incident. Taking, first, the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ we find that the
explosion took place at ‘two hours before none;’ which at that time meant
2 A.M. The murderers opened the door with false keys, and strangled
Darnley, and his servant, Taylor, ‘in their naked beds,’ then threw the
bodies into a garden, ‘beyond the Thief Row’ (see the sketch, p. 131),
returned, and blew up the house, ‘so that there remained not one stone
upon another undestroyed.’ The names of the miscreants are given, ‘as
alleged,’ Bothwell, Ormistoun of that ilk; Hob Ormistoun his uncle;
Hepburn of Bowton, and young Hay of Tala. All these underlings were later
taken, confessed, and were executed. The part of the entry in the
‘Diurnal’ which deals with them, at least, is probably not contemporary.
The men named professed to know nothing of the strangling. For what it is
worth the entry corroborates the entire destruction of the house, which
would imply a mine, or powder in the vaulted cellars. The contemporary
drawing shows the whole house utterly levelled with the ground.[132]
Birrel, in his Diary, says, ‘The house was raised from the ground with
powder, and the King, if he had not been cruelly strangled, after he fell
out of the air, with his garters, he had lived.’ An official account says,
‘Of the whole lodging, walls and other, there is nothing remaining, no,
not one stone above another, but all either carried far away, or dung in
dross to the very groundstone.’[133] This could only be done by a mine,
but the escape of Nelson proves exaggeration. This version is also in
Mary’s letter to Archbishop Beaton (February 10, or 11), written in Scots,
probably by Lethington, and he, of course, may have exaggerated, as may
the Privy Council in their report to the same effect.[134] Clernault, a
Frenchman who carried the news, averred that a mine was employed. Sir
James Melville says that Bothwell ‘made a train of powder, or had one made
before, which came under the house,’ but Darnley was first strangled ‘in a
low stable,’ by a napkin thrust into his mouth.[135] The Lennox MSS. say
that Darnley was suffocated ‘with a wet napkin steeped in vinegar.’ The
Savoyard Ambassador, Moretta, on returning to France, expressed the
opinion that Darnley fled from the house, when he heard the key of the
murderers grate in the keyhole, that he was in his shirt, carrying his
dressing gown, that he was followed, dragged into a little garden outside
his own garden wall (the garden across the Thieves’ Row), and there
strangled. Some women heard him exclaim, ‘Pity me, kinsmen, for the love
of him who pitied all the world.’[136] His kinsmen were Archibald and
other Douglases. Buchanan, in his ‘Detection,’ speaks of ‘the King’s
lodging, _even from the very foundation_, blown up.’ In the ‘Actio,’ or
Oration, printed with the ‘Detection,’ the writer, whoever he was, says,
‘they had _undermined the wall_,’ and that Mary slept under Darnley’s
room, lest the servants should hear ‘the noise of the underminers
working.’
The ‘Detection’ and ‘Actio’ were published to discredit Mary, long after
the murderers had confessed that there was no mine at all, that the powder
was laid in Mary’s room. In the ‘Book of Articles,’ the powder is placed
‘in the laich house,’ whether that means the arched ground floor, or
Mary’s chamber; apparently the latter, as we read, ‘she lay in the house
under the King, where also thereafter the powder was placed.’[137] This is
made into conformity with the confessions of Bothwell’s men, according to
whom but nine or ten were concerned in the deed. But Moray himself, two
months after the murder, told de Silva that ‘it is undoubted that over
thirty or forty persons were concerned’ (the fifty of the Lennox Paper)
‘and _the house ... was entirely undermined_.’[138] When Morton, long
afterwards, was accused of and executed for the deed, the dittay ran that
the powder was under the ‘angular stones and within the vaults.’ In the
mysterious letter, attributed to Mary, and cited by Moray and the Lennox
Papers, the ‘preparation’ of the Kirk o’ Field is at least hinted at. The
‘Book of Articles’ avers that, ‘from Glasgow, by her letters and
otherwise,’ Mary ‘held him’ (Bothwell) ‘continually in remembrance of the
said house,’ which she _did_, in the letter never produced, but not in any
of the Casket Letters, unless it be in a note, among other suspicious
notes, ‘Of the ludgeing in Edinburgh.’[139] The Lennox MSS., as we saw,
say ‘the place was already prepared with “undermining and” trains of
powder therein.’ The whole of the narratives, confirmed by Moray, and by
the descriptions of the ruin of the house, prove that the theory of a
prepared mine was entertained, till Powrie, Tala, and Bowton made their
depositions, and, in the ‘Actio,’ an appendix to Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’
and the indictment of Morton, even after that. But when the accusers, of
whom some were guilty themselves, came to plead against Mary, they
naturally wished to restrict the conspiracy to Bothwell and Mary. The
strangling disappears. The murderers are no longer thirty, or forty, or
fifty. The powder is placed in Mary’s own room, not in a mine. All this
altered theory rests on examinations of prisoners.
