Voices, however, were heard in the streets, during the darkness of the night, proclaiming Bothwell, and even Mary herself, to be murderers of the king; bills were secretly affixed on the walls to the same purpose; offers were made, that, upon giving proper securities, his guilt should be openly proved; but after one proclamation from the court, offering a reward and indemnity to any one that would discover the author of that villany, greater vigilance was employed in searching out the spreaders of the libels and reports against Bothwell and the queen, than in tracing the contrivers of the king's assassination, or detecting the regicides.[***] The earl of Lenox, who lived at a distance from court in poverty and contempt, was roused by the report of his son's murder, and wrote to the queen, imploring speedy justice against the assassins; among whom he named the earl of Bothwell, Sir James Balfour, and Gilbert Balfour his brother, David Chalmers, and four others of the queen's household; all of them persons who had been mentioned in the bills affixed to the walls at Edinburgh.[****] * It was imagined that Henry had been strangled before the house was blown up.

But this supposition is contradicted by the confession of the criminals; and there is no necessity to admit it in order to account for the condition of his body.

There are many instances that men's lives have been saved who had been blown up in ships.

Had Henry fallen on water, he had not probably been killed.
** Melvil, p.78.Cabbala, p.

136.
*** Anderson's Collections, vol.ii.p.