The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Kate Williams

  On 27 January, Mary’s envoy in Paris sent her a letter with the news that he had also heard there was a plot against her.20 Her life was in danger, again, but he had no clue as to the details.

  The lords feared Darnley was gathering support in Glasgow and so they needed to strike. Again, Mary said ‘she would have no speech on the matter’.21 She didn’t understand – no one had told her – that they were talking of murder. She wanted Darnley brought under control and it seems to be the case that she thought they were going to threaten him and commit a small amount of violence. Darnley had punched and threatened before: it was a language he understood. Some of the lords did think this was what was in the offing. But others wanted him killed. At Holyrood, in dark corners, in private rooms in taverns, late at night in houses, men plotted and laid out how they might dispatch the husband. And yet, the Spanish ambassador already knew – many people did. Silva was not particularly keyed in to the networks of the court and his spies were poor. Someone had told him, fed him the information.

  The three big problems of the Darnley murder, which have not been fully accounted for, are cui bono, Bothwell’s influence, and the question of reprisals. Scotland is too often viewed as a lawless country at this time. Yes, there was violence and nobles punching each other on their sickbeds. But the country was strong on the rule of law and prided itself on justice. Perhaps a few peasants or servants could be quietly murdered. But one could not kill a king, the father of the future heir, a relation of Elizabeth I, and not expect some retaliation or prosecution. Someone would have to be put on trial – the ordinary people would not stand for anything less. So the men could hardly have imagined that they would not be punished.

  Some have theorised that Bothwell was the master of the plot. But he was unpopular – partly because of his gruff character and partly because he had gone the other way to everyone else over the Rizzio plot. He was not liked or supported by the other lords and could hardly have staged the killing by himself. He would have needed help. It is also significant that Moray hated Bothwell and wanted him dislodged. Arran and the Hamiltons detested him as well. But Moray saw that he could be useful. Bothwell could be persuaded to actually carry out the murder along with various accomplices – and cover his hands with blood while the rest looked through their fingers.

  Mary was constantly looking for advisors who truly cared for her, rather than what they could gain. Elizabeth had the ever-loyal Cecil and also Dudley, but Mary had arrived in Scotland against the backdrop of long battles between the lords and interfamilial strife that went back decades, even hundreds of years. The only other possible strategy would have been to favour no one, to play the lords off against each other, but that would have been risky too. There was no chance to advance a keen independent lawyer, as Henry VIII had done with Thomas Cromwell. And now, with the plot against Darnley, Moray and the rest could make the ultimate power grab.

  Darnley was returning to Edinburgh to complete his convalescence. Mary went to escort him. But he was still too ill and marked to attend court – he wore a piece of taffeta over his face to hide the pocks of syphilis – so he had to go to a place where he could be private. Mary thought he might wish to stay at Craigmillar Castle, not far from Edinburgh, but he took a house just inside the town wall, the old provost’s lodgings of the church of Kirk o’Field. The choice was between one owned by his enemies, the Hamiltons, and one owned by the Balfours. He chose the latter. Possibly he suspected a plot and wanted to choose a different house to that offered to him. It was a rather comfortable and well-appointed house at the south side of the quadrangle, although hardly suitable for the queen’s husband. It was quickly furnished with items from the royal apartments at Holyrood – his room was decorated with six pieces of tapestry, a Turkish carpet, red velvet cushions and a velvet-covered chair and table and he had his ornate bed, draped in purple velvet, sent up from Holyrood. The room below Darnley’s was appointed and decorated for the queen, when she chose to visit along with her nobles and courtiers. Darnley kept his servants with him but there was no royal guard. This was significant.

