her brother Moray and Maitland of Lethington, were fairly well agreed as
to general policy. With all her affection for her Church and her French
kinsmen, Mary could not hope, at present, for much more than a certain
measure of toleration for Catholics. As to the choice of the French or
English alliance, her ambitions appeared to see their best hope in an
understanding with Elizabeth, under which Mary and her issue should be
recognised as heirs of the English throne. So far the ruling politicians,
Moray, Lethington, and Morton, were sufficiently in accord with their
Queen. A restoration of the Church they would not endure. Not only their
theological tenets (sincerely held by Moray) opposed any such restoration,
but their hold of Church property was what they would not abandon save
with life. The Queen and her chief advisers, therefore, for years enjoyed
a _modus vivendi_: a pacific kind of compromise. Mary was so far from
being ardently Catholic in politics, that, while Bothwell was confined in
Edinburgh Castle, she accompanied Moray to the North, and overthrew her
chief Catholic supporter, Huntly, ‘the Cock of the North,’ and all but the
king of the Northern Catholics. Before she set foot in Scotland, he had
offered to restore her by force, and with her, the Church. She preferred
the alliance of her brother, of Lethington, and of _les politiques_, the
moderate Protestants. Huntly died in battle against his Queen; his family,
for the hour, was ruined; but Huntly’s son and successor in the title
represented the discontents and ambitions of the warlike North, as
Bothwell represented those of the warlike Borderers. Similarity of
fortunes and of desires soon united these two ruined and reckless men,
Huntly and Bothwell, in a league equally dangerous to Moray, to amity with
England, and, finally, to Mary herself.
To restore his family to land and power, Huntly was ready to sacrifice not
only faith and honour, but natural affection. Twice he was to sell his
sister, Lady Jane, once when he married her to Bothwell against her will:
once when, Bothwell having won her love, Huntly compelled or induced her
to divorce him. But these things lay in the future. For the moment, the
autumn of 1562, the Huntlys were ruined, and Bothwell (August 28, 1562),
in the confusion, escaped from prison in Edinburgh Castle. ‘Some whispered
that he got easy passage by the gates,’ says Knox. ‘One thing,’ he adds,
‘is certain, to wit, the Queen was little offended at his escaping.’[23]
He was, at least, her mother’s faithful servant.
We begin to see that the Protestant party henceforward suspected the Queen
of regarding Bothwell as, to Mary, a useful man in case of trouble.
Bothwell first fled to Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale. As
Lieutenant-General on the Border he commanded the reckless broken clans,
the ‘Lambs,’ his own Hepburns, Hays, Ormistouns of Ormistoun, and others
who aided him in his most desperate enterprises; while, as Admiral, he had
the dare-devils of the sea to back him.
Lord James now became Earl of Moray, and all-powerful; and Bothwell,
flying to France, was storm-stayed at Holy Island, and held prisoner by
Elizabeth. His kinsfolk made interest for him with Mary, and, on February
5, 1564, she begged Elizabeth to allow him to go abroad. In England,
Bothwell is said to have behaved with unlooked-for propriety. ‘He is very
wise, and not the man he was reported to be,’ that is, not ‘rash,
glorious, and hazardous,’ Sir Harry Percy wrote to Cecil. ‘His behaviour
has been courteous and honourable, keeping his promise.’ Sir John Forster
corroborated this evidence. Bothwell, then, was not loutish, but, when he
pleased, could act like a gentleman. He sailed to France, and says himself
that he became Captain of the Scottish Guards, a post which Arran had once
held. In France he is said to have accused Mary of incestuous relations
with her uncle, the Cardinal.
During Bothwell’s residence in England, and in France, the equipoise of
Mary’s political position had been disturbed. She had held her ground,
against the extreme Protestants, who clamoured for the death of all
idolaters, by her alliance with _les politiques_, led by Moray and
Lethington. Their ambition, like hers, was to see the crowns of England
and Scotland united in her, or in her issue. Therefore they maintained a
perilous amity with England, and with Elizabeth, while plans for a meeting
of the Queens, and for the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth’s heir, were
being negotiated. But this caused ceaseless fretfulness to Elizabeth, who
believed, perhaps correctly, that to name her successor was to seal her
death-warrant. The Catholics of England would have hurried her to the
grave, she feared, that they might welcome Mary. In the same way, no
conceivable marriage for Mary could be welcome to Elizabeth, who hated the
very name of wedlock. Yet, while Bothwell was abroad, and while
negotiations lasted, there was a kind of repose, despite the anxieties of
the godly and their outrages on Catholics. Mary endured much and endured
with some patience. One chronic trouble was at rest. The feud between the
Hamiltons, the nearest heirs of the crown, and the rival claimants, the
Lennox Stewarts, was quiescent.
