Mary, Queen of Scots (63 page)

LOCHLEVEN CASTLE Mary was a prisoner here for ten months before she escaped and fled to England.

GEORGE BUCHANAN “The author of slanderous and untrue calumnies.”

WILLIAM CECIL “The Queen of Scots is, and always shall be, a dangerous person to Your Majesty’s estate.”

ELIZABETH I She told Mary: “Your case is not so clear but that much remains to be explained.”

THE CASKET LETTERS MAY HAVE BEEN KEPT IN THIS SILVER BOX The letters contained “many matters unmeet to be repeated before honest ears.” But were they genuine?

From the time they seized power, the Lords were in control of all sources of official information, and there is no doubt that they manipulated such information to their own advantage, for it was essential to justify their conduct towards their anointed sovereign. The chief victim of this policy would, of course, be the Queen.

On 23 June, William Powrie made a deposition describing the conveying of the gunpowder to Kirk o’Field, the details of which were sent by Drury to Cecil four days later; clearly, the Lords were anxious to prove their case to the English. However, on 3 July, Powrie made a second deposition, which contradicted many of the details in the first.
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Whatever the truth of the matter, something underhand was certainly going on.

Bedford reported on 23 June that the Lords did not wish to imprison their Queen any longer than necessary, but would do as Elizabeth appointed,
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which suggests that Cecil had all along been aware of their plans. On the 25th, the General Assembly of the Kirk met, and appointed George Buchanan as Moderator. Once Mary’s tutor and admirer, Buchanan, a staunch Lennox man, had aligned firmly with the Protestant Lords, and would soon become the Queen’s most effectively virulent enemy, spitting out his venom in tract after tract of highly readable propaganda so convincing that much of it is still believed today, flawed though it can be proved to be.

On 26 June, George Dalgleish was brought before the Council and made a deposition about Darnley’s murder, in which it was made clear that he had played no active part. Strangely, he did not refer in it to the casket or its discovery, which, together with the fact that his name was not mentioned in connection with them until after he was dead, lends credence to the theory that its original contents were of little import.
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Had incriminating letters been found, Dalgleish would have been a useful witness to their having been in Bothwell’s possession. But it was only after his death, when the Lords had decided to put forward the Casket Letters as evidence against Mary, that the silenced Dalgleish became useful to them as the man who had allegedly led them to the letters.

As Dalgleish was making his confession, Bothwell was back in the Borders, assessing support, and that night he returned to Dunbar, where he no doubt learned of the arrest of his servants. The Lords may have been aware of his return, and, taking no chances, for it was certain that he would try to rescue the Queen and stir up trouble for them, they proclaimed a reward of 1,000 crowns for anyone apprehending Bothwell, and ordered the surrender of Dunbar Castle. Those who helped the Earl would be adjudged “plain par-takers with him in the horrible murder.”
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That same day, in an Act of the Privy Council, the Lords announced that they had sufficient proof—“as well of witnesses as of writings”—of Bothwell’s guilt, which some writers have understood to refer to the Casket Letters. This is possible, although the reference may be to the depositions. However, it seems likely that, by this time, the Lords had discovered, or forged, some letters that were suitable for their purpose.

Around the 26th, Robert Melville arrived in London with Maitland’s letter to Cecil.
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Certainly, on that day Cecil sent some packets to Moray in France, expressing the hope that he would return at once. Historians have speculated that these packets contained copies of the Casket Letters, but this is unlikely, because in August, Moray revealed to de Silva that he had not actually seen the letters, and seemed to know the contents of only one of them, of which he had heard from a man who had read it.
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On 27 June, William and John Blackadder, James Edmonstoun and the Swedish sailor, Mynart Fraser, were summarily tried by a new committee called the Lords of the Secret Council. William Blackadder insisted he was innocent, but he was tortured, found guilty of being “art and part” of Darnley’s murder, then hanged and quartered at the Mercat Cross.
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There is no record of the evidence on which he was convicted. Edmonstoun and John Blackadder were executed the following September, while Fraser was released and allowed to return to his ship.
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Around this time, according to Powrie, his friend William Geddes, of whom nothing more is known, made a deposition, but it was afterwards destroyed and he was set free.
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Mary’s servants, Sebastien Pagez and Francisco de Busso, were imprisoned in the Tolbooth, but they too were quickly released, as was “Black” John Spens, after he had delivered Bothwell’s treasure chest to the Lords. It may be inferred from this that not all these interrogations had to do with Darnley’s murder. Possibly through Balfour’s good offices, Captain Cullen was also freed, without having made any deposition, which is very strange, considering he had earlier “uttered the whole manner of the murder,” and had probably been present at Kirk o’Field. Presumably what he had uttered was in reality of little importance, although it had suited the Lords to declare otherwise.

