The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Kate Williams

  Mary’s commissioners defended her vigorously, saying that if Bothwell did commit the murder, she did not know at the time of the wedding and that the lords had encouraged her to marry him. Norfolk, who was meant to be adjudicating, was growing increasingly frustrated by the political machinations behind the scenes.

  On 11 October, Maitland sent Mary a copy of one of the casket letters so she would know what she was up against and told her that the English commissioners had seen it and others. He then went to Norfolk and told him that the letters were forged and Mary’s handwriting was so easy to imitate that he had even had a go himself. He also pushed the idea of Mary marrying Norfolk. Norfolk was charmed by the plan. As he saw it, he could win the gratitude of Elizabeth for sorting out the problem of Mary and gain great power and riches for himself, not to mention a famously beautiful and accomplished wife. And he was deeply conflicted over the letters and whether they indicated guilt.

  At the same time, Mary had won over Knollys to her side, who felt sorry for his royal captive and decided that her imprisonment was unfair and unjustified. A marriage with Norfolk could mean her escape. On 21 October, she told her commissioners to begin the divorce of Bothwell, and men were despatched to Denmark to ensure his assent. Optimistic, Mary wrote to Elizabeth enthusing and implying that the inquiry would find for her and thus ‘we may be perpetually indebted to you’.10

  Norfolk said he was struggling to find the truth in all the lies. With so many lords involved, the ambiguous letters and her own keen self-defence, he judged it the ‘doubtfullest and most difficult that ever I dealt in’. He was lost in the dark. ‘You shall find in the end as there be some few in this company that mean plainly and truly, so there be others that seek wholly to serve their own private terms.’11 Moray and the rest were less concerned with justice than pursuing their own ends – thrusting Mary off the throne and hiding the fact that so many of them were implicated in the murder of Darnley. Their argument that Darnley was killed by Bothwell with Mary’s assent and assistance, and that then the lords proceeded to deprive Mary of the throne due to her scandalous behaviour, was looking more impossible to prove by the day.12 Norfolk was of course biased towards Mary as the wild scheme for their marriage advanced. But his basic criticism was fair: there was no definitive evidence.

  Norfolk was hoping, perhaps, that the matter could all be laid to rest and Mary released. But Elizabeth and Cecil had also grown frustrated by the manipulations of the Scottish lords and feared they were being outfoxed by both them and Mary. Elizabeth did not like the sympathy expressed for Mary from Norfolk and Knollys, and she was distrustful of her ‘sister and cousin’. Sussex, who had been assisting Norfolk, summed up the matter: either the queen was found guilty of murder on the basis of the casket letters, or the whole matter was bundled up ‘with a show of saving her honour’.13 The problem was that if Mary was found guilty on the basis of the letters, fair treatment involved her being shown them and questioned upon them – and, as he noted, ‘she will deny them’ and openly accuse the other lords of ‘manifest consent to the murder’. The only solution was that Moray might present some indisputable evidence of her guilt, but what that might be no one knew, and surely if he had any, he would have shown it before now.

  Elizabeth too saw that the inquiry was getting nowhere and was subject to leaks. Influenced by Cecil, she decided to move the conference to Westminster and appoint further judges, including Cecil and his brother-in-law, Nicholas Bacon. She was perhaps suspecting Norfolk of being too kind to Mary.

  If this was not enough, one of Mary’s supporters told her he believed that even if she were found innocent, she would not be released and restored to the throne. As she was informed, Elizabeth would not pass judgement but would ‘transport you up in the country and retain you there till she thinks time to show you favour’. This favour was ‘not likely to be hastily’ because Elizabeth feared Mary was ‘her unfriend’.14 In all the months leading up to the trial, Mary and her supporters had not entertained the horrific possibility that there might never be any verdict at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘You Have Promised to Be Mine’

  Norfolk sent Mary a glittering diamond and she replied promising to keep it to her, wearing it in secret ‘until I give it again to the owner of it and me both’. As she put it, ‘you have promised to be mine and I yours’.1 Mary said clearly that she would not marry without the consent of Elizabeth, because she had caused herself ‘hurt’ by not gaining her cousin’s assent for the marriage to Darnley. But despite all this high speaking, she agreed to a corres­pondence with him and turned the full force of her charm to appealing to him. Norfolk was not particularly handsome and he was something of an innocent abroad, easily overwhelmed by events, but he was young, single, wealthy, a trusted member of Elizabeth’s government and the only duke in England. Mary addressed him as ‘My Norfolk’ and wrote, ‘I trust that none shall say I have ever mind to leave you.’2 The inconvenient obstacle that Mary still had a living husband in Bothwell was overlooked in all the rush to romance.

