Life of Mary Queen of Scots, Volume 2 (of 2)

“Madam, my good sister, I came into your dominions to ask your assistance, and not to save my life. Scotland and the world have not renounced me. I was conscious of innocence; I was disposed to lay all my transactions before you; and I was willing to do you honour, by making you the restorer of a Queen. But you have afforded me no aid, and no consolation. You even deny me admittance to your presence. I escaped from a prison, and I am again a captive. Can it expose you to censure, to hear the complaints of the unfortunate? You received my bastard brother when he was in open rebellion; I am a Princess, and your equal, and you refuse me this indulgence. Permit me then to leave your dominions. Your severity encourages my enemies, intimidates my friends, and is most cruelly destructive to my interests. You keep me in fetters, and allow my enemies to conquer my realm. I am defenceless; and they enjoy my authority, possess themselves of my revenues, and hold out to me the points of their swords. In the miserable condition to which I am reduced, you invite them to accuse me. Is it too small a misfortune for me to lose my kingdom? Must I, also, be robbed of my integrity and my reputation? Excuse me, if I speak without dissimulation. In your dominions I will not answer to their calumnies and criminations. To you, in a personal conference, I shall at all times be ready to vindicate my conduct; but to sink myself into a level with my rebellious subjects, and to be a party in a suit or trial with them, is an indignity so vile, that I can never submit to it. I can die, but I cannot meet dishonour. Consult, I conjure you, what is right and proper, and entitle yourself to my warmest gratitude; or, if you are inclined not to know me as a sister, and to withhold your kindness, abstain at least from rigour and injustice. Be neither my enemy nor my friend; preserve yourself in the coldness of neutrality; and let me be indebted to other princes for my re-establishment in my kingdom.”154

Unmoved by the forcible representations contained in this and other letters, Elizabeth resolved to treat the Queen of Scots only with greater severity than before, in the hope of intimidating her into a compliance with her wishes. It was with this view that she had removed her to Bolton, where she took care that she should be strictly guarded, and not allowed to hold any intercourse with the loyal part of her Scottish subjects. Lord Fleming, too, whom Mary wished to send as her ambassador to France, was stopped; and she was given distinctly to understand, that she must not expect any of her commands to be obeyed, unless they met with Elizabeth’s approval. The English Privy Council, of course, sanctioned their Sovereign’s severity; and gave it as their opinion, that, until an inquiry had taken place into the whole conduct of the Scottish Queen, it would not be consistent with the honour or safety of the realm to afford her the aid she required. The result of all these machinations, – a result which Elizabeth contrived to bring about with the most consummate art, – was, that Mary agreed to nominate Commissioners to meet the Earl of Murray and the Lords associated with him, and to authorize them, before Commissioners to be appointed by Elizabeth, to state the grievances of which their mistress, the Queen of Scots, complained. Murray approved of this arrangement, because he foresaw from the first how it would end; and Mary consented to it, because she was led to believe, that Murray and his accomplices were summoned solely that they might answer to her complaints. Well aware that their answer could not be satisfactory, she fondly imagined that she would soon be restored to the power they had usurped.

The important Conference, as it was termed, between the three sets of Commissioners, was appointed to be held at York. Mary’s Commissioners were Lesley, Bishop of Ross, the Lords Herries, Livingston, and Boyd, Gavin Hamilton, Commendator of Kilwinning, Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, and Sir James Cockburn of Stirling.155 Murray associated with himself the Earl of Morton, Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, Pitcairn, Commendator of Dunfermlin, and Lord Lindsay. Macgill and Balnaves, two civilians, Buchanan, whose pen was always at the Regent’s command “through good report and bad report,” Secretary Maitland, and one or two others, came with them as legal advisers and literary assistants.156 On the part of Elizabeth, the Commissioners were Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Ratcliffe Earl of Sussex, and Sir Ralph Sadler; and they were invested with full authority to arrange all the differences and controversies existing between her “dear sister and cousin, Mary Queen of Scots,” and James Earl of Murray.157

