NORFOLK SENT MARY a glittering diamond and she replied promising to keep it to her, wearing it in secret ‘until I give it again to the owner of it and me both’. As she put it, ‘you have promised to be mine and I yours’.1 Mary said clearly that she would not marry without the consent of Elizabeth, because she had caused herself ‘hurt’ by not gaining her cousin’s assent for the marriage to Darnley. But despite all this high speaking, she agreed to a correspondence with him and turned the full force of her charm to appealing to him. Norfolk was not particularly handsome and he was something of an innocent abroad, easily overwhelmed by events, but he was young, single, wealthy, a trusted member of Elizabeth’s government and the only duke in England. Mary addressed him as ‘My Norfolk’ and wrote, ‘I trust that none shall say I have ever mind to leave you.’2 The inconvenient obstacle that Mary still had a living husband in Bothwell was overlooked in all the rush to romance.
Mary should never have corresponded with Norfolk or implied she might marry him. But if she had not, and had obeyed Elizabeth’s every word, would Elizabeth have been more sympathetic? She would not. Mary was a political problem, a rival queen in the same land, and could easily become a separate power to challenge her cousin. Elizabeth had initially been sympathetic but then grown more concerned about her own position, and that was what mattered. She called Norfolk to her, demanding to know if he’d been trying to marry Mary. He had the good sense to lie, saying he would rather go to the Tower, declaring rather vividly that ‘Should I seek to marry her, being so wicked a woman, such a notorious adulteress and murderer? I love to sleep on a safe pillow.’3 Elizabeth was left unsatisfied, sure of his duplicity but unable to prove it. She then received Moray in mid-November, much to the horror of Mary, who was heartbroken that her ‘cousin’ would see Moray but not her. Elizabeth did not want the responsibility of putting a queen on trial like a criminal – if he made the accusation, it would be at his behest, and thus Scotland, not England, risked the vengeance of France and Spain.
The run up to the trial was a cat and mouse power game between Elizabeth and Moray. Both wanted the other to make the final accusation against Mary. Moray knew that he would have to do it. But he was holding out to get as much as he could as a surety beforehand.
When the enlarged commission came together, they met with Moray and told him that if he produced the proof of Mary’s guilt, Elizabeth would recognise Prince James as king and Mary would either be given up to Scotland for trial (which raised the possibility of her execution) or imprisoned in England. Mary was bound on every turn.
On 26 November 1568, Moray rose at the inquiry and finally accused Mary publicly of being party to the murder, and named Bothwell as the murderer. As he put it, Bothwell was the ‘chief executor of that horrible and unworthy murder’ and Mary had ‘fore-knowledge’ and was the ‘counsel, device, persuader, and commander of the said murder to be done’, then refused to prosecute the ‘executors’ and married Bothwell, ‘the universally esteemed chief author of the murder’. It is notable that Bothwell was the ‘chief executor’, not sole, and he was ‘universally esteemed’ the chief author – for there was, strictly speaking, no evidence. By this point, the inquiry was a club, a comfortable circle of accusations, expectations and protections. No more did Moray declare that Mary had simply been imprisoned so that the investigation could be best continued because she was too loyal to Bothwell. Instead, he said, she did not deserve to rule. And thus ‘the estates of the realm of Scotland, finding her unworthy to reign, discerned her demission of the crown’.4 In other words, they had judged her and found her a failure – even though she had made clear that a sovereign could not be judged by earthly court or council. Previously Moray had maintained the fiction that Mary had voluntarily abdicated, but with these new words, the onus on England was much less. Scotland had already judged her and found her to be unworthy and had ‘universally esteemed’ Bothwell the murderer and so deprived her of her crown.
Mary had made many mistakes, it was true, and one was her refusal to put people on trial. The lords had engaged in cruel dishonesty in executing a collection of servants on no evidence other than that discovered by the threat of torture. Mary had shied away from such a show trial, in shock and unable to think straight, and she had been subtly influenced by the lords who knew that the Craigmillar bond could implicate them. She had failed to win over public opinion immediately after the murder by demonstrating hysterical feminine grief. And she had trusted Bothwell too much, until the last minute. But overall, what was happening was a naked power grab by men of a woman’s crown, by her former friends and half-brother, no less. Of course, plenty of bad male monarchs had lost their crowns, but Richard III – for example – had lost in battle, a fair fight.