The interval of peace soon ended. Lennox, the head of the House hateful to
the Hamiltons, was, at the end of 1564, allowed to return to Scotland, and
was reinstated in the lands which his treason had forfeited long ago. In
the early spring of 1565, Lennox’s son, Darnley, followed his father to
the North, was seen and admired by Mary, and the peace of Scotland was
shattered. As a Catholic by education, though really of no creed in
particular, Darnley excited the terrors of the godly. His marriage with
Mary meant, to Moray, loss of power; to Lethington, a fresh policy; to the
Hamiltons, the ruin of their hopes of royalty, while, by most men, Darnley
soon came to be personally detested.
Before it was certain that Mary would marry Darnley, but while the friends
and foes of the match were banding into parties, early in March 1565,
Bothwell returned unbidden to Scotland, and lurked in his Border fastness.
Knox’s continuator says that Moray told Mary that either he or Bothwell
must leave the country. Mary replied that, considering Bothwell’s past
services, ‘she could not hate him,’ neither could she do anything
prejudicial to Moray.[24] ‘A day of law’ was set for Bothwell, for May 2,
but, as Moray gathered an overpowering armed force, he sent in a protest,
by his comparatively respectable friend, Hepburn of Riccartoun, and went
abroad. Mary, according to Randolph, had said that she ‘altogether
misliked his home-coming without a licence,’ but Bedford feared that she
secretly abetted him. He was condemned in absence, but Mary was thought to
have prevented the process of outlawry. Dr. Hay Fleming, however, cites
Pitcairn’s ‘Criminal Trials,’ i. 462,[25] as proof that Bothwell actually
was outlawed, or put to the horn. Knox’s continuator, however, says that
Bothwell ‘was not put to the horn, for the Queen continually bore a great
favour to him, and kept him to be a soldier.’[26] The Protestants ever
feared that Mary would ‘shake Bothwell out of her pocket,’ against
them.[27]
Presently, her temper outworn by the perpetual thwartings which checked
her every movement, and regardless of the opposition of Moray, of the
Hamiltons, of Argyll, and of the whole Protestant community, Mary wedded
Darnley (July 29, 1565). Her adversaries assembled in arms, secretly
encouraged by Elizabeth, and what Kirkcaldy of Grange had prophesied
occurred: Mary ‘shook Bothwell out of her pocket’ at her opponents. In
July, she sent Hepburn of Riccartoun to summon him back from France.
Riccartoun was captured by the English, but Bothwell, after a narrow
escape, presented himself before Mary on September 20. By October, Moray,
the Hamiltons, and Argyll were driven into England or rendered harmless.
Randolph now reported that Bothwell and Atholl were all-powerful. The
result was ill feeling between Darnley and Bothwell. Darnley wished his
father, Lennox, to govern on the Border, but Mary gave the post to
Bothwell.[28] Her estrangement from Darnley had already begun. Jealousy of
Mary’s new secretary, Riccio, was added.
The relations between Darnley, Bothwell, Mary, and Riccio, between the
crushing of Moray’s revolt, in October 1565, and the murder of the
Italian Secretary, in March 1566, are still obscure. Was Riccio Mary’s
lover? What were the exact causes of the estrangement from Darnley, which
was later used as the spring to discharge on Riccio, and on Mary, the
wrath of the discontented nobles and Puritans? The Lennox Papers inform
us, as to Mary and Darnley, that ‘their love never decayed till their
return from Dumfries,’ whence they had pursued Moray into England.
