Hosack, i. 215, 216. [237] Froude, iii. 118. 1866. [238] Lennox MSS. [239] The words within inverted commas are autograph additions by Lennox himself. [240] Ogilvy of Boyne, who married his old love, Lady Bothwell, after the death of her second husband, the Earl of Sutherland. See pp. 26, 27, _supra_. [241] _A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Stuart._ [242] Throckmorton to Elizabeth, July 18. Bain, ii. 355. [243] Throckmorton to Elizabeth, July 31, 1567. Bain, ii. 370. [244] _Maitland Miscellany_, vol. iv. part i. p. 119. [245] Teulet, ii. 255, 256. [246] Labanoff, ii. 106. [247] Bain, ii. 423. [248] _Ibid._ 441, 442. [249] I do not know where the originals of these five letters now are. They were among the Hamilton Papers, having probably been intercepted by the Hamiltons before they reached Moray, Lethington, Crawford, and the others. [250] Bain, ii. 514. [251] _Ibid._ 523, 524. [252] For. Eliz. viii. 478, 479. Bain, ii. 426, 427. [253] Bowton’s confession. Laing, ii. 256, 257. [254] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 331. [255] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 363. [256] Moray, Morton, Glencairn, Errol, Buchan, Home, Ruthven, Semple, Glamis, Lindsay, Gray, Graham, Ochiltree (Knox’s father-in-law), Innermeith, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, Sir James Balfour (deeply involved in the murder), Makgill, Lethington, Erskine of Dun, Wishart of Pitarro, Kirkcaldy of Grange, and others of less note. [257] Nau, pp. 71-73. [258] Teulet, ii. 247. [259] Act in Henderson, 177-185. [260] Nau, 74, 75.