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

by Alison Weir

  Many years later, Mary informed the Pope, “We were constrained to yield our consent, yet against our will.”37Leslie states that she took into account her constant fear of imminent danger, and called to mind “the sundry and divers uproars and seditions already made against her, the wretched and most cruel murder of her secretary, the late strange and miserable murder of her husband, the discomfort and desolation wherein she was presently be-wrapped, the Earl’s activity in martial feats, and the good and faithful service done by him to her mother and to herself.” She also feared “some new and fresh stir and calamity if she should refuse her nobility’s request.” But “though very circumspect and naturally prudent in all her doings,” she was “nevertheless a woman, and never to that hour once admonished, either openly or privately after the Earl’s acquittal, that he was guilty of the said fact, nor suspecting any thing thereof, yielded to that, to the which these crafty, colluding, suspicious [Lords], and the necessity of the time, as then to her seemed, did in a manner enforce her.” She had many good, even compelling, reasons for consenting to marry Bothwell, but the fact remained that most people still believed he had murdered Darnley; by marrying him, Mary would lend credence to the widespread rumours that she had been his willing accomplice, and the consequences would be devastating for her.

  Mary had agreed to marry Bothwell as soon as he was free. It is possible, but unproven, that she signed a marriage contract at Dunbar, and it has been suggested that it was possibly one of the two contracts amongst the Casket Letters, but they are probably forgeries.

  Buchanan was voicing a belief that had been prevalent at the time when he later asserted that “for coverture of their filthy ways,” Bothwell and the Queen “devised a counterfeited ravishing of her person.” Even before the abduction, Grange had hinted that it would take place with Mary’s consent, and two days afterwards he wrote again to Bedford to say that the Queen “was minded to cause Bothwell to ravish her, to the end that she may sooner end the marriage, which she has promised before she caused murder her husband.”38At Dunbar, Melville’s captor, Captain William Blackadder, told him that the kidnapping “was with the Queen’s own consent.”39On the 27th, Drury reported that “the manner of Bothwell’s meeting with the Queen, although it appeared to be forcibly, is yet known to be otherwise.”40De Silva heard that “all had been arranged beforehand, that the Queen, when the marriage was completed, might pretend that she had been forced to consent.”41

  Mary’s enemies believed that she was looking for a way to avoid the public opprobrium that would be sure to follow upon her marriage to Bothwell, and if it could be made to appear that she had been forced into consenting to the union, she might just get away with it. “It seemed to them a marvellous fine invention that Bothwell should ravish and take away the Queen by force and so save her honour,” wrote Buchanan. Modern historians often point out that she offered little resistance to Bothwell when he ambushed her, and refused her attendants’ offer of help.

  Yet there was no reason for staging the abduction as a sop to public opinion, for the Lords and the Bishops had already given their written and verbal approval of the marriage, thereby implying their support against any critics of it. It was Mary’s consent that Bothwell needed, and he was prepared to take drastic measures to get it. Moreover, Melville, who was present at Dunbar and knew what was going on, states that Bothwell had lain with Mary “against her will,” and his brother Robert, in a letter written to Cecil on 7 May, was in no doubt that the abduction was contrary to her wishes.42As for her lack of resistance, how could her small entourage of thirty-three persons have hoped to prevail against Bothwell’s 800 armed men? Had Mary permitted them to try, a bloodbath would almost certainly have ensued; instead, she courageously went quietly with her captors. And if the abduction had been staged, why would she send to the Provost of Dunbar for help? The theory of the collusive seizure falls down on the evidence of an Act of Parliament passed against Mary by her enemies on 20 December 1567, in which they refer to her abduction by Bothwell and state: “She suspected no evil from any of her subjects, and least of all from him.”43

  Buchanan says that whether the abduction was with Mary’s consent or not “every man may easily perceive by her own letters that she wrote to [Bothwell] by the way as she was in her journey.” The letters to which he is referring are Casket Letters VI, VII and VIII, which, along with a love poem from the Casket Documents, are supposed to have been written on 21, 22 or 23 April, during Mary’s visit to Stirling.

