Knox had helped more than any man to put James’ party in power, but was powerless to direct it when there. The ministers were poorer under a Protestant Regent than they had been under a Catholic Queen. The nobles plundered the Church livings and threatened to desert it if they did not get their way. Years of civil war, and its resulting famine and then plague, made a desert for many miles round Edinburgh. The substantial citizens that had formed Knox’s congregation had to evacuate the city, their houses were wrecked, their trades ruined. It was, as the English Envoy, Lord Hunsdon, observed, ‘a pleasant and profitable time for murderers, thieves, and such as live only by the spoils of true men’.
‘Extreme misery’ – ‘this desolation’ – was Knox’s description of his victory. The last years of his life were soured not only by the public ruin and attempts on his life (an assassin’s bullet was fired through his study window), but by the personal attacks of his former friends; many of them turned against him, accused him of cowardice, threatening him with public ignominy at the Kirk Assembly, ‘providing he be not fugitive according to his accustomed manner’; of treachery in calling in the English troops ‘against his own native country and the liberty thereof’; of blasphemy in speaking of himself as God, and assuming powers of damnation greater than any claimed by a mediaeval Pope.
His cry of misery was such as all her twenty years of imprisonment, and final condemnation to a horrible death, were never able to wring from his victim, Mary. Indignation at her wrongs she showed, and violently; but she never descended to her victor’s level of self-pity.
Both she and Bothwell fought as long as they had life and senses. Years of imprisonment could not tame their spirit. They met death unconquered.
The same fate fell on them both that summer. Freedom ended for them both then, and all that was of their life, living – except the hope of it again.
Each had one more flight into free adventure to make, but apart from each other. Together, each flight might well have won success.
Bothwell’s lasted till the end of that summer. During that time he made desperate efforts to rescue the Queen, but he had not calculated for such instant and extreme treachery as the lords showed. By hurrying her the next night to an island fortress in the middle of a lake, they secured her from even his daring ingenuity. The other bad surprise for him was the helplessness of Gordon, who had suffered some sort of cerebral stroke, of the same nature as that which had killed his father. He recovered, but he was never again the same man, though it took his friend long to recognise it.
Bothwell had left Dunbar secretly in a fishing-boat and sailed up the Firth of Forth under cover of darkness; within a week of Carberry he rallied more than fifty names of note with their retainers to his side, for now at last they saw the issue clearly. They were not being asked to fight, as they had thought, ‘to make James Hepburn King’, but to save the Queen. But what they could have done easily before was now too late to do. Her jailers let them know that if any attempt were made at her rescue, then she would most certainly die. This threat of her assassination in prison tied the hands of Bothwell and the loyalists; his enemies’ next moves separated them from him. Alarmed at the success he had already made in his campaign, the revolutionary Government now concentrated the whole force of the law and the Kirk against him.
He was outlawed; along with ‘thieves, foreigners and wolves’, for the crime of killing the King and ‘making the Queen promise to marry him, for fear of her life’. This was a remarkable charge, as it flatly contradicted the evidence of collusive abduction in the Casket Letters, which had been ‘discovered’ ten days previously by the tortured tailor. They were, however, not yet ready for publication – nor ever were, except in ‘translations’.
A reward of a thousand crowns was offered for Bothwell’s capture, and penalties of death and torture to all who helped him in any way; the continual spectacle of his followers’ mangled limbs issuing in baskets’ from the Tolbooth pointed the warning example. The Lowland lords, even when they remained loyal to Mary, feared to be associated with a man so interdicted; with their retainers, that fear was now being fanned to superstitious terror by threats of God’s judgement on the country hissed out from Knox’s pulpit.
Bothwell went north to Gordon and succeeded at first in stirring him to interest in his plan to raise a force of Highlanders to make a secret march to the Queen’s rescue. But it was no use; Gordon was too ill a man, and soon sank back into the lethargy of his fatalism.
