22

Mary’s Story

While Mary was imprisoned in Lochleven, a black legend was spun. ‘Moral turpitude’ was the charge levelled against her. She was accused of adultery and murder and said to be unfit to rule. The Confederate Lords claimed that she and Bothwell had enjoyed passionate sex for months before Darnley was killed. They said the Queen and her lover had jointly planned the explosion at Kirk o’Field, and that when Darnley was dead she had organized a fake kidnapping, and even an alleged rape, to cloak her brazen designs to marry him.

This story is not Mary’s. History is written by the winners; and after her incarceration, she was to be a spectacular loser. The villainy and cunning of the Lords is shown by their willingness to accuse her of the crimes they had themselves committed, rewriting history to make their version the ‘official’ story to the exclusion of others.

When the Lords wove their damning fiction, Mary’s version of history was forgotten. What may come as a total surprise is that her story – told in her own words – can be retrieved. She has rarely been allowed to tell it. Few biographers have given it more than a brief mention, and the documents recording it have not been quoted at full length since 1845 – perhaps because her story is so different from the supposedly ‘official’ version, it was not thought worthy of examination.

Shortly after marrying Bothwell, Mary chose two ambassadors to put her case to her royal neighbours. She sent William Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, to Paris, and Robert Melville to London, to justify and explain her recent actions. She herself gave them their instructions, dictated to her secretaries and handed to the ambassadors as briefing notes. This was the usual way diplomatic steer was provided, and the documents reflect Mary’s own defence of her position. She had spoken in Scots as she almost always did on these occasions. Sometimes breathless, or containing pendant clauses that were typical of her style under pressure, the documents set out her version of the story. Although divergent in focus, their overall line is consistent.

In Melville’s instructions, Mary stressed the political advantages of her marriage. She played on the factions and plots that had frustrated her efforts to rule, arguing that only a native-born Scot could discipline the nobles successfully. She began by making excuses to Elizabeth for the unseemly haste of her marriage:

After that you have presented our most hearty commendations to our said dearest sister, you shall expound and declare unto her the true occasions which has moved us to take the Duke of Orkneyfn1 to husband, and therewithal make our excuse for that we so suddenly proceeded to the consummation of our marriage, not making our dearest sister advertisement, nor asking her advice and counsel therein.

Mary was initially convincing in her claims. Her statements about the unruly factionalism of the Scottish Lords are far from exaggerated:

For the first, you shall ground you upon the condition and state of us and our realm, declaring how we were destitute of a husband, our realm not thoroughly purged of the factions and conspiracies that of long time have continued therein. These, occurring so frequently, had already in a manner so wearied and broken us that by ourself we were not able of any long continuance to sustain the pains and labour in our own person that were requisite for repressing of the insolence and sedition of our rebellious subjects. They are, as is known, a people as factious amongst themselves and as factious towards the ruler as any other nation in Europe. For their satisfaction, which could not suffer us long to continue in the state of widowhood, it behoved us, moved by their prayers and requests,fn2 to yield unto one marriage or another.

Where Mary began to delude herself was in arguing that her nobles had supported her marriage to Bothwell and petitioned her to marry him as soon as possible without looking any further for a husband:

Seeing no advantage to follow by protracting of time, but as on the one part they were very well content, yea and earnestly urged us that we should without delay proceed to our marriage, even so on the other side, we perceived by their meaning how unwilling they were that we should choose any foreign husband, but rather [we should] so far humble ourself to be content with some native-born subject of our own for that place, someone acquainted with their traditions and the laws and customs of our realm. For indeed we ourself have had proof and experience of their revolts, when as in the case of our foreign marriagefn3 they have supposed that they would be severely handled by foreigners.

Mary may well have been correct that the Lords would have rejected the idea of a foreign marriage, but she inflated the significance of the Ainslie’s Tavern bond to claim she had all along been advised to marry Bothwell. Instead of recognizing that it was she who had chosen him, she tried to cast herself as a political pawn in the hands of the noble factions. She also glossed over Bothwell’s true character:

When, therefore, in the eyes and opinion of our people, one of our own subjects was judged most fitting both for us and them, our whole nobility being lately assembled at our Parliament were best content that the Duke of Orkney, then Earl of Bothwell, should be promoted to that place, if so were our pleasure. To that effect they subscribed a letterfn4 with all their hands before or ever we agreed to take him to our husband or that he opened his mind to us in that behalf, whereby we were moved to make our choice of him, as one whose wisdom, gallantry and other good qualities might be well compared or rather preferred to any other nobleman in our realm, and his ancestry honourable and ancient. But indeed his faithful and upright service ever since he came to man’s estate spent and bestowed for us and in our cause, for setting forth our authority whosoever gainsaid it, was no small motive in our consent in making of our choice. This was the rather because none, or very few of all the nobles, are able in that point to compare with him, seeing at some time or other, the most part of them had left or abandoned us, he alone excepted.

