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

by Alison Weir

  As they had been instructed, Mary’s commissioners saw Elizabeth on 7 January, and demanded that, pursuant to their sovereign’s resolve to charge Moray and the Lords with Darnley’s murder, she “desired the writings produced by her rebellious subjects, or at the least the copies thereof, to be delivered unto them, that their mistress might fully answer thereto, as was desired.” Elizabeth said she would give them an answer in two or three days. When she suggested that it would be better all round if the Queen of Scots abdicated, Leslie protested that Mary would prefer death, and that as this was her final resolution, he could not write to her again on the subject, as Elizabeth wished. Even as this meeting was taking place, the English government was drawing up a paper assessing the possibilities of keeping Mary in England, securely held but with all the courtesies due to a queen, without Elizabeth having passed any judgement on her.

  An embittered Mary had ceased to believe in Elizabeth’s assurances and goodwill, and, with little understanding of the true extent of Catholic support for her cause in England, now embarked on the first of many intrigues against her royal cousin. On 8 January, she sent a message to Philip of Spain, via the Spanish ambassador, telling him that, with his help, she herself could be Queen of England in three months, and Mass would once more be celebrated all over the country.11 But Philip was not ready to commit any resources to such a hazardous undertaking; he also feared that, if Mary did win the English crown, she would ally herself with France, Spain’s enemy.

  It is clear that, from January 1569 onwards, Mary was more interested in claiming the English throne than in regaining the Scottish one. After all, the one might be a springboard to the other. To this end, she was to be implicated in a relentless series of plots against Elizabeth, becoming the focus and figurehead of Catholic intrigues that were all centred upon restoring the ancient faith in England. “My last breath shall be that of a queen,” she was to declare.12

  On 9 December, Mary’s commissioners told the English Lords at Hampton Court that their mistress would never abdicate. The next day, Elizabeth formally ended the inquiry with her long-awaited pronouncement, in which she declared that nothing had been sufficiently proved, against either Mary or Moray, and that she “saw no cause to conceive an ill opinion of her good sister of Scotland.” When it came to the point, Elizabeth had after all declined to pass judgement, not wishing to make it appear that a reigning sovereign was subject to the jurisdiction of any tribunal.

  In giving this ruling, Elizabeth had reserved all her options. The evidence offered against Mary had given her a pretext for keeping her in custody, since she dared not set her at liberty; yet, as Mary had not been found guilty of any crime, and the evidence had been kept secret, Elizabeth could choose to restore her to her throne whenever it suited her. Mary was the trump card in her hand, to be played whenever Elizabeth wished to manipulate Scottish affairs to her own advantage. Her verdict made sound political sense, for she had shown herself helpful to both sides, and thereby avoided offending either the Scots or Mary’s Catholic supporters. Furthermore, it ensured the continuance of a friendly Protestant regime in Scotland, and bound England and Scotland together in long-term amity for the first time in history. It had also left Mary tainted by suspicion, with her innocence in question.

  On the day Elizabeth gave her verdict, Cecil told Moray that Elizabeth, hearing of “the unquiet state and disorder of the realm of Scotland now in his absence, thinketh meet not to restrain any further the Earl and his adherents’ liberty, but suffer him and them at their pleasure to depart, till she hear further of the Queen of Scotland’s answers to such things as have been alleged against her.”13 It was pretty safe to assume that Mary would never condescend to answer Moray’s charges, and that he would not need to be recalled.

  On the 11th, in an attempt to prevent Moray’s return to Scotland, Mary’s commissioners told Cecil, in the presence of the Regent, that they had been instructed by Mary to accuse Moray and his adherents of Darnley’s murder, but were still awaiting copies of the “pretended writings given in against their mistress, which they have divers times required of the Queen’s Majesty and her Council, but they have not as yet obtained; and how soon they received the copies thereof, she would answer thereto in defence of her innocence.” Cecil made no answer. It would appear that both he and the Lords were aware that Mary would be able to demolish their case, and that he was determined that she should not have the opportunity to do so. On 12 January, therefore, Moray was granted formal licence to return to Scotland, even though Mary had charged him with regicide.

