diplomatists like the two Melvilles; burly Kirkcaldy of Grange, a murderer
of the Cardinal, a spy of England when he was in French service, a secret
agent of Cecil, a brave man and good captain, but accused of forgery, and
by no means ‘the second Wallace of Scotland,’ the frank, manly,
open-hearted Greysteil of historical tradition. Huntly and Argyll make
little mark on the imagination: both astute, both full of promise, both
barren of accomplishment. The Hamiltons have a lofty position, but are
destitute of brains as of scruples; even the Archbishop, most unscrupulous
of all, is no substitute for Cardinal Beaton.
There is a crowd of squires; loyal, gallant Arthur Erskine, Willie
Douglas, who drew Mary forth of prison, the two Standens, English
equerries of Darnley, whose lives are unwritten romances (what one of them
did write is picturesque but untrustworthy), Lennox Lairds, busy Minto,
Provost of Glasgow, and Houstoun, and valiant dubious Thomas Crawford,
called ‘Gauntlets,’ and shifty Drumquhassel; spies like Rokeby, assassins
if need or opportunity arise; copper captains like Captain Cullen; and
most truculent of all, Bothwell’s Lambs, young Tala, who ceased reading
the Bible when he came to Court; and the Black Laird of Ormistoun, he who,
on the day of his hanging, said ‘With God I hope this night to sup.’ Said
he, ‘Of all men on the earth I have been one of the proudest and (_sic_)
high-minded, and most filthy of my body. But specially I have shed
innocent blood of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas therefore,
because the said Michael, having me lying on my back, having a pitchfork
in his hand, might have slain me if he pleased, but did it not, which of
all things grieves me most in conscience.... Within these seven years I
never saw two good men, nor one good deed, but all kind of wickedness; and
yet my God would not suffer me to be lost, and has drawn me from them as
out of Hell ... for the which I thank him, and I am assured that I am one
of his Elect.’ This devotee used to hang about Mary in Carlisle, when she
had fled into England. ‘Not two good men, nor one good deed,’ saw
Ormistoun, in seven long years of riding the Border, and following
Bothwell to Court or Warden’s Raid. Few are the good men, rare are the
good deeds, that meet us in this tragic History. ‘There is none that doeth
good, no, not one.’
But behind the men and the time are the Preachers of Righteousness, grim,
indeed, as their Geneva gowns, not gentle and easily entreated, crying
out on the Murderess, Adulteress, Idolatress, to be led to block or stake,
but yet bold to rebuke Bothwell when he had cowed all the nobles of the
land. The future was with these men, with the smaller barons or lairds,
and with sober burgesses, like the discreet author of the ‘Diurnal of
Occurrents,’ and with honest hinds, like Michael Hunter, whom Ormistoun
slew in cold blood. The social and religious cataclysm withdrew its waves:
a new Creed grew into the hearts of the people: intercourse with England
slowly abated the ruffianism of the Lords: slowly the Law extended to the
Border: swiftly the bonds of feudal duty were broken: but not in Mary’s
time.
One strange feature of the age we must not forget: the universal belief in
sorcery. Mary and Moray (she declares) both believed that Ruthven had
given her a ring of baneful magical properties. Foes and friends alike
alleged that Bothwell had bewitched Mary ‘by unleasom means,’ philtres,
‘sweet waters,’ magic. The preachers, when Mary fled, urged Moray to burn
witches, and the cliffs of St. Andrews flared with the flames wherein they
perished. The Lyon King at Arms, as has been said, died by fire,
apparently for confessed dealings with a wizard, who foretold the events
of the year, and for treasure hunting with the divining rod. A Napier of
Merchistoun did foretell Mary’s escape (according to Nau); this man,
_ayant réputation de grand magicien_, may have been the soothsayer: his
son sought for hidden treasure by divination. Buchanan tells how a dying
gentleman beheld Darnley’s fate in a clairvoyant vision: and how a dim
shapeless thing smote and awoke, successively, four Atholl men in
Edinburgh, on the night of the crime of Kirk o’ Field. Old rhyming
prophecies were circulated and believed. Knox himself was credited with
winning his sixteen-year-old bride by witchcraft, as Bothwell won Mary.
Men listened to his reports of his own ‘premonitions.’
