Deadlier Than the Male

by Douglas Skelton

  On 19 June 1566, the Stuart claim to the throne of England was strengthened by the addition of one baby boy, the sixth in the Stuart line to be named James. On hearing the news, Elizabeth made the famous statement, ‘The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son and I am of but barren stock.’ The not so proud father had, once again, taken the huff. He still believed the boy was not his but Rizzio's and even the queen's assurance that the boy had been ‘begotten by none but you’ failed to put his mind at rest. However, although Mary needed his acceptance of the boy to assure the succession, she may have already formulated other plans for her husband, who was feeling increasingly isolated. The surviving nobles involved in the Rizzio plot felt betrayed by him, while Mary's supporters, principally the Lords Huntly and Bothwell, trusted him a little less than they could throw him.

  Bothwell, in particular, was a danger. He was growing closer to the queen than even Rizzio had been. But Bothwell was not as easy a target as the Italian. He was no courtier but a man of action – rough in his manner, quick in his temper and skilful with his sword. When he was wounded during hand-to-hand combat with Border reiver Jock Elliot, Mary rushed from Jedburgh, where she was overseeing a court of justice, to his fortress at Hermitage to consult him on matters of state. The eighty-mile round trip was completed in a single day, which shows how important the Border lord had become to her.

  On the return journey she fell into a marsh, became seriously ill and almost died. Years later, with her life and ambitions in ruins, she looked back on the days during which she had hovered on the edge of life in Jedburgh and wished she had succumbed to the fever.

  Bothwell, steeped in the Border art of feud, was not a man to let Darnley's actions go unpunished. Mary's Stuart blood would not allow her to forgive her husband's treachery or let a continuing threat to the safety of her royal line go unchecked. Divorce was not an option, thanks to her religion, while an annulment may have cast doubt on the legitimacy of her son's birth. Some other means had to be found to counter the threat posed by the queen's preening puppy of a husband. Whether Darnley knew it or not, he was not long for this earth.

  Apologists for Mary say she had no knowledge of the plot supposedly hatched by Bothwell, Huntly and others. Although it is likely that they might have kept certain details from her to provide plausible deniability, it is probable that she knew something was afoot.

  Darnley was still smarting over being cold-shouldered in favour of Bothwell but it did not stop him fornicating his merry way through the bawds and harlots of Edinburgh and Stirling. Finally, in 1567, he came down with a pox although the precise nature of the infection is a mystery. The disease ravaged his face and the vain Darnley took himself off to Glasgow's Lennox Castle, which stood on the site now occupied by the city's Royal Infirmary.

  Mary arrived in the city to visit her ailing husband, possibly staying in Provand's Lordship, the oldest building in the city. She was there to convince Darnley to return to Edinburgh. She told him there were plots against him and he could be protected better there. Darnley, never the sharpest arrow in the quiver, believed her but, with the brutal slaying of Rizzio still fresh in his mind, did not wish to return to Holyrood. For her part, Mary did not want her infant son open to whatever infection was rampaging through his father's body. Instead, Darnley agreed to take up residence at Kirk O’ Field, a house near the city limits, dwarfed by the jagged edge of Salisbury Crags.

  It was here that the royal couple were reconciled. Or so it seemed. As Darnley lay in his sick bed, his face covered by a cloth to hide the hideous eruptions, Mary sat by his side, ministering to him, reading to him, relaying court gossip. Finally, on Sunday 9 February, she attended a wedding at Holyrood but did take the time to visit her husband accompanied by Bothwell, Huntly and other nobles. Decked in their finery, the men threw some dice and made pleasant conversation. But the stakes that night were higher than those on the gaming table. Finally, it came time for them to return to the revelries and Darnley, his face still swathed in the cotton mask, complained bitterly about being deserted. Mary assured him she would be back the following day and gave him a ring as a parting gift.

  At two the following morning, a huge explosion from near the city walls awakened the city. The house at Kirk O’ Field had been demolished after someone had set off a huge store of gunpowder in the basement. Darnley and his valet were dead, their bodies being found a short distance away under a pear tree. Reports suggested they had both been throttled. Perhaps they had been alerted because the gunpowder had been discovered before the fuse was ignited. Perhaps they had tried to get away and been caught in the garden by the assassins. Or, perhaps, by some freak, the explosion had killed them but had left their bodies unmarked and thrown clear of the rubble. The strangulation charge may have then been concocted later.

