Mary Queen of Scots (60 page)

Equally significant of the queen’s state of mind is the fact that there were no rich presents for Bothwell as groom as there had been for Darnley, and certainly no lavish replenishment of her own wardrobe. Whereas Darnley had received violet velvet, furs, a cupboard for perfumes, cloth of gold for his horse’s caparison, blue bonnets with feathers for his fools, and other tokens of Mary’s love, Bothwell merely received some genet fur from one of Mary of Guise’s black cloaks for his dressing-gown – his solitary present. Furthermore, the queen seems to have paid no attention to the subject of her own clothes, once so important to her. There are only two entries in the inventories of her wardrobe in May 1567 – one being for Bothwell’s fur – compared to thirty in July 1565, the month in which she married Darnley.
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Her sartorial preparations were confined to having an old yellow dress relined with white taffeta, an old black gown done up with gold braid and a black taffeta petticoat relined. Of all the sad events in the life of Mary Stuart in Scotland, this squalid hurried wedding, of a rite she did not profess, without any of the preparations she so loved, is surely the most pathetic.

Judged from the comments of observers, Mary’s brief married life with Bothwell brought her absolutely no personal happiness. Already on their wedding-day, du Croc reported that a strange formality was noticed between the queen and her new husband. Mary tried to excuse it, by saying that she did not wish to be merry. To Leslie, she was more explicit: she sent for him, and in floods of tears told him how much she already repented of what she had done, especially her Protestant marriage ceremony.
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She promised him desperately she would never do anything again opposed to the Catholic Church. In front of others, Mary’s sadness was even more fearful and more desperate. Melville heard her actually ask for a knife, to kill herself in front of Arthur Erskine, her equerry, the day after the wedding, and when he remonstrated with her, the queen threatened to drown herself.
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It has been suggested that Mary’s unhappiness was due to the fact that Bothwell now made some revelation to her about his past – his guilt at Kirk o’Field, for example, or even his father’s supposed liaison with her mother Mary of Guise. But Mary Stuart’s state of mind
was now too immediately disturbed for such past scandals to be able to affect her, and Bothwell’s involvement in her husband’s death was certainly no surprise to her at this point. The hysterical nature of Mary’s reaction shows not only how far she was from feeling any kind of personal love for Bothwell, but also how desperately close her nerves were to the surface and how far her self-control had vanished. As it began to dawn on her that she might have betrayed her whole reputation in order to marry a man who was no more suited than Darnley to advise her, control the nobles, or govern Scotland, her future began to look very black indeed.

Melville reported that Bothwell’s beastly and suspicious nature was such that ‘not one day passed’ during their time together without the queen shedding abundant tears. Maitland told du Croc a little later that since the day of the queen’s marriage there had been no end of tears and lamentations, since Bothwell was furious and jealous if she looked at anyone except him – he accused her of having a pleasure-loving nature, and liking to spend her time in frivolous worldly pursuits, like any other woman.
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In short there was now no lute-playing, hunting and hawking, as in the early days with Darnley. Even before their marriage, Bothwell’s unkindness had led to half a day’s quarrel between them. Bothwell’s language was said to be so filthy that even Melville was constrained to leave his presence. Gossips in London suggested that Mary suffered tortures of jealousy because Bothwell’s former wife Lady Jean still remained installed in his own castle of Crichton. Maitland helped to stir up trouble by telling Mary that Bothwell had written to Jean several letters assuring her that he only regarded Mary as his concubine – Jean was still his only lawful wife. Du Croc took care to pass the story on to the French court, adding spitefully: ‘No one in this kingdom is in any doubt but that the Duke (Bothwell) loves his former wife a great deal more than he loves the Queen.’
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In fact property was probably at the bottom of Bothwell’s relations with Jean: it is unlikely that he could have turned her out of Crichton, even if he had so wished, since her dowry had redeemed the mortgage, and Jean Bothwell, as we have seen, had a commendable sense of property values.

