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 for ever, 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, however, what happened before the murder that precipitated her downfall, but the astonishing events that were to follow it.
Mary really was alone after the explosion. Even her Guise family 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 suddenly 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 far-sighted 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 highly 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 quite 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 had 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 to her recent ordeals, she had been publicly insulted by Knox, who had compared her to Nero, the worst of the Roman tyrants, and yet 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 hair’s breadth.
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 similar fate 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 son as well. Her chief suspect for the explosion at Kirk o’Field was always Moray, her illegitimate half-brother. It was in this mistaken belief that she would take a tragic, though 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 for which she had yearned now a dead letter, she decided to claw back her power by backing 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, 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 aged thirty-one, he was the epitome of tough masculinity. He appeared on the surface to be the military gallant with an insolent swagger and bristling moustache. 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 own wicked sense of humour may have misled her into finding his past misdemeanours 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 always keen to score points off his nearest neighbour 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 coasts 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 favourite 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 even given a state funeral. He was buried without pomp or ceremony during the night of Friday, 14 February 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 unfavourable 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 travelled on medical advice, and, far from having spent the previous week in sombre mourning, her black-out had only been in place for 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 black-out 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 the care of Bothwell and Huntly. She travelled 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 26 February, 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 this time onwards 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 light-hearted atmosphere, Mary’s court was acquiring menacing and militaristic overtones as he recruited more and more soldiers to guard her palaces.
On 7 March, 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 in turn 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 favour of Bothwell and Morton or else 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, which for once was 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 20 March, 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 full extremity of the law if a jury were to find 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 on, he had some of her mother’s Spanish furs for a nightgown, and finally she gave him Darnley’s horses and finest clothes. This last gift was naïve in the extreme. When Bothwell had the clothes altered to fit him, the tailor remarked that ‘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 possible 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 even 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 was in bed for several days. On Good Friday, she went with two of her Maries to her private Chapel, where she stayed for four hours in prayer and meditation. 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 rumour mill was churning. The stall-holders 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 towards 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 cipher ‘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 sceptre, 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, whilst her rolled-up net was to enable her to catch the unwary sailors as they passed by, distracted by the sight of the anemone. Whoever devised this placard 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-bearing 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 of ‘James Hepburn’. The swords signified Bothwell’s military standing and love of duelling, but were also positioned in the drawing as phallic symbols.
Mary was mortified by these references. Acting on a tip-off, she summoned the minister and demanded whether he knew the artist. He said no. She then 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. He completely spoiled Mary’s efforts to question the minister, because he loved nothing more than a ribald spat, which he now proceeded to enjoy with the minister, revelling in the smutty innuendo.
The Privy Council fixed the date of Bothwell’s trial for 12 April, 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 three hundred 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 supply 3,600 crack troops to Mary and Bothwell in exchange for regular payments.
On 4 April, 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 kitchens 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,30 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 truly shocking incident. Out of the blue, Mary had seen for herself the rough side of Bothwell in all its cruelty and brutality. Up until now, only his smooth side had been visible to her. The other part of his character was either carefully suppressed, or else 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 pre-eminence 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 judgement had become clouded. As yet, she had not even begun to think about marrying Bothwell, and why indeed should she rush into a third marriage when her marriage to Darnley had been altogether such a disaster? And yet her trust in Bothwell was starting to become something more than a purely pragmatic decision. He had begun to pay court to 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, being 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 post-haste 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 o’clock 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, he 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 at that very moment she appeared at an open window flanked by Mary Fleming and one of du Croc’s servants. For once caught out 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 then clattered out of the courtyard on Darnley’s favourite courser, followed by four thousand retainers. Before leaving, he looked up towards 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 then 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 travelled as far as Linlithgow accompanied by three thousand retainers, but did not dare to continue when told he could only bring six of them into Edinburgh. His case was conducted in his absence by two professional advocates, who requested an adjournment for forty days. This plea was discussed at great length. Finally, the motion 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 wilful error. When this was agreed, Argyll and Huntly brought the proceedings to a close.