Mary, too, had lost in conflict, but only after she had already been wrongfully imprisoned in the guise of rescuing her from Bothwell. It is hard to argue that the lords would have taken power with such confidence had Mary been a man. Such was the structure of society that even a baby male was above her in terms of his right to rule, and she was easily pushed out. Mary succeeded in continuing the line of succession, unlike Elizabeth and a good number of male monarchs, before and after. But without James, it would have been difficult for the lords to depose her, for the blood claim of Moray or anyone else was much diluted. And, simply, it was believed that women were weaker, physically and mentally, and ruled only as an anomaly. At the same time as Mary was deprived of her crown by physical force, so Elizabeth was constantly fighting to keep hold of her prerogative. As Elizabeth saw, if the lords could simply deem Mary ‘unworthy to reign’, Parliament could do the same to her or anyone who succeeded her.
Mary had lost all trust in the process and had told her commissioners to only make a short address and withdraw, unless she was allowed to speak. If Moray was allowed to accuse her in front of everyone, it was surely unfair if she could not argue her side, so she instructed them to avoid engagement. But her commissioners could not let such a shocking affront go unanswered. On 1 December, after a few days of discussion, her commissioners argued that it was an usurpation: the lords had simply rebelled so that they could stop her reaching the age of twenty-five and thus cancel the grants of land. They made the acute point that the English should think about how dangerous it was for subjects to bring wrongful accusations against their monarchs, and noted that some of the accusers had themselves made bonds for the death of Darnley. They also argued that, as Moray had been present and made his case, Mary should be able to attend and also to protest her innocence in front of the queen and her nobles.5
It was an excellent defence and they had done all they could. They were invited to speak to Elizabeth on 3 December at Hampton Court and gave Elizabeth a written request that Mary should be allowed to defend herself. Elizabeth replied to them in a way to give them hope: she said it was ‘very reasonable’6 she should be heard, but first wished Moray to give his proofs of what he accused Mary of; they needed the original letters from the silver casket, or something better. Before she could tell them when or where or by whom Mary would be heard, she first must speak to the Scottish commissioners. But, as she did not tell them, if Mary were to be received, it would not be by her. Elizabeth told her commissioners and Privy Council that she would not meet Mary until she was proved innocent. Mary might have agreed to defend herself in front of a set of nobles and Elizabeth’s proxy, but it was unlikely she would be offered even this.
Unfortunately, Herries and the others of Mary’s defence then lost their nerve. Convinced, not without reason, that Mary was in a hopeless situation, Herries and Leslie asked for another private meeting with Elizabeth at which they suggested they might come to terms with Moray. Elizabeth would have none of it, and said Mary’s honour was so impugned by the accusations that her commissioners should wish the evidence exposed to public scrutiny and so refuted, and Moray and the rest then accused of ‘so audaciously defaming’7 their queen. Of course, Moray had been promised that he would not be punished, even if Mary was found innocent, so this was all castles in the air. Herries and Mary’s other defenders would have been better trying to meet Moray privately to discuss the matter. After all, Moray had not yielded up the evidence and was still demanding assurances that he would be protected if he did so. Had Herries moved swiftly at this point and told Moray they might come to terms, Moray might possibly have withdrawn. But what would these terms have been? Most likely, that Moray would be allowed to continue as regent for James and Mary would go free, probably to live in France. But Elizabeth and Cecil would never have allowed Mary to live there, even if, as the ambassador had already promised, the king kept her shut up in a convent. She might plot against them both, particularly if she was in the Guise convent of her aunt.
Elizabeth saw this plea of Herries as a sign of weakness and moved quickly. She told Herries and the others that Mary would not need to appear in person to give her defence. No proofs had been shown and it would be a long and arduous journey through snow. She said that they must answer for her, for if they did not, people might suspect that the accusations had substance. Mary would surely put up a brilliant defence, winning the court with her beautiful, powerful presence and the sheer reason of her argument. It was also likely that Mary would name the other lords who had been involved in Darnley’s death and then Cecil would have a huge problem on his hands. Over and over, the English tried to simplify the case to Bothwell killing Darnley, with Mary’s knowledge, rather than the truth: that Darnley’s death had been another instance of the endless and violent shifts of power in the Scottish nobility.
Herries and Leslie played the one card they had left: they withdrew from the inquiry on the basis that Mary had been forbidden to appear. They naturally thought that this would bring the commission to a close. But, instead, Cecil found a legal loophole and Herries’ statement was discounted on the basis that it had not been a true summary of what Elizabeth had actually said as regarding Mary’s appearance. And so, Moray came with his evidence, some witness depositions, the Act of Parliament, the complaint of Darnley’s father Lennox, and other inconclusive materials. Some of the casket letters had been shown at York (most likely in the Scottish copies) and copies had been sent to Cecil, but the court needed a public showing of them.