  Bothwell's name was soon in the frame for the murder but there is no firm evidence linking him with the crime, even though the house belonged to the brother of one of Bothwell's friends. Nor is there any firm evidence linking Mary to her husband's death. Darnley had enemies on all sides and it is possible that one, or more, conspired to rid the country of him and his queen. Perhaps the gunpowder stored in the cellar was supposed to go off when the queen and her supporters were together on the night of the wedding.

  However, only Mary and Bothwell seemed to benefit from Darnley's death. Mary had removed one potential danger to herself and her son and Bothwell was rid of the man who was married to the woman he desired for himself. That Bothwell had some notions regarding the queen there can be no doubt but whether they were of a romantic or a self-serving nature is less clear. Rumours that the two had been lovers were rife and, although Darnley's death did remove one obstacle to their union, it also threw up another one – but one that Mary, in her customary arrogance, ignored.

  After a two-day period of mourning, she and Bothwell left the city and travelled to Seton House where they played golf and organised archery contests. The people, though, were unhappy with the way matters were progressing. Whereas they had formerly taken their young queen to their hearts – with some reservations regarding her religion, certainly – they now turned against her. Knox's accusations over her sexual abandon were being openly repeated in the streets and, in a bid to soothe the affronted morals of the masses, pressure was brought to bear on Mary to instigate some sort of inquiry into Bothwell's alleged complicity in Darnley's murder. Reluctantly, she agreed but, when the time came, Bothwell filled Edinburgh with his own men, no witnesses were called and the swashbuckling Borderer challenged anyone who thought that he was guilty to trial by combat. He was, unsurprisingly, acquitted.

  Bothwell wanted to marry Mary but he had one problem – he already had a wife. However, she was quite happy to be rid of him, filing for divorce on the grounds of a convenient infidelity with a serving lass. But still Mary hesitated. Despite the ever growing tide of public opposition, the way now lay open for Mary Stuart and Bothwell to be together. Finally Bothwell, man of action that he was, took matters into his own hands by apparently abducting her at Bridge of Almond near Edinburgh and carrying her off to the stronghold at Dunbar, the castle to which she and Darnley had fled following Rizzio's murder. How willing Mary was in this turn of events is unknown but she did prevent her own protectors from taking any action. At Dunbar the relationship reached a physical level but whether it was rape or consensual depends on your view of the couple in question. In May 1567, Bothwell obtained his divorce and Mary made him Duke of Orkney. She told her council that she wished no action to be taken against him for the abduction. In fact, she was going to marry him.

  The news shattered what support she had. To begin with, the ceremony was a Protestant one and that angered her own Church. Her allies in France and Spain were also against the match. Bothwell's enemies wanted to separate the couple and the common people still believed they had conspired to murder Darnley. Finally, while the now married couple were at Borthwick Castle, a force of 1000 men arrived to arrest Bothwell. The canny Bo
rderer managed to escape and left Mary to deal with the posse before she slipped past them disguised as a boy. Reunited with her new husband, they took refuge in the all-but-impregnable Dunbar Castle, with which Mary was by now becoming very familiar.

  With her lords forming a confederation and now in open rebellion, Mary and Bothwell raised an army to defend her crown and their marriage. The two forces met at Carberry Hill, near Musselburgh and very close to the site of the battle of Pinkie Cleugh which had led to the child Mary being spirited from the country all those years ago. However, there was to be no blood shed on this occasion. The confederate lords demanded that Mary give Bothwell up to them. Bothwell, as was his habit, challenged anyone, who thought they were hard enough, to single combat but the first challenger to come ahead was dismissed for not being of a lofty enough position to trade blows with the new Duke of Orkney. As the wrangling continued, Mary's army grew bored and began to desert. Finally, Bothwell realised no good was going to come of this continual bickering so he suggested they return to Dunbar. But Mary, who perhaps now saw there was no future with the maverick noble, opted to stay with the confederate lords. Again, it could be argued that the spirit of self-preservation had risen in her breast and she was happy to throw her new lover to the wolves. Or perhaps she felt it advisable that he get away to raise another army. Whatever the case, the lovers were parted on that field and never saw one another again. He went into exile and ended up forgotten, but not gone, in a Norwegian prison, where he eventually succumbed to a gangrenous wound.

