The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Kate Williams

  Darnley had shuffled back in after the murder and she turned to her husband and demanded why he would see her treated thus – after she had taken him from a ‘low estate and made you my husband’. ‘What offence have I made you that you should have done me such shame?’ Darnley started complaining, moaning that she had not ‘entertained’ him ever since she took to Rizzio and never visited him anymore. Mary dismissed his words, still brave, despite the horror and said it was his responsibility to visit her. But Darnley, bursting with adrenalin and furious about being treated as merely the queen’s husband, launched into a tirade, saying she had promised obedience, and even if he had been from a ‘baser degree’, marriage made him her husband and her ‘head’. Mary was almost speechless. His behaviour, the murder, the blood, his jealousy, was all too much. She told him, ‘I shall be your wife no longer nor sleep with you anymore’ and would not rest until he too had a heart as sorrowful as hers. Ruthven trudged back into Mary’s presence, demanding a cup of wine because he was exhausted after the frenzy of fighting and killing. Mary shook her head at him. ‘If I or my child die, you will have the blame.’2

  The people of Edinburgh had heard the commotion and had assembled under the queen’s windows, asking to speak with her. Lord Lindsay marched into her chamber and told her that if she spoke to them, ‘we will cut you into collops and cast you over the walls’. Darnley told the men that it had been a minor domestic disturbance and all was well now. In the blink of an eye, Mary had become a prisoner.

  Ruthven and Darnley finally left. Darnley had the men drag the corpse out of the chamber, throw it down the stairs and drag it off to the porter’s lodge, where it was stripped of its belongings, Rizzio’s beloved fine clothes taken away and sold. Next day, Rizzio’s body was bundled into a grave at Holyrood. Bothwell, who had been elsewhere in the palace and whom the gang had also hoped to murder, fled with Huntly.

  Mary was under strict surveillance and was isolated in her rooms, allowed only a few female attendants, with threatening men standing guard outside her door and patrolling the palace gates. High on his own success, Ruthven declared that if she tried to escape, ‘we will throw her to them piecemeal, from the top of the terrace’.3 Mary was on her own, entirely at the mercy of the conspiring lords. She feared they might use her as a puppet queen, to front their rule – or they might imprison her, unseat her and kill her. They hoped, above all, that the child would be a girl – for then what legitimacy could the queen have? All the power would be theirs.

  Darnley dissolved parliament so that Moray’s goods were safe, but he was having second thoughts. He was unnerved that the conspirators had been so eager to see his dagger in Rizzio and, now that they had won, none of them seemed very enthusiastic about listening to his plans for kingship. He began to worry that they had only used him and would throw him aside.

  Mary spent all night unable to sleep and next morning wrote to the thirty-four-year-old Earl of Argyll, begging for his help. Although he had been an ally of Moray and a keen Protestant, he was married to her half-sister, who had been forced to witness the murder as Mary’s companion and he was a man who was traditional and supportive of the monarchy. She gambled correctly in writing to him. She decided that the only way to escape was by getting Darnley onside, even though he had killed a man in front of her and humiliated her. That afternoon, when Darnley visited, she berated him for his betrayal. ‘You have done me so grievous an injury within the last twenty four hours that I shall never be able to forget it’ – and she ignored his protestations that he had been dragged into the plot. She played on his paranoid nature, planting the seed of possibility that the lords might be double-crossing them both, that he too might be locked up with her. Darnley, beginning to panic that Moray and the others might exclude him or imprison him too, told her that the plan was to confine her at Stirling and govern without her and she realised she had to act fast. She understood that the whole plan had been about her, not Rizzio. Yes, he was unpopular and disliked, but killing him in front of the queen had been a way of bringing her to heel and an excuse for imprisoning her, forcing her under their control. Mary instructed her errant husband that he had to save her: ‘you have placed us both on the brink of the precipice, you must now deliberate how we shall escape the peril’.4

  That afternoon, she declared she was about to miscarry and needed her gentlewomen. Without an heir Darnley was nothing, so he forced Ruthven to allow the doctor and midwife to visit the captive. They said that the queen was delicate and should be attended by her ladies as normal. Ruthven agreed to send away some of the guards, convinced that Mary couldn’t escape. Mary’s ladies were immediately on her side, took letters to Bothwell and Huntly, who advised her to escape from Holyroodhouse however she could, leaping over the walls by ropes and chairs if she had to, and then flee. The enterprising Countess of Huntly even managed to smuggle a rope ladder to the queen, hidden between two dinner plates – but as Mary would have to clamber out of the window in full view of the guards, she decided it was impossible.

  Moray was already widely suspected of being involved. The fact he’d been away wasn’t fooling anyone. He popped up again, having returned fortuitously on the day after the murder, visited Mary and pressed for a pardon for all the lords. Mary made gestures to please him, accepting that he had not been involved but she refused to acquit all the lords. She said that she felt she had been too lenient in the past, and this had emboldened the nobles to misbehave. She saw herself, the queen, as the dispenser of justice and said she owed it ‘to everybody’ and so could not give them a ‘full pardon the minute you ask’. She would, however, if they behaved well and loyally, ‘endeavour to forget’. When Moray reported back, the lords were furious. She could still prosecute them for the murder in the future and they still felt she could take back the church lands. The lords refused the offer. Mary was stuck.