Mary protested too much. She pretended that she had no idea of Elizabeth’s likely hostility to Bothwell. She did not even seem to remember her duelling with her ‘sister Queen’ two years before over her choice of Darnley as a husband:

Concerning all these matters, you shall pray and desire her heartily to excuse us, for as we never meant to join in marriage with any that we believed she was not content with, so at this present time, we trust she will not only continue her accustomed favour and mutual intelligence with us, but also, for our respect, will extend her friendship to our husband with whom we are inseparably joined, and to bear him and us no less goodwill than if all had proceeded to this hour with the knowledge and advice of our dearest sister, whom you shall assure to find him ready to do her all the honour and service that she can require of him.

Mary then turned to the most dangerous ground. She had to deal with the fact that Elizabeth had written to her immediately after Darnley’s death, charging her to punish his murderers without delay, sparing no one, not even ‘him whom you have nearest to you’, meaning Bothwell ‘if he was involved’:

In case the Queen our good sister shall think strangely of our marriage with the Duke of Orkney by reason he was suspected and accused of the odious violence committed on the person of the King our late husband, and because she had written to ourself somewhat in that behalf before, it is true that she wrote to us and we sent her an answer, the copy whereof we have enclosed herewith. It will instruct you sufficiently in what you shall answer to this objection in case you should be asked about it.

Mary wished Melville to answer such charges fully. To that end, she asked him to refer to a letter she had belatedly sent to Elizabeth addressing this very point. A copy of the letter was included in his diplomatic brief, and Mary drew his attention to the key passage:fn5

I lament more highly the tragedy of my husband’s death more than any other of my subjects can do; and if they had allowed, and if I had been permitted to use my authority untroubled by my subjects, I had punished the committers thereof … I had never knowledge, art nor part thereof, nor none of my subjects did declare unto me that they who are now holden culpable and principal executors thereof were the principal authors and committers of the same: which if they had done, assuredly I would not have proceeded as I did so far. I suppose I did nothing in that matter but by the advice of the nobility of the realm.

If they allege that my marriage with the Earl of Bothwell will be taken as a presumption against me, I never condescended thereto until the time the greatest part of the nobility had cleansedfn6 him by an assize and the same ratified in Parliament, and they had given their plain consent unto him for my marriage, and solicited and persuaded me thereto, as their handwriting,fn7 which was shown to me, will testify.

Mary had been forced into a corner. To say that she had never been informed that Bothwell was one of those accused of Darnley’s murder would be palpably untrue. Not only had Lennox named Bothwell as the chief suspect in a letter to Mary, the placards affixed to the walls and doors of the Tolbooth had also accused him. The whole force of her statement depends on her use of the words ‘principal authors and committers’. Her argument was that Bothwell may well have been an accessory to the murder, but she had not been made aware of his role at the time as Morton’s chief ally in devising the plot. We already know that she had held Moray to be the arch-conspirator, a view reinforced by his decision to seek voluntary exile abroad.

Lastly, Mary tried to deal with the inconvenient fact that Bothwell had been a married man when she had consented to marry him:

It may be that our good sister shall allege our present marriage not to be lawful insofar as the Duke our husband was coupled to a wife before, who yet lives. You shall answer that by the laws received within our realm and often times practised as is generally known, his former marriage was dissolved and the process of divorce orderly led for resolute causes of consanguinity and others before our marriage with him. And so we might lawfully consummate the same, for it is no new thing neither in Scotland nor England.

The Bishop of Dunblane’s instructions were angled differently, offering rationales more likely to sway the French. Mary still defended her marriage on political grounds, but focused on Bothwell’s character and role as Queen’s protector:

First, you shall excuse us to the King, the Queen Mother, our uncle, and others our friends, in that the consummation of our marriage is brought to their ears by other means, before that by any message from ourself they have been made participant of our intention therein; which excuse must be chiefly grounded upon the true story and report of the Duke of Orkney, his behaviour and proceedings towards us before and until this time that we have been made content to take him to our husband …

Mary settled down for the long haul. She went right back to the start of Bothwell’s career and his role as her mother’s defender:

Beginning from his very youth and first entrance to this realm immediately after the death of his father, who was one of the first earls of the realm and one of the foremost in reputation by reason of his nobility and ancestry, and of the great offices which are his by inheritance. At which time the Queen our motherfn8 being then regent of our realm, he dedicated his whole service to her in our name with such devotion and earnestness, that albeit soon thereafter, the most part of the nobility, almost all of the burghsfn9, and so consequently in a manner the whole substance of the realm, made a revolt from her authority under colour of religion; yet swerved he never from our obedience.

