The result was a great surprise to Queen Elizabeth. When the Conference of York had been duly opened, Moray was content to put in a plaint against Bothwell, who happened to be hundreds of miles away, and not in a position to denounce his confederates. The regent carefully refrained from making any accusation against Mary Stuart, and seemed to have forgotten that, a year before, she had been openly accused of the murder in the Scottish parliament. These chivalrous knights did not enter the lists with the impetuosity Cecil had hoped for. They did not fling the incriminating letters onto the table. Furthermore, it was a remarkable (and not the least remarkable) feature of this ingenious comedy that the English commissioners, likewise, showed themselves little inclined to ask questions. The Duke of Northumberland, being a Roman Catholic, was perhaps better disposed towards Mary Stuart than towards Elizabeth, his own Queen. The Duke of Norfolk, for reasons which will presently be revealed, was also in favour of compromise. The grounds for an understanding were not difficult to find. Mary’s royal title and her liberty were to be restored, while Moray was to retain the power which was all he cared about. Though Elizabeth wished for a thunderstorm which would annihilate her adversary—morally at least—the weather proved balmy.
Instead of openly hurling facts and documents at one another, the commissioners carried on conversations in a friendly spirit behind closed doors. Their mood grew more and more genial. After a few days, instead of holding a strict assize, accusers and accused, commissioners and judges, were collaborating to bring about a decent burial of the conference which Elizabeth had intended to be an imposing state trial of Mary Stuart.
The heaven-born intermediary between the two parties was the Scottish secretary of state, Maitland of Lethington. In the obscure business of Darnley’s murder he had played one of the most sinister parts—and, since he was an admirable diplomatist, of course a double one. When, at Craigmillar, the Scottish lords had proposed to Mary that she should rid herself of Darnley by divorce or in some other way, Maitland had been their spokesman, and had conveyed the sinister assurance that Moray would “look through his fingers”. Lethington had also furthered Mary’s marriage to Bothwell, had “chanced” to be on hand at the “abduction” of Queen Mary, and had deserted her for the Scottish lords only twenty-four hours before the end. If the Queen and the Scottish lords were to shoot at one another in deadly earnest, he was likely to find himself between two fires, so that he was eager, by fair means or foul, to bring about a compromise.
His first step was an attempt to intimidate Mary Stuart by telling her that if she proved unyielding the Scottish lords would make a ruthless use of the evidence against her, although it should put her to open shame. To convince her what deadly weapons her enemies possessed, he had the Casket documents privately copied by his wife (who had been Mary Fleming), and then sent the copies to Mary Stuart.
It need hardly be said that, in disclosing this evidence to Mary, Maitland was betraying his comrades and was infringing the accepted rules of legal procedure. But his fellow peers capped his perfidy by (under the table, so to say) handing the Casket Letters to the Duke of Norfolk and the other English commissioners. This was to load the dice against Mary, since it could not fail to prejudice against her those who were to act as her judges but who had thus been “nobbled”. Norfolk, in particular, was dumbfounded by the reek which emerged from this open Pandora’s box. Since right and justice were far from being the chief concern of those who presided over the conference, the English commissioners hastened to report to Elizabeth: “The said letters and ballades do discover such inordinate love betweene her and Bothwell, her loothsomness and abhorringe of her husband that was murdered, in such sorte as everie good and godlie man can not but detest and abhorre the same.”
This report, so disastrous to Mary Stuart, was extremely welcome to Elizabeth Tudor. She knew now what incriminating material could be produced at the conference, and she determined not to rest until Moray had been forced to produce it. The more Mary showed herself inclined for compromise, the more did Elizabeth insist upon a disclosure of all the facts. It seemed as if the Duke of Norfolk’s “detestation and abhorrence”, now that he had had a private glimpse of the contents of the famous casket, would prove fatal to Mary.