In Paris, Sir Anthony Standen heard of the fate of the Queen and Bothwell, and of the subsequent arrests, and decided it was safer to spend his life in exile. In the event, “this banishment endured thirty years or more.” The younger Standen remained in Scotland, but was imprisoned for a year in Berwick for remaining loyal to the Queen.
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Black Ormiston and his uncle went into hiding in the Borders; the fate of Robert Ormiston is unknown, but his nephew survived to play a role in the Northern Rising of 1569–70 against Queen Elizabeth.

Du Croc left Edinburgh on 29 June, bearing a communication from the Lords to Charles IX and, it has been suggested, copies of the Casket Letters. The Lords wrote to King Charles that, “of further circumstances and of the whole affair, your ambassador can more fully advise Your Majesty, as we have fully informed him of the justice of our cause.” They made no mention of the Casket Letters,
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but in July, Throckmorton told Elizabeth that “du Croc carries with him matter little to the Queen’s advantage, and the King may therefore rather satisfy the Lords than pleasure her,”
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which has again been interpreted as a reference to the Casket Letters. It is certainly possible that the Lords had furnished du Croc with copies of at least one of the so-called Casket Letters in order to deter the French government from supporting Mary.

On 29 June, Mary’s supporters at Dumbarton, notably Huntly, Argyll, Bishop Leslie, Seton, Fleming and the Hamiltons, signed a bond to liberate her.
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Such a coalition posed a threat to the Lords, so this would have been the optimum moment to produce the Casket Letters in order to inflame public feeling against the Queen. But the Lords did no such thing.

Queen Elizabeth had been outraged and incensed to hear of Mary’s imprisonment. Of the Scottish Lords, she fulminated, “They have no warrant nor authority, by the law of God or man, to be as superiors, judges or vindicators over their prince and sovereign, howsoever they do gather or conceive matter of disorder against her. We are determined that we will take plain part with them to revenge their sovereign, for an example to all posterity. Though she were guilty of all they charge her with, I cannot assist them while their Queen is imprisoned.”
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In her anger, Elizabeth’s first impulse was to declare war, but a horrified Cecil dissuaded her. He and his fellow Councillors were in no way dismayed by what had happened north of the border, and realised that it was to England’s benefit to have in Scotland a Protestant government desperate to build friendly relations with its neighbour. Yet Elizabeth had a different agenda. At the end of June, she decided to send that experienced diplomat, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, to Scotland to bring about Mary’s immediate restoration—by persuasion, treaty or force—and a reconciliation between her and her Lords. Once that had been achieved, Throckmorton was to demand that Darnley’s murderers be hunted down and tried. At the same time, he was to persuade the Scots to agree to Prince James being brought up in England as Elizabeth’s ward. Finally, he was to see Mary and deliver to her an encouraging message from Elizabeth. It was Elizabeth’s hope that, in return for her restoration, Mary would ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh.

Not surprisingly, a gloomy and reluctant Throckmorton told Leicester that this was “the most dangerous legation in my life.” He knew, all too well, that the Scots would not take kindly to English interference in their affairs.

It is often claimed that, by her intervention, Elizabeth probably saved Mary’s life, for, had she given the Lords her support, they might well have executed their Queen. However, as has been noted, they had no legal basis on which they could do so, short of putting her on trial, which carried the risk of her publicly exposing their own guilt. There were, however, other ways of disposing of inconvenient sovereigns, and these Lords had not hesitated when it came to getting rid of Darnley. Throckmorton would soon reach the opinion that they meant to do away with Mary as well. It was the covert assassination of her cousin that Elizabeth almost certainly prevented. Alone of all the monarchs of Europe, the Queen of England, Mary’s dynastic rival, was her champion at this time.

Nonetheless, she was shocked to hear reports that Mary was pregnant, for it was obvious that the child must have been conceived out of wedlock. If the reports were confirmed, she declared pessimistically, “It will be thought all was not well before.”
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It is unlikely that Elizabeth had much sympathy with Mary on a personal level. She told Throckmorton she had almost decided “to deal no more with her by way of advice, but look on her as a person desperate to recover her honour.”
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Elizabeth was more concerned to protect the institution of monarchy, and in particular female monarchy, which Mary, by her apparently rash behaviour, had undermined.