Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

  It becomes apparent therefore that some letter, or draft of a letter, written by Mary herself, has been loosely and not particularly skilfully run together with a love letter written to Bothwell by some other woman. There is more than one possible candidate for the role of the other woman: Anna Throndsen in particular had every reason to consider herself badly treated by Bothwell and tricked out of a promise of marriage; but as she had left Scotland by the date of Bothwell’s marriage it seems that the charge of writing these tortured jealous letters cannot be laid at her door, although they fit with what we know of her character. However, Bothwell had many mistresses previous to his marriage: in the autumn of 1565 Randolph referred to some mysterious French mistress imported by Bothwell to Scotland. Bothwell did not marry Jean Gordon until the spring of 1566, and the match could well have aroused the most poignant jealousy in some discarded mistress, seeing herself passed over in favour of the rich and powerful Huntly connection. Whereas it is highly unlikely that Bothwell would have retained an incriminating letter from Mary written before Darnley’s death among his papers, he might easily have preserved a bundle of love letters of no political implications, from an insignificant but passionate mistress; these could have been seized either in June 1567 from George Dalgleish, or at any other point after Bothwell’s departure from the Scottish scene and before October 1568, during which time the lords were totally in power in Scotland.

  The interpolation of a love letter from the other woman makes sense not only of the inordinate length of this letter – and Mary, who was only at Glasgow two nights, was already supposed to have written one letter from thence to Bothwell – but also of the strange activities she described herself as doing there: she writes on two separate occasions in the same letter of a bracelet she is making for her lover, a bracelet which she is staying up late to finish in secret, an amazing occupation for Queen Mary to adopt in the course of her critical mission to Glasgow. The pleading tone of the latter half of the letter is also strangely at variance with Mary’s character. ‘Alas, and I never deceived anybody but I remit myself wholly to your will, and send me word what I shall do, and whatever happens to me I will obey you. …’ Bothwell is said to be almost making Mary a traitor – an odd phrase for a queen to use, who could hardly be accused of treason towards herself. Still more puzzling, if the whole letter had indeed been written by Mary, is the concluding sentence: ‘Remember your friend and write unto her and often.’ For not only have no love letters from Bothwell to Mary survived (it is surely strange that the allegedly reckless Mary should have been so much more prudent than the theoretically cold-blooded Bothwell), but also Mary was about to return to Edinburgh, where she would actually sleep under the same roof as Bothwell at Holyrood; Bothwell being here in constant attendance on her, she would surely have no need for these constant communications for which the writer cravenly begged.

  If parts of this long letter are dismissed as interpolations of another hand, this still leaves the problem of Mary’s own highly confidential letter, and to whom it was addressed. One piece of internal evidence points to the fact that it might have been Moray: the queen compares Darnley’s evil breath (due in fact to syphilis, although she did not know it) to ‘your uncle’s breath’. Bothwell had no uncles; and only one great-uncle, the bishop of Moray, whom Mary had met once over four years ago. His personal hygiene can scarcely have been so vividly in her mind. But Moray’s uncle, the earl of Mar, was a prominent courtier, had been so over a number of years, and was now guardian of the queen’s son. Mary would have every reason to know such an intimate detail about Mar. Another piece of internal evidence suggests even more strongly that the queen’s part of the letter was not intended for Bothwell: at the very end of the published Scottish version of the letter there follows a mysterious list of headings: ‘Remember you … of the purpose of Lady Reres, of the Inglismen, of his mother, of the Earl of Argyll, of the Earl Bothwell,* of the lodging in Edinburgh.’ These headings were clearly intended to remind the writer of certain points she was to raise: but Mary would hardly remind herself to raise the subject of the Earl Bothwell in a letter written to Bothwell himself. These are not the only headings in the letter: half-way through the letter occurs a further list of headings, referring back to subjects already discussed. The existence of two such groups of memoranda lead one to suppose that Mary’s part of the Long Casket Letter might have been only a draft for a letter which was never in fact sent. As a draft, it would have remained in her possession, and might therefore have been seized among her other papers when she was taken to Lochleven.