  If Mary thought she would fare well with the confederate lords, she was sadly mistaken. By giving herself into their hands, she had effectively destroyed everything for which she had worked – and possibly killed – to keep. She was imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favour of her son, the infant James. Her half-brother Moray, proving to be something of a survivor in Scottish politics, was once again named regent. However, his luck ran out in 1570 when he was shot in the stomach as he rode through Linlithgow.

  But Mary did not submit willingly to her fall from grace. Despite miscarrying twins, her charms proved useful in luring a young man to aid her in a dramatic escape from imprisonment at Loch Leven Castle. She then led her army of loyal Highland supporters against Moray's force at Langside in Glasgow. The resulting defeat forced a despondent Mary to seek refuge with her cousin, Elizabeth, in England. However, suspicion was strong that, not only was she involved in Darnley's murder, she was also at the centre of various plots to take the place of the English queen. Letters had been found, allegedly written by Mary while she was staying in Glasgow, which proved she was involved in the murder plot. The originals were never actually seen – what was produced were transcripts or copies – but the so-called Casket Letters, named after the silver box in which they were found, were generally accepted at the time as proof of her guilt. She had also never renounced her claim to the English throne and more letters were supposedly uncovered, during her nineteen years of captivity, that alleged she was at the centre of rebellious plots. Her attitude at her trial – that she could be judged only by God and not by any court of man – failed to go down well in a court filled with men who thought they were somewhere just below God in the pecking order.

  Elizabeth was not keen to order the death of her cousin – perhaps because she knew some of the evidence was fabricated. Finally, though, she saw to it that the execution warrant was hidden among other innocent papers so it could be signed as if by mistake. The farcical pretence played out, Mary Stuart was beheaded at Fotheringay on 8 February 1587.

  The story of Mary, Queen of Scots, is filled with mysteries. There was so much intrigue but so few records that it is impossible to say with any certainty who was responsible for what. Mary herself cuts a highly romantic figure and, even today, it is easy to dismiss much of what happened as a conspiracy by a male-dominated society. Mary, though, must shoulder much of the blame for the blood spilled during her few years in Scotland. She was arrogant and ambitious. She saw the Scottish crown as third rate compared to those of France and England. She used men just as easily as they were prepared to use her. Despite the change of spelling, she was a Stewart and throughout their history, from their beginnings in Ayrshire to their final days on the throne, the Stewarts put themselves first and everything else second. Nothing was allowed to get in the way of their right to rule – not the people, not the nobles, not religion. Mary often acted solely to protect her own power base and that of her son, who inherited much of his mother's steely determination.

  Or did he? For, according to legend, Mary's son died soon after birth and another child was substituted for him. This baby was the newborn second son of the Countess of Mar, in whose care Mary's infant had been placed while Mary went off to plan her husband's downfall. It is said the adult James VI bore little likeness to his father or even to earlier Stewarts but he did bear a strong resemblance to John, the Second Earl of Mar, with whom he shared a particular bond. Was this a family resemblance and a brotherly bond?

  It is, of course, only legend. But, in 1830, they say, following a fire in the rooms used by Mary in Edinburgh Castle, a small coffin was found behind a wall. There were bones inside the tiny casket – the bones of a child only one or two months old. And those bones were wrapped in rich silk. And that rich silk was embroidered with a letter, which was either a J or an I – I being used in Latin for J.

  Was this the final resting-place of Mary's boy child who had died in infancy? And did a changeling take his place on the throne of Scotland and later England? If so, then James V's prediction that the Stewarts’ reign ‘cam wi’ a lass and will gang wi’ a lass’ proved correct.