  Mary’s commissioners were informed by Cecil, on 13 January, that Elizabeth would not deny the Queen of Scots sight of “true copies” of the Casket Letters, but before they were delivered to her, she required “a special writing sent by the Queen of Scots, signed with her own hand, promising that she will answer to the things laid to her charge without exception”; then the matter would be subject to trial, and she would be judged innocent or guilty. Elizabeth warned her to think seriously about the consequences of a guilty verdict, for then “the Queen’s Majesty can never with her honour show her any favour.” Mary’s commissioners reiterated that, “whatsoever thing was produced by the Queen’s rebels was but invented slanders and private writings, which could not prejudice her in any wise.” They also claimed that Mary, like Moray, should be given licence to return to Scotland, but Cecil answered that Moray had promised to return at any time if Elizabeth required his presence; “in the meantime, the Queen of Scotland could not be suffered to depart, for divers respects.” With their worst fears confirmed, Herries and Leslie made vehement protests, but Cecil would not say any more.

  Moray left London around 19 January, enriched by a large loan from Elizabeth, which was to be used to crush the Marian party in Scotland. Before he left, he had told Norfolk that, “so far from not loving his sister, she was the creature upon Earth that he loved the best. He never wished her harm. Her own pressing was the occasion of that which was uttered to her infamy.” He also discussed the prospect of a marriage between Norfolk and Mary, and departed under the impression that Elizabeth looked kindly upon it, when in fact she had warned Norfolk to put all thoughts of this marriage out of his head. Moray had also been granted a farewell audience with Elizabeth, who promised to maintain him in his Regency.

  After Moray had gone, the French ambassador, at Mary’s instance, interceded with Elizabeth on her behalf, expressing the hope that Her Majesty would not permit the Queen of Scots to be oppressed by her rebellious subjects, and would furnish Mary’s commissioners with copies of the evidence against her. Elizabeth looked profoundly moved, and promised that this would be done the very next day. But she did not keep her word. On 20 January, she wrote coldly to Mary:

  It may be, Madam, that in receiving a letter from me, you may look to hear something which shall be for your honour. I would it were so, but I will not deceive you. Your case is not so clear but that much remains to be explained.

  There were no further pronouncements on Mary’s future. It was obvious to most people that Elizabeth intended keeping her a prisoner.

  30

  “THE DAUGHTER OF DEBATE”

  MARY WAS MOVED TO TUTBURY Castle in Staffordshire on 26 January 1569, and placed in the custody of its owner, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. For the next eighteen years, she would remain Elizabeth’s prisoner. It is often claimed that, throughout that time, she maintained her silence over the Darnley murder, yet it is almost certain that her version of events formed the substance of Claude Nau’s Memorials, written in 1578 while he was employed as her secretary.1

  On 31 January, Mary’s commissioners were allowed to depart for Scotland. Lord Fleming returned at once to Dumbarton Castle, which he thereafter helped to hold in the Queen’s name against the Lords in power. Herries united with Chatelherault and the Hamiltons to plot a revolt against Moray, but in April 1569, after refusing to acknowledge James as King, they were imprisoned by the Regent.

  A
s the years passed, Mary was confined in several different houses, notably Wingfield Manor and Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, and Sheffield Castle in Yorkshire. Her existence in captivity was not unduly onerous to begin with, but as it became clear that she was increasingly becoming the focus of plots against Elizabeth’s throne, security was tightened and further restraints were placed on her. Although keeping Mary under restraint had seemed the best solution in 1568, Elizabeth was to find that her presence in England was a constant source of anxiety, for there was always the risk that she might either escape, incite Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects to rebel, or inspire attempts on Elizabeth’s crown or her life.

