Mary, Queen of Scots (61 page)

In order to pave the way for her deposition, the Lords were doing everything in their power to incite public opinion against the Queen. Protestant ministers denounced her from their pulpits as a murderess, and broadsheets were circulated emphasising her immorality. In England, Sir Walter Mildmay expressed the opinion that the Queen’s fall was “a marvellous tragedy,” but it was only what could be expected to befall “such as live not in the fear of God.”
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The Lords were also systematically despoiling and redistributing Mary’s property.
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Glencairn and his men destroyed the altar and images in the chapel royal at Holyrood. The Queen’s jewels were seized and set aside for Moray, who later sold her famous black pearls to Queen Elizabeth and passed on other pieces to his wife. When Mary heard what the Lords were doing, she realised that their intention was not just to keep her in custody until she agreed to abandon Bothwell.

Bothwell, meanwhile, had fled with Seton to the Borders to raise troops, yet met with little success. By 19 June, he was in Dunbar,
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but left immediately to seek reinforcements, sailing with his followers for Linlithgow, whence he went west to Dumbarton.
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Soon afterwards, Bedford reported that the Earl was building up a volume of support, and Bothwell himself later claimed that fifty men of rank had rallied to him for the Queen’s sake. He claimed they all decided “that it would be advisable to wait for a little” before attacking Lochleven, for the Lords “would naturally be expecting us to mount a rescue attempt. Had we put this into effect, [the Queen’s] life would certainly have been in great danger.”
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However, if this support had ever existed, it soon melted away.

For the present, the Lords made no move to take Bothwell, but, true to their promise to pursue and punish Darnley’s murderers, they closed in on the lesser fish, Bothwell’s henchmen, whose role in the Kirk o’Field conspiracy must have been known to them. By 11 June, they had already arrested Captain Cullen and clapped him in irons,
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and on the 16th, Lord Scrope reported that, “after some strict dealing”—probably torture—Cullen “hath uttered and revealed the murder, with the whole manner and circumstance thereof.”
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This, however, is unlikely to have been true, as will be seen.

William Blackadder had also been arrested,
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along with John Blackadder (perhaps his brother), James Edmonstoun and Mynart Fraser, a Swedish sailor, in whose ship the other three had been trying to reach Bothwell at Dunbar. But the vessel was captured, and when the four men were brought ashore at Leith, a mob tried to stone them. All were imprisoned in the Tolbooth.
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According to a statement made by Morton on 9 December 1568,
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on 19 June, while he and Maitland were dining in Edinburgh, they received secret information, probably from Balfour, that three of Bothwell’s servants— Thomas Hepburn, Parson of Oldhamstocks, John Cockburn (brother of Skirling) and George Dalgleish—had managed to gain entry to Edinburgh Castle. Buchanan later stated that Dalgleish had been sent by Bothwell to recover “a small silver casket bearing inscriptions which showed that it had once belonged to Francis, King of the French. In this, there were letters, nearly all of them written in the Queen’s hand, in which the murder of the King and practically all that followed was clearly revealed. Balfour gave this casket to Bothwell’s servant, but first he warned [the Lords].” Buchanan was writing propaganda for the Lords; as has been demonstrated, the authenticity of the letters to which he referred is by no means well founded, nor can there be any certainty that any of them were actually in the casket at this time. Furthermore, it is hardly likely that Bothwell would send his servants to ask Balfour for the casket after the latter had so treacherously betrayed him, especially if it contained anything compromising.
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Bothwell must surely have heard by now that Balfour had gone over to the Lords, for it was common knowledge.
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Morton sent Archibald Douglas, Douglas’s brother Robert, James Johnston of Westerrow and about thirteen of his own servants to the castle to search for and apprehend the three men, but when they got there, their quarry had already left, so Morton’s men split up into three groups. Archibald Douglas could only find Hepburn’s horse, for its master had fled; Cockburn was arrested by Johnston, but afterwards released, as he had no compromising evidence on him; and Robert Douglas tracked down George Dalgleish to a house in Potterrow, near Kirk o’Field itself. With him were found “divers evidences and letters in parchment, viz. the Earl of Bothwell’s investments of Liddesdale, of the Lordship of Dunbar, and of Orkney and Shetland, and divers copies,” which Robert Douglas brought to Morton with his prisoner.

