The power held by Bothwell was that of a victorious dictator on the morning after his coup d’état. He had reduced Mary to the position of puppet queen and she had acquiesced; the nobility, still amazed by his actions, were supporting him; he had used a servile legal process to clear himself of all illegalities and the inevitable backlash had not yet begun. His next move had to be to codify his support, which he made immediately on his return to Holyrood after the parliament.
On the evening of 19 April, Bothwell hosted a dinner at Ainslie’s Tavern close by the palace, attended by Argyll, Huntly, Cassilis, Morton, Sutherland, Rothes, Glencairn and Caithness, among others, as guests. An official record of this meeting gives Moray as a participant, but since he was abroad this is impossible; he had left Scotland ‘as out of discontent’ and had left Morton, a man ‘who knew well enough how to manage the business, for he was Moray’s second self’ in his place. Eglinton, who was present, ‘slipped away’ before signing the now inevitable bond. The signatories vowed to defend Bothwell’s innocence and to support his marriage to Mary – ‘if it should please her’.
Bothwell had, it seemed, ticked a very important box, but next day Kirkcaldy of Grange wrote to Bedford suggesting that support by Elizabeth for the pursuit of the murderers would win the hearts of all Scots. He also reported that Mary was now so infatuated with Bothwell that ‘she care[d] not to lose France, England and her own country for him and [would] go to the world’s end in a white petticoat ere she [left] him’. This was schoolgirl rhetoric even for an emotionally immature 24-year-old and contrasts interestingly with Elizabeth’s claim that if she were cast out of her realm alone and in her petticoat she would, none the less, prosper.
Mary was clearly not prospering: her bodyguard, on the point of mutiny, demanded their back pay. Bothwell started to solve the problem in his own particular way by seizing the spokesman by the throat and drawing his dagger, but the man was rescued and Mary intervened immediately, paying the guards 400 crowns. Lethington, clearly prompted by Bothwell, implored Mary to marry for the stability of the kingdom, but she refused the plea. Given the history of her first two marriages this, at least, was sensible. Next day she left for Stirling to see her son, and Bothwell announced that he was gathering his forces to ride to Liddesdale. No one believed this and the common rumour was that he would seize the queen and take her to Dunbar. Meanwhile, Cecil wrote one of his many memoranda to himself to remind Elizabeth to seek out the murderers, to note that Mary’s complicity in the murder was still widely believed, and to use all means to prevent her marriage to Bothwell.
Having seen that the infant James was fit and well, Mary left him with the Earl and Countess of Mar. Although she did not know it, this was to be the last time she would see her son. Mary set out with Lethington, Melville, Huntly and her normal armed bodyguard, resting overnight at Linlithgow. A few miles west of Edinburgh, where the Gogar Burn joins the River Almond at the village of Cramond, the royal party, having just been ferried across, were reassembling themselves when Bothwell sprang an ambush with 800 armed men. Mary’s guards, hopelessly outnumbered, drew their swords, but she restrained them, saying that she would not have blood shed on her behalf. Bothwell took her bridle and told her there were hostile elements awaiting her in Edinburgh; he then escorted her by way of Granton and Leith to ‘safety’ in his castle at Dunbar, where the gates were locked on the entire royal party, including Lethington and Melville. The Diurnal reported, ‘The Earl of Bothwell, being well accompanied, ravished the queen and took her that same night to his castle of Dunbar (not against her will).’ Captain Blackadder, the nocturnal reveller and now one of Bothwell’s men, alleged to Melville that the charade had been mounted with the queen’s consent.
In fact, Mary did despatch a messenger to Edinburgh to mount a rescue, but he was a messenger who had just heard his queen order that no violence should be used, and his efforts were formal rather than effective. Bothwell knew that his star was only in the ascendant as long as he held the reins of power and that Mary was ‘a feather for each wind that blows’. She had resisted Lethington’s plea to marry and he had therefore decided to take the initiative by the means best suited to a Border bandit – kidnap. Mary had been genuinely taken by surprise but she had seen maidens being rescued and carried off by their knights from the terraces of Chambord and here, perhaps, at last was her Amadis. However, Bothwell’s role as a knight in shining armour was more than a little tarnished.
