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THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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[Illustration: Mary Stuart
From the portrait in the collection of the Earl of Morton.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART
BY ANDREW LANG
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_NEW EDITION_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
89 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1901
All rights reserved
PREFACE
In revising this book I have corrected a number of misreadings in the
Arabic numerals of dates of years. I owe much to Mr. David Bruce-Gardyne
and Mr. Hay Fleming. In deference to other criticisms offered privately, I
have somewhat modified certain phrases about the hypothetical forged
letter, as quoted by Moray and Lennox (pp. 211-236). That such a letter
once existed is, of course, an inference on which readers must form their
own opinion. The passage as to the site of Darnley’s house, Kirk o’ Field
(pp. 124-131), ought to have been banished to an Appendix. On any theory
the existence of the town wall, shown in the contemporary chart opposite
p. 130, is a difficulty. The puzzle is caused by the chart of 1567,
reduced in the design given at p. 130. In all published forms the drawing
is given as it is here. But it reverses the points of the compass, east
and west. Mr. A. H. Millar has suggested to me that if reflected in a
mirror some errors of the chart disappear, whence one infers that it was
drawn in reverse for an engraving. I have, therefore, corrected the text
in this sense. But difficulties remain: there is a town wall, running
south to north, of which we have no other knowledge; and Hamilton House
(if the chart is reversed) is placed east instead of west of Kirk o’
Field, where it actually stood. The original design contains only the name
of Hamilton House. In our chart the house is copied from the picture of it
as part of the University buildings, in the map of 1647.
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Carlyle not unjustly described the tragedy of Mary Stuart as but a
personal incident in the true national History of Scotland. He asked for
other and more essential things than these revelations of high life. Yet
he himself wrote in great detail the story of the Diamond Necklace of
Marie Antoinette. The diamonds of the French, the silver Casket of the
Scottish Queen, with all that turned on them, are of real historical
interest, for these trifles brought to the surface the characters and
principles of men living in an age of religious revolution. Wells were
sunk, as it were, deep into human personality, and the inner
characteristics of the age leaped upwards into the light.
For this reason the Mystery of Mary Stuart must always fascinate:
moreover, curiosity has never ceased to be aroused by this problem of
Mary’s guilt or innocence. Hume said, a hundred and fifty years ago, that
the Scottish Jacobite who believed in the Queen’s innocence was beyond the
reach of reason or argument. Yet from America, Russia, France, and Germany
we receive works in which the guilt of Mary is denied, and the arguments
of Hume, Robertson, Laing, Mignet, and Froude are contested. Every inch of
the ground has been inspected as if by detectives on the scene of a recent
murder; and one might suppose that the Higher Criticism had uttered its
last baseless conjecture and that every syllable of the fatal Casket
Letters, the only external and documentary testimony to Mary’s guilt, must
have been weighed, tested, and analysed. But this, as we shall see, is
hardly the fact. There are ‘points as yet unseized by Germans.’ Mary was
never tried by a Court of Justice during her lifetime. Her cause has been
in process of trial ever since. Each newly discovered manuscript, like the
fragmentary biography by her secretary, Nau, and the Declaration of the
Earl of Morton, and the newly translated dispatches of the Spanish
ambassadors, edited by Major Martin Hume (1894), has brought fresh light,
and has modified the tactics of the attack and defence.
As Herr Cardauns remarks, at the close of his ‘Der Sturz der Maria
Stuart,’ we cannot expect finality, and our verdicts or hypotheses may be
changed by the emergence of some hitherto unknown piece of evidence.
Already we have seen too many ingenious theories overthrown. From the
defence of Mary by Goodall (1754) to the triumphant certainties of
Chalmers (1818), to the arguments of MM. Philippson and Sepp, of Mr.
Hosack, and of Sir John Skelton (1880-1895), increasing knowledge of
facts, new emergence of old MSS. have, on the whole, weakened the
position of the defence. Mr. Henderson’s book ‘The Casket Letters and Mary
Stuart’ (First Edition 1889) is the last word on the matter in this
country. Mr. Henderson was the first to publish in full Morton’s sworn
Declaration as to the discovery, inspection, and safe keeping of the fatal
Casket and its contents. Sir John Skelton’s reply[1] told chiefly against
minor points of criticism and palæography.
The present volume is not a Defence of Mary’s innocence. My object is to
show, how the whole problem is affected by the discovery of the Lennox
Papers, which admit us behind the scenes, and enable us to see how Mary’s
prosecutors, especially the Earl of Lennox, the father of her murdered
husband, got up their case. The result of criticism of these papers is
certainly to reinforce Mr. Hosack’s argument, that there once existed a
forged version of the long and monstrous letter to Bothwell from Glasgow,
generally known as ‘Letter II.’ In this book, as originally written, I had
myself concluded that Letter II., as it stands, bears evidence of
garbling. The same is the opinion of Dr. Bresslau, who accepts the other
Casket Papers as genuine. The internal chronology of Letter II. is
certainly quite impossible, and in this I detected unskilled dove-tailing
of genuine and forged elements. But I thought it advisable to rewrite the
first half of the Letter, in modern English, as if it were my own
composition, and while doing this I discovered the simple and ordinary
kind of accident which may explain the dislocation of the chronology, and
remove the evidence to unskilled dove-tailing and garbling. In the same
spirit of rather reluctant conscientiousness, I worked out the scheme of
dates which makes the Letter capable of being fitted into the actual
series of events. Thus I am led, though with diffidence, to infer that,
though a forged version of Letter II. probably once existed, the Letter
may be, at least in part, a genuine composition by the Queen. The fact,
however, does not absolutely compel belief, and, unless new manuscripts
are discovered, may always be doubted by admirers of Mary.