But gamesters and politicians must never give up the game as lost so long as they still hold a card in their hand. At this juncture Lethington made a sharp curve. He called on Norfolk and had a long private conversation with the premier peer of England. Immediately afterwards Norfolk himself made a sharp curve. Saul had been converted into Paul. The man who had seemed prejudiced against the Queen of Scots as one of her judges became her most zealous assistant and partisan. Instead of guiding the conference towards a public inquiry such as Elizabeth wanted, he began to work in the interests of the Scottish Queen. Nay more, he urged Mary against renouncing the Scottish crown and against abandoning her claim to the English succession; he stiffened her back and steeled her hand. At the same time he strongly advised Moray against producing the letters in open court, and Moray suddenly changed front after his private conversation with Norfolk. The regent became mild and conciliatory, fully agreeing with Norfolk that Bothwell must be held solely responsible for Darnley’s murder and that Mary Stuart should be exonerated. A gentle thaw had begun. Within a few days spring weather came, and friendship smiled over this remarkable house.
What had induced Norfolk to swing round in this way, so that he disregarded the instructions of his own sovereign, and from being an adversary of Mary Stuart became one of the Scottish Queen’s closest friends? We can hardly suppose that Lethington had bribed him with money. Norfolk was the wealthiest nobleman in England; his family was of hardly less importance than that of the Tudors; neither Lethington nor all Scotland could have furnished enough money to influence him. Nevertheless, Lethington had bribed him, though not with dross. He had offered the young widower the only bribe which could appeal to so powerful a man, namely more power. Why should not the Duke of Norfolk marry Queen Mary and thus secure the right of succession to the English crown? There is magic in the thought of wearing a kingly diadem which can make a coward brave, an indifferent man ambitious, and a philosopher a fool. That was why Norfolk, who a few days before had been strongly advising Mary voluntarily to renounce her royal rights, now urged her to cling to them. It was only because of her right of succession to the English throne that Norfolk wished to wed Mary Stuart, for by this marriage he would rank with the Tudors.
To modern sentiment it cannot but seem extraordinary that a man who had just been denouncing Mary to Elizabeth as a murderess and an adulteress, who had been so righteously indignant about the Scottish Queen’s unsavoury love affairs, should almost in the same breath decide upon making this woman his wife. Naturally enough, therefore, the wholehearted defenders of Mary Stuart declare that, in the aforesaid private conversation, Lethington must have convinced Norfolk of Mary’s innocence and of the fact that the Casket Letters were forgeries. There is, however, no documentary evidence in support of such a hypothesis, and some weeks later Norfolk, in conversation with Elizabeth, was still describing Mary Stuart as a murderess. Nothing can lead the historian more hopelessly astray than to apply to a long-past century the moral standards of a later date. The value of a human life is not an absolute value, but one which varies from time to time and from place to place. We ourselves are much laxer in our judgement of political assassinations than were our grandfathers in the nineteenth century, though we may not have reverted without qualification to the sixteenth-century outlook that such matters are trifles. In the days of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor conscientious scruples were rare; morality was based, not upon Holy Writ, but upon Machiavelli’s The Prince. One who aspired to a throne would wade through slaughter to reach it, undeterred by sentimental considerations. The scene in King Richard III in which Anne Neville consents to give her hand in marriage to the slayer of her husband (“Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?”) was penne
d by a contemporary of the fourth Duke of Norfolk. It seemed nowise incredible to the playgoers who witnessed its performance. To become King a man would poison his father or his brother, would involve thousands of innocent persons in a war, would sweep people ruthlessly out of his path. In the Europe of those days it would hardly be possible to find a ruling house in which such crimes were not committed. When a crown was at stake, a boy of fourteen would marry a woman of fifty, or a girl would wed a man old enough to be her grandfather. No one bothered, in such cases, about virtue or good looks or dignity or morals. The aspirant to a throne married without a qualm someone who was feeble-minded, crook-backed or paralysed; a syphilitic, a cripple or a criminal. Why, then, should it be supposed that the ambitious Norfolk would have been troubled by moral scruples when this young, beautiful and hot-blooded Queen declared herself ready to become his wife? Norfolk was not concerned with what Mary Stuart had done or might have done to others, but with what she would or could do for him. A man with more imagination than intelligence, he already fancied himself at Westminster in Elizabeth’s place. Betwixt night and morning there had been a change of scene. Lethington’s clever hand had drawn aside the net which was being woven round Mary Stuart, and he who was to have been a severe judge had been transformed into a wooer and a helper.