  Darnley arrived on Saturday 1 February and seemed content. Mary stayed overnight in her room on Wednesday and visited in the daytimes, and by Friday Darnley was so touched by her attentions that he passed on information he had about various plots against her, and she once more stayed for the night. On Friday, he took a medicinal bath and Mary nursed him. On Saturday night, he told Mary that Lord Robert, her half-brother, had told him his life was in danger, but then when questioned Robert denied he had ever said anything. Still, as Darnley was recovering quickly, it was thought that he should move soon and on the next day, Sunday, it was announced that he would return to Holyrood on the following day, Monday 10 February. The day was one of great celebrations across Edinburgh for it was the last Sunday before Lent. And Holyrood was busy with the wedding of Mary’s favourite valet, Bastian Pagez. The queen attended his wedding breakfast at midday, and then at four there was a formal dinner for the ambassador of Savoy, attended by all the major nobles. Only Moray was missing – on Sunday morning, he begged permission to leave for St Andrews to attend his sick wife, and so, conveniently, he disappeared.

  On Sunday evening, Mary and a large party of nobles and courtiers arrived at Kirk o’Field and crammed into Darnley’s rooms. Bothwell was there, resplendent in black velvet and silver-trimmed satin. There was music and conversation – and then Mary was reminded that she had promised to attend the masque to celebrate Bastian’s wedding. Darnley was cross and unhappy but the queen gave him a ring and bid him goodbye. The whole party then set off for Holyrood, leaving an angry Darnley to his bath and bed. On the way out, Mary met the servant who had once been Bothwell’s, Nicholas Hubert, nicknamed French Paris. ‘How begrimed you are!’ she said in surprise.22

  At some point that day, probably while Mary was entertaining the ambassador, dark-clothed men had crept into the house and crammed it full of gunpowder.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘So Horrible and Strange’

  In the early morning of 10 February 1567, a terrifying explosion shook Edinburgh. The ‘blast was fearful to all about and many rose from their beds’.1 At Holyrood Palace, Mary sprang awake, hearing what she thought was the noise of twenty or thirty cannon, and sent her guards to investigate. The people of Kirk o’Field dashed out and saw the whole house in which the king had lodged blown to rubble. They believed the queen might still be in there too. Mass panic ensued, slightly alleviated when they spotted one of Darnley’s servants, clinging to the town wall for dear life. The searchers broke into the garden – and there saw the bodies of Darnley, and his servant William Taylor, lying under a pear tree. The king was wearing only his nightshirt. Beside him was his furred cloak, a chair, a gown, a dagger and a rope. There were no marks of violent landing, blood or bruising on the bodies. It was quite impossible that the two men, sleeping in different rooms, could have been blown out of the building, over the wall and into the garden, a distance of a good forty feet. The watch realised they were looking at a murder scene. Both men had been strangled.

  The messengers ran post-haste to the queen and delivered her the news that her husband was dead. Mary was near to collapse, believing that she had been the target of the killers. Bothwell was sheriff of Edinburgh and was awakened (from a sleep that had been very short) and rode to Kirk o’Field with soldiers and took the bodies to the new provost’s lodgings. There they were surveyed by surgeons, the Privy Council and then the general public. Those who looked at Darnley discussed the pristine state of his body, and then the gossip spread that marks of strangulation had been visible. English spies were on the site in a moment. Some old women who lived nearby had heard men rushing away, and one, Mrs Mertine, had shouted after them, sure that they were engaged in evil doings. Another woman who lived near the orchard and garden of Kirk o’Field said she heard a man crying, ‘Pity me, kinsmen!’.2

  In Holyrood, sick and panicked, Mary wrote to her ambassador in Par
is, stunned by what had happened, the thing ‘so horrible and strange’. James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, nephew of the disgraced Cardinal, was a close advisor, a man she really trusted. She still thought Darnley had died in the explosion and that the attack had been meant for her. ‘Always, whoever have taken this wicked enterprise in hand, we assure our self it was dressed always for us as for the King, for we lay the most part of all the last week in that same lodging, and was there accompanied with the most part of the lords that are in this town at the same time at midnight, and of very chance, waited not all night, by reason of some masque in the abbey’.3 She believed that God had rescued her. And she had no idea of the link to her lords. She planned to seek out the guilty men and bring them to justice. ‘We hope to punish the same with such rigour as shall serve for example of this cruelty of all ages to come.’

