Footnotes

1: The First Year

1A bond (or ‘band’) was a feudal contract or indenture promising loyalty, support, protection and service, usually for life.

2: The Rough Wooings

1The bottle dungeon is now a tourist attraction.

4: Adolescence

1One of the four cardinal ‘humours’ or bodily fluids of medical orthodoxy of the time.

5: Education

1See plate section 1 and jacket illustration.

6: A Dynastic Marriage

1Archaic usage introducing infinitive, literally ‘for to advance’.

7: Betrayed Queen

1‘Deuil’ or ‘dole’ is the French word for mourning clothes. The ‘deuil blanc’ was a white wired hood or cap to which a wide gauze veil was attached, enveloping the body from the top of the neck downwards. A white streamer attached to the back of the cap hung down loose.

9: Into the Labyrinth

1St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 13: 1.

10: A Meeting Between Sisters

1A foundation garment of wooden hoops designed to support wide underskirts.

2Often stuffed or on wire supports.

3Wanton young women.

4Another term for a shroud.

5A quilted leather tunic worn by foot-soldiers, usually plated with iron.

6A headpiece or helmet.

7See chapter 4.

13: A Marriage of Convenience

1The wedding ring was then worn on the right hand.

14: Enter Bothwell

1See chapter 23.

2Bothwell’s sister is variously called ‘Jane’, ‘Jean’, and ‘Janet’ in the sources.

15: A Marriage in Trouble

1i.e. ‘Henry Rex’, rex being Latin for ‘king’.

16: Assassination One

1An archaic Scots word for daggers.

2Archaic usage, i.e. ‘lost himself through sloth’.

3It would appear that ropes and chairs were the standard way to escape from a building in case of fire.

4Archaic usage, i.e. ‘without just cause’.

17: Reconciliation

1Mary had only just recovered after childbirth, but her resolute actions to protect her son from kidnapping suggest she was not suffering from postnatal complications.

18: Plot and Counter-Plot

1One of the greatest confusions about the plot would be the later claim that the Lords had signed a bond at Craigmillar in which they had promised to murder Darnley. According to this legend, the bond was in Bothwell’s possession on the day of his final confrontation with his enemies and given to Mary as an insurance policy before Bothwell fled for his life. Although this bond is confidently discussed in innumerable works of history, an authentic copy of it has never been found. It was only with hindsight that it was ever said to have existed, and when Mary demanded to see a copy of it while in exile in England – which she would hardly have needed to do if the original bond had been presented to her by Bothwell as the legend claims – a ‘copy’ was obtained, but this was forged by the unscrupulous Sir James Balfour, who took his opportunity to denounce his own enemies as Darnley’s murderers while omitting the names of those he wished to protect.

2Holyrood was on low ground and renowned for its winter smog from the burning of wood and coal fires.

19: Assassination Two

1Paris had been Bothwell’s servant before moving to Mary’s service.

2i.e. his idea.

3R. H. Mahon, The Tragedy of Kirk o’Field (Cambridge, 1930).

4Two letters Mary was later said to have written from Glasgow will be the subject of chapter 25.

20: A Love Match?

1Archaic usage, meaning ‘knave’ or ‘base fellow’.

2Several of the signatories said later that they had agreed to the Ainslie bond only after Bothwell told them Mary wanted them to sign. No such claims were made at the time, but the charge may well be true, and Mary herself levelled it against Bothwell: see chapter 22.

3See chapter 22.

4The annotation of Cecil’s secretary on this ‘evidence’ is discussed in chapter 26.

5Her remaining servants, as well as Maitland, Huntly, and Sir James Melville, were also taken to Dunbar.

6Further evidence of Mary’s likely state of mind at Dunbar will be considered in chapters 22 and 26.

22: Mary’s Story

1Bothwell.

2i.e. the Ainslie’s Tavern bond.

3i.e. Darnley, who was born an Englishman.

4The Ainslie’s Tavern bond.

5This letter from Mary to Elizabeth is missing from the archives. Fortunately, its contents can be recovered, as Mary quoted them in 1568. A verbatim extract from that later document is used here.

6i.e. acquitted.

7The Ainslie’s Tavern bond.

8Mary of Guise.

9i.e. towns.

10Moray and Arran are chiefly meant here.

11Moray and the rebels of the Chase-about Raid.

12Châtelherault and his family.

13Mary had been confined to her apartments with guards posted on the door.

14Literally, ‘power’.

15Queen of Israel.

23: Bothwell’s Story

1See chapter 14.

2A mistake for Holyroodhouse.

3An oblique reference to Morton, whose curfew Mary lifted at Bothwell’s request in March 1567.

