The True Life of Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots

by John Guy

  This was not a household in which Mary was likely to thrive. Sir William Douglas was one of Morton’s clan. If that were not enough, his widowed mother, who still lived in the castle, had been born Lady Margaret Erskine. She was one of James V’s former mistresses, none other than the mother of Mary’s half-brother Moray. The laird, himself Moray’s half-brother as well as Morton’s dependent, had two legitimate brothers and seven sisters, one of them married to Lindsay, Bothwell’s challenger whom Mary had threatened on the road back from Carberry Hill. Lady Erskine had more than once claimed to have been officially if clandestinely married to James V. She had said that her son, Moray, was not only legitimate but rightfully King of Scots in place of Mary.

  The inference was inescapable. Moray intended to return to Scotland from his self-imposed exile in France to rule in one capacity or another. The Confederate Lords had justified their revolt as a moral crusade to avenge Darnley’s murder and secure Mary’s release from the “captivity” and “thralldom” of Bothwell. This was pure humbug. What they did after her surrender at Carberry Hill was to imprison her themselves. By way of an excuse, they tried to implicate her in Darnley’s murder. The stakes soared when they asserted in their warrant for her arrest that she had “appeared to fortify and maintain” Bothwell in his crimes. She was, they claimed, a woman of “inordinate passion.”

  For Mary, it was the beginning of the end of her tumultuous reign in Scotland. She had been queen for all but the first six days of her life, and a reigning queen for six years. She was now a prisoner, guarded night and day by her enemies. Apart from a few short but intoxicating weeks in the following year, the rest of her life would be spent in captivity.

  22

  Mary’s Story

  WHILE MARY was imprisoned in Lochleven, a black legend was spun. “Moral turpitude” was the charge leveled against her. She was accused of adultery and murder and said to be unfit to rule. The Confederate Lords claimed that she and Bothwell had enjoyed passionate sex for months before Darnley was killed. They said the queen and her lover had jointly planned the explosion at Kirk o’Field, and when Darnley was dead she had organized a fake kidnapping and rape to cloak her brazen designs to marry him.

  This story is not Mary’s. History is written by the winners, and after her incarceration, she was to be a spectacular loser. The villainy and cunning of the lords are shown by their willingness to accuse her of the crimes they had themselves committed, rewriting history to make theirs the official story.

  When the lords wove their damning fiction, Mary’s version of history was forgotten. What may come as a surprise is that her story—told in her own words—can be retrieved. She has rarely been allowed to tell it. Few biographers have given it more than a brief mention, and the documents recording it have not been quoted at full length since 1845. Perhaps because her story is so different from the supposedly official version, it was not thought worthy of examination.

  Shortly after marrying Bothwell, Mary chose two ambassadors to put her case to her royal neighbors. She sent William Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, to Paris and Robert Melville to London, to justify and explain her recent actions.

  She herself gave them their instructions, dictated to her secretaries and handed to the ambassadors as briefing notes. This was the usual procedure, and the documents reflect Mary’s own defense of her position. She had spoken in Scots, which she almost always did on these occasions. Sometimes breathless or containing pendent clauses as was typical of her style under pressure, the documents set out her version of events. Although divergent in focus, their overall line is consistent.

  In Melville’s instructions, Mary stressed the political advantages of her marriage. She played on the factions and plots that had frustrated her efforts to rule, arguing that only a native-born Scot could discipline the nobles successfully. She began by making excuses to Elizabeth for the unseemly haste of her marriage:

  After that you have presented our most hearty commendations to our said dearest sister, you shall expound and declare unto her the true occasions which has moved us to take the Duke of Orkney [Bothwell] to husband, and therewithal make our excuse for that we so suddenly proceeded to the consummation of our marriage, not making our dearest sister advertisement, nor asking her advice and counsel therein.

  Mary was initially convincing in her claims. Her statements about the unruly factionalism of the Scottish lords are far from exaggerated:

  For the first, you shall ground you upon the condition and state of us and our realm, declaring how we were destitute of a husband, our realm not thoroughly purged of the factions and conspiracies that of long time have continued therein. These, occurring so frequently, had already in a manner so wearied and broken us that by ourself we were not able of any long continuance to sustain the pains and labor in our own person that were requisite for repressing of the insolence and sedition of our rebellious subjects. They are, as is known, a people as factious amongst themselves and as factious toward the ruler as any other nation in Europe. For their satisfaction, which could not suffer us long to continue in the state of widowhood, it behoved us, moved by their prayers and requests [i.e., the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond], to yield unto one marriage or another.