Mary had come back to Edinburgh from Dumfries by October 18, 1565. Riccio
was already, indeed by September 22, complained of as a foreign upstart,
but not as a lover of Mary, by the rebel Lords.[29] The Lennox Papers
attribute the estrangement of Mary and Darnley to her pardoning without
the consent of the King, her husband, ‘sundry rebels,’ namely the
Hamiltons. The pardon implied humiliation and five years of exile. It was
granted about December 3.[30] The measure was deeply distasteful to
Darnley and Lennox, who had long been at mortal feud, over the heirship to
the crown, with the Lennox Stewarts. The pardon is attributed to the
influence of ‘Wicked David,’ Riccio. But to pardon perpetually was the
function of a Scottish prince. Soon we find Darnley intriguing for the
pardon of Moray, Ruthven, and others, who were not Hamiltons. Next, Lennox
complains of Mary for ‘using the said David more like a lover than a
husband, forsaking her husband’s bed and board very often.’ But this was
not before November. The ‘Book of Articles’ put in against Mary by her
accusers is often based on Lennox’s papers. It says ‘she suddenly altered
the same’ (her ‘vehement love’ of Darnley) ‘about November, for she
removed and secluded him from the counsel and knowledge of all Council
affairs.’[31] The ‘Book of Articles,’ like Lennox’s own papers, omits
every reference to Riccio that can be avoided. The ‘Book of Articles,’
indeed, never hints at his existence. The reason is obvious: Darnley had
not shone in the Riccio affair. Moreover the Lennox party could not accuse
Mary of a guilty amour before mid November, 1565, for James VI. was born
on June 19, 1566. It would not do to discredit his legitimacy. But, as
early as September 1565, Bedford had written to Cecil that ‘of the
countenance which Mary gave to David he would not write, for the honour
due to the person of a Queen.’[32] Thus, a bride of six weeks, Mary was
reported to be already a wanton! Moreover, on October 13, 1565, Randolph
wrote from Edinburgh that Mary’s anger against Moray (who had really
enraged her by rising to prevent her from marrying Darnley) came from some
dishonourable secret in Moray’s keeping, ‘not to be named for reverence
sake.’ He ‘has a thing more strange’ even than the fact that Mary ‘places
Bothwell in honour above every subject that she hath.’ As the ‘thing’ is
_not_ a nascent passion for Bothwell, it may be an amour with Riccio.[33]
Indeed, on October 18, 1565, he will not speak of the cause of mischief,
but hints at ‘a stranger and a varlet,’ Riccio.[34] Randolph and the
English diplomatists were then infuriated against Mary, who had expelled
their allies, Moray and the rest, discredited Elizabeth, their
paymistress, and won over her a diplomatic victory. Consequently this talk
of her early amour with Riccio, an ugly Milanese musician, need not be
credited. For their own reasons, the Lennox faction dared not assert so
early a scandal.
They, however, insisted that Mary, in November, ‘removed and secluded’
Darnley from her Council. To prevent his knowing what letters were
written, when he signed them with her, she had his name printed on an iron
stamp, ‘and used the same _in all things_,’ in place of his subscription.
This stamp was employed in affixing his signature to the ‘remission’ to
the Hamiltons.[35]
In fact, Darnley’s ambitions were royal, but he had an objection to the
business which kings are well paid for transacting. Knox’s continuator
makes him pass ‘his time in hunting and hawking, and such other pleasures
as were agreeable to his appetite, having in his company gentlemen willing
to satisfy his will and affections.’ He had the two Anthony Standens, wild
young English Catholics. While Darnley hunted and hawked, Lennox ‘lies at
Glasgow’ (where he had a castle near the Cathedral), and ‘takes, I hear,
what he likes from all men,’ says Randolph.[36] He writes (November 6)
that Mary ‘above all things desires her husband to be called King.’[37]
Yet it is hinted that she is in love with Riccio! On the same date ‘oaths
and bands are taken of all that ... acknowledge Darnley king, and liberty
to live as they list in religion.’ On November 19, Mary was suffering from
‘her old disease that commonly takes her this time of year in her side.’
It was a chronic malady: we read of it in the Casket Letters. From
November 14 to December 1, she was ill, but Darnley hunted and hawked in
Fife, from Falkland probably, and was not expected to return till December
4.[38] Lennox was being accused of ‘extortions’ at Glasgow, complained of
‘to the Council.’ Châtelherault was ‘like to speed well enough in his suit
to be restored,’ after his share in Moray’s rebellion.
Darnley was better engaged, perhaps, in Fife, than in advocating his needy
and extortionate father before the Council, or in opposing the limited
pardon to old Châtelherault. In such circumstances, Darnley was often
absent, either for pleasure, or because his father was not allowed to
despoil the West; while the Hamilton chief, the heir presumptive of the
throne, was treated as a repentant rebel, rather than as a feudal enemy.
He was an exile, and lost his ‘moveables’ and all his castles, so he told
Elizabeth.[39] During, or after, these absences of Darnley, that ‘iron
stamp,’ of which Buchanan complains, was made and used.