What are they worth? They were taken in the following order: Powrie, June
23, Dalgleish, June 26, before the Privy Council. Powrie was again
examined in July before the Privy Council, and Hay of Tala on September
13. A note of news says that Tala was taken in Fife on September 6, 1567
(annotated) ‘7th (Nicolas and Bond).’[140] Tala ‘can _bleke_ [blacken]
some great men with it’--the murder. But as Mr. Hosack cites Bedford to
Cecil, September 5, 1567, Hay of Tala ‘opened the whole device of the
murder, ... and went so far as to touch a great many not of the smallest,’
such as Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and others, no doubt.[141] Even Laing,
however, admits that ‘the evidence against Huntly was suppressed carefully
in Hay’s deposition.’[142] In Dec.-Jan. 1567-68, anonymous writings say
that, if the Lords keep Tala and Bowton alive, they could tell them who
subscribed the murder bond, and pray the Lords not to seem to lay all the
weight on Mary’s back. A paper of Questions to the Lords of the Articles
asks why Tala and Bowton ‘are not compelled openly to declare the manner
of the King’s slaughter, and who consented thereunto.’[143]
The authors of these Questions had absolute right on their side. Moray no
more prosecuted the quest for all murderers of Darnley than Mary had done.
To prove this we need no anonymous pamphlets or placards, no contradictory
tattle about secret examinations and dying confessions. When Mary’s case
was inquired into at Westminster (December, 1568), Moray put in as
evidence the deposition of Bowton, made in December, 1567. Bothwell, said
Bowton, had assured him that the crime was devised ‘by some of the
noblemen,’ ‘other noblemen had entrance as far as he in that matter.’[144]
This was declared by Bowton in Moray’s own presence. The noble and
stainless Moray is not said to ask ‘What noblemen do you mean?’ No torture
would have been needed to extract their names from Bowton, and Moray
should at once have arrested the sinners. But some were his own allies,
united with him in accusing his sister. So no questions were asked. The
papers which, between Dec.-Jan. 1567-68, did ask disagreeable questions
must have been prior to January 3, 1568, when Tala, Bowton, Dalgleish, and
Powrie, after being ‘put to the knowledge of an assize,’ were executed;
their legs and arms were carried about the country by boys in baskets!
According to the ‘Diurnal,’ Tala incriminated, before the whole people
round the scaffold, Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and Balfour,
with divers other nobles, and the Queen. On January 7, Drury gave the same
news to Cecil, making Bowton the confessor, and omitting the charge
against Mary. The incriminated noblemen at once left Edinburgh, ‘which,’
says the ‘Diurnal,’ ‘makes the matter ... the more probable.’[145]
Meanwhile Moray ‘looked through his fingers,’ and carried the incriminated
Lethington with him, later, as one of Mary’s accusers, while he purchased
Sir James Balfour!
What, we ask once more, in these circumstances, are the examinations of
the murderers worth, after passing through the hands of the accomplices?
On December 8, 1568, Moray gave in the written records of the examinations
to the English Commissioners. We have, first, Bothwell’s servant, Powrie,
examined before the Lords of the Secret Council (June 23, July 3, 1567).
He helped to carry the powder to Kirk o’ Field on February 9, but did not
see what was done with it. Dalgleish, examined at Edinburgh on June 26,
1567, before Morton, Atholl, the Provost of Dundee, and Kirkcaldy, said
nothing about the powder. Tala was examined, on September 13, at
Edinburgh, before Moray, Morton, Atholl, the Lairds of Loch Leven and
Pitarro, James Makgill, and the Justice Clerk, Bellenden. No man
implicated, except Morton, was present. Tala said that Bothwell arranged
to lay the powder in Mary’s room, under Darnley’s. This was done; the
powder was placed in ‘the nether house, under the King’s chamber,’ the
plotters entering by the back door, from the garden, of which Paris had
the key. Thus there would be no show at the front door, in the
quadrangle, of men coming and going: they were in Mary’s room, but did not
enter by the front door. Next, on December 8, Bowton was examined at
Edinburgh before Moray, Atholl, Lindsay, Kirkcaldy of Grange, and
Bellenden. He implicated Morton, Lethington, and Balfour, but, at
Westminster, Moray suppressed the evidence utterly. (See Introduction, pp.