  Where Mary began to delude herself was in arguing that her nobles had supported her marriage to Bothwell and petitioned her to marry him as soon as possible without looking any further for a husband:

  Seeing no advantage to follow by protracting of time, but as on the one part they were very well content, yea and earnestly urged us that we should without delay proceed to our marriage, even so on the other side, we perceived by their meaning how unwilling they were that we should choose any foreign husband, but rather [we should] so far humble ourself to be content with some native-born subject of our own for that place, someone acquainted with their traditions and the laws and customs of our realm. For indeed we ourself have had proof and experience of their revolts, when as in the case of our foreign marriage [i.e., Darnley, who was born an Englishman] they have supposed that they would be severely handled by foreigners.

  Mary may well have been correct that the lords would have rejected the idea of a foreign marriage, but she inflated the significance of the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond to claim she had all along been advised to marry Bothwell. Instead of recognizing that it was she who had chosen him, she tried to cast herself as a political pawn in the hands of the noble factions. She also glossed over Bothwell’s true character:

  When, therefore, in the eyes and opinion of our people, one of our own subjects was judged most fitting both for us and them, our whole nobility being lately assembled at our Parliament were best content that the Duke of Orkney, then Earl of Bothwell, should be promoted to that place, if so were our pleasure. To that effect they subscribed a letter [the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond] with all their hands before or ever we agreed to take him to our husband or that he opened his mind to us in that behalf, whereby we were moved to make our choice of him, as one whose wisdom, gallantry and other good qualities might be well compared or rather preferred to any other nobleman in our realm, and his ancestry honorable and ancient. But indeed his faithful and upright service ever since he came to man’s estate spent and bestowed for us and in our cause, for setting forth our authority whosoever gainsaid it, was no small motive in our consent in making of our choice. This was the rather because none, or very few of all the nobles, are able in that point to compare with him, seeing at some time or other, the most part of them had left or abandoned us, he alone excepted.

  Mary protested too much. She pretended that she had no idea of Elizabeth’s likely hostility to Bothwell. She did not even seem to remember her dueling with her “sister queen” two years before over her choice of Darnley as a husband:

  Concerning all these matters, you shall pray and desire her heartily to excuse us, for as we never meant to join in marriage with any that we believed she was not content with, so at this present time, we trust she will not only continue her accustomed fa
vor and mutual intelligence with us, but also, for our respect, will extend her friendship to our husband with whom we are inseparably joined, and to bear him and us no less goodwill than if all had proceeded to this hour with the knowledge and advice of our dearest sister, whom you shall assure to find him ready to do her all the honor and service that she can require of him.

  Mary then turned to the most dangerous ground. She had to deal with the fact that Elizabeth had written to her immediately after Darnley’s death, charging her to punish his murderers without delay, sparing no one, not even “him whom you have nearest to you,” meaning Bothwell, “if he was involved”:

  In case the queen our good sister shall think strangely of our marriage with the Duke of Orkney by reason he was suspected and accused of the odious violence committed on the person of the king our late husband, and because she had written to ourself somewhat in that behalf before, it is true that she wrote to us and we sent her an answer, the copy whereof we have enclosed herewith. It will instruct you sufficiently in what you shall answer to this objection in case you should be asked about it.

  Mary wished Melville to answer such charges fully. To that end, she asked him to refer to a letter she had belatedly sent to Elizabeth addressing this very point. A copy of the letter was included in his diplomatic brief, and Mary drew his attention to the key passage:*

  I lament more highly the tragedy of my husband’s death more than any other of my subjects can do; and if they had allowed, and if I had been permitted to use my authority untroubled by my subjects, I had punished the committers thereof . . . I had never knowledge, art nor part thereof, nor none of my subjects did declare unto me that they who are now holden culpable and principal executors thereof were the principal authors and committers of the same: which if they had done, assuredly I would not have proceeded as I did so far. I suppose I did nothing in that matter but by the advice of the nobility of the realm.

  If they allege that my marriage with the Earl of Bothwell will be taken as a presumption against me, I never condescended thereto until the time the greatest part of the nobility had cleansed [acquitted] him by an assize and the same ratified in Parliament, and they had given their plain consent unto him for my marriage, and solicited and persuaded me thereto, as their handwriting [the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond], which was shown to me, will testify.

  Mary had been forced into a corner. To say that she had never been informed that Bothwell was one of those accused of Darnley’s murder would be palpably untrue. Not only had Lennox named Bothwell as the chief suspect in a letter to Mary, the placards affixed to the walls and doors of the Tolbooth had also accused him. The whole force of her statement depends on her use of the words “principal authors and committers.” Her argument was that Bothwell may well have been an accessory to the murder, but she had not been made aware of his role at the time as Morton’s chief ally in devising the plot. We already know that she had held Moray to be the arch-conspirator, a view reinforced by his decision to seek voluntary exile abroad.

  Lastly, Mary tried to deal with the inconvenient fact that Bothwell had been a married man when she had consented to marry him:

  It may be that our good sister shall allege our present marriage not to be lawful insofar as the duke our husband was coupled to a wife before, who yet lives. You shall answer that by the laws received within our realm and often times practiced as is generally known, his former marriage was dissolved and the process of divorce orderly led for resolute causes of consanguinity and others before our marriage with him. And so we might lawfully consummate the same, for it is no new thing neither in Scotland nor England.

