by Alison Weir
Around this time, according to Powrie, his friend William Geddes, of whom nothing more is known, made a deposition, but it was afterwards destroyed and he was set free.53Mary’s servants, Sebastien Pagez and Francisco de Busso, were imprisoned in the Tolbooth, but they too were quickly released, as was “Black” John Spens, after he had delivered Bothwell’s treasure chest to the Lords. It may be inferred from this that not all these interrogations had to do with Darnley’s murder. Possibly through Balfour’s good offices, Captain Cullen was also freed, without having made any deposition, which is very strange, considering he had earlier “uttered the whole manner of the murder,” and had probably been present at Kirk o’Field. Presumably what he had uttered was in reality of little importance, although it had suited the Lords to declare otherwise.
In Paris, Sir Anthony Standen heard of the fate of the Queen and Bothwell, and of the subsequent arrests, and decided it was safer to spend his life in exile. In the event, “this banishment endured thirty years or more.” The younger Standen remained in Scotland, but was imprisoned for a year in Berwick for remaining loyal to the Queen.54Black Ormiston and his uncle went into hiding in the Borders; the fate of Robert Ormiston is unknown, but his nephew survived to play a role in the Northern Rising of 1569–70 against Queen Elizabeth.
Du Croc left Edinburgh on 29 June, bearing a communication from the Lords to Charles IX and, it has been suggested, copies of the Casket Letters. The Lords wrote to King Charles that, “of further circumstances and of the whole affair, your ambassador can more fully advise Your Majesty, as we have fully informed him of the justice of our cause.” They made no mention of the Casket Letters,55but in July, Throckmorton told Elizabeth that “du Croc carries with him matter little to the Queen’s advantage, and the King may therefore rather satisfy the Lords than pleasure her,”56which has again been interpreted as a reference to the Casket Letters. It is certainly possible that the Lords had furnished du Croc with copies of at least one of the so-called Casket Letters in order to deter the French government from supporting Mary.
On 29 June, Mary’s supporters at Dumbarton, notably Huntly, Argyll, Bishop Leslie, Seton, Fleming and the Hamiltons, signed a bond to liberate her.57 Such a coalition posed a threat to the Lords, so this would have been the optimum moment to produce the Casket Letters in order to inflame public feeling against the Queen. But the Lords did no such thing.
Queen Elizabeth had been outraged and incensed to hear of Mary’s imprisonment. Of the Scottish Lords, she fulminated, “They have no warrant nor authority, by the law of God or man, to be as superiors, judges or vindicators over their prince and sovereign, howsoever they do gather or conceive matter of disorder against her. We are determined that we will take plain part with them to revenge their sovereign, for an example to all posterity. Though she were guilty of all they charge her with, I cannot assist them while their Queen is imprisoned.”58
In her anger, Elizabeth’s first impulse was to declare war, but a horrified Cecil dissuaded her. He and his fellow Councillors were in no way dismayed by what had happened north of the border, and realised that it was to England’s benefit to have in Scotland a Protestant government desperate to build friendly relations with its neighbour. Yet Elizabeth had a different agenda. At the end of June, she decided to send that experienced diplomat, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, to Scotland to bring about Mary’s immediate restoration—by persuasion, treaty or force—and a reconciliation between her and her Lords. Once that had been achieved, Throckmorton was to demand that Darnley’s murderers be hunted down and tried. At the same time, he was to persuade the Scots to agree to Prince James being brought up in England as Elizabeth’s ward. Finally, he was to see Mary and deliver to her an encouraging message from Elizabeth. It was Elizabeth’s hope that, in return for her restoration, Mary would ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh.
Not surprisingly, a gloomy and reluctant Throckmorton told Leicester that this was “the most dangerous legation in my life.” He knew, all too well, that the Scots would not take kindly to English interference in their affairs.
