Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy

by Leslie Carroll

  Mary would only have agreed to marry Leicester if Elizabeth named her the heir to the English throne; and though Elizabeth’s envoys first dangled that carrot, the promise was withdrawn. The hope of a union with Don Carlos, the heir to King Philip of Spain, had dimmed as well. So Mary focused her attentions on Darnley, a curly-haired, nineteen-year-old, six-feet-one-inch-tall playboy, “the properest and best proportioned long man she had ever seen.”

  But Sir James Melville, one of her envoys to the English court, didn’t understand the attraction, sneering, “No woman would make choice of such a man that was liker a woman than a man, for he is very lusty, beardless, and lady-faced.”

  John Knox, the formidable clergyman and leader of the Protestant Reformation, believed that Mary should secure his approval before choosing a husband—and the last thing this puritanical evangelical wanted was a Catholic consort for the queen.

  An enraged Mary, all of twenty-one years old at the time, summoned the fifty-year-old Knox to Holyrood Palace. Choked with tears, she demanded, “What have you to do with my marriage? What are you within this commonwealth?”

  “A subject born within the same,” Knox replied tersely.

  In April 1565, when Darnley fell ill and was confined to Stirling Castle for his recuperation, Mary’s ardor blossomed. She was at Darnley’s bedside every day, and at each visit they exchanged love tokens, proximity working its magic on her feelings.

  Elizabeth was enraged to learn that Mary intended to marry Darnley without asking for her permission to wed an English subject. Mary angrily informed Elizabeth that “Her Majesty desires her good sister to meddle no further.” She would marry Darnley, no matter what.

  The two tall figures made an elegant couple, and together they enjoyed the pastimes of hawking, hunting, and billiards. Exceedingly feminine, Mary possessed a striking, though fragile, beauty—slender and unusually tall for the era at nearly six feet, with high cheekbones, hazel eyes, and the Tudor red-gold hair. Her speaking voice was praised as “très douce et très bonne” (very sweet and very pretty).

  On July 22, 1565, Mary made Darnley Duke of Albany. One week later, the heralds proclaimed that the man so recently introduced to the Scots as “Prince Henry” would henceforth be known as “King of this our kingdom” with Mary’s full blessing.

  The sun was not yet up on the morning of July 29, 1565, when Mary was led down the aisle of the Chapel Royal at Holyrood by Darnley’s father, Lord Lennox, and the Earl of Argyll. Though her smile was radiant, the bride wore black, emblematic of her status as a widow, and by extension, the dowager queen of France.

  Darnley entered the chapel and the bridal couple exchanged vows. Since they were first cousins, a papal dispensation was necessary in order for them to marry. It had not arrived in Edinburgh by July 29, but Mary blithely assumed the document was en route and married Darnley without it. Although the dispensation finally made it to Scotland, the July 29 marriage was technically not legal because the bride and groom still remained within a proscribed degree of affinity.

  As soon as the ceremony was over, Mary cast aside her mourning garments and days of festivities began.

  Darnley was a handsome popinjay who stirred Mary’s lust and evidently gave her what she craved after a celibate marriage to the French dauphin—fabulous sex. The English ambassador to Scotland, Thomas Randolph, was disgusted that the “poor Queen, whom ever before I esteemed so worthy, so wise, so honorable in all her doings” was behaving like a giddy schoolgirl, mooning over a man who was so vastly her inferior.

  But Darnley’s lower birthright was nothing compared to the fact that he turned out to be an adulterous, syphilitic alcoholic who abused the “poor queen” almost as soon as he bedded her. Having learned that her beloved husband was no stranger to the brothels of Edinburgh, how must she have felt to realize that her body alone could not satisfy him?

  Darnley had become King Henry, so self-aggrandizing that he would go hunting or hawking on a day when important government business was being transacted so that he had to be fetched in order to affix his signature—which he deliberately wrote larger than Mary’s own. But he wanted more—and not just from the whores along the Canongate. Darnley wanted the crown matrimonial, which would have made him a coruler rather than a mere consort, giving him the full powers of kingship on Mary’s death. To that end, he began to make deals with some of the Scottish lairds; but he was too dim to realize that they were using him as a pawn.