  Whether such a draft was intended for Moray, or possibly even one of Mary’s French relations, who would all have uncles known to her, to follow up her letter to Beaton the day before is less relevant than the light this letter casts on Mary’s state of mind at Glasgow. The report of the Spanish ambassador in July 1567, the statement in Parliament in December of the same year, Lennox’s supplication to Elizabeth in May 1568, and Buchanan’s early mention of litterae applicable to a single letter, show that quite early on in their rule of Scotland, the lords did feel they possessed some sort of written evidence against Mary – to be distinguished from the actual Casket Letters themselves. It is quite possible that this evidence was the draft of Mary’s letter from Glasgow, in which she discusses her relations with Darnley with such candour, and relates her own promise to renew their married life once he was cured. It is significant that Crawford’s deposition to the English tribunal was apparently tailored from the Marian parts of this letter, to the extent of virtually copying it.

  Darnley’s docile acceptance of his removal from Glasgow, into what he must have known was danger, is one of the more puzzling aspects of the Kirk o’Field tragedy. It has been seen that Mary more or less certainly suspended physical relations with her husband from the late summer onwards: perhaps the promise of renewal was made to bring the invalid to Edinburgh. This still incidentally provides no proof of Mary’s adulterous liaison with Bothwell, merely of her own desire to get Darnley to Edinburgh, by promise if not threats, and under her influence once away from his own conspiracies. When the lords came to present their evidence to the English tribunal, they too did not find this draft letter sufficiently damning, and therefore laced it with a few classically villainous phrases – such as a suggestion that Darnley’s ‘physic’ at Craigmillar should be poisoned – as well as interpolating, very roughly, another love letter to Bothwell.

  Letter III,16 of which a copy in the original French survives, is marked ‘to prove the affections’ in a clerkly hand. No attempt was made by the lords to date it, which would indeed have been very difficult, and it is of course not signed. It is quite inconceivable that it should have been written by Mary to Bothwell at any point in their relationship: the writer appears to have followed Bothwell’s fortunes over a long period (as he is said to know) and have been brought into ‘a cruel lot’ and ‘continual misadventure’ as a result. Nothing was less true of Mary, to whom Bothwell brought good fortune up to the last moment, after which she was not able to write love letters to him. There is a reference to a secret ‘marriage’ of bodies, which the writer hugs to her bosom until their marriage can be made in public – the classical delusion of the girl who has been seduced. For all Bothwell’s unkindness, the writer will in no way accuse him: ‘neither of your little remembrance, neither of your little care, and least of all of your promises broken, and of the coldness of your writing, since I am so far made yours, that that which pleases you is acceptable to me’. This is hardly the pattern of Bothwell’s relations with Mary: he broke no promises to her, was never cold, but acted for many years as a loyal servant and lieutenant before he aspired – his aspirations, not hers – to become still more powerful as her consort. Letter III, on the other hand, comes from the pen of someone who has had a long, passionate and unhappy love affair with Bothwell, over many years – in short, the other woman. If it be true that in all love affairs, il y a un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la jo
ue, with the other woman and Bothwell it was always she who kissed and he who extended the cheek. Mary Stuart’s relations with Bothwell took place on the less fanciful plane of politics: and it was Bothwell, as the seeker after power, rather than Mary as the fount of it, who was the aggressor in their relationship.

  Letter IV17 refers to that mysterious incident which Buchanan also mentioned in his ‘Detection’ (but to which Moray never referred although said to be a witness of it) in which Mary was supposed to have incited Lord Robert Stewart to quarrel with Darnley, with a view to getting him neatly killed in the course of the dispute.18 This letter was marked by the English clerk ‘Letter concerning Holyrood House’ – a mistake for the house at Kirk o’Field. Apart from backing up Buchanan’s dubious story which seems to be its main point in the lords’ scheme of accusation, it is an extraordinarily obscure letter, despite the existence of both French and English contemporary copies, suggesting that the copyist found the original difficult to decipher, or else that the original was somewhat clumsily forged. It is a long letter – which makes it implausible that Mary should have written it to Bothwell on 7th February, two days before Darnley’s death, during a week when Bothwell was in constant attendance on her both at Holyrood and at the provost’s lodging. Again, many of the references are quite out of keeping with Mary at this point, including the reiterated theme of the ‘ill luck’ of the writer (quite inconsistent with Mary’s fortunes at this date) and her jealousy of some rival who has not ‘the third part of the faithfulness and voluntary obedience that I bear unto you’. Who was the rival who in February 1567 had the advantage over Mary in Bothwell’s affections? The only possible answer was his wife Jean Gordon. Yet the writer of the letter deliberately compares herself to Medea, the first wife of Jason, whom he deserts to marry Glauce – the implication being that the writer, unlike Queen Mary, had been first in the field with Bothwell.