The common presumption is that Bothwell’s first action on his return to Dunbar was to rape Mary, but the Diurnal says quite precisely that he ‘ravished her and took her to his castle’. Now, it is impossible that he raped her in front of the entire party at Cramond, but in the sixteenth century to ‘ravish’ simply meant to ‘seize’, and Mary, her head spinning with the romance of it all, may have consented easily to sexual intercourse at Dunbar. Whatever occurred, by the end of that month Mary was pregnant by Bothwell.
With Mary safely in Dunbar his next move was to marry her. Since she had been dishonoured by him she would have had no choice, but first he had to divorce Lady Jean Gordon. He rode to Edinburgh on 26 April to file for a divorce. With admirable thoroughness Bothwell cited his illicit rendezvous with Bessie Crawford in the church tower at Haddington as evidence of adultery, while at the same time lodging a request for an annulment on the grounds of consanguinity before the court of the Archbishop of St Andrews. Thus his divorce would have legality in both civil and canon law. No one contested the divorce and the decree annulling the marriage was granted on 7 May. The long-term effect of this cynical act would be to disengage Huntly, Lady Jean’s brother, from Bothwell’s supporters. Oddly enough, the Catholic Bishop of Ross, a one-time ally of the Huntlies, proved his skill as a diplomat by managing to remain a friend of Bothwell’s, possibly since he was reputedly able to out-drink the Border lord.
On the day before the divorce was granted, Bothwell was confident enough of his prize to return with Mary to Edinburgh. Accompanied by Lethington and the still-faithful Huntly, he entered by the West Port, rode through the Grassmarket and then up to the High Street and the castle. It was a shorter route and exposed the couple to less risk of public disapproval. This was a far cry from the entrées joyeuses of the past: with Bothwell now on foot leading Mary’s horse by the bridle, she re-entered her capital more as a captive than as a sovereign queen. Bothwell had, however, disarmed his men and the royal escort looked comparatively peaceable. Bothwell immediately asked John Craig, as minister of St Giles, to declare the banns of marriage, which Craig refused to do, declaring in an open sermon that the marriage was adulterous and that Mary had been taken by force. Typically, Bothwell demanded that the town council hang the minister forthwith and the justice-clerk appeared with a letter from Mary declaring that she was ‘neither ravished nor detained in captivity’. Craig, under protest, did reluctantly call the banns and on 12 May Mary declared to the Privy Council, ‘[she] stands content with the said earl and has forgiven him, all hatred conceived by her majesty for the taking and imprisoning of her at the time foresaid’.
Mary created Bothwell Duke of Orkney, reputedly placing the coronet on his head herself, and on 15 May the couple were married in the chapel at Holyrood by the Bishop of Orkney, Adam Bothwell, according to the Protestant rite, at ten o’clock in the evening with ‘neither pleasure nor pastime’. One contemporary said that the marriage was ‘huddled up in an unorderly way’. Lord Herries had begged her not to marry Bothwell, and du Croc warned her that the deed would lose her the friendship of France. Ironically, of Mary’s first two marriages, one had been entirely dynastic and the other impetuous, if necessary for the continuation of the royal line, but both were celebrated with the utmost formal pomp. However, this third marriage at least appeared to be for her a romantic match and was, by contrast, a rather shoddy affair. She had been widowed by her first bridegroom, her second husband had been murdered only three months previously, and only fifteen months had passed since she herself had
given Lady Jean Gordon a cloth-of-silver wedding dress for her marriage to Bothwell. Her careful Guise education had been of no use to her, and now she had isolated herself from even those of the Scots nobility who were still loyal. The popular view was made clear when placards appeared on the gates of Holyrood, now quoting Ovid: ‘Mense malas maio nubere vulgus ait’ (‘As is common said, none but harlots marry in May’). David Hume, in his History of England, tells us that ‘the Scots who resided abroad, met with such reproaches that they durst nowhere appear in public’. Mary wrote to Elizabeth, ‘the factions and conspiracies that of long time continued herein, which, occurring so frequently had already in a manner so wearied and broken us that we ourselves were not able of any long continuance to sustain the pain and travail in our own person’. She does not declare Bothwell innocent, only that ‘he was acquitted by our laws’. Elizabeth described her marriage ‘hard to be digested by her or any other monarch’.
