Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley

by Alison Weir

  For centuries Scotland had endured an uneasy relationship with her more powerful neighbour, England. From the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Kings of England had repeatedly asserted their unfounded claim to be feudal overlords of Scotland, which nevertheless had its own independent monarchy. In 1290, following the extinction of the ancient royal line, Edward I of England, who had visions of uniting the two kingdoms under English rule, acted as arbitrator between the thirteen claimants to the Scottish throne, and chose one, John Balliol, who would act as his puppet. Scottish resistance led first by William Wallace and then by Robert the Bruce was fierce, and in 1314 Bruce vanquished the English at the Battle of Bannockburn and was able to establish himself firmly on the throne. In 1320, he published the Declaration of Arbroath, affirming Scotland’s status as an independent sovereign state. Thereafter, his descendants, the House of Stewart—named after Walter the Steward who had married Bruce’s daughter Marjorie; they were the parents of Robert II, the first Stewart king—enjoyed an undisputed succession. In the sixteenth century, however, the dynasty’s future rested upon the successful resolution of the political and religious situation in Scotland.

  As a young Catholic queen in a turbulent land, Mary faced challenges that would have defeated a far more experienced ruler. She did not understand the Scottish people, and to many of them she must have seemed very alien with her frivolous French ways. In an age of religious intolerance, her willingness to compromise seemed suspect, as indeed it was, for Mary was playing a dangerous double game, professing tolerance of the new faith in Scotland in order to ensure her political survival, whilst assuring the Pope that she intended to restore the Catholic faith in her realm. Although personally devout, she did little to champion the Catholic cause in Scotland during her reign. Her private attendance at Mass gave rise to much resentment, and initially there were even riots in protest against it. Lord James managed to calm the people, but the prejudiced Knox would not be appeased, believing that Mary “plainly purposed to wreck the religion within this realm,” and crossed swords with her on several occasions, during which disputes she either spiritedly defended her position or dissolved into tears.

  Although for a long time she refused to confirm officially the Acts of the Reformation Parliament, on several occasions Mary issued proclamations reiterating her undertaking not to tamper with the established religion and made generous grants to the Kirk; she even received some instruction in Calvinist doctrines from George Buchanan, but none of this satisfied her critics, nor did it do anything to allay the fears of the Catholics, who had looked to her to bring about a counter-reformation.

  Yet Mary still had her sights set on a great Catholic marriage. “The marriage of our Queen was in all men’s mouths,” wrote Knox. It was her duty to remarry and provide for the succession, but the question of whom she might marry was a matter of great concern, not only in Scotland, but in England also, for Elizabeth was determined to prevent Mary from allying herself with Spain or France and giving a hostile Catholic power a foothold in mainland Britain; she warned Mary that, if she did so, she, Elizabeth, could not avoid being her enemy. But Mary had dreams of marrying Don Carlos and becoming Queen of Scotland, Spain and—with Spanish help—England. Lord James, however, was determined that she should choose a husband who was acceptable to Elizabeth, preferably one of the Protestant Kings of Sweden or Denmark. Nor were Catherine de’ Medici or Mary’s uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, keen to see Spain aggrandised by a union with Scotland. In desperation, Catherine offered her son, Charles IX, whom Mary rejected as being too young, while the Cardinal urged Mary instead to consider the Archduke Charles of Austria, who had for a long time been fruitlessly negotiating a marriage with Queen Elizabeth. But Mary eventually abandoned all ideas of this match on the grounds that the Archduke was too poor. The Lords then suggested Lord Darnley, but Mary declared “never would she wed with that faction,” and continued to pursue the idea of marrying Don Carlos, despite opposition on all sides.

  Philip II, however, had reservations about the match. He knew Scotland to be unquiet, and had heard a rumour that Mary had murdered her first husband by poison. More to the point, Don Carlos himself was hopelessly unstable to the point of insanity. At only sixteen, he was morally degenerate, sadistic, severely epileptic, and unprepossessing in his person. His growth was stunted, he had a speech impediment, and he dribbled. But he was set to inherit the greatest throne in Europe, and he was fabulously wealthy. Moreover, King Philip had seen to it that his son’s worst defects had remained hidden from public scrutiny. Mary believed him to be a gallant and brave prince who would help her assert her authority in Scotland, champion the Catholic cause and assert her rights in England, and during the next few years, she doggedly persisted in her attempts to bring the reluctant Philip to an agreement.

