THE INQUIRY AT York began on 4 October 1568 – and all turned on the eight unsigned ‘casket letters’ from Mary to Bothwell, two draft marriage contracts and twelve love sonnets. Then, at the last minute, Moray declined to submit them or accuse Mary. He refused to do so without a promise of protection from her vengeance and affirmation that she would not be restored if she was guilty. Essentially, he was asking if his evidence was enough to condemn the queen. And if he received such an assent in official form, then what did this mean for the trial? Norfolk sent the demands to London. Nothing appears to have been forthcoming, but clearly Moray’s mind was laid at rest somehow, presumably by Cecil moving clandestinely. The letters were shown to the English commissioners, although not to those representing Mary.
The paper that Elizabeth received from the inquiry survives in manuscript in the British Library. But in it, the extracts of letters are in Scots. Mary tended to write in French. The lords swore they were genuine and the English commissioners found these copies of originals they had not seen to be persuasive evidence. As they saw it, they had to be genuine because they ‘could hardly be invented or devised by any other than herself’ and ‘they discourse of some things which were unknown to any but herself and Bothwell’.1 How could they know what was and was not known by anybody other than Mary and Bothwell, without interviewing either party or questioning others about what they knew? Their other proof that the letters couldn’t be forgeries was because ‘it is hard to counterfeit so many’ – but how hard would it be to counterfeit a series? And finally they were moved by the ‘manner of them’ and how they were obtained. The reasoning was all ludicrously vague. No matter, they were evidence enough and, the commissioners decreed, ‘if the set letters be written with her own hand’, then they were ‘sufficient to convict her of the detestable crime of the murder of her husband’.2
The caveat ‘written with her own hand’ was crucial. They were most likely looking at Scots translations of the ‘original’ letters, in the hand of the translator, and then supplied a simultaneous copy in English. It was possible for an Englishman to read and understand Scots – but it was not easy to decipher lengthy documents, and they most likely relied on translations. And, if so, how could they assert the ‘manner of them’? One has to conclude that they took the word of the lords that Letter II, for instance, revealed ‘inordinate love’ from Mary for Bothwell and ‘abhorrence’ for her husband.
So what were these letters? Unfortunately, the originals – whether real letters or spliced-together forgeries – have been lost. Elizabeth sent her man to find them after Mary’s death and he was told that they had been destroyed, conveniently, and we have only the transcripts, notes of what was shown in York and copies sent to Cecil (some still bearing Cecil’s annotations) kept by Cecil’s descendants along with other copies made at Westminster.
The sonnets were supposed to prove Mary’s lust for Bothwell, but one might just as easily read them as a promise of constancy to God:
I have no other desire
But to make him perceive my faithfulness;
For storm or fair weather that may come,
Never will it change dwelling or place3
It could not be said to be erotic. Cecil discounted the poetry as irrelevant. The marriage contracts were equally ambiguous. One used the language of the Ainslie’s tavern bond, but was noted as written two weeks earlier. It was an obvious forgery. The other was a written promise from Mary to marry Bothwell, which noted that she was a widow and he was divorced. This may well have been genuine but was hardly damning – the fact that Mary agreed to marry Bothwell when she was a widow (and after he had raped her) hardly made her guilty of murder. Moray desperately flustered that although there ‘was no date and though some words therein seem to the contrary, yet it is on credible grounds supposed to have been made and written before the death of her husband.’4 What grounds? He had none. This was poor stuff and not even Mary’s keenest enemy could have put it in front of a judge.
The letters were a different matter. They are all unsigned and un-addressed and only one has a date – so we first must trust that Mary would have sent off letters undated, unsigned and without even an address. Letter I, often called the ‘short Glasgow letter’, ‘from Glasgow this Saturday morning’, written apparently while Mary was visiting Darnley when he was ill and Letter II, the ‘long Glasgow letter’, the longest letter of them all, were the most lurid. Letter I is apparently written by a woman suffering with illness who chides her correspondent for being away and says she will bring ‘this man’ to Craigmillar by Wednesday. She tells the unnamed correspondent he has forgotten her and asks for ‘word from you at large, and what I shall do if you be not returned’.5 The writer talks of the pain in her side and how she needs bloodletting. It could, conceivably, have been a draft from Mary to Bothwell or even to another, perhaps to Moray himself at another time, and the date and place are most likely forged. Would Mary have sent an unsigned and unaddressed letter off to a lover? The lords declared that the man addressed was Bothwell. But there was no proof. And ‘this man’ could be a reference to Prince James – as historians including Alison Weir have suggested – for the Guises often used ‘man’ to refer to a boy child, and John Guy points out that Mary’s son fitted much better than cross old Darnley the description of the ‘man’ as ‘the merriest you ever saw’.
