Mary, Queen of Scots (78 page)

Mary and Nau continued to believe in the testament’s authenticity, but it can now be established from the abstracts that are extant that, if it existed at all, it was a forgery. Two of those listed as witnesses were already dead when they were supposed to have signed it, and it contains far-fetched allegations that Grange, Boyd and Lord Robert Stewart were among the murderers. It was probably the work of a well-meaning but misguided supporter of the Queen, who was zealous to proclaim her innocence.

On 9 March 1578, Lady Lennox died, having been seized with violent pains only hours after dining with Leicester. There was talk that he had poisoned her, but unfounded popular rumour credited him with the deaths of several other people, among them his first wife: several unproven allegations appear in a scurrilous tract entitled
Leicester’s Commonwealth
, which was published in 1584. Lady Lennox had been ailing for some time, and it has been claimed that Leicester would have had no motive for killing her.
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That is not quite true. Leicester was staunchly loyal to Elizabeth, and it was well known in court circles that Lady Lennox, that inveterate intriguer, was in regular correspondence with Mary, which would certainly have aroused suspicions and anxieties in Elizabeth. After the Countess’s death, Leicester took her steward, Thomas Fowler, into his service, probably in order to gain access to her papers, of which Fowler apparently had custody. Leicester may have believed that among those papers was to be found the evidence for Lady Lennox’s change of heart towards Mary, which, if it got into the wrong hands and were made public, could seriously compromise Elizabeth’s policy of keeping Mary in custody. So there were good reasons for murdering Lady Lennox, even though it can never be certain that Leicester did so.

The Countess was buried in Westminster Abbey in a splendid tomb surmounted by her painted effigy and adorned with kneeling figures of her eight children. The statue of Darnley is distinguished by a crown suspended above the head and an ermine mantle, denoting his royal but uncrowned status. Her son Lennox was interred with her.

Three days after Lady Lennox’s death, Atholl and the new Earl of Argyll brought off a coup against their old enemy, Morton, and forced him to resign from the Regency. Having gained control of the eleven-year-old James VI, they had him declare himself of age. Real power, however, would remain in the hands of a regency Council headed by Atholl, who was appointed Chancellor of Scotland on 29 March. But Morton had no intention of relinquishing power. At the beginning of June, he effected a counter-coup and regained control of the King and the Regency, conceding that Atholl and Argyll should assist him in the government. When Atholl died unexpectedly, in April 1579, Morton was suspected of poisoning him, although this was never proved.

At Dragsholm, the crazed Bothwell had been held in increasingly vile conditions. It is often stated that he was chained to a pillar in such a way that he was unable to stand upright, but there is no contemporary evidence for this allegation, which rests on a local tradition that was related to the Earl’s biographer, Gore-Browne, when he visited Dragsholm in 1935.
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But many of Bothwell’s contemporaries testify to his insanity, notably Herries, Buchanan, Melville, the French envoy de Thou, and Maitland’s brother John, who, during a visit to Copenhagen in 1590, heard how Bothwell had become “distracted of his wits or senses.” Herries also says that the Earl was “overgrown with hair and filth.” Buchanan states that he “was driven mad by the filth and other discomforts of his dungeon.” The cessation of entries relating to expenses for Bothwell in the castle accounts in the spring of 1576 gives credence to these reports.

In the end, this cruel treatment claimed its victim. Bothwell “died miserably”
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on 14 April 1578. What was almost certainly his body was embalmed and placed in an oak coffin and buried beneath the nave of Faarvejle Church, twenty miles from Dragsholm. In 1858, the coffin was opened and the body found to be in a good state of preservation, having been naturally mummified by the salty sea air; the head had become detached, and lay below the shoulder; it was taken away and placed on a writing table in the castle for a time. Thereafter, the mummy was displayed under glass in a shallow crypt until 1970, when, at the instigation of the future Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, it was buried in Riis’s Chapel, an annexe to the church. Although there is no inscription on the coffin, this body was obviously that of a nobleman, since it rested on a white satin cushion and was shrouded in fine linen and silks, so it is unlikely to have been that of Captain Clerk, as has been suggested.
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The body measured about 5 feet 6 inches long; in the nineteenth century there were traces of red and silver hair on the skull, and in 1935 Gore-Browne observed a faint white scar on the temple, probably the result of the wound dealt by Jock Elliott in October 1566. In 1976, a move to have the body returned to Scotland ended in failure.
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There is no record of Mary’s reaction to the death of Bothwell. In 1580, in liaison with the Spanish ambassador in London, she embarked on a fresh round of dangerous plotting against Elizabeth. That year, Pope Gregory XIII ruled that whoever sent the English Queen out of the world “with the pious intention of doing God service, not only does not sin, but gains merit.” In Mary’s eyes, this would have justified all her future conspiracies against Elizabeth.