His sister the Lady Jean was now a bosom friend of Lady Agnes, the Lord James’ ‘long love’. Their tenacity must have been a link in common; both loved and lived long; Jean secured her first love, Sandy Ogilvie of Boyne, many years later as a third husband, and outlived him as well as everybody else in this story. Even as Agnes refused to part with the Queen’s jewels she had embezzled, so Jean contrived to keep the castle and lands of Crichton, and its charter-chest, through two successive marriages; kept also, in secret, the Dispensation that would iliegitimatize any child of Mary’s by Bothwell, not only for the eighty-four years of her life, but for three centuries after her death. Her care was wasted. There was no child.
At the end of July, Mary’s doctor recorded her miscarriage at Loch Leven of twins not quite three months gone. Those children that should have been so magnificent, the result of his vigour and her fineness, were destroyed by her terrible experiences before they came to birth. Her only child was that weak-legged abnormal-looking boy by the degenerate Darnley, a changeling who, by some queer anomaly of fate, lived to inherit not only the Crown of his mother’s enemy, Elizabeth, but also far more of her qualities, her caution, patience, and love of the crooked and devious ways of diplomacy, than any of his mother’s.
Bothwell still had no doubt that he would win Mary to him again; no doubt but that they would have other children together, would together rule their country – or another.
He now thought seriously of that wild fancy of hers on their last ride to Dunbar, that they should ‘make another kingdom’, an empire of the waves. If he set out to raise something of a fleet, he could scour the seas and get help for the Queen from Sweden or Denmark, until he was strong enough to come down upon Scotland, effect her rescue, and reconquer the country from the coast inwards, as his Viking ancestors had done centuries ago. His hereditary office of Lord High Admiral of Scotland gave him standing among sailors and even pirates; his new titles, but also hereditary in the past, of Duke of Orkney and the Shetland Isles, would have more weight with those remote islanders than his outlawry by the rebel lords; he should have a good chance to recruit his sailors from among their seafaring folk and make use of their harbours. He was in close touch too with the fishermen along the East Coast and persona grata with that queer secret brotherhood of theirs, the Free Fishers, invaluable for taking messages along the seaways of Europe.
He stayed with his great-uncle Patrick, the shocking old Bishop of Spynie, while perfecting these plans. This disgraceful old man was now over eighty and looked like a eupeptic white walrus with his enormous snowy moustache and rosy cheeks; his little blue eyes, though sunk in fat, twinkled with unregenerate vitality. He had always felt a proud affection for his young rascal of a great-nephew, which his latest exploits in royal murder and rape had rather increased; when Bothwell had been ruined and imprisoned five years before, he had done his best to help him, and was eager to do so now, quite undeterred by the Government’s command in consequence to his tenants, forbidding them to pay their rents.
But his sins had had awkward consequences for his great-nephew, in the shape of rather more than a dozen bastards, most of them jealous of their encroaching cousin. With surprising lack of invention the Bishop had not found enough names to go round, or else he forgot the ones he had baptized before, and so Bothwell was confronted with three angry Patricks, two brace of Johns and Agneses, three Janets, three Adams, and a George. George and two of the Patricks took active measures and plotted together with the Captain of the garrison and an
English spy to murder Bothwell. Lethington gave hearty encouragement to the scheme, and even the correct Sir Nicholas Throckmorton showed a cautious interest in it, but disapproved of the plotters’ gratuitous suggestion that while they were about it they might as well murder ‘the ould busshope’ too. But the only man killed was George, for Bothwell and his followers put up a fierce fight, drove his attackers out of the Castle, and replaced the garrison with his own men. This hurt his greatuncle’s feelings, since he did not know of the intention against his own life harboured by his unnatural son.
