before they broke into Mary’s room and slew Riccio. While Bothwell,
Huntly, and Atholl were at large, the forces of the Queen’s party had
powerful friends in the North and on the Border. When the tumult of the
murderers was heard, these nobles tried to fight their way to Mary’s
assistance, but were overpowered by numbers, and compelled to seek their
apartments. An attempt was made to reconcile them to the situation, but
they escaped under cloud of night. In her letter to the French Court (May
1567) excusing her marriage with Bothwell, Mary speaks of his ‘dexterity’
in escaping, ‘and how suddenly by his prudence not only were we delivered
out of prison,’ after Riccio’s death, ‘but also that whole company of
conspirators dissolved....’ ‘We could never forget it,’ Mary adds, and
Bothwell’s favour had a natural and legitimate basis in the gratitude of
the Queen. Very soon after the outrage she had secretly communicated with
Bothwell and Huntly, ‘who, taking no regard to hazard their lives,’
arranged a plan for her flight by means of ropes let down from the
windows.[53] Mary preferred the passage through the basement into the
royal tombs, and, by aid of Arthur Erskine and Stewart of Traquair, she
made her way to Dunbar. Here Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell rallied to her
standard: Knox fled from Edinburgh, Morton and Ruthven with their allies
found refuge in England: the lately exiled Lords were allowed to remain in
Scotland: Darnley betrayed his accomplices, they communicated to Mary
their treaties with him, and the Queen was left to reconcile Moray and
Argyll to Huntly, Bothwell, and Atholl.
IV
_BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE_
Mary’s task was ‘to quieten the country,’ a task perhaps impossible. Her
defenders might probably make a better case for her conduct and prudence,
at this time, than they have usually presented. Her policy was, if
possible, to return to the state of balance which existed before her
marriage. She must allay the Protestants’ anxieties, and lean on their
trusted Moray and on the wisdom of Lethington. But gratitude for the
highest services compelled her to employ Huntly and Bothwell, who equally
detested Lethington and Moray. Darnley was an impossible and disturbing
factor in the problem. He had, publicly, on March 20, and privately,
declared his innocence, which we find him still protesting in the Casket
Letters. He had informed against his associates, and insisted on dragging
into the tale of conspirators, Lethington, who had retired to Atholl.
Moreover Mary must have despised and hated the wretch. Perhaps her hatred
had already found expression.
The Lennox MSS. aver that Darnley secured Mary’s escape to Dunbar ‘with
great hazard and danger of his life.’ Claude Nau reports, on the other
hand, that he fled at full speed, brutally taunting Mary, who, in her
condition, could not keep the pace with him. Nau tells us that, as the
pair escaped out of Holyrood, Darnley uttered remorseful words over
Riccio’s new-made grave. The Lennox MSS. aver that Mary, seeing the grave,
said ‘it should go very hard with her but a fatter than Riccio should lie
anear him ere one twelvemonth was at an end.’ In Edinburgh, on the return
from Dunbar, Lennox accuses Mary of threatening to take revenge with her
own hands. ‘That innocent lamb’ (Darnley) ‘had but an unquiet life’
(Lennox MSS.).
Once more, Mary had to meet, on many sides, the demand for the pardon of
the Lords who had just insulted and injured her by the murder of her
servant. On April 2, from Berwick, Morton and Ruthven told Throckmorton
that they were in trouble ‘for the relief of our brethren and the
religion,’ and expected ‘to be relieved by the help of our brethren, which
we hope in God shall be shortly.’[54] Moray was eager for their
restoration, which must be fatal to their betrayer, Darnley. On the other
side, Bothwell and Darnley, we shall see, were presently intriguing for
the ruin of Moray, and of Lethington, who, still unpardoned, dared not
take to the seas lest Bothwell should intercept him.[55] Bothwell and
Darnley had been on ill terms in April, according to Drury.[56] But
common hatreds soon drew them together, as is to be shown.
Randolph’s desire was ‘to have my Lord of Moray again in Court’ (April 4),
and to Court Moray came.
Out of policy or affection, Mary certainly did protect and befriend Moray,
despite her alleged nascent passion for his enemy, Bothwell. By April 25,
Moray with Argyll and Glencairn had been received by Mary, who had
forbidden Darnley to meet them on their progress.[57] With a prudence
which cannot be called unreasonable, Mary tried to keep the nobles apart
from her husband. She suspected an intrigue whenever he conversed with
them, and she had abundant cause of suspicion. She herself had taken
refuge in the Castle, awaiting the birth of her child.