Following her abduction the enormity of her situation had started to be felt almost at once. On 1 May in Stirling a confederation of the nobility was formed to ‘pursue the Queen’s liberty, preserve the prince from his enemies in Mar’s keeping, and purge the realm of the detestable murder of our king’. In hard political terms, what this meant was that the upstart Bothwell had become far too big for his boots and had to be cut down to size. This marked a reversal in the attitude of the nobility who had enthusiastically signed the Ainslie Tavern Bond, and demonstrates how quickly Bothwell had achieved his new status, with only one more step remaining between him and the crown.
Since the death of James V, Scotland had been ruled first by governors, then a queen regent, who was followed in turn by a French-educated girl who had imposed no firm government over the country. Now, with Prince James safely in their grasp under the governorship of the Earl of Mar, the nobility prepared themselves again for what had been commonplace over the last 130 years – a royal minority and a regency. Among others, the proposers of this action were Argyll, Atholl, Morton and Mar, three of whom had been signatories of the Craigmillar Bond, and they were to be joined in this new confederation by the earls of Glencairn, Cassilis, Eglinton, the new Earl of Ruthven and eleven others. With Châtelherault and Moray abroad, this confederacy of the nobility almost exactly mirrored those who had opposed Mary’s marriage to Darnley during the Chase-about Raid.
They felt confident enough, while at Stirling, to commission a masque, ‘The Murder of Darnley and the Fate of Bothwell’, at the end of which the boy playing Bothwell was hanged amid uproarious applause. The hanging was slightly over-realistic and some anxious time elapsed before the boy actor recovered. Now the signatories departed to their own lands to raise levies.
Mary, who had never previously needed to raise an army, and whose income from the ‘thirds’ precluded such expenditure, had to face the first serious shortage of money in her reign. She had only raised taxes once before – to pay for her son’s baptism. Now, she sold off plate and jewels and even tried to melt down Elizabeth’s christening present of a gold font to mint coinage to pay her troops. The font was so large that it proved impossible to melt and Mary merely managed to deface the gift.
Mary’s romantic notions were rapidly disappearing as her relationship with Bothwell disintegrated. She seemed unaware that his only previous female relationships had consisted of sexual conquest followed by virtual abandonment, and that he made no secret of his infidelities – ‘there has been no end of Mary’s tears and lamentations’. His divorced wife, Jean Gordon, still lived in Crichton Castle and was regularly visited by him, and du Croc reported that the earl still regarded Jean as his spouse, and the queen as a kind of legal concubine. The normal rules of society did not apply to Bothwell. His jealousy of Mary, his latest possession, was constant and she was allowed no male contact, being the victim of censure for the comparatively slight gesture of giving a horse to the unstable Earl of Arran. Bothwell also removed her female servants and replaced them with his own trusted retainers to keep her under constant watch. The depth of her unhappiness with the plight she had brought upon herself can be judged by her saying to du Croc on her wedding day that she ‘wanted only death’, and on another occasion, in the presence of Melville, asking for a knife to stab herself, ‘Or else I shall drown myself!’ This remark betrayed no real intention of suicide but was an impulsive cry of desperation which clearly showed the extent of her unhappiness. Extraordinarily, the once-loathed Darnley was now, on a placard, referred to as ‘Gentle Henry’, and when Mary was seen by some Edinburgh housewives they called out, ‘God save your grace’, but added, ‘if you be guiltless of the king’s death.’ A ballad on the death of Darnley circulated beginning with the lines, ‘Adieu, all gladness, sport and play, / Adieu, farewell both night and day.’ Distance was lending enchantment to his memory.
