In appearance Bothwell lacked the hermaphrodite beauty of a Darnley; he was only of middle stature, compared to Darnley’s slender height – his mummified corpse at Dragsholm measures five feet six inches. Although those who had reason to deplore his influence over Mary Stuart, like Brantôme and Buchanan, rather childishly described him as having been hideously ugly – ‘like an ape in purple’ said Buchanan – another of Mary’s partisans, Leslie, said that he was of great bodily strength and beauty, although vicious and dissolute in his habits.11 The only known portrait traditionally said to be of him – a miniature now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – shows a face which is certainly not conventionally handsome; there is even something simian here to confirm Buchanan’s insults; the complexion is swarthy, the nose appears to have been broken, the ears large and slightly protruding, the lips under their carefully trained moustache with its curling ends are full and sensual, the eyes look suspiciously out of the picture like those of a watchful animal. It is the face of a man who might well prove attractive to certain types of women, because it is strong and vital, yet from another point of view it gives the impression of one to whom the defence of the rights of the weak would seem a thorough waste of time.
At the beginning of June Mary began to make detailed preparations for the birth of her child: at the wish of her Council, she had been lodged in Edinburgh Castle since early April, since the great castle frowning on its rock over the town below was evidently felt to be a safer locality for this important event than Holyrood, so recently demonstrated to have the flimsiest defences; it would also be understandable if Mary herself had been reluctant to give birth to her child in the same apartments where her servant had been butchered. In view of the hazards of the time towards any mother and child in the process of labour, let alone one who had been through the Scottish queen’s experiences in March, it was particularly important that Mary should make a will. This testament, of which she made three copies, one to keep, one for those who were to execute it in Scotland, and one to send to France, provides an interesting commentary on her state of mind on the eve of this critical occasion.12 The lords also signed a document binding themselves to adhere to the queen’s testament, in view of the fact that she was (through imminent childbirth) ‘in peril and danger of her life’: in this semi-governmental measure, which was presumably directed against Darnley, it is significant that Bothwell’s signature was high up and prominent among the other loyal lords.13
Mary’s first thought is for her child, to whom, if it survives her own death, everything is to be left without further distinctions. But in the event of their joint death, she lays down minute provisions for the disposal of her jewels, in which her foremost concern is the establishment of a rich inheritance for the Scottish crown itself: her choicest gems, including the Great Harry, are to be annexed to the Scottish crown in perpetuity by Act of Parliament, in remembrance of herself, and the Scottish alliance with the house of Lorraine. Darnley is included in the will, as befits the queen’s husband, and is left twenty-six bequests, among them a diamond ring enamelled in red of which the queen notes in her handwriting, ‘It was with this that I was married; I leave it to the King who gave it to me’; although Buchanan later stated quite erroneously that Darnley had been totally ignored in the will, not only does Mary acknowledge the conventional claim of her husband to be remembered but she also leaves minor bequests to both Lord and Lady Lennox, as her father- and mother-in-law.
However, it is to her French relations, who seem to have possessed her true heart, that her most affectionate and detailed bequests are made: she still feels herself sufficiently a member of the house of Guise to outline a gift of rubies and pearls, to be handed down from generation to generation as the legacy of its first-born. The family of Duke Francis and Duchess Anne, whom she had known so well as little children, and who had grown to adolescence since her departure, are left rich jewels, the most precious going to the youngest son, Francis, namesake and godson of Mary’s first husband,* Duchess Anne, Mary’s beloved aunt and correspondent, herself receives splendid jewels and another aunt, the Abbess Renée, for whom the queen seems to have felt a daughter’s affection after her mother’s death, receives a number of bequests including a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the frame of a mirror. Other Guise children, those of the Elboeuf and Aumale families, all now growing up, are remembered with Mary’s own namesake and god-daughter, young Mary of Elboeuf, receiving again a specially large share. To the cardinal of Lorraine goes an emerald ring.
