by Alison Weir
At the monastery gate, the three men found the other conspirators waiting; Ormiston was wearing a belted nightgown, which was totally unsuitable for the cold night. With them were two cloaked men wearing mules on their feet, whom Powrie, Dalgleish and Wilson did not recognise, and who have never been satisfactorily identified. Both Hepburn and Powrie claimed that Bothwell had left the Old Provost’s Lodging and come down to the gate to make sure that the men were speedy at their task. Hepburn says he told them sharply, “Hurry up and finish the job before the Queen comes out of the house, or you will not find it so convenient.” It is unlikely he stayed long, for his presence would have been missed.
As it was dark, Hepburn sent Powrie to get candles, which he purchased from a woman in the Cowgate. By the light of one candle, Powrie, Dalgleish and Wilson opened the trunks and carried the polks of gunpowder on their backs through the gate and uphill to the wall surrounding the east garden of the Kirk o’Field quadrangle. At this point, they were forbidden to go further, and Hepburn, Hay and Ormiston carried on with the task of heaving the bags over the wall.
Powrie claimed that this was when he and Wilson made the second journey to Holyrood to collect the powder and the barrel. On the way back to Kirk o’Field, Powrie grumbled, “Jesus! What kind of road is this we are going? I think it is no good.” Wilson, well aware of the danger they were in, muttered, “Wheesht! Hold your tongue!” Hob Ormiston was waiting for them at the Blackfriars gate, and he was equally pessimistic. “This is not good,” he said. “I do not believe this affair will come about tonight. I will go in and see what they are doing.” Then Black Ormiston appeared with Paris, and sent Powrie and Wilson with the empty trunks back to Holyrood. When the latter reached the Blackfriars gate, they found their horses gone, and had to shoulder the trunks and walk.
Soon, the conspirators had carried the barrel and the polks of gunpowder to the back door of the Old Provost’s Lodging, which Paris is said to have unlocked. He cannot have done so, however, because it had no lock and was bolted on the inside. The only other doors to the house were the front door, and the door from the cellar kitchen to the alley, to which Bonkil held the key; Paris apparently had a counterfeit.
The Ormistons are said to have gone in first, but the barrel was too large to go through the door and was left in the garden, by the wall. The powder bags were then carried into the house. Paris says he went to the kitchen and asked Bonkil for a candle. Both the back door and the side door opened into the kitchen, and Bonkil, who was not in the plot, must have concluded that something suspicious was going on, if he was in fact still on duty, which is doubtful. It seems strange, too, that Paris should be asking for a candle when Powrie had just bought six.
Paris lit his candle, and by its light, the gunpowder is said to have been emptied into a pile on the floor of the Queen’s chamber, directly under the spot where the King’s bed stood in the room above. Once this was done, the Ormistons went home, having ascertained that the rest knew how to light the fuse, and Hay and Hepburn remained in the room with the powder. Hay, Hepburn and Buchanan state that this all took place while the Queen and her courtiers were entertaining the King in the room above, but it is more likely that they were in the Prebendaries’ Chamber across the passage. However, Bothwell apparently heard muffled sounds, and hastened downstairs.
“My God! What a noise you are making!” he growled. “Everything you do can be heard upstairs.”
Apart from attracting attention, there were obvious risks in what the conspirators were supposed to have been doing. At any time, someone—even the Queen herself—could have come into the room to see what was causing the noise, or to fetch something, and found them there with the pile of powder. It is not inconceivable that cloaks were being stored in the Queen’s room that evening. Furthermore, the Queen and her Lords would have had with them a number of attendants, who would have been coming and going all evening. Someone surely would have noticed that something odd was going on. Most pertinent of all, had there been so much gunpowder in a heap on the floor, the dust from it would have permeated every part of the room, so that the lighting of even a single candle would assuredly have caused it to ignite.
