Just before the explosion of the anti-Riccio conspiracy, Bothwell _se rangea_. Mary herself made a match for him (the contract is of February 9, 1566) with Lady Jane Gordon, a Catholic, a sister of Huntly, and a daughter of that Huntly who fell at Corrichie burn. The lady was only in her twentieth year. The parties being akin, a dispensation was necessary, and was granted by the Pope, and issued by the Archbishop of St. Andrews.[52] The marriage took place in the Protestant Kirk of the Canongate, though the bride was a Catholic, and Mary gave the wedding dress (February 24). The honeymoon was interrupted, on March 9, by the murder of Riccio. The conspirators made the fatal error of not securing Bothwell and Huntly before they broke into Mary’s room and slew Riccio. While Bothwell, Huntly, and Atholl were at large, the forces of the Queen’s party had powerful friends in the North and on the Border. When the tumult of the murderers was heard, these nobles tried to fight their way to Mary’s assistance, but were overpowered by numbers, and compelled to seek their apartments. An attempt was made to reconcile them to the situation, but they escaped under cloud of night. In her letter to the French Court (May 1567) excusing her marriage with Bothwell, Mary speaks of his ‘dexterity’ in escaping, ‘and how suddenly by his prudence not only were we delivered out of prison,’ after Riccio’s death, ‘but also that whole company of conspirators dissolved....’ ‘We could never forget it,’ Mary adds, and Bothwell’s favour had a natural and legitimate basis in the gratitude of the Queen. Very soon after the outrage she had secretly communicated with Bothwell and Huntly, ‘who, taking no regard to hazard their lives,’ arranged a plan for her flight by means of ropes let down from the windows.[53] Mary preferred the passage through the basement into the royal tombs, and, by aid of Arthur Erskine and Stewart of Traquair, she made her way to Dunbar. Here Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell rallied to her standard: Knox fled from Edinburgh, Morton and Ruthven with their allies found refuge in England: the lately exiled Lords were allowed to remain in Scotland: Darnley betrayed his accomplices, they communicated to Mary their treaties with him, and the Queen was left to reconcile Moray and Argyll to Huntly, Bothwell, and Atholl. IV _BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE_