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

by Alison Weir

  In March, Mary learned that Balfour, then in the Netherlands, was offering to provide evidence to incriminate Morton in the murder of Darnley in return for permission to re-enter Scotland unmolested and the restoration of his Scottish estates, an offer that was to be enthusiastically taken up by Morton’s enemies, who were again looking for an excuse to topple him. Balfour was doubtless hoping to ensure that he would not be in danger of prosecution if he returned to Scotland; of all those who had been involved in Darnley’s murder, most were dead, but Morton was not only still alive but in power, and must be neutralised. Mary also had an interest in Balfour’s evidence, and on 18 March asked Archbishop Beaton to secure possession of it, especially the murder Bond that Morton was supposed to have signed.59In response, Balfour sent Mary such evidence as he had, but it apparently did not amount to much, and it certainly did not include the Bond. In May, Mary told Beaton that they should play along with Balfour, evidently hoping that more documents could be extracted from him.

  Balfour spent several months negotiating the terms of his return with King James and Morton’s enemies, and on 12 December 1580, he arrived in Edinburgh and was granted a private audience with the young King. James was now heavily reliant on his handsome but ruthless French-born cousin, the pro-Catholic Esmé Stuart, Count of Aubigny: having conceived an adolescent passion for Stuart, he had created him Earl of Lennox on 5 March 1580. Lennox was ambitious and wanted Morton ousted from power, and it was he who headed this new conspiracy against the Regent, which was backed by Ochiltree’s son, Captain James Stewart, another royal favourite who was soon to be created Earl of Arran by James. Lennox was aware of Balfour’s Catholic sympathies and confident that his testimony would bring down the Regent, for Balfour had assured Lennox that he did indeed hold the murder Bond, and that Morton’s signature was on it.

  On 31 December 1580, in front of the King and his Council, Captain Stewart fell on his knees, denounced Morton for having conspired in Darnley’s murder, and demanded his arrest. Morton contemptuously denied the charge, insisting that it was well known that he had punished with the utmost rigour every person who had been involved in the late King’s death.

  “It is false!” cried Stewart. “Where have you placed your cousin, Archibald Douglas? Does not that most infamous of men now pollute the bench of justice with his presence,60 instead of suffering the penalty due to the murderer of his sovereign?”61 At this, Morton drew his sword, but he was seized and, with the other Lords present loudly supporting the charge, placed under arrest and confined in Edinburgh Castle, the King making no move to save him. In January, Morton was transferred to a prison cell in Dumbarton Castle.62 Elizabeth, meanwhile, was making frantic but fruitless efforts to save him, which suggests that she was perhaps fearful of what might be revealed at his trial, but his other “friends” had abandoned him, “for he was loved by none and envied and hated by many, so they all looked through their fingers to see his fall.”63

  Sir William Douglas, Archibald Douglas and other members of Morton’s family were also summoned to answer charges. Sir William was banished beyond the Firth of Cromarty in the far north. The Laird of Whittinghame, Archibald’s brother, revealed under interrogation that Archibald had forged letters in an attempt to bring down Lennox;64as has been noted, these may not have been the first incriminating letters that he had forged. Furthermore, it was almost certainly he who had actually struck down Darnley. But Douglas, alerted by the Regent’s apprehension, had already fled to England, and thus managed to evade arrest, for Elizabeth adamantly refused to deliver him up to James VI. In his absence, his lands were declared forfeit, and his servant, John Binning, was arrested.

  Morton’s removal from power left Scotland in the hands of a clique that was sympathetic to Mary, and paved the way for schemes for her restoration as joint ruler with her son. But, while Elizabeth affected to support such schemes, they never reached a satisfactory conclusion because there were so many conflicting interests involved. Even though the truth about Darnley’s murder was now well known, Mary was still being punished for it.

  On 30 January, Balfour asked Mary to produce an affidavit containing everything that she knew about the Darnley murder. This, of course, did not amount to much. In March, Thomas Randolph, the English agent, informed Lords Hunsdon and Huntingdon: “I spoke again of the Bond in the green box, containing the names of all the chief persons consenting to the King’s murder, which Sir James [Balfour] either hath or can tell of.”65 But Balfour had still not shown anyone the Bond.