When questioned, Dalgleish “alleged he was sent only to visit his master’s clothing, and that he had no other letters or evidences but those which were apprehended with him; but, his report being found suspicious, and his gesture and behaviour ministering cause of distrust,” he was kept under guard overnight and the next day taken to the Tolbooth to be tortured “for furthering of the truth.”
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Terrified by the sight of the instruments of torment, “and moved of conscience,” Dalgleish led Archibald and Robert Douglas back to the house in Potterrow, where he took from “under the foot of a bed” the locked silver casket that had allegedly belonged to Bothwell, which he said he had taken from the castle the day before, and gave it to them. At 8 p.m., it was delivered to Morton, who, “because it was late, kept it all that night.” Dalgleish was returned to prison.
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That day, 20 June, Drury reported Mary’s defeat and incarceration to Cecil, and wrote that the Confederate Lords were awaiting Elizabeth’s approval and would not attempt any other enterprise “till they hear how this that they have already done be liked by the Queen’s Majesty, at whose devotion it seems they desire to be, to be directed wholly by Her Majesty.” He added that Cullen, Blackadder “and others” (among them Powrie, who was arrested around this time) had not yet been arraigned because the authorities had been unable to track down as witnesses the tenants of the cottages at Kirk o’Field, in which they believed these men had been hiding.
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Meanwhile, the Lords and their acolytes had begun spreading rumours that the Hamiltons were heavily implicated in Darnley’s murder. In July, there was speculation that Archbishop Hamilton himself would be charged with it.
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On 21 June, the silver casket was forced open in the presence of Morton, Maitland, Atholl, Glencairn, Tullibardine, Archibald Douglas and others, “and the letters within sighted.” The Scots word “sicht” then meant “inspect” or “peruse,”
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so, according to Morton, the letters were read, although many historians have misunderstood the meaning of the word “sichted” and disputed this. Immediately afterwards, the casket and its contents were delivered to Morton for safe keeping, “since which time [he stated in December 1568] I have observed and kept the same box, and all letters, missives, contracts, sonnets and other writings contained therein, surely, without alteration, changing, eking [adding] or diminishing of anything found or received in the said box. This I testify and declare to be the undoubted truth.”
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He was almost certainly lying.

It should be noted that there is no contemporary evidence, apart from Morton’s statement, for the discovery of the casket. Had it contained the compelling evidence against the Queen that it was later held to contain— Buchanan says “the whole wicked plot was exposed to view”—it is astonishing that the Lords did not immediately use it against her in order to justify her proposed deposition. Morton’s statement, however, merely says that the letters were sighted; it does not even say who wrote them. If letters in the Queen’s handwriting had been found in a locked casket belonging to Bothwell, surely the Lords, considering their precarious position, would have seized upon them as evidence to support their coup, and Morton would surely have given some description of them and the shock they engendered. But the fact that Morton made no comment about the Lords’ reactions to the letters on the day the casket was opened, and the fact that these letters were not at once made public and used against Mary, suggest that, if such a casket containing documents was found in the manner described, then the documents were of an innocuous nature, and deserving of little publicity.

It might not be stretching credulity too far to suggest that their discovery may have inspired the Lords to seek, or manufacture, letters that
could
be used to incriminate the Queen. Thus, when Buchanan came to compose the
Book of Articles,
which was made public at the same time as Morton’s declaration, he could state that, in the casket, “there was found such letters of the Queen’s own handwriting direct to [Bothwell] and other writings as clearly testified that, as he was the chief executor of the murder, so was she of the foreknowledge thereof, and that her ravishing was nothing else but a coloured mask.”

