Mary, Queen of Scots (24 page)

Mary has often been blamed for a fatal lack of judgement in placing such reliance upon Bothwell, a man who was hated by Catholics and Protestants alike, and feared by the English, but bitter experience and his own record of loyalty to the Crown had convinced her that he was more worthy of her trust than her own husband and most of her Lords. He had saved her from Rizzio’s murderers, and she was full of gratitude towards him. It has been noted that allegations that Mary was having an affair with Bothwell at this time belong to a later period, when her enemies had good political reasons for maligning her character. There is no evidence for such an affair in contemporary sources; sixteenth-century monarchs lived their lives in the public gaze and were surrounded by attendants, some of whom could be bribed for inside information. Foreign ambassadors were avid for the slightest morsel of gossip or scandal, and often made extensive and secret inquiries about the intimate lives of princes: the English in particular would have been grateful for the chance to defame Mary. There had been scurrilous gossip about Mary and Rizzio, pounced on by Randolph, but no one, in the summer and autumn of 1566, claimed that she was on intimate terms with Bothwell.

In his letter of 3 August, Bedford had mentioned that Mary was now reconciled with Maitland. Maitland had not yet been received back at court but was privately assisting Moray and Argyll in their efforts to bring about the restoration of Morton and the other exiles. Castelnau and du Croc were also working “very earnestly and effectually” towards the same end.
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Mary paid another visit to Alloa on 3 August, returning to Edinburgh five days later. On 10 August, the Papal Nuncio, the Bishop of Mondovi, arrived in Paris on his way to Scotland, only to find letters from Mary awaiting him, in which she begged him to defer his departure for her kingdom, as seditious people would prevent her from receiving him with the honour he deserved. Her messenger, John Beaton, “a man of high character in every respect,”
⁵³
arrived soon afterwards to offer her apologies. The truth was that Mary had so far failed to “induce the nobles to give free entrance into the kingdom to the Papal Legate; no argument could move [them], especially Moray, to assent.”
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Mary also knew that, if Mondovi came secretly, “great tumults” would result, which would inevitably upset the status quo she was working so hard to maintain. Mondovi sent Beaton back with a portion of the promised subsidy
⁵⁵
and a stern letter exhorting the Queen to do everything in her power to bring about the restoration of the faith in her realm.
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Meanwhile, Bedford had received intelligence of a plot, or “device,” against Bothwell, who “hath grown of late so hated that he cannot long continue.” Bedford claimed he “might have heard” the “particularities” of the plot, “but, because such dealings like me not, I desire to hear no further thereof”
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It would have suited the English very well for someone to assassinate Bothwell, therefore Bedford did not intend to intervene. It has been suggested that Moray was behind this plot, which is possible, given his other activities at this time, but if he was, he took care—as he may have done on other occasions—to cover his traces. Rumour also credited Maitland with an attempt to poison Bothwell: Maitland had regained possession of Haddington Abbey, which had been granted to Bothwell after Maitland’s disgrace, and the two men were now locked in a bitter dispute about ownership. Some believed that murder was Maitland’s way of resolving it, but there is no proof of this.

Mary was making the best of the situation with Darnley. There was no acceptable way out of her marriage, so the sensible course was to re-establish a good rapport with her husband. This meant resuming sexual relations. On 13 August, Darnley received a large payment of money from her treasury,
⁵⁸
as well as cloth of gold for caparisons for his horse, and a magnificent bed that had belonged to Marie de Guise. This was upholstered in “violet-brown velvet, enriched with cloth of gold and silver, with ciphers and flowers sewn with cloth of gold and silk, furnished with roof and headpiece”; its curtains were of purple damask, its pillows of violet velvet, and its quilt of blue taffeta. The sheets were of the finest Holland linen.
⁵⁹
The gift of the bed probably marked what was intended to be, on the Queen’s part at any rate, a reconciliation. Randolph, in England, heard that “the King and Queen are bedded together, whereby ’tis thought some better agreement may ensue.”

On the day after the bed was delivered, Mary and Darnley went on a stag-hunting expedition to the wild moors of Meggetland, which lay south of Peebles, and the nearby Ettrick Forest. They were accompanied by Bothwell, Moray, Huntly, Atholl and Mar:
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given the ill feeling between some of these nobles, the atmosphere must have been tense.