When Huntly, one of the band for Darnley’s murder, died, his death was
strange. He had hunted, and taken three hares and a fox, after dinner he
played football, fell into a fit, and expired, crying ‘never a word save
one, looking up broad with his eyes, and that word was this, “Look, Look,
Look!”’ Unlike the dying murderer of Riccio, Ruthven, he perhaps did not
behold the Angel Choir. His coffers were locked up in a chamber, with
candles burning. Next day a rough fellow, banished by Lochinvar, and
received by Huntly, fell into unconsciousness for twenty-four hours, and
on waking, cried ‘_Cauld, cauld, cauld!_’ John Hamilton, opening one of
the dead Earl’s coffers, fell down with the same exclamation. Men carried
him away, and, returning, found a third man fallen senseless on the
coffer. ‘All wrought as the Earl of Huntly wrought in the death thraw.’
The chamber was haunted by strange sounds: the word went about that the
Earl was rising again. Says Knox’s secretary, Bannatyne, who tells this
tale, ‘I maun praise the Lord my God, and bless his holy name for ever,
when I behold the five that was in the conspiracy, not only of the King’s
[Darnley’s] and the second Regent’s murder, but also of the first Regent’s
murder. Four is past with small provision, to wit, Lethington, Argyll,
Bothwell, and last of all Huntly. I hope in God the fifth [Morton] shall
die more perfectly, and declare his life’s deeds with his own mouth,
making his repentance at the gallows foot.’ Part of his life’s deeds
Morton did declare on his dying day.
In such a mist of dark beliefs and dreads was the world living, beliefs
shared by Queen, preacher, and Earl, scholar, poet, historian, and the
simple secretary of Knox: while the sun shone fair on St. Leonard’s
gardens, and boys like little James Melville were playing tennis and golf.
The scenes in which the wild deeds were done are scarcely recognisable in
modern Scotland. Holyrood is altered by buildings of the Restoration; the
lovely chapel is a ruin, where Mary prayed, and the priests at the altar
were buffeted. The Queen’s chamber is empty, swept and garnished, as is
the little cabinet whereinto came the livid face of Ruthven, clad in
armour, and Darnley, half afraid, and Standen, later to boast, with
different circumstances, that he saved the Queen from the dirk of Patrick
Ballantyne. The blood of Riccio, outside the door of the state chamber, is
washed away: there are only a tourist or two in the long hall where Mary
leaned on Chastelard’s breast in the dance called ‘The Purpose’ or
‘talking dance.’ The tombs of the kings through which Mary stole,
stopping, says Lennox, to threaten Darnley above the new mould of Riccio’s
grave, have long been desecrated.
At Jedburgh we may still see the tall old house, with crow-stepped gables,
and winding stairs, and the little chambers where Mary tried to make so
good an end, and where the wounded Bothwell was tended. In the long
gallery above, Lethington, and Moray, and du Croc must have held anxious
converse, while physicians came and went, proposing uncouth remedies, and
the Confessor flitted through, and the ladies in waiting wept. But least
changed are the hills of the robbers, sweeping slopes of rough pasturage,
broken by marshes, and the foaming burns of October, through which Mary
rode to the wounded Bothwell in Hermitage Castle, now a huge shell of grey
stone, in the pastoral wastes.
Most changed of all is Glasgow, then a pretty village, among trees,
between the burn and the clear water of Clyde. The houses clustered about
the Cathedral, the ruined abodes of the religious, and the Castle where
Lennox and Darnley both lay sick, while Mary abode, it would seem, in the
palace then empty of its Archbishop. We see the little town full of armed
Hamiltons, and their feudal foes, the Stewarts of Lennox, who anxiously
attend her with suspicious glances, as she goes to comfort their young
chief.
In thinking of old Edinburgh, as Mary knew it, our fancy naturally but
erroneously dwells on the narrow wynds of the old town, cabined between
grimy slate-roofed houses of some twelve or fifteen stories in height,
‘piled black and massy steep and high,’ and darkened with centuries of
smoke, squalid, sunless, without a green tree in the near view, so we are
apt to conceive the Edinburgh of Queen Mary. But we do the good town
injustice: we are conceiving the Edinburgh of Queen Mary under the colours
and in the forms of the Edinburgh of Prince Charles and of Robert Burns.
