by R J M Pugh
Leith
The Anglo-Scottish army advancing on Leith numbered 9,000 English and 10,000 Scots but, after a few weeks, desertions reduced the total of 19,000 by half. Lord Grey of Wilton besieged Leith which was defended by 4,000 French troops. On 14 April the French sallied out and slew 200 English soldiers; then, on 7 May, a combined Anglo-Scottish assault on Leith was brilliantly repulsed, leaving 800 dead and wounded English and Scots in the trenches. However, the death-knell of the French sounded on 10 June with the demise of Marie of Guise from dropsy. Less than a week later teams of commissioners from England and France convened at Leith on 16 June with powers to effect peace. From the outset the French contended that any treaty which might be concluded would be exclusively between France and England as François, or Francis II of France, regarded his Scottish subjects – he and Mary, Queen of Scots being joint sovereigns of Scotland – as nothing less than rebels. The Treaty of Leith was signed on 6 July; its terms were straightforward. All French subjects in Scotland were to return home, with only 120 soldiers, sixty at Inchcolme in the Forth and sixty at Dunbar Castle remaining to arrange safe conducts for the departing French. No pronouncement was made on religion, however; there could be little doubt in the minds of the Lords of the Congregation how this omission should be interpreted. Henceforth Scotland would be a Protestant country. The Treaty of Leith marks the modernization of Scotland and the adoption of the Protestant faith as the state religion.
In December 1560 Francis II of France died suddenly of an ear infection; Mary, Queen of Scots’ reign as Queen consort of France thus came to an end. It was only a matter of time before she would return to her native Scotland and ascend the throne. Even before she set sail from France, Mary indicated the policy she would follow in her kingdom. In February 1561 she sent emissaries to the Scottish Council of Estates to urge the renewal of the Auld Alliance which the Estates resolutely refused to do. In response to her request the Protestant leaders urged upon Mary the necessity of leaving religion in Scotland as she found it.
On 19 August 1561 Mary stepped ashore at Leith, attended by a few French retainers and a handful of diplomats. Within five days of her arrival Mary and her household attended Mass in the private Chapel of Holyrood Palace. Her half-brother, Lord James Stewart, had to personally bar the door of the chapel against a group of angry Protestants led by John Knox. The following Sunday Knox preached a particularly violent sermon in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, to the effect that one Catholic Mass was more fearful than ‘if 10,000 armed men were landed in any part of the realm, of purpose to suppress the whole Protestant religion’.15 He would later rant about the ‘monstrous regiment of women’, meaning not only the young Queen Mary but the frocked clergy of Rome. Knox and Mary remained irreconcilable enemies throughout her brief reign from 1561 to 1567.
On 6 September 1561 Mary chose her chief councillors; among these was her half-brother, Lord James Stewart, James Hamilton, the Duke of Chatelherault, his son, James, Earl of Arran, the Earls of Huntly, Argyll, Bothwell, Hay of Errol, Morton, Glencairn, Montrose, William Keith, 4th Earl Marischal and Lord Erskine. However, in the first four years of her reign, Mary would be guided by her chief Secretary of State, William Maitland of Lethington and Lord James Stewart who would later be elevated to the earldom of Moray. Of the pair, Maitland was more astute, being a diplomat rather than a politician. At least the two men were agreed on a common aim; the need for an eventual union of the crowns of Scotland and England and, as a means to this end, the recognition of Mary, Queen of Scots as immediate successor to Elizabeth I. (It is perhaps surprising that the two Queens never met, even during Mary’s incarceration in England between 1568 and her execution in 1587.) The year 1562 produced little of advantage to the foreign and domestic policies of Mary and her advisers. The chief event was the defeat and death of the powerful Earl of Huntly in the autumn of that year.