In Scotland, it is her illegitimate Stewart relations whom Mary treats as her own family; not only her confidante and half-sister Jean Argyll, but also Moray, his wife Agnes and their daughter are mentioned; Mary’s godson Francis, son of her half-brother Lord John Stewart and Bothwell’s sister, is given special consideration. One of Mary’s charming traits was a fondness for young children as this will shows. The queen seems always to show a particular affection for this boy, reminiscent of her later fondness of Arbella Stuart; owing to the early death of his father, he became her ward as well as her nephew and godson; she heaped him with honours and lands until in captivity she could do no more.* Other legatees included the two Lady Huntlys, young and old (young Lady Huntly being the only Hamilton to be mentioned in the will), and Privy Councillors then in favour including Argyll, Atholl, Huntly himself and of course Bothwell. Otherwise Mary’s innate concern seems to have been for her servants – not only the four Maries, but also an endless string of other ladies-in-waiting, maids-of-honour, women of the bed-chamber, and equerries are remembered, including the faithful Arthur Erskine, behind whom she had ridden to Dunbar, Riccio’s brother Joseph, to receive a ring to be delivered to a secret destination (perhaps some relation or dependent of David Riccio, of whose existence Mary knew), and Mary’s favourite bed-chamber woman Margaret Carwood, who had entered her service in 1564. Like all servants at court, Mary’s attendants tended to form a tight little circle who were both related to each other and who married each other – as Erskine had recently married Magdalene Livingston, a royal maid-of-honour who was also the sister of the grander ‘Marie’, Mary Livingston. Their intimate little world of service is here commemorated in the queen’s will.
According to the custom of the time, the queen took to her lying-in chamber ceremoniously on 3rd June to await the confinement. Already in May the midwife Margaret Asteane had been provided with a special black velvet dress for the coming occasion; an enormous and sumptuous bed hung in blue taffeta and blue velvet had been prepared for Mary’s use, and as much as ten ells of Holland cloth commissioned to cover the baby’s cradle.14 The apartments Mary now inhabited in Edinburgh Castle were in the south-east corner, within the old palace, and thus overlooked the town; the actual room in which the birth took place was extremely small, like so many of the important rooms of this period, and lay off the chamber now known as Queen Mary’s room. On 15th June a false alarm about the birth gave rise to premature rejoicings; but it was not until four days later that the labour actually began. This was long, painful and difficult, and the queen was ‘so handled that she began to wish that she had never been married’. This was despite the efforts of Mary Fleming’s sister Margaret, countess of Atholl, to cast the pangs of childbirth upon Margaret, Lady Reres, by witchcraft; Lady Reres lay in bed, suffering likewise with her mistress, but Mary’s pangs do not appear to have been solaced in consequence. The baby prince was finally born between ten and eleven on the morning of Wednesday 19th June, with a thin, fine caul stretched over his face. Despite this hazard, and despite the length of the labour, he was an impressively healthy child, as Killigrew, the English ambassador noticed five days later when he was shown the naked infant. Killigrew first saw the baby sucking at the breast of his wet-nurse – Lady Reres, who was perhaps given the post as a consolation for her earlier ordeal – and the baby James was later unwrapped for his inspection, much as Mary herself had been displayed in infancy to Sir Ralph Sadler. Although Mary could only manage to
speak to him faintly with a hollow cough, Killigrew concluded that her child was likely to prove ‘a goodly prince’.*15
The birth of a male heir was signalled with immense rejoicings in Edinburgh, and now five hundred bonfires were lit, to illuminate the city and the surrounding hills with their festive fire. The whole artillery of the castle was discharged, and lords, nobles and people gathered together in St Giles church, to thank God for the honour of having an heir to their kingdom, the fact that St Giles was the main Protestant church demonstrating the great legacy of goodwill which awaited any queen who gave birth to a healthy prince in this era. Sir James Melville, given the good news by Mary Beaton, rode off to London an hour later to break it to Queen Elizabeth. The English queen reacted with her famous outcry, the primitive complaint of the childless woman for a more favoured sister: ‘Alack, the Queen of Scots is lighter of a bonny son, and I am but of barren stock.’18 It was true that the birth of James duly enhanced Mary’s merits as a candidate for the English throne. A strange little incident about the time of Mary’s accouchement involved an English spy, Rokeby, who was supposed to have lured Mary in Edinburgh into unwise pronouncements concerning her future on the English throne – although even Rokeby admitted in his report to Cecil that Mary ‘would be content that she would have it after …’ Others were not so discreet as to wait for ‘after’. In a poem of thanksgiving for James’s birth, Patrick Adamson in Paris even went so far as to refer to him as ‘Serenissimus princeps’ of Scotland, England, France and Ireland, a gesture which not only infuriated Elizabeth in London, who ordered her envoy Bedford to make a protest about it at James’s christening, but also produced angry outbursts in the English House of Commons; Adamson finally underwent six months’ imprisonment for his indiscretion.19 The birth of a son, however, strengthened Mary’s hand over the English succession for the future in a way which was obvious, and which even the English Commons could not obliterate by intemperate speeches.