On the 4th of October 1568, the conference was opened with much solemnity at York. “The great abilities of the deputies on both sides,” observes Robertson, “the dignity of the judges before whom they were to appear, the high rank of the persons whose cause was to be heard, and the importance of the points in dispute, rendered the whole transaction no less illustrious than it was singular. The situation in which Elizabeth appeared on this occasion, strikes us with an air of magnificence. Her rival, an independent queen, and the heir of an ancient race of monarchs, was a prisoner in her hands, and appeared, by her ambassadors, before her tribunal. The Regent of Scotland, who represented the Majesty, and possessed the authority of a king, stood in person at her bar, and the fate of a kingdom, whose power her ancestors had often dreaded, but could never subdue, was now absolutely at her disposal.” It may, however, be remarked, that the “magnificence” of power depends, in a great degree, on the manner in which that power has been acquired; and when it is recollected that, by secretly and diligently fomenting civil disturbances in Scotland, Elizabeth first attacked Mary’s peace, and then undermined her authority, and that, having subsequently assumed the mask of a friend, only to conceal the scowl of an enemy, she had forcibly arrogated the rank of a judge, her “air of magnificence” is discovered to be little else than stage-trick.

The “Instructions” given to her Commissioners, are of themselves sufficient to show that her desire was not to extinguish, but to encourage animosities between the Queen of Scots and her subjects. She had previously assured Mary, in order to induce her to send Commissioners to York at all, that so far from intending to use any form or process by which her subjects should become her accusers, “she meant rather to have such of them, as the Queen of Scots should name, called into the realm, to be charged with such crimes as the said Queen should please to object against them; and if any form of judgment should be used, it should be against them.”158 But as soon as she had persuaded Mary, by these specious promises, to come into Court, she resolved to alter the features of the cause. She instructed her Commissioners to listen particularly to the requests and complaints of the Earl of Murray, and to assure him privately, that if he could prove Mary to have been implicated in her husband’s murder, she should never be restored to the throne. Nay, she went further; she desired it to be intimated to the Regent, that even though he could not prove Mary’s guilt, yet, that if he could attach sufficient suspicion to her, it would be left to himself and his friends to determine under what conditions they would again consent to receive her into Scotland. This was as much encouragement as Murray could desire; for he knew that, by artifice and effrontery, a shade of suspicion might be made to attach itself even to the most perfect. Mary’s Commissioners, on the other hand, though doubting much the impartiality of the party which was to arbitrate between them, felt strong in the justice of their cause; and after protesting that their appearance was not to be construed as implying any surrender of her independence on the part of their mistress, or of feudal inferiority to the Crown of England, they proceeded to give in their complaint. It contained a short review of the injuries the Queen of Scots had suffered since her marriage with Bothwell; – of the rebellion of Morton and others, – of her voluntary surrender at Carberry Hill, – of her imprisonment in Loch-Leven, – of the abdication that had been forced from her, – of the coronation of her infant son, and the assumed regency of the Earl of Murray, – of her defeat at Langside, – and of the undutiful conduct in which the Regent had since persevered.159

To this complaint it was answered, at great length, by Murray, that the Earl of Bothwell having forcibly carried off the person of the Queen to the Castle of Dunbar, and kept her there a prisoner for some time, had, in the end, suddenly accomplished “a pretended marriage,” which, confirming the nobility in the belief that the Earl was the chief author of the murder of the King, made them determine to take up arms to relieve those who were unjustly calumniated, and to rescue the Queen from the bondage of a tyrant, who had presumptuously attempted to ravish and marry her, though he could neither be her lawful husband, nor she his lawful wife; – that Bothwell came against these nobility, “leading the Queen in his company, as a defence and cloak to his wickedness;” but that, as the quarrel was intended only against him, the Queen was received by the nobles, and led by them into Edinburgh, as soon as she consented to part from the Earl; – that she was then requested to agree that the murderers should be punished, and that the pretended marriage into which she had been led, should be dissolved; – that to this request she only answered, by rigorously menacing all who had taken up arms in her cause, and declaring she would surrender her realm altogether, “so she might be suffered to possess the murderer of her husband;” – that, perceiving the inflexibility of her mind, they had been compelled to “sequestrate her person” for a season; – that, during this time, she had voluntarily renounced the Government, finding herself wearied by its fatigues, and perceiving that she and her people could not well agree; and that she had appointed, during the minority of her son, the Earl of Murray Regent of the realm, and that every thing he had done since had been in accordance with the legal authority with which she had thus invested him; – and that he therefore required, in behalf of his Sovereign Lord the King, to be allowed peaceably to enjoy and govern the country.160

