Mary Stuart (32 page)

At the words “trial”, “investigation”, “judicial inquiry”, Mary Stuart’s anger found vent: “I have none other judge than God!” she exclaimed. “Marry, I know mine own estate and degree, although, according to the good trust I have reposed in the Queen, my good sister, I have offered to make her the judge of my cause. But how can that be, when she will not suffer me to come at her?” Threateningly she declared (a true word!) that Elizabeth would gain no advantage by holding her fast in England. Then she took up her pen: “Prithee, madam, abandon the thought that I came hither in order to save my life. Neither the world nor Scotland has repudiated me. I came hither to win back my honour, and to find support that would enable me to chastise those that have falsely accused me; but not in order to answer them as if they were my equals. For among all princes I chose you as my next of kin and my ‘
perfaite amye
’, that before you I might accuse my accusers, because I believed you would regard it as an honour to yourself to be called upon to help in re-establishing the honour of a queen unjustly accused.” She had not fled from a prison in Scotland in order to be confined “
quasi en un autre
”
—
almost in another
—
on English soil. In conclusion she demanded, what it was always futile to demand from Elizabeth, namely plain speaking and unambiguous behaviour; either to be helped, or else to be set at liberty. She would “
de bonne voglia
”
—
with a good will
—
justify herself before Elizabeth, but would not do so in the form of a trial by the mightiest of her subjects, unless these were brought before her with bound hands; being fully aware of her position as a ruler by divine right, she would not meet any subject on equal terms; she would rather die.

Mary Stuart’s attitude was legally incontestable. The Queen of England could exercise no jurisdiction over the Queen of Scotland; Elizabeth had no right to institute an inquiry concerning a murder which had taken place in another kingdom; she possessed no right to intervene in a conflict between a foreign princess and the latter’s subjects. Of course Elizabeth was aware of this, and therefore redoubled her cajoleries in order to lure Mary Stuart out of an impregnable position onto the slippery ground of a quasi-judicial inquiry. It was not, she said, as a judge, but as a friend and sister that she desired these dark matters to be cleared up; the exculpation was an indispensable preliminary to the gratification of her dearest wish to see Mary face to face and to enjoy the knowledge that Mary had been restored to her queenship. In order to gain the end she had in view, Elizabeth gave one important pledge after another, implying that never for a moment did she doubt the Scottish Queen’s innocence, that the proposed conferences had nothing whatever to do with Mary Stuart, but were simply directed against Moray and the other rebels. One lie followed hard upon the heels of another. She gave a binding pledge (we shall see later how it was kept) that nothing should be disclosed at the inquiry which could tarnish Mary Stuart’s honour. As a further deception, Elizabeth explained to those who were to hold the conferences that, whatever the result of the inquiry, Mary Stuart’s royal position would be unaffected.

While Elizabeth was being thus prodigal of friendly assurances and undertakings, Cecil was quietly pursuing a different path. To make Moray consent to the investigation, the regent was assured that there was not the remotest thought of his sister’s reinstatement. (We see that double tongues and double faces are not the invention of latter-day statesmen!) Mary was not deceived by the manoeuvres of her “dear sister and cousin”. She strenuously defended herself, writing letter after letter, sweet and bitter by turns. In London, however, the net was drawn closer all the time. By degrees measures were taken to intensify spiritual pressure upon the captive, to show her that, if she persisted in her refusal, force would be used. Such amenities as she had been allowed were withdrawn. She was no longer permitted to receive visitors from Scotland. If she left Carlisle Castle to take the air, she was accompanied (that is to say watched and guarded) by a hundred riders. Carlisle was too near the coast, from which rescue by boat was possible. Thus, in the middle of July, despite her protests, she was removed to Bolton Castle in the North Riding of Yorkshire—her new prison being described as a “very strong, very fayre and very stately house”.

Even now the iron hand was velvet-gloved. The Queen of Scotland was assured that the removal was only due to Elizabeth’s kindness and consideration, that correspondence between the pair might be accelerated. Mary would have more liberty at Bolton, and would be better protected from the risk of attack on the part of her enemies. What was possible to Mary beyond empty protest? She could not effectively resist. Return to Scotland was impossible; she could not make her way to France; and her position grew more sordid day by day. She lived upon the bread of charity, and the very clothing she wore was borrowed from Elizabeth. Utterly alone, cut off from communication with her friends, surrounded by her adversary’s subjects, she gradually became more pliable.

