An Accidental Tragedy (31 page)

Next day, Monday, 11 March, Mary summoned the conspirators and, to their astonishment, forgave them for their actions.
Moray had arrived in Edinburgh and was dining with Morton when a messenger came from Mary inviting him to receive her pardon; in a scene of high hypocrisy they drew each other into an embrace vowing eternal love. The conspirators realised that their fears of Mary’s French-learned guile were justified but were powerless to act against her. The banished rebels of the Chase-about Raid had arrived in Edinburgh to hear their fate from the Lords of the Articles, but since Darnley had prorogued parliament no Lords of the Articles had been appointed and, in any case, their repentance was unnecessary. Mary met them and forgave them, but, before they could ask for recompense, she fell forward, crying out in pain as her labour started. The midwife, who was now in permanent attendance, was called and the gentlemen dismissed. She also convinced her captors that she could not move from Holyrood until the next day without putting her child in danger. They, being men and terrified of anything to do with childbirth, agreed out of embarrassment. Mary had, of course, been faking the labour pains.

However, before Mary could take any other action she needed her freedom, and it was a simple matter to persuade Darnley to accompany her, although he tried to have Mary let his father Lennox accompany them. Mary refused, and sent for Stewart of Traquair, the captain of her guard, as well as Erskine and Standen, the latter two having been witnesses to Rizzio’s murder, asking them to make arrangements for her escape that night. Darnley and she went down the private staircase which had allowed access for the conspirators and through the servants’ quarters and wine cellar. The French ambassador reported that ‘pregnant as she was, the queen escaped by climbing down a bell rope’. However romantic his story might have seemed, no one believed him. Ironically, they passed the small newly dug grave of Rizzio before collecting their horses. Mary was given a pillion seat behind Erskine, while Traquair had a Marie, probably Seton, on his horse. Other servants followed, mounting as best as they could. At Seton Castle, twelve miles east of Edinburgh, they were met with more horses and attendants, thanks to the
arrangements made by Lady Huntly, as requested in Mary’s smuggled letter. Darnley, at first, took fright on seeing the soldiers at Seton and attempted to ride on, callously ignoring his wife’s condition. In spite of their increased escort, he insisted on galloping, cruelly flogging Mary’s horse and was frequently out of sight of the pregnant queen and the rest of the fugitives. When he had to stop to allow them to catch up he was abusive and insulting towards Mary, saying, ‘If this baby dies we can have more!’ and then riding off alone. Mary well knew that the usual result of a miscarriage was the death of the mother, and any affection between her and Darnley was now quite definitely finished.

The detail of this journey is given by Claude Nau, secretary to Mary from March 1575. He was the author of
The History of Mary Stewart
, which is based on details given to him nine years after the events took place. These details inevitably reflect Mary’s total hatred for her late husband, for which one must accept some exaggeration.

On arriving unexpectedly early at Dunbar Castle, Mary’s party wakened the astonished servants. Mary herself cooked some eggs and the fugitives settled down to breakfast. Mary transferred the wardship of the castle from the Laird of Craigmillar, one of Rizzio’s murderers, to the Earl of Bothwell. The rest of the nobility had now lost patience with Darnley. As Nau wrote: ‘They found the king was a man without any constancy, and all complained of him. Some would not speak to him or associate with him; others (especially Lord Fleming) openly found fault with his conduct towards the queen, his wife . . . [none] of the nobility had accepted him or admitted him as their king.’

Morton and Ruthven fled to England, and the Chase-about rebels rallied to Mary’s side so that by 18 March 1566 she was able to advance to Haddington, where 4,000 men came to her support. On the next day she rode to Musselburgh to meet the Hamiltons, Atholl, Huntly and Bothwell with further forces. On the same day she re-occupied Edinburgh, where she was carried in a litter by four arquebusiers. Recent events made Holyrood an
unwelcome place and apartments in Edinburgh Castle were still in preparation, so Mary took lodgings in the High Street for the time being. On 28 March, she took up residence in the castle. One of the rooms being prepared for her was to be her lying-in room in which she would give birth to her child.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She wished she had never been married

Stability was the most urgent need for the country and the Privy Council, led by Moray, Argyll and Glencairn, now included Bothwell and Huntly. Darnley tried to assert himself and advised the removal of Lethington – who was still under a form of loose house arrest – only to be peremptorily overruled by Mary. He threw a petulant fit and stormed out, saying that from now on he would sleep with two loaded and primed pistols by his bed. That night Mary went quietly to his bedroom, presuming correctly that he would be in a drunken stupor, and removed the pistols. She gave a final honour to her murdered servant Rizzio by having his corpse re-interred, according to the Catholic rite, in her chapel at Holyrood.

