Mary Queen of Scots (94 page)

The depositions and letters of Babington were now read aloud. The mention of the name Arundel and his brothers, who had been involved in conspiracies in her favour, drew from Mary the exclamations: ‘Alas, why should this noble house of Howard have suffered so much for me….’ After the midday meal further letters were read aloud including the depositions and confessions of Nau and Curle. Throughout the trial, the speeches were addressed to the lords rather than to Mary, so that in order to make a point about a passage in a letter she had to interrupt them; she also complained that the evidence was produced in no particular order, on purpose to confuse her in her answers for she had after all no previous warning of what was going to be produced against her, no opportunity to study the letters privately, and of course no counsel to assist her in making her case. The strain of keeping sufficiently mentally alert was considerable. Nevertheless Mary continued calmly to emphasize the wrongfulness of her imprisonment and call to witness her own ill-health – ‘I cannot walk without assistance nor use my arms, and I spend most of my time confined to bed by sickness’. She also said that much of her memory had faded with age, captivity and ill-health, and she hardly knew any longer how to act the queen, since it had been so long – nearly twenty years – since she had actually reigned. Although Mary vehemently contradicted the ludicrous notion that the English might have the right to try her because they had in ancient times claimed suzerainty over Scotland, which she claimed would dishonour the memory of her own ancestors, yet she freely admitted that she no longer wished to rule: ‘My advancing age and bodily weakness both prevent me from wishing to resume the reins of government. I have perhaps only two or three years to live in this world, and I do not aspire to any public position, especially when I consider the pain and desperance which meet those who wish to do right, and act with justice and dignity in the midst of so perverse a generation, and when a whole world is full of crimes and troubles’ – this was indeed the cry of sad disillusioned middle-age.
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At this Cecil, either determined to make an impressive showing of his disapproval of the queen of Scots, or with his memory of those far-off days of the abortive Treaty of Edinburgh nearly thirty years before, in which he
had been much involved, still burning in his mind, reproached Queen Mary with having assumed the English royal arms at the time of her French marriage and having thus attempted to usurp Elizabeth’s throne. Mary gave in reply her stock answer to this accusation: that being then very young, she had merely acted in obedience to the commands of her father-in-law, Henry
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. To this Cecil retorted that she had later aggravated the offence by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh in which her pretensions to the English throne were formally abandoned, and the argument then proceeded as often before on well-worn lines, except that Mary took care to reiterate at every turn the significance of her status as a queen, which meant that she could never be expected to cede her rights without receiving any concessions about the succession in return. Cecil now accused her of having personally coveted Elizabeth’s throne, and Mary responded with a long and closely argued speech on the subject of the English royal succession, which she had evidently prepared carefully in advance, and may be regarded as incorporating her ultimate views on the subject. She made two main points: firstly, she had never at any time wished to usurp the English throne while Elizabeth lived; secondly, and in no way contradicting her previous point, she had ‘no scruple of conscience in desiring the second rank as being the legitimate and nearest heir’. It was the right to inherit at the proper time rather than the right to reign immediately, which Mary was not prepared to surrender.