Elizabeth, however, had excellent tale-bearers, and her senses were kept alert by her suspicions. “Les princes ont des oreilles grandes qui oyent loin et près”—Princes have large ears that hear far and near—she once said triumphantly to the French ambassador. A hundred trivial signs convinced her that in York potions were being brewed which would disagree with her. She sent for Norfolk and told him archly how a little bird had informed her that “he would a-wooing go”. Norfolk was no hero. His father had been attainted by Henry VIII, and only that monarch’s death had saved the third duke of Norfolk from execution. Like Peter with his “I know not the man”, Norfolk, who had so recently become Mary Stuart’s suitor, repudiated the implication. Those who affirmed that he desired to wed an adulteress and murderess were calumniators. “Madam,” said he, “that woman shall never be my wife who has been your competitor, and whose husband cannot sleep in security on his pillow.”
But Elizabeth knew what she knew, and afterwards was able to say proudly: “Ils m’ont cru si sotte, que je n’en sentirais rien”—They think me so stupid that I know nothing. When, in one of her tantrums, she seized an eavesdropper at her court to give him a violent shaking, she soon shook all his secrets out of his sleeve. She took prompt and energetic measures. On 25th November 1568, the proceedings were transferred from York to the Painted Chamber at Westminster. Here, a few paces from her own palace, and immediately under her watching eyes, Lethington could not play his double game so easily as he had played it at York, two hundred miles away, and with fewer spies around him. Furthermore, Queen Elizabeth, now that she knew some of her commissioners to be untrustworthy, supplemented them by persons on whom she could absolutely rely, above all appointing her favourite Leicester. As soon as her hands were on the reins, the inquiry proceeded at a smart trot along the prescribed road. Moray, her sometime pensioner, was bluntly told “to defend himself”, this implying that he must not shrink from the “extremity of odious accusations”, but must produce his proofs of Mary’s adultery with Bothwell and must lay the Casket Letters on the table. Forgotten now was Elizabeth’s solemn pledge that nothing should be brought up “against the honour” of Mary Stuart. Still, the Scottish lords remained uneasy. They shilly-shallied, hesitated to produce the letters and restricted themselves to general charges. Since Elizabeth would have shown her bias too plainly by a blunt command that they should produce the letters, she had recourse to hypocrisy. Professing herself to be convinced of Mary’s innocence, she said that her one desire was to save her “good sister’s” honour, and that, to this end, it was essential for her to have evidence which would refute the “calumny”. She wanted the letters and the love poems to Bothwell to be exposed upon the conference table. It was necessary to her scheme that Mary Stuart should be hopelessly compromised.
Under this pressure the Scottish lords at length gave way. A little comedy of resistance was played, indeed, for Moray did not himself actually put the letters on the table, but merely showed them in his hand, and then allowed them to be “snatched” from his secretary. Elizabeth had triumphed. The documents were in open court. They were read aloud forthwith and, next day, were read aloud once more before the full assembly. The Scottish lords had long since sworn that the documents were genuine, but this previous oath did not suffice Elizabeth. As if foreseeing that in centuries to come the authenticity of the letters and sonnets would be disputed by the defenders of Mary Stuart’s honour, she insisted that their handwriting must be closely compared with that of the letters she had herself received from Mary. This comparison must be effected in full view of the conference. While it was taking place, Mary’s commissioners walked out of the room (is not this additional and strong evidence of the genuineness of the letters?), declaring, truly enough, that Elizabeth had broken her pledge to produce nothing which would be derogatory to the honour of Mary.