There exists a bird’s-eye view of the city, probably done by an English
hand, in 1544. It looks a bright, red-roofed, sparkling little town, in
contour much resembling St. Andrews. At St. Andrews the cathedral forms,
as it were, the handle of a fan, from which radiate, like the ribs of the
fan, North Street, Market Street, and South Street, with the houses and
lanes between them. At Edinburgh the Castle Rock was the handle of the
fan. Thence diverged two spokes or ribs of streets, High Street and
Cowgate, lined with houses with red-tiled roofs. Quaint wooden galleries
were suspended outside the first floor, in which, not in the ground floor,
the front door usually was, approached by an outer staircase. Quaintness,
irregularity, broken outlines, nooks, odd stone staircases, were
everywhere. The inner stairs or turnpikes were within semicircular
towers, and these, with the tall crow-stepped gables, high-pitched roofs,
and dormer windows, made up picturesque clumps of buildings, perforated by
wynds. St. Giles’s Church occupied, of course, its present site, and the
‘ports,’ or gates which closed the High Street towards Holyrood, had
turrets for supporters. Through the gate, the Nether Bow, the Court suburb
of the Canongate ran down to Holyrood, with gardens, and groves, and green
fields behind the houses. The towers of the beautiful Abbey of Holyrood,
partly burned by the English in 1544, ended the line of buildings from the
Castle eastward.
[Illustration:
1. Kirk o’ Field Church
2. Holyrood
3. Canongate
4. Netherbow Port
5. Netherbow
6. St. Giles’s Church
7. Cowgate
8. Wynd leading to Kirk o’ Field
9. Castle
10. Calton Hill]
Far to the left of the town, on a wooded height, the highest and central
point of the landscape, we mark a tall rectangular church tower, crowned
with a crow-stepped high-pitched roof. It is the church of Kirk o’ Field,
soon to be so famous as the scene of Darnley’s death.
The blocks of buildings are intersected, we said, by narrow wynds, not yet
black, though, from Dunbar’s poem, we know that Edinburgh was
conspicuously dirty and insanitary. But the narrow, compact, bright little
town running down the spine of rock from the Castle to Holyrood, was on
every side surrounded by green fields, and there were still trout in the
Norloch beneath the base of the Castle cliff, where now the railway runs.
New town, of course, there was none. Most of the town of Mary’s age was
embraced by the ruinous wall, hastily constructed after the defeat and
death of James IV. Such was the city: of the houses we may gain an idea
from the fine old building traditionally called John Knox’s house: if we
suppose it neat, clean, its roof scarlet, its walls not grimy with
centuries of reek. The houses stood among green gardens, hedges, and
trees, and on the grassy hills between the city and the sea, and to the
east and west, were _châteaux_ and peel-towers of lords and lairds.
Such was Queen Mary’s Edinburgh: long, narrow, and mightily unlike the
picturesque but stony, and begrimed, and smoke-hidden capital of
to-day.[14]
‘There were fertile soil, pleasant meadows, woods, lakes, and burns, all
around,’ where now is nothing but stone, noisy pavement, and slate. The
monasteries of the Franciscans and Dominicans lay on either side of St.
Mary in the Fields, or Kirk of Field, with its college quadrangle and wide
gardens.[15] But, in Mary’s day, the monastic buildings and several
churches lay in ruins, owing to the recent reform of the Christian
religion, and to English invaders.
The palaces of the Cowgate and of the Canongate were the homes of the
nobles; the wynds were crowded with burgesses, tradesmen, prentices, and
the throng of artisans. These were less godly than the burgesses, were a
fickle and fiery mob, ready to run for spears, or use their tools to
defend their May-day sport of Robin Hood against the preachers and the
Bible-loving middle classes. Brawls were common, the artisans besieging
the magistrates in the Tolbooth, or the rival followings of two lairds or
lords coming to pistol-shots and sword-strokes on the causeway, while
burgesses handed spears to their friends from the windows. Among popular
pleasures were the stake, at which witches and murderesses of masters or
husbands were burned; and the pillory, where every one might throw what
came handy at a Catholic priest, and the pits in the Norloch where
fornicators were ducked. The town gates were adorned with spikes, on which
were impaled the heads of sinners against the Law.
Mary rode through a land of new-made ruins, black with fire, not yet green
with ivy. On every side, wherever monks had lived, and laboured, and dealt
alms, and written manuscripts, desolation met Mary’s eyes. The altars were
desecrated, the illumined manuscripts were burned, the religious skulked
in lay dress, or had fled to France, or stood under the showers of
missiles on the pillory. It was a land of fallen fanes, and of stubborn
blind keeps with scarce a window, that she passed through, with horse and
litter, lace, and gold, and velvet, and troops of gallants and girls. In
the black tall Tolbooth lurked the engines of torture, that were to strain
or crush the limbs of Bothwell’s Lambs. Often must Mary have seen, on the
skyline, the gallows tree, and the fruits which that tree bore, and the
flocking ravens; one of that company followed Darnley and her from
Glasgow, and perched ominous on the roof of Kirk o’ Field, croaking loudly
on the day of the murder. So writes Nau, Mary’s secretary, informed,
probably, by one of her attendants.
