Had Mary been Bothwell’s partner in murder and adultery, it is extremely unlikely that she would have agreed to a private process that carried a high risk of public exposure. Yet she had willingly sought to meet Lennox’s demands all along, which gives the lie to Buchanan’s claim that she tried to evade them.
It has been said that Mary herself should have initiated the prosecution of Bothwell, yet she had no evidence against him but the accusations in the placards. For the Crown to have brought him to trial on this flimsy pretext might have satisfied public opinion, but would have been a travesty of justice. Nor do the Lords seem to have urged their sovereign to seek out and punish Darnley’s murderers; in fact they had abandoned their inquiry as soon as it became clear that it might reveal evidence prejudicial to themselves.
At this time, Queen Elizabeth was telling de Silva that there were “grave suspicions” about Bothwell, and about others near to Mary, but that people “did not dare to proceed against them [i.e., Bothwell and Mary] or make any demonstration in consequence of the influence and strength of Bothwell, both on account of his perpetual office of Admiral, and because the Queen has given him charge of five hundred men who formed her guard.”27But Mary now had authorised the prosecution of Bothwell, and at his own urging, as Elizabeth would soon find out. De Silva also mentioned that Mary had spoken tentatively to Killigrew of sending the Prince to be brought up in England, which indicates how concerned she was for his safety and her own security in the current political climate. Elizabeth, however, had told de Silva that she was unsure whether she wanted the responsibility of Mary’s child, for “it would cause her anxiety, as any little illness it might have would distress her”; on the other hand, “she knew that the French would do their best to take the infant to France,” and that she could never allow.28
Around 25 March, Clernault apparently arrived back in Edinburgh, carrying letters to Mary from her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine. Drury later reported that Mary burned these letters because the Cardinal seemed “much to mislike with her for the death of the King,”29but Clernault later told Beaton that Mary had neither read nor paid any attention to any communication he had brought her. According to Drury, Mary “has been for the most part either melancholy or sickly ever since” Darnley’s murder; she was unwell on 25 and 27 March, and fainted on both occasions.30Yet, on the latter day, which was Maundy Thursday, she insisted on keeping vigil on her knees in the chapel royal from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.31
During that Holy Week, Mary presented Bothwell with some valuable church vestments that had originally come from Aberdeen Cathedral, but had been taken by the 4th Earl of Huntly to Strathbogie for safe keeping after the Reformation, and confiscated by the Crown on his attainder in 1563. These vestments were said to have been made from cloth of gold taken from the abandoned English royal pavilions after Robert the Bruce’s victory at Bannockburn in 1314. Mary had a number of these pieces in her possession: three she now gave to Bothwell, and the rest she used to furnish a memorial bed for her husband, which probably replaced the black hangings in her apartments as a symbol of her widowhood.32In the circumstances, the gifts to Bothwell displayed a disturbing lack of judgement, but Mary was becoming increasingly dependent on him, and later evidence suggests that she at this time believed him innocent; these gifts may have been made in token of that belief, to sustain him during the trial to come. But some people took great exception to this gift of historic Catholic vestments to a Protestant Lord suspected of murder.
On Good Friday or the day after, the Council, with Bothwell himself among them, but not Balfour, enacted that Bothwell, with those other persons named by Lennox as his accomplices in the murder of the King, be tried on 12 April following. A formal letter of summons, signed by the Queen, was sent warning Lennox and any other accusers he might bring with him to appear in the Court of Justiciary on that day.33
According to an Act of James IV passed in 1493, fifteen days had to elapse between citation and trial; forty days were allowed where the accused was charged with treason.34In Bothwell’s case, only fifteen days were allowed for. This was doubtless arranged so that the trial could take place before Parliament met on 14 April; Buchanan alleged that “the Queen wanted the inquiry settled by that day so that the accused, absolved by the verdict of the court, could be exonerated by the assent of the whole Parliament,” but in fact Lennox had told Mary that the matter was too important to be delayed until Parliament met, and she had merely complied with his wishes.
