AT DUNBAR, BOTHWELL took the queen to a room and he raped her. Melville, who was with Mary in the castle, wrote that ‘he had ravished her and laid with her against her will’ and that Bothwell was boasting that he would have her whether she ‘would or would not’.1 He did not care that she was a queen. She was a woman and to him, women had one use only. He would force her to submit. As soon as she arrived, he dismissed her attendants and began pressing her to marry him, as had been provided for by the council. She refused and sent a secret message out to the Governor of Dunbar to come with his men to rescue her. No rescue came.
Mary was caught in a web, all of it spun by Bothwell. For some historians, the fact she did not scream and resist, much less fight to the death, was evidence of complicity. But Mary considered Bothwell a friend and an ally. She expected to be taken to a castle and treated well. But most of all, we view the incident with the benefit of hindsight. Mary trusted him as she always had done and she thought he was saving her from riots in Edinburgh.
Bothwell’s crime was dreadful. Even though the code of gallantry in Scotland was not always strong, to seize a lady from the road was seen as shocking behaviour. And a queen anointed by God was a sacred being. To take her was enough – and a rape was beyond imaginable. Bothwell raped Mary to attempt to reduce her into marrying him, to gain power over her, to show her that despite her riches and authority and God-given crown, she was nothing more than a body and reducible to subservience by a man’s act on her. Most of all, he wanted to impregnate her so she had no choice but to marry him. And once Mary was married and pregnant, everyone would forget the method. He deluded himself into believing he had the lords’ support, clutching the Ainslie tavern bond, signed by nobles, saying they would support the marriage.
Bothwell had precedent in mind. Men kidnapping and raping women who had refused to marry them or whose fathers had resisted their overtures was not uncommon. Heiresses were often at risk of being abducted. In such cases, the rapist would be allowed, even encouraged, to marry the girl, perhaps after a small fine had been paid to the father. Women in the sixteenth century were constantly exposed to the possibility of sexual assault – and Scotland, where there were long and dangerous roads without settlements, was a dangerous place for female travel.
In Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, nearly all female characters, including those standing for Elizabeth, are threatened with rape, which Spenser tends to denote with the word ‘spoil’. But although these encounters are demarcated as forced, they are represented as vital for the founding of the world they create: the women give birth to children, and Agape, who is raped and bears three sons, is described as ‘full blessed’ for producing such brave young men. Rape comes to seem a necessary part of the dynastic creation of a strong race of warriors. For many men committing rape, such language could function as a pleasing cover: they committed the assaults to create a dynasty and sons. As the historian and sociologist Georges Vigarello shows in his study of sexual violence in France in the early modern period, trials, even of child victims who were victims of rape, ended up with the child castigated and seen as spoiled, and if the man was more powerful, recourse was rarely possible.2
But to do this to the queen? Too many historians have found it impossible that a man would dare, and thus judged her complicit. Others have argued that because Mary did not fight back, she must have consented. We have a much greater understanding of sexual assault and consent these days: many victims panic or fear that if they do not submit, they will be killed. Bothwell was furious that she was refusing to marry him, and he took his revenge on her in the cruellest and most devastating way, using his physical force to intimidate her. If Andrew Ker had been happy to hold a gun to her stomach during the Rizzio murder, it is possible that Bothwell’s men threatened her with guns to submit to him – and witnessed her horrible assault.
Those who say she could have then escaped – and should have done so – reflect a misunderstanding of the effect of trauma on the mind. Mary was excessively proud, obsessed with her status as a queen. She had been tormented and attacked by a former friend, and this may have been witnessed by his servants – most things were at the time. She was deeply distressed, may have been too physically injured to move, and was consumed by fear. Moreover, it was possible that she thought she was pregnant.
As Mary knew, women who had been raped were generally expected to come to terms with their rapist and usually marry him. As Melville, her supporter, put it, ‘The Queen could not but marry him, seeing he ravished her and laid with her against her will.’3
Exodus and Deuteronomy suggested the father of a single woman could agree her marriage to her rapist. Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, was assaulted and groomed by her tutor, but was blamed for it. And heiresses who were seized were blamed for having been too friendly to the man – wearing certain gowns, looking at him in company, walking in the garden alone with him. Later fiction was filled with heroines who were raped, married their assaulters and then managed to ‘reform’ the man into love and piety.