At length, as Cecil had hoped and planned, she made the great mistake for which he and Elizabeth had been so impatiently waiting. In a moment of fatigue and weakness she acquiesced in the scheme of an inquiry. This was the greatest blunder of her life. Her position had so far been invincible; as long as she insisted that Elizabeth had no jurisdiction, had no right to deprive her of her freedom—that, as the Queen’s and as England’s guest, no one could compel her to submit to alien jurisdiction—nothing could be undertaken against her. Mary’s courage, however, great though it was, came only in flashes, and she lacked the stamina essential to a sovereign ruler. Having once consented, it was vain for her to impose conditions. She felt that the ground had been cut from under her feet. “There is nothing,” she wrote on 28th June, “which I would not undertake upon your word, for I have never doubted your honour and your royal good faith.”

But one who has surrendered unconditionally cannot, thereafter, attempt to make terms. The conqueror insists upon his rights, while the conquered have no rights whatever.
Vae vic-tis!—
Woe to the vanquished!

A
S SOON AS MARY STUART
foolishly consented to an investigation by an “unbiased conference”, the English government devoted itself to ensuring that there should be the bias it wanted. Whereas the Scottish lords would be allowed to appear before the tribunal, equipped with all their proofs, Mary was to be represented only by two confidential agents. Solely from a distance and through intermediaries could she levy her counter-accusation against the rebel lords who, for their part, could speak freely with their own voices, and could form cabals among themselves. By this perfidious arrangement the captured Queen was at one stroke reduced from the offensive to the defensive. The fine pledges which were previously given her might now be ignored. Elizabeth, who had declared it incompatible with her honour to receive Mary Stuart until the proceedings were over, did not hesitate to admit the rebel Moray to her presence. This little matter did not trouble her “honour”. No doubt the determination to force Mary into the dock was still carefully veiled, for appearances must be kept up before the eyes of the foreign world. The Scottish lords, it was said, would have to “justify” their rebellion. But this justification, which Elizabeth sanctimoniously demanded, meant nothing more than that they would have to state the reasons why they had taken up arms against their Queen. That implied a request to them to disclose “the whole truth” about Darnley’s murder, giving them a weapon of which the point was to be directed against Mary Stuart. If the Scottish lords would be strenuous enough in their accusations, legal reasons could be excogitated in London for continuing to keep the Scottish Queen in prison, and a specious excuse would be provided for what was really an unwarrantable detention.

Conceived as a huge piece of humbug, this conference (which cannot be called a judicial procedure without libelling justice) unexpectedly degenerated into a comedy of a very different character from that which Cecil and Elizabeth had designed. For hardly had the parties to the affair been brought together round a table that they might accuse one another, when it appeared they had very little desire to produce documents and state facts, and both sides knew perfectly well why. As a unique feature of this trial, accusers and accused had been confederates in the same crime. The murder of Darnley was a thorny matter for them all. Both would prefer to maintain silence about it since both had had “art and part” therein. If Morton, Lethington and Murray should produce the Casket documents and maintain, on the strength of these, that Mary Stuart was a confederate in the murder or at least an accessory before the fact, the honourable lords would, no doubt, have been right in their deductions. Mary Stuart would also have been right in showing that those who accused her had likewise been accessories before the fact, and had at least approved the murder by their silence. If the accusers put the letters in as evidence, Mary, who had learnt from Bothwell the names of the signatories to the bond for murder, and perhaps had the document in her possession, could tear the mask from the faces of the posthumous royalists. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than the lukewarmness of both parties to the action; nothing could be plainer than their common interest in settling the matter out of court, and allowing poor Henry Darnley to rest quietly in his tomb. “
Requiescat in pace!
” was the pious prayer of everyone concerned.