The Young Fool had brought this on himself. Mary already, according to
Randolph, had been heard to say that she wished Lennox had never entered
Scotland ‘in her days.’ Lennox, the father-in-law of the Queen, was really
a competitor for the crown. If Mary had no issue, he and Darnley desired
the crown to be entailed on them, passing over the rightful heirs, the
House of Hamilton. A father and son, with such preoccupations, could not
safely be allowed to exercise power. The father would have lived on
robbery, the son would have shielded him. Yet, so occupied was Darnley
with distant field sports, that, says Buchanan, he took the affair of the
iron stamp easily.[40] Next comes a terrible grievance. Darnley was driven
out, in the depth of winter, to Peebles. There was so much snow, the roads
were so choked, the country so bare, that Darnley might conceivably have
been reduced to ‘halesome parritch.’ Luckily the Bishop of Orkney, the
jovial scoundrel, ‘Bishop Turpy,’ who married Mary to Bothwell, and then
denounced her to Elizabeth, had brought wine and delicacies. This is
Buchanan’s tale. A letter from Lennox to Darnley, of December 20, 1565,
represents the father as anxious to wait on ‘Your Majesty’ at Peebles,
but scarcely expecting him in such stormy weather. Darnley, doubtless,
really went for the sake of the deer: which, in Scotland, were pursued at
that season. He had been making exaggerated show of Catholicism, at matins
on Christmas Eve, while Mary sat up playing cards.[41] Presently he was to
be the ally of the extreme Protestants, the expelled rebels. Moray was
said not to have two hundred crowns in the world, and was ready for
anything, in his English retreat. Randolph (Dec. 25) reported ‘private
disorders’ between Darnley and Mary, ‘but these may be but _amantium
iræ_,’ lovers’ quarrels.[42] Yet, two months before he had hinted broadly
that Riccio was the object of Mary’s passion.
On this important point of Mary’s guilt with Riccio, we have no
affirmative evidence, save Darnley’s word, when he was most anxious to
destroy the Italian for political reasons. Randolph, who, as we have seen,
had apparently turned his back on his old slanders, now accepted, or
feigned to accept, Darnley’s anecdotes of his discoveries.
It is strange that Mary at the end of 1565, and the beginning of 1566,
seems to have had no idea of the perils of her position. On January 31,
1566, she wrote ‘to the most holy lord, the Lord Pope Pius V.,’ saying:
‘Already some of our enemies are in exile, and some of them are in our
hands, but their fury, and the great necessity in which they are placed,
urge them on to attempt extreme measures.’[43] But, ungallant as the
criticism may seem, I fear that this was only a begging letter _in
excelsis_, and that Mary wanted the papal ducats, without entertaining any
great hope or intention of aiding the papal cause, or any real
apprehension of ‘extreme measures’ on the side of her rebels. Her
intention was to forfeit and ruin Moray and his allies, in the Parliament
of the coming March. She also wished to do something ‘tending to’ the
restoration of the Church, by reintroducing the spiritual lords. But that
she actually joined the Catholic League, as she was certainly requested to
do, seems most improbable.[44] Having arranged a marriage between Bothwell
and Huntly’s sister, Lady Jane Gordon, she probably relied on the united
strength of the two nobles in the North and the South. But this was a
frail reed to lean upon. Mary’s position, though she does not seem to have
realised it, was desperate. She had incurred the feud of the Lennox
Stewarts, Lennox and Darnley, by her neglect of both, and by Darnley’s
jealousy of Riccio. The chiefs of the Hamiltons, who could always be
trusted to counterbalance the Lennox faction, were in exile. Moray was
desperate. Lethington was secretly estranged. The Protestants were at
once angry and terrified: ready for extremes. Finally, Morton was
threatened with loss of the seals, and almost all the nobles loathed the
power of the low-born foreign favourite, Riccio.