Mary, who had encouraged Bothwell, given him presents and let him remain at Holyrood, had given him so much that she knew the world would blame her. And, like most victims, she no doubt castigated herself when there was no reason to do so. Historians who claim Mary did not flee the castle and so wanted the rape, enjoyed it, or had even colluded with Bothwell all along, ignore the fundamentally sexist nature of sixteenth-century society: a woman who was raped was to blame for it. And since the Governor of Dunbar had not come for her and the Ainslie bond had been signed by so many, she felt she had no one to support her.
Mary was in fear of her life, possibly injured and afraid of another rape at Bothwell’s hands – one that he might make even worse this time. She remained at the castle and submitted to him. Today, our notions of consent are undergoing a fundamental shift, with the whole understanding of rape being re-evaluated in terms of the power structure between men and women. I write in modern times and we are dealing with the sixteenth century here – but one thing that does not change is the pain and suffering and struggle with self-blame that survivors feel, often years later. Some women, after they have been attacked by someone they know, attempt to get a handle on the situation and get some power back by contacting the rapist or even attempting to seduce him on their terms. Mary had often used sex or the promise of it to gain some control over Darnley. Perhaps she hoped that by promising to marry Bothwell, she could encourage some sort of rapprochement or at least equality.
The worst arguments have come from historians who argue that after the effete Darnley, Mary was thrilled to receive sexual satisfaction from a ‘real man’. But Bothwell was no romantic hero – he was gruff, violent and opportunist, unloved by his wife and mistresses. Even consensual intercourse with him was unlikely to be tender. Such notions of him as being sexually a ‘real man’ rest dangerously close to notions that all women want to be overpowered and attacked, that having rape fantasies (a way of gaining control over what is for many a perennial fear) is the same as wanting to be assaulted. As was entirely the case here, rape is about power not sex. Bothwell didn’t assault Mary because he was overwhelmed with sexual desire for her and had to act on it. He wanted to be king, he was furious that she would not marry him, and wished to force her submission.
Mary was never going to forgive a man who had attacked her, so keenly wanting to humiliate her and debase her. She could never bear to speak of what had happened, such were her feelings of shame, and she could only refer to ‘doings rude’ – ‘rude’ being a word applied to rape. Later, when in captivity, she did not talk of him or write to him – which hardly suggested she was in love with him. But, exhausted, afraid and fearful of the consequences, she agreed to marry him. ‘As it is succeeded, we must take the best of it’, she said. She might be pregnant. And, moreover, she thought she was doing what her nobles desired, since so many had signed the Ainslie bond. As she wrote, ‘seeing ourselves in his power, sequestered from the company of our servants and others, of whom we might ask counsel, yea, seeing them upon whose counsel and fidelity we had before dependene, already welded to his appetite and so we left alone, as it were, a prey to him’.4
She was utterly isolated and friendless and saw, as she said, ‘no way out’. She was perhaps hoping that if she married Bothwell, no one would hear about the rape.
However, the news got out fast, and because Mary was no ordinary woman, sympathy was with her. Taking an heiress? Unfortunate, but her father should have been more careful and she should marry the offender quickly. Seizing a queen? A scandal that would damn Scotland in the eyes of the world. A petition from Aberdeen on 27 April asked what could be done since she had been ‘ravished by the Earl of Bothwell against your will’. Morton, Argyll and Mar met urgently at Stirling three days after the abduction and agreed to free the queen, safeguard little James, and kill Bothwell ‘the barbarous tyrant’.5 Robert Melville requested English support and urgent letters were sent to Moray asking him to return.
Of course, as well as sympathy for Mary, the lords were motivated by horror at the vaunting power of Bothwell. But still, Scotland saw her as an innocent victim of Bothwell’s criminal acts. Even at this point, Mary could have turned things around by waiting until it was possible and then fleeing back to Edinburgh, throwing herself on her people for help. But Mary did not know what support she had in the capital. Bothwell watched all her messengers and later she said that she never heard from her nobles, even though the nobles at Stirling said they had written to her and she had replied that she had been ‘evil and strangely handled’.6 Even if she was lying and they did write to her and she replied, still, she could see no effort to rescue her. And she believed that they had all wished her to marry her attacker. She was caught in Bothwell’s trap and could not escape.