In March, Mary learned that Balfour, then in the Netherlands, was offering to provide evidence to incriminate Morton in the murder of Darnley in return for permission to re-enter Scotland unmolested and the restoration of his Scottish estates, an offer that was to be enthusiastically taken up by Morton’s enemies, who were again looking for an excuse to topple him. Balfour was doubtless hoping to ensure that he would not be in danger of prosecution if he returned to Scotland; of all those who had been involved in Darnley’s murder, most were dead, but Morton was not only still alive but in power, and must be neutralised. Mary also had an interest in Balfour’s evidence, and on 18 March asked Archbishop Beaton to secure possession of it, especially the murder Bond that Morton was supposed to have signed.
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In response, Balfour sent Mary such evidence as he had, but it apparently did not amount to much, and it certainly did not include the Bond. In May, Mary told Beaton that they should play along with Balfour, evidently hoping that more documents could be extracted from him.

Balfour spent several months negotiating the terms of his return with King James and Morton’s enemies, and on 12 December 1580, he arrived in Edinburgh and was granted a private audience with the young King. James was now heavily reliant on his handsome but ruthless French-born cousin, the pro-Catholic Esmé Stuart, Count of Aubigny: having conceived an adolescent passion for Stuart, he had created him Earl of Lennox on 5 March 1580. Lennox was ambitious and wanted Morton ousted from power, and it was he who headed this new conspiracy against the Regent, which was backed by Ochiltree’s son, Captain James Stewart, another royal favourite who was soon to be created Earl of Arran by James. Lennox was aware of Balfour’s Catholic sympathies and confident that his testimony would bring down the Regent, for Balfour had assured Lennox that he did indeed hold the murder Bond, and that Morton’s signature was on it.

On 31 December 1580, in front of the King and his Council, Captain Stewart fell on his knees, denounced Morton for having conspired in Darnley’s murder, and demanded his arrest. Morton contemptuously denied the charge, insisting that it was well known that he had punished with the utmost rigour every person who had been involved in the late King’s death.

“It is false!” cried Stewart. “Where have you placed your cousin, Archibald Douglas? Does not that most infamous of men now pollute the bench of justice with his presence,
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instead of suffering the penalty due to the murderer of his sovereign?”
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At this, Morton drew his sword, but he was seized and, with the other Lords present loudly supporting the charge, placed under arrest and confined in Edinburgh Castle, the King making no move to save him. In January, Morton was transferred to a prison cell in Dumbarton Castle.
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Elizabeth, meanwhile, was making frantic but fruitless efforts to save him, which suggests that she was perhaps fearful of what might be revealed at his trial, but his other “friends” had abandoned him, “for he was loved by none and envied and hated by many, so they all looked through their fingers to see his fall.”
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Sir William Douglas, Archibald Douglas and other members of Morton’s family were also summoned to answer charges. Sir William was banished beyond the Firth of Cromarty in the far north. The Laird of Whittinghame, Archibald’s brother, revealed under interrogation that Archibald had forged letters in an attempt to bring down Lennox;
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as has been noted, these may not have been the first incriminating letters that he had forged. Furthermore, it was almost certainly he who had actually struck down Darnley. But Douglas, alerted by the Regent’s apprehension, had already fled to England, and thus managed to evade arrest, for Elizabeth adamantly refused to deliver him up to James VI. In his absence, his lands were declared forfeit, and his servant, John Binning, was arrested.