Corrichie
The cause of the downfall of George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly is not entirely clear. In August 1562 Mary set out from Edinburgh on an itinerary of her northern provinces, something she had long considered due in order to acquaint herself with that part of her kingdom. Her northern visit was marred by the contumacy of Huntly’s second son, Sir John Gordon of Findlater, who had broken his ward in Edinburgh Castle for some misdemeanour and refused to submit to Mary at Stirling, as she had ordered him to. The Earl of Huntly invited her to his castle at Strathbogie but in view of his son’s behaviour, Mary wisely declined. At Inverness she was insulted by the garrison of the castle which, in the name of Lord Gordon, refused her admission. The inhabitants of the area rose in support of their queen and the castle was surrendered the following day, when its captain was hanged and some of the garrison sent to prison for life. Sir John Gordon of Findlater refused to give up his castles at Findlater and Auchindoune; his father, the Earl of Huntly also disregarded Mary’s summons to her presence. On 17 October Huntly was declared an outlaw. This was possibly a grave error on Mary’s part; Huntly was the head of the north-east clans and enjoyed a considerable following. It is believed that his rebellion against Mary was not aimed at her but her Protestant advisers. A devout Catholic, Huntly had urged Mary to reinstate the ‘true’ religion; already at odds with some of her nobles over her policy of religious tolerance, Mary was acutely embarrassed by Huntly’s ultimatum. The bigoted Protestant nobles dismissed Huntly’s claim that his opinion should carry more weight than any other noble as, in his view, he was the first in rank among the Scottish nobility, whatever their religious persuasion. The Protestant nobles called Huntly’s bluff and an army led by Mary’s half-brother, James Stewart, now Earl of Moray, was assembled; Moray, with the Earls of Atholl and Morton led 2,000 Lowlanders against Huntly. When Huntly received the news of the approaching army, it is said that he became indecisive and had to be persuaded by his wife to take the field.
Huntly commanded a force of only 700 or 800 clansmen on the day of Corrichie which was fought on 28 October 1562. Moray’s 2,000-strong force had been recruited mainly from East Lothian and Fife. He drew up his force on rising ground at Meikle Tap (Big Top) near Aberdeen; Moray’s army contained Lowlanders he knew he could trust and Highlanders whom he could not. For his part, Huntly was not dismayed by the superior force confronting him as he believed many in Moray’s army were friends of his and would defect during the course of the battle.
Moray launched his attack with the dubious clansmen who made little impression on Huntly’s front line, perhaps deliberately so; they broke and came running back to Moray’s position, hotly pursued by Huntly’s clansmen. Moray’s main battalion of Lowland spearmen levelled their weapons to receive both pursued and pursuers, not caring who they slew. Huntly’s Gordons charged in Highland fashion in disorderly lines with sword and targe; they were no match for Moray’s spearmen. Huntly’s men retreated, Huntly being thrown from his horse; he could not rise again, being corpulent and weighed down by his armour. Moray’s dubious clansmen returned to the field to take part in the slaughter – and plunder – of Huntly’s men, 120 of whom were slain. Among those taken prisoner were Huntly and his two sons, Adam and John. Huntly died that night, short of breath; some accounts give the cause of his death as apoplexy.16 Huntly’s son, Sir John Gordon of Findlater was executed for treason on 29 October. Huntly’s eldest son and heir George was also charged with treason, even though he had not been present on the field of Corrichie. He was sent to prison in Dunbar Castle where he languished for the next three years.17 Finally reinstated as the 5th Earl of Huntly by Mary in 1565, Gordon became one of her staunchest supporters.
Modern historians consider the somewhat farcical battle of Corrichie as a clan battle; this author disagrees with this view. Corrichie did indeed involve clansmen on both sides but it was a battle fought by Lowlanders against Highlanders, not by Clan Gordon against Clan Stewart or Stuart, as Mary began to style herself. The battlefield of Corrichie was commemorated by a memorial stone raised in 1951; the Gaelic inscription is translated as
‘remember the day of Corrichie’. The battlefield is now largely obscured by woodlands.
The question we must ask is this: why did Mary, Queen of Scots acquiesce in the defeat and ruin of the Earl of Huntly, a Catholic and one of her most loyal supporters? The answer can only be Huntly’s defiance of Mary’s mother, Marie of Guise and punished by the latter for his treasonable contact with England during the term of Marie’s regency. Mary was probably made aware of this. She would have had little confidence in a noble – Catholic though he undoubtedly was – who attended the sermons of John Knox, albeit as a somewhat intemperate listener; in the event of a renewed civil war it was likely that Huntly would have placed his sword in the service of whichever party was the more powerful. For all her faults Mary preferred an open foe to a devious friend.
