Mary came round: she realised her best chance of escape was by using her legendary charm. She began to ‘take both rest and meat and also some dancing and play at cards’.9 Her captor also noted, on 17 July, that she was growing fat – her pregnancy was continuing. She attempted to win over Ruthven – which unfortunately worked too well, as he became infatuated with her, promising to help her if she became his lover. She might have tried to string him along and see what promises he might make and what information she might extract. But Mary, powerful beauty, was no manipulator of men and wished above all to be honourable. She was already married and would not escape in any low manner. Agnes Keith, wife of Moray, was sent to accompany her, softening Mary up for what was to come. The queen was grateful for the friendship of her sister-in-law and it gave her hope that she might be better treated. But Agnes was reporting back to her husband, who had the regency in his sights now.
In mid-July, the intrepid English envoy Throckmorton managed to smuggle in a secret letter to Mary. He begged her to publicly relinquish Bothwell and made it clear that he wanted to help her. She replied that she was in despair and constantly in fear of death. But she would not give up her husband. She didn’t declare love for him or try to claim again that it had been necessary to marry him to prevent factionalism among the nobles and the court. Instead she needed him because she was pregnant, ‘taking herself seven weeks gone with child, she should acknowledge herself to be with child of a bastard and to have forfeited her honour’ if she divorced him.10 The reference to seven weeks dated the conception safely after the marriage, just as should be the case, in a letter that would be communicated straight to Elizabeth. But it certainly seems as if Mary thought herself pregnant before that date. A pregnancy of seven weeks is a fragile thing. Even at this time, due to anecdotal knowledge, most women and doctors understood that passing two months improved the chances of carrying a pregnancy to term and three months was the golden line. Mary was probably much further along than she stated – and so it seemed to her that the pregnancy would be carried to term and she would bear Bothwell’s child.
The letter cast Throckmorton into a panic. If Mary could not be induced to give up Bothwell, then he could not see how he could help her. The lords had repeatedly justified her imprisonment by saying that it was to keep her from Bothwell, and they were stopping her from writing to him in order to allow them ‘leisure to go forward in the prosecution of the murder’. He did not believe them, ruing that ‘when they have gone so far, these lords will think themselves unsafe while she lives and take her life’.11 He guessed the truth – the lords would not release her even if she relinquished her husband. But their excuse of holding Mary in order to pursue the murderers had a fair appearance to the rest of the world and Throckmorton could not see how he could contest it.
Mary’s former friends were fully occupied dividing her belongings and encouraging sermons against her. They summoned Bothwell to answer for murdering Darnley, abducting the queen and forcing her to agree to marriage, and when he did not appear, he was declared an outlaw. He fled to Orkney, where he hoped to raise ships to fight. Next, the lords attempted to hunt down all of those servants and men of ordinary stature who had helped to kill Darnley. William Blackadder, who said he had only been in a nearby tavern, was hanged, drawn and quartered and his limbs were placed on the gates. Bastian, the groom whose masque Mary had attended, was imprisoned in the Tolbooth. Cecil demanded to interview one man who claimed he had been bullied into committing the murder, but the lords hanged him, keen not to see him sent to England. A tailor who had watched Bothwell change his celebratory outfit for a dark dress that would mean he was not so easily found was captured and hanged. The lords were engaging in a wholesale mass killing of the minor players.