  Mary should never have corresponded with Norfolk or implied she might marry him. But if she had not, and had obeyed Elizabeth’s every word, would Elizabeth have been more sympathetic? She would not. Mary was a political problem, a rival queen in the same land, and could easily become a separate power to challenge her cousin. Elizabeth had initially been sympathetic but then grown more concerned about her own position, and that was what mattered. She called Norfolk to her, demanding to know if he’d been trying to marry Mary. He had the good sense to lie, saying he would rather go to the Tower, declaring rather vividly that ‘Should I seek to marry her, being so wicked a woman, such a notorious adulteress and murderer? I love to sleep on a safe pillow.’3 Elizabeth was left unsatisfied, sure of his duplicity but unable to prove it. She then received Moray in mid-November, much to the horror of Mary, who was heartbroken that her ‘cousin’ would see Moray but not her. Elizabeth did not want the responsibility of putting a queen on trial like a criminal – if he made the accusation, it would be at his behest, and thus Scotland, not England, risked the vengeance of France and Spain.

  The run up to the trial was a cat and mouse power game between Elizabeth and Moray. Both wanted the other to make the final ­accusation against Mary. Moray knew that he would have to do it. But he was holding out to get as much as he could as a surety beforehand.

  When the enlarged commission came together, they met with Moray and told him that if he produced the proof of Mary’s guilt, Elizabeth would recognise Prince James as king and Mary would either be given up to Scotland for trial (which raised the possibility of her execution) or imprisoned in England. Mary was bound on every turn.

  On 26 November 1568, Moray rose at the inquiry and finally accused Mary publicly of being party to the murder, and named Bothwell as the murderer. As he put it, Bothwell was the ‘chief executor of that horrible and unworthy murder’ and Mary had ‘foreknowledge’ and was the ‘counsel, device, persuader, and commander of the said murder to be done’, then refused to prosecute the ‘executors’ and married Bothwell, ‘the universally esteemed chief author of the murder’. It is notable that Bothwell was the ‘chief executor’, not sole, and he was ‘universally esteemed’ the chief author – for there was, strictly speaking, no evidence. By this point, the inquiry was a club, a comfortable circle of accusations, expectations and protections. No more did Moray declare that Mary had simply been imprisoned so that the investigation could be best continued because she was too loyal to Bothwell. Instead, he said, she did not deserve to rule. And thus ‘the estates of the realm of Scotland, finding her unworthy to reign, discerned her demission of the crown’.4 In other words, they had judged her and found her a failure – even though she had made clear that a sovereign could not be judged by earthly court or council. Previously Moray had maintained the fiction that Mary had voluntarily abdicated, but with these new words, the onus on England was much less. Scotland had already judged he
r and found her to be unworthy and had ‘universally esteemed’ Bothwell the murderer and so deprived her of her crown.

  Mary had made many mistakes, it was true, and one was her refusal to put people on trial. The lords had engaged in cruel dishonesty in executing a collection of servants on no evidence other than that discovered by the threat of torture. Mary had shied away from such a show trial, in shock and unable to think straight, and she had been subtly influenced by the lords who knew that the Craigmillar bond could implicate them. She had failed to win over public opinion immediately after the murder by demonstrating hysterical feminine grief. And she had trusted Bothwell too much, until the last minute. But overall, what was happening was a naked power grab by men of a woman’s crown, by her former friends and half-brother, no less. Of course, plenty of bad male monarchs had lost their crowns, but Richard III – for example – had lost in battle, a fair fight.

  Mary, too, had lost in conflict, but only after she had already been wrongfully imprisoned in the guise of rescuing her from Bothwell. It is hard to argue that the lords would have taken power with such confidence had Mary been a man. Such was the structure of society that even a baby male was above her in terms of his right to rule, and she was easily pushed out. Mary succeeded in continuing the line of succession, unlike Elizabeth and a good number of male monarchs, before and after. But without James, it would have been difficult for the lords to depose her, for the blood claim of Moray or anyone else was much diluted. And, simply, it was believed that women were weaker, physically and mentally, and ruled only as an anomaly. At the same time as Mary was deprived of her crown by physical force, so Elizabeth was constantly fighting to keep hold of her prerogative. As Elizabeth saw, if the lords could simply deem Mary ‘unworthy to reign’, Parliament could do the same to her or anyone who succeeded her.

  Mary had lost all trust in the process and had told her commissioners to only make a short address and withdraw, unless she was allowed to speak. If Moray was allowed to accuse her in front of everyone, it was surely unfair if she could not argue her side, so she instructed them to avoid engagement. But her commissioners could not let such a shocking affront go unanswered. On 1 December, after a few days of discussion, her commissioners argued that it was an usurpation: the lords had simply rebelled so that they could stop her reaching the age of twenty-five and thus cancel the grants of land. They made the acute point that the English should think about how dangerous it was for subjects to bring wrongful accusations against their monarchs, and noted that some of the accusers had themselves made bonds for the death of Darnley. They also argued that, as Moray had been present and made his case, Mary should be able to attend and also to protest her innocence in front of the queen and her nobles.5

  It was an excellent defence and they had done all they could. They were invited to speak to Elizabeth on 3 December at Hampton Court and gave Elizabeth a written request that Mary should be allowed to defend herself. Elizabeth replied to them in a way to give them hope: she said it was ‘very reasonable’6 she should be heard, but first wished Moray to give his proofs of what he accused Mary of; they needed the original letters from the silver casket, or something better. Before she could tell them when or where or by whom Mary would be heard, she first must speak to the Scottish commissioners. But, as she did not tell them, if Mary were to be received, it would not be by her. Elizabeth told her commissioners and Privy Council that she would not meet Mary until she was proved innocent. Mary might have agreed to defend herself in front of a set of nobles and Elizabeth’s proxy, but it was unlikely she would be offered even this.

