FOR MARY, the weeks and months after the explosion were the most critical of her life. Her integrity was on the line. What happened then tarnished her reputation forever, and rightly so. She made no serious effort to bring Darnley’s murderers to justice. The worst that could be proved before the murder is that she wanted the depraved and dangerously conspiratorial Darnley safely under house arrest at Craigmillar Castle and that she had gone to Glasgow, the stronghold of the Lennoxes, to fetch him. It is not what happened before the murder that precipitated her downfall, but the astonishing events that followed it.
Mary really was alone after the explosion. Even the Guises found her to be such a liability that her uncle made terms with Moray behind her back, provoking an angry response. Mary’s usually prolific correspondence with her family abruptly stopped. She felt she had no one to trust. Looking back on the months since her illness at Jedburgh, she must have guessed that most if not all her lords had known of the plot to kill her husband.
When Killigrew had arrived to present Mary with Elizabeth’s letter of rebuke, he was entertained to dinner by Moray and the lords and assured that every effort would be made to arrest the guilty parties. Mary herself promised Killigrew that the assassins would be unmasked. But how was she to give substance to her promise when the very same lords who dined with Killigrew were the leading conspirators? They stuck together and had already suppressed the testimony of the women in the cottages beside Thieves Row.
Moray was the most farsighted of the bunch: he would choose to go voluntarily into exile until the dust settled, which only served to reinforce Mary’s suspicions of his guilt. He realized that Darnley’s murder was not the end but just the beginning of a catastrophic downward spiral in which violence and retribution would reach a frenzy.
Bothwell, with his typical bluster and lack of subtlety, saw it very differently. He had a “mark of his own that he shot at.” He planned to step into Darnley’s shoes and Mary’s bed. For this he would reap the vengeance of the lords for seeking to overawe them. He would be the scapegoat for Darnley’s murder, but as yet this dramatic turn of events was still several months away. Until then, the pact between Morton and Bothwell (as Drury had noticed) held fast, which was long enough for an isolated and confused Mary to make her own mistakes.
Mary’s psychology is crucial. She had been brought up in the luxury and safety of Henry II’s court and never felt completely secure after she had left the shores of France. The factionalism of the lords was relentless and on a scale beyond anything she could have imagined. Violence was endemic in Scotland. Politics were tribal, based on organized revenge and the blood feud. An anointed queen she might be, but the monarchy lacked the financial resources and centralized institutions of France.
As for her recent ordeals, she had been publicly insulted by Knox, who had compared her to Nero, the worst of the Roman tyrants, but when she had called on him to explain himself, she had been forced to back down. She had discovered Chastelard under her bed, armed with a sword and dagger. Her uncle Francis had been assassinated by the Huguenots. Her secretary had been dragged from her in her apartments and brutally murdered in the next room. A loaded pistol had been pointed at her by Ker of Fawdonside, and now she had escaped death in a gunpowder plot by what seemed like a hairsbreadth.
Mary saw a common thread linking all these events. Her conversations with Castelnau eighteen months before had shown that she had an ideological understanding of politics. She had claimed then that the rebel lords sought to depose and kill her in order to create a “republic.” She had long believed that her mother’s deposition was the beginning of a trend, and the murderous events at Kirk o’Field proved just how right she had been.
When she picked herself up after the initial shock of the murder, she shaped her own destiny. In what she saw as desperate circumstances, she took a breathtaking political gamble. She wanted Bothwell to protect her by controlling the noble factions. A poacher was to be turned into a gamekeeper. She did this because, rightly or wrongly, she saw him as the monarchy’s champion and the only man who could save her from a fate similar to Darnley’s.
As she went over and over everything in her mind, her priorities switched from identifying the murderers to deciding what they were likely to do next—this time to her and perhaps her child as well. Her chief suspect in the explosion was always Moray, her illegitimate halfbrother. It was in this mistaken belief that she would make a tragic, pragmatic decision to protect herself and her son, believing that whatever else she did, she would be surrounded by treachery and deceit.
She had another reason to think this way. She was approaching her twenty-fifth birthday, the age when Scottish rulers by tradition revoked the grants and rewards they had improvidently made in their youth. Mary would be expected to reassert the power of the monarchy against the nobles, and yet Darnley’s murder had crippled her ability to do so. With the dynastic settlement with Elizabeth a dead letter, she decided to claw back her power by supporting Bothwell. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Such impulsiveness was characteristic of her. When she had put on her steel cap and mounted her charger to defeat Moray in the Chase-about Raid, Castelnau had said she was adopting an “all or nothing” approach. This is how she reacted again, and she did so consciously, and not in a daze of lethargy or bewilderment. Mary was a gambler, and this was to be her biggest throw of the dice.
On Bothwell’s side, ambition was never far away. Now thirty-one, he was the epitome of tough masculinity. He appeared on the surface to be the military gallant with an insolent swagger and a bristling mustache. He could be suave when it suited him, even if he upset people with his freebooting ways and obscenities. Beneath the surface he was no better than any of the other lords. Mary had not yet seen him as he really was. Her wicked sense of humor may have misled her into finding his past misdemeanors to be more like schoolboy pranks than criminal acts of lawlessness. He may have seemed diverting to her as well as unswervingly loyal. But his single biggest attraction was that, apart from a brief interlude of reconciliation for which Mary herself was responsible, he had always been Moray’s mortal foe.