George Dalgleish, a tailor and one of Bothwell’s servants, was arrested. It was later said that he had broken into Edinburgh Castle on the orders of Bothwell to get possession of a small silver casket containing incriminating letters from Mary to Bothwell. Once arrested, Dalgleish was shipped off to the Tolbooth and threatened with torture. He quickly caved in, and on 20 June took the investigators to a house where he showed them the casket, hidden under a bed. This was the item on which all accusations of Mary’s guilt about the murder would hinge, and all our evidence for it comes from a statement from Morton to Cecil. Even at this point, the story has an oddly fairy-tale ring, chiefly because it would be a poor hiding place for such a vital item. According to Morton, on the following day, the casket was broken open in the presence of Maitland and Atholl and others, and the letters were ‘sighted’12 – but the Scots word does not indicate whether they were read or simply seen. Did the casket even exist? Or did it exist but contained nothing more incriminating than notes – and gave Morton an idea of how to throw opprobrium at the queen? Oddly, in a council meeting on the next day, there was no mention of the casket or its contents. On 26 June, Dalgleish was interviewed by the council and made a confession about Darnley’s murder. Even stranger, he did not mention the casket at all and was not questioned on it. He was hanged for being part of the murder along with some other accomplices in early 1568 – and surely if his evidence was so material to Mary’s guilt, they would have kept him alive.
The lords were hunting for documents. Mary had not taken her papers with her – so where were they? Either she or a quick-thinking attendant such as Mary Seton had destroyed them or, simply, there was nothing particularly incriminating. The lords did find another casket at Edinburgh Castle – but, unfortunately for them, it seems to have contained evidence that other lords knew of the plan to kill Darnley, probably the Craigmillar bond. That was the sort of evidence the lords didn’t want in the public domain.
Still, the lords were delighted with the course of events. They declared they had evidence of Bothwell’s guilt, although they refrained from showing it. A deposition was sent to the French king and to Elizabeth explaining their acts. Happily for them, the Pope was scandalised to hear about Mary’s marriage to Bothwell and decided he could no longer assist her, complaining that he couldn’t decide which of the two queens in Britain was worse.13
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘The Conspiracy for Her Husband’s Murder’
On 20 July, in her dismal rooms at Lochleven, Mary began suffering pains. Within a day or so, she realised she was miscarrying. Her secretary later said she had been carrying twins – if she was miscarrying at only eight weeks, this would have been difficult to see although, perhaps if identical, two sacs might have been visible, but it was probably more likely that Mary was further along, perhaps even around the three-month mark, and thus could see what she was losing. This dating makes it seem more likely that she conceived before her marriage – and so she felt she had no choice but to go ahead with her marriage to Bothwell. Now, however, the reason she had given to Throckmorton as to why she would not relinquish her husband was no longer valid. The child – or children – were no more.
The news was quickly sent to the lords that Mary was suffering and sick and appeared to be losing her pregnancy. For the lords, this was fraught with danger. If she rose from her sickbed to declare she would divorce Bothwell, as was not unlikely, there would be little reason not to restore her to the throne, as they had told Throckmorton they would. By giving up Bothwell, Mary would win back the support of Elizabeth – and most likely of the Pope as well. The ordinary people of Edinburgh had come to hear that other lords had been involved in the murder, and they were restive that only the lesser men were being prosecuted. They still loved and pitied their queen. Moray and the rest had to act swiftly to prevent Mary regaining her position.
On 24 July, only a few days after the miscarriage began, Mary was collapsed on her bed, exhausted and suffering severe blood loss and pain, in what she called ‘a state of great weakness’, when Lindsay and a group of other lords burst in. They gave her documents declaring she was too enervated in body, mind and spirit to continue to reign and thus would abdicate in favour of James.
1 Moray would be regent and Morton and the others act as a temporary regency council until he returned from France. Mary refused. Lindsay cruelly ordered her to stand and said she’d be sent to the most isolated island or cast into the loch. Then he told her he’d cut her throat.
Mary, shocked and humiliated, in fear for her life, agreed to sign, weeping at how she was ‘vexed, broken and unquieted’. Brave until the end, she told the men that when God had returned her to liberty she would disavow the documents for ‘it is done against my will’.2 She fell into a terrible state of illness, with swelling in her limbs and boils over her body – and believed she had been poisoned. The lords rushed off to prepare for crowning the child James, aiming to get the job done before Elizabeth or any foreign power could intervene. Five days after Mary had signed the documents under duress, Morton swore the coronation oath in place of the gurgling baby prince at the first Scottish Protestant coronation ceremony. The lords had organised bonfires and celebrations in Edinburgh but the people had no desire to celebrate. They still supported Mary and they were sick of fighting. In Lochleven, the cannons were fired and when Mary asked why, the laird told her and cruelly asked why she was not celebrating the coronation of her own child.