Sir John Skelton, in his ‘Maitland of Lethington,’ regarded the supposed
falsification of Letter II. as an argument against all the Casket Letters
(‘false in one thing, false in all’). But it is clear that forgery may be
employed to strengthen the evidence, even of a valid cause. If Mary’s
enemies deemed that the genuine evidence which they had collected was
inadequate, and therefore added evidence which was not genuine, that
proves their iniquity, but does not prove Mary’s innocence. Portions of
the Letter II., and of some of the other Letters, have all the air of
authenticity, and suffice to compromise the Queen.
This inquiry, then, if successfully conducted, does not clear Mary, but
solves some of the darkest problems connected with her case. I think that
a not inadequate theory of the tortuous and unintelligible policy of
Maitland of Lethington, and of his real relations with Mary, is here
presented. I also hope that new light is thrown on Mary’s own line of
defence, and on the actual forgers or contaminators of her Letters, if the
existence of such forgery or contamination is held to be possible.
By study of dates it is made clear, I think, that the Lords opposing Mary
took action, as regards the Letters, on the very day of their discovery.
This destroys the argument which had been based on the tardy appearance of
the papers in the dispatches of the period, an argument already shaken by
the revelations of the Spanish Calendar.
Mary’s cause has, hitherto, been best served by her accusers, most injured
by her defenders. For political and personal reasons her enemies, her
accomplices, or the conscious allies of her accomplices, perpetually
stultified themselves and gave themselves the lie. Their case was
otherwise very badly managed. Their dates were so carelessly compiled as
to make their case chronologically impossible. Their position, as stated,
probably by George Buchanan and Makgill, in ‘The Book of Articles,’ and
the ‘Detection,’ is marred by exaggerations and inconsistencies. Buchanan
was by no means a critical historian, and he was here writing as an
advocate, mainly from briefs furnished by Lennox, his feudal chief, the
father of the murdered Darnley. These briefs we now possess, and the
generosity of Father Pollen, S.J., has allowed me to use these hitherto
virgin materials.
The Lennox Papers also enable us to add new and dramatically appropriate
anecdotes of Mary and Darnley, while, by giving us some hitherto unknown
myths current at the moment, they enable us to explain certain
difficulties which have puzzled historians. The whole subject throws a
lurid light on the ethics and the persons of the age which followed the
Reformation in Scotland. Other novelties may be found to emerge from new
combinations of facts and texts which have long been familiar, and
particular attention has been paid to the subordinate persons in the play,
while a hitherto disregarded theory of the character of Bothwell is
offered; a view already, in part, suggested by Mignet.
The arrangement adopted is as follows:
First, in two preliminary chapters, the characters and the scenes of the
events are rapidly and broadly sketched. We try to make the men and women
live and move in palaces and castles now ruinous or untenanted.
Next the relations of the characters to each other are described, from
Mary’s arrival in Scotland to her marriage with Darnley; the murder of
Riccio, the interval of the eleven predicted months that passed ere beside
Riccio lay ‘a fatter than he,’ Darnley: the slaying of Darnley, the
marriage with Bothwell, the discovery of the Casket, the imprisonment at
Loch Leven, the escape thence, and the flight into England.
Next the External History of the Casket Letters, the first hints of their
existence, their production before Elizabeth’s Commission at Westminster,
and Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, with the obscure intrigues of the
Commission at York, and the hasty and scuffling examinations at
Westminster and Hampton Court, are described and explained.
Next the Internal Evidence of the Letters themselves is criticised.
Finally, the later history of the Letters, with the disappearance of the
original alleged autograph texts, closes the subject.
Very minute examination of details and dates has been deemed necessary.
The case is really a police case, and investigation cannot be too anxious,
but certain points of complex detail are relegated to Appendices.
In writing the book I have followed, as Socrates advises, where the
_Logos_ led me. Several conclusions or theories which at first beguiled
me, and seemed convincing, have been ruined by the occurrence of fresher
evidence, and have been withdrawn. I have endeavoured to search for, and
have stated, as fully as possible, the objections which may be urged to
conclusions which are provisional, and at the mercy of criticism, and of
fresh or neglected evidence.
The character of Mary, _son naturel_, as she says, or is made to say in
the most incriminating Letter, is full of fascination, excellence and
charm. Her terrible expiation has won the pity of gentle hearts, and
sentiment has too often clouded reason, while reaction against sentiment
has been no less mischievous. But History, the search for truth, should be
as impersonal as the judge on the bench. I am not unaccustomed to be
blamed for ‘destroying our illusions,’ but to cultivate and protect
illusion has never been deemed the duty of the historian. Mary, at worst,
and even admitting her guilt (guilt monstrous and horrible to contemplate)
seems to have been a nobler nature than any of the persons most closely
associated with her fortunes. She fell, if fall she did, like the
Clytæmnestra to whom a contemporary poet compares her, under the almost
demoniacal possession of passion; a possession so sudden, strange and
overpowering that even her enemies attributed it to ‘unlawful arts.’
I have again to acknowledge the almost, or quite, unparalleled kindness of
Father Pollen in allowing me to use his materials. He found transcripts of
what I style the ‘Lennox MSS.’ among the papers of the late learned Father
Stevenson, S.J. These he collated with the originals in the University
Library at Cambridge. It is his intention, I understand, to publish the
whole collection, which was probably put together for the use of Dr.