Morton’s removal from power left Scotland in the hands of a clique that was sympathetic to Mary, and paved the way for schemes for her restoration as joint ruler with her son. But, while Elizabeth affected to support such schemes, they never reached a satisfactory conclusion because there were so many conflicting interests involved. Even though the truth about Darnley’s murder was now well known, Mary was still being punished for it.

On 30 January, Balfour asked Mary to produce an affidavit containing everything that she knew about the Darnley murder. This, of course, did not amount to much. In March, Thomas Randolph, the English agent, informed Lords Hunsdon and Huntingdon: “I spoke again of the Bond in the green box, containing the names of all the chief persons consenting to the King’s murder, which Sir James [Balfour] either hath or can tell of.”
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But Balfour had still not shown anyone the Bond.

Morton’s trial took place at the Edinburgh Tolbooth on 1 June. He was accused of having been “art and part” of Darnley’s murder, and in answer to the charge, “granted that he was made privy thereto, but had no hand in devising thereof.”
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Balfour testified against him, but failed to produce the murder Bond; he had probably never had it in the first place. Morton was found guilty of treason, declared forfeit, and condemned to be hanged and quartered the very next day, but King James commuted the sentence to decapitation.

Before his execution, Morton made a confession to John Brand and two other ministers of the Kirk, which was first published in the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland
. This is not the full text of the original, since Holinshed admitted that he had omitted sensitive passages that mentioned “great persons now living,” who may have included Queen Elizabeth herself, and possibly Mary: anything favourable to Mary would have been unwelcome in the political climate that prevailed in England at the time. There are manuscript copies of the confession extant, but they too may have been censored. In his confession, Morton admitted that he had with others foreknown the crime, but that nothing had been done to prevent it because it was known that the Queen of Scots desired it, which is what he had been told by Bothwell and Maitland. He also confessed to meeting with those men at Whittinghame and to receiving Archibald Douglas after the murder.

Morton was beheaded on 2 June 1581 in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh on a guillotine known as “the Maiden,” which he himself had introduced from Halifax as a more humane method of execution. “He died resolutely” with his hands untied, and his head was set up on a spike above the Tolbooth, where it remained until December 1582.
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Mary professed herself “most glad” at his passing.
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The next day, John Binning, Archibald Douglas’s servant, was put to the torture, and revealed Douglas’s part in Darnley’s murder. He was tried and condemned,
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then hanged and quartered at the Mercat Cross that same day. In 1582, another of Archibald Douglas’s men, George Home, Laird of Sprott, was tried for complicity in Darnley’s murder but acquitted.

On 19 June 1581, James VI reached the age of fifteen, and assumed personal rule. He had done with regents, preferring to rely on the counsels of Esmé Stuart, who was created Duke of Lennox in August 1582. That month, hardline Protestants led by William Ruthven, now Earl of Gowrie, kidnapped the King and forced Lennox to flee to France, where he died in 1583. James escaped from his captors in June 1583 and reasserted his authority as King.

Meanwhile, there had been a new conspiracy to place Mary on the throne of England, hatched by the Guises, the Pope, Philip of Spain and the Jesuits. In October 1582, Walsingham discovered that Mary was communicating in cipher with her foreign allies, and her correspondence was thereafter vetted and she herself kept under closer surveillance. At this time, Elizabeth again taxed Mary with the murder of Darnley. Mary demanded to have any charges put in writing before she answered them, but this was never done, exposing Elizabeth’s words as an idle threat. In the wake of Morton’s execution, Elizabeth would have been on very tenuous grounds had she formally accused Mary of murdering Darnley. On 21 November, an aggrieved Mary wrote a scathing letter to Elizabeth, accusing her of bringing about her downfall:

By the agents, spies and secret messengers sent in your name into Scotland while I was there, my subjects were corrupted and encouraged to rebel against me, and to speak, do, enterprise and execute that which has come to the said country during my troubles. Of which I will not at present specify any proof, than that which I have gained of it by the confession of one who was afterwards amongst those that were most advanced for their good service.
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