But even the timing of this one was wrong, if the Saturday meant was 25 January 1567. The woman complains that her correspondent has been too long away and she expected him back. But Bothwell left Edinburgh on the previous evening, to target so-called thieves on the border. Mary often went to Craigmillar as it was a convenient and pleasant retreat near Stirling. It is most likely that this was a genuine letter, probably to Darnley himself, probably from Stirling, complaining of his absence and her poor health and talking of bringing their son to them, and the lords simply changed the date and place. It was more likely written on 11 January, when Mary was at Stirling. On 12 January, she travelled with James to Holyrood, stopping at Falkirk on the way to stay with Lord Livingston, rather than Craigmillar.
Letter II is more convincing. It is a lengthy, rambling letter in which a woman complains to a mystery correspondent about the king, who is importuning her for relations, despite his foul venereal disease, and how she deals with his various demands. ‘Cursed be this poxy fellow,’ she declares. She is making her lover a bracelet and says, ‘God forgive me, and God knit us together for ever the most faithful couple that he ever did knit together. This is my faith. I will die in it.’6 Even if Mary had been overwhelmed with passion for Bothwell – and there is no evidence that she was – she would not have gone so far as to blaspheme.
That Mary had written to complain about Darnley is not unlikely – and it could have been a diary entry. The – again unnamed – woman tells her lover she is missing him and ‘being gone from the place where I have left my heart, it may be easily judged what my countenance was’. She complains that the man she is with – Darnley – wants relations and ‘I have refused it’, on account of his health. And she tells her lover that she writes to him when asleep because she so wishes to be ‘according to my desire, that is between your arms, my dear life’. She even tells him that ‘you make me dissemble’ and ‘you make me almost to play the part of a traitor. Remember that if it were not for [your sake – crossed out], obeying you, I had rather be dead.’ We have seen Mary threaten to wish to die throughout her life. But many women did use it as a threat – it was hardly unique to her. She begs her lover for instruction and says ‘whatsoever happens to me, I will obey you’.7
The letter is convincing for its intimate representations and is much more damning than a few bits of rather dull poetry and a marriage contract. Sections of it are very like Mary’s voice. But although it clearly reveals adultery, the murder it suggests is the wrong one. Mary – if it was her – talks of poison, which Bothwell was believed to be no stranger to.
The most damning entries come at the close. The writer talks about ‘some invention more secret by physick’, says that ‘I shall never be willing to beguile one that putteth his trust in me. Nevertheless, you may do all and do not esteem me the less therefore, for you are the cause thereof. For my own revenge, I would not do it.’8 If this is read as referring to a murder, then it seriously and obviously implicates Mary. But, if it was truly written by her – which of course we will never know – she does not mention any of the other conspirators. We know that there were many men involved with Bothwell, some who had signed the Craigmillar bond and some who had not – why would Mary not mention them? The reference to poison jars oddly with the rest of the letter, and is blunt and forthright where Mary was circumspect and fond of allusion. It was most convenient for the lords and Cecil. They wanted the whole matter made into a simplistic caricature of Mary and Bothwell versus Darnley, and they could not have shown any letter that implicated even one further lord in the death.
Moreover, when Mary’s movements are reviewed around the time, there was no moment when she could have written to Bothwell, sent it to him via Paris and the letter return in time for her to send back Letter II, on the basis that all was arranged for the death. It is more likely that the letters are a collection of extracts from original letters and notes from various dates – which the lords found when Mary was taken off to Lochleven – spliced together with some bits and pieces of forgery. The letter contains a note at the end which states ‘Of the Earl Bothwell’.9 But why put this to a postscript when the whole letter is meant to be to him? Mary Beaton, among others, had written for the queen and her handwriting was easy to counterfeit. The casket letters were rambling, odd, hardly conclusive, muddled. Any lawyer could pick holes in them. And so they were not permitted to do so. The casket letters had been found in a confusing, invented story and the letters themselves were poor evidence. But Moray and the English wanted Mary kept in prison and so these flimsy and ambiguous scribblings had to be damning for they had nothing else.
