Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

  Fast as events had moved before Mary’s wedding, the speed only increased after the ceremony. By the end of May the clouds of war were gathering round Bothwell’s head with such menace that on 30th May the queen and duke were constrained to summon their people to meet them at Melrose on 15th June, with a view to taking arms. The granting of Tantallon to Morton and Edinburgh Castle to Balfour made neither of them more agreeable to see Bothwell elevated above them. Mary described the genesis of a new conspiracy in Scotland to Nau as follows:46 ‘It may have originated in some secret feuds among the lords of recent date, or possibly from grievances of remoter origin which though long hidden, at last came to scatter their poison on the surface.’ What distinguished this new fracas from the Huntly affair, the Chaseabout Raid, the Riccio killing and even the murder of Darnley, was that it now proved convenient to bring in a new dimension of morality, in order to blacken the case against Bothwell, and gloss over the previous commitments of Morton and Maitland. Undoubtedly the hatred of Bothwell and Maitland for each other proved a telling point in the rallying of the nobles against the queen. This animosity was so well known that Maitland was actually rumoured to have been killed by Bothwell at Dunbar. In the end Maitland placed his feelings for Bothwell above his loyalty to Mary, and on 6th June finally left the royal court for the west. He told Cecil that he had been in fear of his life, since Bothwell had tried to kill him in a fit of ungovernable rage in the queen’s own presence, and would have succeeded in doing so if Mary had not rushed to Maitland’s assistance. Maitland refused to admit that his disappearance at this critical juncture involved any disloyalty. To Cecil he explained smoothly that he had only remained at Mary’s side for so long, with so many hazards to his life and honour, because of his ancient affection for the queen. Now he could endure no more.47

  Many of the conspirators, such as Kirkcaldy, belonged to the old Protestant party of Moray, who had hated Bothwell since Chaseabout days and before. Bothwell had many virulent enemies. After Home and Murray of Tullibardine joined, Tullibardine brought in his brother-in-law Mar, the more inclined to come over because Bothwell had deprived him of Edinburgh Castle. The allegiance of Atholl was the easier to procure because his wife was sister to Maitland’s wife Mary Fleming; Morton also dangled the prospect of the marriage of his rich young ward the countess of Angus with Atholl’s son before the earl’s eyes, although in the end the young lady was married off to Mar’s son instead. In this network of allegiances and betrayals the treachery of Sir James Balfour surpassed that of anyone else: for he, the closest involved in the murder of Darnley, who had probably drawn up the Craigmillar bond, and who had been granted the custody of Edinburgh Castle as a reward for his complicity, now secretly treated with the conspirators and agreed to support their cause, on condition that his custody of the castle was confirmed. Yet another bond was made in which Sir James Balfour promised to put Edinburgh Castle at the disposal of the nobles, on the grounds that Bothwell was wickedly keeping their sovereign’s person in thrall. A further condition of Balfour’s adhesion was a total indemnity for any past crimes he might have committed up to the present moment – which included of course his participation in the murder at Kirk o’Field.

  On 6th June, Bothwell took Mary from Holyrood to the castle of Borthwick, a stark twin-towered fifteenth-century fortress set down beneath a low hill in a valley watered by a tributary of the Esk, about twelve miles to the south of Edinburgh. The lord of Borthwick was Bothwell’s neighbour and ally: from the battlements of Borthwick, the tip of Bothwell’s own castle of Crichton, only two miles away, could be discerned. Mary evidently considered her stay would be tranquil enough, for the Demoiselle de Courcelles specially brought down the royal silver hand-basin for the queen to use while she was there.48 Her hopes were disappointed. Borthwick was surrounded by the insurgents. Bothwell, with his military knowledge, realized that it was ill-situated to withstand a siege, and therefore slipped away through a postern gate, with only one companion, the son of the laird of Crookston. The boy was captured, but Bothwell galloped clean away, leaving Mary to hold the castle. The besiegers called up to the queen to abandon her husband and accompany them back to Edinburgh. When she proudly refused, they shouted insults up to the steep and forbidding walls, of a nature ‘too evil and unseemly to be told’, wrote Drury in a letter to London, as he described the new plight of ‘this poor princess’.49 The poor princess had not, however, lost all her old spirit. She sent two messengers to Huntly for help, both of whom fell into Morton’s hands. The besiegers felt unable to attack without the arrival of Mar and Lindsay, and decided to return to Edinburgh. In the meantime Mary disguised herself as a man, and escaped out of the castle by night to the nearby Black Castle at Cakemuir, which belonged to the Wauchopes, also neighbours and adherents of Bothwell. Here she met Bothwell, and together they made their way to Dunbar, by Fala, skirting the Lammermuir hills to the north to avoid detection.