  Casket Letter VI is endorsed by Cecil’s clerk, “From Stirling before the ravishment—proves her mask of ravishing.” It reads:

  Alas, my Lord, why is your trust put in a person so unworthy to mistrust that which is wholly yours? I am wood. You had promised me that you would resolve all, and that you would send me word every day what I should do. You have done nothing thereof. I advertise you well to take heed of your false brother-in-law. He came to me, and without showing me anything from you, told me that you had willed him to write to you that I should say, and where and when you should come to me, and that you should do touching him; and thereupon hath preached unto me that it was a foolish enterprise, and that with mine honour, I could never marry you, seeing that, being married, you did carry me away. And that his folk would not suffer it. And that the Lords would unsay themselves and would deny that they had said. To be short, he is all contrary. I told him that, seeing I was come so far, if you did not withdraw yourself of your self, that no persuasion nor death itself should make me fail of my promise. As touching the place, you are too negligent (pardon me) to remit yourself thereof to me. Choose it yourself and send me word of it. And in the meantime, I am sick. I will differ as touching the matter it is too late. It was not long of me that you have not thought thereupon in time. And if you had not more changed your mind since mine absence than I have, you should not be now to ask such resolving. Well, there wanteth nothing of my part. And seeing that your negligence doth put us both in the danger of a false brother, if it succeed not well, I will never rise again. I send this bearer unto you, for I dare not trust your brother with these letters, nor with the diligence. He shall tell you in what state I am, and judge you what amendment these new ceremonies have brought unto me. I would I were dead, for I see all goeth ill. You promised other manner of matter of your foreseeing, but absence hath power over you, who have two strings to your bow. Dispatch the answer that I fail you not. And put no trust in your brother for this enterprise. For he hath told it, and is all against it. God give you good night.

  If this letter was written by Mary to Bothwell, the false brother-in-law to whom she refers can only be Huntly, whom Bothwell is using as a go-between, much to her annoyance, for she does not think that Huntly is to be trusted. She is also angry that her irresolute and apparently incompetent suitor has not been in touch with her on a daily basis, as he promised, to plan the abduction. She fears it will all go wrong, and wishes she was dead.

  Huntly, however, had refused to have anything to do with the abduction plot, and had been taken captive along with Maitland and Melville. In the letter, Huntly had told Mary that his family would never suffer her to marry Bothwell, but in fact Huntly had already given his consent to his sister filing for divorce. If Mary had been a party to Bothwell’s plans, they would surely have been finalised before her departure on 21 April, when she knew that Bothwell was intending to raise a force. There was therefore no need for him to write to her on a daily basis, as she was only going to be away for three days. Even Buchanan contradicts the “evidence” in this letter, stating that, before she left Edinburgh, Mary had fully arranged with Bothwell the plan and place of the seizure. The inescapable conclusion must be that Casket Letter VI is a forgery.

  Casket Letter VII is also written on the premise that Huntly was assisting the abduction plot:

  Of the place and the time, I remit myself to your brother and to you. I will follow him and will fail in nothing of my part. He finds many difficulties. I think h
e does advertise you thereof and what he desires for the handling of himself. As for the handling of myself, I heard it once well devised. Methinks that your services, and the long amity, having the good will of the Lords, do well deserve a pardon, if above the duty of a subject you advance yourself, not to constrain me, but to assure yourself of such place near to me, that other admonitions or foreign persuasions may not let [prevent] me from consenting to that that ye hope your service shall make you a day to attend. And to be short, to make yourself sure of the Lords and free to marry, and that you are constrained for your surety, and to be able to serve me faithfully, to use a humble request joined to an importune action. And to be short, excuse yourself, and persuade them the most you can, that you are constrained to make pursuit against your enemies. You shall say enough, if the matter or ground do like you, and many fair words to Lethington. If you like not the deed, send me word, and leave not the blame of all unto me.