4The secretary first wrote ‘petite vérole’, which means smallpox. However, Bothwell, reading through the text, crossed out ‘vérole’ and substituted ‘roniole’. The word ‘rognole’ is still slang for syphilis.

5Not surprisingly, when Bothwell had four thousand retainers, whereas Lennox was only allowed six.

6For Buchanan’s traducement of Mary, see chapters 24–6.

24: The Lords’ Story

1On 6 September 1566.

2See chapter 17.

3See chapter 17.

4See chapter 18.

5This refers in particular to the ‘long Glasgow letter’ said to have been written by Mary to Bothwell. For a full discussion of this highly significant and contested document, see chapter 25.

6The family of Châtelherault, the enemies of the Lennoxes.

7For a detailed consideration of this chronology, see chapter 25.

8In reality, Mary only met Hubert as she was leaving the house.

9Since Mary attended Bastian’s wedding masque, this seems highly unlikely.

10Bothwell apparently managed to be in two places at once!

11For a discussion of this alleged letter, see chapter 26.

25: The Casket Letters I

1The sonnets have been counted differently by historians as twelve, eleven, or as one long poem. The ‘twelfth’ is only six lines in length, and is either an unfinished sonnet or else a ‘postscript’ to the others.

2See references in the notes.

3With a single exception, they are subdivided between class SP 53 at the Public Record Office and the Cecil Papers at Hatfield House: see references in the notes.

4I have followed the numbers given to the Casket Letters by Henderson (1890), which are those most commonly used.

5Nickname for Nicholas Hubert.

6i.e. break his promises.

7See chapter 18.

8The innuendo is that Mary is tied to the Lennoxes by her marriage to Darnley just as Bothwell is to the Gordons, the family of his wife, Lady Jean.

9See chapter 18.

10See chapter 18.

11His father, Patrick Earl of Bothwell, had no living brothers, and his uncle on his mother’s side, Alexander Earl of Buchan, had died in 1563.

12i.e. investigation.

13No one else could have been meant. Lord John of Coldingham, husband of Jane Hepburn, Bothwell’s sister, had died in December 1563, and Jane took as her second husband John Sinclair, Master of Caithness, who was loyal to Mary.

14See chapter 20.

15See chapter 20.

16See chapter 24.

17See chapter 26.

26: The Casket Letters II

1i.e. Nicholas Hubert.

2i.e. parts of the body.

3i.e. set.

4See chapters 17–18.

5i.e. sans.

6i.e. grief or mourning.

7i.e. care or keeping.

8The fact that Lennox was at Glasgow and not Kirk o’Field on 7 February does not seem to have worried the Lords.

9His correction is clearly visible. Cecil’s ‘t’ can sometimes look like a ‘k’. The reading is erroneously given as ‘make’ in the modern scholarly editions, which makes the meaning obscure; and yet no one appears to have gone back to the handwritten transcript to check it.

10This could mean either that Bothwell can choose between his wife and Mary, or that he could mend his fences with the Lords and ditch her.

11i.e. indexing it for filing.

12The cipher of Francis II.

13This really means the original Casket Letters and not the transcripts or copies.

27: Captive Queen

1Now demolished.

2One of the earliest references in the English language to the use of hair extensions. Later, Mary’s hair became thin and grey, and she was forced to wear a wig.

3i.e. according to the availability of supplies.

4See chapter 28.

5See chapter 4.

6See chapter 5.

7i.e. the flat sections of the roofs at his Sheffield properties.

8Vice-Chamberlain of Elizabeth’s household and later Lord Chancellor, a favourite second only to Leicester.

28: An Axe or an Act?

1i.e. the Blessed Virgin Mary with the assistance of all the company of saints in Heaven.

2See chapter 22.

3A Latin version was also anonymously published, without identifying the publisher or place of publication. A genuine Scots translation followed in 1572, printed at St Andrews, after which the Casket Letters were in the open.

4i.e. James VI.

29: Nemesis

1i.e. using agents provocateurs to foment conspiracies that were then conveniently ‘detected’.

2The surviving French versions of the letter are all enemy translations used either to discredit Mary in France or else for the interrogation of her French servants.

3Walsingham had, in fact, searched in vain for the notes and also for Nau’s initial draft in French of the reply to Babington.

Epilogue

1See chapter 2.

2Archaic usage, i.e. ‘driting’ or ‘shitting’.

3Archaic usage for ‘welfare’ or ‘state’.

4Some experts have questioned this on the grounds that no written proof has been found of the rhyme before 1744, but all this means is that it was not printed or anthologized until then.