  It was at Dunbar that the ultimate treachery of Balfour revealed itself: for it was his message to the queen that she would do better to return to Edinburgh, where the guns of the castle, under his command, would support her, which brought her out of this comparatively safe place, before the royal forces had mustered to anything like a secure strength. In answer to this reassuring summons, Mary and Bothwell now issued forth from Dunbar, with 200 hagbutters (musketeers), sixty cavalrymen, and only three field guns taken from the castle itself. All the queen’s belongings and wardrobe had been left behind in Edinburgh or at Borthwick from which she had escaped in her male disguise; she was now dressed in clothes hastily borrowed at Dunbar: a short red petticoat, a muffler, velvet hat and sleeves tied with bows, such as the women of Edinburgh wore. Her charm and dignity were undiminished by her costume: it was her reputation which no longer had its pristine purity in the minds of her ordinary subjects and, in a tragic phrase, as the royal cortège passed, ‘the people did not join as was expected’. By the time the queen reached Haddington she had about 600 horses – the faithful Seton had joined her, but Lord John Hamilton and Fleming did not appear; as they debated the best route to take, Huntly and the rest of the Hamiltons stayed, either dispiritedly or indecisively, within Edinburgh Castle. Bothwell found himself relying on the inferior contingents of border lairds such as Ormiston, Langton, Waughton, Wedderburn and Bass. At Gladsmuir, those royal supporters to be seen were treated to a proclamation saying that the conspirators, under the pretext of saving the life of Prince James, were trying to dethrone the queen, in order that they might rule in their own fashion. Queen Mary was therefore compelled to take up arms, and those faithful subjects who had come to her assistance would be rewarded with the lands and the possessions of the rebels. The army then marched on to Leith, and reached Prestonpans, where they spent the night. Mary and Bothwell passed the night – their last together – at the palace of Seton, the house which Mary had loved so long and happily in her six years in Scotland.

  At 2 a.m. on the Sunday morning, 15th June, 1567, the confederate lords marched out of Edinburgh towards Musselburgh. In the van of their procession was borne a white banner showing a green tree, with the corpse of Darnley lying underneath it, and his infant son kneeling before him, with the legend: ‘Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord’. Otherwise the rebel lords were each marked by the banner of their family. A few hours later, the royal army under Bothwell also moved out, and took up a commanding position on Carberry Hill. About eight miles east of Edinburgh, above their heads flew not family banners, but a series of banners bearing in each case the cross of St Andrew; and the position of the queen herself was marked by the solitary rampant red lion of Scotland. These nobles now took up their position on a hill opposite – Morton and Home with the cavalry, and behind them, Atholl, Mar, Glencairn, Lindsay and Ruthven with the main body of troops. It was a blazing hot day. Both parties suffered from thirst although by one account the lords had the advantage of some wine to sustain them. In between these two armies, neither of them exactly certain as to how they sho
uld proceed, the queen lacking troops, and the nobles lacking authority, there appeared the figure of du Croc, the French ambassador, who had panted out from Edinburgh after the insurgents.50

