The Mystery of Mary Stuart

The declarations of Paris were never published at the time. On November 8, 1571, Dr. Wilson, who was apparently translating something – the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan, or the accompanying Oration (‘Actio’), into sham Scots – wrote to Cecil, ‘desiring you to send unto me “Paris” closely sealed, and it shall not be known from whence it cometh.’ Cecil was secretly circulating libels on Mary, but ‘Paris’ was not used. His declarations would have clashed with the ‘Detection’ as written when only Bothwell and Mary were to be implicated. The truth, that there was a great political conspiracy, including some of Mary’s accusers, and perhaps Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven (for so Paris makes Bothwell say), would have come out. The fact that Moray ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and sneaked off, would have been uttered to the world. The glaring discrepancies would have been patent to criticism. So Cecil withheld documents unsuited to his purpose of discrediting Mary.[175]

The one valuable part of Paris’s declarations concerns the carrying of a Glasgow letter. And that is only valuable if we supply the accusers with possible dates, in place of their own impossible chronology, and if we treat as false their tale[176] that Bothwell ‘lodged in the town’ when he returned from Calendar to Edinburgh. The earlier confessions, especially those of Tala, were certainly mutilated, as we have seen, and only what suited the Lords came out. That of Paris was a tool to use against Lethington, but, as it also implicated Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven, with Argyll and Huntly, who might become friends of Morton and Moray, Paris’s declaration was a two-edged sword, and, probably, was little known in Scotland. In England it was judiciously withheld from the public eye. Goodall writes (1754): ‘I well remember that one of our late criminal judges, of high character for knowledge and integrity, was, by reading it [Paris’s statement], induced to believe every scandal that had been thrown out against the Queen.’ A criminal judge ought to be a good judge of evidence, yet the statements of Paris rather fail, when closely inspected, to carry conviction.

Darnley, in fact, was probably strangled by murderers of the Douglas and Lethington branches of the conspiracy. On the whole, it seems more probable that the powder was placed in Mary’s room than not, though all contemporary accounts of its effects make against this theory. As touching Mary, the confessions are of the very slightest value. The published statements, under examination, of Powrie, Dalgleish, Tala, and Bowton do not implicate her. That of Bowton rather clears her than otherwise. Thus: the theory of the accusers, supported by the declaration of Paris, was that, when the powder was ‘fair in field,’ properly lodged in Mary’s room, under that of Darnley, Paris was to enter Darnley’s room as a signal that all was prepared. Mary then left the room, in the time required ‘to say a paternoster.’ But Bowton affirmed that, as he and his fellows stored the powder, Bothwell ‘bade them make haste, before the Queen came forth of the King’s house, for if she came forth before they were ready, they would not find such commodity.’ This, for what it is worth, implies that no signal, such as the entrance of Paris, had been arranged for the Queen’s departure. The self-contradictory statements of Paris can be torn to shreds in cross-examination, whatever element of truth they may contain. The ‘dying confessions’ are contradictorily reported, and all the reports are worthless. The guilt of some Lords, and their alliance with the other accusers, made it impossible for the Prosecution to produce a sound case. As their case stands, as it is presented by them, a jury, however convinced, on other grounds, of Mary’s guilt, would feel constrained to acquit the Queen of Scots.

VIII

MARY’S CONDUCT AFTER THE MURDER

Nothing has damaged Mary’s reputation more than her conduct after the murder of Darnley. Her first apologist, Queen Elizabeth, adopted the line of argument which her defenders have ever since pursued. On March 24, 1567, Elizabeth discussed the matter with de Silva. Her emissary to spy into the problem, Killigrew, had dined in Edinburgh at Moray’s house with Bothwell, Lethington, Huntly, and Argyll. All, except Moray, were concerned in the crime, and this circumstance certainly gave force to Elizabeth’s reasoning. She told de Silva, on Killigrew’s report, that grave suspicions existed ‘against Bothwell, and others who are with the Queen,’ the members, in fact, of Moray’s little dinner party to Killigrew. Mary, said Elizabeth, ‘did not dare to proceed against them, in consequence of the influence and strength of Bothwell,’ who was Admiral, and Captain of the Guard of 500 Musketeers. Elizabeth added that, after Killigrew left Scotland, Mary had attempted to take refuge in the Castle, but had been refused entry by the Keeper, who feared that Bothwell would accompany Mary and take possession. This anecdote is the more improbable as Killigrew was in London by March 24, and the Earl of Mar was deprived of the command of the Castle on March 19.[177] To have retired to the Castle, as on other occasions of danger, and to have remained there, would have been Mary’s natural conduct, had the slaying of Darnley alarmed and distressed her. Those who defend her, however, can always fall back, like Elizabeth, on the theory that Bothwell, Argyll, Huntly, and Lethington overawed her; that she could not urge the finding of the murderers, or even avoid their familiar society, any more than Moray could rescue or avenge Darnley, or abstain from sharing his salt with Bothwell.[178] De Silva inferred from Moray’s talk, that he believed Bothwell to be guilty.[179]