Finally, Moray gave the inquiry a transcript of Bothwell’s trial and what he claimed were the original first and second casket letters, in French. On the next day, he gave them the rest of the letters and the love poems. The timing was no coincidence – Moray and Cecil both waited until Mary’s commissioners were out of the way before the letters were finally revealed.
For Moray, there was no going back. He had accused Mary of murder and given letters that ‘proved’ it.8 The half-siblings were in a battle and only one of them could get out alive.
In 1571, Morton gave Lennox a receipt for the casket letters and wrote that they contained ‘missive letters, contracts or obligations, sonnets or love ballads, and other letters to the number of 21’.9 But we have only ten, and these are not the original French, nor the Scottish translations from the French, nor the copies made in Edinburgh. What remains are the copies in French and English translations from Westminster, and as they are written in the hand of the secretary, there is no use comparing them to Mary’s handwriting. It is doubtful that any of the English commissioners or politicians saw any originals in Mary’s handwriting – if they ever existed. They were supplied with Scottish copies at York and then French copies at Westminster – and both times were told that these were the originals, and both statements could not be true. We have various claims that they were in her handwriting, but these came from the virulent supporters of Moray. It is indeed fortuitous that the letters lack signatures.
As we know, there was a huge search for documents in the early days of Mary’s incarceration. Some of Mary’s papers were found and used and it is most likely that the lords, finding no admission of guilt, did the sixteenth-century equivalent of cutting and pasting and created the most damning missives out of pieces of original letters along with additions. As Maitland and others had pointed out, it was easy to forge Mary’s handwriting. Not only do the letters at times sound nothing akin to her own expressions used in the correspondence of hers that does survive, but we also know that Mary tended to date and sign her letters.
Elizabeth herself, always shrewd, never pronounced on the letters and their authenticity, only saying they contained shocking contents and that it was regretful that Moray had produced them to the public (even though she had compelled him to do so).
It is a vital point that neither Mary nor her defenders were allowed by the inquiry to see the letters. Mary could have argued against many of the points contained within them and publicly noted that they were forgeries. But she was never permitted to do so. Surely, if they were indisputable, Moray would have shown them to Herries and Leslie. He did not. As we saw, the judges and nobles at York believed the lords’ assertions on what the letters contained. Repeatedly, the English judges took the lords’ word for it, either because they could not believe that anyone would do anything so low as forge the hand of a queen, or because it suited them to do so.
Dalgleish, who had ‘shown’ the investigators the casket under the bed, had been executed in early 1568 and could not be questioned – when surely the lords should have kept him alive as a witness, if he had truly been the possessor of the casket. French Paris or Nicholas Hubert, the servant of Bothwell who had then gone to work for the queen and carried her letters, had fled to Denmark after his mistress had been taken to Lochleven but the lords were chasing him down. When he was finally brought back and interrogated in the summer of 1569, he stoutly said that he did not carry Letters I and II to Bothwell at Mary’s instigation. He was promptly tortured and confessed. But the confession was so weak that when Cecil read it, he wrote instantly to say that any execution should be delayed and the man sent for interview in England. Elizabeth wished him interrogated about the role of other lords in the conspiracy and how much Moray had known. But Paris was hanged without trial almost immediately after the confession had been wrung out of him. On the scaffold, he shouted that he had never delivered the letters.
What Mary’s accusers needed was a letter from her directing Bothwell to kill Darnley. But instead, there was a very vague unsigned love poem that could have been to anyone, and undated copies of letters that were inconclusive. As we have seen, the dates were entirely wrong on Letter I, and Letter II has incorrect timing as well – as well as no mention of anybody else being involved.
Mary had been investigated on perhaps the flimsiest evidence conceivable. But the judges believed they had done their job.
Then Elizabeth had another change of heart. The whole pantomime of judges looking at letters when Mary was denied them, and which her commissioners could not defend, smacked of unfairness, and the English queen had come to suspect that the casket letters were unreliable. She was not only concerned with upholding the rule of law, but she also worried that if a trumped-up court and accusations based on false letters took place under her watch then she would be damned in the eyes of the world. Elizabeth suspended the tribunal, added further dignitaries to the group of judges to balance out the bias and decreed she would supervise proceedings herself. Cecil took the minutes and noted that when the casket letters were compared to those written by Mary to Elizabeth, ‘no difference was found’.10
This was a lie. Not only were they looking at copies, but Mary, when writing to Elizabeth, as the archives show, would write in her most perfect script – as people tended to do when writing on official business. She no doubt copied the letter out more than once to ensure a good impression. Letter II declared that it was ‘scribbled’ and that the writing was ‘evil’. Moreover, Mary’s handwriting, when examined in the archives, was not particularly distinctive. It was actually rather round and almost schoolgirlish, unlike Elizabeth’s charismatic hand. As she herself had said before, it was easy to forge. Not all the nobles were convinced. The Spanish ambassador heard that some had dissented and found Cecil too aggressive in his attitudes towards the Scots queen.
