The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Kate Williams

  Mary was hopeful when she realised she was travelling south, thought she might be moved closer to London and finally receive her day in Parliament to defend herself, her journey there witnessed by all London. Instead, she was told they were not pausing at Fotheringhay but it was her new home. She was to be squirrelled away in the landlocked Midlands. Although Fotheringhay was large, Mary was lodged in a small section and at first wondered at what was now to happen. When she realised that the state rooms were empty, she guessed that she was to be put on trial. Her captors had not even told her this, so afraid were they of her creating a defence or even escaping. By moving her with short notice, not telling her where she was going and then not com­municating with her when she arrived, they hoped to disorientate and reduce her completely.

  On 1 October, Paulet told her that she was to be interrogated about her crimes by lords and suggested she confess all and beg for forgiveness. She said that ‘as queen and sovereign, I am aware of no fault or offence for which I have to render account to anyone here below’.7 As she could not offend anyone, she would not ask for pardon. Talbot was summoned to judge his old captive. He attempted to plead ill health but Cecil told him sharply that if he did not appear, the world would think that he had truly been Mary’s lover.

  The Act for the Queen’s Safety was the official excuse for putting Mary on trial. But also Elizabeth had finally given in to the demands of her advisors and ministers. For so long, she had resisted the importuning of Parliament that she must try Mary for the death of Darnley, treat her as a common subject, execute her. It had been her great moment of resistance, of maintaining that an anointed queen was above all she surveyed. But now Mary was to be tried – and the very role of queen undermined. When Elizabeth had relented to the articles providing that Mary should be tried by peers if she were found plotting again, she destroyed much of Mary’s position and a little of her own. For so long, she and Parliament had fought over sovereignty. She had refused what they had advised her to do. But now it was a fait accompli that she could not refuse. And if we accept that the latter part of the sixteenth century saw Parliament and the state gather more power, much of this was due to Mary and the precedent set by her trial. If a queen could be tried, then what was a queen?

  On the 13th, the greatest nobles arrived at the house and others scattered themselves around dwellings nearby. A group of lords including Paulet visited Mary in her privy chamber and gave her a letter from the queen, with the formal information that she would be interrogated, since she persisted in denying the plot of which Elizabeth possessed proof. As she put it, Mary had been guilty of plotting against her in ‘the most horrible and unnatural attempt on her life’.8 Elizabeth justified it by saying that Mary was in England, so must bow to the laws of the country. They wanted to convince Mary that she must come in front of the court.

  Mary refused to appear. ‘I am a true queen and will do nothing that will prejudice mine own royal majesty, or other princes in my place and rank, or my son.’ To her, it was a matter of principle. A queen could not be put on trial. She emphasised that she had come to England of her own volition for help and had been taken captive (this was important to stress for it made it clear that she had not been captured in battle). She told them that she had no papers or notes, did not know the laws of England and ‘am alone, without counsel or anyone to speak on my behalf’ and ‘am destitute of all aid, taken at a disadvantage’. Her dignity and majesty were as impressive as ever. ‘My mind is not dejected’, she said.9 Still, the servants took one of her crimson velvet chairs for use in the trial.

  Cecil tried again, and when he led a large delegation, he found her yet more majestic. ‘I am a queen and not a subject’, she said. ‘If I appeared, I should betray the dignity and majesty of kings and it would be tantamount to confession that I am bound to submit to the laws of England, even in matters touching religion. I am willing to answer all questions, providing I am interrogated before a free Parliament, and not before these commissioners, who doubtless have been carefully chosen, and who have probably already condemned me unheard.’ Her basic point was correct: as a foreign queen, she could not be found guilty of treason. But every part of her trial was unfair: she had no lawyers to advise her before she entered, she had not been allowed to review the evidence, and the place would be packed with those who were vowed against her. ‘Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England,’ she said. She spoke brilliantly, but Cecil was not turning back now. He told Mary that if she did not appear, she could still be tried in her absence. And her claims of royal blood were as nothing to him. ‘The queen, my mistress, knows no other queen in the realm but herself’.10

  Sir Christopher Hatton, future Lord Chancellor and one of the men presiding over the trial, tried to sway Mary by telling her that the best way of proving her innocence was to appear in front of the court. Indeed, Mary herself was deeply protective of her reputation. And, fatally, she thought that the charges against her were circumstantial because she still had no idea that all her letters had been read and deciphered. She did not know that her secretaries had confessed all. Mary asked again to be tried in front of Parliament and made the condition that she should first be acknowledged as Elizabeth’s kinswoman and heir to the throne. Cecil lost patience and said that the trial would continue, whether she appeared or not. Elizabeth sent a letter, accusing Mary of planning in ‘divers ways and manners to take my life, and to ruin my kingdom by the shedding of blood’. She attacked Mary for ingratitude. ‘I never proceeded so harshly against you; on the contrary, I have maintained you and preserved your life with the same care which I use myself.’11 Elizabeth had reduced Mary’s allowance, ordered her to lose the entourage, demanded close captivity and no outside access – and finally instructed Paulet to take her remaining money. But she wrote that there was still a chance: ‘answer fully, and you may receive greater favour from us’.12

  Should Mary have refused to speak at the trial? If she had, she would never have had a chance to put her case. And if she had not appeared, she would have been criticised, for it would have been said that she could have avoided a guilty verdict by defending herself. But most importantly, she did not know what evidence they had against her.