  Nevertheless, Mary was housed in some luxury and deferred to as a queen. Amongst her possessions, she kept miniatures and portraits of Francis II and Darnley, but none of Bothwell.2 Although she was only twenty-six when she was moved to Tutbury, she aged rapidly in captivity, and took to wearing wigs to hide her greying hair, while her health, never particularly robust, declined over the years, making her a martyr to rheumatism. Yet poor health did not deflect her from her ambition to seize the English throne and be revenged on her enemies.

  Her brief flirtation with Anglicanism over, she became increasingly pious, as became the rightful Catholic Queen of England. With a conscious display of religiosity, she cultivated a new and successful image as a martyr who had suffered for her faith at the hands of heretics, which was calculated to enlist the sympathy and support of the Pope and the Catholic powers, and obliterate the false and unfair stigma of murderess and adulteress.3 As time went by, many Catholics forgot the scandals that had touched Mary’s past, and thought of her only as the dynastic hope of their religion, and the Catholic powers in Europe came to espouse her cause with increasing—and, to Elizabeth, alarming—fervour. Yet for Scottish and English Protestants, she remained the evil woman who had killed her husband in order to marry her lover.

  After the imprisonment of Herries and Chatelherault, Leslie returned to England to work for Mary’s restoration, and was told by Elizabeth that she fully intended to bring this about “without making any mention of the murder of her husband or any part of the rest of the heinous crimes.”4 Leslie was also hoping to bring about the marriage between Mary and Norfolk, which he believed would be to the advantage of both Queens. He had been working for some time on a written defence of Mary, in response to the calumnies of Buchanan, and this spirited work was published abroad in May 1569, although, significantly, it was suppressed in England and made an indignant Elizabeth think again about restoring Mary. Of Mary, Leslie wrote: “Her person and the whole trade of her godly and virtuous life past do far repel and drive away all suspicion and conjectural presumptions.” After the Defence was published in France in 1571, copies of it were smuggled into England.

  Moray was still trying to justify his position, and on 13 May 1569, published a proclamation accusing Mary afresh of Darnley’s murder.5Around the middle of June, Paris was brought back to Scotland.

  Mary was still making plans for a marriage with Norfolk, which she regarded as a means of escaping from captivity. In June, at her instigation, Bothwell authorised Lord Boyd to procure an annulment of his marriage to Mary,6 and she herself commanded Boyd to ask Moray and the Lords for a written mandate to institute “an action for divorce” in Scotland, on the grounds that, when their wedding took place, Bothwell was already contracted to another wife and had not been lawfully divorced from her. Mary may also have applied to the Pope for an annulment. By 8 July, Norfolk himself was negotiating with Moray to secure the annulment of the Bothwell marriage, with a view to marrying Mary and thereby uniting England and Scotland.7 In this enterprise, he had Maitland’s support, as well as that of Philip of Spain and the powerful Catholic Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. The Catholics’ agenda differed, in that they saw the Norfolk marriage as a means to Elizabeth’s overthrow and the re-establishment of the ancient religion in England.

  But, at a congress of the Scottish Lords at Perth on 25 July, forty of the forty-nine nobles present dismissed Mary’s request for an annulment on the grounds that it was impious; in truth, they feared that any man she married now would take up arms in her cause. They also publicly avowed that they would never allow her to return to Scotland, either as Queen or co-regent, or even as a private person. Balfour, surprisingly, was among the nine who voted for Mary’s restoration:8he had already fallen foul of Moray, and perhaps feared exposure for his part in Darnley’s murder. Maitland, who had also declared for Mary, publicly opined that it was very strange that those who had so lately taken up arms against their Queen expressly for the purpose of separating her from Bothwell, should now have so entirely changed their minds.9 Relations between Moray and Maitland were now, understandably, icy. The Secretary, having “seen that the scales had turned,” had long since secretly begun “to traffic for the Queen’s return to Scotland,”10 and now he was making his position clear. It was, unfortunately, too late for either himself or Mary.

  Argyll had also voted in favour of Mary, but soon afterwards submitted to Moray and was reconciled to the Lords.