All her life, Mary had believed that she was special because she was a queen. The one and only time that this belief could have served her well – in believing that she would be better treated than the average woman and public sympathy would lie with her – this confidence deserted her. There was not a single lord, it seemed, who had not tried to imprison her, capture her, demean her or undermine her. Bothwell had killed her spirit.
On 6 May, Bothwell’s divorce still not completed, Mary and Bothwell rode back to Edinburgh. On the arrival at the gate, Bothwell took Mary’s horse and led her up to the castle. This was Mary’s moment to show displeasure for Bothwell and her desire to escape. The crowds would have supported her. But all the other lords had plotted against her in one way or another and she had no one left to trust. On the same day, John Craig of St Giles Kirk was asked to pronounce the banns of marriage between the pair. He refused. Next day he was given a writ in which Mary said she had not been raped nor held by Bothwell. But, as he put it, if she had not been assaulted, she had committed adultery with a still-married man. He was compelled to read the banns but he made it clear that he found the marriage a disgrace. Bothwell summoned him and asked for an apology. But Craig, loyal man of Knox, was not easily cowed and launched into what everyone was thinking, declaring Bothwell guilty of breaking ‘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 the last, the suspicion of the king’s death, which her marriage would confirm’.7 Bothwell should have realised that if the minister dared say this to his face then he was losing his grip. Craig repeated the lot in his sermon the next day and Bothwell was apoplectic, threatening to have him hanged.
Mary was desperate now. She felt that if she, the most injured, had forgiven Bothwell then everybody else should too. But the church was scandalised, the ordinary people distressed, and Mar and Argyll and the rest had begun to create a separate court of James at Stirling, going so far as performing a masque in which Bothwell was hanged. The implication was clear: Bothwell should die and Mary should be deposed for James. They feared – rightly – that Bothwell would try to make himself king. The foreign ambassadors watched matters in shock and disbelief. As Cecil had put it, Scotland was ‘in a quagmire’.8 Elizabeth was deeply distressed and appalled. Mary’s acts were to her horrific and wrong – and the possibility that she would be deposed for her son was an implicit condemnation of all female rule. Still, Mary made Bothwell Duke of Orkney and Lord of Shetland on 12 May. She commissioned a beautiful wedding gown and set her seamstresses to work.
In France, Moray read reports of what was happening in Scotland. Mary’s actions were playing more into his hands than anything he could have imagined. The suspicions that he had been behind her husband’s murder had drowned under this new scandal.
Mary signed the marriage contract, which was all written to support Bothwell. Much of the language seemed to have been copied directly from the Ainslie bond, as it noted that Mary was ‘destitute of a husband’. As it put it, Mary was ‘living solitary in the state of widowhood, and yet young and of flourishing age, apt to procreate and bring forth children, has been pressed and humbly require to yield to some marriage’.9 The latter was guaranteed to outrage everyone. The last thing anyone wanted was Bothwell fathering a child he could then claim was a legitimate heir to the throne and unseat Prince James – or even kill him. Mary’s friends begged her not to marry but she said that ‘her object in marrying [was] to settle religion by that means’. She was desperate, felt she had no choice and believed that Bothwell must be able to cow the lords, as he had attacked her. And she – or more likely he – had clearly created some kind of great fantasy, where their differing religions might represent religious co-existence, a king and queen who were both Protestant and Catholic respectively, representing union and unity. This might just possibly have worked, if Bothwell had not been universally hated and he hadn’t sexually assaulted the queen in order to force her into marriage.
The contract noted that all documents must be signed by Mary alone or in joint signature, but this was scant consolation to the lords, the Scottish people and the foreign crowns. As soon as Bothwell had managed to beget a child, he would be demanding unlimited powers. Du Croc declared he had no mandate from France to recognise Bothwell as Mary’s husband and would not attend the wedding – and encouraged others to do the same.10 The stage was set for the most scandalous marriage in royal history.