by Jane Dunn
Mary’s sense of isolation and friendlessness grew as she realized increasingly that her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, so warmly embraced by her at first, so well rewarded, did not fully reciprocate her warmth and loyalty. Personal ambition was always to be his motivating force. Her affection for him had turned to violent antipathy over his refusal to welcome Darnley as her husband and his king. He had thought better of his initial enthusiasm for Darnley’s suit, fearing the strengthening of the Catholic party and the loss of personal influence.
During the previous four years, Mary had learnt better the difficulties of ruling a country where there was no proper legal system, no organized taxation and the necessity of relying on her lords to safeguard her person and enforce her government. The Scottish lords were notoriously factional, unruly and self-interested, their loyalties first to their clans and their fiercest antipathies focused on each other. Loneliness and the lack of a decisive man of action on her side meant Mary looked to Bothwell as her warrior hero. Although he had spent much of her active reign in exile and in nominal disgrace for his apparent involvement in the Earl of Arran’s deranged scheme to kidnap her, and despite his escape from prison and possible charge of treason, Mary had shown herself sympathetic to his petitions for pardon and freedom. It was even rumoured that the Queen of Scots had turned a blind eye, if not actually offered assistance, when in April 1563 he fled across the border to Berwick, escaping her brother Moray and the Protestant lords.3
Mary had written to Elizabeth requesting she allow Bothwell licence to leave England, ostensibly for France, and by February 1564 Randolph’s suspicions about her intentions towards this reprobate were confirmed: ‘Such as have written (and I amongst the rest) in the favour of my Lord Bothwell (saving the Queen and Mary Fleming) repent their haste. It is found out that this way it is purposed to bring him home.’4 He certainly caused consternation among the Scottish lords. After a panicky warning went out to Moray and his servants that Bothwell had somehow re-entered Scotland and ‘come secretly [to Dunbar] to speak with the Queen, with many horses’,5 Moray’s life was thought to be in danger. As it turned out, this was only a rumour but it showed Bothwell’s ability to strike fear into rival hearts and disconcert the plans of those who wanted to maintain the status quo.
By the early summer one of those uneasy Protestant lords had written to Randolph: ‘Among ourselves things are presently quiet, but I fear not for long: “for thyngis begynes to grow to a rypnes and thair is great practesoris, quho ar lyk to set all thyngis a loft” [for things begin to grow to a ripeness and there is great scheming, which are like to set all things aloft] … I wish, as you know I have always done, “that the Erll Botheill wer keipet [restrained] still: for our quene thynkis to have hym at all tymes redye to schaik out of hir pushet agaynst us protestantis” [for our queen [Mary] thinks to have him at all times ready to shake out of her pocket against us protestants].’6
In fact Elizabeth delayed attending to the licence and only by the beginning of November 1564 did Bothwell finally get to France, carrying letters of introduction from Mary to her brother-in-law the king, and her Guise uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine. But within four months the unruly earl, uninvited, was back in Scotland for mysterious reasons and in some peril of his freedom, if not his life. Certainly, by the beginning of March, when he appeared unexpectedly in Edinburgh, Bothwell would have heard all the rumours of Mary’s imminent marriage to the son of his father’s old rival. Perhaps this projected marriage stirred his own ancestral ambitions and his desire to participate in the inevitable shifts in power such a marriage would bring.
Bothwell’s arrival was heralded by a dust cloud of rumour: that he had threatened to kill Moray and Lethington the moment he set foot again in Scotland; that while in France he had called Mary the ‘Cardinals hoore’7 and had abused both Elizabeth and Mary by declaring ‘both the queens could not make one honest woman’ between them.* His disobedience in returning to Scotland without licence had irritated Mary, the stories of his rudeness incensed her. The Earl of Bothwell was told in no uncertain terms by the Sergeant at Arms to submit himself to the law by 2 May (giving him a leisurely two months’ grace) or be pronounced a rebel. There was still a suspicion, however, that Mary remained sympathetic and faithful: the Earl of Bedford wrote from Berwick: ‘The length of time and the easiness of his bond [£200 Scottish] maketh me to think that the Queen there doth secretly favour him. If he get fair weather on his back, he may chance to wax wanton and work them some trouble before they catch him.’8 He had already seen the effect Bothwell’s arrival had on the Borders, ‘to whom resort all the outlaws, thieves, and rovers [robbers] of these marches’.9 As this notorious adventurer had based himself in the forbidding Hermitage Castle, well supported by his loyal Liddesdale men, Bedford had good reason to talk about fortifying border strongholds against any trouble to come.