III
_THE CHARACTERS BEFORE RICCIO’S MURDER_
After sketching the characters and scenes of the tragedy, we must show how
destiny interwove the life-threads of Bothwell and Mary. They were fated
to come together. She was a woman looking for a master, he was a masterful
and, in the old sense of the word, a ‘masterless’ man, seeking what he
might devour. In the phrase of Aristotle, ‘Nature _wishes_’ to produce
this or that result. It almost seems as if Nature had long ‘wished’ to
throw a Scottish Queen into the hands of a Hepburn. The Hepburns were not
of ancient _noblesse_. From their first appearance in Scottish history
they are seen to be prone to piratical adventure, and to courting widowed
queens. The unhappy Jane Beaufort, widow of James I., and of the Black
Knight of Lome, died in the stronghold of a Hepburn freebooter. A Hepburn
was reputed to be the lover of Mary of Gueldres, the beautiful and not
inconsolable widow of James II. This Hepburn, had he succeeded in securing
the person of Mary’s son, the boy James III., might have played Bothwell’s
part. The name rose to power and rank on the ruin of the murdered James
III., and of Ramsay, his favourite, who had worn, but forfeited to the
Hepburn of the day, the title of Bothwell. The name was strong in the most
lawless dales of the Border, chiefly in Liddesdale, where the clans
alternately wore the cross of St. Andrew and of St. George, and
impartially plundered both countries. The more profitable Hepburn estates,
however, were in the richer bounds of Lothian.
The attitude and position of James Hepburn, our Bothwell, were, from the
first, unique. He was at once a Protestant, ‘the stoutest and the worst
thought of,’ and also an inveterate enemy of England, a resolute partisan
of Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, the Regent, in her wars against the
Protestant rebels, ‘the Lords of the Congregation.’ From this curious and
illogical position, adopted in his early youth, Bothwell never wandered.
He was to end by making Mary wed him with Protestant rites, while she
assured her confessor that she only did so in the hope of restoring the
Catholic Church! We must briefly trace the early career of Bothwell.
While Darnley was being educated in England, with occasional visits to
France, and while Mary was residing there as the bride of the Dauphin:
while Moray was becoming the leader of the Protestant opposition to Mary
of Guise (‘the Lords of the Congregation’), while Maitland was entering on
his career of diplomacy, Bothwell was active in the field. In 1558, after
Mary of Guise had been deserted by her nobles at Kelso, as her husband
had been at Fala, young Bothwell, being now Lieutenant-General on the
Border, made a raid into England. In the war between Mary of Guise, as
Regent, and the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, Bothwell fought on
her side. A Diary of the Siege of Leith (among the Lennox MSS.) describes
his activity in intercepting and robbing poor peaceful tradesmen. From
another unpublished source we learn that he, among others, condemned the
Earl of Arran (in absence) as the cause of the Protestant rebellion.[16]
On October 5, 1559, Bothwell seized, near Haddington, Cockburn of
Ormiston, who was carrying English gold to the Lords.[17] They, in
reprisal, sacked his castle of Crichton, and nearly caught him. He later
in vain challenged the Earl of Arran (the son of the chief of the
Hamiltons, the Duke of Châtelherault) to single combat. A feud of
far-reaching results now began between Arran and Cockburn on one side, and
Bothwell on the other. When Leith, held for Mary of Guise, in 1560, was
besieged by the Scots and English, Bothwell (whose estates had been sold)
was sent to ask aid from France. He went thither by way of Denmark, and
now, probably, he was more or less legally betrothed to a Norwegian lady,
Anne Throndssön, whom he carried from her home, and presently deserted.
Already, in 1559, he was said to be ‘quietly married or handfasted’ to
Janet Beaton, niece of Cardinal Beaton, and widow of Sir Walter Scott of
Buccleugh, the wizard Lady of Branxholme in Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last
Minstrel.’[18] She was sister of Lady Reres, wife of Forbes of Reres, the
lady said to have aided Bothwell in his amour with Mary. In 1567 one of
the libels issued after Darnley’s murder charged the Lady of Branksome
with helping Bothwell to win Mary’s heart by magic.