When Bothwell had married Huntly’s sister, Lady Jean Gordon, he arguably became the most powerful lord after the Earl of Argyll. He had already made a pact with Morton and the Douglases. Of the other leading power blocs, Châtelherault, the leader of the Hamiltons, was in voluntary exile after the Rizzio plot. Atholl was vulnerable to Argyll, who was keen to score points off his nearest neighbor and rival in the western and central Highlands, and the Lennoxes were in turmoil after Darnley’s death.
Bothwell’s alliance with Huntly brought him a vast military retinue to add to his own border forces. On top of this, his right as Lord Admiral to a share of the profits of all vessels wrecked off the coast of Scotland meant that he was one of the few Scottish nobles who was financially independent. As sheriff of Edinburgh he had the legal profession and many of the judiciary on his side. He must have calculated that he could protect Mary for as long as she asked him to, provided his pact with Morton and the Douglases could be kept alive.
The day after the murder, Mary emerged from her apartments looking pale and drawn to join the wedding feast of Margaret Carwood, her favorite bedchamber woman. Carwood had married John Stuart, one of Mary’s distant relatives, at Holyrood that morning. It was Shrove Tuesday, the last day it was possible to marry by Catholic rites until Easter. The bride’s dress was given by Mary, who also paid for the banquet. No doubt she was fulfilling a long-standing promise to her loyal gentlewoman by attending her wedding, but it came at some cost to her reputation.
Mary’s attendance made it clear that she had dispensed with the strict rules of court protocol. She should have put the court into mourning for forty days immediately after the murder, but waited for five days before ordering her deuil attire and large quantities of black taffeta to cover the walls and windows of her apartments. To some degree, the lapse may be attributed to her decision to move into Edinburgh Castle. But she drew attention to it by attending Carwood’s wedding.
Darnley was not given a state funeral. He was buried without pomp or ceremony during the night of Friday, February 14, 1567, his corpse laid to rest in the tomb of the kings in the old Abbey-Kirk at Holyrood. It must have been an eerie occasion; it certainly attracted unfavorable comment. An Edinburgh chronicler recorded that the former king of Scotland was interred “quietly in the night without any kind of solemnity or mourning heard among all the persons at court.”
The following Sunday, Mary left Edinburgh for Seton, by the shore of the Firth of Forth some eleven miles east of Edinburgh. She stayed with Lord Seton, the half-brother of one of her Maries and a Catholic who had fought alongside Bothwell in the guerrilla war against the Lords of the Congregation. She was said to be following the advice of her doctors, who felt she had been in a dark and stuffy room for long enough and needed a change of scene. Yet there is no independent evidence that she traveled on medical advice, and far from having spent the previous week in somber mourning, her blackout had been in place for just a day.
Mary’s disregard for convention can only suggest that even though she played no part in Darnley’s death, she must at some level have been happy to see him gone. Even when her bales of taffeta had finally arrived and the blackout was in place, she could not escape the charge that it was more for show than substance.
When first departing for Seton, Mary left her son in Bothwell and Huntly’s care. She traveled with her other lords, returning to Edinburgh three days later, where she lived in seclusion for a week. She then set off again for Seton, this time with Bothwell as her escort. They stayed at Lord Wharton’s house on February 26, dining at nearby Tranent. There an archery contest was held in which Mary partnered Bothwell against Huntly and Argyll. To Mary’s delight, she and Bothwell won, and the losers paid for dinner.
Long before the end of the official forty days of mourning, Mary and Bothwell were seen outdoors together. She had decided to trust him, which was perhaps prudent as a security measure but politically very unwise. He took command of the royal bodyguards, who from then on were constantly within Mary’s sight. Bothwell himself was guarded when he walked through the open streets. If he spoke to anyone he did not know, he kept his hand firmly on his dagger.
There was an acute sense of danger and foreboding in the air. Before leaving for Seton, Bothwell swore an oath that if he ever found the authors of the placards accusing him of Darnley’s murder, he would wash his hands in their blood. Previously known for its “joyousity” and lighthearted atmosphere, Mary’s court was acquiring menacing and militaristic overtones as he recruited more and more soldiers to guard her palaces.
On March 7, Morton was brought secretly by Bothwell to see Mary late at night. He humbly apologized to her for his part in Rizzio’s murder and made his peace with her; she relaxed his curfew and allowed him back to court.
Now the cards were stacking up. Bothwell and Morton were in the top positions. Their closest allies were Huntly and Argyll. Maitland was for the moment siding with Bothwell, nudging Moray aside. Argyll was trying to restore a semblance of normality to government. Atholl had receded into the background, deliberately squeezed out by Argyll.
Moray was shunned by his sister. His disgrace sprang from his refusal either to declare in favor of Bothwell and Morton or to denounce them openly to Mary. This time his attempts to hedge his bets had undone him. Mary suspected him to be the chief instigator of the explosion, for once doing him an injustice. While Bothwell and Morton preened themselves, Moray prepared to travel to exile in France. When he finally left the country, Bothwell danced for joy.