In Meggetland, Mary and Darnley stayed at Cramalt, in a tower house whose remains now lie beneath a reservoir. Their sport was disappointing, and they were obliged to issue a proclamation prohibiting anyone from shooting the royal deer, which were proving elusive. Nor was the reconciliation working. Buchanan claims that Mary behaved “capriciously, arrogantly and disdainfully” towards Darnley, “openly, in the face of all”; if this is true, his insulting behaviour certainly gave her sufficient provocation. On 19 August, the party stayed at Traquair House, near Innerleithen, as the guests of the Laird, Sir John Stewart, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, who had helped the royal couple escape from Holyrood after Rizzio’s murder. Traquair was a fortified three-storey tower house that had been a hunting lodge of the Kings of Scots since c.1100 before passing to a junior branch of the Stewart line. Mary and Darnley occupied chambers on the first floor, now the King’s Room and a dressing room.
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At supper, Darnley asked Mary to accompany him on another stag hunt on the morrow. “Knowing that, if she did so, she would be required to gallop her horse at a great pace, she whispered in his ear that she suspected she was pregnant.”
⁶²
This is confirmation in itself that she had resumed sexual relations with Darnley. However, it was far too soon to tell if she had conceived: it was exactly two months since the birth of James, and she had been unwell and estranged from Darnley for much of that time. It may be that, in the interests of happy marital relations, she wished people to think that she and the King had been reconciled for longer than they had. Darnley’s reaction shows that she had every cause to think she might be pregnant, but it was unpardonably brutal.

“Never mind,” he told her, “if we lose this one, we will make another.” It was the same thing he had said to her on that terrible night ride to Dunbar in March, and, seeing the Queen’s distress, the Laird rounded on his King and “rebuked him sharply,” telling him “he did not speak like a Christian.” But Darnley was unrepentant.

“What? Ought we not to work a mare when she is in foal?” he retorted.
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After this, all hopes of reconciliation faded, and on the way back to Edinburgh, which they reached on 20 August, Mary decided that it might be wiser to place her son in the stronghold of Stirling, in the care of a governor. There was every chance that Darnley might try to force the issue of the Crown Matrimonial, and if he succeeded, James’s security, even his life, would be under threat.

From Paris, on 21 August, having no doubt conferred with statesmen and foreign ambassadors, including Francisco de Alava, Mondovi expressed, in a confidential letter to the Cardinal of Alessandria in Rome, his opinion that Mary’s difficulties “might be obviated if the King of Spain should come, as it is hoped, with a strong force to Flanders, or, as certain persons of weight believe, if justice were executed against six rebels, who were leaders and originators of the late treason against the Queen, and whose deaths would effectually restore peace and obedience in that kingdom.” He then listed their names: Moray, Argyll, Morton, Maitland, Justice Clerk Bellenden and former Clerk Register MacGill, “a man of no family and contriver of all evil.” They comprised effectively the core of the Protestant establishment in Scotland. Moray’s inclusion on the list shows how widespread was the belief that he was behind the Rizzio plot, and Mondovi’s willingness to have him executed for it suggests that he had access to diplomatic intelligence confirming Moray’s role in the affair.

With regard to Darnley, Mondovi had learned that he was “an ambitious and inconstant youth, [who] would like to rule the realm, which was the subject of the plot he hatched a few months back, with the purpose of getting himself crowned King. He continues to go to Mass, but maintains strict friendship and intercourse with the heretical rebels, in order to preserve and increase his credit and authority.” By all reports, and possibly on the recommendation of de Alava, Darnley was the man to engineer the arrests of the Lords concerned “without any disturbance arising, and with the assured hope that afterwards the holy Catholic religion would soon be restored with ease throughout that kingdom, as no leader of faction would remain. The danger is that the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Queen, in their excessive clemency, would not consent to such an act.” The implication was clear: it was Darnley, not Mary, who would act as the champion of Catholicism. The Pope was said to be “delighted” with Mondovi’s suggestions.
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That August, the French ambassador to Spain reported that Philip’s visit to the Netherlands was certain. Men and ships were being assembled for the invasion. On 23 August, de Silva warned that some disturbance or rising was expected before the English Parliament met in the autumn.
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A week earlier, Darnley’s man, Anthony Standen the Elder, had left Scotland;
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he remained abroad, plotting on behalf of the Catholic cause, until 1605, and may well have initially acted in secret as Darnley’s agent. At the end of August, Darnley received another sum of money from the treasury.
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There has been speculation that he used this and the earlier payment to fund his treasonable schemes, but there is no evidence of this, and Mary herself must have authorised the grants, which were probably made to finance Darnley’s household and pleasures and keep him sweet.

