Mary, Queen of Scots (48 page)

Madam,

My ears have been so astounded, my mind so disturbed and my heart so frightened to hear of the horrible and abominable murder of your late husband and my slaughtered cousin, that I have scarcely spirit to write; and however I would express my sympathy in your sorrow for his loss, so, to tell you plainly, I cannot conceal that I grieve more for you than for him.

O, Madam, I should ill fulfill the office of a faithful cousin or an affectionate friend if I did not urge you to preserve your honour. I cannot but tell you what all the world is thinking. Men say that, instead of seizing the murderers, you are looking through your fingers while they escape; that you will not seek revenge on those who have done you so much pleasure, as though the deed would never have taken place had not the doers of it been assured of impunity.

For myself, I beg you to believe that I would not harbour such a thought for all the wealth of the world, nor would I entertain in my heart so ill a guest, or think so badly of any prince that breathes. Far less could I so think of you, to whom I desire all imaginable good and all blessings which you yourself could wish for. For this very reason, I exhort, I counsel, I beg you deeply to consider of the matter—at once, if it be the nearest friend you have, to lay your hands upon the man who has been guilty of the crime; to let no interest, no persuasion, keep you from proving to everyone that you are a noble princess and a loyal wife. I write thus vehemently not that I doubt, but for affection. You may have wiser counsellors than I am, but even Our Lord, as I remember, had a Judas among the twelve; while I am sure that you have no friend more true than I, and my affection may stand you in as good stead as the subtle wits of others.
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The references to Mary not fearing to proceed even against her nearest friend and a Judas among the twelve almost certainly point to Bothwell. Elizabeth was to a degree sincere in her advice to her fellow sovereign, for she was quick to perceive the damage that scurrilous rumours could do to her cousin’s reputation. In Elizabeth’s opinion, Mary was not taking vigorous enough action to track down the murderers, which was the only way to counteract the gossip. However, Elizabeth’s greatest concern was that, if Mary’s honour was impugned because of her apparent passivity, the prestige of queens regnant in general would be tarnished, justifying the prejudices of many who believed women unfit to rule. And if Mary’s subjects took it upon themselves to depose her, an even more alarming precedent would be set.

Catherine de’ Medici took the same view as Elizabeth, and wrote to Mary in a similar vein. Her private opinion was that the Queen of Scots was well rid of her young fool of a husband, but she warned her that she must find and prosecute his killers expeditiously and ruthlessly in order to proclaim her own innocence in the eyes of her subjects. Catherine had never liked Mary, and, unlike Elizabeth, pointedly sent no envoy to express the condolences of the French government on her sad loss.

It is often said that Mary did not heed the wise advice of these two seasoned stateswomen, but it is difficult to see what else she could have done to pursue the murderers, in the absence of any substantial evidence or willing informers. She had entrusted the investigation of the matter to her Councillors (little realising that many of them had a vested interest in preventing the crime being solved), issued a proclamation offering a handsome reward to anyone identifying the murderers, and summoned Parliament to debate the next steps in the inquiry—Melville reported on 26 February that it had been proclaimed for 14 April.
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It was in the interests of her enemies, however, for people to believe the worst of her.

Reports of Mary’s conduct, false though they may have been, did not help matters. On 26 February, according to Drury,
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she dined at Lord Seton’s house at Tranent in East Lothian, “where he and the Earl of Huntly paid for the dinner, the Queen and the Earl Bothwell having, at a match of shooting, won the same of them.” Drury may yet again have got his facts wrong, for on the day that Mary was supposed to have been at Tranent she was in fact unwell,
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but the damage had been done. This was not, people felt, the behaviour expected of a woman who was supposed to be in mourning.

On 26 February, Robert Melville reported to Cecil that Pagez and Dolu had arrived in London with Mary’s lost letter to Elizabeth, and said he had had no word himself from the Queen. He had heard that Prince James had been moved to Holyrood, and that Atholl and Tullibardine had departed to the country but had immediately been recalled to Edinburgh under pain of the penalty for rebellion.
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Clearly, Bothwell and Maitland were taking steps to prevent them joining forces with Lennox.