Step by step, Bothwell was seizing control of the available military power. On his advice, Mary dismissed the Earl of Mar as governor of Edinburgh Castle, replacing all the officers and gunners with Bothwell’s nominees. She appointed James Cockburn, the Laird of Skirling, Bothwell’s servant, as the new captain of the castle. She also made him comptroller of her household, thereby fusing military and civil power in the Edinburgh region. As comptroller, Cockburn ousted Sir William Murray, the Laird of Tullibardine, a noted Lennox supporter whose brother was suspected of being the author of the placards denouncing Bothwell.
And yet Bothwell did not always trust his own men. A month later, he had Cockburn removed from the castle, bringing in Sir James Balfour instead. Almost at once, large supplies of food and munitions were requisitioned as if to prepare against a possible siege, and Bothwell levied fresh companies of soldiers for the royal bodyguard.
Mary was not yet wholly in thrall to Bothwell. She still trusted Mar, with whom she had stayed at Alloa the previous year and to whom she had given her son when she suspected a plot by Darnley and the Lennoxes to kidnap him. Now she put Mar in charge of Stirling Castle. And on March 20, Prince James was again left in his safekeeping. It was almost as if Mary knew that she should do what her own mother had done with her as a baby, when the lords posed a threat to her life.
She then wrote to Lennox, inviting him to file his charges against those he suspected of Darnley’s murder. She promised that they would be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law if a jury found them guilty.
Lennox put Bothwell at the top of his list, but Mary was unimpressed. She detested Lennox, well aware that his son’s ambition for the crown matrimonial had been the cue for Rizzio’s death. She was relying on Bothwell to protect her, and as a signal of her confidence gave him some old church vestments of cloth of gold to recycle to make new suits. Later he got some of her mother’s Spanish furs for a nightgown, and she gave him Darnley’s horses and finest clothes.
This last gift was naive in the extreme. When Bothwell had the clothes altered to fit him, the tailor remarked, “It was but right and according to the custom of the country for the clothes of the deceased to be given to the executioner.” If only Mary had realized the degree to which public opinion was turning against her.
Soon Bothwell presumed too much. He started thinking in the crudest terms: that to guarantee his position in the giddy game of noble factionalism, he must physically possess the queen. Slowly but surely he began to pay court to Mary. Although married, he was well aware that marriages could—with the right influence—be broken almost as easily as they were made. The Catholic Church in Scotland was comparatively tolerant of infidelity. Annulments were difficult but far from impossible to obtain. The Protestant Kirk was able to grant divorces, and Bothwell was a Protestant.
His father, Patrick, a Catholic, when vying to marry Mary’s mother a quarter of a century before, had readily obtained an annulment. We know this fact had been on Bothwell’s mind, because when the lords had discussed a possible divorce for Mary in their plotting at Craigmillar Castle shortly before Prince James’s baptism, he had reminded them of his father’s experience.
On Palm Sunday, Mary collapsed at a Requiem Mass for Darnley. She found the occasion too distressing and stayed in bed for several days. On Good Friday, she went with two of her Maries to her private chapel, where she prayed and meditated for four hours. Those who saw her said that she was stricken with “melancholy.” But when Easter arrived and the dancing and banqueting resumed, she recovered her spirits and her looks. She moved out of Edinburgh Castle back into her old apartments at Holyrood, and soon seemed more her usual self.
The Privy Council met on Good Friday. Bothwell took his seat as usual, even though the day’s business was to approve the final arrangements for his trial. The rumor mill was churning. The stallholders in the busy street markets of Edinburgh gossiped that their queen would marry Bothwell. One day when Mary rode out of the castle past the Lawnmarket toward the High Street, a small group of women minding their stalls cried out, “God save Your Grace if you be innocent of the king’s death.”
Public opinion was the part of her gamble that Mary had not taken sufficiently into account. A few days before, she had sent for the parish minister of Dunfermline to question him about the most scurrilous and sensational placard to appear so far. It was a pornographic picture of a mermaid and a hare. The mermaid, naked apart from her golden crown and identified by the monogram MR, sported a large sea anemone in her right hand and a rolled-up net in her left. These were surrogates for the orb and scepter, but also had deeper, more suggestive meanings. The sea anemone, a giant polyp with petal-like tentacles around the mouth, stood for the female genitalia. And the rolled-up net was to enable her to catch unwary sailors as they passed by, distracted by the sight of the anemone.
Whoever devised this placard must have had an impressive classical education. The symbol of the anemone was used in this way by the Roman poet Ovid, an author familiar to Mary. The other idea of the drawing was the Roman retiarius, or net man: the net fighter in the Roman arena who took on the sword-wielding gladiator and aimed to ensnare him in his net before killing him with the trident he bore in his right hand.
Below the mermaid was a hare within a circle of seventeen swords. The hare was the heraldic symbol of Bothwell’s family, and the letters JH inside the circle identified Bothwell by his name, James Hepburn. The swords signified Bothwell’s military standing and love of dueling, but were also positioned in the drawing as phallic symbols.