  Du Croc was now deputed by the rebels to beg Mary to abandon Bothwell, at which they were to restore her to her former position, while they themselves would continue to be her loyal subjects. This Mary absolutely and furiously declined to do. She pointed out in a passion of indignation to du Croc that these same lords had signed a bond recommending marriage with the very man they were now opposing vehemently – ‘It was by them that Bothwell had been promoted’ she kept repeating. By her account, Mary had no inkling at this point that the lords intended to charge Bothwell with the murder of Darnley, but certainly she felt absolutely no temptation to desert Bothwell. In the first place, Bothwell, with all his faults, had shown himself loyal to her throughout her adversities and his own, and was pledged to her support; she felt no such confidence about the behaviour of men of the calibre of Morton, Lindsay and Ruthven. Secondly, the queen, who miscarried a child at Lochleven in the middle of July, must by now have realized herself to be pregnant by Bothwell. The fact could not fail to seal their union in the mind of such a philoprogenitive woman. A single child was scarcely enough to ensure the royal succession of Scotland – or England – as history had all too often proved: it was no coincidence that Mary’s marriage contract to Bothwell had specifically stated one of the objects of the match to be ‘that of her royal person succession might be produced’.51

  As Mary refused to relinquish Bothwell, both sides now gave themselves up to a series of chivalric parleys, reminiscent of medieval warfare, in which challenges to personal combat were given and taken with great enthusiasm, but no actual battles took place. The first challenge came from the lords, who probably thus hoped to delay matters, until their reinforcements reached them. Bothwell, whom du Croc described as being in high spirits – ‘a great Captain, speaking with undaunted confidence, and leading his army gaily and skilfully … he could not count on half his men, and yet was not dismayed’ – accepted the challenge and rode out in front of the troops, sending a herald forward. James Murray of Purdovis was the first to step forward, but the queen refused to tolerate the encounter, on the grounds that his rank was so much inferior to that of the duke. Bothwell then indicated the sly Morton as a suitable recipient of his challenge. Morton characteristically delegated the job to the spirited Lindsay, who took off his armour and rested his limbs in preparation for the combat. Morton then clasped round his waist the great sword which had once belonged to his ancestor Archibald Bell-the-Cat. But even as these parleyings and preparations were proceeding, the royal troops were melting away, as can be seen in the contemporary sketch of the battlefield. This was probably the intention of the rebels, for in the end, despite these splendid preparations, no one ever did come forward to meet Bothwell’s challenge. Like an ancient hero he stood alone while his troops vanished. It was too late now to attack his enemies up hill, and his men were insufficient. There was no sign of the Hamiltons, who it was hoped might reinforce them.

  At evening the rebels decided to press their advantage with a new parley. Atholl and Maitland both lacked the courage to confront the queen they had betrayed, but Kirkcaldy rode forward. Bothwell’s spirits were very far from being either broken or cowed, but as a good general he was aware that the royal party suffered from a striking lack of troops. It would be highly unwise to choose this moment to challenge the lords, when there was a possibility of rallying much more support to Mary’s side in other parts of the country. He therefore suggested to Mary that they should retreat to Dunbar: first of all the castle had a strong, virtually impregnable position on the sea; secondly it would serve as a rallying-point for new supplies of royalists. But Mary could not believe that the situation was so desperate. She still believed in Kirkcaldy’s honour. She considered that the wisest course for her to pursue in the interests of peace and the avoidance of bloodshed was to accept a safe-conduct for Bothwell, and trust herself to the confederate lords, whom she now apparently thought would investigate everything anew by Parliament. Kirkcaldy assured her that the crown as such was not being attacked; afterwards Mary told Nau that both Maitland and Atholl had assured her privately that they were not with the rebels at heart.52 Bothwell, it was agreed, would gallop off to Dunbar, either to raise further troops, or to await parliamentary developments in the capital. With renewed trust in her nobles, Mary bade farewell to the man for whom she had sacrificed so much in terms of honour and reputation. They embraced in full view of both armies. It was at this point that Bothwell entrusted to Mary the bond signed at Craigmillar, which gave her the proof of Morton’s and Maitland’s complicity in the murder; perhaps because he had been raised among them he had less optimism than his wife about her future at the hands of the rebels. At sunset Bothwell mounted his charger, and after five weeks of power galloped away down the road of Dunbar. It was the last sight Mary was ever to have of him.