  The “importune action” is almost certainly the abduction. From the wording of the beginning of this letter, it would appear that a reply to Casket Letter VI had been received, which would have arrived late on 22 April at the earliest; therefore, if Mary wrote this letter on that day, expecting a reply confirming that Bothwell did indeed intend to proceed with his plans, she was cutting it fine if she expected to hear from him before the 24th. There is no record of Huntly racing back and forth from Linlithgow or Stirling to Edinburgh and Calder with these letters. Moreover, if Mary and Bothwell were in collusion, they could have finalised their plans with Huntly when Bothwell visited Linlithgow. There was no need for this correspondence. Nor is it clear what difficulties Huntly himself had to face. All he had to do was go quietly with the Queen to Dunbar. It was also rather late in the day to advise Bothwell to make sure of the Lords, since he already had their signatures on the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond. Armstrong-Davison thought that Casket Letter VII was a genuine letter from Mary to George Douglas, the man who helped her escape from Lochleven in 1568, which the Lords adapted to suit the abduction plot; if so, then it was added to the Casket Documents a year after their discovery. Otherwise, it must be a forgery.

  Mary’s enemies claimed that Casket Letter VIII was the third of the series that Mary allegedly sent to Bothwell from Stirling, but it almost certainly relates to a different matter and belongs to a later date, because it refers to Huntly as “your brother-in-law that was,” which lends itself to the presumption that the letter must have been sent after Bothwell’s divorce.

  The 158-line love poem in French from the Casket Documents, often erroneously described as a collection of twelve sonnets, was also alleged by some to have been written by Mary for Bothwell while she was at Stirling. Robin Bell, who edited Mary’s collected verse,44believes that this poem is consistent with her authenticated style, and that any forger would have attempted to copy her youthful, better known poems, rather than guess how she would write in her maturity. He suggests, however, that the “sonnets” may have been tampered with in order to incriminate Mary: Buchanan claimed that they were composed “(as it is said) while her husband lived, but certainly before [Bothwell’s] divorce from his wife.” He also says they were written with tolerable elegance, but Brantôme and Ronsard declared that they were in such bad French, and in such an unpolished, fragmented style, that it was ludicrous to attribute them to Mary. It has been suggested that Buchanan himself wrote—or altered—them, since he was one of the few people in Scotland who knew how to compose courtly French verse; furthermore, he knew Mary’s style.

  During the first night at Dunbar, according to Drury, Huntly quarrelled with Maitland and tried to kill him. Maitland’s life was saved only by the intervention of the Queen, who thrust her body in the way of the Earl’s drawn sword and warned Huntly that, “if a hair of Lethington’s head did perish, she would cause him to forfeit lands and goods and lose his life.”45Melville also relates this incident, but states that it was Bothwell who attacked Maitland, giving no reason for this apart from the fact that Bothwell was not Maitland’s friend. Maitland himself later told Cecil that he had gone in fear of his life since Bothwell, in a fit of ungovernable rage, had tried to kill him, and would have succeeded if the Queen had not hastened to his assistance.

  After the attack, Bothwell placed Maitland under guard and kept him a prisoner.46The next day, Huntly and Melville were allowed to leave Dunbar. Before Melville left, he told Mary “that those who had advised her [to marry Bothwell] were betrayers of her honour for their own selfish ends, seeing her marrying a man commonly adjudged her husband’s murderer would leave a tash [slur] upon her name and give too much ground for jealousy.”47Mary did not heed his warning.

  On 25 April, Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council, unaware of the dramatic events of the previous day, discussed the situation in Scotland. Elizabeth decided to send Lord Grey de Wilton to Edinburgh to express her displeasure at three things: Mary’s failure to bring to justice Darnley’s murderers, the favour shown by her to “such as have been by common fame most touched with the crime,” and “the contempt or neglect in the burial of the King’s body.” “So monstrous an outrage” as the Queen’s marriage to Bothwell “must be prevented”; but after issuing Grey with his instructions, Elizabeth changed her mind and immediately countermanded them. Instead, she sent another warning to Mary via Bedford, and asked the latter to make inquiries as to the possibility of Prince James being brought up in England.48Nau believed—as, most probably, did Mary—that Elizabeth’s change of heart had been dictated by the realisation that, if Mary could be persuaded to marry Bothwell, “they might charge her with being in the plot against her late husband.”