Poor Throckmorton, trounced at every turn and shocked at the violence he had seen from the lords, begged to return to England, two days after Mary’s forced abdication. ‘I see no likelihood to win anything at these men’s hands’, he complained to Cecil.3 It was the greatest admission that mere legal and diplomatic threat simply didn’t work – when Lindsay could threaten to throw the queen into the loch and cut her throat if she didn’t obey. To Leicester, Throckmorton was even more blunt, fearing the ‘tragedy will end in the queen’s person’, in the same way as it began with Rizzio and Darnley.4
Elizabeth received the news of Mary’s abdication at the beginning of August with rage. She demanded to see Cecil and railed at him in, in his words, ‘a great offensive speech’5 about his inaction and declared she would go to war. She was distressed for her cousin and infuriated by the lies of the lords and blamed Cecil for the disaster. Elizabeth was scandalised and also conscious of her own position: if an anointed queen could be abducted, raped, imprisoned and then deposed and no one protested, then what of the right of any queen to be on the throne? She naturally feared that her enemies might be emboldened to treat her similarly. It would go through a more openly legal process in England, but her detractors could easily vaunt that Mary’s fate proved that Elizabeth would fail too – and should be removed from the throne before the country fell into ruin.
Cecil recoiled at the idea of sending in the army. He disliked Mary and thought her a threat to his queen and had no time for female rule, other than that of his mistress. Also, he was a behind-the-scenes man. He was happy – and indeed expert – at raising sedition backstage or harrying on the borders, but the thought of all-out war on the outskirts of Edinburgh was terrifying; expensive, unpopular and there was the possibility of losing, which would be roundly humiliating and bad for their international standing. Moray was running a friendly Protestant government and restoring Mary would mean a return to some power for Catholics. Cecil told Elizabeth that if she announced war, the lords might try to avoid it by simply assassinating the queen (because if she were dead, there was no point fighting to restore her). With the Privy Council, he tried to persuade Elizabeth to negotiate with Scotland.6 On this, the queen was steadfast. She would not speak to the lords while Mary was in prison, and if any harm came to Mary, she was ready to send in the armies.
Elizabeth still could have saved Mary at this point with a viable threat of war, even if she only proposed that Mary occupy a reduced role as a symbolic queen. Invading Scotland would be difficult and dangerous and Mary had signed the deed of abdication allowing the lords to crown James. But if Elizabeth had made a serious threat, the lords, isolated from any allies and already riven by internal divisions, would have possibly agreed to give Mary a limited symbolic role, alongside her son, if they could guarantee she never saw Bothwell again (a condition that Elizabeth would also expect). Mary would have had little choice other than to accept and assume a position that was more akin to the ‘queen mother’, a reduction but at least better than permanent imprisonment on a chilly loch. And Elizabeth would be spared the painful problems of Mary’s exile that awaited.
Cecil, not for the first time, was wrong. A letter of horror from Elizabeth, implicit threat and possibly even the suggestion of collaboration with Spain or France could have had some impact. No one wanted to see a queen pushed off her throne. There was no way that the lords, embattled and exhausted, would have rushed to war against England, the wealthy, well-oiled fighting machine. People had suffered so much under the previous English invasions and they would blame the lords for subjecting them to harrying and bloodshed once more. And after months of fighting, the lords’ retainers were weary and there was no money to pay them. If Elizabeth had made a serious warning, the lords would have sent a team to negotiate with her. For, as the sensible ones among them knew, keeping Mary a prisoner was continuing to prove deeply unpopular with the common people.
