Un seul penser qui me profficte et nuit
Amer et doux change en mon coeur sans cesse
Entre le doubte et l’espoir il m’oppresse
Tant que la paix et le repos me fuit …
J’ay veu la nef relascher par contraincte
En haulte mer, proche d’entrer au port,
Et le serain se convertir en trouble.
Ainsi je suis en souci et en crainte
Non pas de vous, mais quantes foir a tort
Fortune rompt voille et cordage double.*
Other variations on the theme in letters were the evil plight of her supporters in Scotland under Moray’s cruel persecution, and the monstrous nature of her subjects’ rebellion against her, a tendency which surely no sovereign queen would encourage. One of the most poignant of the pleas, on 5th July, expostulated: ‘Alas! Do not as the serpent that stoppeth his hearing, for I am no enchanter but your sister and natural cousin. If Caesar had not disclaimed to hear or heede the complaint of an advertiser [soothsayer] he had not so died. …’ And with still more anguish, on the subject of the personal interview: ‘I am not of the nature of the basilisk and less of the chameleon, to turn you to my likeness.’21 Mary was of course writing not only to Elizabeth, but also to France, to Catherine de Médicis, to Charles ix, to whom she protested that she was suffering for the true religion, the duke of Anjou, and her uncle the cardinal. Some of these letters touched naturally on the vexed subject of money, the perennial preoccupation of exiled royalty: Mary now desperately needed the income of her French estates to provide for herself and her household, having arrived without a penny. But her instructions of 30th May to Lord Fleming, whom she dispatched to London, made it clear that if Elizabeth did not agree to help her, then help was to be sought immediately from France, and that Mary herself in these circumstances would arrange to depart thither as soon as possible.22 Fleming, however, was not allowed to proceed from London to France, and the instructions were never able to be carried out. On 8th June Mary received a visit from Middlemore, Elizabeth’s emissary to Scotland, on his way north. Middlemore handed her a letter in which Elizabeth promised to restore Mary if she consented to have her innocence proved by Elizabeth’s inquiry. Mary wept and stormed. In vain she tried to tempt Middlemore with the notion of the confidences she would make personally to Elizabeth if only she was allowed to meet her. ‘I would and did mean to have uttered such matter unto her as I would have done to no other. … No one can compel me to accuse myself, and yet if I would say anything of myself, I would say of myself to her and to no other.’23 To such beguilements, Elizabeth was deaf.*
In Scotland Middlemore found that Moray and his supporters had quite independently reached the same conclusion as Elizabeth, to which they had been working since the previous winter: Mary’s guilt over Darnley’s death and her subsequent marriage to Bothwell were the points to be stressed if Mary was to be kept where Moray would most like to see her – in an English prison. The difference between Elizabeth and Moray was that Elizabeth at this point intended ultimately to restore Mary to Scotland, and only wished to delay the process; Moray on the other hand had no wish to see Mary back on the throne on any terms whatsoever. To Moray, the viciousness of his sister was no moral issue, it was a question of his own survival as governor of Scotland. Moray was therefore determined to go much further than the English and make the mud already thrown at Mary stick so hard that there could be no question of this besmeared figure returning to reign.
It was significant that Cecil himself, in one of those private memoranda he was so fond of drawing up for his own guidance giving the pros and contras of any given situation, could find Mary’s alleged moral turpitude the only true excuse for keeping her off the Scottish throne, and in an English prison.24 In favour of setting Mary at liberty were the following arguments: that she had come of her own accord to England, trusting in Elizabeth’s frequent promises of assistance; that she herself had been illegally condemned by her subjects, who had imprisoned her and charged her with the murder of Darnley, without ever allowing her to answer for her crimes either personally or through a lawyer in front of Parliament; that she was a queen subject to none, and not bound by law to answer to her subjects; lastly there were her own frequent offers to justify her behaviour personally in front of Queen Elizabeth. It was indeed a hard case to answer; it was certainly not answered by Mary’s opponents at the time, nor has the passage of time and the unrolling of history made it seem any less formidable as an indictment of England’s subsequent behaviour. The case which Cecil put contra Mary’s liberty was entirely based on the assumption that she had been an accessory to the murder of her husband, and gone on both to protect and to marry the chief assassin, Bothwell – apart from a somewhat dubious argument that since Darnley had been constituted king of Scots, and by Mary herself, so he was ‘a public person and her superior’, and therefore her subjects were bound to search out his murderer. This argument ignored the fact that Darnley had never in fact received the crown matrimonial, without which, despite his title of king, he could scarcely claim to be Mary’s equal, let alone her superior.