It is often claimed that, by her intervention, Elizabeth probably saved Mary’s life, for, had she given the Lords her support, they might well have executed their Queen. However, as has been noted, they had no legal basis on which they could do so, short of putting her on trial, which carried the risk of her publicly exposing their own guilt. There were, however, other ways of disposing of inconvenient sovereigns, and these Lords had not hesitated when it came to getting rid of Darnley. Throckmorton would soon reach the opinion that they meant to do away with Mary as well. It was the covert assassination of her cousin that Elizabeth almost certainly prevented. Alone of all the monarchs of Europe, the Queen of England, Mary’s dynastic rival, was her champion at this time.
Nonetheless, she was shocked to hear reports that Mary was pregnant, for it was obvious that the child must have been conceived out of wedlock. If the reports were confirmed, she declared pessimistically, “It will be thought all was not well before.”59It is unlikely that Elizabeth had much sympathy with Mary on a personal level. She told Throckmorton she had almost decided “to deal no more with her by way of advice, but look on her as a person desperate to recover her honour.”60Elizabeth was more concerned to protect the institution of monarchy, and in particular female monarchy, which Mary, by her apparently rash behaviour, had undermined.
Before he left London, Throckmorton saw the Lennoxes. “My Lady wept bitterly, my Lord sighed deeply,” he wrote. Lennox was already working in secret for Mary’s abdication, and in July, he returned to Scotland. On 1 July, Throckmorton left London in a pessimistic mood, and travelled north with a heavy heart, only to be overtaken by a royal courier, who urged him to make haste.
Meanwhile, on 30 June, the Confederate Lords had issued a summons in Mary’s name ordering Bothwell and his accomplices to appear in the Tolbooth on 22 August to answer charges in connection with the King’s murder and the abduction of the Queen, or otherwise be “put to the horn,” the Scottish term for outlawed.61
The next day, Melville informed Cecil that Balfour was now “in daily counsel” with the Council of Confederate Lords, along with James MacGill, the former Clerk Register.62Robert Melville had just returned to Scotland, and was sent immediately by the Lords to the Queen at Lochleven, to persuade her to abdicate or divorce Bothwell, but she refused to contemplate either. However, she said she was willing for the Lords to continue pursuing Darnley’s murderers.
On 2 July, the Pope, having learned of the Bothwell marriage, broke off relations with Mary. He did not know, he said, which of the two Queens in Britain was the worse, and announced “that it was not his intention to have any further communications” with the Queen of Scots, “unless in times to come he shall see some better sign of her life and religion than he has witnessed in the past.”63
Five days later, on receipt of Melville’s invitation to return to Scotland to assume the office of Regent, Moray promptly left France for England on the first stage of his journey home,64having already sent ahead his secretary, Nicholas Elphinstone, to remonstrate with the Lords over their harsh treatment of his sister. Elphinstone passed through London on 8 July.65On the 9th, the Lords sent someone, possibly a man called John Wood, with letters from Maitland and Robert Melville for Moray in France.
De Silva made the first direct reference to the Casket Letters on 12 July; in a coded report, he wrote that he had heard from M. de la Forrest, the French ambassador in London, that “the Queen’s adversaries assert positively that they know she had been concerned in the murder of her husband, which was proved by letters under her own hand, copies of which were in his [i.e., the ambassador’s] possession.”66The word “letters,” in its sixteenth-century context, meant any document with letters in it, so de la Forrest could have been referring to one letter only. He had almost certainly obtained these letters from du Croc, who had arrived in London around 4 July. No further reference is made to these copies, but it is probable
that they accounted for the French government’s unwillingness to intercede on Mary’s behalf. It is unlikely that the French would have publicised the immorality and guilt of one who so recently had been their Queen.
By 13 July, Throckmorton had arrived in Edinburgh to find “the most part of Scotland incensed against the Queen.” The next day, he had an interview with Maitland, in which he aired Queen Elizabeth’s indignation with the Lords, declaring that she would not endure to have their sovereign imprisoned, deprived of her estate or put in peril; indeed, Mary’s offences were as nothing compared with the outrage committed upon her person “by those that are by nature and law subject to her.”67
Throckmorton found Maitland wise and reasonable, but it soon became clear that the Lords had no intention of allowing him to see Mary, who, he was told, was being “guarded very straitly because she had refused to lend herself to any plans to seek out the murderers of her husband”—which was patently untrue—“or to abandon Bothwell.” According to Maitland, she “avoweth constantly” that, if she had to choose between her kingdom and her husband, “she would rather live and die with him a simple damsel; she could never consent that he should fare worse or have more harm than herself.” This may also have been a fabrication, but it conformed to the official line that the Lords were taking. “The principal cause of her detention is [that] the Lords, seeing her fervent of affection to him, fear, if put at liberty, she would so maintain him that they should be compelled to be in continual arms against him.”