After Bothwell had gone back to the gathering, Paris is supposed to have made sure that the back door and the door to the stairs were left unlocked. He then locked the door to the Queen’s room, left the keys to the downstairs doors with Hepburn, and went upstairs, or into the quadrangle,16where he signalled to Bothwell that all was ready. It was then that Mary noticed how begrimed he was.17Argyll patted Paris on the back, from which Paris inferred that he too was in the conspiracy; at the time his deposition was made, Argyll had just been forced to submit to the Lords after supporting Mary, so it is not surprising that Paris was allowed to imply his guilt.
The Queen then left Kirk o’Field with Bothwell and her other courtiers. As Powrie and Wilson emerged from Blackfriars Wynd into the Canongate with the empty trunks, they saw the torches lighting the royal entourage ahead of them.
After his midnight interview with Mary, Bothwell, with the help of Dalgleish, his tailor, changed out of his masquing costume into a canvas doublet, black hose and a thick German soldier’s cloak, then, armed with a sword and taking with him Powrie, Dalgleish, Wilson and a very reluctant Paris among others—Lennox says his party numbered sixteen, while the eyewitness, Mrs. Merton, counted eleven—he walked to Kirk o’Field, to supervise the killing of the King.18
As he and his men emerged from Holyrood, they were challenged by the palace guards, and said they were “my Lord Bothwell’s friends.” Finding the Netherbow Port closed for the night, Wilson woke up the porter, John Galloway, and made him open it “to friends of Lord Bothwell’s.” When the porter asked why they were all abroad at so late an hour, he received no answer. Bothwell then led his men up the High Street and down Blackfriars Wynd, where they knocked at Ormiston’s lodgings, only to find he was not at home; Ormiston later claimed that he had gone to the house of his friend, Thomas Henderson. Bothwell and his followers were almost certainly the men whom Mrs. Merton later saw coming up Blackfriars Wynd a short while before the explosion. Lennox claims that they approached Kirk o’Field by “the secret way” that Mary had used, which gave access from the monastery grounds. Once they arrived, Bothwell and Paris climbed over the town wall, the Earl having told the others to wait in the east garden and not stir, regardless of what they heard or saw. Dalgleish was apparently in ignorance of what was to happen, for he later swore before his execution that, “As God shall be my judge, I knew nothing of the King’s death before it was done.”
One of those who allegedly accompanied Bothwell was a Captain James Cullen, who had served as a mercenary in France, Denmark and Poland. In 1560, he had been an officer of the garrison in Edinburgh Castle, and in February 1567, he was the captain of a band of royal hagbuteers and was described by Cecil as a creature of Bothwell’s,19but he is more likely to have been answerable to John Stewart of Traquair, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. Moray later referred to Cullen as “one of the very executors” of Darnley’s murder, but the part he actually did play in it is uncertain. Captain Cullen is said to have advised Bothwell, before he scaled the wall, “for more surety, to have the King strangled, and not to trust to the train of powder alone, as he had known so many saved.” Given what probably happened to Darnley, this tale may have been contrived so as to pin all the responsibility on Bothwell.
In the Detectio and the Book of Articles, Buchanan claims that only one group of conspirators—Bothwell’s—was at Kirk o’Field that night. In his History, however, which was written after certain nobles had fallen from favour, he alleges that there were three groups. In fact, there were probably two.
There is little doubt that Bothwell and his henchmen were not the only band of conspirators to converge on Kirk o’Field that night. At some point, armed men of the Douglas faction arrived by stealth on the scene and stationed themselves near the Old Provost’s Lodging. Their purpose has been
variously debated, one theory being that they were there, on behalf of Morton and the other Protestant Lords, to do away with Bothwell once he had laid the fuse, making it look as if he had perished in the explosion. That way the crime could neatly be attributed to him, and no one else would be implicated. Bothwell was hated by the Lords, but he was useful in his willingness to eliminate Darnley, their common enemy, and he could also be useful as a scapegoat for them all. For that reason, it would be better if he too were eliminated. But this hypothesis is not workable.