Mary and Moray now wished to pardon Lord Boyd, with whom Darnley had a
private quarrel, and whom he accused of being a party to Riccio’s
murder.[58] On May 13, Randolph tells Cecil that ‘Moray and Argyll have
such misliking of their King (Darnley) as never was more of man.’[59]
Moray, at this date, was most anxious for the recall of Morton, who (May
24) reports, as news from Scotland, that Darnley ‘is minded to depart to
Flanders,’ or some other place, to complain of Mary’s unkindness.[60]
Darnley was an obstacle to Mary’s efforts at general conciliation, apart
from the horror of the man which she probably entertained. In England
Morton and his gang had orders, never obeyed, to leave the country:
Ruthven had died, beholding a Choir of Angels, on May 16.
At this time, when Mary was within three weeks of her confinement, the
Lennox Papers tell a curious tale, adopted, with a bewildering confusion
of dates, by Buchanan in his ‘Detection.’ Lennox represents Mary as trying
to induce Darnley to make love to the wife of Moray, while ‘Bothwell alone
was all in all.’ This anecdote is told by Lennox himself, on Darnley’s own
authority. The MS. is headed, ‘Some part of the talk between the late King
of Scotland and me, the Earl of Lennox, riding between Dundas and Lythkoo
(Linlithgow) in a dark night, taking upon him to be the guide that night,
the rest of his company being in doubt of the highway.’ Darnley said he
had often ridden that road, and Lennox replied that it was no wonder, he
riding to meet his wife, ‘a paragon and a Queen.’ Darnley answered that
they were not happy. As an instance of Mary’s ways, he reported that, just
before their child’s birth, Mary had advised him to take a mistress, and
if possible ‘to make my Lord ----’ (Moray) ‘wear horns, and I assure you I
shall never love you the worse.’ Lennox liked not the saying, but merely
advised Darnley never to be unfaithful to the Queen. Darnley replied, ‘I
never offended the Queen, my wife, in meddling with any woman in thought,
let be in deed.’ Darnley also told the story of ‘horning’ Moray to a
servant of his, which Moray ‘is privy unto.’
The tale of Darnley’s then keeping a mistress arose, says Lennox, from the
fact that one of two Englishmen in his service, brothers, each called
Anthony Standen, brought a girl into the Castle. The sinner was, when
Lennox wrote, in France. Nearly forty years after James VI. imprisoned him
in the Tower, and he wrote a romantic memoir of which there is a
manuscript copy at Hatfield.
Whatever Mary’s feelings towards Darnley, when making an inventory of her
jewels for bequests, in case she and her child both died, she left her
husband a number of beautiful objects, including the red enamel ring with
which he wedded her.[61] Whatever her feelings towards Moray, she lodged
him and Argyll in the Castle during her labour: ‘Huntly and Bothwell would
also have lodged there, but were refused.’[62] Sir James Melville (writing
in old age) declares that Huntly and Lesley, Bishop of Ross, ‘envied the
favour that the Queen showed unto the Earl of Moray,’ and wished her to
‘put him in ward,’ as dangerous. Melville dissuaded Mary from this course,
and she admitted Moray to the Castle, while rejecting Huntly and
Bothwell.[63]
James VI. and I. was born on June 19. Killigrew carried Elizabeth’s
congratulations, and found that Argyll, Moray, Mar, and Atholl were
‘linked together’ at Court. Bothwell had tried to prejudice Mary against
Moray, as likely to ‘bring in Morton during her child-bed,’ but Bothwell
had failed, and gone to the Border. ‘He would not gladly be in the danger
of the four that lie in the Castle.’ Yet he was thought to be ‘more in
credit’ with Mary than all the rest. If so, Mary certainly ‘dissembled her
love,’ to the proverbial extent. Darnley was in the Castle, but little
regarded.[64] Moray complained that his own ‘credit was yet but small:’ he
was with the Privy Council, Bothwell was not.[65] By July 11, Moray told
Cecil that his favour ‘stands now in good case.’[66]
He had good reason to thank God, as he did. According to Nau, Huntly and
Bothwell had long been urging Darnley to ruin Moray and Lethington, and
Darnley had a high regard for George Douglas, now in exile, his agent with
Ruthven for Riccio’s murder.[67] This is confirmed by a letter from Morton
in exile to Sir John Forster in July. Morton had heard from Scotland that
Bothwell and Darnley were urging Mary to recall the said George Douglas,
whom they expected to denounce Moray and Lethington as ‘the devisers of
the slaughter of Davy.’ ‘I now find,’ says Morton, ‘that the King and
Bothwell are not likely to speed, as was written, for the Queen likes
nothing of their desire.’[68]
Thus Mary was protecting Moray from the grotesque combination of Bothwell
and Darnley. This is at a time when ‘Bothwell was all in all,’ according
to Lennox, and when she had just tried to embroil Moray and her husband by
bidding Darnley seduce Lady Moray. By Moray’s and Morton’s own showing,
Moray’s favour was ‘in good case,’ and he was guarded from Darnley’s
intrigues.