  The next day, Grange wrote again to Bedford, claiming that Mary had caused Bothwell to abduct her so that she could marry him.

  The Queen will never cease until she has wrecked all the honest men of this realm. Many would revenge it, but they fear your mistress. I am so suited for to enterprise the revenge that I must either take it in hand or leave the country, which I am determined to do, if I get licence; but Bothwell minds to cut me off ere I obtain it. I pray you let me know what your mistress will do, for if we seek France, we may find favour; but I would rather persuade to lean to England. No honest man is safe in Scotland under the rule of a murderer and a murderess.49

  On the 26th, Cecil was informed, by one of his agents in Paris, that Archbishop Beaton was openly saying “that the Lord James [Moray] was the author of the King’s death, and Lord Lennox is deluded and mocked by him.”50

  Lady Bothwell’s suit for divorce came before the Protestant Commissary Court of Edinburgh on 26 April.51She “accused her husband, before the Queen’s judge, of adultery, which was the only case of divorce recognised by them,”52and “therefore requires to be no longer reputed flesh of his flesh.”

  To the Queen, a Catholic, this Protestant divorce was unacceptable, and on the following day, at the instance of Bothwell, Mary granted Archbishop Hamilton a commission to try the validity of Bothwell’s marriage, on the grounds that he and Jean were within the forbidden degrees of kinship and had not been granted a dispensation.53This was blatant collusion, for they had indeed received a dispensation, and it had been granted by no other than the Archbishop himself.54Furthermore, Hamilton’s consistorial powers had been revoked, after protests by the Kirk, in January, and never restored. Technically, therefore, as Buchanan points out, he had no authority to pronounce on matrimonial causes. Strictly speaking, the Queen should have applied directly to the Pope for an annulment, but that would have taken months, and there was no guarantee that he would grant her request, especially if he suspected that she meant to marry Bothwell, a notorious Protestant.

  When news of these dubious and collusive proceedings leaked out, many of Mary’s loyal subjects turned against her. It was impossible for her to explain that what almost certainly drove her to these desperate measures was the fear of pregnancy and the consequent scandal, which in the present climate might well cost her her throne. She was also a priso
ner, and had no choice but to do her captor’s bidding.

  Mary was still being held at Dunbar, yet so far none of her subjects, Lords or commoners, had attempted to rescue her, which is an indication of how many people believed that she had connived at her own abduction. She herself wrote that she looked in vain for some of her subjects to come to her relief.55Only the “highly offended” lieges of Aberdeen offered to help her escape, sending a message on 27 April, desiring to know what they should do “towards the reparation of the matter.”56Whether Mary received this, or sent an answer, is not known. On 3 May, Robert Melville informed Cecil that Mary had sent asking Elizabeth for help, but had not obtained it.57

  Drury reported on 30 April that Bothwell had cast off his mourning garments and was now sporting his finest clothes; he had also been seen out walking with Mary at Dunbar, with an escort of arquebusiers, and showing “tokens of mirth”; Mary’s response is not recorded.58A few days later, Drury reported that she and Bothwell were amusing themselves with archery practice and equestrian exercises, and that the arquebusiers were no longer so much in evidence. The Queen was attended by Bothwell’s sister, Janet Hepburn, and by his former mistress, Janet Beaton, and her sister Margaret, Lady Reres, to whom she gave gifts.59

  On 28 April, Archbishop Hamilton appointed a commission of two bishops and six clerics to inquire into the validity of Bothwell’s marriage. The next day, the Countess of Bothwell’s divorce suit came before the Commissary Court; as the case was defended, witnesses on her behalf were examined over the following two days; among them were George Dalgleish and Patrick Wilson. Neither of the parties appeared in person, but were represented by lawyers. On 1 May, the court found that Lady Bothwell had established her husband’s adultery, and adjourned the case until 3 May.60