Mary was mortified by these references. Acting on a tip, she summoned the minister and demanded whether he knew the artist. He said no. She asked, “Who then was likeliest to do it?” He said, “There was none could write so well unless a canon who is a papist and lives in adultery and hath sired in the same manner three children.” At this, Bothwell, who was listening nearby, roared with laughter, disrupting Mary’s questioning. He loved nothing more than a ribald spat, which he now proceeded to enjoy with the minister, reveling in the smutty innuendo.
The Privy Council fixed the date of Bothwell’s trial for April 12, just short of two weeks away. It was to take place at the Tolbooth, with Argyll presiding and Huntly assisting. No wonder Bothwell was so relaxed about it. Edinburgh was already filling up with his supporters, and he was brashly confident. Morton had supplied 300 cavalry to reinforce the palace bodyguard, for which Mary restored him to his stronghold of Tantallon Castle. More ominously, Bothwell met a German mercenary captain whom Mary’s ambassador in Paris had recommended. He offered to send 3600 crack troops to Mary and Bothwell in exchange for regular payments.
On April 4, Mary went on a third visit to Seton to enjoy the fresh spring air. While she was there, an old man, one of Darnley’s former domestic staff, approached her while she was walking in the garden with Bothwell on her arm. He humbly presented himself, then asked her “to give him some release” in his poverty. Mary was typically generous to old or sick servants, and would doubtless have asked her ladies to give the man a few coins from her purse and a proper meal in the kitchen before sending him on his way.
But Bothwell rudely interrupted her. Railing against the man’s effrontery, he turned to him and said, “Thou custrel [i.e., knave], go thy ways! I shall so release you that you shall be sorry with yourself, churl!” He then attacked him viciously until blood poured from his mouth. The man limped home and died two hours later. Before expiring, he said, “I have served in France, England and Scotland, but the like was never said unto me.”
It was a shocking incident. Out of the blue, Mary had seen for herself the rough side of Bothwell in all its cruelty and brutality. Up to now, only his smooth side had been visible to her. The other part of his character was either carefully suppressed or cloaked by a veil of gentility. The truth is that his dashing looks and French education were deceptive. He was a swordsman with a taste for violence, by birth and training a border lord, an adventurer, a pirate and a buccaneer. His civility was superficial, his fiery temper encouraged by his sudden rise to greatness. He strove for personal preeminence over his rivals among the lords, which he sought to win in any way he could. His loyalty to Mary and her mother had all along been directed to this end.
Mary’s judgment had become clouded. She had not even begun to think about marrying Bothwell, and why should she rush into a third marriage when her marriage to Darnley had been such a disaster? And yet her trust in Bothwell was becoming something more than a purely pragmatic decision. He had started to court her between Good Friday and the end of Easter week, which fits with the fact that a fortnight earlier, he had first sounded out his wife, Jean Gordon, about her reaction to an arranged divorce.
Mary would have abandoned Bothwell to his fate if she had wanted to divest herself of him. His trial was less than a week away. Despite seeing his true character unveiled, she chose deliberately not to do so.
Lennox, meanwhile, was lobbying Cecil to intervene in Bothwell’s trial. He was quite certain it would be rigged. After some prevarication, Elizabeth wrote to Mary to request an adjournment. Only four days were left before it was due to begin. The letter was sent posthaste to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where Drury gave it to a courier to take immediately to Holyrood. His man arrived at the gates of the palace at six in the morning on the day of the trial.
At first he was told it was too early to enter, because Mary was asleep. He was advised to wait, so he went into Edinburgh to find some breakfast. When he returned, Mary was still not awake, and so he paced up and down until ten o’clock, when Bothwell’s men began mustering in the courtyard. Seeing his opportunity, he approached the entrance of the palace, but was denied access. He asked for permission to deliver his letter, but everyone pretended to be deaf.
At that moment, who should appear but Thomas Hepburn, another of Bothwell’s relatives. He brought a message from Bothwell, advising the courier to withdraw, “for the queen was so molested and disquieted with the business of that day that he saw no likelihood of any convenient time to serve his turn until after the assize.”
Cockburn, Laird of Skirling, then emerged. He demanded to know if Drury’s man brought a letter from Elizabeth or Cecil. On hearing it was from Elizabeth, Cockburn said, “Then ye shall be soon discharged.” He ordered Hepburn to escort him off the premises.
At that instant, Maitland and Bothwell came out, and everyone mounted their horses. Maitland spotted Drury’s man and demanded Elizabeth’s letter. When it was handed over, he and Bothwell went back inside to see Mary, disappearing for half an hour.
When they reappeared, Drury’s man asked if Mary had read the letter and what reply he should take back. Maitland said that she was still sleeping. This was untrue, because just then she appeared at an open window, flanked by Mary Fleming and one of du Croc’s servants. For once caught in a blatant lie, the “Scottish Cecil” said, “No, I have not delivered the letter, and there will be no convenient opportunity to do so until after the assize.”
Bothwell clattered out of the courtyard on Darnley’s favorite courser, followed by four thousand retainers. Before leaving, he looked up at Mary’s window. She saw him, laughed and gave him a friendly toss of the head as a farewell. A “merry and lusty cheer” was raised at his departure. His company rode in a stately procession to the Tolbooth, preceded by a force of two hundred musketeers to clear the streets. When everyone had gone inside, the musketeers kept guard at the door, so that no one might enter but Bothwell’s supporters.