Mary’s commissioners defended her vigorously, saying that if Bothwell did commit the murder, she did not know at the time of the wedding and that the lords had encouraged her to marry him. Norfolk, who was meant to be adjudicating, was growing increasingly frustrated by the political machinations behind the scenes.
On 11 October, Maitland sent Mary a copy of one of the casket letters so she would know what she was up against and told her that the English commissioners had seen it and others. He then went to Norfolk and told him that the letters were forged and Mary’s handwriting was so easy to imitate that he had even had a go himself. He also pushed the idea of Mary marrying Norfolk. Norfolk was charmed by the plan. As he saw it, he could win the gratitude of Elizabeth for sorting out the problem of Mary and gain great power and riches for himself, not to mention a famously beautiful and accomplished wife. And he was deeply conflicted over the letters and whether they indicated guilt.
At the same time, Mary had won over Knollys to her side, who felt sorry for his royal captive and decided that her imprisonment was unfair and unjustified. A marriage with Norfolk could mean her escape. On 21 October, she told her commissioners to begin the divorce of Bothwell, and men were despatched to Denmark to ensure his assent. Optimistic, Mary wrote to Elizabeth enthusing and implying that the inquiry would find for her and thus ‘we may be perpetually indebted to you’.10
Norfolk said he was struggling to find the truth in all the lies. With so many lords involved, the ambiguous letters and her own keen selfdefence, he judged it the ‘doubtfullest and most difficult that ever I dealt in’. He was lost in the dark. ‘You shall find in the end as there be some few in this company that mean plainly and truly, so there be others that seek wholly to serve their own private terms.’11 Moray and the rest were less concerned with justice than pursuing their own ends – thrusting Mary off the throne and hiding the fact that so many of them were implicated in the murder of Darnley. Their argument that Darnley was killed by Bothwell with Mary’s assent and assistance, and that then the lords proceeded to deprive Mary of the throne due to her scandalous behaviour, was looking more impossible to prove by the day.12 Norfolk was of course biased towards Mary as the wild scheme for their marriage advanced. But his basic criticism was fair: there was no definitive evidence.
Norfolk was hoping, perhaps, that the matter could all be laid to rest and Mary released. But Elizabeth and Cecil had also grown frustrated by the manipulations of the Scottish lords and feared they were being outfoxed by both them and Mary. Elizabeth did not like the sympathy expressed for Mary from Norfolk and Knollys, and she was distrustful of her ‘sister and cousin’. Sussex, who had been assisting Norfolk, summed up the matter: either the queen was found guilty of murder on the basis of the casket letters, or the whole matter was bundled up ‘with a show of saving her honour’.13 The problem was that if Mary was found guilty on the basis of the letters, fair treatment involved her being shown them and questioned upon them – and, as he noted, ‘she will deny them’ and openly accuse the other lords of ‘manifest consent to the murder’. The only solution was that Moray might present some indisputable evidence of her guilt, but what that might be no one knew, and surely if he had any, he would have shown it before now.
Elizabeth too saw that the inquiry was getting nowhere and was subject to leaks. Influenced by Cecil, she decided to move the conference to Westminster and appoint further judges, including Cecil and his brother-in-law, Nicholas Bacon. She was perhaps suspecting Norfolk of being too kind to Mary.
If this was not enough, one of Mary’s supporters told her he believed that even if she were found innocent, she would not be released and restored to the throne. As she was informed, Elizabeth would not pass judgement but would ‘transport you up in the country and retain you there till she thinks time to show you favour’. This favour was ‘not likely to be hastily’ because Elizabeth feared Mary was ‘her unfriend’.14 In all the months leading up to the trial, Mary and her supporters had not entertained the horrific possibility that there might never be any verdict at all.