But Bothwell in his treatment of Mary was less concerned with the niceties of their legal relationship, than in the power that it brought him. In their bond of 16 June, the lords announced that Bothwell had kept Mary as the virtual prisoner of his ambition. None of their number had been able to speak to her, even on lawful business, without Bothwell being present; so suspicious had Bothwell become, that he kept the queen’s chamber door perpetually guarded by his own men of war. Drury reported on 20 May that the queen’s distress was the talk of the court: never,
it seemed, had a woman changed so much in appearance in so short a space of time. It was even rumoured that she was suffering from the falling sickness (epilepsy) to explain her deranged behaviour.
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The mermaid and the hare were evidently as ill-suited to live together as might be expected of a half-fairy sea creature and a wild animal of the earth.

One of the first tasks the queen and Bothwell had to face after their hasty marriage was that of explaining it away to both the French and English courts. Mary’s instructions to the bishop of Dunblane,
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who was entrusted with the mission to France, and the letter she sent along the same lines to Beaton, have a strongly apologetic note, as though she was all too aware of that unpleasant French proverb,
qui s’excuse, s’accuse.
Apart from her accounts of events leading up to the marriage, already quoted, she stressed her continued loyalty to the Catholic Church – she would not ‘leave her religion for him, nor for any man at all’ – aware that her actions had once more cast this seriously in doubt. Her instructions emphasized Bothwell’s loyal service to the Scottish crown, and glossed over their previous disagreements which she attributed to the jealousy of other nobles. ‘As envy follows virtues, and this country is of itself somewhat subject to factions; others began to mislike his proceedings, and so far by reports and misconstructing his doings, went about to put him out of our good grace….’ Then Mary stressed the fact that Bothwell had won over the other nobles to the marriage project – ‘He obtained an writing subscribed with all their hands, wherein they not only granted their consent to our marriage with him, but also obliged them to set him forward with their lives and goods.’ Finally she described her own helpless and broken spirit, how she felt herself inadequate to deal with the Scottish situation single-handed – ‘this realm being divided in factions as it is, cannot be contained in order, unless our authority be assisted and forthset by the fortification of a man who must take upon his person in the execution of justice … the travail thereof we may no longer sustain in our own person, being already wearied, and almost broken with the frequent uproars and rebellions raised against us since we came in Scotland’. Despite this plea for sympathy in her situation, which has the ring of truth, Mary felt it necessary to outline answers to two possible objections – the lawfulness of the marriage she defends by saying that Bothwell’s previous marriage was dissolved, and her failure to bring the nuncio to Scotland she defends by saying rather ingenuously that she had done all she could in this respect, and that if the nuncio had arrived such terrible events might not have happened.

Robert Melville’s instructions for breaking the news to Queen Elizabeth ran along very similar lines.
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The difficult quarrelsome nature of the Scottish people is once more emphasized, as is Mary’s personal exhaustion and despair for lack of a husband to support her in this impossible situation. Mary met the principal objection of Elizabeth – that she had married the man suspected of her husband’s death – with the point that he had been formally acquitted of the crime by the Scottish Parliament. Despite the fact that Mary accompanied her instructions with a personal and charming letter to Cecil, begging him to help her cause with Elizabeth, neither the English queen nor the French queen allowed themselves to be distracted by Mary’s excuses from the patent facts of the case. From the point of view of either France or England, the Scottish queen had totally lost her head in thus allowing herself to be wedded to the disreputable Bothwell. The only real line of defence was after all that which Mary took in her letter to Beaton: ‘The event is indeed strange and otherwise nor (we know) you would have looked for. But as it is succeeded, we must take the best of it.’

