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Let us take in the political situation for a moment. It was the spring of 1569—just two years since the murder of Darnley, since when Mary had the impression of a procession of violent events to wipe out of her mind. Events since that horrible night had travelled at a wild speed. Her abasement before Bothwell, her desperate game of bluff—that is to say, her mad marriage with him, in spite of the opposition of all her friends, while she yet wore her discreet mourning for the wretched Darnley—her sudden awakening to bare realities, and the shock of the knowledge that she had given herself wholly to a mere adventurer, and a brutal one at that—these were some of the sinister facts over which, in this solitude and stillness of her English life, she had time enough to brood. Then came the final revelation of the almost wholesale perfidy of her Scottish noblemen, and the three weeks of her ghastly third honeymoon, which amounted to nothing but a preliminary imprisonment, ending in the gross insults of the populace, which drove her distracted on her way to the fortress of Lochleven. The detection and flight of Bothwell, her Scottish imprisonment, her escape and her flight to England—all these were part of the crimson pageant from which she had emerged, shattered in body, soul-worn, to face the problem of her life. Her baby boy was far from her in the hands of her brother and worst enemy, Earl Moray, the traitor to whom the power of Elizabeth gave approval as regent. But Moray himself had executed a volte-face. For his own purposes he now assumed a highly moral and affectionate tone towards his kinswoman. He advised this, her fourth marriage, on the score that it was the best chance of wiping out the stigma which clung to her in connection with her passion for Bothwell and her illegal union with him. “Take a suitable and godly person to be your spouse and you will at once assume a very high place in my excellent esteem” was practically his attitude. Mary knew his power. Was not the villain in constant intercourse with Cecil, Elizabeth’s right hand? She knew also that marriage was the only way out of prison and back to her throne. Three husbands had failed her. Even Moray conceded that she “had been troubled in times past with children, young, proud fools, and furious men”—the anæmic Francis II, Darnley, and Bothwell. As a woman she could attract any man she chose. And the Duke of Norfolk was one of the premier gentlemen of England, inclined to espouse her faith, and had powerful friends among the nobles near the Border. The plan was exciting. France and Spain must back her up in it. It was very difficult to send and receive letters. No wonder that the strain of this secret, with the bad weather and the difficulties under which the Tutbury household laboured of securing sufficient provisions and sufficient fuel to warm the cranky building, resulted in the illness of the prisoner.