  Mary agreed to appear before the court and then fainted with the strain.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ‘Shipwreck of My Soul’

  At nine o’clock the next day, Wednesday 15 October 1586, Mary appeared at her trial, dressed in black velvet and a white cap and veil. She limped in, barely able to walk, and her steward Melville and her doctor Bourgoing had to take her arms. Her maid took her train and her surgeon, apothecary and three women came with her, including her favourite, Jane Kennedy and her secretary’s sister, Elizabeth Curle. It was the most intimidating court – with a large throne at one end, symbolising Elizabeth, and rows of men watching her. Opposite the throne was Mary’s own scarlet velvet chair. Thirty-six noblemen sat in judgement over her fate, including Cecil and Walsingham, as well as Talbot. As Mary moved forward, she presumed she was to sit on the large throne and when she was directed otherwise, she cried out, ‘I am a queen by right of birth and my place should be there under the dais.’ As she sat down, she noted how there were ‘many counsellors here, but not one for me’.1

  The Lord Chancellor laid out why the court had been convened. Mary refuted once more that the court could rule over a queen and also reminded the peers that she had entered voluntarily ‘under promise of assistance and aid, against my enemies and not as a subject’, which she said she could prove if she had her papers. The Lord Chancellor denied that Elizabeth had ever promised Mary anything. Strictly speaking, he was right.

  Mary refuted the accusations that she had known of the plot and agreed to it, and the further accusation that she had shown the plotters ‘the ways and means’. She put on a brilliantly strong defence, saying that ‘I knew not Babington. I never received any letters from him, nor wrote any to h
im. I never plotted the destruction of the queen. If you want to prove it, then produce my letters signed with my own hand.’

  When the counsel informed her that they had letters between her and Babington, Mary asked to see them and declared that they could have been forged – as had happened so often in her reign. She felt utterly sure of her position. She said that she could not be blamed for the ‘criminal projects of a few desperate men without my knowledge’.

  But then the counsel produced copies of the letters: Babington’s letter to Mary requesting assistance and offering ‘all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear the Catholic cause and your Majesty’s service, will undertake that tragical execution’.2 And then her return, her letter to Babington in which she replied to assent, expressing her concern that the Catholics in England were losing power and her desire to help them ‘rise again’, making it clear she wished for a Spanish invasion – including the dubiously added postscript asking for names and other information of Babington’s friends, the ‘six gentlemen’. Their final flourish, their pièce de résistance, Walsingham’s master stroke: the copy of Mary’s letter that the cunning Phelippes had translated back into the code. This was the shock. It showed Mary and the whole court that he and Walsingham had known all. Every time that Mary and her secretaries congratulated themselves, wrote a letter in their careful codes, folded it up in the beer keg – it had been for nothing. Walsingham’s men had known every symbol of the code that Mary and her secretaries had produced with such care.

  Mary’s shock was terrible. Quickly, she understood that someone had betrayed her. But she still fought back and thought on her feet. For the list of ciphers had been taken from her drawers in Astley – it would be easy enough for anyone to forge a letter using one of these. She turned directly to Walsingham and accused him of forgery. He defended himself by saying, ‘I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man.’3 Mary took it as his acknowledgement that any act of forgery was wrong (really, he was saying that he would do anything for the safety of the queen). Mary burst into tears and cried, ‘I would never make shipwreck of my soul by conspiring the destruction of my dearest sister.’4 She thought that her argument of forgery was succeeding.

  The court adjourned for lunch at one, after which the most damning evidence appeared: the words of Mary’s secretaries. Mary was shocked and surprised but defended herself with gusto, saying that additions to her letters could have been made – and that she should not be convicted on the words of those who worked for her. And as her secretaries had not been called as witnesses for cross-examination, how could this be fair? The letter had not been written by her hand, either in draft or in code. She suggested that Nau had sometimes added further material of his own to her letters. She generously excused them for ‘I see plainly what they have said is from fear of torture and death. Under promise of their lives and in order to save themselves, they have excused themselves at my expense, fancying that I could thereby more easily save myself . . . not knowing the manner in which I am treated.’ In other words, her secretaries could never have imagined she would be put on trial. Her words were clear and brilliantly convincing: ‘I am not to be convicted except by mine own word or writing.’5

  Mary’s self-defence was strong, confounding at a stroke all John Knox’s arguments about women’s weaker understanding. She even raised the possibility that Walsingham had fabricated the entire case and intrigued with Ballard and the rest, prompting a somewhat equivocal defence from the spymaster: ‘as a private person, I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man, and as a Secretary of State, nothing ­unbefitted of my duty’. But his audience would have known it not impossible for Walsingham to have invented the whole thing – and Mary sowed some seeds of doubt in their minds.

