The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Kate Williams

  Plenty of other suitors offered their hand, including Prince Eric of Sweden; the son of Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor; and various Englishmen, including the Earl of Arundel and the diplomat Sir William Pickering. In the past, when Elizabeth heard about Francis and Mary declaring they would lay claim to her throne, she cried, ‘I shall take a husband who will give the King of France some trouble.’3 She meant James Hamilton, the younger Earl of Arran, whose father, the former regent, had suggested him as a husband for Elizabeth, and was in line for the Scottish throne. Had Elizabeth done so and claimed herself and Arran as some kind of joint monarchy over Scotland and England, she would have made it very difficult for Mary to gain the throne. Marrying Arran might have made the entire story completely different. But instead, Hamilton was left unmarried and went mad over the accusations he had made about Bothwell.

  Elizabeth was a woman of words, but cautious in her actions, and she made loud threats of marriage and scattered kind words to envoys – but she continued to spend her time with Robert Dudley. The gossip swirled. Kat Ashley, her First Lady of the Bedchamber, told Elizabeth that she had gone too far and her ‘behaviour towards the Master of the Horse occasioned much evil speaking’. Elizabeth said it was ridiculous to accuse her, since her ladies were always with her and would see any impropriety. Kat tried again, but Elizabeth summarily refused to give him up. She needed his friendship for she had lost so much, and ‘in this world, she had so much sorrow and tribulation and so little joy’.4 As always with Elizabeth, when she was pushed to do something, she resisted and dug in her heels. There was similarity with Mary’s relationship with Bothwell. In the future, Mary would struggle to give up Bothwell because he seemed to her to be the one person who had never turned against her or tried to exploit her. Elizabeth felt, too, that everyone had abandoned her when she had been suspected of treachery by her sister Mary. As the ambassador to the Duke of Saxony later reported, she ‘was more attached to him than any of the others because when she was deserted by everybody in the reign of her sister not only did he never lessen in any degree his kindness and humble attention to her, but he even sold his possessions that he might assist her with money and therefore she thought it just that she should make some return for his good faith and constancy’. As the imperial ambassador put it, ‘It is generally stated that it is his [Dudley’s] fault that the queen does not marry’,5 and the Holy Roman Emperor began to question whether he should even consider marrying his son to a woman who appeared to be engaged in an affair. The ambassadors comforted themselves that any marriage would be so unpopular with the people that the queen would not go through with it. But still, they fretted that there was ‘not a man in England who does not cry out upon him as the queens’ ruin’,6 and passed on rumours that Dudley planned to divorce his wife. Certainly, Amy was never at court, but then few wives ever were. Elizabeth’s own ladies were the main female presence – and the queen excused it by saying there simply was not room for wives. Then the news spread that Amy, only just twenty-seven, had a terrible malady of the breast, presumably some type of breast cancer. Speculation was rife that her eventual death would clear the way for Dudley and Elizabeth to marry.

  Cecil was angered by the intimacy and wanted Robert gone. He turned to the Spanish ambassador and seemed to pour out his heart. As Álvaro de Quadra put it, he ‘perceived the most manifest ruin impending over the queen through her intimacy with Lord Robert. The Lord Robert had made himself master of the business of the state and the person of the queen.’ So far, nothing that de Quadra had not previously said himself in his reports. And then Cecil turned to scandal. ‘He said that they were thinking of destroying Lord Robert’s wife. They had given out that she was ill, but she was not ill at all, she was very well, and taking care not to be poisoned.’7

  This was a shocking allegation against the queen and her closest confidant, and a scandalous and out-of-character display of loose lips from Cecil. De Quadra naturally thought things could get no more cloak and dagger than the suggestion that the queen was plotting to murder one of her subjects. He was wrong.

