Stuart dynasty

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 177
volume) and rated the unfortunate sister to whom
lie owed title and fortune so unmercifully, that she
burst into tears, and abandoned herself to despair.*
Possibly, at this moment the "Good Regent" may
have remembered how — inadvertently, it may be,
but still without subsequent withdrawal — he had
allowed his name to head the list of twenty nobles
who recommended Both well as a fit husband for
the Queen whose sins (on account of which he
upbraided her) began at Craigmillar, when he him-
self had conferred with her how best to rid the Court
of Darnley by such means as should not sully the
family honour. Thus closed, in personal durance,
and exposed to shameful suspicion, the reign of the
most unfortunate occupant of the throne of the
Stuarts. Although Robert II., the first monarch of
that race, is the only one of Mary's predecessors who
can be said to have ended his career in perfect peace
— for Robert III. sank to the grave bitterly griev-
ing the captivity of his son and heir — yet Mary's
enforced resignation is sadder than any death-scene.
Better, indeed, the last struggle of James I. with
Robert Graham, in 1437, under the Black Friars
Abbey, the mortal wound and untimely death of
James II. at Roxburgh in 1460, or the weird assassi-
nation of James III. after Sauchieburn, twenty-eight
years later ; aye ! even the self-obliteration of
* Robertson's ' History of Scotland,' edition 1791, vol. i. p. 462, quoting
Keith, pp. 445-446. The injuries were such, says Sir James Melville,
speaking of Murray's visit to Lochleven (' Memoirs,' edition 1683, p. 67),
." that they cut the thread of love and credit betwixt the Queen and him
for ever."
N