Mary went into almost superfluous detail as to how Bothwell had stolen the first instalment of gold sent covertly by Cecil to aid the Lords of the Congregation in their revolt. Then, she turned to his service since her own return to Scotland six years before, glossing over his many misdemeanours and quarrels with Moray and Arran, but stressing his loyalty and resourcefulness:

After our return to Scotland, he gave his whole study to the setting forth of our authority and to employ his person to suppress the insolence of the rebellious subjects inhabiting the counties lying west of the borders of England, and within a short time brought them to a perfect quietness …

But as envy ever follows virtue, and this country is of itself somewhat subject to factions, othersfn10 began to dislike his proceedings. They went about so far by bad reports and by misconstruing his doings to put him out of our good grace, that at length – upon colours invented by his evil-willers, for satisfying of them that might not abide his advancement and avoiding of further contention, which might have brought the whole realm in trouble – we were compelled to put him in prison.

Out of the which escaping … he passed out of the realm towards France, and there remained until about two years ago, when the same persons who were before the instruments of his trouble began to forget their duty towards ourself, putting themselves in arms,fn11 [and] displaying open banners against our person.

Mary then turned to Bothwell’s service during the Chase-about Raid:

At which time by our commandment he was called home and immediately restored to his former charge of lieutenant-general. Our authority prospered so well in his hands that suddenly our whole rebels were constrained to flee the realm and remain in England, until some of themfn12 upon submission and humble suit were reconciled to us.

Step by step, Mary drew closer to recent events. She said she would skip over the Rizzio plot on the grounds that her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was already fully aware of it. But she could not fail to mention Bothwell’s role in her daring escape at midnight from Holyrood:

Yet it is worthy of remembrance with what dexterity he [Bothwell] escaped from the hands of those who at that time detained our person captive, and how suddenly by his providence not only were we delivered out of the prison,fn13 but also that whole company of conspirators were dissolved and we recovered our former obedience. Indeed we must confess that service done at that time to have been so acceptable to us that we could never to this hour forget it. He has ever since then prosecuted with the like diligence in all that might content us, so that we could not wish for more fidelity nor good behaviour than we have always found in him.

Mary then attempted to explain her conduct after Darnley’s assassination. Her remarks made it clear she knew she had married in haste and Bothwell’s behaviour was unworthy. Neither his gallantry and bravado, nor his unswerving loyalty, justified his dubious methods of courtship:

Until of late, since the decease of the King our husband, when as his ambitions began to be higher, so find we his proceedings somewhat strange. Albeit now since we are so far proceeded with him we must interpret all things to the best, yet have we been highly offended. First, with his presumption, who thought we could not sufficiently reward him unless we should give ourself to him [in marriage] for the recompense of his service. Next, for his practices and secret means, and at length the plain attempting by force to have us in his puissance,fn14 for fear to be disappointed of his purpose.

Mary’s retrospective characterization of Bothwell was forthright:

His deportment in this behalf may serve for an example, how cunningly men can cover their designs when they have any great enterprise in head until they have brought their purpose to pass. We thought his continuance in the awaiting upon us and readiness to fulfil all our commandments, had proceeded only upon the acknowledging of his duty, being our born subject, without further hidden respect. This moved us to make him the better visage, thinking that the same was but an ordinary countenance to such noblemen as we found affectionate to our service, and never supposing that it should encourage him or give him boldness to look for any extraordinary favour at our hands.

Mary’s side of the story was that she had known nothing of the Ainslie’s Tavern bond before Bothwell had secretly procured it. She claimed he had extracted the Lords’ signatures deceitfully, pretending she had already sanctioned the bond and had thus agreed to marry him:

And in the meantime, he went about by practising with the Lords secretly to make them his friends, and to procure their consent to the furtherance of his intents. And [he] so far proceeded by these means with them, before that ever the same came to our knowledge, that our whole estates being here assembled in Parliament, he obtained a writing subscribed with all their hands, wherein they not only granted their consent to our marriage with him, but also obliged themselves to set him forward thereto with their lives and goods, and to be enemies to all who would disturb or impede the same. This bond he obtained by giving them to understand that we were content therewith.