The result was a great surprise to Queen Elizabeth. When the Conference of York had been duly opened, Moray was content to put in a plaint against Bothwell, who happened to be hundreds of miles away, and not in a position to denounce his confederates. The regent carefully refrained from making any accusation against Mary Stuart, and seemed to have forgotten that, a year before, she had been openly accused of the murder in the Scottish parliament. These chivalrous knights did not enter the lists with the impetuosity Cecil had hoped for. They did not fling the incriminating letters onto the table. Furthermore, it was a remarkable (and not the least remarkable) feature of this ingenious comedy that the English commissioners, likewise, showed themselves little inclined to ask questions. The Duke of Northumberland, being a Roman Catholic, was perhaps better disposed towards Mary Stuart than towards Elizabeth, his own Queen. The Duke of Norfolk, for reasons which will presently be revealed, was also in favour of compromise. The grounds for an understanding were not difficult to find. Mary’s royal title and her liberty were to be restored, while Moray was to retain the power which was all he cared about. Though Elizabeth wished for a thunderstorm which would annihilate her adversary—morally at least—the weather proved balmy.

Instead of openly hurling facts and documents at one another, the commissioners carried on conversations in a friendly spirit behind closed doors. Their mood grew more and more genial. After a few days, instead of holding a strict assize, accusers and accused, commissioners and judges, were collaborating to bring about a decent burial of the conference which Elizabeth had intended to be an imposing state trial of Mary Stuart.

The heaven-born intermediary between the two parties was the Scottish secretary of state, Maitland of Lethington. In the obscure business of Darnley’s murder he had played one of the most sinister parts—and, since he was an admirable diplomatist, of course a double one. When, at Craigmillar, the Scottish lords had proposed to Mary that she should rid herself of Darnley by divorce or in some other way, Maitland had been their spokesman, and had conveyed the sinister assurance that Moray would “look through his fingers”. Lethington had also furthered Mary’s marriage to Bothwell, had “chanced” to be on hand at the “abduction” of Queen Mary, and had deserted her for the Scottish lords only twenty-four hours before the end. If the Queen and the Scottish lords were to shoot at one another in deadly earnest, he was likely to find himself between two fires, so that he was eager, by fair means or foul, to bring about a compromise.

His first step was an attempt to intimidate Mary Stuart by telling her that if she proved unyielding the Scottish lords would make a ruthless use of the evidence against her, although it should put her to open shame. To convince her what deadly weapons her enemies possessed, he had the Casket documents privately copied by his wife (who had been Mary Fleming), and then sent the copies to Mary Stuart.

It need hardly be said that, in disclosing this evidence to Mary, Maitland was betraying his comrades and was infringing the accepted rules of legal procedure. But his fellow peers capped his perfidy by (under the table, so to say) handing the Casket Letters to the Duke of Norfolk and the other English commissioners. This was to load the dice against Mary, since it could not fail to prejudice against her those who were to act as her judges but who had thus been “nobbled”. Norfolk, in particular, was dumbfounded by the reek which emerged from this open Pandora’s box. Since right and justice were far from being the chief concern of those who presided over the conference, the English commissioners hastened to report to Elizabeth: “The said letters and ballades do discover such inordinate love betweene her and Bothwell, her loothsomness and abhorringe of her husband that was murdered, in such sorte as everie good and godlie man can not but detest and abhorre the same.”

This report, so disastrous to Mary Stuart, was extremely welcome to Elizabeth Tudor. She knew now what incriminating material could be produced at the conference, and she determined not to rest until Moray had been forced to produce it. The more Mary showed herself inclined for compromise, the more did Elizabeth insist upon a disclosure of all the facts. It seemed as if the Duke of Norfolk’s “detestation and abhorrence”, now that he had had a private glimpse of the contents of the famous casket, would prove fatal to Mary.

But gamesters and politicians must never give up the game as lost so long as they still hold a card in their hand. At this juncture Lethington made a sharp curve. He called on Norfolk and had a long private conversation with the premier peer of England. Immediately afterwards Norfolk himself made a sharp curve. Saul had been converted into Paul. The man who had seemed prejudiced against the Queen of Scots as one of her judges became her most zealous assistant and partisan. Instead of guiding the conference towards a public inquiry such as Elizabeth wanted, he began to work in the interests of the Scottish Queen. Nay more, he urged Mary against renouncing the Scottish crown and against abandoning her claim to the English succession; he stiffened her back and steeled her hand. At the same time he strongly advised Moray against producing the letters in open court, and Moray suddenly changed front after his private conversation with Norfolk. The regent became mild and conciliatory, fully agreeing with Norfolk that Bothwell must be held solely responsible for Darnley’s murder and that Mary Stuart should be exonerated. A gentle thaw had begun. Within a few days spring weather came, and friendship smiled over this remarkable house.