On 31 August, Mary and Darnley, attended by an escort of 500 arquebusiers, took Prince James to Stirling Castle, where Mary entrusted him to the keeping of her good friend, the Earl of Mar, who was to be the Prince’s Governor. By tradition, the Erskines were guardians of royal heirs—Mar’s father had been given charge of Mary as a child—and Stirling was by custom the nursery palace of future kings. James was now assigned his own household, with a luxuriously furnished nursery; for the next four years, he would be “nursed and upbrought” by the Countess of Mar, the Catholic Annabella Murray. Lady Reres now replaced Helena Little as his wet-nurse,
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and Bothwell was made one of two Captains of his Bodyguard.

Soon afterwards, thanks to the efforts of his friend Atholl and Moray, Maitland arrived at Stirling and was formally welcomed back to court by the Queen. Mary had agreed to his return “as there was no proof of the charge against [him], trusting more than he deserved to his good qualities and his loyalty to herself.”
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On 4 September, Maitland dined with Mary, who behaved as if she “liked him very well.”
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She knew that Maitland would be far more effective than the Anglophobic Bothwell when it came to negotiating with Elizabeth for recognition of James’s rights to the English succession. Naturally, Bothwell was not pleased by this turn of events.

By 6 September, Mary was back in Edinburgh, where she stayed at the Exchequer House in the Cowgate, below St. Giles’s Kirk. Here, she attended an audit of the royal finances, “to understand her revenues and arrange for the maintenance of the Prince.”
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She also wished to ascertain her financial position with a view to paying for a lavish christening for her son. Darnley remained at Stirling, having refused to accompany her. The rift between them now seemed irreparable.

“NO OUTGAIT”

ACCORDING TO BUCHANAN, IN SEPTEMBER 1566, Mary began an adulterous affair with Bothwell. He alleges that the chief attraction of the Exchequer House for her was that its “pleasant, almost solitary” gardens gave access to the back door of the residence of David Chalmers, Bothwell’s man, who was shortly to be appointed, through Bothwell’s good offices, Common Clerk of Edinburgh. “By this door, Bothwell could come and go as he liked.” According to Buchanan’s scarcely believable and farcical tale, at Bothwell’s request, an accommodating Lady Reres, “a most dissolute woman who had been one of Bothwell’s whores,” smuggled him through the Exchequer House garden and up to the Queen’s room, where he “forced her against her will” to have sexual intercourse with him.

On reflection, Mary decided she had, after all, enjoyed the experience, and, “not many days after, desiring [Buchanan supposed] to repay force with force, sent Lady Reres to bring [Bothwell] captive unto her.” We are to believe that Mary and Margaret Carwood let the stout Lady Reres “down by a sash over the wall into the next garden. But behold! The sash suddenly broke! Down with a great noise tumbled Lady Reres. But the old warrior, nothing dismayed by the darkness, the height of the wall or her unexpected flight to earth, reached Bothwell’s chamber, opened the door, plucked him out of bed—out of his wife’s embrace—and led him, half-asleep, half-naked, to the arms of the Queen.”

Bothwell’s tailor, George Dalgleish, is said by Buchanan to have been a witness and to have given details of the episode in his confession of 1567, but the extant version of this document does not refer to it. Buchanan also claims that Mary “confessed the whole thing” to Moray and his mother at Lochleven in 1567, “as well as to many others,” but there is no proof of this. It is hardly likely that Lady Reres would have connived at the rape of her mistress, whose escape she had risked her life to facilitate after Rizzio’s murder, and she could not have done so anyway, for she was now lodging in the Prince’s household at Stirling as his wet-nurse. Moreover, it was her sister Janet, the Lady of Buccleuch, who had been Bothwell’s mistress. It will also be remembered that Lennox had dated the commencement of Mary’s alleged affair with Bothwell to before the birth of the Prince.

Some “Notes on David Chambers [
sic
],” which were later sent to Cecil alleged that Bothwell and his wife were indeed staying in David Chalmers’s house at that time, and that Chalmers got his preferments “because he had served Bothwell as a bawd. He was a great dealer betwixt the Queen and Bothwell, so Mr. David’s lodging was chosen as a place meet to exercise their filthiness, when the Queen lay in the Exchequer House in the Cowgate.”
¹
This would appear to corroborate Buchanan, but it was written after 1568, at a time when it was vitally expedient to destroy Mary’s reputation and when Buchanan’s libel had been circulated in political circles, so it cannot be relied upon as independent evidence.

According to
The Book of Articles
, which Buchanan drew up against Mary in 1568, “from September 1566, [Bothwell] became so familiar with her, night and day, that at his pleasure he abused her body,” while Darnley “was never permitted to remain patiently the space of 48 hours together in her company.” If Mary and Bothwell were lovers at this time, then they must have been exceptionally discreet, because no contemporary source mentions such an affair.