Wilson, when writing, or editing, the ‘Actio,’ published with Buchanan’s
‘Detection.’ Father Pollen has also read most of my proof-sheets, but he
is not responsible for any of my provisional conclusions. I have also
consulted, on various points, Mr. George Neilson, Dr. Hay Fleming, Mr. A.
H. Millar, and others.
Miss Dorothy Alston made reduced drawings, omitting the figures, of the
contemporary charts of Edinburgh, and of Kirk o’ Field. Mr. F. Compton
Price supplied the imitations of Mary’s handwriting, and the facsimiles in
Plates A B, B A, &c.
For leave to photograph and publish the portrait of Darnley and his
brother I have to acknowledge the gracious permission of his Majesty, the
King.
The Duke of Hamilton has kindly given permission to publish photographs of
the Casket at Hamilton Palace (see Chapter XVIII.).
The Earl of Morton has been good enough to allow his admirable portraits
of Mary (perhaps of 1575) and of the Regent Morton to be reproduced.
Mr. Oliphant, of Rossie, has placed at my service his portrait of Mary as
a girl, a copy, probably by Sir John Medina, of a contemporary French
likeness.
To the kindness of the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour and Miss Balfour we owe
the photographs of the famous tree at Whittingham, Mr. Balfour’s seat,
where Morton, Lethington, and Bothwell conspired to murder Darnley.
The Lennox Papers are in the Cambridge University Library.
_The Suppressed Confessions of Hepburn of Bowton_
Too late for notice in the body of this book, the following curious piece
of evidence was observed by Father Ryan, S.J., in the Cambridge MS. of
the deposition of Hepburn of Bowton. This kinsman and accomplice of
Bothwell was examined on December 8, 1567, before Moray, Atholl,
Kirkcaldy, Lindsay, and Bellenden, Lord Justice Clerk. The version of his
confession put in at the Westminster Conference, December 1568, will be
found in Anderson, ii. 183-188, and in Laing, ii. 256-259. The MS. is in
Cotton Caligula, C.I. fol. 325. It is attested as a ‘true copy’ by
Bellenden. But if we follow the Cambridge MS. it is _not_ a true copy. A
long passage, following ‘and lay down with him,’ at the end, is omitted.
That passage I now cite:
‘Farther this deponar sayis that he inquirit at my lord quhat securitie he
had for it quhilk wes done, because their wes sic ane brute and murmo{r}
in the toun And my lord ansuerit that diuerse noblemen had subscrivit the
deid with him And schew the same band[2] to the deponar, quhairat wes the
subscriptionis of the erles of huntlie, ergile, boithuile altogether, and
the secretares subscriptioun far beneth the rest. And insafar as the
deponar remembers this was the effect of it, it contenit sum friuose
[frivolous?] and licht caussis aganis the king sic as hys behavio{r}
contrar the quene, quhilk band wes in ane of twa silver cofferis and wes
in dunbar, and the deponar saw the same there the tyme that they wer thare
after the quenis revissing And understandis that the band wes with the
remanent letters, and putt in the castell be george dalgleis. Inquirit
quha deuisit that the king suld ludge at the kirk of feild?
‘Answeris S{r} James balfo{r} can better tell nor he And knew better and
befoir the deponer yof. And quhen the Quene wes in glasgow my lord
Boithuile send the deponar to S{r} James balfo{r} desiring that he wald
cum and meit my lord at the kirk of feild To quhome Schir James ansuerit,
“will my lord cum thair? gif he cum it wer gude he war quiet.” And yit
they met not at that place than nor at natyme thairefter to the deponers
knawledge.
‘Thair wes xiiii keyis quhilkis this deponer efter the murtho{r} keist in
the grevvell hoill [? quarrel-hoill, _i.e._ quarry hole] betuix the abbay
and leith. And towardes the makers of the keyis they were maid betuix
Leuestoun and S{r} James balfo{r} and thai twa can tell. Item deponis that
Ilk ane that wer of the band and siclike the erle of Morton and Sy{r}
James balfo{r} suld haif send twa men to the committing of the murther.
And the erle boithuile declarit to the deponar are nyt or twa afore the
murtho{r} falland in talking of thame that wer in the kingis chalmer My
lord said that Sandy Durham wes ane gude fallowe and he wald wische that
he weir out of the same.
‘This is the trew copy, etc.’
Perhaps few will argue that this passage has been fraudulently inserted in
the Cambridge MS. If not, Bellenden lied when he attested the mutilated
deposition to be a true copy. His own autograph signature attests the
Cambridge copy. Moray, who heard Bowton make his deposition, was a partner
to the fraud. The portion of the evidence burked by Moray is corroborated,
as regards the signatures of the band for Darnley’s murder, by Ormistoun,
much later (Dec. 13, 1573) in Laing, ii. 293. Ormistoun, however, probably
by an error of memory, says that he saw what Bothwell affirmed to be the
signature of Sir James Balfour, in addition to those spoken of by Bowton,
namely Argyll, Bothwell, Huntly, and Lethington. This statement as to
Balfour Bowton withdrew in his dying confession as published. Bowton’s
remark that Lethington’s signature came ‘far beneath the rest’ sounds
true. Space would be left above for the signatures of men of higher rank
than the secretary.