Mary’s commissioners were despairing when they heard that the inquiry had proceeded without them. Elizabeth agreed to meet them and said that Mary could send someone to answer on her behalf or that a deputation would be sent to question her (but they would probably not bring copies of the letters). Herries and Leslie advised Mary to compromise. But she was infuriated and she wrote to Elizabeth that she would not answer accusations based on evidence she had not been shown. She requested again that her commissioners should receive copies of all the documents that were ranged against her and should also be allowed to see the originals. Mary made her points clear: Moray and the others had blamed her for the murder when ‘they themselves are authors, inventors, doers and executors’, and any writings that might exist were ‘false and feigned’. She made a proud declaration that she was not ‘equal to her rebels’ and ‘neither will I submit myself to be weighted in equal balance with them’.11 Finally, she had openly accused her half-brother of Darnley’s murder.
Before Elizabeth could receive the letter, she wrote again to Mary that she had been ‘very sorry of long time for your mishaps’ and was even sorrier now ‘in beholding such things as are produced to prove yourself cause of all the same’. But, she said, she would wait for Mary to provide her defence – ‘we are moved to stay our judgement before we may hear of your direct answer thereunto’. Elizabeth told her that she should reply quickly, ‘as earnestly as we may, require and charge you not to forbear answering’.12 The inquiry could hardly find Mary guilty of the charges if she had not given her response. To reach a conclusion and a verdict, it was necessary that Mary should speak – and she refused to do so unless she saw the letters.
Herries and Leslie also tried to offer a compromise to Moray but he would only consider that Mary might assent to her abdication and live in England. They then told Elizabeth that they were acting on Mary’s behalf and were now accusing Moray and the other lords of Darnley’s murder. They asked again to see the letters that had been given as proof of Mary’s guilt. Elizabeth received their requests but still the copies were not forthcoming. Then in mid-January, Herries and Leslie were told that Elizabeth would allow Mary to see the letters, but only if she agreed to submit to a trial, after which she would be pronounced innocent or guilty.13 It was the most enormous travesty of justice – but to whom could Mary complain? The French ambassador attempted to get the letters for her.14 Elizabeth told him that she would show them to him but then promptly did not.
Elizabeth was reluctant to openly pass judgement on a queen. And finding Mary innocent was anathema to Cecil, who continued to believe she aimed to seize the English throne. Elizabeth adjourned the inquiry, swearing all the judges to secrecy over the letters. She agreed to recognise Moray as regent, although she did not trust him. It was a hopeless stalemate.
Mary was begging again to see her, declaring Elizabeth her ‘nearest kinswoman and perfect friend’, expressed her bitter disappointment that her cousin was not the ‘queen restorer’ she had hoped and blamed Cecil for everything. Although Elizabeth had suspended the inquiry, the stench of suspicion still hung around Mary, and if Elizabeth would not meet her, it was a signal to the rest of the world. Mary saw that no hope lay with her cousin and instead turned to Philip of Spain, begging him to take pity on her because she was ‘deprived of my liberty and closely guarded’.15 She wished that he would push for her release. The new Spanish ambassador went swiftly to his French counter-part and declared Cecil the greatest enemy to Catholicism possible and that they should work together to ‘make him lose his office’.
On 12 January 1569, Moray was formally allowed to return to Scotland, even though Mary had accused him of murder. He set off with a large loan from England and the crown. As both Elizabeth and Cecil knew, Moray was entirely under their control.16 If he rebelled, threatened or attempted a foreign alliance, they could remind him of the accusation of regicide to bring him back into line and even expose the letters as full forgeries.
On 20 January, Elizabeth wrote to Mary without the usual expressions of emotion, sympathy or desire to see her cleared. She told her: ‘Your case is not so clear but that much remains to be explained.’ This state of ambiguity and confusion was exactly what Elizabeth wished to continue. Mary was to remain, as it were, in suspended animation.