As soon as Bothwell had the Ainslie bond in his possession, he began to hint at a possible marriage, but Mary rejected his suit:

And the same [bond] being once obtained, he began afar off to reveal his intentions to us and to assay if he might by humble suit purchase our goodwill. But finding our answer nothing corresponding to his desire and casting before his eyes all doubts that usually men use to resolve with themselves in similar enterprises … he resolved with himself to follow forth his good fortune.

Mary denied that her abduction at Almond bridge had been collusive. She had known nothing about it until she was kidnapped:

He suffered not the matter long to sleep, but within four days thereafter, finding opportunity by reason we were passed secretly towards Stirling to visit the Prince our dearest son, in our returning he awaited us by the way, accompanied with a great force, and led us with all diligence to Dunbar.

In what part we took that manner of dealing, but specially how strange we find it of him of whom we doubted less than of any subject we had, is easy to be imagined.

Mary claimed to have been surprised and shocked by her abduction. Once she had reached Dunbar, she had censured Bothwell for his unseemly behaviour, but he had paid court to her and won her over:

Being there, we reproached him on account of the honour he had to be so esteemed of us, the favour we had always shown him, his ingratitude, with all other remonstrances which might serve to rid us out of his hands.

Albeit we found his doings rude, yet were his answer and words but gentle: that he would honour and serve us and no wise offend us. He asked pardon of the boldness he had used … and there began to make us a discourse of his whole life, how unfortunate he had been to find men his enemies whom he had never offended; how their malice never ceased to assault him at all occasions, albeit unjustly; what calumnies had they spread upon him touching the odious violence perpetrated on the person of the King our late husband.

Bothwell had then produced his trump card – the Ainslie’s Tavern bond:

And when he saw us like to reject all his suit and offers, in the end he showed us how far he was proceeded with our whole nobility, and what they had promised him in their own handwritings …

In the end, when we saw no hope to be rid of him, never man in Scotland once making an effort to procure our deliverance, for that it might appear by their handwritings and silence at that time, that he had won them all, we were compelled to mitigate our displeasure, and began to think upon that he propounded. And then [we] were content to lay before our eyes the service he had done in times past, the offer of his continuance hereafter, how unwilling our people are to receive a foreigner unacquainted with their laws and customs, that they would not allow us long to remain unmarried …

Mary’s account of her twelve-day stay at Dunbar is deeply disingenuous. She had been a fool for love. She knew she had done wrong in sleeping with a married man, and her excuse that no one had made the effort to rescue her can be countered by the fact that she made no attempt whatever to escape, even when Bothwell was away in Edinburgh encouraging his wife, Lady Jean Gordon, to file her divorce petition.

Against this, her insistence that she had married Bothwell to seal his role as Queen’s protector is persuasive. She could make a strong case for deploying him as an instrument against the noble factions, even if his treatment of her as a woman had bruised her dignity and sense of honour. Her explanation is that she felt she had no other option, wearied and broken as she had become by the relentless infighting of the Lords and the threat of bloodshed:

[Finally, we realized] that this realm, 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, who must take pain upon his person in the execution of justice and suppressing of their insolence that would rebel, the travail whereof we may no longer sustain in our own person, being already wearied and almost broken with the frequent uproars and rebellions raised against us since we returned to Scotland …

After he had by this means and many others brought us on the way to his intent, he partly extorted and partly obtained our promise to take him to our husband. And yet not content therewith, fearing ever some alterations, he would not be satisfied with all the just reasons we could allege to have the consummation of the marriage delayed as had been most reasonable …

But as by his act of bravado in the beginning he had won the first point, so ceased he never until by persuasions and importunate suit, accompanied none the less with force, he had finally driven us to end the work begun at such time and in such form as he thought might best serve his turn. We cannot dissemble that he has used us otherwise than we would have wished or yet have deserved at his hand …

Mary always refused to acknowledge the gusto with which she had raced into her third marriage. When it had quickly turned sour, she would be willing to confess that Bothwell had treated her brutally. And yet, she had made her choice and would stick by it. Even while enumerating his faults, she still wrote of him in the way she really wished him to be:

Now since it is passed and cannot be brought back again, we will make the best of it, and it must be thought, as it is in effect, that he is our husband whom we will both love and honour, so that all that profess themselves to be our friends must profess the like friendship towards him who is inseparably joined with us. And albeit he has in some points or ceremonies behaved imprudently, we are content to impute this to his affection towards us.