Ironically enough, if the Scottish situation had not been so factious, if Bothwell had not by the flagrant manner of Darnley’s death provided such a convenient handle against himself, if he had understood in any way how to persuade his fellow-nobles into accepting him as consort – as he attempted unsuccessfully to do through the Ainslie bond – he might not have made a bad ruler of the country. The union of Mary and Bothwell might have turned out a marriage of convenience, if not a love match. Bothwell had strength and he had intelligence; as for his tendency to search for violent solutions to problems, he was certainly not alone in possessing this failing in this epoch. He showed reverence for the queen’s position if not her person, refusing to cover himself in her presence until she took his cap and put it on. When they rode abroad together, they put up a good public front of content. Bothwell’s actions during his five weeks as consort were positively encouraging for the future of the country, were it not for the fact that his fellow-nobles were by now seething in almost open revolt. The machinery of the Privy Council, for example, was overhauled to provide for more regular attendance; a law was passed against bringing false money into Scotland; more important still, on 23 May the proclamation concerning the religion of the country which Mary had enacted on her first arrival in Scotland in 1561, was re-enacted formally to reassure the troubled minds who had heard false rumours about its validity. It was
pointed out that by allowing certain persons to practise their own (Catholic) religion, the queen had intended no violation of the Act. Scotland was still very much officially Protestant. All this was done with the advice of Mary’s ‘dearest husband, James Duke of Orkney, Earl Bothwell, etc.’ Bothwell’s own letters to France and England, backing up Mary’s explanations of their marriage, revealed a certain native diplomatic ability. To Queen Elizabeth, Bothwell wrote: ‘I will thus boldly affirm that, albeit men of greater and birth and estimation might well have been preferred to this room, yet none more careful to see your two Majesties’ amity and intelligence continued by all good offices….’ He wrote in the same vein to Charles
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of France; Archbishop Beaton he tactfully requested to excuse him in so far as some of his behaviour might seem rather unceremonious and lacking respect.
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Such intelligence might have stood Mary in good stead, if she had ever been allowed the time to enjoy it. It was in exchange for his strength and support in the future that Mary had endured the humiliation of her wedding-day to Bothwell. But the cruelty of fate ensured that she was never allowed the time to enjoy her part of the bargain.

Fast as events had moved before Mary’s wedding, the speed only increased after the ceremony. By the end of May the clouds of war were gathering round Bothwell’s head with such menace that on 30 May the queen and duke were constrained to summon their people to meet them at Melrose on 15 June, with a view to taking arms. The granting of Tantallon to Morton and Edinburgh Castle to Balfour made neither of them more agreeable to see Bothwell elevated above them. Mary described the genesis of a new conspiracy in Scotland to Nau as follows:
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‘It may have originated in some secret feuds among the lords of recent date, or possibly from grievances of remoter origin which though long hidden, at last came to scatter their poison on the surface.’ What distinguished this new fracas from the Huntly affair, the Chaseabout Raid, the Riccio killing and even the murder of Darnley, was that it now proved convenient to bring in a new dimension of morality, in order to blacken the case against Bothwell, and gloss over the previous commitments of Morton and Maitland. Undoubtedly the hatred of Bothwell and Maitland for each other proved a telling point in the rallying of the nobles against the queen. This animosity was so well known, that Maitland was actually rumoured to have been killed by Bothwell at Dunbar. In the end Maitland placed his feelings for Bothwell above his loyalty to Mary, and on 6 June finally left the royal court for the west. He told Cecil that he had been in fear of his life, since
Bothwell had tried to kill him in a fit of ungovernable rage in the queen’s own presence, and would have succeeded in doing so, if Mary had not rushed to Maitland’s assistance. Maitland refused to admit that his disappearance at this critical juncture involved any disloyalty. To Cecil he explained smoothly that he had only remained at Mary’s side for so long, with so many hazards to his life and honour, because of his ancient affection for the queen. Now he could endure no more.
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Many of the conspirators, such as Kirkcaldy, belonged to the old Protestant party of Moray, who had hated Bothwell since Chaseabout days and before. Bothwell had many virulent enemies. After Home and Murray of Tullibardine joined, Tullibardine brought in his brother-in-law Mar, the more inclined to come over because Bothwell had deprived him of Edinburgh Castle. The allegiance of Atholl was the easier to procure because his wife was sister to Maitland’s wife Mary Fleming; Morton also dangled the prospect of the marriage of his rich young ward the countess of Angus with Atholl’s son before the earl’s eyes, although in the end the young lady was married off to Mar’s son instead. In this network of allegiances and betrayals the treachery of Sir James Balfour surpassed that of anyone else: for he, the closest involved in the murder of Darnley, who had probably drawn up the Craigmillar bond, and who had been granted the custody of Edinburgh Castle as a reward for his complicity, now secretly treated with the conspirators and agreed to support their cause, on condition that his custody of the castle was confirmed. Yet another bond was made in which Sir James Balfour promised to put Edinburgh Castle at the disposal of the nobles, on the grounds that Bothwell was wickedly keeping their sovereign’s person in thrall. A further condition of Balfour’s adhesion was a total indemnity for any past crimes he might have committed up to the present moment – which included of course his participation in the murder at Kirk o’Field.