It was under these circumstances that, shortly after Mary’s flight to England, the first salvos in the new campaign to blacken her reputation once and for all were fired by the men who now occupied the throne from which they had ejected her. The queen’s ‘privy letters’, of which nothing had been heard since the Parliament in the previous December, and which had apparently lain the while untouched in Morton’s keeping, now made a new appearance on the political scene. It was interesting to note that these letters seemed not only to swell in importance, but also actually to grow in number as the campaign mounted in fervour. In England at the end of May, Lennox presented his own supplication to Elizabeth, wildly inaccurate in many details and poisonously accusatory of his former daughter-in-law; it referred to one letter only written by Mary by which she was supposed to have lured Darnley to his death. On 27th May Moray commissioned George Buchanan, Lennox’s feudal vassal, to prepare a Book of Articles to denounce Mary. These articles, to whose inaccuracies reference has already been made in Chapter 15, were originally in Latin, and contained a short reference to Mary’s ‘letters’. But this term did not necessarily imply that there was more than one letter: the Latin word was litterae which was used to denote one letter as well as several, and in sixteenth-century English, also, the term ‘letters’ was always used to describe a solitary letter. The Latin Book of Articles was ready by June. On 21st May, five days after Mary’s flight, Moray dispatched his secretary John Wood to London, gnawingly anxious to prevent Elizabeth showing favour to Mary; Wood’s instructions were to ‘resolve’ Elizabeth’s mind of anything she might ‘stand doubtful to’.25 A little while later, translated copies of an unspecified number of the queen’s writings were sent on to Wood from Scotland; as copies of letters said to have been written originally in French and now translated into Scottish they were, of course, of little value as evidence. But Wood was to show them secretly to the English establishment, in order to hint what big guns Moray might be able to bring against his sister, if only the English would encourage him to do so.
The encouragement which Moray needed was an assurance from Elizabeth that she would not restore Mary to her throne in the event of her being found guilty of the murder. On 22nd June, therefore, Moray dispatched an extraordinary letter to Elizabeth in reply to her request to explain his rebellion; he virtually asked to be assured in advance that the verdict of Elizabeth’s judges would be guilty if Moray was able to produce some of Mary’s own letters, and if he could prove they were genuine. The English were asked to make up their minds on the basis of the translated copies of the letters now in London in order to resolve Moray’s dilemma for him. Moray continued the letter on a note of near indignation at his difficulties: ‘For what purpose shall we either accuse, or take care how to prove, when we are not assured what to prove, or, when we have proved, what shall succeed?’26
Moray�
��s letter was a remarkable document. It may be thought to show more regard for the principles of statecraft than those of justice; it certainly outlined the problems of Moray and his supporters. For it was of no avail to accuse Mary of murder, and even prove it by fair means or foul, if she was subsequently to be restored to her throne, whatever the English verdict. Her vengeance might then be expected to be fierce upon those who had accused her. At this critical juncture, it seems likely that in response to Moray’s anxious inquiries, Cecil did in fact give some private unwritten assurances to John Wood in London, to pass on to Moray: whatever Elizabeth might say in public, in order to lure the Scottish queen into accepting her arbitration voluntarily, it was not in fact intended to restore Mary to Scotland if she was found to be guilty.27 At all events, Moray received some sort of satisfactory answer to his problems at the end of June, for he now began to endorse the plan of an English ‘trial’ with enthusiasm.
