317.
While affairs were in this situation, all those who wished well to her character, or to public tranquillity, were extremely pleased, and somewhat surprised, to hear that a friendship was again conciliated between them, that she had taken a journey to Glasgow on purpose to visit him during his sickness, that she behaved towards him with great tenderness, that she had brought him along with her, and that she appeared thenceforth determined to live with him on a footing more suitable to the connections between them.

Henry, naturally uxorious, and not distrusting this sudden reconciliation, put himself implicitly into her hands, and attended her to Edinburgh.

She lived in the palace of Holyrood House; but as the situation of the palace was low, and the concourse of people about the court was necessarily attended with noise, which might disturb him in his present infirm state of health, these reasons were assigned for fitting up an apartment for him in a solitary house at some distance, called the Kirk of Field.

Mary here gave him marks of kindness and attachment; she conversed cordially with him; and she lay some nights in a room below his; but on the ninth of February, she told him that she would pass that night in the palace, because the marriage of one of her servants was there to be celebrated in her presence.

About two o'clock in the morning, the whole town was much alarmed at hearing a great noise; and was still more astonished, when it was discovered that the noise came from the king's house, which was blown up by gunpowder; that his dead body was found at some distance in a neighboring field; and that no marks, either of fire, contusion, or violence appeared upon it.[*] No doubt could be entertained but Henry was murdered; and general conjecture soon pointed towards the earl of Bothwell as the author of the crime.[**] But as his favor with Mary was visible, and his power great, no one ventured to declare openly his sentiments; and all men remained in silence and mute astonishment.