  Morton’s trial took place at the Edinburgh Tolbooth on 1 June. He was accused of having been “art and part” of Darnley’s murder, and in answer to the charge, “granted that he was made privy thereto, but had no hand in devising thereof.”66Balfour testified against him, but failed to produce the murder Bond; he had probably never had it in the first place. Morton was found guilty of treason, declared forfeit, and condemned to be hanged and quartered the very next day, but King James commuted the sentence to decapitation.

  Before his execution, Morton made a confession to John Brand and two other ministers of the Kirk, which was first published in the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. This is not the full text of the original, since Holinshed admitted that he had omitted sensitive passages that mentioned “great persons now living,” who may have included Queen Elizabeth herself, and possibly Mary: anything favourable to Mary would have been unwelcome in the political climate that prevailed in England at the time. There are manuscript copies of the confession extant, but they too may have been censored. In his confession, Morton admitted that he had with others foreknown the crime, but that nothing had been done to prevent it because it was known that the Queen of Scots desired it, which is what he had been told by Bothwell and Maitland. He also confessed to meeting with those men at Whittinghame and to receiving Archibald Douglas after the murder.

  Morton was beheaded on 2 June 1581 in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh on a guillotine known as “the Maiden,” which he himself had introduced from Halifax as a more humane method of execution. “He died resolutely” with his hands untied, and his head was set up on a spike above the Tolbooth, where it remained until December 1582.67 Mary professed herself “most glad” at his passing.68

  The next day, John Binning, Archibald Douglas’s servant, was put to the torture, and revealed Douglas’s part in Darnley’s murder. He was tried and condemned,69 then hanged and quartered at the Mercat Cross that same day. In 1582, another of Archibald Douglas’s men, George Home, Laird of Sprott, was tried for complicity in Darnley’s murder but acquitted.

  On 19 June 1581, James VI reached the age of fifteen, and assumed personal rule. He had done with regents, preferring to rely on the counsels of Esmé Stuart, who was created Duke of Lennox in August 1582. That month, hardline Protestants led by William Ruthven, now Earl of Gowrie, kidnapped the King and forced Lennox to flee to France, where he died in 1583. James escaped from his captors in June 1583 and reasserted his authority as King.

  Meanwhile, there had been a new conspiracy to place Mary on the throne of England, hatched by the Guises, the Pope, Philip of Spain and the Jesuits. In October 1582, Walsingham discovered that Mary was communicating in cipher with her foreign allies, and her correspondence was thereafter vetted and she herself kept under closer surveillance. At this time, Elizabeth again taxed Mary with the murder of Darnley. Mary demanded to have any charges put in writing before she answered them, but this was never done, exposing Elizabeth’s words as an idle threat. In the wake of Morton’s execution, Elizabeth would have been on very tenuous grounds had she formally accused Mary of murdering Darnley. On 21 November, an aggrieved Mary wrote a scathing letter to Elizabeth, accusing her of bringing about her downfall:

  By the agents, spies and secret messengers sent in your name into Scotland while I was there, my subjects were corrupted and encouraged to rebel against me, and to speak, do, enterprise and execute that which has come to the sa
id country during my troubles. Of which I will not at present specify any proof, than that which I have gained of it by the confession of one who was afterwards amongst those that were most advanced for their good service.70

  Mary was apparently referring to Morton.

  Balfour, who had almost certainly been a leading player in the Darnley murder, died in his bed in 1583. He “had served with all parties, had deserved all, yet had profited by all.”71 Mary called him “a traitor who offered himself first to one party and then to the other.”72 Yet, of all those who had been involved in the Darnley conspiracy, he was one of the few who met a peaceful end.

  Between April and November 1583, Archibald Douglas, now in France, was doing his best to ingratiate himself with Mary in the hope that she would be a suitor to James VI on his behalf. On 12 November, Mary wrote to Castelnau that she had promised to do her best for Douglas, but desired to know “the main cause of his banishment, for if he is in any way connected with the death of the late King my husband, I will never intercede for him.”73 Soon afterwards, Douglas wrote to her, stating that in 1566, Moray, Atholl, Bothwell, Argyll and other Lords had entered into a bond with the then exiled Lords to have nothing to do with Darnley as King, and to sue for the return of the exiles; this, he said, had been discussed at the Craigmillar Conference. Douglas naturally made no mention of the murder Bond. He added that he had been chosen as the intermediary between the Lords and the exiles.