On the day the casket was allegedly opened, or the day before, Robert Melville was sent to London to explain the Lords’ actions to Elizabeth. There is no direct evidence that he took with him secret information about the Casket Letters, although Maitland did write to Cecil stating that the Lords’ messenger would explain the reasons why he had taken sides against the Queen. Maitland, however, had taken sides against Mary fifteen days before the alleged discovery of the casket; he also said in his letter that “the best part of the nobility [had] resolved to look narrowly into [Bothwell’s] doings, and being by them required, I would not refuse to join me to them in so just and reasonable a cause.” He also asked Cecil for English money to finance the Lords’ coup.
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More than three years later, Randolph was to report that, around this time, another casket was found in Edinburgh Castle. This was said to have been a small coffer covered with green cloth, which contained a copy of the Craigmillar Bond, and it was discovered, probably in Bothwell’s apartments, by Balfour and Maitland.
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Needless to say, this copy of the bond was suppressed.

On 25 June, Drury referred to a casket: “There is [news] here that the Queen had a box, wherein are the practices between her and France, wherein is little good meant to England.”
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Given the timing of this dispatch, it is certainly possible, even likely, that Drury was talking about the silver casket opened by the Lords, which was found to contain only diplomatic documents. If it had contained more contentious matter, the Lords would certainly have informed Drury of it, for they needed to justify their actions to Queen Elizabeth, whose reaction they feared. Drury again mentions this box in a report sent on 29 June, in which he says that the partly coded documents in it have been deciphered.
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Again, there is no mention of their supposedly dramatic content.

On 21 June, the day the casket was purportedly opened, the Lords sat in Council, but no mention was made in the minutes of the casket or its contents, which is astonishing, given the reputedly sensational nature of the latter. Instead, the Councillors denounced Bothwell for keeping the Queen under restraint, ignoring the fact that they themselves were doing just that, and far more straitly.

That day, in London, de Silva reported that Mary was “five months gone with child,”
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an obvious error that has nevertheless given rise to all kinds of speculation, since, if it had been true, then the child would have been conceived in the middle of January, when Darnley was ill with syphilis; the natural conclusion might be that Bothwell was the father, which lends credence to the allegations in the libels that Bothwell and Mary were lovers before Darnley’s death, and also to the long Glasgow letter. It is more likely that de Silva’s informant told him that Mary was five weeks gone with child. When she fell pregnant with James, reports of her condition circulated early, even before it was confirmed—ambassadors kept an eagle eye out for such things. With Mary and Darnley estranged, any hint of a pregnancy would have been scandalous, and thus would attract diplomatic attention, but there are no reports before May that Mary was expecting a child. If she had conceived in January, by late June her condition would have been difficult to conceal, and would soon have been detected by those in charge of her; moreover, her enemies would surely have made political capital out of it.

Mary still had some friends in Scotland. Huntly had remained loyal, and around 21 June, Argyll abandoned the Confederate Lords.
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Together, they joined the Hamiltons, Lord Crawford and other royalist supporters at Dumbarton, where plans were laid for rescuing the Queen.

From June onwards, in order to exculpate themselves, the Lords did what everyone had urged Mary to do, and ruthlessly pursued a policy of arresting and executing the minor participants in Darnley’s murder. There is no doubt that the evidence they obtained from these wretches, which may well have been extracted under torture, and was contained in a series of depositions, was censored, distorted and even invented in order to incriminate Bothwell, and later Mary—neither of whom was in a position to refute the allegations— and divert suspicion from the true culprits, the Confederate Lords themselves, who were now able to have the truth suppressed. Their efforts in this respect produced an official version of the murder that contains many inconsistencies and improbabilities, and can in many respects be proved false, as has been demonstrated. These arrests and executions may have gone some way towards satisfying the public’s desire for retribution, but they left many questions unanswered, notably the matter of the Queen’s guilt. Furthermore, the material in the depositions has only served to confuse historians, not a few of whom have accepted it as wholly factual, even though there is sufficient evidence to prove the contrary.