  The Bishop of Dunblane’s instructions were angled differently, offering rationales more likely to sway the French. Mary still defended her marriage on political grounds, but focused on Bothwell’s character and role as queen’s protector:

  First, you shall excuse us to the king, the Queen Mother, our uncle, and others our friends, in that the consummation of our marriage is brought to their ears by other means, before that by any message from ourself they have been made participant of our intention therein; which excuse must be chiefly grounded upon the true story and report of the Duke of Orkney, his behavior and proceedings toward us before and until this time that we have been made content to take him to our husband . . .

  Mary settled down for the long haul. She went right back to the start of Bothwell’s career and his role as her mother’s defender:

  Beginning from his very youth and first entrance to this realm immediately after the death of his father, who was one of the first earls of the realm and one of the foremost in reputation by reason of his nobility and ancestry, and of the great offices which are his by inheritance. At which time the queen our mother [Mary of Guise] being then regent of our realm, he dedicated his whole service to her in our name with such devotion and earnestness, that albeit soon thereafter, the most part of the nobility, almost all of the burghs, and so consequently in a manner the whole substance of the realm, made a revolt from her authority under color of religion; yet swerved he never from our obedience.

  Mary went into almost superfluous detail as to how Bothwell had stolen the first installment of gold sent covertly by Cecil to aid the Lords of the Congregation in their revolt. Then she turned to his service since her return to Scotland six years before, glossing over his many misdemeanors and quarrels with Moray and Arran, but stressing his loyalty and resourcefulness:

  After our return to Scotland, he gave his whole study to the setting forth of our authority and to employ his person to suppress the insolence of the rebellious subjects inhabiting the counties lying west of the borders of England, and within a short time brought them to a perfect quietness . . .

  But as envy ever follows virtue, and this country is of itself somewhat subject to factions, others [i.e., chiefly Moray and Arran] began to dislike his proceedings. They went about so far by bad reports and by misconstruing his doings to put him out of our good grace, that at length—upon colors invented by his evil-willers, for satisfying of them that might not abide his advancement and avoiding of further contention, which might have brought the whole realm in trouble—we were compelled to put him in prison.

  Out of the which escaping . . . he passed out of the realm toward France, and there remained until about two years ago, when the same persons who were before the instruments of his trouble began to forget their duty toward ourself, putting themselves in arms [Moray and the rebels of the Chase-about Raid], displaying open banners against our person.

  Mary then turned to Bothwell’s service during the Chase-about Raid:

  At which time by our commandment he was called home and immediately restored to his former charge of lieutenant-general. Our authority prospered so well in his hands that suddenly our whole rebels were constrained to flee the realm and remain in England, until some of them [Châtelherault and his family] upon submission and humble suit were reconciled to us.

  Step by step, Mary drew closer to recent events. She said she would skip over the Rizzio plot on the grounds that her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine was already fully aware of it. But she could not fail to mention Bothwell’s role in her daring escape at midnight from Holyrood:

  Yet it is worthy of remembrance with what dexterity he escaped from the hands of those who at that time detained our person captive, and how suddenly by his providence not only were we delivered out of the prison [Mary had been confined to her apartments with guards at her door], but also that whole company of conspirators were dissolved and we recovered our former obedience. Indeed we must confess that service done at that time to have been so acceptable to us that we could never to this hour forget it. He has ever since then prosecuted with the like diligence in all that might content us, so that we could not wish for more fidelity nor good behavior than we have always found in him.

  Mary then attempted to explain her conduct after Darnley’s assassination. Her remarks made it clear that she knew she had married in haste and Bothwel
l’s behavior was unworthy. Neither his gallantry and bravado nor his unswerving loyalty justified his dubious methods of courtship:

  Until of late, since the decease of the king our husband, when as his ambitions began to be higher, so find we his proceedings somewhat strange. Albeit now since we are so far proceeded with him we must interpret all things to the best, yet have we been highly offended. First, with his presumption, who thought we could not sufficiently reward him unless we should give ourself to him [in marriage] for the recompense of his service. Next, for his practices and secret means, and at length the plain attempting by force to have us in his puissance, for fear to be disappointed of his purpose.

  Mary’s retrospective characterization of Bothwell was forthright:

  His deportment in this behalf may serve for an example, how cunningly men can cover their designs when they have any great enterprise in head until they have brought their purpose to pass. We thought his continuance in the awaiting upon us and readiness to fulfill all our commandments, had proceeded only upon the acknowledging of his duty, being our born subject, without further hidden respect. This moved us to make him the better visage, thinking that the same was but an ordinary countenance to such noblemen as we found affectionate to our service, and never supposing that it should encourage him or give him boldness to look for any extraordinary favor at our hands.