  Three days later, the Scottish Lords rejected Norfolk’s request, pointing out that, if the Queen of Scots wanted her freedom, she only had to ask King Frederick to chop off Bothwell’s head. Mary was greatly grieved that her proposals had been rejected out of hand, while her supporters in Scotland gave more serious thought to the notion of restoring her by armed force.

  On 9 and 10 August, in his prison at St. Andrews, Paris made two depositions. In the first, apparently voluntary, one, he made no accusations against Mary; but in the second, which was almost certainly extracted under torture, the interrogation being supervised by (among others) Buchanan and John Wood, Paris charged the Queen directly with Darnley’s murder. Significantly, and probably correctly, he also implicated Maitland, Balfour, Huntly and Argyll in the crime. Of course, the aim of this, in the light of recent events, was to undermine the Queen’s party, but these depositions were never made public because the testimony in them was greatly at variance with that in the earlier depositions, and much of it was obviously contrived. Even Buchanan omitted to publish them, although he included the depositions of Hay, Hepburn and Dalgleish in his Detectio.

  There is no record of Paris being put on trial. He was summarily hanged and quartered for his part in Darnley’s murder on 16 August. Six days too late, Elizabeth wrote to Moray requesting that he be sent to London for interrogation, her purpose being to discover the extent of Moray’s involvement in the crime. But Moray had already ensured Paris’s silence. Instead, he sent Paris’s depositions to London, trusting that they would be “found so authentic as the credit thereof shall not seem doubtful.”11 But even the wily Cecil could find no use for such obviously flawed documents, and they were consigned to oblivion.12

  Moray now set out to destroy Maitland. At the beginning of September, he enticed him to Stirling and caused Thomas Crawford to accuse him in Council of Darnley’s murder.13 As a result, Maitland was placed under house arrest, where, “seeing that his life was in immediate danger, [he] began with increased activity to organise a party for his own security” and continued to plan Mary’s restoration, negotiating “with every member of her party.”14 He secured as allies Grange, Atholl and Seton.

  Balfour, another turncoat, was also arrested at this time and accused of the murder of Darnley, but was freed on condition that he agree to answer a summons to trial when required, which, for “secret causes” between him and the Lords, he never was.15This may refer to the indemnity about which several historians have speculated.

  Moray’s intention was to imprison Maitland in the fortress of Tantallon, a castle on the East Lothian coast that was owned by Morton, but while he was being conveyed there, he was rescued by Kirkcaldy of Grange and carried off to Edinburgh Castle, which Grange was holding for Mary. Maitland was only too pleased to join him. This coalition between Scotland’s greatest politician and her greatest soldier was a blow to Moray
, but he had not the resources to besiege the mighty fortress of Edinburgh.

  In England, that September, Elizabeth found out that Norfolk was scheming to marry Mary, and her rage was such that Moray’s government became more secure overnight. By 11 October, Norfolk was a prisoner in the Tower of London. That month, in retaliation, a rising broke out in the north of England, orchestrated by the Catholic Earls; its aims were to depose Elizabeth and set up Mary in her place, bring about Mary’s marriage to Norfolk, and thereby return England to the Church of Rome. The King of France was supporting the rebels, King Philip was sympathetic, and a Florentine banker and papal agent, Roberto Ridolfi, was funding the enterprise. This was the most dangerous threat to her security that Elizabeth had encountered since her accession.

  Although Mary did not support the rebellion, Cecil warned Elizabeth that “the Queen of Scots is, and always shall be, a dangerous person to your estate,” and said, with some prescience, that, if she were found guilty of her husband’s murder, “she shall be less a person perilous; if passed over in silence, the scar of the murder will wear out, and the danger [will be] greater.” Elizabeth’s Councillors were urging her to have Mary executed, and for a time she gave serious thought to their pleas; she even allowed them to draw up a death warrant. Then she backed down, realising that the execution of an anointed queen would set a very dangerous precedent indeed. She did, however, write reminding Charles IX that Mary’s husband had been “foully murdered” and that she had married “the principal murderer.”16