The first efforts of Mary and the Council were to throw dust in the eyes of France and Europe. The Council met on the day of Darnley’s death. There were present Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, Atholl, Caithness, Livingstone, Cassilis, Sutherland, the Bishop of Galloway (Protestant), the Bishop of Ross, the treasurer, Flemyng, Bellenden, Bothwell, Argyll, Huntly, and Lethington. Of these the last four were far the most powerful, and were in the plot. They must have dictated the note sent by express to France with the news. The line of defence was that the authors of the explosion had just failed to destroy ‘the Queen and most of the nobles and lords in her suite, who were with the King till near midnight.’ This was said though confessedly the explosion did not occur till about two in the morning. The Council add that Mary escaped by not staying all night at Kirk o’ Field. God preserved her to take revenge. Yet all the Court knew that Mary had promised to be at Holyrood for the night, and the conspirators must have seen her escort returning thither with torches burning.[180] The Lennox MSS., in a set of memoranda, insist that Mary caused a hagbut to be fired, as she went down the Canongate, for a signal to Bothwell and his gang. They knew that she was safe from any explosion at Kirk o’ Field.

On the same day, February 10 (11?), Mary, or rather Lethington for Mary, wrote, in Scots, the same tale as that of her Council, to Beaton, her ambassador in Paris. She had just received his letter of January 27, containing a vague warning of rumoured dangers to herself. The warning she found ‘over true’ (it probably arose from the rumour that Darnley and Lennox meant to seize the infant Prince). The explosion had been aimed at her destruction; so the letter said. ‘It wes dressit alsweill for us as for the King:’ she only escaped by chance, or rather because ‘God put it in our hede’ to go to the masque. Now all the world concerned knew that Mary was not in Kirk o’ Field at two in the morning, and Mary knew that all the world knew.[181] To be sure she did not actually write this letter. Who had an interest in this supposed plot of general destruction by gunpowder? Not Lennox and Darnley, of course; not the Hamiltons, not Mary and the Lords who were to be exploded. Only the extreme Protestants, whose leader, Moray, left on the morning of the affair, could have benefited by the gunpowder plot. In Paris, on February 21, the deed was commonly regarded as the work of ‘the heretics, who desire to do the same by the Queen.’[182]

This was the inference – namely, that the Protestants were guilty – which the letters of Mary and the Council were meant to suggest. To defend Mary we must suppose that she, and the innocent members of Council, were constrained by the guilty members to approve of what was written, or were wholly without guile. The secret was open enough. According to Nau, Mary’s secretary, she had remarked, as she left Kirk o’ Field at midnight, ‘Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!’ The story was current. Blackwood makes Mary ask ‘why Paris smelled so of gunpowder.’ Had Mary wished to find the guilty, the begrimed Paris would have been put to the torture at once. The sentinels at the palace would have been asked who went in and out after midnight. Conceivably, Mary was unable to act, but, if her secretary tells truth as to the begrimed Paris, she could have no shadow of doubt as to Bothwell’s guilt. A few women were interrogated, as was Nelson, Darnley’s servant, but the inquiry was stopped when Nelson said that Mary’s servants had the keys. Rewards were offered for the discovery of the guilty, but produced only anonymous placards, denouncing some who were guilty, as Bothwell, and others, like ‘Black Mr. James Spens,’ against whom nothing was ever proved.