  Darnley’s ego was considerably larger than his brain and he swallowed the lords’ bait, entering a conspiracy to dethrone his wife. Meanwhile, Mary, six months pregnant, was platonically taking comfort in the company of her correspondence secretary, an Italian from Savoy named David Riccio, perhaps the only man at court to have the queen’s ear and her full trust. The xenophobic nobles distrusted Riccio because he was a Catholic and a foreigner. The thirty-five-year-old Riccio, short and ugly, also became the lairds’ convenient scapegoat for all baseborn men who the queen had elevated to positions of influence at court.

  “Woe is me for you when Davy’s son shall be a king of England,” was the pestilence poured into the gullible, egotistical Darnley’s ear. The lords persuaded Darnley that the first step in effecting a coup was to destroy Mary’s confidant. And Mary and her unborn child had to be put out of the picture for Darnley to step into his own.

  Curiously, the English knew of the plot, while Mary was utterly unaware of it. On February 13, 1566, Elizabeth’s ambassador, Thomas Randolph, wrote to the Earl of Leicester: I know for certain that this Queen repenteth her marriage, that she hateth Darnley and all his kin. I know there are practices in hand contrived between father and son to come by the crown against her will. I know that if that take effect which is intended, David, with the consent of the king, shall have his throat cut within these ten days. Many things grievouser and worse than these are brought to my ears, yea, of things intended against her own person.

  At Holyrood Palace on the night of March 9, 1566, Riccio and Mary were in her supper-room enjoying a game of cards amid servants, guards, and other companions, when a group of men, led by Patrick Lord Ruthven, sneaked up the privy stairs from Darnley’s apartment below and began to batter at the door.

  “Let it please Your Majesty that yonder man David come forth of your Privy Chamber where he hath been overlong,” they demanded.

  Mary refused to open the door, insisting that Riccio was there by her invitation. This proved no deterrent to Ruthven, who then barged into the room. He denounced the secretary for offending the queen’s honor.

  Mary turned to her husband and asked Darnley if he had anything to do with the unwanted intrusion. He muttered an incoherent and sheepish demurral. Ruthven railed against Mary for banishing the Protestant lairds. Her servants were so cowed that they could not stir, and yet Ruthven shouted, “Lay not hands on me, for I will not be handled.” It was the cue for the coconspirators to enter the room.

  As Ker of Fawdonside leveled his pistol at Mary’s swollen belly, Riccio, dandyishly dressed in his nightgown of furred damask and a satin doublet and hose of russet velvet, was dragged into the next room kicking and screaming in Italian and French, “Justizia! Justizia! Sauvez ma vie, madame! Sauvez ma vie!” He was stabbed more than fifty times, and his bloody, battered body was tossed down a staircase.

  Darnley’s coconspirators made the queen a prisoner in her own palace. Although she feared for her life and privately grieved (and seethed with rage) over Riccio’s assassination, Mary concealed her emotions behind a mask of pure charm. Lucky for her that her husband was too stupid to spot a trap once it had been laid. By the following evening she had convinced Darnley that his life was as endangered as hers. By midnight, he had become her ally.

  Only fifty-two hours after Riccio’s murder, Mary and Darnley tiptoed down the privy stairs that led from her apartment to his, through the servants’ quarters, and out of the palace. All through the night, they rode to Dunbar Castle and safety, managing a twenty-fiv
e-mile journey in five hours. Mary, riding pillion (on a cushion behind him), urged Darnley to have more care for her condition, to which he angrily replied that if she lost the baby, they could just as easily make another.

  Mary’s courage rallied her subjects. By March 18, she had amassed eight thousand men behind her, and rode victoriously back into Edinburgh.

  On June 19, 1566, after a painful and difficult labor, Mary gave birth to a son, the future James VI. Now that the heir was born and healthy, Mary raged at Darnley, “I have forgiven, but will never forget!” She saw him now for a craven, scheming traitor. “What if Fawdonside’s pistol had shot, what would become of him and me both? Or what estate would you have been in? God only knows, but we may suspect.”