  Mary believed that she had to escape. She might have done better to stay and attempt to rule the lords by dividing and conquering – being friendly to Moray and those who had backed his Chaseabout Raid while punishing Ruthven and the murderers. The news was slowly leaking out to the public that Rizzio had been brutally killed and their queen was being held and the uneasy alliance between conspirators was already crumbling.

  She continued to persuade Darnley to help her flee. She offered to come to him as a wife and he was won over. Mary spoke to him cleverly, telling him that he couldn’t trust the lords and they would never give him the crown. She told him that the best way to govern was to be above the various factions. He was entirely convinced and agreed to help her escape to Dunbar, the nearest royal fortress and the home of the sister of Bothwell.

  Mary used her pregnancy again. She, Darnley and her ladies said she needed air otherwise she might miscarry. The lords had to assent. She said she would sign paperwork pardoning them and they duly prepared it. That night, she said – using her health just as Elizabeth so often did – that she did not feel well enough to sign documents but would do it in the morning. She had, of course, been feeling perfectly well and that night, at midnight, she left her rooms clandestinely, through the servants’ quarters and out, over the land where poor Rizzio was buried, onto horses prepared by her servants. It was a long, dark journey of five hours to Dunbar – and Mary suffered through it. But she was free.

  The lords had been outwitted. They guessed where she had gone and wrote to her asking for the pardons to be signed. Mary did not reply. Instead, she wrote at length to Elizabeth of the miseries of her treatment, drawing a parallel between them both as queens, the dreadful treatment that Mary had suffered and Elizabeth might yet experience.5 As the days ticked on and Mary still did not sign the collective exoneration, some nobles lost their nerve and asked for individual pardons and made overtures to Argyll about discussing a settlement. The queen knew, then, that she had her power back. Bothwell and Huntly gathered an army for her and on the morning of 18 March, Mary returned to Edinburgh with nearly 8,000 men, as well as Darnley, Bothwell, Hu
ntly and her older supporters – and was welcomed with enthusiasm by her people. She took a house in the High Street rather than Holyroodhouse, because for her it was still tainted, her old home a bloodstained prison.

  Mary sent messages to Moray’s Chaseabout rebels that they would be pardoned as long as they did not attempt to assist the murderers of Rizzio. All of the Rizzio conspirators were declared outlaws and Mary pronounced that everything they owned should be given to the Crown. Darnley declared that he had nothing to do with the plot and hadn’t even known about it, thus undermining the rebels at a stroke. Morton, Ruthven and Andrew Ker – who had waved the gun at her – fled to England and begged Cecil for his protection, declaring they had only been following Darnley’s orders. Elizabeth was less than pleased to have the plotters in her realm and sharply told Morton to go elsewhere; Ruthven, long sickly, died in Newcastle soon after being denounced as a rebel. Knox, who expected to be caught up in the recriminations, dashed to Ayrshire, where he wrote his history of the Reformation in Scotland. Mary, it seemed, had won, even if it meant Bothwell now thought he had power over her.

  Poor Rizzio was forgotten in his makeshift grave, all his possessions forfeit. The lords had genuinely disliked him and thought he had too much influence with the queen. But Mary had a goodly number of French and Italian servants. And if it had simply been about him, they would have killed him and that would have been that. But they wanted to confine her, reduce her, rule instead of her. The attempt was upon her, the ultimate end to imprison her at Stirling as Darnley had confessed. The queen had used all her courage, ingenuity and strength to escape and it had been a brilliant coup.

  Mary had Rizzio reburied in a Catholic ceremony and she even appointed his brother, Joseph, young and very inexperienced, as secretary in his place to show them she could not be cowed. But she saw her reign was weakened, that she did not have enough support to pursue a policy of Catholic reform and she would have to be careful of the lords thenceforth. And the lords had sent her evidence that Darnley had signed the document taking responsibility for the plot against Rizzio and promising pardons for all concerned. She could have had Darnley executed for treason, but it would be a terrible scandal, half the aristocracy would be implicated, and she needed him to assent to the legitimacy of their child. She had to tolerate him but she resolutely excluded him from court business, which only made him angrier, drunk every night, ruing how he had been tricked by everybody. But with the rest of the lords, Mary had reached an uneasy truce. Even though Moray had led one rebellion against her and failed to save her from imprisonment post-Rizzio, she was attempting to trust him again. He was her half-brother, she thought, her old friend and surely would be loyal to her from thenceforth.