Mary’s relationship with Elizabeth I was never cordial; the English queen resolutely refused to acknowledge Mary as her successor, although, in the eyes of Catholic Europe, Mary was the rightful heir-apparent to the throne of England, Elizabeth being considered illegitimate, despite her being Henry VIII’s lawful daughter. Mary and her late husband Francis II had assumed the titles of King and Queen of France, Scotland and England; but England was Elizabeth’s and would remain so until her death in 1603.
In 1563 Mary lost a formidable ally in France when her uncle the Duke of Guise was assassinated. Mary, a widow, was determined to marry whomsoever she chose, including a powerful Catholic king; even her closest advisers, Maitland of Lethington and James Stewart, Earl of Moray were not averse to the prospect in the hope that such a marriage would force Elizabeth to recognize Mary as her rightful successor. But Elizabeth, alarmed by the prospect, was not sufficiently cowed; she sent her agent Thomas Randolph to Scotland with a message to the effect that were Mary to follow this course of action she would regard it as a breach of friendship with England.
The following year the question of Mary’s marriage absorbed both herself and her council of advisers; Elizabeth suggested her favourite Lord Robert Dudley whom she elevated to the Earl of Leicester to make him a more suitable husband. For her part, Mary agreed to the marriage on one condition – that with Dudley should come the recognition of her right to succeed Elizabeth. As Dudley was a Protestant he was not only acceptable to Maitland and James Stuart, Earl of Moray but also to John Knox, who eagerly welcomed the prospect of a Protestant king of Scotland. Dismissing Mary’s condition out of hand (it is doubtful whether Elizabeth was ever remotely enthusiastic about Dudley’s marriage to Mary), Elizabeth rejected the alliance and Mary was left to take responsibility herself for her matrimonial affairs. She made a disastrous choice in her second choice of husband, Lord Darnley.
Henry, Lord Darnley, was the son of Matthew, 4th Earl of Lennox, and Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of James IV’s widow Margaret Tudor and Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus. The seventeen-year-old Darnley was Mary’s cousin and next in line to her in the succession to the throne of England. At Mary’s request, Elizabeth I permitted the exiled Earl of Lennox to return to Scotland; it may be remembered that Lennox had supported the English during the Rough Wooing. Lennox, a Catholic, would be a welcome ally for various reasons, the main being that he would act as a counter-balance to the over-mighty Protestant Hamilton family as well as being a check to other powerful nobles. The prospect of Lennox’s return was anathema to the Earl of Moray and Maitland of Lethington; they feared he would present an obstacle to their progress while others of the Protestant party found his return in September hateful; these fears were not lessened when, in December, Mary restored all Lennox’s honours and lands.
Mary and Darnley were married in accordance with the rites of the Catholic Church in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood on 29 July 1565. As grandson of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister, Darnley’s marriage to Mary strengthened their respective claims to the English throne. As for Mary, she had frightened Elizabeth I and she gave the great Catholic houses of Europe hope that the true religion might be re-established not only in Scotland but also England, where Elizabeth’s still considerable number of Catholic subjects posed a threat to the Protestant religion. Many of Mary’s nobles were angered by her marriage, seeing it a threat to the Reformation in Scotland. Mary’s response was to crush those Protestant lords who had voiced their displeasure at her choice of husband. Mary was eager to engage the insurgents – the Duke of Chatelherault and Earls Moray, Rothes, Glencairn and Lord Boyd – in a battle which never materialized. While Mary rode about gathering support and stamping out pockets of rebellious subjects, the Duke of Chatelherault gathered a force of 1,200 horse and made his headquarters at Dumfries. By 8 October Mary had gathered sufficient support to engage the insurgents but they had vanished across the Border. Mary was now mistress of her kingdom for the first time in four years. This episode became known as the Roundabout or Chaseabout Raid, the highwater mark of Mary’s brief reign.