Bowton saw the band at Dunbar (April-May, 1567, during Mary’s detention
there), ‘in one of two silver coffers.’ He only ‘understands’ that the
band was ‘with the remanent letters, and put in the Castle by George
Dalgleish.’ If ‘the remanent letters’ are the Casket Letters, and if
Bowton, at Dunbar, had seen them with the band, and read them, his
evidence would have been valuable as to the Letters. But as things are, we
have merely his opinion, or ‘understanding,’ that certain letters were
kept with the band, as Drury, we know, asserted that it was in the Casket
with the other papers, and was destroyed, while the Letters attributed to
Mary ‘were kept to be shown.’ Of course, if this be true, Morton lied
when he said that the contents of the Casket had neither been added to
nor diminished.
Next, Bowton denied that, to his knowledge, Bothwell and Balfour met at
the Kirk o’ Field, while Mary was at Glasgow, or at any other time. If
Bowton is right, and he was their go-between, Paris lied in his Deposition
where he says that Bothwell and Sir James had passed a whole night in Kirk
o’ Field, while Mary was at Glasgow.[3]
Bowton’s confession that Morton ‘should have sent two men to the
committing of the murder,’ explains the presence of Archibald Douglas,
Morton’s cousin, with Binning, his man. These two represented Morton.
Finally, Bowton’s confession in the Cambridge MS. joins the copy of his
confession put in at Westminster, on the point of the fourteen false keys
of Kirk o’ Field, thrown by Bowton into a gravel hole. Unless then the
Cambridge MS. is rejected, the Lord Justice Clerk and Moray deliberately
suppressed evidence which proved that Moray was allied with two of
Darnley’s murderers in prosecuting his sister for that crime. Such
evidence, though extant, Moray, of course, dared not produce, but must
burke at Westminster.
I have shown in the text (p. 144) that, even on Bowton’s evidence as
produced at Westminster, Moray was aware that Bothwell had allies among
the nobles, but that, as far as the evidence declares, he asked no
questions. But the Cambridge MS. proves his full knowledge, which he
deliberately suppressed. The Cambridge MS. must either have been furnished
to Lennox, before the sittings at Westminster; or must have been the
original, or a copy of the original, later supplied to Dr. Wilson while
preparing Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’ the ‘Actio,’ and other documents for the
press in November 1571.[4] It will be observed that when Lethington was
accused of Darnley’s murder, in September 1569, Moray could not well have
prosecuted him to a conviction, as his friends, Atholl and Kirkcaldy,
having been present at Bowton’s examination, knew that Moray knew of
Lethington’s guilt, yet continued to be his ally. The Cambridge copy of
the deposition of Hay of Tala contains no reference to the guilt of Morton
or Lethington; naturally, for Morton was present at Hay’s examination.
Finally, the evidence of Binning, in 1581, shows that representatives of
Lethington and Balfour, as well as of Morton, were present at the murder,
as Bowton, in his suppressed testimony, says had been arranged.
It is therefore clear that Moray, in arraigning his sister with the aid of
her husband’s assassins, could suppress authentic evidence. Mary’s
apologists will argue that he was also capable of introducing evidence
less than authentic.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ 1
II. THE MINOR CHARACTERS 28
III. THE CHARACTERS BEFORE RICCIO’S MURDER 45
IV. BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE 71
V. BETWEEN THE BAPTISM AND THE MURDER 105
VI. THE MURDER OF DARNLEY 123
VII. THE CONFESSIONS OF PARIS 154
VIII. MARY’S CONDUCT AFTER THE MURDER 171
IX. THE EMERGENCE OF THE CASKET LETTERS 193
X. THE CASKET LETTERS 208
XI. THE LETTERS AT THE CONFERENCE OF YORK 237
XII. THE LETTERS AT WESTMINSTER AND HAMPTON COURT 266
XIII. MARY’S ATTITUDE AFTER THE CONFERENCE 283
XIV. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE LETTERS 290
XV. THE SIX MINOR CASKET LETTERS 322
XVI. THE CASKET SONNETS 344
XVII. CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS 346
XVIII. LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS 365
_APPENDICES_
A. THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL 371
B. THE BURNING OF LYON KING OF ARMS 374
C. THE DATE OF MARY’S VISIT TO GLASGOW 379
D. THE BAND FOR DARNLEY’S MURDER 381
E. THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS 385
THE CASKET LETTERS:
LETTER I. PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION
AT RECORD OFFICE 391
" II. PUBLISHED SCOTS AND ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 393
" III. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION AT HATFIELD 414
" IV. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION 416
" V. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION AT HATFIELD 417
" VI. PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION 418
" VII. SCOTS VERSION 419
" VIII. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION 420
" IX. THE FRENCH ‘SONNETS’ 422
CRAWFORD’S DEPOSITION 427
INDEX 433
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES_
MARY STUART _Frontispiece_
_From the Portrait in the Collection of the Earl of
Morton._
MARY AT EIGHTEEN _To face p._ 4
DARNLEY ABOUT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN " 10
THE REGENT MORTON " 30
_From the Portrait in the Collection of the Earl of
Morton._
LE DEUIL BLANC " 48
_Sketch by Janet, 1561._
HOUSE OCCUPIED BY QUEEN MARY AT JEDBURGH " 94
_OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF EDINBURGH " 40
THE OLD TOWER, WHITTINGHAM " 116
THE WHITTINGHAM TREE " 118
_After a Drawing by Richard Doyle._
THE WHITTINGHAM TREE (External View) " 120
KIRK O’ FIELD SITE IN 1646, SHOWING EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY " 126
KEY PLAN OF KIRK O’ FIELD " 130
PLACARD OF MARY, 1567 (Mary as a Mermaid) " 174
TWO SONNETS FROM THE CAMBRIDGE MS. (Plate A) " 344
EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND (Plates A B, B A) " 362
HANDS OF MARY BEATON, KIRKCALDY, LETHINGTON AND MARY
FLEMING (Plate C) " 364
SIDE OF CASKET WITH ARMS OF HAMILTON (Plate D) " 366
RAISED WORK ON ROOF OF CASKET (Plate D) " 366
CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY (Plate E) " 368
FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN
‘STRICKEN UP’ (Plate E) " 368
MODERN IMITATION OF MARY’S HAND (Plate F) " 420
_Errata_
Page 38, lines 20-23, _the sentence should read_: Holyrood is altered by
buildings of the Restoration; where now is the chapel where Mary prayed,
and the priests at the altar were buffeted?