  David Riccio’s murder had engendered in Mary an abiding, seething hatred of her husband. She had been in ill health ever since her son’s birth, collapsing in October 1566 with vomiting and convulsions, losing consciousness for two days. Darnley did not even visit her sickbed. “He misuses himself so far towards her that it is an heartbreak for her to think that he should be her husband,” lamented William Maitland, one of Mary’s most trusted advisers.

  Mary now toyed with the idea of divorcing Darnley, but the nobles would only consent to it if the queen would pardon the conspirators, who had scattered to the four winds after Riccio’s murder. Mary agreed—as long as it was formally stipulated that her son, James, was legitimate, without the slightest taint of bastardy. She had never been intimate with Riccio, and wanted the idle tongues silenced.

  At Stirling Castle on December 17, 1566, Mary’s son was christened. In absentia, Elizabeth I was his godmother. Darnley was conspicuously missing from the festivities. At the end of the month he departed for Glasgow, a center of Lennox Stewart power, where his family would welcome him. Around the New Year, he was diagnosed with syphilis.

  Mary convinced Darnley to return to Edinburgh to recuperate. Rather than take up residence in Holyrood, on February 1, 1567, he moved to a modest house just inside the city wall, known colloquially as Kirk o’ Field. Mary was all cordiality toward her husband, even staying at the house with him, though in a bedroom upstairs from his. Darnley congenially unburdened himself, informing Mary of certain plots against her, adding that even he had been approached by malfeasors who had suggested that he murder Mary himself! You can just hear the nervous laughter.

  On the night of February 9, Mary attended the wedding masque for one of her favorite valets. While she was out, the house at Kirk o’ Field was filled with gunpowder. At two a.m. on February 10, the house was blown sky-high.

  Hours later, one of Darnley’s servants, who had somehow survived the blast, stood atop the town wall, crying for assistance. Darnley’s body, naked beneath his nightgown, was found in the little garden outside the house. He had been strangled to death. Evidently, he had peered out the window and saw the conspirators outside, including some of his kinsmen from Clan Douglas. Fearing that they were about to set the house afire with him inside, Darnley had tried to escape. Only twenty-one years old, the king died at their hands.

  At Holyrood, where she had gone after remaining at the wedding masque past midnight, Mary was awakened with the news of Darnley’s death. She vowed to punish those who “have taken this wicked enterprise in hand,” since “we assure ourself it was dressed always for us as for the king; for we lay the most part all of the last week in that same lodging.”

  Mary usually became distraught at scenes of bloodshed and violence and had been physically ill over the deaths of her mother and François, but she shed no tears when she was shown Darnley’s corpse. Perhaps she was as much relieved that he was gone as that she had survived an attempted coup. Or perhaps she was just in shock.

  Mary observed the traditional forty days of mourning, during which she was said to be melancholy and pensive. Maybe she wondered who her friends were. Was there anyone left who she could trust? Ill health and depression brought on by stress and grief increased her dependence on the Earl of Bothwell, “a glorious, rash, and hazardous young man” whose power seemed to grow daily.

  On March 19, Bothwell began to act as Mary’s policy director. He was already Lord High Admiral, as well as one of Mary’s key advisers on matters relating to the border territories. Bothwell was ambitious to be king of Scotland himself now that Mary was once again marriageable.

  A somewhat simian-looking serial adulterer, the five-feet-six -inch-tall Bothwell was dwarfed in stature by the queen. John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, thought the earl “of great bodily strength and beauty, although vicious and dissolute in his habits.” He was also brutal and striving, though perhaps no more so than many of his era, particularly in a time and place where money and family ambition were the Scottish nobles’ two driving forces. And he was up to his elbows in conspiracies.

  On her way back to Edinburgh after visiting her infant son at Stirling Castle, Mary’s party was accosted by Bothwell and eight hundred of his men. He told Mary that her safety was in jeopardy, urging her to place her trust in him and permit him to escort her to Dunbar Castle. In order to avoid bloodshed, Mary assented. The incident was so odd and Mary’s conciliation so easily won that many people believed (and still do) that she had been complicit in the “abduction.” It is possible, given that she was utterly exhausted, physically and emotionally, and thought there might be worse fates than joining forces with Bothwell. But what happened next was most certainly not what she expected.