From the outset Mary’s matrimonial troubles with Darnley are extensively recorded. They quarrelled repeatedly because she withheld the Crown Matrimonial from Darnley, which meant he could never style himself King of Scotland. Darnley, immature, boastful, frequently drunk and cowardly, vented his wrath on his wife by indulging in extra-marital liaisons. When the renegade nobles of the Chaseabout Raid were pardoned and allowed to return to Scotland, the Earl of Moray persuaded Darnley to join a plot to murder Mary’s Italian (Catholic) secretary and favourite, David Rizzio, whom Moray and his associates believed to be either an English spy or an agent of Rome. The assassination took place on the night of 9 March 1566 when a heavily pregnant Mary was enjoying a late night supper with Rizzio and a few friends. The plotters, led by the aged Patrick, Lord Ruthven, James, 4th Earl of Morton, Lord Lindsay and their associates, broke into the Queen’s private chambers and dragged Rizzio into the corridor and messily knifed him to death, leaving Darnley’s own dagger beside the corpse to implicate him. Fearing she would be the next victim, Mary and Darnley rode to her castle at Dunbar to seek sanctuary. There, supportive nobles such as George, 5th Earl of Huntly (whom Mary had pardoned after three years in captivity following the battle of Corrichie), the Earl of Atholl and James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell joined Mary at Dunbar. Gathering an army with Mary at its head, the force of about 4,000 re-entered Edinburgh on 18 March, the renegade nobles having fled to Linlithgow the day before. On 19 June Mary gave birth to a son who would become James VI of Scotland, then James I of England.
Relations between Mary and Darnley did not improve after the baby’s birth. Alienated both from his wife and the renegade lords, Darnley consoled himself with extra-marital liaisons, thereby further distancing himself from the Queen. In desperation, Mary turned to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell a noble who, for the three years prior to 1565 had spent his time either in prison or in exile in France. Mary showered gifts on Bothwell; on 7 June 1566 he was given the inheritance of Dunbar (excepting its castle) as well as other lands and honours, including the appointment of Admiral of Scotland and Warden of the Borders. With his castles of Hailes, near East Linton and Borthwick in Midlothian, Bothwell became over-mighty in a very short space of time.
In January 1567 Bothwell met up with the Earl of Morton and Secretary Maitland of Lethington at Whittingehame, East Lothian,18 ostensibly to form an alliance; however, it is generally believed to have been a meeting to discuss ways of getting rid of Darnley. Darnley’s subsequent murder at Kirk o’Field in Edinburgh on the night of 9 February 1567 inevitably led to accusations against Bothwell as prime suspect. It is widely accepted that Mary played no part in Darnley’s murder; in fact, it is thought that Darnley intended to blow up Kirk o’Field with Mary inside but he reckoned without the counter-plot against him. Kirk o’Field was indeed destroyed by gunpowder thought to have been placed there by Darnley who was found dead in his nightshirt in the garden, with strangulation marks on his neck;19 beside his body were a chair and a rope. However, it became clear that Darnley had been strangled by hand. It was a tragic and ironic coincidence – i
f that is what it was – that two separate plots conjoined on that fateful night. The identities of Darnley’s murderers remain a mystery today, not helped by the crude bias of the state archives which point the finger of suspicion at Bothwell.
The Scottish crown now lay tantalizingly within Bothwell’s reach; he was close to the Queen and her dissolute husband was now out of the way. Matters came quickly to a head. Accusations were made against both Mary and Bothwell regarding Darnley’s murder; Bothwell swore that he was innocent of the crime but, for good measure, forced several leading Protestant and Catholic nobles to sign a document attesting to his innocence and indicating their willingness to accept Bothwell’s declared intention to marry the Queen should she accept him. On 24 April he intercepted Mary on her way from Stirling after a visit to her infant son James and led her – some historians believe Bothwell actually kidnapped the Queen – to Dunbar Castle. There he reputedly and repeatedly raped her, then forced her to sign two marriage contracts, one written in Scots, one in French. On 7 May Bothwell’s divorce from Lady Jean Gordon, sister of George, 5th Earl of Huntly was conveniently settled; then, on 15 May, Bothwell and Mary were married. (At that time, and possibly still today, May was considered an unlucky month for marriage.)20
The consequences of the marriage were immediate. It was one matter to offer support for Bothwell but quite another to suffer his overweening authority; several nobles, including those who had signed Bothwell’s bond in April promising support, formed a coalition. Calling themselves the Confederate Lords, they attempted to arrest Bothwell at Borthwick Castle. He eluded capture, managed to reach Haddington, then Dunbar, where Mary joined him; in her haste to escape from Borthwick Castle, Mary could find only male clothing to wear.21 The citizens of Edinburgh were now convinced that Bothwell and Mary had been instrumental in Darnley’s murder and many responded to the Confederate Lords’ call to arms against the queen.