Retribution for Rizzio’s death was surprisingly mild. Thomas Scott was hanged, drawn and quartered for the murder. Scott’s bloody fate was shared by Henry Yair, who had killed a Dominican priest shortly after Rizzio’s murder, thinking it had been a signal for a general slaughter. Two other small fry, Mowbray and Harlaw, were brought to the scaffold to watch these executions, but were pardoned at the last minute. Morton and Ruthven were now in exile in England – Morton in Alnwick and Ruthven in Newcastle. Ruthven died in May, totally insane, believing that he saw the gates of paradise opening and hosts of angels welcoming him to heaven. In the vain hope of reconciliation the rebel lords sent Mary the bond that Darnley had signed giving his support to the plot in return for the crown matrimonial. On receiving such concrete proof of her husband’s treachery, Mary gave ‘so many great sighs that it was a pity to hear’.

Darnley now lived in a court largely deserted by his familiars, who realised that any contact with him was poisonous; even his father blamed him for destroying all the Lennox plans. Bizarrely, he continued to hear Mass daily and even washed the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday. Meanwhile he conceived mad schemes to invade England – or, at least, Scarborough – all of which amused Cecil, whose spies had easily penetrated Darnley’s circle of incompetents.

Equally incompetent was Christopher Rokesby, sent to Scotland as a secret agent, pretending to be the leader of disaffected English Catholics, and pleading for Mary’s support in a plot to depose Elizabeth. Rokesby was immediately arrested, and among the papers he was carrying were the instructions from Cecil himself in cipher. However, Mary now had to concentrate on giving birth and there the matter rested for the moment. Cecil may have been quite ready to sacrifice Rokesby to test Mary’s intelligence’s defences, and there would be other, more sophisticated, attempts to involve Mary in Catholic uprisings.

It was now crucial for Mary to see her nobles united and reconciled since she knew that Darnley, for all that he was politically isolated, would try to use the birth of an heir – should her child be male – to ease himself back into power. Perhaps more importantly, if she should die in childbirth – which was always a risk – a strong Privy Council could prevent Darnley claiming the crown for himself alone if the child were female, or appointing himself regent if the child were male.

Randolph, though
persona non grata
and officially replaced by Thomas Killigrew, reported the rumour that James Thornton, a chanter of the bishopric of Moray, had gone to Rome to start negotiations for a divorce between Mary and Darnley. It is difficult to see what grounds could have been found to grant such a divorce, except, of course, that Darnley was the grandson of Mary’s grandmother, Margaret Tudor, by her second marriage to the Earl of Angus. Of course, the fact that Mary was also the niece of the Cardinal of Lorraine and a Catholic sovereign in her own right would not have been inconsequential for the Holy
See. Thornton had been given instructions to call on Mary’s Guise relatives in France, which could have laid the foundations for an appeal to Rome. Such a divorce, if granted, would, however, call into doubt the legitimacy of Mary’s child – a matter of vital importance if the child was a boy – so a delay in the papal decision would allow everyone time for reflection.

Mary had, for the moment, the united council she needed for a period of peace, and the nobility had moved either into the castle itself or into lodgings in Edinburgh. Darnley was isolated from power and Randolph reported that the troublesome consort was intending to go to Flanders ‘to move his case to any prince who [would] pity him’. In fact, as well as plans to leave Scotland, Darnley was continuing to encourage a Spanish–Dutch landing at Scarborough, on the east coast of England. But, for the present, diplomatic breath was held, not only in Scotland, but also across Europe, as Mary established herself in her private quarters in the heart of the castle. Significantly, however, she had not dismissed her personal bodyguard of arquebusiers.