On 29 March, as soon as the Council had concluded its business, Mary set off again for Seton35for the sake of her health: on 30 March, Drury reported that she was “troubled this last week with some sickness of which she is not yet all free of.” But the rumour-mongers were busy in the wake of news of the Countess of Bothwell’s divorce action. On the 29th, Drury wrote that the judgement of the people was that the Queen would marry Bothwell. The next day, Drury informed Cecil that Huntly misliked the idea of Bothwell divorcing his sister, but “has now condescended” to it.36The Lords would later accuse Huntly of conniving at Bothwell’s marriage to Mary.37In Paris, rumour was busy too, and de Alava now voiced a far-fetched suspicion that Darnley’s murder had been plotted by Mary and Catherine de’ Medici together!38
Mary had by now replied to Elizabeth’s urgent letter, but the reply is lost, and its contents are known only through a report of de Silva, who had discussed the letter with Elizabeth. According to this, Mary’s response was disappointing: her letter “only contained lamentations for the troubles she had suffered in her life, and a request that the Queen would pity her, especially in her present grief for her husband, which was greatly increased by the desire of wicked persons to throw the blame of such a bad act upon her. She therefore asked the Queen to help her in her troubles, as she could trust no one else, and begged her not to allow her to be calumniated in [England].”39
This pathetic communication was unlikely to impress Elizabeth, who had learned at an early age to deal with adversity, and whose wise advice had been apparently ignored. What it does reveal, though, is Mary’s fragile and emotional state of mind, which seems to have affected her physical health and rendered her incapable of decisive action. She had been ill almost continuously since Darnley’s death, which incidentally had occurred just eight months after her confinement, and may have triggered postnatal depression. There is plenty of evidence that the loss of her husband had caused her grief, which was no doubt mingled with regret that their life together had been so unhappy. She was also suffering the after-effects of shock and the trauma of realising—as she believed—that the murder plot had been intended for her. Furthermore, she had to live with the fear that her enemies would make a second attempt, which was why she was contemplating taking the drastic step of sending her baby to England. It must not be forgotten either that Darnley’s murder was the climax of a year in which Mary had had to deal with the horrific killing of Rizzio, a difficult childbirth, the disintegration of her marriage, a life-threatening illness, and rumours of plots and conspiracies, and that she had just begun to recover from all this when the tragedy happened.
We may discount the gossip of Drury and Buchanan concerning Mary’s activities at Seton as malicious, and even Drury had to concede at length that Mary was suffering from depression and fainting fits and was generally unwell. Her Council had quickly realised that her health might not withstand the rigours of secluded mourning, and since then she had retreated three times to the bracing air of Seton in the hope that it would restore her. There is other evidence that she was not functioning normally. Her voluminous foreign correspondence suddenly ceased, and there is no record of her communicating even with her Guise relatives. Most of the letters sent in her name were in Scots, and therefore not written by her personally but probably by her Council on her behalf, which suggests that she was unable to cope with affairs of state. She was said to be “too grievous and tormented” to reply in full to Archbishop Beaton’s letter, and Clernault declared that she had not re
ad or listened to any of the letters he brought her. She had failed to thank both de Alava and de Silva for their warnings of a conspiracy. She had been almost too ill to receive Killigrew, had broken down in public at Darnley’s requiem Mass, and had failed to accompany her son to Stirling.
This all suggests a woman racked with shock, grief, stress and anxiety, and it is hardly surprising that some historians have concluded that Mary suffered a nervous breakdown at this time. Certainly she was at the mercy of her emotions and her poor health, which left her incapable of effort and rational judgement and rendered her an ineffective ruler. In this weakened state, she was easy prey for the predatory men who surrounded her. Being a woman who had always needed a strong man to lean upon, it was her tragedy that she now chose to rely on Bothwell, although her letter to Elizabeth suggests that she had doubts about even his trustworthiness. As for her other advisers, to whom she had entrusted the investigation of the murder, most had a hidden agenda and were determined that the truth of the Kirk o’Field conspiracy should remain hidden; Mary later revealed that she had been perturbed at their dilatoriness, but at the time she was probably incapable of calling it into question; because of this, however, it was she who was blamed for it.