Anne Throndssön, later, accused Bothwell of breach of promise of marriage,
given to her and her family ‘by hand and mouth and letters.’ In 1560 the
Lady of Branksome circulated a report that Bothwell had wedded a rich wife
in Denmark: she does not seem to have been jealous.[19] An anonymous
writer represents Bothwell as having three simultaneous wives, probably
Anne, the Branxholme lady, and his actual spouse, Lady Jane Gordon, sister
of Huntly. But the arrangements in the first two cases were probably not
legally valid. There is no doubt that Bothwell, ugly or not, was a great
conqueror of hearts. He may have been _un beau laid_, and he possessed, as
we have said, the qualities, so attractive to many women, of utter
recklessness, of a bullying manner, of great physical strength, and of
a reputation for _bonnes fortunes_. That Bothwell was extravagant and a
gambler is probably true: and, in short, he was, to many women, a most
attractive character. To the virtuous, like Lady Jane Gordon, he would
appear as an agreeable brand to be snatched from the burning.
[Illustration: Le Dueil Blanc
Sketch by Janet 1561.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
Dropping poor Anne Throndssön in the Netherlands, on his way from Denmark,
Bothwell, in 1560, went to the French Court, where he was made Gentilhomme
de la Chambre, but could not procure aid for Mary of Guise. He acquired
more French polish, and (so his enemies and his valet, Paris, said) he
learned certain infamous vices. Mary Stuart became a widow, and Dowager of
France, in December 1560: it is not certain whether or not Bothwell was in
her train at Joinville in April 1561.[20] After Mary’s return to Scotland
the old feud between Arran and Bothwell broke out afresh. Bothwell and
d’Elbœuf paid a noisy visit to the handsome daughter of a burgess, said to
be Arran’s mistress. There were brawls, and presently Bothwell attacked
Cockburn of Ormiston, the man he had robbed, Arran’s ally, and carried off
his son to Crichton Castle. This occurred in March, 1562, and, as early as
February 21, Randolph, the English minister at Holyrood, had ‘marked
something strange’ in Arran.[21] His feeble ambitious mind was already
tottering, which casts doubt on what followed. On March 25, Bothwell
visited Knox (whose ancestors had been retainers of the House of Hepburn),
and invited the Reformer to reconcile him with Arran. The feud, Bothwell
said, was expensive: he dared not move without a company of armed men.
Knox contrived a meeting at the Hamilton house near the fatal Kirk o’
Field. The enemies were reconciled, and next day went together to ‘the
Sermon,’ a spiritual privilege of which Bothwell was only too neglectful.
Knox had done a good stroke for the Anti-Marian Protestant party, of whose
left wing Arran was the leader.[22]
But alas for Knox’s hopes! Only three days after the sermon, on March 29,
Arran (who had been wont to confide his love-sorrows to Knox) came to the
Reformer with a strange tale. Bothwell had opened to him, in the effusions
of their new friendship, his design to seize Mary, and put her in Arran’s
keeping, in Dumbarton Castle. He would slay Mar (that is Lord James
Stuart, later Moray) and Lethington, whom he detested, ‘and he and I would
rule all,’ said Arran, who knew very well what sort of share he would be
permitted to enjoy in the dual control. I have very little doubt that the
impoverished, more or less disgraced Bothwell did make this proposal. He
was safe in doing so. If Arran accused him, Arran would, first, be
incarcerated, till he proved his charge (which he could not do), or,
secondly, Bothwell would appeal to Trial by Combat, for which he knew
that Arran had no taste. In his opinion, Bothwell merely meant to entrap
him, and his idea was to write to Mary and her brother. Whether Knox
already perceived that Arran was insane, or not, he gave him what was
perhaps the best advice--to be silent. Arran’s position was perilous. If
the plot came to be known, if Bothwell confessed all, then he would be
guilty of concealing his foreknowledge of it; like Morton in the case of
Darnley’s murder.
Arran did not listen to Knox’s counsel. He wrote to Mary and Mar, partly
implicating his own father; he then fled from his father’s castle of
Keneil, hurried to Fife, and was brought by Mar (Moray) to Mary at
Falkland, whither Bothwell also came, perhaps warned by Knox, who had a
family feudal attachment to the Hepburns. Arran now was, or affected to
be, distraught. He persisted, however, in his charge against Bothwell, who
was warded in Edinburgh Castle, while Arran’s father was deprived of
Dumbarton Castle.
The truth of Arran’s charge is uncertain. In any case, ‘the Queen both
honestly and stoutly behaves herself,’ Randolph wrote. While Bothwell lay,
a prisoner on suspicion, in Edinburgh Castle, Mary was come to a crisis in
her reign. Her political position, hitherto, may be stated in broad
outline. The strains of European tendencies, political and theological,
were dragging Scotland in opposite directions. Was the country to remain
Protestant, and in alliance with England, or was it to return to the
ancient league with France, and to the Church of Rome?