It were tedious and bewildering to examine the gossip as to Mary’s private demeanour. If she had Darnley buried beside Riccio, she fulfilled the prophecy which, Lennox tells us, she made over Riccio’s new-made grave, when she fled from Holyrood after the murder of the Italian: ‘ere a twelvemonth was over, a fatter than he should lie beside him.’ What she did at Seton and when (Lennox says that, at Seton, she called for the tune Well is me Since I am free), whether she prosecuted her amour with Bothwell, played golf, indulged in the unseasonable sport of archery or not, is matter of gossip. Nor need we ask how long she sat under candle-light, in darkened, black-hung chambers.[183] She assuredly made no effort to avenge her husband. Neither the strong and faithful remonstrances of her ambassador in France, nor the menace of Catherine de Medicis, nor the plain speaking of Elizabeth, nor a petition of the godly, who put this claim for justice last in a list of their own demands, and late (April 18), could move Mary. Bothwell ‘ruled all:’ Lethington, according to Sir James Melville, fell into the background of the Court. He had taken nothing by the crime, for which he had signed the band, and it is quite conceivable that Bothwell, who hated him, had bullied him into signing. He may even have had no more direct knowledge of what was intended, or when, than Moray himself. He can never have approved of the Queen’s marriage with Bothwell, which was fatal to his interests. He was newly married, and was still, at least, on terms with Mary which warranted him in urging her to establish Protestantism – or so he told Cecil. But to Bothwell, Mary was making grants in money, in privileges, and in beautiful old ecclesiastical fripperies: chasubles and tunicles all of cloth of gold, figured with white, and red, and yellow.[184] Lennox avers, in the Lennox Papers, that the armour, horses, and other effects of Darnley were presented by Mary to Bothwell. Late in March Drury reported that, in the popular belief, Mary was likely to marry him.

From the first Lennox had pleaded for the arrest and trial of Bothwell and others whom he named, but who never were tried. Writers like Goodall have defended, Laing and Hill Burton have attacked, the manner of Bothwell’s Trial (April 12). Neither for Lennox nor for Elizabeth, would Mary delay the process. As usual in Scotland, as when Bothwell himself, years before, or when John Knox still earlier, or when, later, Lethington, was tried, either the accused or the accuser made an overwhelming show of armed force. It was ‘the custom of the country,’ and Bothwell, looking dejected and wretched, says his friend, Ormistoun, was ‘cleansed’ in the promptest manner, Lennox merely entering a protest. The Parliament on April 19 restored Huntly and others to forfeited lands, ratified the tenures of Moray, and offended Mary’s Catholic friends by practically establishing the Kirk. On the same night, apparently after a supper at Ainslie’s tavern, many nobles and ecclesiastics signed a band (‘Ainslie’s band’). It ran thus: Bothwell is, and has been judicially found, innocent of Darnley’s death. The signers therefore bind themselves, ‘as they will answer to God,’ to defend Bothwell to the uttermost, and to advance his marriage with Mary. If they fail, may they lose every shred of honour, and ‘be accounted unworthy and faithless Traytors.’

A copy of the names of the signatories, as given to Cecil by John Read, George Buchanan’s secretary, ‘so far as John Read might remember,’ exists. The names are Murray (who was not in Scotland), Argyll, Huntly, Cassilis, Morton, Sutherland, Rothes, Glencairn, Caithness, Boyd, Seton, Sinclair, Semple, Oliphant, Ogilvy, Ross-Halkett, Carlyle, Herries, Home, Invermeath. ‘Eglintoun subscribed not, but slipped away.’[185] Names of ecclesiastics, as Lesley, Bishop of Ross, appear in copies where Moray’s name does not.[186] It is argued that Moray may have signed before leaving Scotland, that this may have been a condition of his license to depart. Mary’s confessor told de Silva that Moray did not sign.[187] That the Lords received a warrant for their signatures from Mary, they asserted at York (October, 1568), but was the document mentioned later at Westminster? That they were coerced by armed force, was averred later, but not in Kirkcaldy’s account of the affair, written on the day following. No Hamilton signs, at least if we except the Archbishop; and Lethington, with his friend Atholl, seems not even to have been present at the Parliament.

On April 21 (Monday), Mary went to Stirling to see her son, and try to poison him, according to a Lennox memorandum. On the 23rd, she went to Linlithgow; on the 24th, Bothwell, with a large force, seized her, Huntly, and Lethington, at a disputed place not far from Edinburgh. He then carried her to his stronghold of Dunbar. Was Mary playing a collusive part? had she arranged with Bothwell to carry her off? The Casket Letters were adduced by her enemies to prove that she was a party to the plot. As we shall see when examining the Letters if we accept them they leave no doubt on this point. But precisely here the darkness is yet more obscured by the enigmatic nature of Mary’s relations with Lethington, who, as Secretary, was in attendance on her at Stirling and Linlithgow. It will presently be shown that, as to Lethington’s policy at this moment, and for two years later, two contradictory accounts are given, and on the view we take of his actions turns our interpretation of the whole web of intrigue.

