Stuart dynasty

MART QUEEN OF SCOTS. 175
Lords themselves, and the Queen may or may not
have refused to repudiate- the connection with
Bothwell at a moment when uncertainty prevailed
whether the marriage was to exercise future influ-
ence over the dynasty she represented and whose
name she bore.
Had Mary (as she believed was probable) borne a
child by her third marriage, the question would have
cropped up whether Bothwell could legally have
gained a divorce from his former wife, the Earl of
Huntly's sister, a papal dispensation for that first
marriage being in existence.
At all events, the story that Mary wrote in terms
of affection to Bothwell at this crisis is unsupported
by evidence, if not absolutely disproved. Sir James
Melville, indeed, says that some such writing was
produced to silence Kirkaldy of Grange's scruples ;
but when Queen Elizabeth called on the ruling olig-
archy in Scotland to justify the extreme measures
taken at this period, no allusion to any such epi-
stolary evidence was made, the Lords' reply being
placed in literary form three weeks after Carberry
Hill.*
But the report that Mary Stuart remained obdurate
as regards Bothwell, and had signified the same in
writing, gave a specious excuse for conveying her
by night to Lochleven, where Morton committed his
charge to the care of Murray's mother, wife to Douglas
of Lochleven. As this lady declared that James V.
had been her lawful husband, and therefore believed
* Skelton's ' Maitland of Lethington,' vol. ii. pp. 244, 245.