The case was begun, pushed on, and decided in ten days.
As to the second obstacle, that of the violence used to the queen, Mary undertook to remove it herself; for, being brought before the court, she declared that not only did she pardon Bothwell for his conduct as regarded her, but further that, knowing him to be a good and faithful subject, she intended raising him immediately to new honours.

In fact, some days afterwards she created him Duke of Orkney, and on the 15th of the same month--that is to say, scarcely four months after the death of Darnley--with levity that resembled madness, Mary, who had petitioned for a dispensation to wed a Catholic prince, her cousin in the third degree, married Bothwell, a Protestant upstart, who, his divorce notwithstanding, was still bigamous, and who thus found himself in the position of having four wives living, including the queen.
The wedding was dismal, as became a festival under such outrageous auspices.

Morton, Maitland, and some base flatterers of Bothwell alone were present at it.

The French ambassador, although he was a creature of the House of Guise, to which the queen belonged, refused to attend it.
Mary's delusion was short-lived: scarcely was she in Bothwell's power than she saw what a master she had given herself.

Gross, unfeeling, and violent, he seemed chosen by Providence to avenge the faults of which he had been the instigator or the accomplice.