While Mary’s emissary in London, Lord Herries, treated with Cecil and Elizabeth over the possibility of the English holding such a ‘trial’ if Mary would agree to it, Mary herself suffered a change of prison. It was decided to remove her to Bolton Castle in Yorkshire. Carlisle was dangerously near the Scottish border. From the moment of Mary’s arrival there, other more secure places of confinement for her had been discussed, including Nottingham and Fotheringhay. The move was complicated by the fact that Mary was still not officially a prisoner. When the suggestion of a change was first broached to Mary, she quickly asked Middlemore whether she was to go as a captive or of her own choice. Middlemore tactfully replied that Elizabeth merely wished to have Mary stationed nearer to herself. To this Mary countered with equal diplomacy that since she was in Elizabeth’s hands, she might dispose of her as she willed.28 But when the actual moment came to leave Carlisle, Mary showed less composure. She began to weep and rage with a temper which was rapidly quickening with the frustrations of her unexpected imprisonment. Knollys had to exercise all his patience to get Mary to agree to proceed, since he did not wish to practise duress. Eventually Mary saw the threats and lamentations were achieving nothing, whereas gentleness might win her some advantage. She therefore withdrew her objections to departure, like a wise woman, said Knollys, and allowed herself to be removed quite placidly, on condition that she should be permitted to dispatch messengers to Scotland. The journey took two days, with a night at Lowther Castle and a night at Wharton. On arrival, Mary was pronounced by Knollys to his satisfaction to be very quiet, tractable, and ‘void of displeasant countenance’.29
There was, however, much to displease Mary’s countenance in the intrigues which were now being spun between Edinburgh and London. In spite of her incarceration, she had some inkling of what was taking place, and her knowledge of Scotland led her to guess more. Some messages from Wood in London to Moray fell into her hands by chance in June and uncovered some of the regent’s plotting. The news that some of her own letters were to be used against her reduced her to a state of nervous collapse, and she ended one letter to Elizabeth with a plea to excuse her ‘bad writing, for these letters, so falsely invented, have made her ill’.30 The move away from Carlisle proved to be a severe handicap. Carlisle was at least the capital of the western portion of the English borders, a frontier town with administrative connections, easy of access for travellers. Bolton was an isolated castle in a remote corner of the North Riding of Yorkshire, looking over the broad pastoral valley of Wensleydale; it had no town of its own to surround it, and lay forty miles from York and over fifty miles from Carlisle. The castle itself was comparatively unfurnished on her arrival, and hangings and other belongings had to be borrowed from Sir George Bowes’s house some distance away. Far more serious to Mary’s cause than these minor discomforts was the fact that she was from now on placed physically outside the mainstream of political life, although mentally she remained very much part of it. Mary had never been well-endowed with advisers, although she was a woman who wished by nature to lean upon others for advice; for the next nineteen years she was deprived of any sort of proper worldly contact by which to judge the situations which were reported to her. Her own servants, although loyal, were no match in intelligence for the English politicians with whom they had to deal. A Herries certainly could not hope to worst a Cecil: in any case the mistress of one presided at liberty over an illustrious court, whereas the mistress of the other pined in enforced seclusion.
Herries came to Bolton from London at the end of July and put the English proposals to his queen; it is easy to understand how Mary, lit up by false hopes of restoration at Elizabeth’s hands, agreed at last to the prospect of an English ‘trial’.* The fact that the English had no right to try her seemed now less important than the fact that Elizabeth had promised to restore her whatever the outcome, although if the lords proved her guilt, it was stipulated that the lords themselves should go unpunished for their rebellion. If the lords brought no evidence against Mary, on the other hand, or if their evidence was not held to be valid, then Mary was to be adjudged innocent in any case and restored as before, on condition that she renounced her present title to the crown of England during the lifetime of Elizabeth and her lawful issue. Other conditions made were the abandonment of the alliance with France, and the substitution of an alliance with England, the Mass in Scotland to be abandoned by Mary and common prayer after the English form to be practised instead and the ratification at last of the Treaty of Edinburgh. Believing herself to be on the eve of liberty, Mary even bade her partisans in Scotland cease fighting on condition that Moray’s would do the same.