In public, Mary tried to maintain a pretence of normality, riding with Bothwell and running at the ring together with him. Bothwell totally ignored court protocol, appearing in Mary’s presence bareheaded, forcing her to try to make a joke of it by taking his cap and putting it on his head herself. He issued proclamations as if he were already either king or protector. Mary, needless to say, obediently trotted along, issuing yet another proclamation defending the Reformed religion, but courtiers noticed a coarsening in her language, echoing her normally foul-mouthed husband. Mary was rude about the lords: ‘Atholl is but feeble, for Argyll, I know well how to stop his mouth, as for Morton, his boots are but new pulled off and still soiled, he shall be sent back to his old quarters’, that is to say, back to exile.
The court itself was shorn of all gaiety. There were far fewer servants and many more soldiers, with Lethington and Huntly being the only advisers still loyal to Mary. In fact, Huntly was now an extremely reluctant ally of Bothwell’s since the latter’s cynical divorce from Huntly’s sister, and he asked for permission to leave the court. Mary refused, telling him that she knew he was turning against her, as had his father at the Battle of Corrichie. This was not only petulant but also directly insolent and personally hurtful, and resulted in Huntly promptly defecting with his supporters to the safety of Edinburgh Castle. The castle was under the control of Sir James Balfour, who had secretly changed sides without the knowledge of Bothwell. Lethington felt his life was under threat from Bothwell, eventually quitting the court for the circle of the Confederate Lords and the King’s Party. With these defections there was no longer any effective government in Scotland apart from that of Bothwell, who was seen as a usurper supported by his somnambulant wife.
The Lords made their first move to confront Mary and Bothwell while they were at Borthwick Castle, twelve miles south of Edinburgh. The hostile forces arrived on the night of 10 June and Bothwell, with his usual regard for his own welfare, escaped, leaving Mary to confront the Lords, who were now openly abusive outside the castle walls. On the next night Mary escaped in male disguise, riding astride on a servant’s horse, and joined Bothwell at three in the morning. They then took refuge in Dunbar, while Bothwell hastily assembled an army: defensive action was not his kind of warfare.
On the following day the Privy Council declared that since Mary was a prisoner she could not govern, and therefore, for the sake of the nation, all means must be used to free her. The council went on to accuse Bothwell openly of murder, illegal marriage and ‘ravishing and invading the princess’s body’, and called the burgesses to arms on three hours’ notice. Sir William Drury reported to Cecil that even ‘If there were no other quarrel or cause of choler than the evil speech that passed at Borthwick, it is like enough to cause the shedding of blood.’ He was right.
The Privy Council on the same day accused Bothwell of having ‘put violent hands on [Mary], and that he had seduced [her] into an unhonest marriage and murdered Darnley’, whereupon the Lords occupied Edinburgh and summoned whatever levies they could to protect the prince. They also demanded that Bothwell be tried. The facts that the prince was safely in their power and that Bothwell had already been tr
ied and acquitted were ignored in their legitimising of a call to civil war. In Edinburgh, Sir James Balfour, the probable author of the Craigmillar Bond, the purchaser of the gunpowder and a principal accessory to Darnley’s murder, had been granted the governorship of Edinburgh Castle by Bothwell. He now asked the Confederates if he could remain in his post provided he put the castle at their disposal. This was an egregious act of treachery. John Knox had known Balfour when they had been fellow galley slaves and said of him, ‘He has neither fear of God nor love of virtue, further than the present commodity persuadeth.’ The Lords agreed at once, thus gaining the chief stronghold in Scotland and imprisoning Huntly without firing a shot. They also now controlled the mint and had possession of the gold christening font, Mary’s last asset. Balfour proved his new loyalty by sending a message to Mary at Dunbar proposing that she and Bothwell return to Edinburgh, where they would find safety under the guns of the castle. Being unaware of his volte-face, they agreed and Mary called on her subjects to come to her aid at Musselburgh. She reached Haddington with 600 men, the country having largely ignored her call, and met Bothwell, who had summoned 2,000 more, as well as three pieces of artillery. The couple spent what would be their last night together in nearby Seton Castle.
The Lords rested at Musselburgh under the command of Morton and Argyll, having created a banner showing a drawing of Darnley dead below a tree, a child kneeling beside him with the motto ‘Judge and revenge my cause, O lord!’ This purported to justify their actions as not being against their lawful queen but only against Bothwell as murderer of Darnley.
An Accidental Tragedy Page 28