From early April, a voice was heard every night in Edinburgh, crying out, “Vengeance on those who caused me to shed innocent blood! O Lord, open the heavens and pour down vengeance on me and those that have destroyed the innocent!”40Once again, the Council concentrated its energies on pursuing this minor offender, rather than on investigating the King’s murder.
Moray had received his safe-conduct from Elizabeth, and was now—as the crisis deepened and Bothwell grew all-powerful—about to make himself scarce again. “The ostensible reason of his journey was his desire to see [other] countries,”41but it was a strange time to be leaving his sister, who now needed his counsel and support more than ever. Buchanan asserts that Bothwell had tried to murder Moray, but this is unsubstantiated, and Moretta had told Mondovi that it was Moray who was plotting to murder Bothwell. But Bothwell was shortly to be tried and might well name Moray as one of his fellow conspirators, and Moray would not have wanted to be in Scotland when that happened.
Moray may also have laid plans, in the event of Bothwell’s acquittal, for a coup against him, for he must have suspected where Bothwell’s ambitions lay, and if they came to fruition, Moray’s position would be untenable; moreover, Bothwell would have the wherewithal to ruin him. Moray said as much to de Silva when he was in London, telling him that the real reason for his leaving Scotland was that Bothwell, who had always been his enemy, was in so powerful a position, he feared something unpleasant might befall him, particularly as Bothwell had over four thousand men at his disposal, besides the force in Edinburgh and Dunbar, where he says the whole of the artillery and ammunitions are. He said he did not intend to return until the Queen had punished the persons concerned in her husband’s death, as he thought it was unworthy of his position to remain in a country where so strange and extraordinary a crime went unpunished. He believes that the truth might certainly be ascertained if due diligence were shown, as it is undoubted that over thirty or forty persons were concerned, and the house where the King was killed was certainly undermined, which could not have been done by one man.42
Moray’s plans may also have embraced Mary, as Mondovi had concluded on 16 March, after speaking with Moretta. Nau says that “this same Earl, after having matured all his plans necessary for his success in seizing the crown and ruining the Queen, asked her permission to go to France, which she granted, giving him also letters of introduction to her relations, with power to draw money on her dowry.” Elsewhere, Nau claims that “the usurpation of the crown had been planned before the departure of the Earl of Moray out of the kingdom.” When Moray was in France, Archbishop Beaton warned de Alava that, despite Moray’s professions of friendship for Mary, he was in reality her mortal enemy and would show himself to be so on his return to Scotland.43Had Moray been innocent of Darnley’s murder, or of conspiring against Bothwell and the Queen, there would have been no need for him to leave Scotland.
It was Moray’s intention to travel via England to France, Milan and Venice, and on 3 April, he made his Will, appointing Mary the chief guardian of his infant daughter. This document is proof that Moray, that model of moral rectitude, did not believe the gossip about his sister and Bothwell, nor that she was a murderess. The Will is not, however, indicative of his real intentions towards Mary, for it would only come into force if he died abroad before he could realise his ambitions.
It appears that Mary briefly returned to Holyrood from Seton on 4 April, but was back there on the 5th, when a Privy Council was held at Seton.44It was later alleged that Mary and Bothwell were betrothed on that day. Amongst the Casket Letters are two marriage contracts. One was undated, in French,45and Buchanan alleged that it had been drawn up before Darnley’s death, even though it refers to that event. Although it was supposedly signed by Mary, her signature is almost certainly a forgery, and the handwriting bears a resemblance to Maitland’s in its letter formation and pressure points.46This may be the only original surviving document from the Casket Letters.