  OFF WITH THEIR HEADS

  Scottish justice – and its brother-in-law, the Kirk – favoured a number of ways to punish the wicked. Some of them caused little more than embarrassment and discomfort. Others were devised to cause tremendous agony and disfigurement. Death, naturally, was the final solution.

  For relatively minor transgressions, men and women could be forced to do penance either by sitting on the ‘cutty’ or repentance stool or by standing on the pillar or raised platform, in front of the entire congregation. They might also be chained in the ‘jougs’, manacles set in the wall beside the main church door, or – in the case of nagging, gossiping or slanderous women – be forced to wear the ‘branks’ or the scold's bridle. This was a metal headpiece with a spiked tongue that was thrust into the mouth to prevent speech.

  For more serious offences there was a variety of punishments to hand. Thieves could be branded with the letters T or M (for Malefactor). In 1701, a Dumfries woman, Elspeth Rule, was burned on the cheek and the branding iron was so hot that smoke blew out from the inside of her mouth. Habitual offenders, such as Anne Harris of Inveraray in the early eighteenth century, often had been branded so frequently that there was very little unmarked flesh on their faces and hands where new letters could be burned. Other punishments, even for comparatively minor offences, included: holes being bored in tongues; hands and ears being lopped off; and the guilty being whipped, tortured, consigned to slavery or banished.

  Death sentences could also be dished out for the pettiest of crimes and, again, there was a host of ways to carry them out. Hanging was always a favourite (see ‘Platform Parties’, pp. 141–5). Women could be drowned for theft or witchcraft although the favoured punishment for the latter was burning at the stake. During the witch craze, that began in the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots and peaked while her son was on the throne, an incredible number of women were first ‘wirreit’ – strangled whilst at the stake – then burned in the name of Christ. But the small mercy of being throttled was a stage that was sometimes dispensed with and the accused ‘brunt quick’ (burnt alive). Lady Jane Douglas suffered this fate in 1535 after being accused, by her former brother-in-law, of conspiring to murder James V. She was, of course, innocent but that did not stop the authorities from stretching her on the rack to force a confession and then taking her to Edinburgh's
Castle Hill, the favoured site for such roastings. There she was tied to a stake, surrounded by barrels of tar and burned.

  Some prisoners, usually nobles, preferred being beheaded to being turned off the gallows and slowly throttled on the end of a rope or being strangled and then burned. If they had to go, then beheading was the way. Messy it may have been but it was a much more dignified way to go. For such dispatches, a sword was used, wielded by the common executioner who, like as not, was blind drunk, having received part of his fee in ale. Fairly often the execution was botched, sometimes multiple strokes being necessary to separate the head from the body. Even in a time when barbarity was not just common but was actually a much sought-after form of entertainment, these badly executed events caused distress among the good people of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Stirling. They did not mind satisfying their morbid curiosity by watching someone die a swift death but they did not want to lose a perfectly good breakfast, thank you very much, by seeing it turn into a bloodbath.

  As nothing could be done about the blood, the only thing the authorities could address was the inefficiency of the swordsman. It was decided that a new way of head-lopping had to be found – something more efficient, more scientific. According to legend, it was James Douglas, Earl of Morton, who brought back the idea of a beheading machine, rather like the one used in the Yorkshire town of Halifax. The Halifax Gibbet was a notorious device which prompted beggars to intone, ‘From Hull, Hell and Halifax, the good Lord deliver us.’ It stood as a permanent fixture on Gibbet Hill and was a very busy machine indeed for, during the sixteenth century, when it was used, people could be put to death just for stealing a loaf of bread. Exactly when – or even if – the man who later became Regent Morton brought back the idea of such a beheading device is unclear. What is certain, though – and contrary to the popular legend – is that he was not the first to succumb to the Scottish version. That honour fell to Tom Scott, executed for his involvement in Rizzio's murder (see p. 35). Jealous rivals, however, implicated Morton in the murders of both David Rizzio and Lord Henry Darnley, and James VI was happy to believe that the man who played regent during his early years was involved in the death of the father he never knew. After a whirlwind trial, with evidence provided by servants tortured into saying what the prosecution wanted, on 2 June 1581 Morton was led to the device he was credited with bringing to Scotland.