  The English spies busied themselves creating the sketches that would inform the incredible drawing of the murder scene commissioned by William Drury, second in command to Elizabeth’s lieutenant in the north. It is astonishing to look at it in the National Archives now: the sketch that shows a murder. Darnley and his servant lie in the field, the house a pile of rubble – as Mary put it in her letter to Paris, ‘nothing remaining, no, not a stone above another’. It underlines the impossibility that Darnley and Taylor could have died as a consequence of the explosion – unlike the grooms, who did die in the blast. The drawing made clear that Darnley was murdered, to the degree of showing Prince James in his cot praying to God to avenge his cause. The drawing is a very useful plan. But it is not an objective document; every stroke is about vengeance.

  The queen was afraid for her own life and that of her son, and she could not believe what had happened. She passed the days in a daze. She slept until noon on the day after Darnley’s death because she had been up late and worrying. But the queen appearing to sleep soundly on the day after her husband died did not give a good impression.

  Mary ordered the whole court into mourning and embarked on the forty days of grief that was expected of her. But within twenty-four hours, she broke mourning to attend the wedding of one of her bedchamber attendants, Margaret Carwood. She was still in shock and didn’t want to break her promise to be present – but it was a very unwise move. For the world was beginning to whisper about the murder and the shadows of gossip were coming very close to the queen. In her grief and terror, Mary fell prey to her old foes of sickness and migraines and the doctors sent her to take the air for a few days at Seton. She was lost, uncomprehending, struggling to think straight, having suffered greatly over the previous year, her mind fragile, her understanding overturned, unable to act. This would have been entirely reasonable and forgiven if she’d been a queen consort. But she was queen regnant, and she was expected not just to grieve for her husband but to act to punish the criminals. She needed to make a great speech to vow vengeance and weep for the crowd. She needed to throw herself into a paroxysm of public grief and say she would not rest until the guilty were arrested. Then she needed to find the guilty – or even the innocent, if needed – and put them on trial.

  True grief often does not manifest immediately in such dramatic, visible terms, but our perception, then and now, is that it should, and Mary fell short. Her behaviour suggests that she was not guilty of the plot, for only the innocent would behave with such naivety. And as she appears to have known a little of the conspiracy against her husband, had expected Darnley at some point to be injured and roughed up a little, was in horrified shock because it had been done so close to her and matters had escalated. She could not believe what had happened. If she put anyone on trial, they could implicate the others, say she was told of the ‘matter’ and so should have stopped it, and pull down the whole house of cards.

  The Privy Council did quickly announce a reward for the capture of the criminals and there were questionings carried out, and discussion of an inquiry that was planned to take place during the parliament at the end of April, but this wasn’t enough. Mary fell prey to the hypocrisies of the time. Everyone had been intent on her having a husband to manage matters for her – those matters considered by Philip of Spain as ‘not in ladies’ capacity’. But now that an event had occurred that was so terrible – if anything was outside a lady’s capacity, this was it – she was condemned for not acting. Mary wanted someone to help her and rescue her, a knight in shining armour to sweep up the matter. But the lords did nothing for her, for it suited them that little was done. The Privy Council and her advisors should have rallied her to act. But Moray was her chief advisor, Maitland her Secretary of State and they had stuffed the Privy Council with their allies. Moray and the others did not leap up and demand that a trial was launched, announce that the queen was in shock and so they were dealing with matters. Instead, they watched things crash into the wall because this suited their agenda. With every moment of inaction, Mary played into Moray’s hands.

  With Bothwell as sheriff of Edinburgh, the investigations were flimsy. Everyone knew that it had to be some member or members of the nobility who had killed Darnley, and strong suspicion fell on Bothwell and Moray, as well as Maitland. The Venetian ambassador in Paris heard that ‘It is widely believed that the principal persons of this kingdom were implicated in this act because they were dissatisfied with the King’ – he thought Moray was the guilty party.4 Moray, who had returned to Edinburgh five days after the murder, needed to stop that kind of talk and fast.