The court sat for over eight hours. The indictment was read, charging Bothwell with the explosion and Darnley’s murder, but no further evidence was submitted. The court’s debates were on procedural issues. Lennox was too afraid to appear. He had traveled as far as Linlithgow accompanied by three thousand retainers, but did not dare to continue when told he could bring only six of them into Edinburgh. His case was conducted in his absence by two professional advocates, who requested an adjournment for forty days. This motion was discussed at great length. Finally, it was denied and the court moved to a verdict. Bothwell was acquitted by the jurors, who then quickly sought to insure themselves against claims by Lennox for willful error. When this was agreed, Argyll and Huntly brought the proceedings to a close.
Bothwell was overjoyed. Immediately he posted a notice on the door of the Tolbooth, declaring himself cleared of the murder and challenging anyone who claimed otherwise to a duel. He then rode in triumph back to Holyrood. He supposed he was untouchable. He was to find out that he was not: his very acquittal would become a major source of grievance. The danger no longer came from Lennox, who took the hint and fled to England. It came from the other conspirators, who were not in Bothwell’s fortunate position. Morton, the most fiendish of the lords, had refused to attend the assize. He should have been one of the jurors, but said that although Darnley “had forgotten his part in respect of nature toward him, yet for that he was his kinsman he would rather pay the forfeit which was £100.”
Another villain swiftly recalculating the odds was Sir James Balfour. After Bothwell’s acquittal, he felt especially vulnerable. He was, after all, the man who had obtained the gunpowder and whose brother had offered Darnley the use of the Old Provost’s Lodging. He was now “minded with full determination to have had an assize for him[self] in like manner.” When Mary rejected his request, he decided to change sides and support those lords who were already beginning to mutter against Bothwell.
Balfour for the moment kept his own counsel. He had no wish for an outright confrontation with Bothwell. But he posted guards outside his house night and day. He also murdered one of his servants. The man had been at Kirk o’Field; he was about to break ranks and claim the reward and free pardon that Mary had offered to anyone who would inform on his accomplices. For this he was killed and his body buried secretly at night.
On April 16, Bothwell rode up the Canongate with Mary and the lords on his way to Parliament. He carried the scepter, leaving Argyll to bear the crown and the Earl of Crawford the sword of state. Everyone noticed that he refused to allow the bailiffs of Edinburgh their traditional stations as Mary’s guard. His influence was pervasive. On her short journey to the Tolbooth, she was escorted by a force of his own musketeers.
And Bothwell oversaw every aspect of the Parliament. He was determined to entrench his position. As a Protestant himself, he appealed first and foremost to his coreligionists, sponsoring an Act Concerning Religion that brought the Protestant Kirk formally under Mary’s protection after seven years of uncertainty. The act did more than maintain the religious status quo: it declared Protestantism to be the queen’s official religion, even if privately she worshiped as a Catholic. At this aspect of Bothwell’s ascendancy, not even Knox and his adherents in the General Assembly of the Kirk could complain.
Next Bothwell helped his co-conspirators to their bounty. Morton, Argyll and Huntly had all of their ancestral lands confirmed to them, and Argyll even received some of Darnley’s former property. Bothwell also helped himself. His grant of Dunbar Castle, received as his reward for assisting Mary to escape after the Rizzio plot, was ratified with all the privileges belonging to it. He then secured a confirmation and enlargement of his hereditary rights as Lord Admiral.
Lastly, a retaliatory Act Against the Makers and Setters Up of Placards and Bills was passed at his insistence, clearly devised to block further attempts by the supporters of the Lennoxes to blacken his name.
By the 19th, Parliament’s work was done. That night, Bothwell invited his fellow lords to a supper at Ainslie’s Tavern in Edinburgh, where he produced the draft of a bond he wanted them to sign. They were asked to confirm his innocence of Darnley’s murder, to declare their willingness to defend him from calumny, and finally to promise that if Mary should just “happen” to choose “James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell” as her future husband, they would support him.
The Ainslie’s Tavern Bond was couched as a petition to Mary:
. . . weighing and considering the time present, and how our sovereign the Queen’s Majesty is now destitute of a husband, in the which solitary state the commonwealth of this realm may not permit Her Highness to continue and endure, but at some time Her Highness in appearance may be inclined to yield unto a marriage . . . [it] may move Her Majesty so far to humble herself, as preferring one of her native-born subjects unto all foreign princes, to take to husband the said Earl . . .
Bothwell wanted everyone to sign, but had missed an important trick. He had helped his co-conspirators to their land grants less to thank them for their role in murdering Darnley than to bribe them to support his future marriage to Mary. Instead of waiting until the grants had been ratified by Parliament, Bothwell should have got the lords to sign his bond first. Not everyone was willing to sign afterward. Cecil, for once, got everything wrong. His “copy” of the bond said that all the lords had signed. Morton and Huntly did sign, but Argyll, Maitland and Atholl refused—in fact, Maitland and Atholl did not turn up at the rendezvous. As to Moray, he had already left the country and was on his way to France.