  The letter concludes with the most enigmatic phrase in the entire Casket documents: in the French copy it reads, ‘Faites bon guet si l’oiseau sortira de sa cage ou sens son per comme la tourtre demeurera seulle a se lamenter de l’absence pour court quelle soit.’ This translates literally as ‘Beware lest the bird fly out of its cage, or without its mate like the turtle-dove live alone to lament the absence however short it may be.’ The only possible implication is that the writer is the bird who may fly out of her cage, if badly treated, or else go into a decline out of melancholy. But, of course, such a sentiment could hardly be applied to Mary. Therefore the contemporary English translation, presumably at the instruction of the Scottish lords present, tries to make Darnley the bird who may fly out of the cage, and by mistranslating per (mate) as father (père), implies that the absence of Lennox is making Darnley mourn like the dove. The published Scottish version, on the other hand, while making Darnley the bird who may fly out of the cage without his mate, makes the writer the dove who will remain alone to mourn his absence, an interpretation which fits neither the French nor Mary’s alleged disdain of Darnley – since there was no reason why she of all people should mourn the absence of Darnley.

  Letter V,19 of which the contemporary French copy survives, is endorsed ‘Anent the dispatch dismissal of Margaret Carwood; which was before her marriage; proves her affection.’ This endorsement is indeed essential to explain the production of this letter, which is otherwise of little guilty import in the history of Mary’s relations with Bothwell. The writer – whose style one has now come to recognize as that of the other woman – expostulates against the folly and ingratitude of a certain woman who has made trouble between her and her lover: ‘I beseech you that an opinion of another person be not hurtful in your mind to my constancy …’ and whom she now detests in consequence. There is as usual no signature and no proper names are mentioned. In point of fact Margaret Carwood was never in any disgrace with Mary: she was married from her service and as has been seen her wedding was attended by Queen Mary herself on the Tuesday after Darnley’s death, a mark of signal favour; the queen also paid for her weddinggown as the inventories show. There was certainly no question of her ‘dispatch’ from Mary’s service. These facts were either forgotten or ignored by the lords presenting the ladies, in their inspiration at fitting this particular letter into the scheme of things, or else they rightly banked on such details of Scottish court life nearly two years before being unknown to the English tribunal.

  Letter VI20 is ostensibly written from Stirling where Mary went on 22nd April to visit Prince James. It was on her return journey that she was abducted by Bothwell, and the letter is thus endorsed ‘From Stirling before the ravishment – proves her mask [pretence] of ravishing.’ It exists in the contemporary French copy, and the English translation among the Cecil MSS at Hatfield House. Once again this love letter contains many internal references which make it impossible to have come from the pen of Mary. The external theme of jealousy on the part of the other woman for her rival is once again present: Bothwell is accused of having ‘two strings to his bow’, and Huntly is once more described as ‘your false brother-in-law’ who has come to the writer and warned her that Bothwell will never marry her ‘since being married you did carry me away’. Yet Huntly at this point had just signed the Ainslie bond, backing Bothwell’s marriage to the queen, and he certainly never seems to have been morally troubled by the abduction in any way. Furthermore, the other woman repeatedly reproaches Bothwell with being a negligent suitor, who has promised to resolve everything, but in fact: ‘Vous n’en avez rien fait.’ Yet Bothwell in April 1567, as far as Mary was concerned, was a man of consummate vigour and resource, as the organization of the Ainslie bond itself goes to prove. Clearly the lords were struck by the coincidence of the phrases concerning Bothwell carrying his mistress away, referring in fact to some other earlier adventure, and adapted the letter to their own purposes.