xiii-xviii, for the suppressions). Next we have the trial of Bowton, Tala,
Powrie, and Dalgleish, on January 3, 1568, before Sir Thomas Craig and a
jury of burgesses and gentlemen. The accused confessed to their previous
depositions. The jury found them guilty on the depositions alone, found
that ‘the whole lodging was raised and blown in the air, and his Grace
[Darnley] was murdered treasonably, and most cruelly slain and destroyed
by them therein.’ When Mr. Hosack asserts that these depositions ‘were
taken before the Lords of the Secret Council, namely Morton, Huntly,
Argyll, Maitland, and Balfour,’ he errs, according to the documents cited.
Only Powrie is described as having been examined ‘before the Lords of the
Secret Council.’ Mr. Hosack must have known that Huntly and Argyll were
not in Edinburgh on June 23, when Powrie was examined.[146] We can only
say that Powrie’s depositions, made before the Lords of the Secret
Council, struck the keynote, to which all later confessions, including
that of Bothwell’s valet, Paris, correspond.[147] Thus vanish, for the
moment, the mine and the strangling, while the deed is done by powder in
Mary’s own chamber. Nobody is now left in the actual crime save Bothwell,
Bowton, Tala, Powrie, Dalgleish, Wilson, Paris, Ormistoun, and Hob
Ormistoun. They knew of no strangling.[148]
But on February 11, 1567, two women, examined by a number of persons,
including Huntly, stated thus: Barbara Mertine _heard_ thirteen men, and
_saw_ eleven, pass up the Cowgate, and _saw_ eleven pass down the Black
Friars wynd, after the explosion. She called them traitors. May Crokat (by
marriage Mrs. Stirling), in the service of the Archbishop of St. Andrews
(whose house was adjacent to Kirk o’ Field), heard the explosion, thought
it was in ‘the house above,’ ran out, saw eleven men, caught one by his
silk coat, and ‘asked where the crack was.’ They fled.[149] The avenging
ghost of Darnley pursued his murderers for twenty years, and, in their
cases, we have later depositions, and letters. Thus, as to the men
employed, Archibald Douglas, that reverend parson and learned Lord of
Session, informed Morton that he himself ‘was at the deed doing, and came
to the Kirk o’ Field yard with the Earls of Bothwell _and Huntly_.’
Douglas, at this time (June, 1581), had fled from justice to England:
Morton was underlying the law. Morton’s confession was made, in 1581, on
the day of his execution, to the Rev. John Durie and the Rev. Walter
Balcanquell, who wrote down and made known the declaration. On June 3,
1581, Archibald Douglas’s servant, Binning, was also executed. He
confessed that Archibald lost one of his velvet mules (dress shoes) on the
scene, or on the way from the murder. Powrie had ‘deponed’ that three of
Bothwell’s company wore ‘mulis,’ whether for quiet in walking, or because
they were in evening dress, having been at Bastian’s wedding masque and
dance. Douglas, in a collusive trial before a jury of his kinsmen, in
1586, was acquitted, and showed a great deal of forensic ability.[150]
It is thus abundantly evident that the depositions of the murderers put in
by Mary’s accusers did not tell the whole truth, whatever amount of truth
they may have told. We cannot, therefore, perhaps accept their story of
placing the powder in Mary’s room, where it could hardly have caused the
amount of damage described: but that point may be left open. We know that
Bothwell’s men were not alone in the affair, and the strangling of
Darnley, and the removal of his body, with his purple velvet sable-lined
dressing gown (attested by the Lennox MSS.), may have been done by the men
of Douglas and Huntly.
The treatment of the whole topic by George Buchanan is remarkable. In the
‘Book of Articles,’ levelled at Mary, in 1568, Darnley is blown up by
powder placed in Mary’s room. In the ‘Detection,’ of which the first draft
(in the Lennox MSS.) is of 1568, reference for the method of the deed is
made to the depositions of Powrie and the others. In the ‘History,’ there
are _three_ gangs, those with Bothwell, and two others, advancing by
separate routes. They strangle Darnley and Taylor, and carry their bodies
into an adjacent garden; the house is then blown up ‘from the very
foundations.’ Buchanan thus returns to the strangling, omitted, for
reasons, in the ‘Detection.’ Darnley’s body is unbruised, and his
dressing-gown, lying near him, is neither scorched nor smirched with dust.