  Around this time, the plot to place Mary on the English throne was revealed to the English government by one of its participants, Francis Throckmorton, who was later executed. Mary was heavily implicated, as was the Spanish ambassador, who was expelled. Elizabeth was urged to bring Mary to justice, but refused out of hand.

  In May 1584, after he had again been discovered conspiring against James VI, the Earl of Gowrie was executed; it was at this time that the Casket Letters came into the possession of the King. Neither James nor his mother had any reason to love the Ruthven family, and when, in 1600, the Earl’s sons were involved in another treasonable plot, Parliament ruled that the name of Ruthven be abolished for all time. The last of the line died in the Tower of London in 1652, nearly a century after Patrick, Lord Ruthven had burst into Mary’s supper chamber at Holyrood and demanded that Rizzio leave it.

  Mary was gratified by the punishment meted out to Gowrie, and soon afterwards sent a messenger to James to demand the head of Lindsay also, which she had sworn she would have after Carberry Hill. James, however, contented himself with imprisoning Lindsay at Tantallon Castle. Lindsay died in 1589.

  Walsingham still feared that Mary was plotting against Elizabeth, and in August 1584, he tightened the security net around her. The next month, he showed Elizabeth a letter that convinced her that Mary was again conspiring to overthrow her. This led in October to the famous Bond of Association, whereby thousands of English gentlemen pledged themselves under oath to take up arms and destroy Mary if it became known that, knowingly or otherwise, she was the focus of any plot against the Queen’s life. The principles of this bond were enshrined in the Act of Association, passed by Parliament in February 1585. The following month, King James wrote to his mother to tell her that it was impossible to ally himself with her because she was “captive in a desert”; in truth, he was anxious not to jeopardise his hopes of the English succession by favouring one who was regarded with such deep suspicion by the English. In May, he concluded a treaty with Elizabeth that made it clear that he had abandoned all ideas of sharing sovereignty with his mother and implied that Mary was to remain in captivity. For Mary, this was a devastating betrayal that marked the end of her long-cherished hopes of freedom and restoration. Deeply embittered, she resolved to bequeath her crown and her dynastic claim to England to Philip of Spain, effectively disinheriting her son.

  Increasing demands that Mary be kept under stricter surveillance led in April 1585 to the appointment of the sternly puritanical disciplinarian, Sir Amyas Paulet, as her custodian. Under his rule, Mary was allowed no visitors and no correspondence.

  In May 1586, nearly twenty years after the event, Archibald Douglas was at last tracked down and tried for the murder of Darnley. The trial—which was the last of those related to the crime—was a farce, since Douglas had in his possession evidence of collusion between the English and Scottish governments, and Elizabeth bribed James to ensure a favourable verdict, even though most people now knew that Douglas was the man who had killed Darnley. Of the nineteen chosen jurors, ten deemed it unwise to put in an appearance, and their places were filled by ten others “who happened to be at the bar,” amongst them Douglas’s man, George Home. The court was packed with the Douglases and their supporters.

  The depositions of Ormiston, Hay, Paris and Binning were offered in evidence, despite the fact that there was no reference to Douglas in any of them. No witnesses were called to testify against the accused. In his defence, Douglas stated he could not have lost his velvet mule at Kirk o’Field because he was not wearing it, since the road that led there from his house was too rough for a man in armour to walk on in slippers. At the end of the day, he was pronounced “clean and acquit of being in company with Bothwell, Ormiston, Hay and Hepburn in committing the crime.”74Douglas’s rehabilitation led to his being restored to his lands and appointed ambassador to England.