  On Sunday 8 September 1560, the day after Elizabeth I’s twenty-seventh birthday, Amy Robsart gave all her servants permission to leave the house for a day to visit a nearby fair. She was staying at the home of Sir Anthony Forster, a friend of Dudley, at Cumnor Place in Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire), which had been before the dissolution of the monasteries one of the granges owned by the very wealthy Abingdon Abbey. She wished to be alone in her part of the house. Her husband was not present but at court with Elizabeth, enjoying the aftermath of the birthday celebrations. Perhaps Amy was expecting a visit from a secret messenger whom she wished no one to see. Or, perhaps, if it was the case that she was sick from the abscess in her breast, she wished to be alone with her pain. She sent away her most devoted maid, Picto, and was angry with some others who didn’t want to go to the fair, and was equally discouraging to Mrs Odingsells, a widow who also lived in the house, when she said the fair was too crowded on Sundays and would rather remain at home.

  Amy managed to send everyone away into the fine September day. To us, this may seem a normal occurrence. Now, we crave solitude when sad or overstrained. But people of the sixteenth century were never alone. Women were always attended and accompanied at every move – to be bereft of all servants was simply unfitting. Amy had to compel her servants to leave her, against all tradition and propriety.

  When they returned, they found her dead at the bottom of the stairs.

  Had Amy wanted everybody gone because she wished to commit suicide? And if she did, was this because she was in mortal pain, or because she suspected her husband was in love with another woman? Did someone push her to suicide by manipulating her? Or did she receive a messenger who demanded she see him alone – and who then killed her? Or had she simply had an unlucky fall?

  When Robert heard the news, he sent his man, Thomas Blount, to investigate. He was panicking about the evil talk that might pin the murder of his wife on him. ‘I do understand that my wife is dead, and, as he [the messenger] saith, by a fall from a pair of stairs. Little understanding can I have of him. The greatness and suddenness of the misfortune doth so perplex me until I do hear from you how the matter standeth, or how this evil should light on me, considering what the malicious world will bruit [say], as I can take no rest.’8

  Robert left court in a hurry for a small palace at Kew that Elizabeth had given him. He was right to hide from the peering eyes of ambassadors and courtiers – but many questioned why he did not rush straight to Cumnor, to see his wife’s final place of death and pay his respects to her. That would be the behaviour one might expect of a loving husband. But Robert was in shock and confusion and no doubt feared that he might be suspected or questioned if he arrived at Cumnor. He wanted Blount to tell him whether it was ‘by evil chance, or by villainy’. Blount rode to Abingdon, lodged at an inn and asked the owner for information. It was this man who told him the astonishing piece of information that Amy had been alone when she died because she had commanded all her servants to go to the fair and ‘would suffer none to tarry at home’. Blount interviewed the maid Picto, who swore that it must have been an accident and Amy would never have committed suicide, although she did agree Amy had been melancholic in recent months. Not only were suicides in the period cruelly dealt with and widely condemned, but if Amy had been so depressed as to kill herself, her maid might also be considered at fault for not comprehending her mistress’s saddened state.

  Amy was buried at the Church of Our Lady in Oxford on 23 September, with a full procession, although Robert did not attend. The ‘malicious talk’ that Robert feared had come to pass. Throckmorton fretted about the ‘dishonourable and naughty reports . . . which every hair on my head stareth at and my ears glow to hear’. It was not so much about Robert – but the queen. ‘Some let not to say, what religion is this that a subject can kill his wife, and the prince not only bear withal but marry him.’9 Had Elizabeth and Robert plotted t
ogether to kill Amy so he could be free? An inquest concluded that Amy ‘by misfortune came to her death’.

  Dudley gave the Cumnor estate manager a huge sum of money, the equivalent of around £70,000 today. Perhaps it was a cover-up, or perhaps he had believed it was suicide and wanted to try to ensure no one knew. Or perhaps there were simply outstanding debts that he needed to pay. Robert’s letters after Amy’s death are very much those of a man in shock – and even if he wanted her dead, it was surely a better option to wait out the year or so of her illness. He would have known that her death would throw suspicion on him and also on his beloved queen.