The Earl of Bothwell’s reputation as a cunning and fearless fighter, together with his commanding presence, evoked fear and loyalty in equal measure. His position as a border lord with wide-ranging influence and ambition, and an inflammable following in that most lawless of territories, made him powerful enemies. Amongst them were Mary’s half-brother Moray and his fellow pro-English lords, as well as the majority of the English executive, although Elizabeth seemed to have recognized his capacity to fuel dissension and disarray wherever he turned up, and this appealed to her covert style of diplomacy. The day of Bothwell’s trial approached amid continuing rumours of his perfidy and a growing anxiety that his freewheeling presence in the realm would make trouble for the recent peace and amity between the two kingdoms. He was known for a certain sexual incontinence (Randolph had joked to Cecil that when Bothwell was detained in England it should be far from Dover, where his sister lived with many nubile daughters) but much more lurid stories were related, possibly to incriminate him further.
The Earl of Bedford was governor of the frontier town of Berwick and, feeling vulnerable to a raid from Bothwell’s borderers, requested extra provisions and reinforcements. He wrote to Cecil citing the opinion of the Warden of the Middle Marches as to Bothwell’s proximity and the danger he posed, as well as pointing out the depravity of his character and implication of the Queen of Scots: ‘He is as naughty a man as liveth, and much given to that vile and detestable vice of sodomy; and whatsoever countenance of justice that Queen pretendeth outwardly, yet is she thought to favour him much.’10 Accusations of sodomy were commonplace in religious arguments of the time, although used more often as a slight against those who practised the Catholic religion than against the more puritanical Protestants. Bothwell was that rare beast at the time, a Scottish nobleman who was constant in his main allegiances; a Protestant but pro-Mary and fiercely anti-English. The slur of sodomy may well have been part of an underlying accusation that this manly warrior and Scottish patriot was in fact a closet papist and not at all what he seemed.
It became increasingly clear to Bothwell that his prosecution was just as likely to be military as judicial: Moray was marshalling a considerable force against him; all the Protestant lords were expected at the trial, together with various armed retainers (as many as 6000 men in all were mentioned). Rather than risk appearing in person Bothwell jumped bail and headed back to France. To the surprise of many, and as confirmation of their suspicions of Mary’s continued support of him, he was mildly dealt with and not proclaimed a rebel in his absence. Even more surprising perhaps, barely three months had passed before he received the call from the Queen of Scots to return from exile to her side. This was a positive act on Mary’s part and in that exercise of will she had assembled everyone who would enact the tragic undoing of her life.
As Elizabeth’s main diplomatic concern at the time had been the temperature of Scottish opinion and control of the choice of a husband for Mary, the dispatches from that court to the English queen had grown increasingly anxious. Frustrated beyond endurance by Elizabeth’s attempt at control, impatient and increasingly suspicious of
her own pro-English ministers, Moray and Lethington, Mary had begun already to look to other more maverick advisers. Having been full of the activities of Darnley and, to a lesser extent, Bothwell, towards the end of 1564 and into 1565 the name of another more intimate denizen of Mary’s close circle began to occur more frequently in dispatches. He was variously styled as Riccio, Richio or Rizzio, and then latterly as just David, and the circumstances of his death were to propel the tragedy of Mary’s destruction and bring him a notorious immortality.