However, Buchanan makes Mary try to drive Darnley and Moray to dagger
strokes after her ‘deliverance.’[69] We need not credit his tale of Mary’s
informing Darnley that the nobles meant to kill him, and then calling
Moray out of bed, half-naked, to hear that he was to be killed by Darnley.
All that is known of this affair of the hurried Moray speeding through the
corridors in his dressing-gown, comes from certain notes of news sent by
Bedford to Cecil on August 15. ‘The Queen declared to Moray that the King
had told her he was determined to kill him, finding fault that she bears
him so much company. The King confessed that reports were made to him that
Moray was not his friend, which made him speak that of which he repented.
The Queen said that she could not be content that either he or any else
should be unfriend to Moray.’ ‘Any else’ included Bothwell. ‘Moray and
Bothwell have been at evil words for Lethington. The King has departed; he
cannot bear that the Queen should use familiarity with man or woman.’[70]
This may be the basis of Buchanan’s legend. Moray and Darnley hated each
other. On the historical evidence of documents as against the partisan
legends of Lennox and Buchanan, Mary, before and after her delivery, was
leaning on Moray, whatever may have been her private affection for
Bothwell. She even confided to him ‘that money had been sent from the
Pope.’ Moray was thus deep in her confidence. That she should distrust
Darnley, ever weaving new intrigues, was no more than just. His wicked
folly was the chief obstacle to peace.
Peace, while Darnley lived, there could not be. Morton was certain to be
pardoned, and of all feuds the deadliest was that between Morton and
Darnley, who had betrayed him. Meanwhile Mary’s dislike of Darnley must
have increased, after her fear of dying in child-birth had disappeared.
When once the nobles’ were knitted into a combination, with Lethington
restored to the Secretaryship (for which Moray laboured successfully
against Bothwell), with Morton and the Douglases brought home, Darnley was
certain to perish. Lennox was disgraced, and his Stewarts were powerless,
and Darnley’s own Douglas kinsmen were, of all men, most likely to put
their hands in his blood: as they did. Mary was his only possible shelter.
Nothing was more to be dreaded by the Lords than the reconciliation of the
royal pair; whom Darnley threatened with the vengeance he would take if
once his foot was on their necks. But of a sincere reconciliation there
was no danger.
A difficult problem is to account for the rise of Mary’s passion for
Bothwell. In February, she had given him into the arms of a beautiful
bride. In March, he had won her sincerest gratitude and confidence. She
had, Lennox says, bestowed on him the command of her new Guard of
harquebus men, a wild crew of mercenaries under dare-devil captains. But
though, according to her accusers, her gratitude and confidence turned to
love, and though that love, they say, was shameless and notorious, there
are no contemporary hints of it in all the gossip of scandalous
diplomatists. We have to fall back on what Buchanan, inspired by Lennox,
wrote after Darnley’s murder, and on what Lennox wrote himself in language
more becoming a gentleman than that of Buchanan. If Lennox speaks truth,
improper relations between Mary and Bothwell began as soon as she
recovered from the birth of her child. He avers that Mary wrote a letter
to Bothwell shortly after her recovery from child-bed, and just when she
was resisting Bothwell’s and Darnley’s plot against Moray and Lethington.
Bothwell, reading the letter among his friends, exclaimed, ‘Gyf any faith
might be given to a princess, they’ (Darnley and Mary) ‘should never be
togidder in bed agane.’ A version in English (the other paper is in Scots)
makes Mary promise this to Bothwell when he entered her room, and found
her washing her hands. Buchanan’s tales of Mary’s secret flight to Alloa,
shortly after James’s birth, and her revels there in company with Bothwell
and his crew of pirates, are well known. Lennox, however, represents her
as departing to Stirling, ‘before her month,’ when even women of low
degree keep the house, and as ‘taking her pleasure in most uncomely
manner, arraied in homely sort, dancing about the market cross of the
town.’
According to Nau, Mary and her ladies really resided at Alloa as guests of
Lord Mar, one of the least treacherous and abandoned of her nobles.