Page 165, line 21, _for_ Blackadder, _read_ Blackader.
Page 175, line 18, _for_ Mr. James Spens, _read_ Mr. John Spens.
Pages 196-205, 320, 355: Melville was _not_ ‘the bearer,’ as erroneously
stated in Bain, ii. 336.
THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART
I
_DRAMATIS PERSONÆ_
History is apt to be, and some think that it should be, a mere series of
dry uncoloured statements. Such an event occurred, such a word was
uttered, such a deed was done, at this date or the other. We give
references to our authorities, to men who heard of the events, or even saw
them when they happened. But we, the writer and the readers, _see_
nothing: we only offer or accept bald and imperfect information. If we try
to write history on another method, we become ‘picturesque:’ we are
composing a novel, not striving painfully to attain the truth. Yet, when
we know not the details;--the aspect of dwellings now ruinous; the hue and
cut of garments long wasted into dust; the passing frown, or smile, or
tone of the actors and the speakers in these dramas of life long ago; the
clutch of Bothwell at his dagger’s hilt, when men spoke to him in the
street; the flush of Darnley’s fair face as Mary and he quarrelled at
Stirling before his murder--then we know not the real history, the real
truth. Now and then such a detail of gesture or of change of countenance
is recorded by an eyewitness, and brings us, for a moment, into more vivid
contact with the past. But we could only know it, and judge the actors and
their conduct, if we could see the personages in their costume as they
lived, passing by in some magic mirror from scene to scene. The stage, as
in Schiller’s ‘Marie Stuart,’ comes nearest to reality, if only the facts
given by the poet were real; and next in vividness comes the novel, such
as Scott’s ‘Abbot,’ with its picture of Mary at Loch Leven, when she falls
into an hysterical fit at the mention of Bastian’s marriage on the night
of Darnley’s death. Far less intimate than these imaginary pictures of
genius are the statements of History, dull when they are not
‘picturesque,’ and when they are ‘picturesque,’ sometimes prejudiced,
inaccurate, and misleading.
We are to betake ourselves to the uninviting series of contradictory
statements and of contested dates, and of disputable assertions, which are
the dry bones of a tragedy like that of the ‘Agamemnon’ of Æschylus. Let
us try first to make mental pictures of the historic people who play their
parts on what is now a dimly lighted stage, but once was shone upon by the
sun in heaven; by the stars of darkling nights on ways dimly discerned; by
the candles of Holyrood, or of that crowded sick-room in Kirk o’ Field,
where Bothwell and the Lords played dice round the fated Darnley’s couch;
or by the flare of torches under which Mary rode down the Blackfriars Wynd
and on to Holyrood.
The foremost person is the Queen, a tall girl of twenty-four, with brown
hair, and sidelong eyes of red brown. Such are her sidelong eyes in the
Morton portrait; such she bequeathed to her great-great-grandson, James,
‘the King over the Water.’ She was half French in temper, one of the proud
bold Guises, by her mother’s side; and if not beautiful, she was so
beguiling that Elizabeth recognised her magic even in the reports of her
enemies.[5]
‘This lady and Princess is a notable woman,’ said Knollys; ‘she showeth a
disposition to speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, and to be very
familiar. She showeth a great desire to be avenged of her enemies, she
showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory,
she delighteth much to hear of hardiness and valiance, commending by name
all approved hardy men of her country, although they be her enemies, and
concealeth no cowardice even in her friends.’
There was something ‘divine,’ Elizabeth said, in the face and manner which
won the hearts of her gaolers in Loch Leven and in England. ‘Heaven bless
that sweet face!’ cried the people in the streets as the Queen rode by, or
swept along with the long train, the ‘targetted tails’ and ‘stinking pride
of women,’ that Knox denounced.
She was gay, as when Randolph met her, in no more state than a burgess’s
wife might use, in the little house of St. Andrews, hard by the desecrated
Cathedral. She could be madly mirthful, dancing, or walking the black
midnight streets of Edinburgh, masked, in male apparel, or flitting ‘in
homely attire,’ said her enemies, about the Market Cross in Stirling. She
loved, at sea, ‘to handle the boisterous cables,’ as Buchanan tells.
Pursuing her brother, Moray, on a day of storm, or hard on the doomed
Huntly’s track among the hills and morasses of the North; or galloping
through the red bracken of the October moors, and the hills of the
robbers, to Hermitage; her energy outwore the picked warriors in her
company. At other times, in a fascinating languor, she would lie long
abed, receiving company in the French fashion, waited on by her Maries,
whose four names ‘are four sweet symphonies,’ Mary Seton and Mary Beaton,
Mary Fleming and Mary Livingstone. To the Council Board she would bring
her woman’s work, embroidery of silk and gold. She was fabled to have
carried pistols at her saddle-bow in war, and she excelled in matches of
archery and pall-mall.