In any case, it is likely that nothing was signed on the night of the 19th. Next day, Bothwell sent his men to each of the lords individually to demand their signatures.*
When the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond was signed, Kirkcaldy of Grange warned his English allies that Mary was infatuated with Bothwell. She had said “that she cares not to lose France, England and her own country for him, and shall go with him to the world’s end in a white petticoat ere she leave him.”
The day of the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond saw an ugly scene at Holyrood. While Mary was watching, the soldiers in the great hall began to mutiny for lack of pay. Bothwell intervened, confronting their captain and seizing him by the throat. When the other soldiers came to the man’s rescue, Bothwell was forced to let go. He swore profanely, but promised to pay the men shortly. Mary always hated trouble, and had never experienced anything of this sort. She stepped forward, calling for her embroidered purse, which contained 400 French crowns. She proceeded to walk down the line from man to man, giving them 2 crowns each.
Whereas Mary sought to soothe conflict, Bothwell was overweening and puffed up with pride, behaving as if he were king already. He was never in love with Mary. His efforts to woo her were minimal. He dominated their relationship to the point of brutality, yet she accepted and even seemed to welcome her subordinate role. Mary could be strong and masterful, but it now looked as if she wanted to surrender all her worldly cares to Bothwell, who took the opportunity to usurp her power and authority at every turn.
Why this should have happened remains a mystery. Mary’s correspondence dried up in these crucial weeks. Later she gave her reasons. She said that her country, “being divided in factions as it is, cannot be contained in order unless our authority be assisted and set forth by the fortification of a man.” She needed Bothwell to deal with the sheer “insolence” of lords, who would otherwise constantly be in rebellion against her.
But in April 1567, she said nothing at all. The only letter she wrote was to the papal nuncio to Scotland, the Bishop of Mondovi, still loitering in Paris. “I beg you,” she said, “to speak well of me to His Holiness, and not to let anyone persuade him to the contrary concerning the devotion I have to die in the Catholic faith and for the good of his Church.”
Mary’s tone was faltering and evasive, reflecting her guilt and unease over her relationship with Bothwell. This was not least because the Act Concerning Religion was read in Catholic circles as a signal of her secret conversion to Protestantism. It was as though Mary were playing a game of chess, but not thinking more than one move ahead.
And then the pact between Bothwell and Morton suddenly disintegrated. Morton resented Bothwell’s good fortune, and Bothwell suspected Morton of plotting against his intended marriage. It was a classic falling-out among thieves. Although Morton was willing to sign the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond, he did so only on terms that severely restricted Bothwell’s powers and prevented him from ever being styled king. Argyll was also deeply offended by Bothwell’s presumption, telling his friends that he would soon leave Holyrood for good.
Bothwell had to act precipitately, before the rest of his supporters melted away. With Morton no longer to be relied on, and with Argyll plainly about to withdraw, the gamble was all now on his side. He had to make a move if his bid for power was to succeed, and that meant staging a coup.
On Monday, April 21, Mary rode to Stirling to fetch her son. To her dismay, the Earl of Mar refused to deliver him. A moderate politician with his finger on the pulse of the lords, he knew they would rebel if Bothwell got his hands on the heir to the throne. When Mary entered the castle, Mar would allow her to be accompanied by only two female attendants. To deny the monarch and her entourage access to her own fortress was considered treasonable by Mary, who threatened to punish Mar severely.
Two days later, she kissed her ten-month-old son goodbye. It was the last time she ever saw him. She rode to her birthplace at Linlithgow, where she spent the night. On the 24th, she rose early. Her thoughts were back in France, as it was the ninth anniversary of her wedding to the dauphin. Her plan was to return to Holyrood, but as she crossed the bridge over the River Almond, a few miles outside Edinburgh, Bothwell intercepted her. He took her forcibly to Dunbar, where she was “ravished.”
Bothwell was no better than Darnley. He believed that to assure his position, he must own Mary sexually, and if she would not yet marry him, he must conquer her.
His conduct was outrageous. To seize the person of an anointed queen was considered to be sacrilegious as well as treasonable, even in a country so lax in its interpretation of law and order as Scotland. A scandalized Sir James Melville claimed such an act could only have been collusive. One of Bothwell’s men was said to have admitted that it was done “with the queen’s own consent.” Drury, with his resolutely English point of view, took the same line: “The manner of the Earl Bothwell’s meeting now last with the queen which though it appeared to be forcible, yet it is known to be otherwise.” Kirkcaldy of Grange was most explicit: “She was minded to cause Bothwell to ravish her, to the end that she may the sooner end [his] marriage, which she promised before she caused [the] murder [of] her husband.”
But all three hated Bothwell and feared his malign influence on Mary. Kirkcaldy was already an official spokesman for the lords: his comment shows the direction their propaganda was taking. The price she would have to pay if she went ahead and married Bothwell was guilt by association in Darnley’s murder.
Some details of the “abduction” can be checked. When Bothwell unexpectedly jumped out and grabbed Mary’s horse by the bridle, she was startled and appalled. She instantly ordered her servants to ride to Edinburgh and summon a rescue party. She was definitely abducted against her will. The evidence later produced by the lords to “prove” otherwise would be doctored, which even Cecil could hardly have failed to notice when it was put in front of him. (The annotation of Cecil’s secretary on this “evidence” is discussed in chapter 26.)