  Within a week of the killings, a placard was hammered up in Edinburgh blaming Bothwell and his associate James Balfour, and moreover stating that the queen had known of and forgiven the murder, thanks to witchcraft.

  Mary still did not act.

  What exactly had happened on that night? The plot had gone wrong: Darnley had not been strangled in his bed and then blown up to hide the evidence. He was woken at night, perhaps by some noise of men coming for him or heard a shuffling about from those setting out the gunpowder. He looked out of the window, saw men gathering in the east garden, and he clutched his cloak around him and he and Taylor let themselves down from the window, using the rope and the chair that were later found next to their bodies. It is possible that one of the plotters, horrified that this had been turned into a gunpowder assassination, bounded upstairs to tip them off. Darnley and his servant ran for their lives but were spotted in flight and the assassins caught them, strangled them and dumped them in the garden.

  Mrs Mertine, who lived nearby, said she had heard thirteen men and saw eleven run up towards the High Street, after the explosion, and bravely shouted to tell them off. Another woman who was in the service of the Archbishop of St Andrews, whose house was adjacent, saw eleven and managed to catch one by his coat, but he ran free. These men were the stranglers, most likely the Douglas family, fleeing. Rather than strangling him quietly in a private home, the killers had been forced to chase Darnley and his man and then run away, and they had been seen.

  John Hepburn, Bothwell’s accomplice, later confessed that Bothwell supervised the planting of gunpowder and watched it light, even approaching closer when he saw it was not exploding. But why choose such an obvious and public way of killing Darnley? Pushing him down the stairs (as may have happened to Amy Robsart), poisoning him, or even sending a stealthy assassin in by night to stab his heart might have been difficult, but less dramatic than blowing up a whole house. They could have set the house on fire at a time when house fires were common and hope it spread to him quickly. What can definitely be concluded is the outcome – Darnley had nearly escaped and the whole world immediately knew it was a murder. Still, had he been blown up by the gunpowder, it would have been much less easy to trace the matter and there could have been counterclaims that he had had his own supply of gunpowder and lit it by mistake. The perfect plot had failed.

  Where had the gunpowder come from? A significant and costly amount was needed to blow up the entire house. It is not impossible that Bothwell had taken it from the royal stores although his servants later
said he brought it from Dunbar and hid it at Holyrood. James Balfour was also accused of buying it and storing it in the vaults. He and his servants had also managed to get it through the streets of Edinburgh and into the house while Mary and her court were present. The comings and goings of a big party was cover. But still, there needed to be people in on the plot. Nine accomplices of Bothwell were later rounded up, including John Hepburn, John Spens and his porter, Dalgleish. But greater men also knew.

  One of Darnley’s servants, Thomas Nelson, who was sleeping in the upper rooms, survived – he was found clinging to the city walls, thrown there by the explosion. Two plots had converged. Some lords thought the plan was for Darnley to merely be exposed to violence, roughed up and told to behave – rather than the horror of murder, which would cause even more enmity and anger. But Moray wanted him dead, as did his supporters and the Hamiltons, as well as Maitland, Argyll and Huntly and plenty of others. Bothwell, his servants and the Douglases were willing to carry out the actual killing. And then Moray edged the suspicion onto Mary, which she made a million times easier for him with her shocked, lost behaviour.

  There is no way that Mary, always fearful of being kidnapped and killed and preoccupied with her health, nervous by disposition, would have spent an evening in a house packed to the brim with gunpowder. She knew that some act was compassed, although did not know when – but she also presumed that the ‘matter’ Moray would be ‘looking through his fingers’ at was just light violence. Darnley would only suffer a little, be brought to heel. She would have naturally assumed that this would be done while she was apart from Darnley, not close by him as this would expose her to suspicion. She didn’t realise that exposing her to suspicion had been the point.