Bothwell felt that he might have outstayed his welcome. Fortunately he was now ready to leave, having collected five small ships and three hundred men to man them – good enough for a beginning. One of the ships he sent down the coast to collect munitions and stores from Dunbar, and take letters to his friends in the South; but the captain, Jock Hepburn, who had pulled him back from the explosion at Kirk o’ Field, was caught and executed. Only one regret could he be made to utter. ‘I had ships provided,’ he said on the scaffold, where so many fellow-victims had sobbed and moaned their remorse, ‘but I could not escape.’
The news gave a savage zest to Bothwell’s piracy of a Scots vessel carrying provisions of food for the Lord James; he ‘masterfully and violently’ seized it and its gear. Two more he chartered in proper legal fashion from their owners, a couple of Hanseatic merchants; one, the Pelican, from Bremen, he saw lading fish at Sumburgh Head and liked, a tall two-masted ship, well furnished with anti-pirate guns. He now had seven ships and got them over safely to the Orkneys, though the Government had detailed some of their fleet to intercept him, and tried to forestall him by warning the islanders against him. In spite of that, they gave him a warm welcome, and ‘began to lean on him’. His plan, only three weeks old, and interrupted by the domestic troubles at Spynie, was already maturing into a success that was badly alarming his enemies. But they held one trump card; Sir James Balfour’s brother, Gilbert, the sinister owner of the two Provosts’ houses at Kirk o’ Field, was sheriff of the Islands and held Kirkwall Castle. He temporized until he could get into touch with the Government and make his terms with them, then fired the Castle guns on the ships lying in the harbour. It looked as though wherever he went in Scotland, Bothwell would find a Balfour brother in the key position of a castle and guns.
His small ships were not strong enough to attack a fortress; he led them out of range of the guns in Scapa Flow and then to the Shetlands. There, as in the Orkneys, he was greeted as the feudal and hereditary overlord; Oliver Sinclair, the ruler or Foude, his mother’s kinsman, was in direct descent, as was Bothwell himself, from the royal house of the St Clairs, Dukes of Normandy, who were independent sovereigns of these islands long before the later Bastard of Normandy conquered England. The princely cousins made friends as they walked along the shore of those far Northern seas and discussed their plans for a maritime hegemony, recruited from adventurers in every ocean. It was by no means impossible at that date.
Pirates would be their enemies’ name for them, no doubt, but the dividing line between piracy and respectable naval enterprise was still rather more vague than that between soldiers and sailors; certainly the English captains that had begun to be the terror of the Spanish traders were called pirates in all countries but their own. The ethics of their case did not worry James Hepburn; all his concern was to get bigger and better fighting ships, and shock troops aboard them, since the boats he had already collected were too small and frail, and slow sailers at that, to meet any serious naval engagement. But he had great hopes of getting what he wanted in Denmark and Norway.
A report reached them that the Lord James had returned to Scotland. News travelled slowly to these distant islands; they could not know that James had not only already secured the Regency, but had employed a fleet of the combined naval forces of Leith and Dundee to kill or capture those ‘notorious and manifest pirates’, Bothwell and his followers, with the emphasis on the killing rather than capturing. Bothwell alive and talking at his trial would be as dangerous as at large.
Kirkaldy of Grange eagerly volunteered to lead the expedition, certain that the notorious pirate ‘shall either carry me with him or else I shall bring him dead or quick to Edinburgh’. With him went ‘the sorcerer of the Orcades’, that same sailor Bishop of Orkney who had married them (and managed to insert references to the ‘past evil living’ of the bridegroom in his wedding sermon); he now sided openly with his enemies, confident, as were Grange and Lethington and most others, that this was the last of Bothwell. Only James with his usual caution remarked dampingly, ‘We cannot bargain for the bear’s skin until we catch him.’
The first Bothwell heard of the fleet’s setting out was as he sat at mid-day dinner with the Foude, when one of his men dashed in breathless with the news that at least eight great ships, heavily armed, had been sighted closing in on Bressay Sound where four of Bothwell’s ships lay at anchor. The sailors had acted instantly, knowing they had no chance against such a war fleet, had cut their cables and run up the channel northwards, that is, three of the ships had done so, but the Swan (rechristened the Lame Duck by the sailors) had been abandoned, since she was too slow to have any chance of escape.