Mary was back at Holyrood by 12 September. A week later, Sir John Forster reported that the Privy Council had voted the Queen £12,000 (now equivalent to at least £3.5 million) to cover the expenses of the Prince’s christening; this was to be raised by loans from wealthy Edinburgh merchants. Everyone recognised the necessity for putting on a lavish show of splendour and pageantry in order to impress foreign ambassadors who were used to the magnificent courts of Renaissance Europe.

With Scotland’s international reputation at stake, the Queen naturally desired a degree of unity amongst her nobles, and around this time she persuaded Maitland and Bothwell to make a public display of reconciliation and friendship in the presence of Moray and Argyll, after which, Maitland resumed his duties as Secretary of State.
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Mary’s willingness to show favour to these leading Protestants may well have made Darnley all the more determined to expose her as a lukewarm supporter of Catholicism.

On 21 September, Mary, restored to good health and in better spirits,
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left Edinburgh to visit her son at Stirling. The next day, John Beaton arrived from Paris with the subsidy payment and the Nuncio’s letter,
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and the day after, Mary returned to Edinburgh to attend to affairs of state. She had been “desirous that the King should have come along with her,”
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but Darnley still insisted upon remaining at Stirling. He was in a foul, dejected mood, and revealed to du Croc that he was in such desperation that he was minded to go overseas. Du Croc “could not believe that he was in earnest.”
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It has been conjectured that the discovery that Mary was Bothwell’s mistress was enough to make Darnley want to leave Scotland, but, if so, it is surprising that neither he nor Lennox ever referred to it during the days that followed, when they had ample opportunity to do so. It will be remembered that Darnley had not been reticent in his suspicions of Rizzio.

Around 24/26 September, Lennox briefly visited Darnley at Stirling before returning to his estates in Glasgow.
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The outcome of their meeting was a letter written by Lennox to Mary, informing her that Darnley was so humiliated by the loss of status consequent upon her denying him the Crown Matrimonial that he intended to go abroad, and had a ship lying ready. According to Buchanan, it was anchored in the Firth of Clyde. Buchanan claims that Darnley meant to go to France or Spain, but Nau says that, “by the persuasion of some dissipated youths, who were his chief companions, he had resolved to go secretly to France, and there to support himself upon the Queen’s dowry.” Lennox told Mary he had tried to dissuade Darnley from going, but had been unable to “make him alter his mind.”
⁸

When Mary read this letter on 29 September, she resolved to have the matter out immediately with Darnley. His threat to go abroad was not only a public affront to her but also a threat to her security and that of her realm and her heir, and may have been a form of blackmail; in any case, it had to be dealt with. Some writers have speculated that Mary’s alarm arose chiefly from fear of the scandal that would ensue if her husband went abroad and she then became pregnant by Bothwell, but of course there is little reliable evidence that she and Bothwell were lovers at this time.

Mary showed Lennox’s letter to the Council, who expressed astonishment that the King should “entertain any thought of departing after so strange a manner” from Scotland and his wife, but they had probably not taken into account the humiliation he felt and his mortal fear that Morton and his other deadly enemies would be repatriated. Nor did they know of his dealings with influential Catholics abroad. “Their Lordships therefore took a resolution to talk with the King, that they might learn from himself the occasion of this hasty deliberation of his, that they might thereby be enabled to advise Her Majesty after what manner she should comfort herself in this conjecture.”
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That evening, to everyone’s “amazement,” Darnley turned up at the gates of Holyrood, but refused to enter the palace until the Privy Councillors had been dismissed, a stipulation that greatly offended those Lords. At 10 p.m., the Queen had to go out and persuade him that he was insulting her by his behaviour and should come inside. Because of the state he was in, she “conducted him to her own apartment, where he remained all night, abed together,” but he resisted her attempts to make him state his grievances. However, he did agree to attend a meeting of the Privy Council in the morning.
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Yet they fared little better. Having told the King that he should thank God for such a wise and virtuous wife, the Councillors asked him to account for his behaviour, and inform them how they had offended him. Mary herself took him by the hand and made him “a pretty strong harangue,” begging him to tell her if she had given him any cause to leave the kingdom, and declaring that she had “a clear conscience, [and] that all her life she had done no action which could anywise prejudice either his or her honour.” But Darnley refused to admit either that he intended to go abroad or that he had any cause for complaint. Du Croc, who was present, bluntly told him that his leaving the country “must affect either his own or the Queen’s honour.” At this, Darnley “at last declared that he had no ground at all for leaving the country” and that Mary had given him no occasion for discontent. “Thereupon he went out of the chamber of presence, saying to the Queen, ‘Adieu, Madame. You shall not see my face for a long space.’ After which, he likewise bade [du Croc] farewell, and, turning to the Lords, said, ‘Gentlemen, adieu.’ ”

After his departure, Mary was visibly distressed, but du Croc and the Lords comforted her, saying they were “all of opinion that this was but a false alarm the Earl of Lennox was willing to give Her Majesty.” The best advice they could give her was to continue on her present course of wise and virtuous behaviour, for the truth about her marriage would soon be public knowledge.
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The Lords would hardly have said this to her had she been carrying on with Bothwell, whom they hated.