  Elizabeth’s spies told her of the events of 9 March and the aftermath. She read the reports and Mary’s letter in shock. She would never be treated so! ‘Had I been in Queen Mary’s place, I would have taken my husband’s dagger and stabbed him with it!’6 Perhaps Mary would have been better off if she had. Elizabeth was keen that no one thought she had any knowledge or involvement with the plot and was seen wearing a miniature of Mary at her waist. She hated what Darnley had done and was delighted by Mary’s request to act as godmother to the forthcoming baby. It seemed that one benefit had been born of the horror: a rapprochement between the queens.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Looking Through Their Fingers

  As Mary grew closer to childbed, Cecil worried. A male child would be a challenge to Elizabeth; her Catholic subjects might be keen to depose her for him, her Protestant subjects too, simply to have a man on the throne. He devised a cunning plan of sending a spy, Christopher Rokesby, who would pose as a Catholic and tell Mary that the nobles in England wished her to be queen – if only she would give him a token or signature to assent to the plot. Mary was suspicious and sent the man away. Rokesby returned to England to collect signatures of support and then arrived back in Scotland. Mary had him arrested and his papers confiscated – and a note from Cecil in code was found in his effects. It was deciphered and turned out to be offering a reward if Rokesby had success. It was a ham-fisted plot and now Mary had certain evidence that Cecil meant to pull her and Scotland down and she had no doubt that Elizabeth had not known and would not approve. She sent him a subtle letter, carefully suggesting that he should devote himself to the ‘nourishing of peace and amity’.1 If he didn’t, she would tell Elizabeth – and Cecil would be in trouble.

  Darnley, difficult as ever, demanded attention and caused arguments – and Mary tried to avoid him whenever she could. She was worried that conflict could explode during her confinement, as if the lords were a tinder box of rebellion that her absence would set on fire in a moment. Moray and Bothwell were in dispute again and Moray was trying to push his rival away from court. Mary moved to Edinburgh Castle for safety and took her new secretary, Joseph Rizzio, with her, an unwise move.

  Mary called her lords to hear her will, in case she died in childbirth. A regency would be pursued through a committee and she left most of her goods to her child and the Scottish Crown. She decided on the distribution of her jewels, many to the Guises, but she also remembered Darnley’s parents, Moray, Robert Stewart, the four Marys, and various lords including Argyll, Huntly and Bishop Leslie. Darnley would receive one of her wedding rings. ‘It was with this that I married. I leave it to the King who gave it to me.’

  In early June, the queen took to her confinement in Edinburgh Castle, her rooms hung with velvet and tapestries to block out the windows, all chosen because they bore calming images rather than visions of biblical vengeance, in order to soothe mother and child. One small window allowed light and air through – for it was thought that too much light could damage the woman’s eyes and a chill for the baby was feared, even in June. On 18 June, her labour began and she transferred to her cabinet, a small room off the main bedroom. It was long and very painful. Her ladies panicked and begged the doctor to help her, but there was nothing that could be done but tell the queen to be strong and bear the excruciating pain of the contractions. Like most women, she would have begged God for assistance, clutched holy relics or called on St Margaret for help – she had been eaten by a dragon but then spat out because she was holding a crucifix; the ideal was that a baby should be born as swiftly as St Margaret had been sent out of the dragon’s mouth. The Reformation had come into the delivery room: Protestant women could not hold crucifixes, relics, call out to the saints. And thus, perhaps it was some comfort for those, like Mary, who at this moment of great fear and pain were able to cling on to the physical objects of the old religion. The poor queen said she was ‘so sore handled that she wished she had never been married’.2

  Twenty hours later, after the hour of ten in the morning on 19 June, Mary gave birth to a perfect baby boy. ‘I have borne him,’ she wrote later, ‘and God knoweth with what danger to him and me both.’3 As she lay, weary and suffering, the city around her erupted into joy for the birth of a boy. The castle guns were fired and five hundred bonfires were lit across the city. Mary Beaton had rushed to Sir James Melville with the news and he set off immediately for London with tidings that the Scottish crown now had a ‘fair sonne’. Elizabeth greeted him with some distress: the queen had a son and ‘I am but of barren stock’.4

  Mary was exhausted and could not recover her health. Even five days later, she could barely summon the energy to speak to the English envoy, Henry Killigrew, when he visited, but he was more interested in the baby, whom he judged very healthy. The little boy would be James, the great name of kings borne by her father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great grandfather in a straight line of men called James back to her great-great-great grandfather, James I, who came to the throne in 1406, after the death of his father, King Robert III.

  Darnley visited her too and Mary had to swallow her pride so he would accept the child as his own. As she said, ‘this is your son, and no other man’s son’. She wished everyone there to bear witness and said ‘he
is so much your son that I fear it will be the worse for him hereafter’. She was still broken-hearted at Darnley’s betrayal. ‘I have forgiven all but will never forget’, she said, begging him to remember that Andrew Ker had held his pistol to her belly.5 Darnley was incensed and went out drinking in Edinburgh every night of Mary’s lying-in, staggering back so late that he had to demand the castle doors were opened for him. His son was both a bolster and a threat to him – for the child pushed him further down the line of succession. And, if the child lived, Mary had no more real use for a husband.

  Elizabeth was torn. Little Prince James was a threat to her: the king that England so desired. Catholic Europe might be emboldened to invade, on the basis of putting him on the throne. As politic as ever, she put on a good show of being pleased for Mary and made sympathetic noises about noting Mary as her successor in the next parliament. She agreed to be godmother but said she could not attend personally and would send lords and ladies as stand-ins. The baby’s other godparents were Charles IX of France and the Duke of Savoy. Mary was making her son a European king, untouchable by her nobles.