‘I’ll not leave one ship behind,’ Bothwell roared as he leaped up from the table and dashed down to the harbour, collected the Swan’s captain and some of her crew and got them aboard with him on what looked like a suicide cruise. The other three ships were well ahead, but the Swan with her delayed start had the pursuers hot on her heels and was losing ground steadily all the way up the Sound. Soon the Unicorn, the flagship of the Scottish fleet, was so near that they could see who was on board, and with a yell of joy Bothwell recognised Kirkaldy of Grange and the turncoat Bishop of Orkney. They answered him with triumphant shouts, and certainly there seemed no cause for joy on board the Lame Duck, now all but overtaken by her foes. But Bothwell had been with her captain over these waters before and knew what he wanted. He got him to take the ship closer into the rocky shore, where most of the bigger ships dared not venture. Only Grange, no seaman, and hot on the chase, insisted on his flagship following close.
The Lame Duck with consummate seamanship ran before the wind through the breaking seas, shipping it green all over the decks, and decoyed the Unicorn on to a sunken rock over which she herself was just able to pass. Those on board could hear her keel grating on the rock, and there was a ghastly instant when it seemed as though she would stick there as a stationary mark for the Unicorn’s guns. But the captain had gauged the shallowness of her draught correctly and she plunged on to safety, came about to the wind and gained the deeps, the water hissing along the gunwale. But the Unicorn, following close, struck dead on the rock. There was a horrible rending sound, the rough water poured in through the hole, the ship lurched, staggered and began to sink fast.
Bothwell roared into the wind to Grange as he leaned over the gunwale, ‘Here’s your safeguard to the Queen, you perjured swine! Take your pork into the pickle tub!’
Some of the sailors were already struggling in the brine, but others had managed to lower the long-boat and were crowding into it, with Grange among them; they fought each other shamelessly, and the Bishop, crowded out, took a flying leap, robes, breastplate and all, from the sinking ship on to a rock and clung there, shrieking to be picked up. His sailors paid no heed to him and were rowing straight past him, when with another magnificent leap he fell plump into the middle of the crowded boat, on top of all the shouting, cursing men, and very nearly upset it. Bothwell’s fugitive crew cheered derisively as they sailed away.
‘The sea won’t cheat the gallows of you,’ they yelled.
Bothwell’s manoeuvre had held up the whole pursuit, for Grange’s other ships had to stop and pick up the survivors, and Bothwell’s all got clear away to Unst, the most northerly of the islands.
But he was certain there would be more fighting, and at once, and sent back one of his ships to Scalloway to fetch a detachment t
hat there had been no time to pick up on his flight. Sure enough, up came Grange’s ships again, though without Grange or the Bishop, for their taste of the bear’s claws had been too much for them. They preferred to stay on dry land with an armed force and hunt up and take back for lingering execution any fugitives of Bothwell’s crews who had not been able to join their ships in time, and were easy prey on an island.
In charge of the pursuit on water was yet another candidate for the unfought duel at Carberry, anxious to make up at sea for what they had failed to do on land, James Murray of Purdovis, now laird of Tullibardine. He attacked Bothwell’s ships off Unst, and for three hours the three little ships fought a running fight, working out to sea all the time, and with the Lame Duck lagging, lagging, lagging all the way. At last she fell to Tullibardine.
Still the detachment from Scalloway had not come up, and still Bothwell fought on, two small ships against seven far bigger and stronger armed, till the Pelican, where he was now aboard, had her mainmast shot right away.
It looked like the end, clean and fairly quick in those long ice-green waves. But just when all seemed over, a south-westerly squall surged up, and Bothwell had one more chance to show his seamanship. He took it superbly, extricated his two battered hulks and ran before the wind, leading Tullibardine for sixty miles on their heels before the laird had to give up the chase to the better sailors.
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