But was she also raped? The difference is between a woman who was becoming a fool for love and one who was already a political pawn.
Mary was a woman of spirit: high-minded and fully conscious of her “grandeur” as a queen. It is entirely out of character that she would have married Bothwell if he had raped her. It is sometimes claimed that he was the first man who satisfied her sexually. That is quite possible, given the dauphin’s ill-health and puny physique and Darnley’s sheer selfishness. And yet even if it is true, it is a world apart from saying that Mary could ever have forgiven Bothwell for forcing her into bed against her will.
Despite the heavy pressure exerted on Mary by Bothwell’s use of the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond, she had not yet decided to marry him, because if she had already given her consent, there would have been no need for him to abduct her. It follows that the sequel at Dunbar was more critical than the kidnapping at Almond Bridge.
Mary stayed with Bothwell in his castle for twelve days and not just a single night. As he was not there the whole time, it cannot seriously be maintained that she was prevented from leaving if she had really wanted to escape. No one else at Dunbar was going to hold their queen a hostage if she had given them an outright command.
Mary and Bothwell were lodged in the state apartments, but they occupied separate rooms. As a chronicler sardonically remarked, there was “no great distance between the queen’s chamber and Bothwell’s.” But while the sexual innuendo is unambiguous, the rooms were indeed apart, so that Mary could have locked or barricaded the door to her own room if she had wanted Bothwell kept at bay. She could have shouted for help to her servants, but did not.*
The most likely sequence of events is that Mary was genuinely ambushed by Bothwell on the road at Almond Bridge. She was taken to Dunbar against her will. When they arrived, she was frightened and angry, but he protested his love to her and pleaded with her to marry him. If he had not already done so, he would also have shown her the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond, which appeared to be a petition from the lords indicating the unanimity of their support. We cannot know what she answered, but within one or two days, he had won her over. (We will see further evidence of Mary’s state of mind at Dunbar in chapters 22 and 26.)
It probably took two days. On April 26, Bothwell galloped at high speed to Edinburgh. There he arranged for his wife, Lady Jean Gordon, to lodge her suit for a divorce in the Protestant court. She filed her petition that very same day. Since her case was set out in graphic detail, it suggests that Bothwell had prepared the documents in advance. He was said to have enjoyed himself in the precincts of Haddington Abbey in broad daylight with the “bonny little black-haired” Bessie Crawford, his wife’s maid. He cheerfully confessed to his adultery.
On May 3, the judges issued a decree of divorce. Its effect was immediate, since Huntly had grudgingly been bought off and had already agreed to the terms of his sister’s financial settlement with Bothwell.
In parallel, Mary asked the Archbishop of St. Andrews to grant Bothwell an annulment in the Catholic court. Her request was made on April 27, and the decree followed on May 7, issued on the grounds that his marriage to Lady Jean had been invalid from the start for lack of a canonical dispensation.
If Huntly had so far condoned his sister’s divorce, he had his limits. When Bothwell returned to Dunbar, he discovered that Huntly and Mary had quarreled. Despite signing the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond, Huntly wavered in his support for Bothwell. By the end of May, his reluctance to take up his erstwhile brother-in-law’s cause in arms against the rebel lords would be unconcealed.
The lords had first gathered at Stirling three days after Mary’s abduction. Morton, Argyll, Atholl and Mar were the instigators, and after four days a new bond was signed. They called themselves the Confederate Lords, denying that they were in revolt but admitting they were in an association to free their queen from “captivity.” They pledged to strive by all possible means to set Mary “at liberty,” to “preserve the prince and the commonwealth” and to kill Bothwell, whom they now called “that barbarous tyrant” and “cruel murderer.”
Bothwell had simply become too powerful. His increasing monopoly of military power was especially feared. He had, claimed the Confederate Lords, “the strengths, munitions and men of war at his commandment.” While this was something of an exaggeration, it is true that he had seriously threatened the independent positions of these lords, and so stepped into Darnley’s shoes in a way quite different from the one he had imagined.
On May 6, Mary and Bothwell processed in triumph to Edinburgh. On their arrival at the gate called the West Port, the castle guns fired a salute and Bothwell dismounted. He then led Mary’s horse by the bridle as they slowly advanced up the hill to the castle. But the crowds were sullen. Mary and Bothwell were visibly displeased, and yet it is hard to see how they could have expected anything else. Mary’s popularity did not extend to marrying Bothwell, and his position as her protector was secured at a heavy price.
The same day, Knox’s assistant at St. Giles Kirk, John Craig, was asked to proclaim the banns of marriage between Mary and Bothwell. This he bravely refused to do. He demanded a royal writ, which arrived next day, in which Mary volunteered the information that she had been neither raped nor held as a prisoner by Bothwell.
She ordered Craig to make the proclamation. If, however, she had not been raped, as she maintained, she must have willingly consented to sleep with Bothwell at Dunbar, which meant she had committed adultery with a married man. She could not have it both ways.
Craig read the banns the following day, but only after calling heaven and earth to witness that he abhorred and detested the proposed marriage.