  There is, however, one interesting point to note about the contemporary copies of this letter. the original French copy at Hatfield is in an italic hand, in contrast to the ‘secretary’ hand of all the other copies. This hand, while clearly distinguishable from Mary’s on close inspection (the c’s and d’s are completely different, the writing is smaller and neater), is nevertheless of the same Roman type, and might even be taken for it at a quick glance, particularly by a group of men used to dealing with a very different type of handwriting. Why should this one letter survive in the Roman hand? No explanation has ever been offered. But its existence does seem to argue that it may quite possibly be one of the original Casket Letters, masquerading as a clerk’s copy; perhaps the prudent Cecil took one of the originals away with him, in place of a copy, as a piece of wise reinsurance bearing in mind always Queen Mary’s close relationship to the English throne, which might at any minute, by the premature death of Elizabeth, make her his sovereign. The fact that the twenty-two documents had mysteriously sunk to twenty-one by the time they were handed over to Morton in 1571 may be explained by this piece of abstraction, which was not noticed at the time.

  It is a fascinating, if speculative, thought. If this Hatfield letter is accepted as one of the original documents shown to the English tribunal, it still leaves us no nearer knowing whether this Roman hand was that of a Scottish forger, or that of the other woman, who, being brought up on the Continent, happened to write in very much the same manner as Mary herself. The Hatfield group of Casket documents were only discovered at Hatfield House in 1870 by Mr R. Gunton, private secretary and later librarian to the 3rd marquess of Salisbury. They were first published in the Calendar of the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1883. If any further copies of the text were ever discovered in French, in this same handwriting, akin to Mary’s but not hers, or in any other Roman hand, fresh light might yet be cast on the whole complicated subject of the Casket Letters.

  Letters VII and VIII,21 for which no contemporary copies exist, are like Letter VI supposed to have been written from Stirling during the day and two nights Mary spent there before her abduction. Letter VII has a genu
ine Marian ring: the tone is regal in contrast to the self-abasement of the others, and Bothwell is here addressed very much as the faithful servant – the role which he occupied also to outward eyes in April 1567. If Letter VII is accepted in its entirety as being written by Mary from Stirling, then it certainly proves that she had foreknowledge of the abduction. Mary writes that she leaves ‘the place and the time’ to Bothwell. As for marrying her afterwards, Mary believes that Bothwell will deserve a pardon for his behaviour through ‘your services and the lang amities … if above the duty of an subject you advance yourself’, especially if he gives as his motive the need to preserve the queen from a foreign marriage. This need to save her from the arms of a foreign-born prince was one of the arguments Mary always gave afterwards for believing that Bothwell was the nobles’ own choice of consort. This letter also stresses another point on which Mary was known to be anxiously concerned at the time: Bothwell is firmly adjured to make sure of the support of the lords, and to take particular trouble to smooth down Maitland (Bothwell’s known antagonist). This eminently practical letter, which Bothwell would have good reason to preserve among his most important papers, lest he could be accused of treason in that he had abducted the queen against her will, is another possible candidate for the queen’s incriminating ‘privy letters’ which the lords might have discovered in the summer of 1567.

  Letter VIII, on the other hand, although also said to have been written from Stirling, must have been written by Mary at some other date, since it refers to Huntly as ‘your brother-in-law that was’. The divorce of Bothwell and Jean Gordon did not take place until after the abduction; at Stirling Huntly was still very much Bothwell’s brother-in-law; it was a mistake which Mary could not possibly have made. Letter VIII is once more a Marian letter, calm, without words of passion, warning Bothwell of various problems, and hoping in unemotional terms to see him soon: ‘pray God send us an happy interview shortly’. The letter would seem to have been written to Bothwell some time after their marriage, the most likely date, as Dr Armstrong-Davison suggests, being 8th June when Bothwell had gone to Melrose to raise help against the rebels, and Mary was in Edinburgh. It won a place in the dossier, however, through the wording of this passage: ‘there be many folks here, and among others the Earl of Sutherland who would rather die, considering the good they have so lately received of me, than suffer me to be carried away’. Although the apprehensions of the ‘folks’ applied to Mary’s probable fate at the hands of her rebels, the lords tried to interpret the words as applying once more to the abduction, ignoring the erroneous description of Huntly.