The “Reply” of Mary’s Commissioners, to this feeble and disingenuous “Answer” of the Earl of Murray, was quite as candid as it was conclusive. It was stated for Mary, that, so far from having been aware, at the time of her marriage, that Bothwell was “known,” or “affirmed,” to be the “chief author” of the horrible murder committed on her late husband, she had seen him solemnly acquitted of all suspicion by a regular trial, according to the laws of the realm, and that most of her principal nobility had solicited her to accept of him as a husband, promising him service, and her Highness loyal obedience, – not one of them, either before or after the marriage, having warned her to avoid it, or expressed their discontent with it, till they suddenly appeared in arms; – that, at Carberry Hill, she willingly parted with Bothwell, as they themselves had seen; but that, if he were in truth guilty of the crimes imputed to him, which she did not then believe, they were to blame for permitting him to escape; – that, upon being taken into Edinburgh, where they had promised to reverence her as their Queen, she found herself treated as their captive; – that, so far from showing any persevering attachment to Bothwell, she repeatedly declared it to be her wish, that the estates of the realm should examine into all the charges which had been made against him; – that, notwithstanding, she had been forcibly carried off under shade of night, and imprisoned against her will in the Castle of Loch-Leven, where she was afterwards made to subscribe instruments of abdication, only through the fear of present death; – that, consequently, the pretended coronation of her son was an unlawful and treasonable proceeding, and the pretended nomination of the Earl of Murray as Regent, a proof of itself that force and fraud had been used; for, even supposing she had been willing to abdicate, if she had been left to her own free choice, there were others whom she would have preferred to appoint to the chief rule during her son’s minority; – that, therefore, she required the Queen of England to support and fortify her in the peaceable enjoyment and government of her realm, and to declare the pretended authority usurped by others null from the beginning.161

“So far,” says Hume, “the Queen of Scots seemed plainly to have the advantage in the contest; and the English Commissioners might have been surprised, that Murray had made so weak a defence.” The truth is, that not only were the English Commissioners surprised, but the Regent himself felt painfully conscious, that he had entirely failed to offer even a plausible pretext for the dethronement of his sister, and his own usurpation. Elizabeth also, anxious as she was to befriend him, saw that she would be imperatively required, by every principle of justice and good government, to take measures against him, were the discussion allowed to terminate at the point to which it had now been brought. Means were therefore taken to inform Murray, that unless he was able to strengthen his case, and to bring his charges more directly home, the matter would in all probability go against him. Upon this the Regent held a consultation with his friends, Maitland and Buchanan, and the necessity of bringing into play a new device, which had been prepared as a corps-de-reserve, was by all of them felt and acknowledged. Though no evidence had been adduced against her, Mary had already been accused by her brother of having had a share in the murder of Darnley. But as the charge was made soon after his return from France, it was strongly suspected to have been invented only to justify himself for retaining her in Loch-Leven. Now, however, seeing the emergency of his affairs, he determined that something like evidence of its truth should be produced. This evidence consisted of a collection of certain letters and sonnets, alleged to be in the Queen’s own hand, and addressed to the Earl of Bothwell, containing passages which testified at once her love for him, and her guilt towards Darnley. But here the question very naturally occurs, why these important documents should not have been brought forward in the earlier part of the conference; and as Robertson, in endeavouring to account for the delay, appears to have fallen into a mistake, it will be worth while examining, for a moment, the soundness of his hypothesis.

The Duke of Norfolk, Elizabeth’s principal Commissioner, was one of the most powerful of all her nobility, and, since Mary’s arrival in England, he had formed the ambitious project of ascending the Scottish throne by means of a marriage with her. With this view, he had already engaged extensively in secret intrigues, and had, in particular, prevailed on Lethington to approve of his plans, and promise him his support. But Robertson asserts further, that soon after his arrival at York, he won over Murray also to his views, and persuaded him to keep back, for a time, the heaviest part of his accusation against Mary, that her character might not be so fatally blackened. The historian’s assertion, however, is unsupported by the evidence he adduces in its favour, his references to Anderson, to Goodall, and to his own Appendix, being quite unsatisfactory. Whatever promises Murray may, at a subsequent date, have made to Norfolk, it clearly appears that no charge against Mary was delayed one hour at York, in consequence of any understanding between these two noblemen.