A single sentence in the Bishop’s instructions would encapsulate Mary’s understanding of her plight: ‘We cannot dissemble that he has used us otherwise than we would have wished or yet have deserved at his hand.’ This realization must, on deeper reflection, have torn her apart in her prison at Lochleven, where a month or so after her arrival she would miscarry twins, her issue by Bothwell.

Mary’s diplomatic efforts were doomed to failure. When the Bishop reached Paris, he was coolly received. The same was true of Melville’s mission to London: in fact by the time the ambassador presented himself to Elizabeth, Bothwell had already fled from Carberry Hill, making the visit irrelevant.

But if Mary’s story fell into oblivion, Elizabeth was utterly scandalized that a fellow ruler had been imprisoned in an island fortress by her rebellious Lords. She could not quite bring herself yet to write to Mary in her own hand, but she dictated her a letter in which she threw her weight behind her fellow monarch, cousin, and close kinswoman. On the same day, she sent another to the Lords expressing her grief and anger at what they had done.

The difference in the approaches of Elizabeth and her chief minister over how to deal with Mary had never been more striking. Elizabeth sent Sir Nicholas Throckmorton to Scotland as her crisis manager. He, like his former protégé, Leicester, and quite unlike Cecil, had become one of Mary’s lesser champions. He had even become a supporter of her claim to the English succession under the right conditions and had been one of those backing Elizabeth’s offer to negotiate a new ‘treaty of perpetual amity’ that would replace the offending clauses of the treaty of Edinburgh after Mary’s illness at Jedburgh.

Throckmorton was not welcome in Scotland. From the rebel Lords’ standpoint, he had to be neutralized. For this, they turned to Cecil, who wrote a memo of instructions for Throckmorton that greatly elaborated and substantially contradicted Elizabeth’s own. Whereas Elizabeth wanted Mary restored to the throne, Cecil laid down the only terms on which she might be freed. She was to be stripped of her authority, which would be vested in a council of nobles. She might be styled Queen, but only nominally. In all other respects, Cecil planned to restore the quasi-republican ‘States of Scotland’ that had governed after the deposition of Mary’s mother during the Lords’ first revolt.

At the end of the memo, Cecil jotted down these words: ‘Athalia interempta per Joas[h] regem’ – ‘Athaliafn15 was killed so that Joash could be King’. It is one of the most revealing comments he ever made. A quotation from the Second Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament, it is the very same text that Knox used to justify the use of armed resistance against ‘idolatrous’ female rulers. Athalia was the perfect exemplar. She (like Mary) ruled in person as Queen of Israel for six years, but because of her moral turpitude, the high priest joined with the nobles to depose and kill her along with her idol-worshipping acolytes. The nobles made a covenant with God, installing the young Prince Joash, then seven years old (for whom read Mary’s own son, James VI, then one year old), in her place. Athalia was murdered, and the nobles ruled in the name of King Joash until he reached the age of majority, exactly as successive regents and their allies would attempt to rule in Scotland.

When Cecil made that jotting, he had seen the hand of God in history. He read the biblical text (as Knox had done) as a prophecy applying to Mary. His note proves that regicide was already in his sights. For Cecil, the spider weaving his web in London, it was but the shortest of steps from a round tower at Lochleven to a scaffold draped in black at Fotheringhay. His mantra had always been Elizabeth’s ‘safety’, and he had regarded Mary as the instigator and intended beneficiary of an international Catholic conspiracy ever since her ushers had cried ‘Make way for the Queen of England’ as she walked to chapel with the Dauphin.

Throckmorton was caught squarely between the conflicting policies of Elizabeth and Cecil. As he confided to the Earl of Bedford, ‘I never was in so busy and dangerous a legation in my life.’ The Lords endlessly told him that Mary ‘will not consent by any persuasion to abandon the Lord Bothwell for her husband, but avoweth constantly that she will live and die with him’. But he was never allowed to see her and hear this for himself, nor was she allowed to see him. What the Lords said to Throckmorton was what they (and Cecil) wanted Elizabeth to hear. They several times promised that, if Mary would divorce Bothwell, she might be restored to her throne. But this was less a serious proposal than a delaying tactic to appease Elizabeth, who was becoming more and more impatient and threatening to go to war to free Mary from her prison. All along, Morton and his staunchest ally Lord Lindsay, Bothwell’s challenger, were set on deposing Mary or forcing her to abdicate.