But what did law and right count for in these proceedings, where the person chiefly implicated was not allowed to participate, although her enemy, Lennox, could act as her accuser? Hardly had Mary’s commissioners withdrawn, when the other commissioners unanimously agreed that Elizabeth could not receive Mary Stuart until the Scottish Queen had been purged from the charges against her. Elizabeth thus reached her goal. At length she had been given the desired pretext for repelling the advances of the fugitive. Henceforward it would not be difficult to find an excuse for continuing to keep the Queen of Scots “in honourable custody”—a euphemism for imprisonment. One of those devoted to Elizabeth’s cause, Archbishop Parker, could jubilantly exclaim: “Now our good Queen has the wolf by the ears!”
With this “temporary conclusion”, the necessary preliminaries had been achieved for the slaughter of Mary’s reputation. Now the axe of judgement might be wielded. She could be declared a murderess, could be handed over to Scotland, where John Knox would have no mercy on her. At this juncture, however, Elizabeth held her hand, and the blow did not fall. Always when a final resolve was needed, whether for good or for evil, this enigmatic woman lacked courage. Was she stirred by one of those generous and humane impulses which were common enough in her? Was she ashamed at having broken her royal word to safeguard Mary Stuart’s honour? Was she moved by diplomatic considerations? Or are we to suppose, as was usually the case in her unfathomable temperament, that she was prompted by mixed motives? Anyhow, Elizabeth refrained from using the opportunity of ridding herself of her adversary once and for all. Instead of having a speedy and severe sentence passed, she postponed the final decision in order to negotiate with Mary. Substantially, what Elizabeth wanted was to be freed from the troubles caused her by this defiant, ambitious, unyielding, self-reliant and courageous woman—to humiliate Mary, to draw her teeth and cut her claws. Elizabeth proposed, therefore, that, before a final judgement was passed, Mary should be given an opportunity for protesting against the documents and, under the rose, the Queen of Scotland was informed that if she consented to abdicate she would be acquitted, could remain free in England, and be supplied with a pension. At the same time, since she must hear the crack of the whip as well as be tempted by a lump of sugar, Mary was told there was considerable chance of a public condemnation, and Knollys, the confidential agent of the English court, reported that he had frightened her as much as he could. Elizabeth loved to combine or alternate caresses with punishment.
But Mary Stuart was not to be either intimidated or decoyed. As soon as danger became imminent, she rallied her forces. She refused to examine the documents. Recognising too late that she had been inveigled into a trap, she reiterated her old contention that it was not possible for her to put herself upon the same footing with her subjects. Her royal word that the accusation and the documents were false mus
t count for more than any proof or contention. She refused to purchase by abdication an acquittal from a court whose jurisdiction she did not recognise. Resolutely she declared that she would not hear another word about the possibility of renouncing her crown. “I will die rather than agree, and the last words of my life shall be those of a Queen of Scotland.”
The attempt at intimidation had miscarried; Elizabeth’s half-heartedness was faced by Mary’s stalwart determination. Again the English Queen hesitated, and did not venture upon open condemnation. As so often happened, Elizabeth shrank from the final goal of her own will. When the definitive sentence came, it was not annihilating, as had been designed, but perfidious like the whole affair. On 10th January 1569, the Westminster Conference announced that nothing had been adduced against Moray and his faction which “might impair their honour or allegiance”. These words explicitly condoned the rebellion of the Scottish lords. As to Mary, the decision of the conference was ambiguous. The commissioners announced that nothing had “bene sufficiently proven or shown by the Scottish lords against the Queen their sovereign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or take any evil opinion of her good sister for anything yet seen.” Superficially considered, this might be regarded as an exculpation. The proofs of Mary’s guilt were insufficient. But the last clause had a sting in its tail. It implied that various things had been adduced of a highly suspicious and injurious nature, but not enough to convince so good a queen as Elizabeth. The sting was more than Cecil needed for his purposes. Henceforward a heavy cloud of suspicion would rest over Mary Stuart, and a “sufficient” ground had been discovered for keeping the defenceless woman in prison. For the moment Elizabeth had conquered.