Mary Queen of Scots (49 page)

It was significant that at two crucial moments in his career – in November 1560 serving Mary of Guise against the insurgents under Châtelherault, and in June 1567 before Carberry Hill – Bothwell issued a challenge for personal combat with his enemies; as a feudal baron, and primarily a soldier, he was apt to choose the quick, if bloody, solution to any problem. It was true that during his brief spell as the queen’s husband Bothwell showed signs of a certain administrative ability, as a soldier can sometimes make a successful politician in a crisis; in the same way the coarse-grained Morton made not a bad showing as regent from the administrative point of view. But Bothwell’s personal qualities negated his usefulness in any delicate situation, and made him the last person to unite successfully that essentially disunited and suspicious body, the Scottish nobility. For one thing, Bothwell’s violence and his boastfulness (when Throckmorton called him a ‘glorious, rash and hazardous young man’ he was of course using the word glorious in the derogatory sense of vainglorious) scarcely led to popularity. Violence in matters of policy was accompanied by a streak of roughness, verging on bullying in private life. His servant Paris testified that he had kicked him in the stomach when Paris tried to argue with him.
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He was certainly not a man who was prepared to try using charm to gain his objectives: as Mary told Nau, ‘he was a man whose natural disposition made him anything but agreeable or inclined to put himself to much trouble or inconvenience to gain the goodwill of those with whom he had been associated’.
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Bothwell’s relations with women fell into the same adventurous but straightforward pattern as his career. Although interested in women, he drew a sharp and effective distinction between sex and marriage: Anna Throndsen never did secure the marriage contract she desired and departed disconsolately to her home some time in 1563. His name was also linked with that of the legendary Janet Beaton, aunt of the queen’s Marie, made famous as Sir Walter Scott’s Wizard Lady of Branxholm, who could bond to her bidding ‘the viewless forms of air’: this remarkable lady enjoyed five husbands – the last at the age of sixty-one – and a number of lovers in the course of a long and full life. When she became Bothwell’s mistress, he was twenty-four and she many years older, her unfading beauty generally attributed to the practice of magic, a subject she may have had in common with her lover. Despite the difference in their ages, they may have gone through some sort of ceremony of ‘hand-fasting’, Bothwell being fascinated by her combination of audacity, determination and sexuality. But it was finally Jean Gordon, the comparatively rich sister of the powerful Huntly, whom Bothwell actually married, the marriage contract making it clear that it was the bride who was making the settlement on the groom rather than the other way round. Bothwell evidently regarded lust as a simple sensation to be quickly gratified. The deposition of Thomas Craigwallis at the time of his divorce gave an evocative picture
of his relations with his mistress, pretty little black-eyed Bessie Crawford, the blacksmith’s daughter – a fifteen-minute rendezvous in the steeple of the abbey at Haddington, and another tryst in a mid-chamber of the kitchen tower at Crichton (Thomas remaining at the door); a subsequent encounter took place ‘in a chamber within the cloister’ according to Pareis Sempill’s evidence ‘and when my lord came forth his clothes were loose, and Patrick Wilson helped him up therewith’.
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Marriage on the other hand was a more serious business to be undertaken for the positive motive of gain.

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.
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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.
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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 now high up and prominent among the other loyal lords.
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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 hand-writing ‘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;
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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.
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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 dependant 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 Livingstone, a royal maid-of-honour who was also the sister of the grander ‘Marie’, Mary Livingstone. 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 3 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.
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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 15 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 19 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’.
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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 church was the Protestant cathedral 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.’
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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.
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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.