Another, more credible, theory is that Archibald Douglas, who had a deadly personal score to settle with Darnley for betraying his kinsman, Morton, was there to ensure that, if by some chance the King escaped the blast, he would not evade death. Thomas Wilson stated that there was “an ambushment before the door, that none should escape” and that the postern in the wall was left open so that the killers could make a quick getaway. Although Morton was not in Edinburgh that night, and had refused to become involved, he may privately have sanctioned this intervention. According to Morton’s confession of 1581, Bothwell knew the Douglases were there, for Archibald Douglas had told Morton he was “at the deed doing, and came to the Kirk o’Field yard with the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly.” There is no other evidence that Huntly was present that night, but as he was closely associated with Bothwell, it is possible that he was. He had, after all, been one of those taken into the Lords’ confidence at Craigmillar. Although one of Bothwell’s followers insisted he saw no one beside the Earl’s men at Kirk o’Field, “nor knew of no other companies,” his evidence was perhaps concocted to protect Morton and his faction.
That Archibald Douglas was at Kirk o’Field that night seems likely. His servant, John Binning, testified under torture in 1581 that Douglas was “art and part” of the murder and “did actually devise and perpetrate it,” which is substantiated by Douglas’s conduct at Whittinghame. Binning claimed that he and another man accompanied his master when he left Douglas House in St. Mary’s Wynd—which ran parallel with Blackfriars Wynd, but lay just outside the Netherbow Port—by the back door and made his way to Kirk o’Field. It was later said that Douglas had left his velvet mule at the scene of the crime, which Douglas denied, but the allegation may be true, for Binning stated that his master was wearing armour beneath his clothes, a steel helmet, and slippers over his boots, as were all his men, as an aid to stealth. Douglas and another man—Binning?—were perhaps the two cloaked men wearing mules whom Powrie had seen earlier at the Blackfriars gate; if so, they were certainly in league with Bothwell.
Hepburn, Hay and Dalgleish all claimed that there were “nine and no more at the deed”—themselves, Bothwell, the Ormistons, Paris, Powrie and Wilson—which became the official line, since it pointed to Bothwell alone as the culprit. Yet there is evidence in diverse sources that there were more than nine men at Kirk o’Field that night. The female witnesses in Blackfriars Wynd saw eleven men before the explosion and thirteen after it. Lennox states that fifty persons surrounded the house that night, of whom only sixteen were in Bothwell’s party, although he does not say who the others were. Cecil says there were thirty persons,20and Moray later told de Silva he thought thirty to forty persons were involved in the crime.21There were certainly more than nine, for this estimate does not take account of Captain Cullen, Huntly (perhaps) and the Douglases. And who were the two cloaked men in mules whom Powrie noticed? It has been variously suggested that they were Huntly and Argyll, Balfour and his brother (of whom more later) or Douglas and Binning.
Further evidence of the Douglases’ presence at Kirk o’Field lies perhaps in the testimony of the women living nearby who heard a man crying out to his kinsmen to pity him. However, it is unlikely that it was the Douglases whom Mrs. Merton saw coming up Blackfriars Wynd because they would have had no reason to go along that street.
Moretta later informed Giovanni Correr, the Venetian ambassador in Paris, that “certain women who live in the neighbourhood declare, and from a window perceived, many armed men were round the house.”22It was later claimed that the Lords had men waiting to ambush Darnley in the cottages that lay in the south garden, adjoining the Flodden Wall. Since the bodies of Darnley and Taylor were found in that garden, it is reasonable to suppose that Douglas positioned some of his men in these cottages. As late as 20 June, Drury informed Cecil that the delay in arraigning those already arrested for Darnley’s murder was “for that the three hosts [householders] out either of the which houses there came out eight persons that were all at the murdering of the King, cannot yet be gotten.”23Nor does it seem that they were ever arrested.