Bothwell was overjoyed. Immediately, he posted up 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 was to be 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 towards 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 murmur 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 own servants. The man had been at Kirk o’Field and 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 16 April, Bothwell rode up the Canongate with Mary and the Lords on his way to Parliament. He carried the sceptre, 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. Bothwell also oversaw every aspect of the Parliament. He was determined to entrench his position. As a Protestant himself, he appealed first and foremost to his co-religionists, sponsoring an ‘Act concerning Religion’ that took 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 worshipped 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 – 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. The very same night, Bothwell entertained 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 afterwards. Cecil, almost uniquely, got everything wrong. His ‘copy’ of the bond said that all the Lords had signed. In reality, Morton and Huntly did sign, but Argyll, Maitland, and Atholl refused: Maitland and Atholl did not even turn up to the rendezvous. As to Moray, he had already left the country and was on his way to France. It is in any case 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.31 When the Ainslie 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 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 roughly, 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 swiftly intervened, calling for her embroidered purse, which contained 400 French crowns. She then shared this out among the soldiers, herself walking down the line from man to man and giving them two 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, and 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 his 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.32 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 was 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, 21 April, 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 only allow her to be accompanied by 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 to be 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, then he must forcibly 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 interpretations of law and order as Scotland. A scandalized Sir James Melville claimed that such an act could only have been collusive. One of Bothwell’s men was said to have admitted 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 most 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 on him.33 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 ever have married Bothwell if he had raped her. It is sometimes claimed that he was the first man who satisfied her sexually. That is perfectly 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 using 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, not just a single night. As he was not himself continuously there, 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 really wanted Bothwell kept at bay. She could have shouted for help to her servants, but did not.34
The most likely sequence of events is that Mary was genuinely ambushed by Bothwell on the road at Almond bridge. She was then 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 exactly what she answered, but within one or two days, he had won her over.35
It probably took two days. On the 26th, 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 would suggest 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 3 May, the judges issued a decree of divorce. Its effect was immediate, since Huntly had grudgingly been bought off and had already agreed 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 issued on 27 April, and the decree followed on 7 May, issued on the grounds that his marriage to Lady Jean had been invalid from the start for lack of a canonical dispensation.
If, however, 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 violently quarrelled. Despite signing the Ainslie’s Tavern bond, Huntly’s support for Bothwell was wavering. 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 had stepped into Darnley’s shoes in a quite different way from the one he had always imagined.
On Tuesday, 6 May, 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, the fearless John Craig, was asked to proclaim the banns of marriage between Mary and Bothwell. This he refused to do. He demanded a royal writ, which arrived next day, in which Mary volunteered the information that she had neither been 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 taking heaven and earth to witness that he abhorred and detested the proposed marriage.
On 9 May, Bothwell privately summoned Craig, demanding an explanation of his remarks. But far from apologizing, the minister admonished Bothwell. ‘I laid to his charge’, he said, ‘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 armour 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 sceptre, 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 his head with her own hands. Bothwell was clad in a scarlet robe lined and edged with ermine, and was attended by Cockburn, Laird of Skirling, carrying a blue banner with his 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 even 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 even quoted from the Ainslie’s Tavern bond, justifying Mary’s decision to ‘so far to humble herself’ as to marry one of her own 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 even to be looked down on by her Guise family for it.
The wedding took place early 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 very few witnesses beyond the four Maries and Mary and Bothwell’s own servants. Yet this was no tawdry occasion. The element of spectacle was provided by Mary herself. She wore the deuil as for her marriage to Darnley, and yet these were no ordinary widow’s weeds. Her dressmakers and embroiderers must have been working furiously night and day for a week. Whereas she had married Darnley in white, 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, and he with his stocky build, moustache, 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 filthy 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 the Old Testament book of 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 Church. 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. But 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 last few months was not sensational enough, the most breathtaking and dramatic events of Mary’s life were about to unfold.