What had induced Norfolk to swing round in this way, so that he disregarded the instructions of his own sovereign, and from being an adversary of Mary Stuart became one of the Scottish Queen’s closest friends? We can hardly suppose that Lethington had bribed him with money. Norfolk was the wealthiest nobleman in England; his family was of hardly less importance than that of the Tudors; neither Lethington nor all Scotland could have furnished enough money to influence him. Nevertheless, Lethington had bribed him, though not with dross. He had offered the young widower the only bribe which could appeal to so powerful a man, namely more power. Why should not the Duke of Norfolk marry Queen Mary and thus secure the right of succession to the English crown? There is magic in the thought of wearing a kingly diadem which can make a coward brave, an indifferent man ambitious, and a philosopher a fool. That was why Norfolk, who a few days before had been strongly advising Mary voluntarily to renounce her royal rights, now urged her to cling to them. It was only because of her right of succession to the English throne that Norfolk wished to wed Mary Stuart, for by this marriage he would rank with the Tudors.

To modern sentiment it cannot but seem extraordinary that a man who had just been denouncing Mary to Elizabeth as a murderess and an adulteress, who had been so righteously indignant about the Scottish Queen’s unsavoury love affairs, should almost in the same breath decide upon making this woman his wife. Naturally enough, therefore, the wholehearted defenders of Mary Stuart declare that, in the aforesaid private conversation, Lethington must have convinced Norfolk of Mary’s innocence and of the fact that the Casket Letters were forgeries. There is, however, no documentary evidence in support of such a hypothesis, and some weeks later Norfolk, in conversation with Elizabeth, was still describing Mary Stuart as a murderess. Nothing can lead the historian more hopelessly astray than to apply to a long-past century the moral standards of a later date. The value of a human life is not an absolute value, but one which varies from time to time and from place to place. We ourselves are much laxer in our judgement of political assassinations than were our grandfathers in the nineteenth century, though we may not have reverted without qualification to the sixteenth-century outlook that such matters are trifles. In the days of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor conscientious scruples were rare; morality was based, not upon Holy Writ, but upon Machiavelli’s
The Prince
. One who aspired to a throne would wade through slaughter to reach it, undeterred by sentimental considerations. The scene in
King Richard III
in which Anne Neville consents to give her hand in marriage to the slayer of her husband (“Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?”) was penned by a contemporary of the fourth Duke of Norfolk. It seemed nowise incredible to the playgoers who witnessed its performance. To become King a man would poison his father or his brother, would involve thousands of innocent persons in a war, would sweep people ruthlessly out of his path. In the Europe of those days it would hardly be possible to find a ruling house in which such crimes were not committed. When a crown was at stake, a boy of fourteen would marry a woman of fifty, or a girl would wed a man old enough to be her grandfather. No one bothered, in such cases, about virtue or good looks or dignity or morals. The aspirant to a throne married without a qualm someone who was feeble-minded, crook-backed or paralysed; a syphilitic, a cripple or a criminal. Why, then, should it be supposed that the ambitious Norfolk would have been troubled by moral scruples when this young, beautiful and hot-blooded Queen declared herself ready to become his wife? Norfolk was not concerned with what Mary Stuart had done or might have done to others, but with what she would or could do for him. A man with more imagination than intelligence, he already fancied himself at Westminster in Elizabeth’s place. Betwixt night and morning there had been a change of scene. Lethington’s clever hand had drawn aside the net which was being woven round Mary Stuart, and he who was to have been a severe judge had been transformed into a wooer and a helper.

Elizabeth, however, had excellent tale-bearers, and her senses were kept alert by her suspicions. “
Les princes ont des oreilles grandes qui oyent loin et près
”
—
Princes have large ears that hear far and near
—
she once said triumphantly to the French ambassador. A hundred trivial signs convinced her that in York potions were being brewed which would disagree with her. She sent for Norfolk and told him archly how a little bird had informed her that “he would a-wooing go”. Norfolk was no hero. His father had been attainted by Henry VIII, and only that monarch’s death had saved the third duke of Norfolk from execution. Like Peter with his “I know not the man”, Norfolk, who had so recently become Mary Stuart’s suitor, repudiated the implication. Those who affirmed that he desired to wed an adulteress and murderess were calumniators. “Madam,” said he, “that woman shall never be my wife who has been your competitor, and whose husband cannot sleep in security on his pillow.”