On May 9, Bothwell privately summoned Craig, demanding an explanation of his remarks. But far from apologizing, the fearless minister admonished Bothwell. “I laid to his charge,” he said shortly afterward, “the law of adultery, the ordinance of the Kirk, the law of ravishing, the suspicion of collusion between him and his wife, the sudden divorcement, and proclaiming within the space of four days, and last, the suspicion of the king’s death, which her marriage would confirm.”
On Sunday the 11th, Craig repeated his rebuke from the pulpit. Bothwell fell into a frenzy. He summoned the minister again, this time before the Privy Council, accusing him of exceeding his authority. But Craig answered, “The bounds of my commission, which was the word of God, good laws and natural reason, was able to prove whatsoever I spake.”
Here was a second Knox! But Bothwell, unlike Mary, refused to bandy words. He silenced the minister and ordered him to leave, threatening to hang him summarily with a cord.
Next day, Mary pardoned Bothwell for abducting her at Almond Bridge, then raised him high enough in the peerage for her to marry him. Heralds in their coat armor led the procession into the Abbey-Kirk at Holyrood. They were followed by the Earl of Rothes, who carried the sword of state, the Earl of Crawford carrying the scepter, and Huntly, who bore the crown. Mary, resplendent in her royal robes and seated on a gilded throne beneath her cloth of state, placed the ducal coronet on Bothwell’s head with her own hands. He was clad in a scarlet robe lined and edged with ermine, and was attended by Cockburn, Laird of Skirling, carrying a blue banner with Bothwell’s arms emblazoned on it. He was created Duke of Orkney and Lord of Shetland by a seemingly rapturous Mary. After the ceremony, four of his retainers were knighted.
But Bothwell’s meteoric rise was likely to be brief. The Confederate Lords were occupying Stirling, where they established a rival court in the name of Prince James. They staged a masque in which Bothwell was tried for Darnley’s murder, convicted and hanged. It might have gone unreported, but the poor boy playing Bothwell was hanged so realistically, he was almost suffocated and had to be frantically revived. Bothwell was beside himself with rage when he heard of the masque. He swore a foul oath and threatened to be revenged on the rebel lords.
On Wednesday the 14th, the marriage contract was signed. It justified the wedding on the grounds that Mary was a young widow, “apt and able to procreate and bring forth more children” to maintain the dynasty, who had been petitioned and advised by the “most part of her nobility” to marry. It quoted from the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond, justifying Mary’s decision to “so far humble herself” as to marry one of her subjects. It noted that Bothwell had been recommended to her by the nobles, and claimed that Mary had “graciously accorded” to their petition.
No longer did Mary seek advice on her marriage from France, Spain or England. Her focus had narrowed to her own realm, and she seemed happy to be known as Bothwell’s wife and to accept that the Guise family looked down on her for it.
The next morning, Mary and Bothwell were married in the great hall at Holyrood by Protestant rites. Du Croc, the French ambassador, organized an official boycott, which even some of those attending Bothwell’s creation as Duke of Orkney joined in. The ceremony was thinly attended. There were few witnesses beyond the four Maries and Mary’s and Bothwell’s own servants.
Nevertheless this was no tawdry occasion. The element of spectacle was provided by Mary herself. She wore the deuil, as for her marriage to Darnley, yet these were no ordinary widow’s weeds. Her dressmakers and embroiderers must have been working furiously night and day for a week.
She had married Darnley in white, but this time she wore a magnificent flowing gown of black patterned velvet in the Italian style, richly embroidered with gold strapwork and gold and silver thread. Her dress was so eye-catching, it hardly seemed to be a mourning dress at all.
She was in the prime of life. She was taller than Bothwell, and they must have looked a slightly odd couple, she with her exceptional height and thin waist, he with his stocky build, mustache and ruddy complexion. It was said that he had never looked more handsome, and yet his language at supper on the eve of the wedding was so profane that Sir James Melville walked away in disgust.
The service was conducted by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, one of Bothwell’s relatives. First he preached a sermon on a text from Genesis: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Next he declared the bridegroom’s repentance for his former sins and wicked life, and affirmed his resolve to make amends and conform to the discipline of the Kirk. Finally, the bride and groom were “handfasted.” This may well have been done without an exchange of rings, as the Protestants objected to the use of the wedding ring, which they considered to be a “popish” superstition.
When Mary returned to her apartments, she changed into another new gown, this time of shimmering yellow silk. She did not get the chance to show it off. Unlike at her previous marriages, there was to be no “balling, dancing and banqueting,” no cries of “Largesse” from heralds as they showered money on the guests, because there was no wedding banquet or masque, the most obvious sign that the ceremony had been hastily arranged.
Only three months and five days had passed since Darnley was murdered. Only fifteen months had passed since Bothwell and Lady Jean Gordon had been married with the “advice and express counsel” of Mary, who had signed their marriage contract, paid for the reception and presented the bride with her wedding dress.
While Bothwell and his servants were moving into Darnley’s old apartments at Holyrood, the Confederate Lords were mustering their forces at Stirling. If what had happened in the past few months was not sensational enough, the most breathtaking and dramatic events of Mary’s life were about to unfold.