The birth of an heir also inevitably moved the child’s own father, Darnley, further down the line of succession for both English and Scottish thrones. Queen Mary, aware of the temperament with which she was dealing, took care to display the baby to him publicly and announce: ‘My Lord, God has given you and me a son, begotten by none but you.’ She went on, uncovering the child’s face: ‘Here I protest to God as I shall answer to him at the great day of Judgment, that this is your son and no other man’s son. I am desirous that all here, with ladies and others bear witness.’ She added, as though to clinch the matter by a note of contempt for her husband: ‘For he is so much your own son, that I fear it will be the worse for him hereafter.’20 Having thus, as she hoped, preserved her child from the stigma of illegitimacy, Mary devoted the rest of her time in Edinburgh Castle to his care, having the baby to sleep in her own room, and frequently watching over him at night. A few days after the birth, she sent for Anthony Standen, the faithful equerry who had helped her escape from Holyrood, and had him knighted by Darnley. Pointing to the child in its cradle, she announced in words which showed how far Mary was from forgetting the events after the murder of Riccio: ‘For that you saved his life …’21
The birth of James had two dramatic effects upon Mary Stuart: she no longer had any pressing motive for demonstrating a public reconciliation with Darnley, and at the same time her own extremely precarious health had its balance finally destroyed. There is no evidence that she ever really recovered it before her extremely serious illness at Jedburgh four months later, and this illness in turn led to a prolonged phase of highly nervous, almost hysterical ill-health, which lasted right until her incarceration on Lochleven the following June. But for her actions and movements during the next eight months, the critical period from the birth of James in June 1566 until the death of Darnley in February 1567, it is extremely important to distinguish between information and reports written at the time – that is to say before the death had taken place – such as ambassadors’ comparatively impartial reports on the state of Scotland, and Mary’s own letters posted to France, which could not be altered by arrière pensée, and those accounts written long after the event, specifically to prove Mary’s guilt with Bothwell. These later accounts include the Book of the Articles written by Buchanan as an accusatory brief at the time of her trial in England, two years later, and Buchanan’s own History, and his Detection of Mary Queen of Scots. The point of Buchanan, who was bound by allegiance to Lennox, and therefore to Darnley, is to prove as salaciously as possible that Mary had enjoyed an adulterous liaison with Bothwell from the birth of her child, and even possibly before. But in the course of making his charge, Buchanan allowed himself the luxury of so many glaring inaccuracies that it is difficult to take his opinion on any aspect of the situation seriously – of these the comment on the queen’s will is only a minor example: the tale of Bothwell hauled up by a rope unwilling and half-naked out of one mistress’s bed directly into that of the queen by James’s wet-nurse is probably the most ludicrous.22
It is a remarkable fact that there is no uncontested evidence among the letters or reports written before Darnley’s death, whether French, English or Scottish, to show that Mary was involved in a sexual affair with Bothwell while her husband was still alive. There are on the other hand a number of pointers to the fact that she was not. The picture of the Scottish court through the autumn and winter of 1566, built by contemporary comments, is of a queen to whom her husband was becoming an increasingly distasteful problem, and a nobility to whom he was becoming an increasingly urgent one. Not one observer made any attempt during this period to connect the queen’s growing scorn for Darnley with her growing affection for Bothwell, although the point would have been one which the ever-watchful ambassadors would have been delighted to make if they had felt it to be true. Of the couple, Mary and Bothwell, Mary was racked in health, not in itself very conducive to romance, and desperate to solve her marital problems; she was also well aware by now that she had created these problems for herself originally through her physical infatuation for Darnley; the very last intention in her mind was to tread so soon again down the treacherous paths of passion. Bothwell on the other hand was steadily bent on his own personal advancement in Scottish government affairs. It is questionable whether the one had the energy, and the second the inclination for the time-wasting business of an adulterous love affair when there were so many important matters to hand.
Before the end of July, Mary left Edinburgh for Newhaven, to see if a change of air would restore her lost health, and from there went on by sea to Alloa, the seat of Lord Mar. She particularly enjoyed the pleasure of sea travel – as Buchanan put it, she ‘joyed to handle the boisterous cables’ – but on this occasion she made the journey alone, unaccompanied by either Bothwell or Darnley. Darnley, having not been informed of her departure, later followed Mary to Alloa but stayed there only a few hours, as Bedford duly reported back to England. In the same letter Bedford also noted that Bothwell’s arrogance was making him so unpopular with his fellow-nobles that he believed that there might be some plot in hand against him. A few days later Bedford reported again that Bothwell was now as much hated as Riccio had ever been, and also that the queen was not getting on well with her husband.23 It was significant that Bedford made no attempt to connect the two facts; on the contrary, by mid-August it was Moray’s influence over his half-sister which was said to be causing Darnley to sulk: Bedford wrote that his jealousy was such that ‘he could not bear that the Queen should use familiarity with men or women, and especially the ladies of Argyll, Moray and Mar, who keep most company with her’.24 Mary now went hunting in the extreme south of Peeblesshire, with Bothwell, Moray and Mar, but without Darnley.