Elizabeth held all the cards. But Cecil convinced her not to use them. All she could do was to insist that he made it clear that if Mary was mistreated or killed, then the English would invade. Battling to make the best of his impossible task, hated and suspected on all sides, Throckmorton did force Maitland to promise that Mary ‘shall not die any violent death unless some new accident chance’.7 One might argue that there were many possible deaths that were not violent. And ‘accident chance’ could be easily simulated. Throckmorton and Elizabeth pretended to themselves they were protecting Mary. But although many lords would have preferred her dead, the actual act would have been a shocking one. She was an anointed queen and thus touched by God, and many lords naturally feared that God would take vengeance. Mary was frequently threatened with death. But had she died mysteriously, poisoned or pushed down the stairs, Scotland would have been aflame.
On 11 August, Moray arrived back from France, after long manipulating matters behind the scenes. Everything had worked out perfectly for him. Darnley had been killed, and Bothwell had fled – and now his troublesome sister had lost all power. He had gained everything and he could push forward the Protestant Reformation and reward himself and his followers with money, jewels and land. Cecil had backed the right horse.
Five days after his arrival, Moray visited Mary in her prison, where she was sick and suffering. She flung herself towards him, weeping passionately. She had hoped for words of comfort or outrage at how she had been treated. Instead, he was cold and cruel, telling her the people were angry with her and she had been careless about her reputation, words that must work to ‘cut the thread of love betwixt him and the queen forever’.8 She pleaded her innocence but he shrugged her off. Next day, he returned and told her she must not apply for help to England or France, threatening her and then offering to make her life easier if she submitted to accepting him as regent. He also told her that he could not protect her life if she contacted Bothwell. In other words, she could be put on trial and executed. She had no choice. She was so desperate that she agreed to it all without asking for anything in return. Moray relented somewhat, lying to Mary to stop her from making him feel guilty, telling her that if she showed abhorrence for the murder of Darnley but agreed not to take any revenge, she might ‘one day be restored to the throne’.9 Poor Mary clutched at his lies with hope. On 22 August, Moray was pronounced Regent of Scotland. He took up Holyrood, revelled in her jewels. He rewarded his beloved wife, Agnes, with Mary’s beloved giant diamond, ‘the great H’, her wedding gift in 1558 from the King of France.
Moray had won, once again, and the winner had taken all.
The new regent didn’t want to be challenged about his sister’s treatment and so she was moved to better quarters of two rooms in September and allowed to take occasional exercise in the castle gardens, and Mary Seton came to attend her. Un
fortunately, the unsympathetic Lady Douglas slept in her chamber. Mary was allowed to order clothes, embroidery thread, boxes of sweets and, in November, a striking clock with an alarm. She had few other comforts.
Elizabeth refused to recognise Moray as regent or James as king and recalled Throckmorton, officially breaking off diplomatic relations.
Moray tried to win over the English queen by sending her Mary’s famed black pearls, six rows of them as large as grapes. He then reviewed the evidence his friends had found against Mary. If placards started appearing, the people became restive and lords began complaining, and England, France or Spain threatened invasion, he had the perfect answer. He would put Mary on trial for part of the conspiracy against Darnley. But they had to ensure that none of the lords were implicated. There were copies in circulation of the Craigmillar bond – and it was so widely discussed that even an English informer, William Drury, heard of it and reported it back to London.
Lady Lennox, mother of Lord Darnley, said that Moray had been told by the queen that she ‘knew the conspiracy for her husband’s murder’.10 Moray lied. What Mary had known was that Darnley would be threatened, and it was the guilt over this that had shaped her life and her terrible situation. What she now knew was that Bothwell had lied to her all along and had always planned to kill the young king, with the backup of the other signatories to the Craigmillar bond. Moray’s use of the word ‘knew’ indicated the project upon which he was now set: collecting evidence to condemn the queen in a show trial.
Mary wrote to Moray asking for the opportunity to speak in front of Parliament to ‘answer the false calumnies that had been published about her’ and ‘submit herself to all the rigour of the laws’, as well as pursuing ‘the punishment of all persons who might be found guilty of the murder of the late king’.11 Of course, Moray refused.
The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots Page 26