  Her obduracy on this matter did not make for easy relations with her cousin Elizabeth, who was already suspicious of Mary on account of her refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, which Mary repeatedly declared she would not do unless Elizabeth recognised her as her heir. “The Queen my mistress,” wrote Maitland, “is descended of the blood of England. I fear she would rather be content to hazard all than to forgo her rights.”

  On a personal level, Elizabeth was jealous of Mary because of her youth, her reputed beauty and the fact that she was now a rival in the European marriage market. On the other hand, Elizabeth felt an affinity with Mary as her kinswoman and a fellow female ruler, and was willing enough to offer her friendship if only Mary would renounce her pretensions to the English crown. Elizabeth would not name a successor for fear of being ousted from her throne; although she privately conceded that she knew of no one with a better title to the succession than Mary, she continually refused publicly to name her her heir. Instead, she advised Mary to win the love of the English by showing herself a friendly neighbour. Nevertheless, the interest that Elizabeth showed in Mary’s choice of husband is proof that she realised that Mary had realistic hopes of succeeding in England; she hinted that her recognition of Mary as her heir was dependent on her approval of the man Mary married. Mary’s frustration over Elizabeth’s unending prevarication, and her persistence in demanding what she regarded as her rights, further soured relations between them. Yet Mary did make efforts to establish friendly relations with her cousin, with some success.

  Until now, the two Queens had never met. Several times during the next few years, plans for a meeting would be made, and then scrapped for various political reasons. As it turned out, Mary and Elizabeth would never meet.

  3

  “POWERFUL CONSIDERATIONS”

  ON 6 SEPTEMBER 1561, MARY appointed her Privy Council. Amongst its sixteen members, aside from Lord James and Maitland, were several men who would play a prominent part in her story. Bothwell was one of them. “She was pleased to reward me personally, far more generously and graciously than I deserved,” he wrote later, of his appointment and a gift of land that the Queen had given him in recognition of his loyalty to her mother and herself.1That autumn, the English agent in Edinburgh, Thomas Randolph, observed a certain rapport between Mary and Bothwell, which was perhaps natural in the circumstances.

  The other members of the new Privy Council were the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earls of Huntly, Argyll, Morton, Atholl, Glencairn, Errol, Montrose and Marischal, Lord Erskine, the Lord High Treasurer Robert Richardson, the Clerk Register James MacGill, and the Justice Clerk James Bellenden. Four—Huntly, Errol, Montrose and Atholl—were Catholics; most of the rest were staunch members of the Congregation.

  George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly was Mary’s cousin, his mother having been Margaret Stewart, a bastard daughter of James IV. This powerful and wealthy magnate ruled north-eastern Scotland like an autonomous prince, and was now reappointed Chancellor, an office he had held since 1546. As the leading Catholic noble, Huntly might have led his co-religionists against the Lords of the Congregation, but instead he had briefly defected to the latter and so destroyed al
l hope of a Catholic revival. Not surprisingly, Mary did not trust him.

  Unlike most of his colleagues, John Stewart, 4th Earl of Atholl was an honourable man with high principles, and would remain loyal to Mary until 1567, when her behaviour outraged his sense of propriety. He was no friend to Huntly, but co-operated with both Lord James and Maitland, becoming a friend of the latter. Atholl’s wife, Margaret Fleming, a sister of Mary Fleming, was reputed to be a witch and to have the power to cast spells.

  Archibald Campbell, 5th Earl of Argyll, whose power base lay in the western Highlands, had been educated at the University of St. Andrews and in 1557 was one of the first to join the Lords of the Congregation. An epileptic, he was married to Mary’s only half-sister, Jean Stewart, the natural daughter of James V by Elizabeth Beaton, but the marriage was unhappy because of Argyll’s infidelities. Nor, according to Mary, was Lady Argyll “as circumspect in all things as she would wish her to be.”2The Queen even resorted to asking John Knox to “put them in unity,” but his intervention was ultimately unsuccessful, as the couple were divorced in 1573. Both the Earl and Countess stood high in Mary’s favour, while Argyll’s tolerance of her Catholic observances earned him a rebuke from Knox.