Whether Mary did or did not know that she was to be carried off, did Lethington know? If he did, it was his interest to ride from Stirling, by night, through the pass of Killiecrankie, to his usual refuge, the safe and hospitable house of Atholl, before the abduction was consummated. Bothwell’s success in wedding Mary would mean ruin to Lethington’s favourite project of uniting the crowns on the head of Mary or her child. It would also mean Lethington’s own destruction, for Bothwell loathed him. To this point was he brought by his accession to the band for Darnley’s murder. His natural action, then, if he knew of the intended abduction, was to take refuge with Atholl, who, like himself, had not signed Ainslie’s band. If Lethington was ignorant, others were not. Bothwell had chosen his opportunity with skill. He had an excellent excuse for collecting his forces. The Liddesdale reivers had just spoiled the town of Biggar, ‘and got much substance of coin (corn?), silks, and horses,’ so wrote Sir John Forster to Cecil on April 24.[188] On the pretext of punishing this outrage, Bothwell mustered his forces; but politicians less wary than Lethington, and more remote from the capital, were not deceived. They knew what Bothwell intended. Lennox was flying for his life, and was aboard ship on the west coast, but, as early as April 23, he wrote to tell his wife that Bothwell was to seize Mary. A spy in Edinburgh (Kirkcaldy, by the handwriting), and Drury in Berwick, knew of the scheme on April 24, the day of the abduction. If Mary did not suspect what Lennox knew before the event, she was curiously ignorant, but, if Lethington was ignorant, so may she have been.[189]

What were the exact place and circumstances of Mary’s arrest by Bothwell, whether he did or did not offer violence to her at Dunbar, whether she asked succour from Edinburgh, we know not precisely. At all events, she was so far compromised, actually violated, says Melville,[190] that, not being a Clarissa Harlowe, she might represent herself as bound to marry Bothwell. Meanwhile Lethington was at Dunbar with her, a prisoner ‘under guard,’ so Drury reports (May 2). By that date, many of the nobles, including Atholl, had met at Stirling, and, despite their agreement to defend Bothwell, in Ainslie’s band, Argyll and Morton, as well as Atholl and Mar, had confederated against him, Atholl probably acting under advice secretly sent by Lethington. ‘The Earl Bothwell thought to have slain him in the Queen’s chamber, had not her Majesty come between and saved him,’ says Sir James Melville, who had been released on the day after his capture between Linlithgow and Edinburgh.[191] Different rumours prevailed as to Lethington’s own intentions. He was sometimes thought to be no unwilling prisoner, and even to have warned Atholl not to head the confederacy against Bothwell (May 4).[192] Mary wrote to quiet the banded Lords at Stirling (about May 3), and Lethington succeeded in getting a letter delivered in which he expressed his desire to speak with Cecil, declaring that Mary meant to marry Bothwell. He had only been rescued from assassination by Mary, who said that, ‘if a hair of Lethington’s head perished, she would cause Huntly to forfeit lands, goods, and life.’[193] Could the Queen who protected Lethington be in love with Bothwell?

Mary, then, was, in one respect at least, no passive victim, at Dunbar, and Lethington owed his life to her. He explained that his letters, apparently in Bothwell’s interest, were extorted from him, ‘but immediately by a trusty messenger he advertised not to give credit to them.’[194] Meantime he had arranged to escape, as he did, later. ‘He will come out to shoot with others, and between the marks he will ride upon a good nag to a place where both a fresh horse and company tarries for him.’[195] Lethington made his escape, but not till weeks later, when he fled first to Callendar, then to the protection of Atholl; he joined the Lords, and from this moment the question is, was he, under a pretext of secret friendship, Mary’s most deadly foe (as she herself, Morton, and Randolph declared) or her loyal servant, working cautiously in her interests, as he persuaded Throckmorton and Sir James Melville to believe?

My own impression is that Mary, Morton, and Randolph were right in their opinion. Lethington, under a mask of gratitude and loyalty, was urging, after his escape, the strongest measures against Mary, till circumstances led him to advise ‘a dulce manner,’ because (as he later confessed to Morton)[196] Mary was likely to be restored, and to avenge herself on him. Mary, he knew, could ruin him by proving his accession to Darnley’s murder. His hold over her would be gone, as soon as the Casket Letters were produced before the English nobles: he had then no more that he could do, but she kept her reserve of strength, her proof against him. His bolt was shot, hers was in her quiver. This view of the relations (later to be proved) between Lethington and the woman whose courage saved his life, explains the later mysteries of Mary’s career, and part of the problem of the Casket Letters.