  At Dunbar, Bothwell raped her. The violation placed her in an untenable position. According to Sir James Melville, “the Queen could not but marry him, seeing he had ravished her and lain with her against her will.”

  But Mary was vulnerable and resigned herself to marrying Bothwell for three reasons: he had convinced her that he was the skilled and masterful consort she needed to rule Scotland; he showed her a bond signed by several powerful nobles pledging their support to him as their overlord; and the rape had “consummated” their union, so that Mary could not go back on her word to marry him once they reached Edinburgh.

  She had angered the nobles by wedding Darnley, against their advice. If they supported Bothwell, and her marriage to him, perhaps the civil strife would cease.

  On Thursday, May 15, 1567, in a Protestant ceremony, Mary and Bothwell were married in the Great Hall at Holyrood Palace. The queen had lost so much control over her destiny that she had allowed herself to be wed according to a religion she did not espouse.

  According to one of Mary’s advisers, “not one day passed” that the new bride was not in tears. Bothwell prohibited Mary from enjoying the leisurely pursuits she had so enjoyed—hawking, hunting, and music. He accused her in the crudest language of frivolity and wantonness. Only twenty-four years old, she seemed to age overnight.

  It was not long before the rebels turned on their leader. Bothwell had served their purpose; now it was time to get rid of him. Mary was urged to abandon her new husband to save herself, but she refused—for two reasons. She did not trust the conspirators to see her safely restored to her throne (she was right; they were already hastily forging documents to implicate her in Darnley’s murder); and by now she realized she was pregnant.

  On June 15, 1567, at Carberry Hill, Bothwell was deserted by his supporters, leaving him to face the rebels alone. He had enjoyed the perquisites of power for only five weeks. After a final, very public embrace with Mary, Bothwell galloped north toward Dunbar Castle to amass more troops. Mary never saw him again. The rebels took her prisoner as soon as the rear end of Bothwell’s horse had faded from view.

  “Burn her, burn the whore, she is not worthy to live!” The soldiers’ taunts rang in the queen’s tender ears as they conveyed her to Edinburgh. Her clothes were streaked with grime; her cheeks were hot with tears.

  In Edinburgh, Mary was conveyed to a modest home owned by a brother-in-law of one of the conspirators. The following day, her unwashed hair streaming about her shoulders, her bodice so ripped that her breasts were nearly exposed,
Mary stuck her head out of the window and begged her subjects to aid her. In the four weeks since she had been married to Bothwell, she had endured humiliations she never could have imagined possible.

  Mary was then taken to Lochleven Castle, a Douglas clan stronghold on an island so small there was little else on it but the castle keep. At Lochleven, Mary lived in less than genteel incarceration, although several members of the Douglas family were enchanted by her, eventually aiding her escape in 1568.

  On June 16, 1567, the warrant for Mary’s imprisonment was signed by a number of the rebels. The initial charges included the murder of Darnley (for which the conspirators themselves were guilty), and for governing her realm under Bothwell’s undue influence. But it was hard to make the latter allegation stick with Bothwell out of the picture. Her captors pressured Mary to divorce Bothwell. Although she never loved the man, she feared the child she was carrying would be denounced as a bastard if she agreed to a divorce.

  Confined indoors, Mary’s health, already fragile, began to deteriorate even further. She miscarried on July 24, with some accounts referring to twin fetuses. She had been pregnant for approximately eight weeks. The only positive to be extracted from her sorrow was that there was no longer a reason to remain married to Bothwell.

  On the day of Mary’s miscarriage, Lord Lindsay brought her a sheaf of documents that would change history. “Sign them, or else the rebels will be compelled to slit your throat,” Lord Lindsay threatened. Having lost a great deal of blood, under extreme duress, and in tremendous pain, Mary affixed her signature and resigned her crown, abdicating in favor of her infant son, James.

  James VI, barely a year old, was crowned King of Scotland on July 29, 1567. Mary’s bastard half brother, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, was named regent.