A light burned, Buchanan says, in the Hamilton House till the explosion,
and was then extinguished; the Archbishop, contrary to custom, was lodging
there, with ‘Gloade,’ says a Lennox MS. ‘Gloade’ is--Lord Claude
Hamilton![151] While Buchanan was helping to prosecute Mary, he had not a
word to say about the strangling of Darnley, and about the dressing-gown
and slippers laid beside the corpse, though all this was in the papers of
Lennox, his chief. Not a word had he to say about the three bands of men
who moved on Kirk o’ Field, or the fifty men of the Lennox MS. The crime
was to be limited to Bothwell, his gang, and the Queen, as was convenient
to the accusers. Later Buchanan brought into his ‘History’ what he kept
out of the ‘Detection’ and ‘Book of Articles,’ adding a slur on
Archbishop Hamilton.
Finally, when telling, in his ‘History,’ how the Archbishop was caught at
Dumbarton, and hanged by Lennox, without trial, Buchanan has quite a fresh
version. The Archbishop sent six or eight of his bravoes, with false keys
of the doors (what becomes of Bothwell’s false keys?) to Kirk o’ Field.
They strangle Darnley, and lay him in a garden, and then, on a given
signal, other conspirators blow up the house. Where is Bothwell? The
leader of the Archbishop’s gang told this, under seal of confession, to a
priest, a very respectable man (_viro minime malo_). This respectable
priest first blabbed in conversation, and then, when the Archbishop was
arrested, gave evidence derived from the disclosure of a Hamilton under
seal of confession. The Archbishop mildly remarked that such conduct was
condemned by the Church. Later, the priest was executed for celebrating
the Mass (this being his third conviction), and he repeated the story
openly and fully. The tale of the priest was of rather old standing. When
collecting his evidence for the York Commission of October, 1568, Lennox
wrote to his retainers to ask, among other things, for the deposition of
the priest of Paisley, ‘that heard and testified the last exclamation of
one Hamilton, which the Laird of Minto showed to Mr. John Wood,’ who was
then helping Lennox to get up his case (June 11, 1568).[152] Buchanan has
yet another version, in his ‘Admonition to the Trew Lordis:’ here the
Archbishop sends only four of his rogues to the murder.
Buchanan’s plan clearly was to accuse the persons whom it was convenient
to accuse, at any given time; and to alter his account of the method of
the murder so as to suit each new accusation. Probably he was not
dishonest. The facts ‘were to him ministered,’ by the Lords, in 1568, and
also by Lennox. Later, different sets of facts were ‘ministered’ to him,
as occasion served, and he published them without heeding his
inconsistencies. He was old, was a Lennox man, and an advanced Liberal.
Of one examination, which ought to have been important, we have found no
record. There was a certain Captain James Cullen, who wrote letters in
July 13 to July 18, 1560, from Edinburgh Castle, to the Cardinal of
Lorraine. He was then an officer of Mary of Guise, during the siege of
Leith.[153] In the end of 1565, and the beginning of 1566, Captain Cullen
was in the service of Frederic II. of Denmark, and was trying to enlist
English sailors for him.[154] Elizabeth refused to permit this, and
Captain Cullen appears to have returned to his native Scotland, where he
became, under Bothwell, an officer of the Guard put about Mary’s person,
after Riccio’s murder. On February 28, 1567, eighteen days after Darnley’s
murder, Scrope writes that ‘Captain Cullen with his company have the
credit nearest her’ (Mary’s) ‘person.’ On May 13, Drury remarks, ‘It was
Captain Cullen’s persuasion, for more surety, to have the King strangled,
and not only to trust to the powder,’ the Captain having observed, in his
military experience, that the effects of explosions were not always
satisfactory. ‘The King was long of dying, and to his strength made debate
for his life.’[155]
To return to honest Captain Cullen: after Bothwell was acquitted, and had
issued a cartel offering Trial by Combat to any impugner of his honour,
some anonymous champion promised, under certain conditions, to fight. This
hero placarded the names of three Balfours, black John Spens, and others,
as conspirators; as ‘doers’ he mentioned, with some companions, Tala,
Bowton, Pat Wilson, and James Cullen. On April 25, the Captain was named
as a murderer in Elizabeth’s Instructions to Lord Grey.[156] On May 8,
Kirkcaldy told Bedford that Tullibardine had offered, with five others, to
fight Ormistoun, ‘Beynston,’ Bowton, Tala, Captain Cullen, and James
Edmonstone, who, says Tullibardine, were at the murder. On June 16, 1567,
the day after Mary’s capture at Carberry, Scrope writes, ‘The Lords have
taken Captain Cullen, who, after some strict dealing [torture], has
revealed the King’s murder with the whole matter thereof.’[157] Scrope was
mistaken. He had probably heard of the capture of Blackader, who was
hanged on June 24, denying his guilt. He had no more chance than had James
Stewart of the Glens with a Campbell jury. His jury was composed of Lennox
men, Darnley’s clansmen. Our Captain had not been taken, but on September
15 Moray told Throckmorton that Kirkcaldy, in Shetland, had captured
Cullen, ‘one of the very executors, he may clear the whole action.’[158]
Did Captain Cullen clear the whole action? We hear no more of his
embarrassing revelations. But we do know that he was released and returned
to the crimping trade: he fought for the Castle in 1571, was taken in a
cupboard and executed. He had a pretty wife, the poor Captain, coveted and
secured by Morton.