  Another active member of the Congregation was Alexander Cunningham, 4th Earl of Glencairn, a man who was motivated more by religious fervour than by political considerations, and was loudly disapproving of Mary’s private Masses.

  James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, the head of the powerful Douglas clan, was to be implicated heavily in Darnley’s murder. Now aged about fortyfive, he was a cousin of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, with whom he was involved in a long-standing battle for the disputed earldom of Angus. Morton was a staunch Protestant and a pensioner of Queen Elizabeth. Sir James Melville called him “witty in worldly affairs and policy,” but said he had “a crafty head.” He was illiterate, sadistic, unscrupulous and avaricious, and Mary was repelled by his uncouth and sometimes brutal manners, yet he was also an able and energetic politician. Morton’s promiscuity was notorious, but his private life was tragic: his wife was insane for the last twenty-two years of their marriage, and seven of their ten children had died young.

  One of the most aggressive Protestants on the Council was the brutal Patrick, 6th Lord Lindsay of the Byres, who was married to Lord James’s half-sister, Euphemia Douglas. This man, who would one day become one of Mary’s most virulent enemies, was a creature of Knox and “a raging, furious, rude, ignorant man, nothing differing from a beast.”3It was he who had incited the mob to protest against Mary’s Mass.

  It is necessary to examine the tensions and rivalry between certain nobles and to recount the actions of the Earl of Bothwell and his relations with the Queen during the first three years of her reign, in order to lay the basis for an understanding of later events. Despite an outward show of friendship for the Queen’s sake, there was bad blood between Bothwell and Lord James, and mutual hatred between Bothwell and the Hamiltons. Lord James was determined to undermine Mary’s confidence in Bothwell, and at his instance, Mary made the latter Lieutenant of the Borders in order to remove him from court and avoid clashes between him and the volatile Arran. Bothwell later claimed that the preferment shown him by Mary “incensed my enemies so greatly that they employed every falsity and malicious invention to put me out of favour with the Queen.”4

  The unstable Arran was still cherishing vain hopes of marrying the Queen. In November, a casual remark by the Earl gave rise to an alarming rumour that he was intending to abduct her from Holyrood, which caused a momentary panic at court until it was proved baseless.5

  In December, Bothwell resolved to discredit Arran. He had learned that the puritanical Earl was secretly having an affair with the daughter of an Edinburgh merchant, Alison Craig, “a good, handsome wench”6whom Bothwell himself wished to seduce. One night, Bothwell and his friends, Mary’s favourite half-brother Lord John Stewart and her uncle René de Guise, Marquis d’Elbeouf, all masked, arrived at Alison Craig’s house, hoping to surprise the couple in flagrante delicto, but Arran was not there. Not wishing to lose face, they returned the next night, drunk; when they were refused entry, they broke down the doors and ransacked the house, only to find that Arran had already escaped by a back way.7

  On Christmas Eve, 300 armed Hamiltons, affronted by the insult to Arran, converged upon the city seeking Bothwell, who in turn raised 500 supporters, intent upon retaliation. Edinburgh was in an uproar. Meanwhile, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, outraged by Bothwell’s behaviour towards one of its most stalwart supporters, had complained to the Queen. The next day, after Lord James, Argyll and Huntly had managed to disperse the armed factions, Mary reprimanded Bothwell and the other culprits, then sent Bothwell to his castle at Crichton for two weeks in the interests of keeping the peace, and said she trusted that the matter would be forgotten.8When the General Assembly demanded that Bothwell and his friends be tried and punished for “this heinous crime,” Mary refused, and so, wrote Knox, “deluded the just petition of her subjects.”