The climate in the outside world was harsher than Mary, within her prison walls, remembered. Whether or not Mary’s partisans did lay down their arms – at any rate at the Parliament of 16th August Moray swiftly declared the forfeiture of the Hamiltons, Fleming and the bishop of Ross, before ever the boasted English trial had taken place. More damaging still to Mary’s cause, on 20th September Elizabeth wrote privately to Moray promising him what Cecil had already divulged in secret: whatever impression Elizabeth might have given Mary, the Scottish queen would not in fact be restored to her throne if she were found guilty in England. This letter, following on Cecil’s hints to Wood, was crucial to the development of Moray’s behaviour. On 23rd September Cecil repeated the same information to Sussex.31 Moray had now every impetus to prepare the blackest possible case against his sister. The queen’s ‘privy letters’ had therefore become the central plank of his accusatory edifice.
The English translation of Buchanan’s Book of Articles, prepared for the coming trial in September or October, contained a much expanded reference to these letters. Instead of the brief phrase in the Latin version written in June, there was now a long postscript specially devoted to the subject. Mary’s own supporters also began to appreciate that these writings were to be the testing-point not only of her own guilt or innocence, but also of the whole future government of Scotland. The Marian nobles, gathered together at Dumbarton, took the opportunity to declare publicly that ‘… if it be alleged that her Majesty’s writing, produced in parliament, should prove her Grace culpable, it may be answered, that there is in no place mention made in it by which Her Highness may be convicted, albeit it were in her own hand-writing, as it is not’.32 Only Mary herself, wrapped in ‘her little prisoner’s world’, believed, trusting Elizabeth, that the trial was a mere formality, and that she would be set free in any case.
Under these inauspicious circumstances, the conference of York was set up. It was decided that the trial should take the form of examination of the evidence by an English panel, headed by the duke of Norfolk. Both Mary and Moray were to be allowed commissioners. Moray’s commissioners included himself and Maitland; Mary’s included among others John Leslie, bishop of Ross, and Lords Livingston, Boyd and Herries. Her instructions to her commissioners illustrate Mary’s personal conviction that the conference was only being held in order that Elizabeth might in the future restore her to her throne, having accomplished ‘t
he reduction of our said disobedient subjects to their dutiful obedience of us’. With such rising hopes to illuminate her horizon, even captivity at Bolton seemed tolerable to Mary. She occupied herself learning to write English under the tuition of Knollys. It is obvious from his letters that propinquity led Knollys to fall a little in love with his glamorous prisoner. Exercising her arts of fascination on those around her in charming little ways was second nature to Mary Stuart: to Knollys she wrote her first letter in English when he had been absent from Bolton for two or three days. The letter, which is indeed exceedingly misspelt and scarcely intelligible as English at all, announces that she has sent him a little token, asks after his wife, and ends touchingly: ‘Excus my ivel vreitn thes furst tym …’33
Knollys also applied himself enthusiastically to trying to persuade his captive of the delights of the English religion which he himself practised. Knollys reported happily that Mary was now at Bolton growing to a ‘good liking of English common prayer’, had received an English chaplain, and had listened to his sermons which had happened to deal severely with the pharisaical justification of works by faith, as well as all kinds of papistry, with ‘attentive and contented ears’. Her replies were gentle and weak and Knollys reported complacently that ‘she does not seem to like the worse of religion through me’.34 Mary was by now surrounded by Protestants: her cousin Agnes Fleming, Lady Livingston, joined her in August and both Livingstons belonged to the reformed Church, as did Herries; they may have added their influence to that of Knollys. It is possible also that she felt some genuine and laudable intellectual curiosity concerning the doctrines which the majority of her subjects practised, and that her inquiries helped to while away the captive hours. But the true motive behind this suspicious docility was now as ever her desire to win the good opinions of Elizabeth, for whom Knollys was merely a stalking-horse. At the end of August Knollys put his finger on the point when he reported how marvellously polite Mary had been of late ‘as though she conceived I could persuade her Highness to show her great favour’.35 The beaux yeux of Knollys, that good family man, who worried over the welfare of his daughters in London (‘experience teaches what foul crimes youthful women fall into for lack of orderly maintenance’ he pronounced in an anxious letter), were quite incidental to Mary Stuart’s plans.
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