At the end of January, Mary was moved to Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, ensconced in the landlocked Midlands, far from Scotland and the sea. She had begged not to be moved from Bolton Castle in Yorkshire, declaring she would have to be ‘bound hand and foot’17 to be shifted. But she had no choice. After an arduous journey, she arrived on 3 February to a solemn and miserable place. It was derelict, admitted every draught, was damp and situated on a marsh that was very unhealthy. Although her furniture followed her there, no money had been provided to make her home habitable. Mary finally realised she was a prisoner. As she wrote in her Book of Hours, pitifully, ‘Qui jamais davantage eust contraire le sort, Si la vie m’est moins utile que la mort’ (‘Who has ever been dealt with by a more hostile fate, if my life is less useful to me than death’).18
Then she was handed over to her new captor, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who had recently become the fourth husband to the formidable Bess of Hardwick. Between them, they had a dazzling array of properties including Sheffield Castle and Chatsworth House, and Tutbury was the least appealing. Elizabeth had sent beds and furniture to make it more comfortable, but it was hardly fit for a queen, and Mary, exhausted after a damp and cold nine-day journey, collapsed into bed with rheumatism and fever. Talbot was sympathetic to Mary and her position, and, like many nobles, was resentful of Cecil and his power. He had no desire for a sickly queen on his hands and Tutbury was not suitable for Mary’s ever-growing entourage, so he wrote to Elizabeth requesting permission to move her to another of his homes.
Notwithstanding her illness and imprisonment, the insults to Mary didn’t stop. She was visited by Nicholas White, one of Cecil’s men, who, despite a pleasant conversation about art, informed her that she had been responsible for the death of Francis Knollys’ wife, Catherine – favourite and chief Lady of the Bedchamber to Elizabeth, daughter of Mary Boleyn – who had died in mid-January, just before Mary was moved, her suffering increased because her husband was away. It was of course unfair – Cecil could have relieved Knollys of the job of jailer so he could have been with his wife. For White, Mary was still a serpent. Despite being reduced, heartbroken, ignored by her relations overseas, deprived of money and associates, imprisoned and watched on all sides, she was to him a terrible threat, a seductive beauty who could send men to their doom. As he warned, she had an ‘alluring grace, a pretty Scots accent, and a searching wit, clouded with mildness. Fame might move some to relieve her, and glory joined with gain might stir others to adventure much for her sake.’19
Elizabeth wrote a letter to Sir Ralph Sadler, one of the three grandees who had headed the inquiry, that she intended to be read by Mary. Elizabeth employed the romantic language that Mary had used – against her. She wrote that she had vowed not ‘to write to her with my own hand until I have received better satisfaction from her to create my contentment than I have received so far’. As she told Sadler, ‘you may let her understand that I wish she had been as careful in the past to have avoided the cause and ground by her given of the just jealousy that I have conceived, since she now appears to dislike the effects that the same has bred towards her’.9 It must have been painful for Mary to read, for Elizabeth does not spare her words. The Queen of Scots knew ‘how great contentment and liking we had for a period of her friendship, which I then esteemed as a singular and extraordinary blessing of God to have one so nearly tied to us with blood and kin’. The ‘just jealousy’ was not so much Mary’s claim to the English throne but the whole avalanche of activities around Darnley’s death. Elizabeth claimed she was sad to see the break in the amity, but, as she put it, it was not her fault. ‘So I am now much grieved to behold the alteration and interruption in the matter, taking no pleasure to look back on the causes that have bred such unpleasant acts which I wish that either they never had been or at the least we could never remember, and that she were as innocent of them as she works so hard to convince both me and the world that she is.’20
Elizabeth was refusing even to write to Mary unless she submitted to the English judges. And to Mary, Elizabeth’s sentiments in this letter were barely distinct from those of the lords. They had changed from saying they would rescue her to declaring she was unfit for the throne because she had been part of the murder plot. Now Elizabeth was declaring that Mary was at fault for what had occurred, and conse-quently she could not treat her as kindly as she wished. When Elizabeth wrote that she wished Mary ‘were as innocent of them as she works so hard to convince both me and the world she is’, she questioned Mary’s innocence. This was something of a new turn. Did Elizabeth truly believe Mary had played a part in the conspiracy? Was she simply trying to attack and reduce her? Or did she dread foreign criticism and was therefore trying to make herself seem less to blame by throwing guilt on Mary?
Typical of Elizabeth, the letter did not choose either way. It cast doubt on Mary’s innocence and yet suggested how much Elizabeth wished her to be innocent. But the import was clear to Mary – her situation could not be worse.