  Douglas’s acquittal and the treachery of her son may have been factors in Mary’s decision, made in July 1586, to approve the plan of a young Catholic gentleman, Anthony Babington, to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with the Scottish Queen. Mary was unaware that Walsingham was being sent all her letters and had in fact set up the means by which she was able to smuggle them out to her friends, and she walked straight into his trap when, against Nau’s advice, she approved in writing Babington’s treasonable conspiracy. After nineteen years in unjust captivity, she was desperate for freedom and the opportunity to win by force that which she believed to be hers by right. She was so detached from reality that she had little idea that she was hated and feared by the majority of Elizabeth’s subjects.

  Elizabeth reacted to news of the plot with panic, and had the cousin whom she referred to as a “wicked murderess” arrested on 9 August. The English government could now proceed against Mary under the Act of Association. Under questioning, Nau admitted sending her letter and did not refute its contents. Mary saw this as a betrayal, but it was no more than the truth.

  Babington and his associates were tried and condemned on 13 September, and executed a week later with horrific barbarity. On 25 September, Mary was moved to mediaeval Fortheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire to await trial. Thirty-six commissioners appointed by Elizabeth assembled there on 11 October, but Mary insisted that no court was competent to try her since she was “a queen and sovereign” and not one of Elizabeth’s subjects. But when Elizabeth wrote that it was her will that Mary answer the charges “as if I were myself present,” Mary capitulated, although she continued to refuse to acknowledge the court’s jurisdiction.

  Her trial took place on 15 and 16 October. Although Mary put up a spirited defence and denied all the charges, its outcome was a foregone conclusion, for the evidence was incontrovertible. But just as the commissioners were about to give their verdict, Elizabeth’s messenger arrived, proroguing the court to the Star Chamber at Westminster, to meet again in ten days’ time. There, on 25 October, Mary was pronounced guilty. Four days later, Parliament ratified the verdict and pressed for “a just sentence”; in their view, there could only be one just sentence.

  Elizabeth embarked on her usual stalling tactics, but Parliament was determined to resolve the problem of the Queen of Scots for good. On 12 November, it petitioned Elizabeth to have Mary executed. Elizabeth was plunged into an agony of indecision. Mary was undoubtedly guilty and had increasingly menaced Elizabeth’s security ever since the latter’s accession in 1558. On the other hand, Elizabeth knew that executing an anointed queen would establish a dangerous precedent and undermine the whole institut
ion of monarchy, which she held as sacred, and she feared the reaction of Catholic Europe, and her Catholic subjects, if she took such a drastic step. Over the years, it had been Elizabeth, with her hatred of bloodshed, who time and again had intervened to save Mary’s life, even when Mary had plotted against hers; now she was being pressurised to kill her. Understandably, she refused. But the demands of Parliament and her Council for justice grew ever more insistent. At last, on 1 February 1587, Elizabeth gave way and signed Mary’s death warrant, which was immediately sent by her Councillors to Fotheringhay. Later, she would deny that she had authorised its dispatch and punish those concerned.

  The warrant arrived on 7 February, and Mary was told to prepare for death on the morrow. That night, she wrote her last letter, to Henry III of France,75 in which she protested that she would meet death “innocent of any crime”: as a devout Catholic, she would not have counted the assassination of the heretical Elizabeth as a crime because the Pope had sanctioned and urged it, but she was almost certainly also referring to the murder of Darnley. She further asserted that “the Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned.”76In her own eyes, she was dying as a martyr for her faith.

  The following morning, she walked calmly to the scaffold in the great hall of the castle, and there, before a large concourse of people, removed her black gown to reveal a kirtle of red, the Catholic colour of martyrdom. It took three strokes to sever her head, but she was probably unconscious after the first. Afterwards, her body was sealed in a lead coffin and stored in the castle until late July, when Elizabeth authorised its burial in Peterborough Cathedral. There was a solemn funeral with the banners of Mary, Francis II and Darnley hung on the pillars of the nave; Bothwell’s was deliberately omitted. In his funeral sermon, the Protestant Dean of Peterborough could not resist raking up old scandals and portraying Mary’s execution as divine retribution: “The day [of the execution] being very fair did, as it were, show favour from Heaven and commended the justice; the eighth day of February, that judgement was repaid home to her, which the tenth day of the same month, twenty years past, she measured to her husband.”77