Bedford, in a letter of August 3, 1566, mentions Mary’s secret departure
from Edinburgh, her intended meeting with Lethington (who had been exiled
from Court since Riccio’s death), at Alloa, on August 2, and her
disdainful words about Darnley. He adds that Bothwell is the most hated
man in Scotland: ‘his insolence is such that David [Riccio] was never more
abhorred than he is now,’ but Bedford says nothing of a love intrigue
between Bothwell and Mary.[71] The visit to Alloa, with occasional returns
to Edinburgh, is of July-August.
In August, Mary, Bothwell, Moray, and Darnley hunted in Meggatdale, the
moorland region between the stripling Yarrow and the Tweed. They had poor
sport: poachers had been busy among the deer. Charles IX., in France, now
learned that the royal pair were on the best terms;[72] and Mary’s
Inventories prove that, in August, she had presented Darnley with a
magnificent bed; by no means ‘the second-best bed.’ In September she also
gave him a quantity of cloth of gold, to make a caparison for his
horse.[73] Claude Nau reports, however, various brutal remarks of Darnley
to his wife while they were in Meggatdale. By September 20, Mary,
according to Lethington, reconciled Bothwell and himself. This was a very
important event. The reconciliation, Lethington says, was quietly managed
at the house of a friend of his own, Argyll, Moray, and Bothwell alone
being present. Moray says: ‘Lethington is restored to favour, wherein I
trust he shall increase.’[74] This step was hostile to Darnley’s
interests, for he had attempted to ruin Lethington. It is certain, as we
shall see, that all parties were now united in a band to resist Darnley’s
authority, and maintain that of the Queen, though, probably, nothing was
said about violence.
At this very point Buchanan, supported and probably inspired by Lennox,
makes the guilty intimacy of Mary and Bothwell begin in earnest. In
September, 1566, Mary certainly was in Edinburgh, reconciling Lethington
to Bothwell, and also working at the budget and finance in the Exchequer
House. It ‘was large and had pleasant gardens to it, and next to the
gardens, all along, a solitary vacant room,’ says Buchanan. But the real
charm, he declares, was in the neighbourhood of the house of David
Chalmers, a man of learning, and a friend of Bothwell. The back door of
Chalmers’s house opened on the garden of the Exchequer House, and
according to Buchanan, Bothwell thence passed, through the garden, to
Mary’s chamber, where he overcame her virtue by force. She was betrayed
into his hands by Lady Reres.[75]
This lady, who has been mentioned already, was the wife of Arthur Forbes
of Reres. His castle, on a hill above the north shore of the Firth of
Forth, is now but a grassy mound, near Lord Crawford’s house of Balcarres.
The lady was a niece of Cardinal Beaton, a sister of the magic lady of
Branksome, and aunt of one of the Four Maries, Mary Beaton. Buchanan
describes her as an old love of Bothwell, ‘a woman very heavy, both by
unwieldy age and massy substance;’ her gay days, then, must long have been
over. She was also the mother of a fairly large family. Cecil absurdly
avers that Bothwell obtained his divorce by accusing himself of an amour
with this fat old lady.[76] Knox’s silly secretary, Bannatyne, tells us
that the Reformer, dining at Falsyde, was regaled with a witch story by a
Mr. Lundie. He said that when Lady Atholl and Mary were both in labour, in
Edinburgh Castle, he came there on business, and found Lady Reres lying
abed. ‘He asking her of her disease, she answered that she was never so
troubled with no bairn that ever she bare, for the Lady Atholl had cast
all the pain of her child-birth upon her.’[77] It was a case of
Telepathy. Lady Reres had been married long enough to have a grown-up son,
the young Laird of Reres, who was in Mary’s service at Carberry Hill
(June, 1567). According to Dr. Joseph Robertson, Lady Reres was wet-nurse
to Mary’s baby. But, if we trust Buchanan, she was always wandering about
with Mary, while the nurseling was elsewhere. The name of Lady Reres does
not occur among those of Mary’s household in her _Etat_ of February 1567.
We only hear of her, then, from Buchanan, as a veteran procuress of vast
bulk who, at some remote period, had herself been the mistress of
Bothwell.
A few days after the treasonable and infamous action of Bothwell in
violating his Queen, we are to believe that Mary, still in the Exchequer
House, sent Lady Reres for that hero. Though it would have been simple and
easy to send a girl like Margaret Carwood, Mary and Margaret must needs
let old Lady Reres ‘down by a string, over an old wall, into the next
garden.’ Still easier would it have been for Lady Reres to use the key of
the back door, as when she first admitted Bothwell. But these methods were
not romantic enough: ‘Behold, the string suddenly broke, and down with a
great noise fell Lady Reres.’ However, she returned with Bothwell, and so
began these tragic loves.