On 24 July 1567, exactly three months after her abduction by Bothwell, Mary was lying on her bed, weak and despairing after her miscarriage, when she heard footsteps on the stairs of her tower. In through the door burst Lindsay with a delegation from the Lords. Three documents were put before her. One declared that she was so exhausted in body, mind, and spirit by the responsibilities of government that she could no longer continue, and so would abdicate in favour of her son, whose coronation she authorized. By the second document, she was to appoint Moray, now hastening home from France, to be regent until Prince James reached the age of majority. By the third, she nominated Morton and others to serve as interim regents until Moray took up the reins of power.

At first, Mary refused to sign. Seeing her hesitate, Lindsay ordered her to rise from her bed and make ready to depart, swearing that she should be marooned for life on an island in the middle of the sea, or else thrown into the loch. Finally, he swore a great oath and threatened to cut her throat.

Mary had no choice; she cannot have known of Elizabeth’s threat to go to war to defend her. She was fighting back the tears. She put her signature on each of the papers, but managed to blurt out, ‘When God shall set me at liberty again, I shall not abide these, for it is done against my will.’

Five days later, the Lords crowned Prince James in the parish church at Stirling. It was the worst attended coronation in Scottish history. Morton swore the one-year-old child’s coronation oath for him, and Knox preached the sermon. Thereafter, a spectacle was laid on. The Lords staged over a thousand bonfires in the towns and burghs, and in Edinburgh the castle guns fired a salute. But the people were sullen. ‘It appeared’, Throckmorton noted wryly, ‘they rejoiced more at the inauguration of the new Prince than they did sorrow at the deprivation of their Queen.’ But their reaction to the coronation had been so muted, it was clear that they were longing for some stability, and outside Edinburgh there was almost no support for the new regime.

When Elizabeth heard of Mary’s forced abdication, she sent at once for Cecil. He got the message at five o’clock in the afternoon, and when he arrived was harangued (as he informed Throckmorton) in a ‘great offensive speech’ on the grounds that he had failed to do anything for Mary. Elizabeth had rarely been so angry. She was almost speechless with rage. Cecil answered, he said, ‘as warily as I could’, but to no avail. Elizabeth was so incensed, she once more threatened to declare war on the Scots. She refused all Cecil’s protests and counter-arguments. It was one of their classic rows, and it turned on the nature and power of monarchy. Mary was an anointed Queen. She was accountable to God alone. Elizabeth wanted it clearly to be demonstrated that no such example as this could be tolerated. She particularly had her own English subjects in mind. Now it was she and not Mary who was brooding over the potential for a ‘domino’ effect. Cecil artfully replied that a declaration of war might precipitate what Elizabeth most feared – Mary’s assassination at dead of night. He was muddying the waters to help his Scottish allies, because he knew that if time were allowed to pass, Elizabeth’s anger would subside. He had the cheek to joke later that it usually took three to six weeks.

Mary was kept in even stricter confinement after her abdication than before. Moray had returned to Edinburgh on 11 August, and when he visited his sister a few days later, she reproached him for her treatment, weeping bitterly. Far from showing any sympathy or affection for her, he was as cold and calculating as ever, scolding her and giving her a lecture on good government. They talked until one o’clock in the morning, by which time she was exhausted.

Next day, they continued where they left off. Moray was gentler now, but out of cunning rather than kindness. His purpose was clear. He wanted his sister to promise not to try to escape or seek aid from England or France. He used every technique of psychological intimidation to induce a sense of gratitude in her, alternately threatening and comforting her, and promising to mitigate the worst plans of Lindsay and his friends if she co-operated, even though they were really acting on his behalf.

Moray got what he wanted. Mary ‘took him in her arms and kissed him, and showed herself very well satisfied, requiring him in any ways not to refuse the regency of the realm, but to accept it at her desire’. Such was the devious way in which her brother won her acquiescence to what she had previously agreed only under duress. On 22 August, Moray was proclaimed regent. He had led the Lords who deposed Mary’s mother eight years before, and now he had done it again. But the fight was far from over.

When Mary recovered from the trauma of her miscarriage and abdication and started to take stock, she knew she had been cheated. She was determined to recover her honour and her throne. She bided her time, resting, and eating properly. She passed the days in sewing and embroidery, which she loved. She played cards. She even danced to the fiddle and the bagpipes. She had managed to obtain a small domestic staff: five or six ladies, four or five gentlewomen, a doctor, a cook, and two chamber servants, one of whom was French. Mary Seton, the most faithful of the four Maries, was still continually by her side.