[Illustration: Mary at Eighteen.]
Her costumes, when she would be queenly, have left their mark on the
memory of men: the ruff from which rose the snowy neck; the brocaded
bodice, with puffed and jewelled sleeves and stomacher; the diamonds,
gifts of Henri II. or of Diane; the rich pearls that became the spoil of
Elizabeth; the brooches enamelled with sacred scenes, or scenes from
fable. Many of her jewels--the ruby tortoise given by Riccio; the enamel
of the mouse and the ensnared lioness, passed by Lethington as a token
into her dungeon of Loch Leven; the diamonds bequeathed by her to one whom
she might not name; the red enamelled wedding-ring, the gift of Darnley;
the diamond worn in her bosom, the betrothal present of Norfolk--are, to
our fancy, like the fabled star-ruby of Helen of Troy, that dripped with
blood-gouts which vanished as they fell. Riccio, Darnley, Lethington,
Norfolk, the donors of these jewels, they were all to die for her, as
Bothwell, too, was to perish, the giver of the diamond carried by Paris,
the recipient of the black betrothal ring enamelled with bones and tears.
‘Her feet go down to death,’ her feet that were so light in the dance,
‘her steps take hold on hell.... Her lips drop as an honeycomb, and her
mouth is smoother than oil. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a
two-edged sword.’ The lips that dropped as honeycomb, the laughing mouth,
could wildly threaten, and vainly rage or beseech, when she was entrapped
at Carberry; or could waken pity in the sternest Puritan when, half-clad,
her bosom bare, her loose hair flowing, she wailed from her window to the
crowd of hostile Edinburgh.
She was of a high impatient spirit: we seem to recognise her in an
anecdote told by the Black Laird of Ormistoun, one of Darnley’s murderers,
in prison before his execution. He had been warned by his brother, in a
letter, that he was suspected of the crime, and should ‘get some good way
to purge himself.’ He showed the letter to Bothwell, who read it, and gave
it to Mary. She glanced at it, handed it to Huntly, ‘and thereafter turnit
unto me, and turnit her back, and gave _ane thring_ with her shoulder, and
passit away, and spake nothing to me.’ But that ‘thring’ spoke much of
Mary’s mood, unrepentant, contemptuous, defiant.
Mary’s gratitude was not of the kind proverbial in princes. In September
1571, when the Ridolfi plot collapsed, and Mary’s household was reduced,
her sorest grief was for Archibald Beaton, her usher, and little Willie
Douglas, who rescued her from Loch Leven. They were to be sent to
Scotland, which meant death to both, and she pleaded pitifully for them.
To her servants she wrote: ‘I thank God, who has given me strength to
endure, and I pray Him to grant you the like grace. To you will your
loyalty bring the greatest honour, and whensoever it pleases God to set me
free, I will never fail you, but reward you according to my power.... Pray
God that you be true men and constant, to such He will never deny his
grace, and for you, John Gordon and William Douglas, I pray that He will
inspire your hearts. I can no more. Live in friendship and holy charity
one with another, bearing each other’s imperfections.... You, William
Douglas, be assured that the life which you hazarded for me shall never be
destitute while I have one friend alive.’
In a trifling transaction she writes: ‘Rather would I pay twice over, than
injure or suspect any man.’
In the long lament of the letters written during her twenty years of
captivity, but a few moods return and repeat themselves, like phrases in a
fugue. Vain complaints, vain hopes, vain intrigues with Spain, France, the
Pope, the Guises, the English Catholics, succeed each other with futile
iteration. But always we hear the note of loyalty even to her humblest
servants, of sleepless memory of their sacrifices for her, of unstinting
and generous gratitude. Such was the Queen’s ‘natural,’ _mon naturel_:
with this character she faced the world: a lady to live and die for: and
many died.
This woman, sensitive, proud, tameless, fierce, and kind, was browbeaten
by the implacable Knox: her priests were scourged and pilloried, her
creed was outraged every day; herself scolded, preached at, insulted; her
every plan thwarted by Elizabeth. Mary had reason enough for tears even
before her servant was slain almost in her sight by her witless husband
and the merciless Lords. She could be gay, later, dancing and hunting, but
it may well be that, after this last and worst of cruel insults, her heart
had now become hard as the diamond; and that she was possessed by the evil
spirits of loathing, and hatred, and longing for revenge. It had not been
a hard heart, but a tender; capable of sorrow for slaves at the galley
oars. After her child’s birth, when she was holiday-making at Alloa,
according to Buchanan, with Bothwell and his gang of pirates, she wrote to
the Laird of Abercairnie, bidding him be merciful to a poor woman and her
‘company of puir bairnis’ whom he had evicted from their ‘kindly rowme,’
or little croft.
Her more than masculine courage her enemies have never denied. Her
resolution was incapable of despair; ‘her last word should be that of a
Queen.’ Her plighted promise she revered, but, in such an age, a woman’s
weapon was deceit.
