Bothwell, JAMES HEPBURN, EARL OF

Bothwell, JAMES HEPBURN, EARL OF, born in 1536 or 1537, received an ill training at Spynie Castle under his grand-uncle, Bishop Patrick Hepburn of Moray, and in 1556 succeeded his father as fourth earl and as hereditary Lord High Admiral. One of the greatest nobles in Scotland, he professed adherence to the Reformation, but stood staunchly by Mary of Guise, the Queen-regent, who in 1558 made him Warden of the Border Marches, and in 1560 sent him on a mission to France. Then it was that he first saw Queen Mary, and then that Throckmorton described him to Elizabeth as 'a glorious, rash, and hazardous young man, one whom his adversaries should have an eye to.' In 1561, shortly after her landing at Leith, Mary made him a privy-councillor; but his own turbulence and Murray's jealousy made the next three years of his life a period of captivity or exile—captivity first at Edinburgh Castle, and then for more than a twelvemonth in England. Not till her marriage with Darnley did Mary recall him from France; but, on 20th September 1565, she restored him to all his dignities; and five months later he married at Holyrood, with Protestant rites, the Catholic sister of the Earl of Huntly. By hostile accounts, he had ere this had many mistresses, and was addicted to far fouler vices. The hurried events of the next sixteen months must be told in full in our life of Queen Mary—the murder of Rizzio by Darnley (9th March 1566), the birth of James VI. (19th June), Bothwell's appointment as keeper of Dunbar, Mary's visit to him at Hermitage Castle, where he was lying sore wounded by the outlaw Jock Elliot (16th October), Darnley's murder by Bothwell (9th February 1567), the mock trial and acquittal (12th April), Mary's abduction to Dunbar (23d April), Bothwell's divorce (3d and 7th May), his elevation to the dukedom of Orkney (12th May), his marriage to Mary (15th May), and the last parting at Carberry Hill (15th June). On the 27th he sailed from Dunbar, and after brief visits to the Earl of Huntly and to Spynie Castle, passed on to Orkney and Shetland. Narrowly escaping a squadron sent in pursuit, and driven by a storm over to Norway, on 2d September he was brought by a Danish warship into Bergen, and detained as having no passport. He never regained his freedom, but from January 1568 was imprisoned at Malmö, and from June 1573, more rigorously, at Dragsholm in Zealand, where he seems to have gone mad before his death, on 14th April 1578. His Declaration, or so-called 'Testament,' acquitting Mary of all share in Darnley's murder, must, if genuine, have been made before October 1569, but is probably a forgery. See his Life by Professor Schiern (Danish, 1863; 2d ed. 1875; Eng. trans. by the Rev. D. Berry, 1880).