  Bothwell had certainly not forfeited Mary’s favour. In January, she went to Crichton Castle for the wedding of his sister Janet to Lord John Stewart. Bothwell hosted the lavish celebrations,9while Lord James was also present. On 30 January, Mary secretly created James Earl of Moray; the vast estates that went with the earldom were, however, in the possession of the unsuspecting Earl of Huntly, and it would require a certain diplomacy, if not force, to get them back, hence the secrecy. A week later, Lord James was married by Knox to Agnes Keith, daughter of William, Earl Marischal, in St. Giles’s Kirk, and on the same day Mary publicly conferred on him the earldom of Mar, which he resigned soon afterwards in favour of Lord Erskine.

  In February, at Bothwell’s instigation, and through the mediation of John Knox, Arran and Bothwell were reconciled at Chatelherault’s newly built mansion at Kirk o’Field, south of Edinburgh.10But Arran was becoming increasingly eccentric. In March, he went to the Queen and accused Bothwell and himself of treasonably plotting to kidnap her and carry her off to Dumbarton Castle so that Arran could, as Bothwell allegedly suggested, use “her person at your pleasure until she agree to whatsoever thing you desire”; then they would murder Lord James and Maitland and seize control of the government. According to Bothwell, Lord James had put Arran up to making these accusations11and, as a result of what Bothwell termed “these false suggestions,” was able to order them both “into close arrest in the prison of Edinburgh Castle” without benefit of trial.12Thomas Randolph, however, reported that Bothwell was “found guilty on his own confession in some points.”13

  For some time, anxious doubts had been expressed about Arran’s sanity. Randolph had noticed that he was “drowned in dreams and feedeth himself with fantasies.”14Now, “he began to rave and speak of devils, witches and such like, fearing that all men about came to kill him.”15Clearly, he was no longer responsible for his actions, and it is impossible to tell whether or not his accusations against Bothwell were based on truth or were simply the product of a deranged mind. It should be remembered, however, that five years later Bothwell did in fact abduct the Queen and carry her off to one of his castles, and it may be that in 1562, despite his protestations of innocence, he was indeed plotting a similar thing, with a view to overthrowing Lord James.

  Chatelherault came to Mary, weeping at the disgrace of his son, but although she received him “with all gentleness,”16he was made to surrender Dumbarton Castle. After being declared insane and chained in a dark cell for four years, Arran was released from prison and committed into his mother’s care. Utterly mad, he spent forty-seven years in confinement, dying in 1609.

  As soon as the Earl of Lennox learned of Mary’s return to her kingdom, he sent a messenger to her with a plea for the restitution of his Scottish estates and permission to return to Scotland. In December, Queen Elizabeth got wind of this and other questionable activities from her spies in Yorkshire17 and, alarmed to hear that the Len
noxes were plotting to marry their son Darnley to Mary, placed the whole family under house arrest in London. In February 1562, the English ports were closed in case Darnley tried to escape,18but in April he gave his gaolers the slip; Randolph reported a rumour that he had gone to France.19In consequence of this, Lennox was sent to the Tower and his wife and younger son Charles placed under house arrest at Sheen, Surrey. Lennox was interrogated several times by the Privy Council, and in May Cecil drew up a list of fifteen articles against the Countess, but there was little that could be proved against them. Meanwhile, the Council was trying in vain to establish Lady Lennox’s illegitimacy.

  In June, Lennox made a humble submission to the Queen, but Elizabeth was not inclined to mercy. The following month, his wife appealed to Cecil for his release, as he was “in close prison” and had “a disease which solitariness is most against.”20Lennox perhaps suffered from claustrophobia, or, it has been suggested, from depression or terrors arising from a guilty conscience over his savage treatment of his young hostages in 1544. Cecil ignored the letter.

  In December 1561, disappointed that Mary had not sent any representatives to the Catholic Council of Trent, Pope Pius IV intimated that he thought she would do little for the faith unless pressure was put upon her. That very month, she approved an Act of Parliament for financing the Protestant Kirk out of former Catholic revenues. In June 1562, when a Papal Nuncio, the Jesuit Father Nicholas de Gouda, arrived secretly in Scotland with proposals from the Pope, Mary rejected them all. In Randolph’s opinion, she had no intention of oversetting the reformed religion, and this seemed to be confirmed by the action she took against Huntly, the leading Catholic peer, who might have been her ally in any counter-reformation.