She was the centre and pivot of innumerable intrigues. The fierce nobles
looked on her as a means for procuring lands, office, and revenge on their
feudal enemies. To the fiercer ministers she was an idolatress, who ought
to die the death, and, meanwhile, must be thwarted and insulted. To
France, Spain, and Austria she was a piece in the game of diplomatic
chess. To the Pope she seemed an instrument that might win back both
Scotland and England for the Church, while the English Catholics regarded
her as either their lawful or their future Queen. To Elizabeth she was,
naturally, and inevitably, and, in part, by her own fault, a deadly rival,
whatever feline caresses might pass between them: gifts of Mary’s heart,
in a heart-shaped diamond; Elizabeth’s diamond ‘like a rock,’ a rock in
which was no refuge. Yet Mary was of a nature so large and unsuspicious
that, on the strength of a ring and a promise, she trusted herself to
Elizabeth, contrary to the advice of her staunchest adherents. She was no
natural dissembler, and with difficulty came to understand that others
could be false. Her sense of honour might become perverted, but she had a
strong native sense of honour.
One thing this woman wanted, a master. Even before Darnley and she were
wedded, at least publicly, Randolph wrote, ‘All honour that may be
attributed unto any man by a wife, he hath it wholly and fully.’ In her
authentic letters to Norfolk, when, a captive in England, she regarded
herself as betrothed to him, we find her adopting an attitude of
submissive obedience. The same tone pervades the disputed Casket Letters,
to Bothwell, and is certainly in singular consonance with the later, and
genuine epistles to Norfolk. But the tone--if the Casket Letters are
forged--may have been borrowed from what was known of her early submission
to Darnley.
The second _dramatis persona_ is Darnley, ‘The Young Fool.’ Concerning
Darnley but little is recorded in comparison with what we know of Mary. He
was the son, by the Earl of Lennox, a royal Stewart, of that daughter whom
Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., and widow of James IV., bore to her
second husband, the Earl of Angus. Darnley’s father regarded himself as
next to the Scottish crown, for the real nearest heir, the head of the
Hamiltons, the Duke of Chatelherault, Lennox chose to consider as
illegitimate. After playing a double and dishonest part in the troubled
years following the death of James V., Lennox retired to England with his
wife, a victim of the suspicions of Elizabeth.[6] The education of his
son, Henry, Lord Darnley, seems to have been excellent, as far as the
intellect and the body are concerned. The letter which, as a child of
nine, he wrote to Mary Tudor, speaking of a work of his own, ‘The New
Utopia,’ is in the new ‘Roman’ hand, carried to the perfection of
copperplate. The Lennox MSS. say that ‘the Queen was stricken with the
dart of love by the comliness of his sweet behaviour, personage, wit, and
vertuous qualities, as well in languages[7] and lettered sciencies, as
also in the art of music, dancing, and playing on instruments.’ When his
murderers had left his room at midnight, his last midnight, his
chamber-child begged him to play, while a psalm was sung, but his hand,
he replied, was out for the lute, so say the Lennox Papers. Physically he
was ‘a comely Prince of a fair and large stature, pleasant in countenance
... well exercised in martial pastimes upon horseback as any Prince of
that age.’ The Spanish Ambassador calls him ‘an amiable youth.’ But it is
plain that ‘the long lad,’ the _gentil hutaudeau_, with his girlish bloom,
and early tendency to fulness of body, was a spoiled child. His mother, a
passionate intriguer, kept this before him, that, as great-grandson of
Henry VII., and as cousin of Mary Stuart, he should unite the two crowns.
There were Catholics enough in England to flatter the pride of a future
king, though now in exile. This Prince _in partibus_, like his far-away
descendant, Prince Charles Edward, combined a show of charming manners,
when he chose to charm, with an arrogant and violent petulance, when he
deemed it safe to be insulting. At his first arrival in Scotland he won
golden opinions, ‘his courteous dealing with all men is well spoken of.’
As his favour with Mary waxed he ‘dealt blows where he knew that they
would be taken;’ he is said to have drawn his dagger on an official who
brought him a disappointing message, and his foolish freedom of tongue
gave Moray the alarm. It was soon prophesied that he ‘could not continue
long.’ ‘To all honest men he is intolerable, and almost forgetful of her
already, that has adventured so much for his sake. What shall become of
her or what life with him she shall lead, that already taketh so much
upon him as to control and command her, I leave it to others to think.’ So
Randolph, the English Ambassador, wrote as early as May, 1565. She was
‘blinded, transported, carried I know not whither or which way, to her own
confusion and destruction:’ words of omen that were fulfilled.
[Illustration: Darnley at about the age of 18.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
Whether Elizabeth let Darnley go to Scotland merely for Mary’s
entanglement, whether Mary fell in love with the handsome accomplished lad
(as Randolph seems to prove) or not, are questions then, and now,
disputed. The Lennox Papers, declaring that she was smitten by the arrow
of love; and her own conduct, at first, make it highly probable that she
entertained for the _gentil hutaudeau_ a passion, or a passionate caprice.
Darnley, at least, acted like a new chemical agent in the development of
Mary’s character. She had been singularly long-suffering; she had borne
the insults and outrages of the extreme Protestants; she had leaned on her
brother, Moray, and on Lethington; following or even leading these
advisers to the ruin of Huntly, her chief coreligionist. Though constantly
professing, openly to Knox, secretly to the Pope, her desire to succour
the ancient Church, she was obviously regarded, in Papal circles, as slack
in the work. She had been pliant, she had endured the long calculated
delays of Elizabeth, as to her marriage, with patience; but, so soon as
Darnley crossed her path, she became resolute, even reckless. Despite the
opposition, interested, or religious, or based on the pretext of religion,
which Moray and his allies offered, Mary wedded Darnley. She found him a
petulant, ambitious boy; sullen, suspicious, resentful, swayed by the
ambition to be a king in earnest, but too indolent in affairs for the
business of a king.