The other contract, written in Scots, supposedly in Huntly’s writing,47 but now only known through a copy, was signed allegedly by Mary and Bothwell, witnessed by Huntly and Thomas Hepburn, Parson of Oldhamstocks, and dated at Seton on 5 April 1567. It reads:
Considering how, by the decease of the King her husband, Her Majesty is now destitute of an husband, living solitary in the state of widowhood; in the which kind of life Her Majesty most willingly would continue, if the weal of her realm and subjects would permit. But, on the other part, considering the inconveniences [that] may follow, and the necessity which the realm has that Her Majesty be coupled with an husband, Her Highness has inclined to marry. And seeing what incommodity may come to this realm, in case Her Majesty should join in marriage with any foreign prince of a strange nation, Her Highness has thought rather better to yield unto one of her own subjects; amongst whom, Her Majesty finds none more able nor endowed with better qualities than the right noble and her dear cousin, James, Earl Bothwell, of whose thankful and true service Her Highness, in all times bypast, has had large proof and infallible experience. And seeing not only the same good mind constantly persevering in him, but with an inward affection and hearty love towards Her Majesty, Her Highness has made her choice of him. And therefore . . . takes the said Earl Bothwell as her lawful husband, and promises that how soon the process of divorce intended betwixt the said Earl and Dame Jean Gordon, now his pretended spouse, be ended by the order of the laws, Her Majesty shall, God willing, thereafter shortly take the said Earl to her husband.
This contract, the wording of which is similar to the unquestionably authentic one drawn up on 14 May, and the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond of 19 April (see Chapter 21), was almost certainly forged by Mary’s enemies to show that, even before Bothwell’s trial and divorce, she, “impatient of the delay,” had agreed to marry him.48In reality, as will be seen, he had not yet even proposed marriage to her.
Du Croc arrived in Scotland around this time, and went to Seton to present his credentials. Buchanan says he warned Mary how infamous Darnley’s murder was abroad, and persuaded her to return to Edinburgh. She arrived in the capital in time to say an emotional farewell to Moray, weeping “at his departure” and “wishing he were not so precise in religion.”49Moray left for England on 7 April, crossing the border on the 10th,50two days before Bothwell’s trial and four days before the opening of the Parliament that would have the power to arraign him.
Maitland, the other prime mover in the Darnley conspiracy, whom Nau calls “the chief conductor of all the plots and rebellions” of Moray, remained in Edinburgh with the Queen, keeping a low profile.
On 10 April, Mondovi finally left Paris, having informed the Vatican that Father Hay would be writing an account of his visit to Scotland.51It is unlikely he ever did so, for no
such account is known to exist. Mondovi’s recall signified Rome’s admission that Mary was unlikely to promote the Counter-Reformation in Scotland.
On 4 April, Drury had reported that Lennox had besought Queen Elizabeth to request a postponement of Bothwell’s trial because he could not gather his witnesses in time and Mary would not grant James Murray immunity from prosecution if he returned from England to testify on Lennox’s behalf. Drury added that Lennox believed that those he had accused had entered into bonds against him, but he did not have time “to raise sufficient strength” to defend himself against such dangers as were intended by his enemies towards him.52
As soon as she received this letter on 8 April, Elizabeth—who desired nothing more than to see Bothwell found guilty—wrote to Mary, exhorting her, “for the consolation of the innocent,” to postpone the trial; “which, if it be denied to them, would make you greatly suspected.” Again, she urged Mary to make clear her innocence:
For the love of God, Madam, use such sincerity and prudence in this case, which touches you so closely, that all the world shall have reason to pronounce you innocent of a crime of such enormity, a thing which, if you do it not, you would deserve to fall from the ranks of princesses and, not without cause, become opprobrious to the people; and rather than that should happen to you, I would wish you an honourable burial than a soiled life. You see, Madam, that I treat you like my daughter, and promise you that, if I had one, I should not wish better for her than I desire for you, as the Lord God will bear me witness, Whom I heartily pray to inspire you to do that which will be most to your honour and the consolation of your friends. With my very cordial recommendations as to her to whom I wish the most good that can come to you in the world for the future.53
Elizabeth was apparently unaware of Mary’s true state, and it was not in the interests of the ruling clique in Scotland to enlighten her: it suited them very well for Mary to be discredited in the eyes of the world because of her evident unwillingness to pursue Darnley’s murderers. But Elizabeth’s alarm was sincere, for the overthrow of a fellow queen regnant would set a dangerous precedent.