That same day, Lennox, who was too agitated to wait for Parliament to meet, fearing that by then any trails would have gone cold, wrote again to Mary with what seemed a very reasonable request:

I render most humble thanks unto Your Majesty for your gracious and comfortable letter. I hear of certain tickets [placards] that have been put on the Tolbooth door of Edinburgh, answering Your Majesty’s first and second proclamations, which name in special certain devisers of the cruel murder. I therefore most humbly beseech Your Majesty, for the love of God [and] the honour of Your Majesty and your realm, that it may please Your Majesty not only to apprehend and put in sure keeping the persons named in the said tickets, but also with diligence to assemble Your Majesty’s nobility, and then, by open proclamation, to admonish and require the writers of the said tickets to compare [i.e., come forward and confront those named], according to the effect thereof. At which time, if they do not, Your Majesty may, by the advice of your nobility and Council, relieve and put to liberty the persons in the tickets aforesaid. So shall Your Majesty do an honourable and godly act in bringing the matter to such a narrow point, as either the matter shall appear plainly before Your Majesty, to the punishment of those who have been the actors of this cruel deed, or else the said tickets to be found vain of themselves, and the persons who are slandered to be exonerated and put to liberty.
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In effect, however, Lennox was asking Mary to arrest people—among them members of her Council and her personal servants—on the highly dubious evidence of persons unknown. His request placed her in an impossible dilemma, for if she did as he wished, she would be violating the law, but if she refused to do so, she would be accused of failing in her duty to pursue her husband’s killers.

Balfour returned to Edinburgh on the night of the 26th, accompanied by thirty horsemen. He came furtively and, according to Drury, “when he was near unto the town, he alighted and came in a secret way. He is hateful to the people.”
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Evidently rumours about Balfour’s involvement in Darnley’s murder were spreading as a result of the first placard, and Balfour must have heard about them. The next day, however, Drury heard that another placard had appeared during the night, “where were these letters written in Roman hand, very great, M.R., with a sword in hand near the same letters; then an L.B. [for Lord Bothwell?] with a mallet near them.”
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Increasingly, Mary’s subjects were linking her with Bothwell and Darnley’s death. In Scotland, “Bothwell was much suspected of this villainous and detestable murder, and the impression was strengthened by the many evil reports circulated about him.”
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The same thing, to a lesser degree, was happening with Mary, and the favour she had hitherto shown to Bothwell was subject to the most unfavourable interpretations.

On the morning after the placard had appeared, a furious Bothwell appeared in Edinburgh “and openly affirmed, by his oath, that if he knew who were the setters up of the bills and writings, he would wash his hands in their blood. His followers, who are to the number of fifty, follow him very near. Their gesture, as his, is of the people much noted. They seem to go near and about him, as though there were [those] who would harm him; and his hand, as he talks with any that is not assured unto him, upon his dagger, with a strange countenance.”
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Clernault arrived in Paris on 27 February and delivered his detailed account of Darnley’s murder. He also spoke with Mondovi and, that same day, the Nuncio sent to Rome a more accurate account of what had occurred at Kirk o’Field. On the 27th or 28th, Elizabeth dispatched Sir Henry Killigrew once more to Scotland to convey her letter to Mary with letters to the Scottish Council. Ostensibly he had come to express Elizabeth’s sympathy on her cousin’s loss, but the real purpose of his mission was to gain an insight into the true state of affairs in Scotland. Leslie later referred to him as “a spy, or rather, a traitor, under the guise of an ambassador,” and Mahon even suggests that he had come to incite the Scots Lords to rebel against and depose their ineffectual but dynastically dangerous Queen, who was showing such favour to Bothwell, a known enemy to England. It may be significant that little is known of Killigrew’s activities in Scotland, and nothing of what he reported to the English government on his return.