The queen now went on to declare that although she knew that her enemies wished to compass her death by unlawful means, yet with God’s help she would still manage to meet her end publicly, as a witness to the faith in which she believed. In a moving passage, which marked her out as far more tolerant than the age in which she lived, and contrasted with the sly venom of Cecil and the cold vindictiveness of Paulet, Mary gave her own philosophy of life, in which there was no place for revenge: ‘I do not desire vengeance. I leave it to Him who is the just Avenger of the innocent and of those who suffer for His Name under whose power I will take shelter. I would rather pray with Esther than take the sword with Judith.’ And she reminded the judges once more that she had come to England seeking Elizabeth’s protection. Mary now attempted valiantly to combat the charges based on the cipher letters. She accused Walsingham of inventing the ciphers and manufacturing the whole plot, and said that she had been warned long before from France to be on her guard against Ballard since he had ‘great intelligence’ with Walsingham. She repudiated her own letter to Babington in its entirety. She battled with Cecil in a game of wits in which Cecil denied that any Catholic had been put to death in
England for religion merely, but only for treason against the queen. Walsingham, stung by Queen Mary’s charges, made his own apologia, as vivid as Mary’s own on the subject of vengeance, in which he drew a sharp distinction between public and private morality. ‘God is my witness,’ he declared, ‘that as a private person I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man, and as a Secretary of State, nothing unbefitted of my duty.’ Another topic discussed in this first day of the trial was that of Thomas Morgan, Mary’s agent in France, now in prison there for his involvement in the Parry plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Cecil tried to make out that the fact that Morgan was her pensioner contaminated Mary with his guilt. Mary answered with some asperity that Morgan was not her pensioner, but merely someone to whom she had given money from time to time, much as England had subsidized the master of Gray, and many other Scots, including the king, James himself. It was a pertinent point.

The evidence of Nau and Curle was now examined in much detail: in vain the queen enquired angrily why the two secretaries themselves were not produced in court as witnesses, since their absence cast a sinister light on the truth of their depositions. Mary pointed out that as it was admitted that Nau had actually written the text of the letters in cipher, it would have been easy enough for him to have incorporated some extra matter without her knowledge, more especially since over the past year he had taken to doing the correspondence apart in his own little cabinet, giving the excuse that it was thus easier to compose and concentrate. ‘Nau had many peculiarities, likings and intentions that I cannot mention in public,’ added Mary darkly.
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Despite this outburst, at heart Mary realized the truth about her secretaries, and even in this extremity was prepared to show the human understanding for which she was rightly famous; for she went on: ‘For my part, I do not wish to accuse my secretaries, but I see plainly that what they have said is from fear of torture and death. Under promise of their lives and in order to save themselves, they have excused themselves at my expense, fancying that I could thereby more easily save myself, at the same time, not knowing where I was, and not suspecting the manner in which I am treated.’ She also distinguished the betrayal of Nau from that of Curle, knowing the characters of both men, saying that if Curle had done anything wrong, he must have been forced into it by Nau. Mary and Cecil now argued about who had employed Nau – whether the fact that he was paid by the king of France might explain his disloyalty to Mary. Having made this point, however, Mary returned to her main thesis on the subject of the secretaries, that they themselves in person rather than their evidence should have been produced against her: ‘If they were in my presence now
they would clear me on the spot of all blame and would have put me out of case….’ Mary was right in the importance she attached to the secretaries’ evidence: Walsingham smugly reported to Leicester the next day that the fact that her own secretaries had testified against Mary was proof of her guilt, in the minds of even her friends on the commission.
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According to the physician Bourgoing’s account, the whole trial now broke down into a bedlam of accusations on the part of Mary’s judges: these
chicaneurs
(as he persistently termed them – pettifogging lawyers) attacked her like furies, sometimes one by one, sometimes all together, all shouting that she was guilty. When Mary returned to her own apartments, she was so exhausted that she told her own servants, without wishing to carry the comparison too far, that the whole scene had reminded her of the Passion of Christ: for the judges had treated her as the Jews treated Jesus, shouting at him
‘Tolle, Tolle, Crucifige’.
And so ended the first day of the trial. The queen passed an anxious and sleepless night, and began the next day early praying in her private oratory.

As she entered the great hall on the second morning of her ordeal, it was noticed that the queen was extremely pale. But her first action was to make it known that she wished to address the assembly personally. Curiosity to hear her was enormous: for over the years the legend of the imprisoned Scottish queen, whether a dragon or a captive princess, had grown quite sufficiently to arouse the keen interest of the spectators. Mary’s first point was to protest strongly and movingly against the manner in which she had been treated on the previous day, being attacked on every issue, although she had only consented to answer accusations specifically related to the assassination plot against Elizabeth. Weak and ill as she was, she was alone among them, a sick woman, with no paper, no notes and no secretary, taken by surprise by a commission which had long been preparing such charges against her: under such circumstances she concluded ‘there is not one, I think, among you, let him be the cleverest man you will, but would be incapable of resisting or defending himself were he in my place.’