  The queen of Scots was now thoroughly alone. And her entry into the camp of the rebels immediately and rudely jolted her confidence in the love which she still believed her subjects bore for her. Here was no enthusiastic reception, no cheers, no protestations of devotion. On the contrary, the soldiers shouted crude insults at her. The queen’s spirit still held. She said loudly and openly to Morton: ‘How is this, my lord Morton? I am told that all this is done in order to get justice against the king’s murderers. I am told also that you are one of the chief of them.’53 Morton slunk away. But Mary Stuart needed all her courage to endure the ordeal before her, for which she seems to have been ill-prepared. She, who all her life had been greeted publicly with adulation and enthusiasm, now heard the soldiers shout, ‘Burn her, burn the whore, she is not worthy to live,’ as they conveyed her along the road into Edinburgh. ‘Kill her, drown her!’ they cried. Close to Mary’s side rode Drumlanrig and Cessford, two notorious young thugs, who joined their insults to the soldiers’ as they rode. Amazed, almost stunned, the queen allowed tears of shock and humiliation to pour down her cheeks, as she rode forward in the clothes she had acquired at Dunbar – now ‘all spoiled with clay and dirt’. For the first time she began to realize what the effect had been on the ordinary people of Scotland – the people who had once loved her – of her reckless action in marrying her husband’s assassin, and of those weeks of propaganda by the enemies of Bothwell. To them she was now no longer their young and beautiful queen, but an adulteress – and an adulteress who had subsequently become the willing bride of a murderer.

  In Edinburgh, the queen was not taken to either of her own residences, Holyrood or Edinburgh Castle, but to the house of the laird of Craigmillar, the provost of Edinburgh, who was Maitland’s brother-in-law. The nobles sat down to a hearty supper, but the queen retreated in a daze of horror at her experiences into her bedroom – even here, however, she could not find peace, since the guards insisted on remaining with her inside the room, so that she could not even undress. Mary now lay down on the bed, deprived of any furniture or bedding proper to her station as a queen, still in the red petticoat in which she had come from Dunbar, and gave herself up to the wastes of despair. There seemed no hope, and certainly no honour in Scotland, since the nobles, to whom she had freely surrendered, now held her a humiliated and unconsidered captive. Looking out of her window, she caught sight of Maitland – Maitland of Lethington who had risen so high in her favours, Maitland, her earliest counsellor, Maitland, her secretary, ‘her Lethington’ who owed so much to her for kindnesses in the past. In a piteous voice, and through her tears, she cried out the name; she called him: ‘Lethington, Lethington.’54 But Maitland pulled his hat over his ears and pretended not to hear her. In the meantime that cruel white banner was stationed in front of her window, with its corpse and its legend, which had accompanied her all the way to Edinburgh, the first thing to meet her impassioned gaze.

  By the next day Mary’s self-control had utterly collapsed. She came to
the window and cried out to the people that she was being kept in prison by her subjects who had betrayed her. The sight of her brought about rioting outside and more mockery and more insults. The lords pulled her back, saying that shots might be fired, and that they could not guarantee her safety. But before they did so, many of her subjects had seen the distraught woman, as she showed herself at the open window – her hair hanging down about her face, her clothes torn open so that the upper half of her body was almost bare, her beauty ravaged, her courage gone.55 Where now was the exquisite princess who had fascinated the French court and half Europe, the ‘belle et plus que belle’ of Ronsard’s poetry, in this wretched, near demented creature hanging out of the window of an Edinburgh prison, half naked, her bosom exposed, shrieking out that she had been betrayed? The people of Edinburgh, their innate decency overcoming their moral disapproval, were shocked into pity and compassion at the sight. It was four weeks since Mary’s marriage to Bothwell, and not quite two years since her boldly triumphant marriage to Darnley, attended by all the panoply of the Scottish court. This was the nadir of Mary Stuart.