It had been all along the Regent’s determination, not to have recourse to the letters, if he could make out a case without them; and even after he perceived that he would require their aid, he did not produce them openly, till they had been first shown privately to the English Commissioners, and their opinion obtained concerning them. It was on the 4th of October that the conference commenced; and on the 10th, Lethington, Macgill, and Buchanan, in a secret interview with Norfolk, Sussex, and Sadler, laid before them the mysterious documents. The nature of their contents was communicated to Elizabeth on the 11th, and she was requested to mention in reply, whether, when publicly adduced and authenticated, they would be sufficient to secure Mary’s condemnation. Murray, therefore, cannot at this time, have entered into any agreement with the Duke of Norfolk; for, so far from keeping back his box-full of letters, he was nervously anxious to ascertain, as speedily as possible, whether Elizabeth would attach any weight to them, or allow them to be branded as palpable forgeries. Had Robertson attended a little more to dates, he would have discovered, that so far from wishing to favour the views of the Duke of Norfolk, Murray informed Elizabeth regarding the letters and their contents, on the very day on which he gave in his first “Answer” to Mary’s Commissioners. Nor had these letters been entirely unheard of till now; for, though they had never been exhibited, they had been expressly alluded to nearly a year before, in an act published by the Lords of Secret Council, on the 4th of December 1567, in which it was asserted, that by the discovery of certain of the Queen’s private letters, sent by her to the Earl of Bothwell, it was “most certain that she was art and part of the actual device and deed of the murder of the King.”162 The same assertion was subsequently repeated, founded upon the same alleged proof, in one of the Acts of the Parliament called by Murray. The only legitimate conclusion therefore to be drawn from his unwillingness to bring forward these letters at York, and make good, by their means the sole charge against the Queen which could justify his usurpation of her authority, is, that he was afraid to expose such fabrications to the eye of day, until he should have received Elizabeth’s assurance that she would treat them with becoming consideration, and assign to them an air of importance, even though forgery, with brazen audacity, was stamped upon their face.163

As soon as Elizabeth heard of the letters, and reflected on the turn which they might give to the case, she determined on taking the whole of the proceedings under her own immediate superintendence, and with this view removed the conference from York to Westminster. To the Commissioners previously appointed, she there added the Earls of Arundel and Leicester, Lord Clinton, Sir Nicolas Bacon, and Sir William Cecil. Mary at first expressed satisfaction at this new arrangement, but several circumstances soon occurred which proved, that no favour was intended to her by the change. That which galled her most, was the marked attention paid to the Earl of Murray. Though Elizabeth refused Mary a personal interview, she admitted her rebellious brother to that honour, and thus glaringly deviated from the impartiality which ought to have been observed by an umpire. Accordingly, the Queen of Scots commanded her Commissioners, the Bishop of Ross and Lord Herries, to complain of this injustice. Not to be received into Elizabeth’s presence, she could regard in no other light but as an assumption of superiority, – a parade of rigid righteousness, – and an affected dread of contamination, which, whilst it was meant to imply the purity of the maiden Queen, aimed at exciting suspicion of the purity of another. Continuing to believe that her Scottish rebels had been called before the English Commissioners at her instance, Mary had consented that her representatives should proceed from York to Westminster, to make her complaints as a free Sovereign. In her instructions to the Bishop of Ross, and those associated with him, she expressly told them, that the conference was appointed “only for making a pacification between her and her rebellious subjects, and restoring her to her realm and authority.” She never lost sight of the fact, that she did not appeal to Elizabeth as a suppliant, but as an equal; and she always took care to preserve high and dignified ground. But to depart from this, and before the tribunal of Hampton Court, in which such men as Cecil were able to procure any decision they chose, to undertake to answer every calumnious charge which might be brought against her, never entered into her imagination. “It is not unknown to us,” she wrote to her Commissioners from Bolton, “how hurtful and prejudicial it would be to us, our posterity and realm, to enter into foreign judgment or arbitrement before the Queen our good sister, her Council, or Commissioners, either for our estate, Crown, dignity or honour; – we will and command you, therefore, that you pass to the presence of our said dearest sister, her Council and Commissioners, and there, in our name, extend our clemency toward our disobedient subjects, and give them appointment for their offences committed against us and our realm, – so that they may live, in time coming, in surety under us their head.” – “And, in case they will otherwise proceed, then we will and command you to dissolve this present diet and negotiation, and proceed no further therein, for the causes foresaid.”164