  The queen was surrounded by hostile men on all sides but she kept her dignity, challenging them on every point. Where was their gallantry? And why be so threatened by a middle-aged lady who was in constant pain? As she pointed out, she could barely walk and ‘I spend most of my time confined to bed with sickness’. She declared that her age and her poor health ‘both prevent me from wishing to resume the reins of government. I have perhaps only two or three years to live in this world, and I do not aspire to any public position, especially when I consider the pain and desperance which meet those who wish to do right.’6 Most poignantly, she said she barely knew how to be a queen, since she had not reigned for twenty years.

  The counsel carried on in trying to prove that she had known and understood and agreed to the death of Elizabeth when she wrote ‘then shall it be time to set the six gentlemen to work taking order, upon the accomplishment of their design, I may suddenly be transported out of this place’. The argument turned specific, with Mary claiming she did not know what ‘work’ the men would be embarked upon. But the very fact that she talked of ‘forces in readiness, inside and outside the realm’ was enough to prove that she desired an invasion, and she connected it to her freedom – and this was sufficient.7

  Mary was accused again of having pronounced herself Queen of England, and she said once more that it was done in her youth.

  The court was manifestly unfair, but what did it matter? It was sham justice – and Mary had been pitched into it by her reluctance to create the same sham justice after the death of Darnley. She demanded to speak to a full Parliament or in an interview and ‘speak personally to the queen, who would, I think, show more regard of another queen’. She said God would judge her correctly.8

  Everything turned on the evidence of the secretaries and it was clear to Cecil that, if the fig leaf of due process was to be preserved, then they would have to be questioned by the commissioners. Cecil was infuriated by Mary’s spirited defence and he did not want her there when the secretaries were questioned. For, confronted by their beautiful, dignified queen to whom both were still devoted, they might very well retract their confessions or claim they had been given under torture. Claude Nau had been with Mary since 1574 and might have been swayed by his old mistress. It would appear that Nau had not only been interrogated and threatened by Walsingham, but also that he had received promises of a safe future – for he would live with Walsingham’s family before returning to France. But promises were as nothing, and, with Mary face to face, Nau might have judged that the wrath of the King of France would be too great to risk and thus recant his testimony.

  Mary’s defence was too effective. The trial turned chaotic as various lords shouted out accusations and Cecil decided to close matters for the evening.

  Mary passed a poor night, and next morning asked if she could address the lords directly. She protested how she had suffered accusations from all sides on the previous day, attacked even for claiming the throne of England when she had been a teenager. The lords had broken their agreement, for she had assented only to answer on the point that she had tried to assassinate Elizabeth. As she made clear, it was no fair trial – she had been taken by surprise, deprived of her papers and secretaries and then given no indication of the accusations that would be ranged against her. Unlike her former trial, this time she was guilty, but still she had not been properly treated. She had been attacked and importuned with little other reason than to take her by surprise and try to wrong-foot her into inconsistencies and confessions. Mary’s address had an effect – and perhaps some of the gentlemen had thought better of their behaviour overnight. Cecil gave her a polite reply, and during the day’s proceedings, declared that while she was being questioned on the issue of the plot to kill Elizabeth, other evidence and issues must be admitted to elucidate the matter. But otherwise, there was nothing new and the lords ran over all the accusations they had posed on the previous day.

  Again and again, Mary said she knew nothing of the plots and when Cecil asked her what she would have done in the event of a Spanish invasion, she said she was not responsible for Spanish acts or motivations. ‘I desired nothing but my own deliverance’, she reiterated. The court tried to accuse her of the blackest crimes – and she said
all she had ever wanted was to be free. It did not look good for the government, and Cecil had been right not to stage the trial in London – as public opinion could have swelled in support of the queen. Mary was not above adjusting the truth in the promotion of her own image of a victim of her people’s ingratitude and England’s cruelty. As she said, she had given too much tolerance to Protestants. ‘It has always been the cause of my ruin for my subjects became sad and haughty, and abused my clemency.’9 The source of her ‘ruin’ was not tolerating Protestants. In truth, the lords had been used to so much power before her reign that they would have continued to do as they pleased. Although Moray had framed her, she had played into his hands; the source of ‘ruin’ was her reluctance to publicly chase down the killers of Darnley and put Bothwell on trial. Bothwell had indeed become sad and haughty and terrifically abused her clemency.

  The argument dragged on, the watching knights shuffled their heels and Cecil worried that some of the lords might be swayed by Mary. He lost his patience and told her that everything that had happened to her – her period of house arrest, her imprisonment and now her trial – were all her own fault. He even made the outrageously untruthful argument that Elizabeth had been attempting to secure her freedom in conversation with James. ‘Ah, I see you are my adversary’, said Mary.10 She was coming to understand that he had been plotting against her all along.