Maitland divulged that Argyll wanted Mary freed from her marriage so that he could marry her to his brother. He confided to Throckmorton that the Lords had no wish “to touch her in surety or honour, for they speak of her with reverence and affection and affirm that, the conditions aforesaid accomplished, they will restore her to her estate.” However, she was in great peril of her life by reason of the common people, who were saying that their Queen had no more liberty nor privilege to commit murder or adultery than any private person. Thus the Lords dared not show lenity to the Queen because they feared “the rage of the people.” Throckmorton had seen this hostility for himself, and formed the opinion that Mary’s life really was in danger. Maitland, however, warned him against meddling, for “a stranger over-busy may soon be made a sacrifice among the people. It were better for us you would let us alone, than neither do us or yourselves good, as I fear in the end it will prove.”68
That day, or soon afterwards, Nicholas Elphinstone arrived in Scotland, just as John Wood was entering London. As Elphinstone did not return to Moray, he may have had a watching brief in Scotland, and it could have been he, rather than Wood, who communicated details of one of the Casket Letters to Moray.
By 16 July, Bothwell had left Dunbar and sailed north in a further attempt to rally support. He had turned up at Huntly’s castle of Strathbogie in Aberdeenshire,69but Huntly wanted nothing more to do with Bothwell, so the Earl was forced to withdraw to nearby Spynie Palace, the residence of the licentious Bishop of Moray, his great-uncle. On 17 July, having failed to respond to the Council’s summons (when, in fact, he still had until 22 August to appear), Bothwell was declared an outlaw and stripped of all his titles, lands and offices.70From then on, his few supporters began to fall away, and royalist resistance to the Lords crumbled. Huntly withdrew to his northern fief, Seton and Fleming abandoned the Queen, and Jean Gordon left Crichton, telling the Countess of Moray she wanted nothing more to do with Bothwell.
Despite the Lords’ injunctions, Throckmorton had already managed to make contact with Mary. On the 18th, he reported that he had found means to smuggle to her, in Robert Melville’s scabbard, a note letting her know that he had been sent by Queen Elizabeth to help her; in it, he also warned her of “the great rage and fury of the people against her,” and urged her, for her own sake, to give up Bothwell. Mary sent back a message that she was in daily fear of her life and in utter despair. Nevertheless, for all her desperate situation, she declared she would rather die than divorce Bothwell for, “taking herself seven weeks gone with child, she should acknowledge herself to be with child of a bastard and to have forfeited her honour” if she had the marriage dissolved. There were no dramatic protestations of love for Bothwell, such as the Lords had described. Throckmorton sighed, “I would to God that she were in case [a position] to be negotiated with.”71
Throckmorton was in despair, convinced that the Lords would do away with Mary, despite Elizabeth’s threats. By 20 July, he had heard that they intended to demand her abdication. Again, he smuggled a message via Robert Melville, urging her to agree to this to save her own life and her unborn child’s, since an abdication under duress was illegal and could be rescinded and set aside once she was free. The Lords, however, were growing increasingly resentful of Throckmorton’s interference, and on 20 July, Maitland again warned Sir Nicholas not to interfere in Mary’s cause. “This is not the time to do her good,” he said.72
Some time between 20 and 23 July, Mary miscarried of twins and suffered a severe haemorrhage, which left her in a greatly weakened state and bedridden for a time.73Throckmorton was told merely that she had had “two fits of an ague.”74
Historians have long speculated as to the date these twins were conceived. Around 16 July, Mary had said she was seven weeks pregnant, which placed her conception around 28 May, during her month of marriage to Bothwell. Yet less than three weeks later, on 15 June, Bedford had reported, “The Queen is with child.” If his report was accurate, then the conception must have taken place before the marriage. On 21 June, de Silva had claimed, probably incorrectly, that Mary was five months pregnant; he perhaps meant five weeks, although that would have been too early, given the limited medical knowledge of the sixteenth century, for a firm diagnosis of pregnancy. If Mary’s estimate is followed, then she was eight weeks pregnant at the most when she miscarried. However, twin foetuses could not then have been identified at eight weeks: at 9–10 weeks, a foetus is only 1 inch long. If, however, the babies had been conceived at Dunbar, then the pregnancy would have lasted twelve weeks, and they would have been easily identifiable, for a foetus is 3.5 inches long at three months. Therefore, it seems that Mary either miscalculated, which was common in those days, or, for the sake of her reputation, made out that she had conceived during her marriage, when in fact she had done so soon after her abduction. Bedford’s report was therefore accurate, for the pregnancy would have advanced seven weeks by the time he wrote, long enough to be a certainty. Women carrying twins often appear further advanced in pregnancy than those with a single baby, and this probably accounts for the report that Mary had become fat, which Bedford mentioned on 17 July.