Against Mary’s wishes,
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Darnley immediately left Holyrood for Glasgow, accompanied by Lennox. From Corstorphine, he wrote to her revealing that he was still in a mind to leave the country since she did not trust him with any regal authority, “nor is at such pains to advance him and make him to be honoured in the nation as she at first did”; furthermore, he complained, the nobility shunned him. On hearing this, the Council declared that they would never consent to his having the disposal of public affairs. Mary herself sent Darnley a letter in which she pointed out that, if his status was diminished, he ought to blame himself, not her, for that, in the beginning, she had conferred so much honour upon him as came afterwards to render herself very uneasy, the credit and reputation wherein she had placed him having served as a shadow to those who have most heinously offended Her Majesty; but she has, notwithstanding this, continued to show him such respect that, although they who did perpetrate the murder of her faithful servant had entered her chamber with his knowledge, and had named him the chief of their enterprise, yet would she never accuse him thereof.

Furthermore, “if the nobility abandon him, his own deportment towards them is the cause thereof; for if he desire to be followed and attended by them, he must first make them love him.”
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Mary also wrote to Lennox, assuring him that Darnley had no cause for complaint.

The King’s behaviour carried serious implications. On 8 October, on Mary’s instructions, the Council sent a full account of her confrontation with him and the correspondence that followed to Catherine de’ Medici, just in case Darnley should appeal to the French for support. It was stressed that the Lords would have been joyfully disposed “to pass over in silence the huge injury he does to himself and the Queen’s Majesty but, seeing that he himself is the very first person who, by his deportment, will lead discovery to the world, we can do no less than to testify the things that we have both seen and heard [to] all those who are allied to Her Majesty, that by these you may have opportunity to perceive the great trouble and vexation the Queen labours under at present, and the occasion of it.”
¹⁴

Soon after his departure, Darnley had sent a message to du Croc, summoning him to meet him halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. He had decided to make public his grievances in the hope that the ambassador would use his influence to put matters right. But du Croc “remonstrated to him every thing that I could think of” to dissuade him from leaving Scotland, and came away with the impression that he had succeeded. Darnley, however, arrived in Glasgow more resentful than ever. Nor did he stay there long, for in October he was in Fife, hunting at Burleigh Castle and Kinross, and fishing at Loch Leven.

Late in September, as Mary had anticipated, the Council, with Moray at his most vociferous, refused permission for the Papal Nuncio to come to Scotland.
¹⁵
Even the militant Pius V was having doubts as to the wisdom of Mondovi’s mission, for he felt that its success was largely dependent upon Philip II being in Flanders, and on 30 September he wrote to the Nuncio to say that, if Philip’s arrival was further delayed, he should return to his See.
¹⁶
Unknown to him as yet, Mary was still making concessions to the reformed Church: in Council, on 3 October, she agreed that all benefices under 300 marks should go to ministers of the Kirk.
¹⁷

Mary was more preoccupied with the need to establish good order in the Borders
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, and decided to go ahead with the assizes that had been postponed, initially because of her pregnancy and then because of the harvest. On 1 October, she summoned all her Border Lords and freeholders to meet her at Melrose on 8 October, prior to travelling to Jedburgh for a justice eyre, or circuit court, over which she intended to preside on the 9th.
¹⁹
Darnley, invited to accompany her, had refused; Lennox claims that Mary’s progress to the Borders was a ploy to get away from her husband,
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but of course he had absented himself from her.

It was essential, in the circumstances, that there was at least a show of unity between the leading nobles and, early in October, according to Moray,
²¹
the Queen forced him, Argyll, Bothwell and Huntly to “subscribe a bond, which was devised in sign of our reconciliation in respect of the former grudges and displeasures that had been amongst us.” Moray claims he “was constrained to make promise before I could be admitted to the Queen’s presence or have any show of her favour”: evidently Mary had been obliged to use her royal prerogative to bend him to her will. The Bond bound these Lords to fortify and support each other in all their undertakings against their enemies and in refusing to obey the King “when his orders conflicted with the Queen’s wishes.”
²²
This put an end to Bothwell’s support of Darnley, and left the latter politically isolated, which is probably what Mary intended.