Bothwell, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of c.1535-78
Scottish nobleman

One of the greatest nobles in 16th-century Scotland, he succeeded his father as earl and hereditary Lord High Admiral (1556). A professed Protestant, he nevertheless was a staunch supporter of Mary of Guise, regent for her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (whom he later married), and was appointed warden of the Border Marches (1558). In France in 1560, he met the young Mary, shortly before the death of her first husband, Francis II of France, and on her return to Scotland (1561) she appointed him a Privy Councillor. In the following year he was accused of plotting to kidnap her, and imprisoned, but she recalled him (1565), shortly after her marriage to Lord Darnley. In February 1566 Bothwell married, in a Protestant ceremony, the Catholic sister of the Earl of Huntly. Shortly afterwards (March 1566), Mary's secretary, David Rizzio, was murdered by Darnley, and Bothwell became her protector and chief adviser. The year 1567 was to be a year of high drama. Darnley himself was murdered in an explosion in Edinburgh (9 February), the chief suspect being Bothwell, who underwent a rigged trial and was acquitted (12 April). He then made a show of abducting Mary (23 April), who was pregnant (probably by him) and carried her off to Dunbar. After his divorce was finalized, he was made Duke of Orkney, and married Mary as her third husband at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, with Protestant rites (15 May), but the marriage did not last long. Bothwell was self-confident, arrogant and ruthless, and his effective usurpation of the government of Scotland was never accepted by the Scottish lords. Mary was forced to surrender to an army of rebellious Scottish noblemen at Carberry Hill (20 June), and he fled to Norway, where he was arrested on a trumped-up charge and imprisoned. On 24 July, Mary miscarried (twins), and on the same day was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James VI. The marriage was annulled in 1570. By then, Bothwell was imprisoned, first at Malm� in Sweden and subsequently at Dragsholm (1573) in Zeeland, Denmark, where he died, apparently insane.

Bibliography: Humphrey Drummond, The Queen's Man: James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell and Duke of Orkney, 1536-1578 (1975)