  Unfortunately, Herries and the others of Mary’s defence then lost their nerve. Convinced, not without reason, that Mary was in a hopeless situation, Herries and Leslie asked for another private meeting with Elizabeth at which they suggested they might come to terms with Moray. Elizabeth would have none of it, and said Mary’s honour was so impugned by the accusations that her commissioners should wish the evidence exposed to public scrutiny and so refuted, and Moray and the rest then accused of ‘so audaciously defaming’7 their queen. Of course, Moray had been promised that he would not be punished, even if Mary was found innocent, so this was all castles in the air. Herries and Mary’s other defenders would have been better trying to meet Moray privately to discuss the matter. After all, Moray had not yielded up the evidence and was still demanding assurances that he would be protected if he did so. Had Herries moved swiftly at this point and told Moray they might come to terms, Moray might possibly have withdrawn. But what would these terms have been? Most likely, that Moray would be allowed to continue as regent for James and Mary would go free, probably to live in France. But Elizabeth and Cecil would never have allowed Mary to live there, even if, as the ambassador had already promised, the king kept her shut up in a convent. She might plot against them both, particularly if she was in the Guise convent of her aunt.

  Elizabeth saw this plea of Herries as a sign of weakness and moved quickly. She told Herries and the others that Mary would not need to appear in person to give her defence. No proofs had been shown and it would be a long and arduous journey through snow. She said that they must answer for her, for if they did not, people might suspect that the accusations had substance. Mary would surely put up a brilliant defence, winning the court with her beautiful, powerful presence and the sheer reason of her argument. It was also likely that Mary would name the other lords who had been involved in Darnley’s death and then Cecil would have a huge problem on his hands. Over and over, the English tried to simplify the case to Bothwell killing Darnley, with Mary’s knowledge, rather than the truth: that Darnley’s death had been another instance of the endless and violent shifts of power in the Scottish nobility.

  Herries and Leslie played the one card they had left: they withdrew from the inquiry on the basis that Mary had been forbidden to appear. They naturally thought that this would bring the commission to a close. But, instead, Cecil found a legal loophole and Herries’ statement was discounted on the basis that it had not been a true summary of what Elizabeth had actually said as regarding Mary’s appearance. And so, Moray came with his evidence, some witness depositions, the Act of Parliament, the complaint of Darnley’s father Lennox, and other inconclusive materials. Some of the casket letters had been shown at York (most likely in the Scottish copies) and copies had been sent to Cecil, but the court needed a public showing of them.

  Finally, Moray gave the inquiry a transcript of Bothwell’s trial and what he claimed were the original first and second casket letters, in French. On the next day, he gave them the rest of the letters and the love poems. The timing was no coincidence – Moray and Cecil both waited until Mary’s commissioners were out of the way before the letters were finally revealed.

  For Moray, there was no going back. He had accused Mary of murder and given letters that ‘proved’ it.8 The half-siblings were in a battle and only one of them could get out alive.

  In 1571, Morton gave Lennox a receipt for the casket letters and wrote that they contained ‘missive letters, contracts or obligations, sonnets or love ballads, and other letters to the number of 21’.9 But we have only ten, and these are not the original French, nor the Scottish translations from the French, nor the copies made in Edinburgh. What remains are the copies in French and English translations from Westminster, and as they are written in the hand of the secretary, there is no use comparing them to Mary’s handwriting. It is doubtful that any of the English commissioners or politicians saw any originals in Mary’s handwriting – if they ever existed. They were supplied with Scottish copies at York and then French copies at Westminster – and both times were told that these were the originals, and both statements could not be true. We have various claims that they were in her handwriting, but these came from the virulent supporters of Moray. It is indeed fortuitous that the letters lack signatures.

  As we know, there was a huge search for documents in the early days of Mary’s incarceration. Some of Mary’s papers w
ere found and used and it is most likely that the lords, finding no admission of guilt, did the sixteenth-century equivalent of cutting and pasting and created the most damning missives out of pieces of original letters along with additions. As Maitland and others had pointed out, it was easy to forge Mary’s handwriting. Not only do the letters at times sound nothing akin to her own expressions used in the correspondence of hers that does survive, but we also know that Mary tended to date and sign her letters.

  Elizabeth herself, always shrewd, never pronounced on the letters and their authenticity, only saying they contained shocking contents and that it was regretful that Moray had produced them to the public (even though she had compelled him to do so).

  It is a vital point that neither Mary nor her defenders were allowed by the inquiry to see the letters. Mary could have argued against many of the points contained within them and publicly noted that they were forgeries. But she was never permitted to do so. Surely, if they were indisputable, Moray would have shown them to Herries and Leslie. He did not. As we saw, the judges and nobles at York believed the lords’ assertions on what the letters contained. Repeatedly, the English judges took the lords’ word for it, either because they could not believe that anyone would do anything so low as forge the hand of a queen, or because it suited them to do so.