James Hepburn, 1st Duke of Orkney and 4th Earl of Bothwell ( – 14 April 1578), better known simply as Lord Bothwell, was the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was accused of the murder of Mary's second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a charge of which he was acquitted. His marriage to Mary was controversial and divided the country; when he fled the growing rebellion to Norway, he was arrested and lived the rest of his life imprisoned in Denmark.

Early life James Hepburn was the son of Patrick Hepburn, 3rd Earl of Bothwell, and Agnes Sinclair (d. 1572), daughter of Henry, Lord Sinclair, and was styled the Master of Bothwell from birth. He succeeded his father as Earl of Bothwell and Lord Hailes in 1556.

Anna Throndsen As Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Lord Bothwell visited Copenhagen around 1559. He fell in love with Anna Tronds, known in English as Anna Throndsen or Anna Rustung. She was a Norwegian noblewoman whose father, Kristoffer Trondson, a famous Norwegian admiral, was serving as Danish Royal Consul. After their engagement, or more likely marriage under Norwegian law, Anna left with Bothwell. In Flanders, he said he was out of money and asked Anna to sell all her possessions. She complied and visited her family in Denmark to ask for more money. Anna was unhappy and apparently given to complaining about Bothwell. His treatment of Anna played a part in his eventual downfall.

Under Mary of Guise's regency Bothwell supported Mary of Guise, queen dowager and Regent of Scotland, against the Protestant Lords of the Congregation. Bothwell and 24 followers took 6000 crowns of English money destined to be used against Guise from the Laird of Ormiston on Halloween 1559 at an ambush near Haddington. In retaliation the Protestant leader, the Duke of Châtelherault, sent his son the Earl of Arran and the Master of Maxwell to seize Bothwell's home Crichton Castle and force the Earl, who was nearby at Borthwick, to join them. Bothwell remained true to the Regent, though it was said in January he was "weary of his part". The English diplomat Thomas Randolph also hinted at this time of a scandal involving his sister Jean Hepburn.

Meeting Queen Mary in France Lord Bothwell appears to have met Queen Mary when he visited the French Court in the autumn of 1560, after he left Anna Rustung in Flanders. He was kindly received by the Queen and her husband, King Francis II of France, and, as he put it: "The Queen recompensed me more liberally and honourably than I had deserved" – receiving 600 Crowns and the post and salary of gentleman of the French King's Chamber.Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (Phoenix Press, 2002), p. 162: Philip Yorke, Miscellaneous State Papers, 1 (London, 1778), p. 143. He visited France again in the spring of 1561, and by 5 July was back in Paris for the third time – this time accompanied by the Bishop of Orkney and the Earl of Eglinton. By August, the widowed Queen was on her way back to Scotland in a French galley, some of the organisation having been dealt with by Bothwell in his naval capacity.Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (Phoenix Press, 2002), p. 161.

At Queen Mary's court After Protestant Lords gained power following Mary of Guise's death and the return to Scotland of Mary, Queen of Scots, Bothwell appears to have been not much more than a troublesome noble at court. His open quarrel with the Earl of Arran and the Hamiltons, who accused him of intriguing against the Crown, caused some degree of anguish to the Queen. The Earl of Arran accused Bothwell of plotting to kidnap Mary and the Earl of Moray from the deer park at Falkland Palace at Easter 1562. Although the Earl of Arran was eventually declared mad, Bothwell was nevertheless imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle without trial.Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (Phoenix Press, 2002), pp. 211–214.James Aikman, History of Scotland by George Buchanan, 2 (Glasgow, 1827), pp. 453–456. Later that year, while the Queen was in the Highlands, Bothwell escaped and went to Hermitage Castle.Joseph Bain, Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, 1 (Edinburgh, 1898), pp. 548, 622, 652.

The Queen and Bothwell were by now very close. Bothwell married Lady Jean Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, on 24 February 1566 and Queen Mary attended the wedding at Holyrood. The banquet was held at Kinloch's house on the Canongate. According to Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie there followed five days of jousting and tournaments. The marriage lasted just over a year.

In October 1566, after the birth of Prince James, Queen Mary came to Jedburgh to hold justice courts. Upon hearing that Bothwell had been seriously wounded and was likely to die, Mary rode to be with him at Hermitage Castle. Subsequently, Mary was unwell and resided at Jedburgh until she recovered. Antonia Fraser asserts that Queen Mary was already on her way to visit Bothwell on matters of state before she heard about his illness, and that therefore this visit is not evidence that they were already lovers at the time of his accident. Alison Weir agrees, and in fact the records show that Mary waited a full six days after learning of his injuries before going to visit Bothwell. The story of her mad flight to his side was put about later by her enemies to discredit her.Lorna Hutson, England's Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland (Cambridge, 2023), pp. 149–150.

Darnley's murder

On 9 February 1567 Bothwell left his lodging at Todrick's Wynd on the south side of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh (east of Blackfriars Street) and with accomplices Dalgliesh, Powrie and Wilson, carried several kegs of gunpowder to Kirk o'Field lodging to the south, almost encountering Queen Mary en route. At Kirk O'Field they lit the gunpowder destroying part of the building and killing Darnley and his aide.