Mary had put on weight through lack of exercise, but her wits were as sharp as ever. She began to plan her escape. She sent a ring to Mary Fleming, now the wife of Maitland, himself wavering in his support for the Lords. She also contacted Mary Livingston, another of the four Maries, who had married John Sempill, the younger son of the Catholic Lord Sempill. Although Moray had won over Lord Sempill to his cause by bribery, his son was loyal to Mary and was at the centre of an unsuccessful plan to rescue her by assaulting the castle by night.

Mary then turned to George Douglas, nicknamed ‘Pretty Geordie’, the dashing and handsome younger brother of the Laird of Lochleven. Nine years younger than Mary, he fell in love with her and offered to serve her. He had been a witness of her forced abdication and was determined to help her, sending her secret messages through her gentlewomen for which he was expelled from the castle by Moray and the Laird and forbidden to return.

But George’s loyalty and Mary’s courage and ingenuity overcame such obstacles. On 25 March 1568, nine months after Mary had first been imprisoned at Lochleven, her first serious attempt to escape in the disguise of a laundress failed when she was recognized by one of the boatmen half-way across the loch. He tried to snatch at her muffler to see her face better, and when she threw up her hands, he noticed that they were ‘very fair and white’, the hands of a Queen, not a washerwoman. He turned the boat back to the castle, but promised Mary not to tell the Laird about her madcap scheme.

A plot was then hatched in which young Willie Douglas, a page in the castle known as ‘Little Willie’ or the ‘orphan Willie’ – he was possibly an illegitimate son of Sir William Douglas, the Laird of Lochleven – agreed to row Mary across the loch. Willie was barely sixteen, but was more than willing to help rescue the charismatic Queen. He joined forces with George Douglas, who waited patiently at Kinross on the mainland with Lord Seton and a small force.

On the afternoon of Sunday, 2 May, while the sun was high in the sky and the Douglas family were enjoying their May Day weekend, Willie Douglas sabotaged all the boats moored beside the castle jetty except one. Then, shortly after seven o’clock, when the Laird and his family were at supper, he stealthily made off with the key of the main gate to the castle which the Laird had left on the table. He signalled to Mary’s tower and she came down to the courtyard. She had exchanged clothes with Mary Seton, who stayed behind to impersonate her in case the alarm was raised.

After they passed through the main gate, Willie locked it behind him and threw the key into the mouth of a nearby cannon. He helped Mary into the boat and rowed her across the loch. They were met as they landed by George Douglas, who had stolen the Laird of Lochleven’s best horses, conveniently stabled on the mainland. Mary rode off at a gallop through Fife to North Queensferry, where she crossed the Firth of Forth. When she arrived on the southern shore, she was escorted to Niddrie, one of Lord Seton’s fortresses situated between Edinburgh and Linlithgow, where she rested for the night.

After almost eleven months of captivity, Mary was free again. She was exultant, enjoying every moment of the ride and the late spring evening. At Niddrie, she scribbled several hasty letters to her friends. She also sent a messenger to Dunbar with orders to fortify the castle in her name.

Early next day, Mary rode west to Hamilton, where her supporters rallied to her and she established a temporary court. Moray was in Glasgow when he heard the news of her escape. The Lords were at first incredulous; then, seeing the danger, immediately ordered their forces to muster at Glasgow.

Mary was reluctant to engage in a battle. The memory of Carberry Hill was too painful. But she was still popular. The Lords’ propaganda had been effective only as long as she was in their clutches. Within a week, six thousand men rallied to her cause. Huntly, Seton, and the Hamiltons, the family of Châtelherault, were beside her. They urged her to fight, and she agreed. ‘By battle let us try it’, she declared. Already several of the Lords were defecting from Moray and joining her camp. They included Argyll, who had been shocked by his Queen’s deposition but had not dared to oppose it alone.

When Mary rode towards Dumbarton at the head of her army, her forces outnumbered Moray’s by a third. When the two armies clashed at Langside, just outside Glasgow, on the morning of Thursday, 13 May, the result appeared to be a foregone conclusion. It was not. Moray threw all he could into his attacks. He knew everything turned on this day. Mary now hated her half-brother even more than Morton for his role in her downfall. She was determined to be avenged. She would never forgive him for the way he had played on her fears and emotions at Lochleven. She had been thinking it over repeatedly as she feigned resignation at her captivity. It was plain to her that, all along, he had wanted her throne for himself. If the victory was hers, Moray would be put on trial for treason.

