He had been accused more than once of an attempt to assassinate Murray; and though the frequency of these accusations on all sides diminish somewhat the credit due to any particular imputation, they prove sufficiently the prevalence of that detestable practice in Scotland, and may in that view serve to render such rumors the more credible. This man had of late acquired the favor and entire confidence of Mary; and all her measures were directed by his advice and authority. Reports were spread of more particular intimacies between them; and these reports gained ground from the continuance, or rather increase, of her hatred towards her husband.[*] That young prince was reduced to such a state of desperation by the neglects which he underwent from his queen and the courtiers, that he had once resolved to fly secretly into France or Spain, and had even provided a vessel for that purpose.[**] Some of the most considerable nobility, on the other hand, observing her rooted aversion to him, had proposed some expedients for a divorce, and though Mary is said to have spoken honorably on the occasion, and to have embraced the proposal no further than it should be found consistent with her own honor and her son’s legitimacy,[***] men were inclined to believe, that the difficulty of finding proper means for effecting that purpose, was the real cause of laying aside all further thoughts of it. So far were the suspicions against her carried, that when Henry, discouraged with the continual proofs of her hatred, left the court and retired to Glasgow, an illness of an extraordinary nature, with which he was seized immediately on his arrival in that place, was universally ascribed by her enemies to a dose of poison, which, it was pretended, she had administered to him. * Melvil, p. 66, 77. ** Keith, p. 345-348. *** Camden, p. 404. Goodall’s Queen Mary, vol. ii. p. 317.