In the English spy’s drawing, there appear four mounted men in an alleyway to the south of the south garden. Some writers have thought that their presence is significant. But they are unlikely to have been Douglas men, for they would have gone to ground long before morning, nor is it feasible that these horsemen had anything to do with the murder. They are probably citizens, come from further afield to view the scene of the crime, or they may even represent Bothwell and/or his men coming to investigate the explosion.
According to Lennox, “some said” that Mary herself “was present at the murder of the King, in man’s apparel, which apparel she loved sometimes to be in.” That Mary enjoyed disguising herself in male attire cannot be disputed, but there is no evidence to substantiate the rumour that she was at Kirk o’Field when Darnley was murdered. Lennox’s rumour is at variance with the other libels, which allege that the Queen was in bed when the explosion took place.
According to the depositions, once Paris had unlocked the door to the Queen’s chamber, Hay and Hepburn lit the slow-burning fuse,24locked the doors through which Darnley might try to escape, and rejoined Bothwell and the others in the east garden, by the Flodden Wall, where they waited for the explosion. After a while, when nothing had happened, Bothwell asked if there was any window through which he could see if the fuse had gone out, for he was determined to check that it had been properly lit. Hepburn, aghast, told him that he would only be able to see that through the Queen’s window facing the quadrangle. To his horror, Bothwell began pulling him towards the house, but Hepburn pushed him back, just in time, for at that moment, there was a flash of flame in one of the windows, and in the next instant a great “crack,” and they all saw “the house rising” before their eyes.25The conspirators scrambled over the wall to where Dalgleish and Powrie were waiting, and ran from the scene, through the precincts of the old Blackfriars monastery and into the Cowgate.
The main problem with this evidence is that, if the door to the Queen’s chamber was shut and the other downstairs doors locked, the only window through which the flame could have been seen was that in the Queen’s chamber, which looked out on to the quadrangle. There is no way that the conspirators could have seen this from the east garden. Moreover, would Bothwell have been so stupid as to risk going back to the house when it could blow up at any moment?
More pertinently, if gunpowder with weak and unpredictable properties was left in a heap, it might have quickly burnt itself out, or, if it did explode, it would never have destroyed the whole building down to the foundations. The damage would have been limited mainly to the room it was in and the floor above it. Therefore the Old Provost’s Lodging could not have been blown up by this means.
Bothwell and his men aimed to scale the Flodden Wall at Leith Wynd, a good way to the north, but it was too high, so they made their way back to the Netherbow Port, brazenly woke the porter and demanded admission, then split up into two groups: Bothwell and Paris went down the Canongate, while the rest returned via St. Mary’s Wynd and the Cowgate to the palace. They cannot therefore have been the men whom Mrs. Merton and Mrs. Stirling saw running up Blackfriars Wynd and splitting into two groups; these were probably members of the Douglas party. Why Bothwell and his men chose to go so far out of their way to Leith Wynd is a mystery; they could have got over the wall near the Blackfriars gardens, for a good stretch of it was ruinous ther
e, as the city records testify.
When challenged, Bothwell and his followers gave the Earl’s name, not only to John Galloway, but also to the sentries at Holyrood, who also asked them, “What was that crack?,” to which they replied, “We know not.” In the circumstances, their indiscretion seems staggering, but neither the porter nor the sentries were ever brought forward as witnesses against them. At Holyrood, Bothwell “called for a draught,” undressed and went to bed, feigning innocence when he was disturbed half an hour later by George Halket with news of the explosion.26Since there was widespread panic in the palace at the time of his return, it is hard to believe that he reached his lodgings without meeting anyone. It is also hard to accept that he walked all the way from Kirk o’Field to Leith Wynd, then back to the Netherbow Port and by the back route to the palace, then prepared for bed, in the time before he was disturbed, and without anybody knowing anything of his movements; most of the city had been aroused by the explosion.