The result was a crushing defeat for Mary. The battle got off to a disastrous start. Argyll had always suffered from a recurrent illness called ‘the stone’ – an omnibus term in the sixteenth century for a variety of internal ailments. Now he collapsed from a sudden fit, throwing Mary’s command structure into disarray. On Moray’s side, by contrast, Kirkcaldy of Grange organized a brilliant ambush of her vanguard as it passed along a narrow lane. The fighting lasted only three-quarters of an hour. Staring defeat in the face from her vantage-point on a nearby hill, Mary fled to Dumfries, riding sixty miles at a stretch. After that, she took cover during the day and emerged only at night, such was her terror of falling again into her brother’s hands.

Mary covered the last thirty miles to Dundrennan in Galloway at night. She hid herself in the Abbey, from where she wrote an urgent appeal for aid to Elizabeth, enclosing the diamond ring that her ‘sister Queen’ had sent her in 1563 as a token of love and friendship to be redeemed. What she could not know was that, even as she put the finishing touches to her letter, Elizabeth was gloating over the most precious of Mary’s pearls, plundered from the royal cabinet at Holyrood, and sold to her by Moray.

Mary did not wait for Elizabeth’s reply. She was too afraid. On the 16th, she embarked on a fishing boat to cross the Solway Firth, landing in England at about seven o’clock in the evening close to Workington in Cumberland, about thirty miles from Carlisle. At dawn, she scribbled a second letter to Elizabeth. She asked to see her cousin, and to have her aid and support in recovering her throne and defeating her rebels. She had expected to gather fresh troops and return shortly to Scotland. But her decision to cross the border was a catastrophic mistake. It precipitated a crisis in England, where it was feared that the northern and still overwhelmingly Catholic counties would rise in her support, leading to civil war in both countries.

Elizabeth was still acutely sympathetic to Mary. What Moray and the rebel Lords had done was unconscionable. They had imprisoned and deposed an anointed Queen, a crime against God that was no less heinous than Darnley’s assassination, perhaps more so from a monarch’s point of view. But Cecil got there first. He saw instantly the danger posed by Mary’s unexpected arrival and had her placed under strict guard in the castle at Carlisle. Her movements were to be watched day and night. He was utterly determined that the charges levelled against her by the Lords of adultery and complicity in Darnley’s murder should be investigated, because his goal, unlike Elizabeth’s, was to keep her off the throne.

In another of his unremitting memos, Cecil set out his case in detail. A trial of Mary’s crimes, he argued with almost hair-splitting logic, would lead to one of two outcomes. If she were to be acquitted, conditions must be placed on her return to Scotland. They were none other than his old favourites. Mary would be required to forge a permanent (and Protestant) alliance in which she acknowledged Scotland’s status as a satellite state by ratifying the treaty of Edinburgh in its original form. If she were found guilty, she might – if her culpability were sufficiently minimal – be allowed to go into exile, but only if Moray were allowed to continue as regent in Scotland and rule in the name of Prince James. If her guilt were greater, then the punishment must fit the crime. Mary must ‘live in some convenient place without possessing of her kingdom, where she may not move any new troubles’. By this, Cecil meant a prison in England.

For Cecil, Mary’s flight to England was an almost providential finale to the reign of the woman he always regarded as his most sinister antagonist. For Mary, now confined to her ‘lodgings’ at Carlisle, it was to be heads he won, tails she lost. She wrote again to Elizabeth. ‘Do not’, she pleaded, ‘[be] as the serpent that stoppeth his hearing, for I am no enchantress but your sister and natural cousin.’ But where Cecil was concerned, it was Mary who was the serpent and the enchantress.

Within a fortnight of her arrival, Mary knew that her whole future lay in Cecil’s hands. She wrote to him on 29 May in the vain hope of throwing herself on his mercy:

Mester Ceciles. The renown that you enjoy of being a lover of equity, and the sincere and faithful service you give to the Queen, Madame my good sister, and consequently to those who are of her blood and high dignity, invite me to write to you above all others, in my just quarrel, at this time of trouble, in the hope of obtaining the assistance of your good counsel.

She had briefed her messenger to appeal to Cecil’s sense of honour and fair play, and her letter ended with the words: ‘Recommending myself to you and your wife, I pray God to keep you in his holy care. Your very good friend, Marie.’

When Cecil read this letter, all he could do was laugh. He was already in touch with Moray, from whom he now demanded the ‘manner of the proofs’ and other ‘evidence’ against Mary. Her trial was fast approaching and the spider’s web all but complete.