This legend is backed, according to Buchanan, by the confession of
Bothwell’s valet, George Dalgleish, ‘which still remaineth upon record,’
but is nowhere to be found. In Dalgleish’s confession, printed in the
‘Detection,’ nothing of the kind occurs. But a passage in the Casket
Sonnet IX. is taken as referring to the condoned rape:
Pour luy aussi j’ai jeté mainte larme,
Premier, quand il se fist de ce corps possesseur,
Duquel alors il n’avoit pas le cœur.
In the Lennox MSS. Lennox himself dates the beginning of the intrigue with
Bothwell about September, 1566. But he and Buchanan are practically but
one witness. There is no other.
As regards this critical period, we have abundant contemporary
information. The Privy Council, writing to Catherine de’ Medici, from
Edinburgh, on October 8, make Mary, ten or twelve days before (say
September 26), leave Stirling for Edinburgh, on affairs of the Exchequer.
She offered to bring Darnley, but he insisted on remaining at Stirling,
where Lennox visited him for two or three days, returning to Glasgow.
Thence he wrote to Mary, warning her that Darnley had a vessel in
readiness, to fly the country. The letter reached Mary on September 29,
and Darnley arrived on the same day. He rode to Mary, but refused to enter
the palace, because three or four of the Lords were in attendance. Mary
actually went out to see her husband, apparently dismissed the Lords, and
brought him to her chamber, where he passed the night. On the following
day, the Council, with du Croc, met Darnley. He was invited, by Mary and
the rest, to declare his grievances: his attention was directed to the
‘wise and virtuous’ conduct of his wife. Nothing could be extracted from
Darnley, who sulkily withdrew, warning Mary, by a letter, that he still
thought of leaving the country. His letter hinted that he was deprived of
regal authority, and was abandoned by the nobles. To this they reply that
he must be _aimable_ before he can be _aimé_, and that they will never
consent to his having the disposal of affairs.[78]
A similar account was given by du Croc to Archbishop Beaton, and, on
October 17, to Catherine de’ Medici, no friend of Mary, also by Mary to
Lennox.[79]
We have not Darnley’s version of what occurred. He knew that all the
powerful Lords were now united against him. Du Croc, however, had frequent
interviews with Darnley, who stated his grievance. It was not that
Bothwell injured his honour. Darnley kept spies on Mary, and had such a
noisy and burlesque set of incidents occurred in the garden of Exchequer
House as Buchanan reports, Darnley should have had the news. But he merely
complained to du Croc that he did not enjoy the same share of power and
trust as was his in the early weeks of his wedding. Du Croc replied that
this fortune could never again be his. The ‘Book of Articles’ entirely
omits Darnley’s offence in the slaying of Riccio. Du Croc was more
explicit. He told Darnley that the Queen had been personally offended, and
would never restore him to his authority. ‘He ought to be well content
with the honour and good cheer which she gave him, honouring and treating
him as the King her husband, and supplying his household with all manner
of good things.’ This goes ill with Buchanan’s story about Mary’s
stinginess to Darnley. It is admitted by the Lennox MSS. that she did not
keep her alleged promise to Bothwell, that she and Darnley should never
meet in the marriage bed.
When Mary had gone to Jedburgh, to hold a court (about October 8), du Croc
was asked to meet Darnley at some place, apparently Dundas, ‘three leagues
from Edinburgh.’ Du Croc thought that Darnley wished Mary to ask him to
return. But Darnley, du Croc believed, intended to hang off till after the
baptism of James, and did not mean to be present on that occasion (_pour
ne s’y trouver point_). He had, in du Croc’s opinion, but two causes of
unhappiness: one, the reconciliation of the Lords with the Queen, and
their favour; the other, a fear lest Elizabeth’s envoy to the baptism
might decline to recognise him (_ne fera compte de luy_). The night-ride
from Dundas to Linlithgow, in which (according to Lennox) Darnley told the
tale of Mary’s advice to him to seduce Lady Moray, must have occurred at
this very time, perhaps after the meeting with du Croc, three leagues from
Edinburgh. In his paper about the night-ride, Lennox avers that Mary
yielded to Bothwell’s love, before this ride and conversation. But he does
not say that he himself was already aware of the amour, and his whole
narrative leaves the impression that he was not. We are to suppose that,
if Buchanan’s account is true, the adventures of the Exchequer House and
of Lady Reres were only known to the world later. Certainly no suspicion
of Mary had crossed the mind of du Croc, who says that he never saw her so
much loved and respected; and, in short, there is no known contemporary
hint of the beginning of the guilty amour, flagrant as were its alleged
circumstances. This point has, naturally, been much insisted upon by the
defenders of Mary.