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Strangely enough this speech met with a moderate reply from Cecil, in contrast to the roughness of the previous day. Bourgoing noted that the whole behaviour of the judges was now more courteous and that Cecil on several occasions gave them hints on how to proceed. Not only that, but Mary’s servants, with the quick observation of those long imprisoned, noticed that many of the nobles had come to the assembly in riding-dress and boots, from which they deduced that the proceedings were already designed, willy-nilly, to end that day. The morning was spent in going over most of the main points again – the pretended overthrow of Elizabeth,
Mary’s correspondence with foreign princes and her attempts to be delivered from prison. Cecil took particular care to try and persuade Mary that she was being well treated, and that although she was only being examined on the subject of the assassination, all the other evidence had to be taken into account. Cecil concluded by saying that Mary had behaved particularly badly in seeking to escape at the exact moment when the last treaty for her freedom had been about to be concluded (he was referring to the Association with James) and sending Parry to kill Elizabeth. At this corruption of the truth, Mary burst out ‘Ah! You are indeed my adversary!’ ‘I am the adversary to the adversaries of Queen Elizabeth,’ replied Cecil smoothly.
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The second stage of the trial concerned Mary’s transference of the inheritance rights of the Scottish crown to Philip
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. In a tone not unlike that of her cousin Elizabeth when her Commons grew too presumptuous, Mary sharply repudiated the right of the court even to consider this matter. It was true that as an English prisoner she hardly had much of a crown to offer, but in any case ‘It is not your affair to speak of matters concerning princes, and to inquire whether they have secret intelligences with each other’. When Cecil questioned her as to how she would have acted if the Spanish army had arrived, Mary stuck to the answer that she was not answerable for the Spanish, and again and again declared: ‘I desired nothing but my own deliverance.’ Accusations were now piled on her head from the intended murder of the queen, to the prayers said at Rome for Mary as the true queen of England. Throughout all these speeches, Mary adhered steadfastly to the statement that she had neither planned nor known of any lethal enterprise. She appealed to her own reputation for mercy and, how in Scotland she had always been blamed for being so tolerant to the Protestants: ‘It has been the cause of my ruin,’ she reflected sadly, ‘for my subjects became sad and haughty and abused my clemency; indeed they now complain that they were never so well off as under my government.’
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In short Mary took her stand on the two things which she had always desired, and freely admitted to having done so – her own deliverance and the support of the Catholic cause in England. Beyond these aims, she no longer wished for anything, neither honours nor kingdoms; and in defence of this last aim she was prepared to die. If the Pope in Rome had chosen to give her the title of queen of England, it was not for her to correct him. As for the famous bull, she herself had offered to prevent its execution. Yet she felt herself more than ever as one with the whole Catholic community in England, whose prayers were sustaining her, and against whose cruel
persecution she once more vigorously protested. The queen’s last demand was to be granted a full hearing in front of Parliament; instead of being limited to this unjust trial, and to be permitted to confer personally with Queen Elizabeth. Mary then rose. As she proceeded from her chair, she regarded the whole assembly, and most regally declared that she pardoned them for what they had done. Mary then had a few private words with Walsingham, which seemed to displease him, for she once more turned and addressed the assembly as a whole: ‘My lords and gentlemen, I place my cause in the hands of God.’ As the queen passed the table full of lawyers she permitted herself a last little pleasantry: she called on God to pardon them for the way they had treated her – ‘somewhat rudely’ – as she put it, and she added with a smile: ‘May God keep me from having to do with you all again.’ At this the lawyers also exchanged smiles.
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