De Silva, meanwhile, had spoken with Queen Elizabeth on the subject of the Casket Letters. “I mentioned that I had been told that the Lords had certain letters proving that the Queen had been cognisant of the murder of her husband.” Elizabeth replied that “it was not true, although Lethington had acted badly in the matter,” from which it may perhaps be inferred that she believed that Maitland had made up the letters. If she saw him, she added menacingly, “she would say something that would not be at all to his taste.” It sounds as if Elizabeth knew more than she revealed to de Silva and that her comments were made in the light of intelligence from Scotland that the letters had been fabricated on Maitland’s orders.75
On 21 July, Throckmorton reported that John Knox had returned in triumph to Edinburgh and was continually thundering from the pulpit against Mary and Bothwell, using his vigorous style of invective to demand that the Queen, that whore of Babylon, that scarlet adventuress, be put to death as a murderess. His violent preaching further inflamed the people’s wrath against the Queen, especially when he threatened that God would send a great plague on the whole nation if Mary was spared from punishment. Nothing but the blood of the Queen would satisfy him, wrote Throckmorton.76However, even Knox could not persuade Argyll to rejoin the Confederate Lords, although he tried.
Also on 21 July, the Lords gave Throckm
orton a document dated 11 July—two days before his arrival in Scotland—which they said was their reply to Elizabeth’s demand for better treatment of Mary. In it, they blamed everything on Bothwell, that “notorious tyrant,” and insisted they took “no pleasure to deal with our sovereign after this sort, as we are presently forced to do.” But they had been forced to imprison her because, flat contrary to our expectations, we find her passion so prevail in maintenance of him and his cause that she would not with patience hear anything to his reproach, or suffer his doings to be called in question; but, by the contrary, offered to give over realm and all so she might be suffered to enjoy him, with many threatenings to be revenged on every man who had dealt in the matter. The sharpness of her words were good witnesses of the vehemence of her passion. She would not fail, enduring that passion, so long as any man in Scotland would take up arms at her command for maintenance of the murderer.
The Lords had therefore shut her up to sequestrate her person from having intelligence with him, to the end we might have a breathing time and leisure to go forward in the prosecution of the murder.77
No mention was made of the Casket Letters, which suggests that the Lords knew they were already on shaky ground where Elizabeth was concerned, and interestingly, the letter stated that Bothwell had imprisoned the Queen “by force”: this is at variance with what the Lords were later to allege when they produced Casket Letters VI, VII and VIII, which were all intended to show that Mary had connived at her abduction, and which, if Morton is to be believed, were already in the Lords’ possession at this date. It should also be noted that, although Knox and the people were demanding Mary’s execution for Darnley’s murder, the Lords had hitherto been careful so far not to charge her publicly with it, imputing all the guilt to Bothwell. This may have been because they did not wish to further alienate Queen Elizabeth. But it would not stop them from making threats, as will be seen.