At tennis, with Riccio, or while exercising his great horses, his
favourite amusement, Darnley was pining to use his jewelled dagger. In the
feverish days before the deed it is probable that he kept his courage
screwed up by the use of stimulants, to which he was addicted. That he
devoted himself to loose promiscuous intrigue injurious to his health, is
not established, though, when her child was born, Mary warned Darnley that
the babe was ‘only too much his son,’ perhaps with a foreboding of
hereditary disease. A satirist called Darnley ‘the leper:’ leprosy being
confounded with ‘la grosse vérole.’ Mary, who had fainting fits, was said
to be epileptic.
Darnley, according to Lennox, represented himself as pure in this regard,
nor have we any valid evidence to the contrary. But his word was
absolutely worthless.
Outraged and harassed, broken, at last, in health, in constant pain,
expressing herself in hysterical outbursts of despair and desire for
death, Mary needed no passion for Bothwell to make her long for freedom
from the young fool. From his sick-bed in Glasgow, as we shall see, he
sent, by a messenger, a cutting verbal taunt to the Queen; so his own
friends declare, they who call Darnley ‘that innocent lamb.’ It is not
wonderful if, in an age of treachery and revenge, the character of Mary
now broke down. ‘I would not do it to him for my own revenge. My heart
bleeds at it,’ she says to Bothwell, in the Casket Letter II., if that was
written by her. But, whatever her part in it, the deed was done.
Of Bothwell, the third protagonist in the tragedy of Three, we have no
portrait, and but discrepant descriptions. They who saw his body, not yet
wholly decayed, in Denmark, reported that he must have been ‘an ugly
Scot,’ with red hair, mixed with grey before he died. Much such another
was the truculent Morton.[8] Born in 1536 or 1537, Bothwell was in the
flower of his age, about thirty, when Darnley perished. He was certainly
not old enough to have been Mary’s father, as Sir John Skelton declared,
for he was not six years her senior. His father died in 1556, and Bothwell
came young into the Hepburn inheritance of impoverished estates, high
offices, and wild reckless blood. According to Buchanan, Bothwell, in
early youth, was brought up at the house of his great-uncle, Patrick
Hepburn, Bishop of Moray, who certainly was a man of profligate life. It
is highly probable that Bothwell was educated in France.
‘Blockish’ or not, Bothwell had the taste of a bibliophile. One of two
books from his library, well bound, and tooled with his name and arms, is
in the collection of the University of Edinburgh. Another was in the
Gibson Craig Library. The works are a tract of Valturin, on Military
Discipline (Paris, 1555, folio), and French translations of martial
treatises attributed to Vegetius, Sextus Julius, and Ælian, with a
collection of anecdotes of warlike affairs (Paris, 1556, folio). The
possession of books like these, in such excellent condition, is no proof
of doltishness. Moreover, Bothwell appears to have read his ‘CXX Histoires
concernans le faite guerre.’ The evidence comes to us from a source which
discredits the virulent rhetoric of Buchanan’s ally.
It was the cue of Mary’s foes to represent Bothwell as an ungainly,
stupid, cowardly, vicious monster: because, he being such a man, what a
wretch must the Queen be who could love him! ‘Which love, whoever saw not,
and yet hath seen him, will perhaps think it incredible.... But yet here
there want no causes, for there was in them both a likeness, if not of
beauty or outward things, nor of virtues, yet of most extream vices.’[9]
Buchanan had often celebrated, down to December 1566, Mary’s extreme
virtues. To be sure his poem, recited shortly before Darnley’s death, may
have been written almost as early as James’s birth, in readiness for the
feast at his baptism, and before Mary’s intrigue with Bothwell could have
begun. In any case, to prove Bothwell’s cowardice, some ally of Buchanan’s
cites his behaviour at Carberry Hill, where he wishes us to believe that
Bothwell showed the white feather of Mary’s ‘pretty venereous pidgeon.’ As
a witness, he cites du Croc, the French Ambassador, an aged and sagacious
man. To du Croc he has appealed, to du Croc he shall go. That Ambassador
writes: ‘He’ (Bothwell) ‘told me that there must be no more parley, for he
saw that the enemy was approaching, and had already crossed the burn. He
said that, if I wished to resemble the man who tried to arrange a treaty
between the forces of Scipio and Hannibal, their armies being ready to
join in battle, like the two now before us, and who failed, and, wishing
to remain neutral, took a point of vantage, and beheld the best sport that
ever he saw in his life, why then I should act like that man, and would
greatly enjoy the spectacle of a good fight.’ Bothwell’s memory was
inaccurate, or du Croc has misreported his anecdote, but he was certainly
both cool and classical on an exciting occasion.
Du Croc declined the invitation; he was not present when Bothwell refused
to fight a champion of the Lords, but he goes on: ‘I am obliged to say
that I saw a great leader, speaking with great confidence, and leading his
forces boldly, gaily, and skilfully.... I admired him, for he saw that his
foes were resolute, he could not be sure of the loyalty of half of his own
men, and yet he was quite unmoved.’[10] Bothwell, then, was neither dolt,
lout, nor coward, as Buchanan’s ally wishes us to believe, for the purpose
of disparaging the taste of a Queen, Buchanan’s pupil, whose praises he
had so often sung.