It may well be conceived, therefore, that when Mary heard of Elizabeth’s kind and familiar treatment of the Earl of Murray, “the principal of her rebels,” she was not a little indignant. She immediately sent word to her Commissioners, that, before proceeding a step further in the negotiation, she considered it right that she should be put on at least an equal footing with the pretended Regent, – for she did not choose that greater respect should be shown to her rebels than to her and her true subjects. There were other three points, of which she thought she had also just cause to complain. First, that though she had come into England on the assurance of friendship, and of her own free will, she had not only seen no steps taken to restore her to her realm and authority, but had most unexpectedly found herself detained a prisoner, and her confinement rendered closer every day; —second, that though, at Elizabeth’s request, she had desired her loyal subjects in Scotland to abstain from hostilities, yet the Earl of Murray had not been prevented from molesting and invading them; – and, third, that having already established the utter groundlessness of the charges brought against her, instead of finding herself reinstated on her throne, the conference had been merely removed to a greater distance, where she could not communicate with her Commissioners so frequently and speedily as was necessary. In consideration of these premises, and especially in consideration of the treatment of the Earl of Murray, “you shall break the conference,” she continued, “and proceed no further therein, but take your leave, and come away. And if our sister allege that, at the beginning, she were content our cause should be conferred on by Commissioners, it is true. But since our principal rebels have free access towards her to accuse us in her presence, and the same is denied to us, personally to declare our innocence, and answer to their calumnies, being held as prisoner, and transported from place to place, though we came into her realm, of our free will, to seek her support and natural amity, we have resolved to have nothing further conferred on, except we be present before her, as the said rebels.”165

In the mean time, before these letters arrived, the Commissioners had held several sittings at Westminster; and Elizabeth having personally informed Murray, that if he would accuse the Queen of Scots of a share in the murder of Darnley, and produce the letters he had in his possession, she would authorize his continuance in the Regency, he no longer hesitated. On the 26th of November, after protesting that he had been anxious to save, as long as possible, the mother of his gracious King, James VI., from the perpetual infamy which the discovery of her shame would attach to her, and that he was now forced to disclose it, in his own defence, because it was maintained, that his previous answer to the complaint made against him was not sufficient, Murray, in conjunction with his colleagues, presented to the English Commissioners an “Eik” or addition to their “Answer,” in which they formally charged Mary with the murder. As to the reluctance so hypocritically avowed, it has been already seen, that so far back as December 1567, precisely the same charge, though unsupported by any evidence, was brought forward in the Scottish Parliament; and having then served its purpose, was allowed to lie dormant for eleven months. It is true, that there was then, no less than now, a palpable contradiction between this accusation, and the grounds which had always previously been assigned, both for Mary’s “sequestration” in Loch-Leven, and her alleged voluntary abdication. It was not till the public mind had been inflamed, and till opposing interests contributed to involve the truth in obscurity, that the notorious fact was denied or concealed, that Mary had been forced into an unwilling marriage with Bothwell, and that her abduction, and imprisonment in the Castle of Dunbar, were themselves an answer to any suspicion, that she was one of his accomplices in Darnley’s slaughter. But now that Mary was a prisoner, in the hands of a jealous rival, the Regent naturally supposed, that some contradictions would be overlooked; and all at once, assuming a tone of the utmost confidence, and undertaking “to manifest the naked truth,” he ventured on couching his assertion in these terms: – “It is certain, and we boldly and constantly affirm, that as James, some time Earl of Bothwell, was the chief executor of the horrible and unworthy murder, perpetrated in the person of King Henry, of good memory, father to our Sovereign Lord, and the Queen’s lawful husband, – so was she of the fore-knowledge, counsel, and device, persuader and commander of the said murder to be done, maintainer and fortifier of the executors thereof, by impeding and stopping of the inquisition and punishment due for the same, according to the laws of the realm, and, consequently, by marriage with the said James, some time Earl Bothwell, dilated and universally esteemed chief author of the above named murder.”166 In support of this new charge, the letters and other documents were referred to, and it was promised to produce them as soon as they were called for.