Even now the exact nature of the intrigues which culminated in Riccio’s
murder are obscure. We cannot entirely trust the well-known ‘Relation’
which, after the murder, on April 2, Morton and Ruthven sent to Cecil. He
was given leave to amend it, and it is, at best, a partisan report. Its
object was to throw the blame on Darnley, who had deserted the
conspirators, and betrayed them. According to Ruthven, it was on February
10 that Darnley sent to him George Douglas, a notorious assassin, akin
both to Darnley and Morton. Darnley, it is averred, had proof of Mary’s
guilt with Riccio, and desired to disgrace Mary by slaying Riccio in her
presence. The negotiation, then, began with Darnley, on February 10.[45]
But on February 5 Randolph had written to Cecil that Mary ‘hath said
openly that she will have mass free for all men that will hear it,’ and
that Darnley, Lennox, and Atholl daily resort to it. ‘The Protestants are
in great fear and doubt what shall become of them. The wisest so much
dislike this state and government, that they design nothing more than the
return of the Lords, either to be put into their own rooms, or once again
to put all in hazard.’[46] ‘The wisest’ is a phrase apt to mean
Lethington. Now, on February 9, before Darnley’s motion to Ruthven,
Lethington wrote to Cecil: ‘Mary! I see no certain way unless we chop at
the very root; you know where it lieth.’[47] When Mary, later, was a
prisoner in England, Knox, writing to Cecil, used this very phrase, ‘If ye
strike not at the root, the branches that appear to be broken will bud
again’ (Jan. 2, 1570). When Lethington meant to ‘chop at the very root,’
on February 9, 1566, he undoubtedly intended the death of Riccio, if not
of Mary.
In four days (February 13) Randolph informed Leicester of Darnley’s
jealousy, and adds, ‘I know that there are practices in hand, contrived
between the father and son’ (Lennox and Darnley), ‘to come by the crown
against her will.’ ‘The crown’ may only mean ‘the Crown Matrimonial,’
which would, apparently, give Darnley regal power for his lifetime. ‘I
know that, if that take effect which is intended, David, with the consent
of the King, shall have his throat cut within these ten days. Many things
grievouser and worse than these are brought to my ears: yea, of things
intended against her own person....’[48]
The conspiracy seems to have been political and theological in its
beginnings. Mary was certainly making more open show of Catholicism: very
possibly to impress the French envoys who had come to congratulate her on
her marriage, and to strengthen her claim on the Pope for money. But
Lennox and Darnley were also parading Catholic devoutness: they had no
quarrel with Mary on this head. The Protestants, however, took alarm.
Darnley was, perhaps, induced to believe in Mary’s misconduct with Riccio
after ‘the wisest,’ and Lethington, had decided ‘to chop at the very
root.’ Ruthven and Morton then won Darnley’s aid: he consented to secure
Protestantism, and, by a formal band, to restore Moray and the exiles:
who, in turn, recognised him as their sovereign. Randolph, banished by
Mary for aiding her rebels, conspired with Bedford at Berwick, and sent
copies to Cecil of the ‘bands’ between Darnley and the nobles (March
6).[49]
Darnley himself, said Randolph, was determined to be present at Riccio’s
slaying. Moray was to arrive in Edinburgh immediately after the deed.
Lethington, Argyll, Morton, Boyd, and Ruthven were privy to the murder,
also Moray, Rothes, Kirkcaldy, in England, with Randolph and Bedford. It
is probable that others besides Riccio were threatened. There is a ‘Band
of Assurance for the Murder.’[50] Darnley says that he has enlisted
‘lords, barons, freeholders, gentlemen, merchants, and craftsmen to assist
us in this enterprise, which cannot be finished without great hazard. And
because it may chance that there be certain great personages present, who
may make them to withstand our enterprise, wherethrough certain of them
may be slain,’ Darnley guarantees his allies against the blood feud of the
‘great persons.’ These, doubtless, are Bothwell, Atholl, and Huntly. The
deed ‘may chance to be done in presence of the Queen’s Majesty, or within
her palace of Holyrood House.’ The band is dated March 1, in other texts,
March 5. The indications point to a design of killing Mary’s nobles, while
she, in her condition, might die of the shock. She was to be morally
disgraced. So unscrupulous were Mary’s foes that Cecil told de Foix, the
French Ambassador in London, how Riccio had been slain in Mary’s arms,
_reginam nefario stupro polluens_.[51] Cecil well knew that this was a
lie: and it is natural to disbelieve every statement of a convicted liar
and traitor like Darnley.
Just before the explosion of the anti-Riccio conspiracy, Bothwell _se
rangea_. Mary herself made a match for him (the contract is of February 9,
1566) with Lady Jane Gordon, a Catholic, a sister of Huntly, and a
daughter of that Huntly who fell at Corrichie burn. The lady was only in
her twentieth year. The parties being akin, a dispensation was necessary,
and was granted by the Pope, and issued by the Archbishop of St.
Andrews.[52] The marriage took place in the Protestant Kirk of the
Canongate, though the bride was a Catholic, and Mary gave the wedding
dress (February 24). The honeymoon was interrupted, on March 9, by the
murder of Riccio.