In spite of the seeming calm, Mary was now having one of her recurrent moods of depression. Most probably this arose from her realisation that her imminent childbirth emphasised her position simply as a dynastic breeding machine for the future of Scotland. On 18 May she voiced a wish to Mauvissière, the French ambassador, to return to France, either for three months’ convalescence after the birth or even permanently, washing her hands of the affairs of Scotland for ever. Lethington fervently wished for the latter, with the country then coming under the control of a council of regency. The lack of firm government and the continual forming and reforming of the alliances among the nobility were becoming intolerable. Both Mauvissière and Cecil thought Mary’s intention was an absurd passing whim.

The tiny room chosen for her ‘travail’ was in the south-west corner of what is now called Crown Square in the heart of the castle complex, with a single window looking south above the cliff of the castle rock. With a short corridor and two other rooms between it and the outside world, it assured her privacy. The
extreme seriousness with which childbirth was viewed is exemplified by the fact that once she was installed with her female attendants as well as a midwife, Margaret Asteane, and a wet nurse, she made her will. There were three copies: one kept by herself, one sent to Joinville for safe keeping by the Guise family and one which would remain with whoever took control after her death. There were also rumours that three regents had already been appointed.

The will began conventionally enough by leaving everything in Mary’s possession to her child. However, in the case of their joint deaths she gave precise instructions as to the dispersal of the jewels which were her own personal possessions. The document was simply an inventory of Mary’s goods against which, piece by piece, she carefully indicated in the margin what she wished to happen to each item. Her annotations are in French, as is the inventory, and the pages are witnessed by Mary Livingston, who was in charge of the royal jewels, and by Margaret Carwood, Mary’s most experienced bedchamber woman, who took charge of the linens and embroideries in Mary’s cabinet. Margaret Carwood’s signature is laboriously drawn and Carwood was probably illiterate. The Great Harry jewel, given to Mary by Henri II on the day of her wedding to François II, was to be included in the Scottish Crown Jewels, and seven of her largest diamonds were to be kept for the use of future queens. Her bequests to Darnley are interesting. There are twenty-six in all: a seemingly endless list of jewelled buttons, a diamond-set watch, a ‘dial’ she had received from Lennox and her red wedding ring. Mary wrote on the document, ‘It was with this that I was married; I leave it to the king who gave it to me.’ There were two rings of diamonds and rubies for her parents-in-law, the Earl and Countess of Lennox.

This ends the list of what was conventionally essential and the remainder of the bequests reflect more strongly her own personal wishes. There were many bequests of jewels for her extended Guise family, followed by bequests to various illegitimate Stewarts. There was jewellery to Lady Jane Stewart, Countess of
Argyll, who had caught the overturned candle during Rizzio’s murder; to Lord John, another witness to the butchery, to her half-brother Lord James, now the Earl of Moray; and to the loyal nobility.

Her legacies to the four Maries seem trivial beside the mountain of jewellery – mostly embroidery and decorated linens. Only one of them had observed her vow of celibacy before Mary’s own marriage. Mary Livingston had married John Sempill on 6 March 1564, and Mary had attended the wedding and provided her wedding dress. Mary Beaton had married Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne in May 1566, and she was bequeathed the queen’s French, Italian and English books, while Mary Fleming would marry Lethington on 6 January 1567. However, Mary Seton, the hairdresser, never married but stayed loyal even during English exile and was only separated from Mary in 1584, when she went to the convent of St Pierre in Reims where Mary’s aunt, Renée de Guise, was still the abbess. The ladies of honour – Countess of Atholl, Mme de Briante, Mme de Crie – were remembered, and a sapphire and pearl brooch was specified for Erskine of Black-grange on whose horse Mary had ridden pillion on the midnight flight to Dunbar. Rizzio’s brother, Joseph, was to get two jewels, and an emerald ring was to be given to a person whose name Mary had whispered into Joseph’s ear. His identity is still a mystery. Margaret Carwood was left a miniature of Mary set with diamonds and a little silver box. Mary’s linen was to be sold and shared among the three bedchamber women, while plate and furniture would be sold for ushers, valets, grooms, etc. Finally, her Greek and Latin books were destined for the University of St Andrews.