Bothwell, the epitome of a hard-living and unruly Scot, an ambitious adventurer, was one kind of growing influence; David Riccio, Italian musician and secretary to Mary, was the other. He was everything Bothwell was not. Physically small and unaggressive, unashamedly Catholic, he provided a sympathetic ear and an insinuating presence in Mary’s inner court. Riccio became increasingly indispensable to the queen as an adviser and confidant. Most probably on the recommendation of Mary’s uncle, the Cardinal, he had entered Mary’s employ in December 1561, initially as someone whose good bass voice could supply the missing part in a quartet of male voices who sang for Mary at Mass, and at court.
Mary had grown up in a cosmopolitan French court full of Italians, an itinerant race of courtiers drawn by the presence of the queen, Catherine de Medici. Riccio exhibited all the Continental qualities of mind and manner that were familiar and attractive to Mary. Isolated in Scotland from the family and friends of her youth, she had been subjected to the brusqueness of her own nobility and the downright rudeness of reformist clergy like Knox. In this austere and robust atmosphere, gallant, light-hearted frivolity and shared memories of warmer, more luxurious times, held a certain charm. When her French secretary was dismissed in 1564 (it was rumoured for being too friendly with Elizabeth’s agent Randolph), Mary appointed Riccio to that post, even though his written French was inferior to her own. In fact, Melville suggested that the rivalry between Elizabeth and Mary was exacerbated by Riccio’s ill-expressed French in their subsequent correspondence.
This new position in the household involved him increasingly in Mary’s affairs. Her solitariness meant she sought his company and confided more in this foreigner who, by his exotic looks, his manner and Catholic sympathies, appeared to her Scottish court as sinisterly alien, intent on promoting foreign interests over legitimate Scottish concerns. Mary’s nobles were proud Scots. They were naturally xenophobic and ambitious for their own advancement, jealous of the influences of others. On those occasions when they sought out the queen for advice or preferment, their resentment grew as they found her often in close conference with her odd little secretary. The apparent intimacy between Mary and her inscrutable servant was galling. Too often, Riccio was the main conduit to the queen and, increasingly, those who wished their business attended to approached him first and, it was rumoured, speeded the process with bribes. David Riccio became more hated as he gained in wealth and influence. Inevitably rumours became more garish as they elaborated on Riccio’s improper intimacy with the queen, even on his being an agent of the pope.
Mary, however, seemed unwilling to alleviate or even to recognize the combustible situation. Melville recalled a conversation he had with Riccio who was frightened by the malevolence of the lords towards him, some of whom ‘would shoulder and shoot him by, when they entered the Queen’s chamber and found him always speaking with her’. Melville, the practised courtier, advised him to be less obvious in his dealings with the queen, not to sit with her at every opportunity and to withdraw discreetly when others drew near. Riccio reported that when he suggested this modification to Mary, ‘the Queen would not suffer him, but would needs have him to use himself in the old manner’. Melville went to remonstrate with Mary directly, and rather boldly reminded her of two painful episodes when her affectionate manner was misconstrued by others, with tragic consequences: ‘I remembered Her Majesty what displeasure she had taken of before for the rash misbehaviour of a French gentleman called Châtelard, transported by her affability; and likewise the Earl of Arran for the same cause; not doubting but Her Majesty’s grave and comely behaviour towards such strangers …’11
Mary’s dismissal of these warnings shared a similar recklessness with Elizabeth herself, whose initial resistance to modifying her own scandalous behaviour with Lord Robert had caused her ambassadors and ministers so much grief at home and embarrassment abroad. Elizabeth, however, was cautious and wise enough to pull back from the brink. Her favourites were never allowed to gain too much power. She quickly slapped them down if they exhibited too great an arrogance towards others, reminding them always who was monarch of them all. In reprimanding Leicester for insulting a fellow lord, Elizabeth had no compunction in reminding him, ‘that if by her favour he had become insolent he should soon reform, and that she would lower him just as she had at first raised him’.12
Such natural authority and self-awareness was alien to Mary’s nature. Instead, impulsiveness, impatience, lack of judgement and uncontrolled animal spirits meant she was cavalier with her own power, relinquishing it to her Guise uncles, her half-brother Moray, to Elizabeth, in her desperation to gain her crown, to Darnley through sexual desire, and then eventually to Bothwell. Elizabeth valued and conserved the sacred power which was vested in her as queen while Mary disregarded her proud responsibility as a monarch of Scotland and delegated the authority awarded her to unworthy and self-seeking relations.
