In a letter from Cecil to Norris (20th February) he says: “The Queen sent yesterday my Lady Howard and my wife to Lady Lennox, in the Tower, to open this matter to her, who could not by any means be kept from such passions of mind as the horribleness of the fact did require.… I hope her Majesty will show some favourable compassion of the said lady, whom any humane nature must needs pity.… The most suspicion that I can hear is of Earl Bothwell, yet I would not be thought the author of any such report.”[242] Lady Margaret, in her agony of grief, made no scruple at first in accusing her daughter-in-law of complicity in the murder; but the bereaved mother left the Tower on the following day, doubtless warned of the unwisdom of saying what she thought. At least, when she saw Sir James Melvil she told him, “She did not believe that Mary had been a party to the death of her son, but she could not help complaining of her bad treatment of him.” But whatever she might say, the spirits of the Catholic party in England sank to zero at the black cloud which hovered over their candidate. “Every day it becomes clearer that the Queen of Scotland must take some step to prove that she had no hand in the death of her husband if she is to prosper in her claims to the succession here,”[243] wrote Guzman. Fortunately this book is not the place in which to discuss the vexed question of Mary’s complicity in Darnley’s death, but her contemporaries both in England and Scotland, as well as abroad, certainly thought her guilty. Cecil, writing to Sir Henry Norris in March, mentions the suspicions against Bothwell, Balfour, &c., and says, “There are words added, which I am loth to report, that touch the Queen of Scots, which I hold best to be suppressed. Further, such persons anointed are not to be thought ill of without manifest proof.”[244] And again, a few days afterwards, he says, “The Queen of Scots is not well spoken of.” The entry of the event in Cecil’s journal makes no mention of Mary. It runs thus: “Feb. 9. The L. Darnley, K. of Scots, was killed and murdered near Edenburgh;” and on the following day the news is amplified thus: “Feb. 10. _Hora secunda post mediam noctem Hen. Rex Scotiæ interfectus fuit, per Jac Co. Bothwell, Jac Ormeston de Ormeston, Hob Ormeston patrem dicti Jac Ormeston, Tho Hepbourn._”