Three more placards appeared on church doors, one posted to the door of the Tron House, on the 28th; this referred to a smith who had agreed to testify that he had made the counterfeit keys to Darnley’s lodging. Drury, reporting this to Cecil, also mentioned he had been informed “by divers means” that the Countess of Bothwell was “extremely sick and not likely to live. They will say there she is marvellously swollen.” The innuendo was clear: Cecil was to infer that the Countess Jean had been poisoned by her husband. Drury added, incorrectly, that Balfour had left Edinburgh after the first placard appeared, but of course he had gone just before Darnley’s murder.

According to Drury, Mary had sent twice to Moray, asking him to return to court, for she greatly needed his advice and support at this time, but he, along with Morton and Lindsay, had been meeting secretly with Atholl and Caithness at Dunkeld.
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This fledgling coalition of Protestants and Catholics is a measure of how strongly opinion was polarising against Bothwell. Mondovi heard later that “the Earl of Moray, having been called by Her Majesty, would not go.”
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Instead, he sent to tell her that “he stayeth himself by my Lady in her sickness.”
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The fact that he had left his wife to go to Dunkeld indicates how sick she actually was.

From late February onwards, the placard and smear campaign gained momentum. Bills were posted to St. Giles’s Kirk, the Tolbooth, the Mercat Cross, “the courthouse, on church doors, in the streets, at the crossroads”
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and even on the gates of Holyrood itself. Some bore crude portraits of Bothwell and the legends, “Who is the King’s murderer?” or “Here is the murderer of the King.”
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Another doggerel rehearsed the crimes of “Bloody Bothwell.”

Naturally, wild rumours began circulating. One had it that, on the night of the murder, a mysterious figure had flitted through the streets of Edinburgh and aroused four of Atholl’s men, supposedly to warn them of the foul deed about to be committed. It was said that a dying man had seen a vision of Darnley being slain, and that one of Bothwell’s servants had been secretly murdered after hysterically denouncing his master as the King’s killer.
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“Everybody suspected the Earl of Bothwell, and those who durst speak freely to others said plainly that it was he,” wrote Melville, while, according to Buchanan, “no one now doubted who had planned the crime and who had carried it out.” But, wrote de Silva, although grave suspicion attached to Bothwell, no one dared accuse him openly because of his influence and strength.
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The gathering intensity of the campaign suggests that it was carefully coordinated by a group of people committed to bringing down Bothwell and, ultimately, the Queen herself. The success of this propaganda is evident from the rising groundswell of public opinion against Bothwell and Mary, and the feeling that Darnley’s murder had brought “shame to the whole nation.” As the people clamoured for justice and retribution, ministers of the Kirk “prayed openly to God that it will please Him both to reveal and revenge, exhorting all men to prayer and repentance.”
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The Queen was alarmed by the libels and rumours, but powerless to stop them, for no one knew for certain who was responsible for them. The placards appeared mysteriously overnight, and their impact on an ignorant populace was immense. “The more they were suppressed, the more the people burst forth in their wrath.”
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Bothwell himself believed, but could not prove, that “several members of the Council, afraid that the Queen and I might catch up with them, banded together in an effort to obstruct us. They used all manner of trickery, posting up bills and placards at night, casting suspicion on me and my friends.”
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Bothwell may well have been correct in his suspicions, for who else knew for certain of his involvement in the murder? As we have seen, he had probably been earmarked from the start as the scapegoat for it. The fact that Drury received prompt information about each placard as it appeared perhaps suggests that there were those in high places who wanted to keep the English government informed about public opinion in Scotland, and it has even been conjectured that the propaganda campaign was orchestrated from England. The
Book of Articles
claims that “the common people” were responsible for the placards, which is almost certainly an attempt to deflect suspicion from the Lords; some of the placards were undoubtedly written by educated men of letters.

Buchanan was probably correct when he wrote that, “although the conspirators tried to seem contemptuous of these things, they could not hide their uneasiness, so they dropped the investigation of the King’s death and, with much more bitterness, set about pursuing the authors of the libels. They prosecuted the search with great severity, sparing neither expense nor labour. All painters and scriveners were summoned to see if they could possibly detect the authors from the pictures and libels.”