  A death by natural causes seems too much of a coincidence, although it is possible. It is also possible that it was a suicide and Dudley and the servants rushed to cover it up so that Amy would receive a fit burial. Although her servants reported her sadness, some scholars have noted that she had recently bought a handsome velvet gown, suggesting she had plans for the future, and while her breast cancer, if that is what it was, would have led to an excruciatingly painful death, she was at that point probably not suffering too badly. The inquest has recently been unearthed in the National Archives, in which there was a note of two ‘dynts’10 in Amy’s head but no indication of much more, which does not seem enough to kill, even if they were received before the fall. Many at the time drew the conclusion that a third party was involved. And as there was no record of robbery or ransacking, they believed it must have been planned.

  Cecil has been considered as a possible murderer. He hated Robert. The last thing he wanted was poor Amy dying of cancer, leaving Robert an innocent widower, free to marry Elizabeth. With Amy’s public death, all suspicion would turn to Robert – and if he tried to marry the queen, he would open himself to more charges of guilt. Murdering Amy was the perfect crime, for it would push Dudley permanently out of the way.

  Or perhaps the killer was a foreign spy who wanted Robert elimin­ated so that his master could be considered a suitor. Or one who believed Robert blocked his country’s influence and also suspected that Robert’s interest in reformed religion was persuading the queen to his side. It is part of the job of a foreign spy to assassinate or threaten, without being discovered, and Robsart’s death, if it was planned, was certainly a brilliantly executed job – no one saw the death and if there were any visitors to Amy that day, they slipped in undetected. De Quadra’s enthusiastic condemnation of the queen and Robert might have been a smokescreen to divert suspicion that the killer had been in the pay of the Spanish. The Holy Roman Emperor, Philip of Spain and plenty of others hated Robert and wanted him deposed from his position. They genuinely believed that he was the one stopping the queen making a dynastic marriage. Killing Robert himself would have been too obvious and brought the queen’s vengeance onto whoever she thought responsible. But his wife was an easy target.

  It is a baffling part of the whole mystery that de Quadra claimed Cecil had said the queen and Dudley wished for Amy’s ruin and were ‘thinking of destroying’ her.11 Why would Cecil say such a thing, especially to someone he knew would immediately report it? Cecil was a measured, strategic man, intelligent, and spoke carefully, according to his ends. He was discreet, careful and ambitious. But telling de Quadra that the queen and Dudley wanted Amy dead was wild and terrible. Had he simply been at the end of his patience with them, blurting something out that seemed impossible – and then, unfortunately and coincidentally, Amy committed suicide or fell? Still, speaking in anger to an ambassador, whatever the subject, was not a good tactic and de Quadra doesn’t record any other such instances. Or had he been planning the murder and was attempting to divert suspicion away from himself? This is possible, but if he condemned the queen, he faced a great loss of influence if she came to hear of it. Or was de Quadra lying? Had his spies or those of networks he knew of been plotting Amy’s murder, and he was at this point wanting to put himself beyond blame?

  We cannot know the truth behind Amy’s death. But the consequence was immediate and absolute: Elizabeth could not and would not ever marry Robert. He was not a sad widower, his wife dead so young of illness. The taint of murder was about him. Even suicide reflected badly on him, as people might think his love for the queen surely broke his wife’s heart. Overnight he went from the position of being considered by many a favourite, most likely to be chosen if Elizabeth ever agreed to wed, to a suitor with less chance than Philip of Spain. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth could put her head over her heart. She truly believed him innocent. But the world did not think him free of guilt and so she had to cool her friendship with him. If she was to marry Robert, even after a decent period of a year or so had passed, people would accuse her of having been in on the plot to kill Amy. Elizabeth had seen Robert as her friend, her source of joy in a cruel world. Now she had to lose him as well. As she herself later said to the Spanish ambassador, ‘They said of me that I would not marry because I was in love with the Earl of Leicester and that I could not marry him because he had a wife already, yet now he has no wife, and for all that I do not marry him.’12 Still, after the dust settled, she kept him as her devoted companion, giving him rooms next to hers in the palace, rights to export clothes, and rights over the customs duties of sweets, wines, silks, velvet, oil and even currants. It may have been more than he had any right to expect, but Elizabeth remembered his loyalty during her difficult times.