Randolph wrote to Leicester in saddened disbelief as to how Darnley’s recent elevation had gone to his head, and how Mary’s besotted love for him had debased her legitimate authority:
[Darnley’s] words to all men against whom he conceiveth any displeasure, how unjust soever it be, are so proud and spiteful, that rather he seemeth a monarch of the world than he not long since we have seen and known as Lord Darnley … No man pleaseth [Mary] that contenteth not him, and what may I say more. She hath given over unto him her whole will, to be ruled and guided as himself best liketh.13
As she grew increasingly impervious to cautionary counsel and obstinate in pursuing her own desires, the Queen of Scots became more headstrong, intent on impulsive unilateral action instead of diplomacy, preferring the sudden plunge rather than the long plan.
To the dismay of those who had striven for a closer relationship with England, Mary acted fast to punish one of the main architects of Scottish foreign policy, her once favoured half-brother. Moray had been adamantly opposed to Mary’s marriage to Darnley and alarmed at what appeared to be her closer relations with France and Spain. He had been mustering support from other disaffected earls, amongst them Châtelherault and Argyll. On 6 August he was ‘put to the horn’,* outlawed, his lands confiscated. Other rebellious noblemen of his party were ordered to confine themselves to the north, although few obeyed, but they retreated to their castles and strongholds uncertain as to what lay in store. A majority of Mary’s noblemen, however, including many of her leading Protestant lords, remained at this point still loyal. Despite her avowed intent to the pope and other Catholic powers that she intended to restore the true religion, Mary continued to reaffirm her tolerance towards her Protestant subjects and her acceptance of the new reformed religion as the religion of Scotland.
Elizabeth, however, was disconcerted both personally and politically by the turn of the tide in Scotland. She dispatched John Tamworth, a member of her Privy Council, with a strongly worded admonition for Mary about ‘her proceedings of late very strange, not only towards us but also her own subjects’.14 But Tamworth and his mistress Elizabeth were unprepared for the newly emboldened Mary. She was no longer willing to be, or feign to be, subservient to Elizabeth. In their conversations, in which Elizabeth had authorized veiled threats to be used should Mary not reconcile herself with Moray and assure the safety of the Protestant religion, Tamworth was taken aback by her vehemence: ‘I have had by the way, “some sharpe wordes that bytethe the quicke,”’ he wrote, ‘I find her marvellous “stowte” [unyielding] and such one as I could not have believ
ed.’15
He was certain that Mary disliked Moray and his fellow rebellious Protestant lords so fervently that there was little chance of an amicable outcome; this animosity, he believed, was extended to Elizabeth herself: ‘so far as I can perceive, [Mary] “as mortally hatethe the Quenes majestie as she dothe them [her rebel lords]”’.16 Certainly Mary’s reply to Elizabeth’s disapproving letter struck a completely new tone in its assertiveness and defiance. She asked that her ‘gud suster’ should not meddle in her affairs, just as she had refrained from meddling in Elizabeth’s, even though there was every reason to do so, as she tartly pointed out, with the continued imprisonment in England of her mother-in-law, Margaret, Countess of Lennox.
Once more distressed Scottish Protestants were looking to Elizabeth for armed support to safeguard their religious and personal interests against Mary: ‘they fear the overthrow of religion, the breach of amity with the Queen’s Majesty [Elizabeth], destruction of as many of the nobility as [Mary] hath misliking of, or that [Darnley] pick a quarrel unto’. Randolph was in despair, urging Elizabeth to act; a small force he believed would mean ‘she may shortly do with this Queen and country as she will’. In a blatant attempt to rouse Elizabeth through sisterly rivalry, he wrote that in a similar situation, the Queen of Scots ‘wolde leave nothynge unattemptede’.17