VII
_THE CONFESSIONS OF PARIS_
Fatal depositions, if trustworthy, are those of the valet lent by Bothwell
to Mary, on her road to Glasgow, in January, 1567. The case of Paris is
peculiar. He had escaped with Bothwell, in autumn, 1567, to Denmark, and,
on October 30, 1568, he was extradited to a Captain Clark, a notorious
character. On July 16, 1567, the Captain had killed one Wilson, a seaman
‘much esteemed by the Lords,’ of Moray’s faction. They had quarrelled
about a ship that was ordered to pursue Bothwell.[159] Nevertheless, in
July, 1568, Clark was Captain of the Scots in Danish service, and was
corresponding with Moray.[160] Clark could easily have sent Paris to
England in time for the meetings of Commissioners to judge on Mary’s case,
in December-January, 1568-1569. But Paris was not wanted: he might have
proved an awkward witness. About August 30, 1569, Elizabeth wrote to Moray
asking that Paris might be spared till his evidence could be taken. To
spare him was now impossible: Paris was no more. He had arrived from
Denmark in June, 1569, when Moray was in the North. Why had he not arrived
in December, 1568, when Mary’s case was being heard at Westminster? He had
been examined on August 9, 10, 1569, and was executed on August 15 at St.
Andrews. A copy of his deposition was sent to Cecil, and Moray hoped it
would be satisfactory to Elizabeth and to Lennox.[161]
In plain truth, the deposition of Paris was not wanted, when it might have
been given, at the end of 1568, while Moray and Lethington and Morton were
all working against Mary, before the same Commission. Later, differences
among themselves had grown marked. Moray and Lethington had taken opposed
lines as to Mary’s marriage with Norfolk in 1569, and the terms of an
honourable settlement of her affairs. Lethington desired; Moray, in his
own interest as Regent, opposed the marriage. A charge of guilt in
Darnley’s murder was now hanging over Lethington, based on Paris’s
deposition. The cloud broke in storm, he was accused by the useful
Crawford, Lennox’s man, in the first week of September, 1569. Three weeks
earlier, Moray had conveniently strengthened himself by taking the so long
deferred evidence of Paris. Throughout the whole affair the witnesses were
very well managed, so as to produce just what was needed, and no more.
While Lethington and other sinners were working with Moray, then only
evidence to the guilt of Bothwell and Mary was available. When Lethington
became inconvenient, witness against him was produced. When Morton, much
later (1581), was ‘put at,’ new evidence of _his_ guilt was not lacking.
Captain Cullen’s tale did not fit into the political combinations of
September, 1567, when the poor Captain was taken. It therefore was not
adduced at Westminster or Hampton Court. It was judiciously burked.
Moray did not send the ‘authentick’ record of Paris’s deposition to Cecil
till October, 1569, though it was taken at St. Andrews on August 9 and
10.[162] When Moray at last sent it, he had found that Lethington
definitely refused to aid him in betraying Norfolk. The day of
reconciliation was ended. So Moray sent the ‘authentick’ deposition of
Paris, which he had kept back for two months, in hopes that Lethington
(whom it implicated) might join him in denouncing Norfolk after all.