  The parliament of January 1563 was preoccupied by Elizabeth’s marriage. The Virgin Queen had been a virgin for far too long. Elizabeth was petitioned to marry and thus produce ‘an imp of your own’ and she should wed ‘where it shall please you, by whom it shall please you and as soon as it shall please you’.13 Elizabeth fought back, prevaricating and offering different opinions. Parliament had to retreat, defeated, until another day.

  In Scotland, Knox was waging war on Mary, feeding the rumours that she had been a lover of the poet Chastelard, and declaring she had been captured by the ‘venom of idolatry’ and that ‘The queen’s Mass shall provoke God’s vengeance.’14 It was becoming easier and easier for him to speak such dreadful words. The beautiful young queen was doubted and distrusted and the rumour that she was unchaste spread fast.

  The answer was for Mary to marry and so protect herself against such insults. But Elizabeth was now determined that Mary should not wed without her say-so. Everyone around the young Scottish queen was trying to control her. Don Carlos of Spain had fallen down the stairs in 1562 and been submitted to head surgery to save his life. But the surgery had brought on attacks of mental illness and so he was off the list of possibles, at least until he recovered. Mary’s uncle set off to Innsbruck and signed a secret treaty for her marriage with Archduke Ferdinand – and when Elizabeth’s spies told her of it, she informed Mary that if she married Ferdinand or anyone from the imperial family, she would consider their good relationship to be at an end. The days when Mary said that the only husband she wished for was Elizabeth were resolutely over.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘To Use Me as Her Sister or Daughter’

  After only a few years in Scotland, Mary was in an impossible position. Knox and the Protestant lords were stirring dissent against her, Catherine de’ Medici refused to openly ally with her, and Elizabeth was refusing to play the tender cousin. In late 1563, Elizabeth laid down what she expected of Mary’s marriage. Ideally, she would marry an Englishman, but the queen was prepared to consider a foreigner, although not Spanish, French or Austrian – which pretty much ruled out all the power players in Europe. If Mary obeyed, she would be rewarded and would in time be decreed as heir. As Elizabeth wrote, ‘we will not be behind on our part to satisfy her as far forth as if she were our only natural sister or dear only daughter’.1

  This was too much for Cecil. He got rid of ‘dear only’ before ‘daughter’ and then scratched out the entire section. Instead, if she ‘show herself conformable’, they would set up an ‘inquisition of her right’, to which she could submit evidence regarding her right of succession. A judgemen
t would then be made on whether Mary should be deemed the queen’s ‘natural sister or daughter’. Afraid of the Guises and obsessively protective of the queen, he went too far. One might ask, if Elizabeth was determined to be the Virgin Queen, who would succeed if not Mary? The queen’s instincts were right and she should have retained the first draft. Instead, Mary was now to be subject to an English court and her rights examined by judges – when surely blood should be enough? No one was saying that she was not legitimate, or that her family had not been. There was no possible reason to put her claim on trial – especially when Elizabeth had been deemed illegitimate and had not reinstated her parents’ marriage. The idea that a queen’s claim could be judged and made subordinate by lawyers was a typical Cecil move, but it contained within it the ­beginning of the end for absolute royal rule. If Mary’s claim could be examined by the courts, then why not any monarch’s? We can be sure Elizabeth had mixed feelings about the document, for ahead of its arrival, she sent Mary a handsome diamond ring.

  Mary kissed the ring and expected a kindly letter from Elizabeth. When the document arrived, she was shocked but restrained her anger. There was no use fighting back. She needed to encourage Elizabeth to trust her – and Knox’s insubordination and rudeness had grown so extreme that she dared not offend the queen. For, if it came to it, she felt sure Elizabeth would back her against the rebellious lords – and she had become convinced that if she only gained her dynastic rights, then they would respect her. She had Knox put on trial for suggesting that two imprisoned Calvinist priests should be freed by a ‘convocation of brethren’. To Mary, that was treasonous and she felt sure she had caught Knox in his own web. But he defended himself nimbly, said that he was a minister and authorised by the Kirk to intervene, and he was acquitted. Mary was furious, and demanded that the verdict be re-examined. She was beginning to look powerless and she believed that Knox would never dare behave so if she were married. In this, she was perhaps right. But still, Elizabeth was proving reluctant to name a possible fiancé.