Meanwhile, in the first days of May, the Queen rushed on her doom. Despite the protestations of her confessor, who urged that a marriage with Bothwell was illegal: despite the remonstrances of du Croc, who had been sent from France to advise and threaten, despite the courageous denunciation of Craig, the Protestant preacher, Mary hurried through a collusive double process of divorce, proclaimed herself a free agent, created Bothwell Duke of Orkney, and, on May 15, 1567, wedded him by Protestant rites, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, later one of her official prosecutors, performing the ceremony.[197] To her or to Lethington’s own letter of excuse to the French Court, we return later.

Mary, even on the wedding-day, was miserable. Du Croc, James Melville, and Lethington, who had not yet escaped, were witnesses of her wretchedness. She called out for a knife to slay herself.[198] Mary was ‘the most changed woman of face that in so little time without extremity of sickness they have seen.’ A Highland second-sighted woman prophesied that she should have five husbands. ‘In the fifth husband’s time she shall be burned, which death divers speak of to happen to her, and it is said she fears the same.’ This dreadful death was the legal punishment of women who killed their husbands. The fires of the stake shone through Mary’s dreams when a prisoner in Loch Leven. Even Lady Reres, now supplanted by a sister of Bothwell’s, and the Lady of Branxholme, ‘both in their speech and writing marvellously rail, both of the Queen and Bothwell.’[199]

A merry bridal!

Mary’s defenders have attributed her sorrow to the gloom of a captive, forced into a hated wedlock. De Silva assigned her misery to a galling conscience. We see the real reasons of her wretchedness, and to these we must add the most poignant, Bothwell’s continued relations with his wife, who remained in his Castle of Crichton. He, too, was ‘beastly suspicious and jealous.’ No wonder that she called for a knife to end her days, and told du Croc that she never could be happy again.

Meanwhile the Lords, from the first urged on by Kirkcaldy, who said (April 26) that he must avenge Darnley or leave the country, were banded, and were appealing to Elizabeth for help, which she, a Queen, hesitated to lend to subjects confederated against a sister Queen. Kirkcaldy was the dealer with Bedford, who encouraged him, but desired that the Prince should be brought to England. Robert Melville dealt with Killigrew (May 27). Bothwell, to soothe the preachers, attended sermons, Mary invited herself to dinner with her reluctant subjects; the golden font, the christening gift of Elizabeth, was melted down and coined for pay to the guard of musketeers (May 31). Huntly asked for leave to go to the north. Mary replied bitterly that he meant to turn traitor, like his father. This distrust of Huntly is clearly expressed in the Casket Letters.[200] On May 30, Mary summoned an armed muster of her subjects. On June 6, Lethington carried out his deferred scheme, and fled to the Lords. On the 7th, Mary and Bothwell retired to Borthwick Castle. On June 11, the Lords advanced to Borthwick. Bothwell fled to Dunbar.[201] The Lords then retired to Dalkeith, and thence, on the same night, to Edinburgh. Thither Mary had sent a proclamation, which is still extant, bidding the citizens to arm and free her, not from Bothwell, but from the Lords. An unwilling captive would have hurried to their protection. The burgesses permitted the Lords to enter the town. Mary at once, on hearing of this, sent the son of Lady Reres to the commander of Edinburgh Castle, bidding him fire his guns on the Lords. He disobeyed. She then fled in male apparel to Dunbar, Bothwell meeting her a mile from Borthwick (June 11). On June 12, the Lords seized the remains of the golden font, and the coin already struck. On the 13th, James Beaton joined Mary and Bothwell at Dunbar, and found them mustering their forces. He returned, with orders to encourage the Captain of the Castle, but was stopped.

Next day (14th) the Lords made a reconnaissance towards Haddington, and Atholl, with Lethington, rode into Edinburgh, at the head of 200 horse. Lethington then for three hours dealt with the Keeper of the Castle, Sir James Balfour, his associate in the band for Darnley’s murder. Later, according to Randolph, they opened a little coffer of Bothwell’s which had a covering of green cloth, and was deposited in the Castle, and took out the band. Was this coffer the Casket? Such coffers had usually velvet covers, embroidered. Lethington won over Balfour, who surrendered the Castle presently. This was the deadliest stroke at Mary, and it was dealt by him whose life she had just preserved.