Bothwell was publicly accused of having murdered the Queen's consort, Lord Darnley. Darnley's father, the Earl of Lennox, and other relatives agitated for vengeance and the Privy Council began proceedings against Bothwell on 12 April 1567. Sir William Drury reported to Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State to Elizabeth I of England, that the Queen was in continuous ill-health "for the most part either melancholy or sickly". On the appointed day Bothwell rode magnificently down the Canongate, with the Earl of Morton and William Maitland of Lethington flanking him, and his Hepburns trotting behind. The trial lasted from noon till seven in the evening. Bothwell was acquitted and it was widely rumoured that he would marry Mary.

Abduction of and marriage to Queen Mary

The next Wednesday, Queen Mary rode to the Estates of Parliament, with Lord Bothwell carrying the Sceptre,Historie of King James the Sext (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1825), p. 8. where the proceedings of Bothwell's trial were officially declared to be just according to the law of the land. On Saturday 19 April 1567, eight bishops, nine earls, and seven Lords of Parliament put their signatures to what became known as the Ainslie Tavern Bond, a manifesto declaring that Mary should marry a native-born subject, and handed it to Bothwell. Bothwell started divorce proceedings citing his adultery with Jane Gordon's servant Bessie Crawford as a cause.Antonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots (1969).Margaret Sanderson, "Jane Gordon", Mary Stewart's People (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1987), pp. 40–41.

On 24 April, while Mary was on the road from Linlithgow Palace to Edinburgh, Bothwell suddenly appeared with 800 men. He assured her that danger awaited her in Edinburgh, and told her that he proposed to take her to Dunbar Castle, out of harm's way. She agreed to accompany him and arrived at Dunbar at midnight. There, Mary was taken prisoner by Bothwell and allegedly raped by him to secure marriage to her and the crown (though whether she was his accomplice or his unwilling victim remains a controversial issue). On 12 May the Queen created him Duke of Orkney and Marquess of Fife at Holyrood.

On 15 May they were married in the Great Hall at Holyrood, according to Protestant rites officiated by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney and John Craig.Gordon Donaldson, The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill (London: Folio Society, 1969), p. 65: Grant G. Simpson, Scottish Handwriting (Tuckwell, 1998), no. 18 contract 14 May 1567.Gordon Donaldson, All the Queen's men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart's Scotland (Batsford, 1983), p. 83. Some accounts say there was a second Catholic ceremony in the palace chapel. One source for this is known as "Regent Moray's journal", which says they were married "efter baith the sortis of the kirkis, reformit and unreformit".George Chalmers, Life of Mary Queen of Scots, 3, p. 99: Birrel's "Diarey" mentions the Chapel Royal. Mary was married in mourning clothes, described as "dule weed". According to William Drury, an English commander at Berwick, there were only a few witnesses who heard a sermon the palace's chamber of presence. The French ambassador, Philibert du Croc did not attend the Duke's creation or the wedding. On the day of the wedding, Mary ordered a gown of black figured velvet embroidered with silver and gold. Mary gave her new husband a fur lined night-gown.Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power (London: Sceptre, 2022), pp. 196–197: Joseph Robertson, Inventaires de la Royne Descosse (Edinburgh, 1863), p. 176. There were few festivities until two weeks after the wedding, when there was a triumph and tilt and Bothwell "ran at the ring" at Leith.

The repercussions of the marriage were not long in coming: in Rome, Pope Pius V showed strong displeasure at the marriage between Mary and a Protestant and threatened to excommunicate the Queen. Michele Bonelli, Cardinal Allesandrino and Pope's great-nephew, reported that the Pius was reluctant to communicate with Mary until her behaviour and religious life improved. Eventually, tensions eased, and the Pope abandoned his threat of excommunication against Mary.Retha Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots (Routledge, 2006), p. 160. In 1568-69, she requested to Pope an annulment of her marriage to Bothwell in order to try to marry the Catholic Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk.Labanoff, "Lettres de Marie Stuart", vol. 3 (London, 1844), p. 5: James Balfour Paul, Scots Peerage, vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1908), p. 156

The marriage divided the country into two camps, and on 16 June, the Lords opposed to Mary and the Duke of Orkney (as Bothwell had newly become) signed a Bond denouncing them. A showdown between the two opposing sides followed at Carberry Hill on 15 June, from which Orkney (as Lord Bothwell was now known) fled, after one final embrace, never to be seen again by Mary. In December that year, Bothwell's titles and estates were forfeited by Act of Parliament.

Escape to Scandinavia and imprisonment After fleeing the confrontation at Carberry Hill, the Duke of Orkney (as Bothwell was now) went to Huntly Castle and Spynie Palace. He took ship from Aberdeen to Shetland, where he talked to Olave Sinclair at Dunrossness and took the Pelican belonging to Gerdt Hemeling of Bremen.Thomas Thomson, Diurnal of Occurrents (Edinburgh, 1833), p. 123 Nicholas Throckmorton described the Pelican as "a great ship of Bremen, laden with fish" which Bothwell intended to arm and make the admiral or flagship of his art of piracy.Joseph Stevenson, Selections illustrating the reign of Mary Queen of Scotland (Glasgow, 1837), p. 294.