| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Mystery of Mary Stuart
Author: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mystery of Mary Stuart" ***
THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
A MONK OF FIFE. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
ANGLING SKETCHES. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
BALLADS OF BOOKS. Fcp. 8vo. 6_s._
BAN AND ARRIÈRE BAN. Fcp. 8vo. [_Out of print._
BOOK OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
BOOKS AND BOOKMEN. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
COMPANIONS OF PICKLE. 8vo. 16_s._
CUSTOM AND MYTH. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
ESSAYS IN LITTLE. Crown 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._
GRASS OF PARNASSUS. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
HOMER AND THE EPIC. Crown 8vo. 9_s._ _net_.
LETTERS ON LITERATURE. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
MAGIC AND RELIGION. 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
MODERN MYTHOLOGY. 8vo. 9_s._
MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. 2 vols, crown 8vo. 7_s._
OLD FRIENDS. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ _net_.
PICKLE THE SPY. 8vo. [_Out of print._
ST. ANDREWS. 8vo. [_Out of print._
THE MAKING OF RELIGION. Crown 8vo. 5_s._ _net_.
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 39 Paternoster Row, London
New York and Bombay.
[Illustration: Mary Stuart
From the portrait in the collection of the Earl of Morton.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART
BY ANDREW LANG
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_NEW EDITION_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
89 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1901
All rights reserved
PREFACE
In revising this book I have corrected a number of misreadings in the
Arabic numerals of dates of years. I owe much to Mr. David Bruce-Gardyne
and Mr. Hay Fleming. In deference to other criticisms offered privately, I
have somewhat modified certain phrases about the hypothetical forged
letter, as quoted by Moray and Lennox (pp. 211-236). That such a letter
once existed is, of course, an inference on which readers must form their
own opinion. The passage as to the site of Darnley’s house, Kirk o’ Field
(pp. 124-131), ought to have been banished to an Appendix. On any theory
the existence of the town wall, shown in the contemporary chart opposite
p. 130, is a difficulty. The puzzle is caused by the chart of 1567,
reduced in the design given at p. 130. In all published forms the drawing
is given as it is here. But it reverses the points of the compass, east
and west. Mr. A. H. Millar has suggested to me that if reflected in a
mirror some errors of the chart disappear, whence one infers that it was
drawn in reverse for an engraving. I have, therefore, corrected the text
in this sense. But difficulties remain: there is a town wall, running
south to north, of which we have no other knowledge; and Hamilton House
(if the chart is reversed) is placed east instead of west of Kirk o’
Field, where it actually stood. The original design contains only the name
of Hamilton House. In our chart the house is copied from the picture of it
as part of the University buildings, in the map of 1647.
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Carlyle not unjustly described the tragedy of Mary Stuart as but a
personal incident in the true national History of Scotland. He asked for
other and more essential things than these revelations of high life. Yet
he himself wrote in great detail the story of the Diamond Necklace of
Marie Antoinette. The diamonds of the French, the silver Casket of the
Scottish Queen, with all that turned on them, are of real historical
interest, for these trifles brought to the surface the characters and
principles of men living in an age of religious revolution. Wells were
sunk, as it were, deep into human personality, and the inner
characteristics of the age leaped upwards into the light.
For this reason the Mystery of Mary Stuart must always fascinate:
moreover, curiosity has never ceased to be aroused by this problem of
Mary’s guilt or innocence. Hume said, a hundred and fifty years ago, that
the Scottish Jacobite who believed in the Queen’s innocence was beyond the
reach of reason or argument. Yet from America, Russia, France, and Germany
we receive works in which the guilt of Mary is denied, and the arguments
of Hume, Robertson, Laing, Mignet, and Froude are contested. Every inch of
the ground has been inspected as if by detectives on the scene of a recent
murder; and one might suppose that the Higher Criticism had uttered its
last baseless conjecture and that every syllable of the fatal Casket
Letters, the only external and documentary testimony to Mary’s guilt, must
have been weighed, tested, and analysed. But this, as we shall see, is
hardly the fact. There are ‘points as yet unseized by Germans.’ Mary was
never tried by a Court of Justice during her lifetime. Her cause has been
in process of trial ever since. Each newly discovered manuscript, like the
fragmentary biography by her secretary, Nau, and the Declaration of the
Earl of Morton, and the newly translated dispatches of the Spanish
ambassadors, edited by Major Martin Hume (1894), has brought fresh light,
and has modified the tactics of the attack and defence.
As Herr Cardauns remarks, at the close of his ‘Der Sturz der Maria
Stuart,’ we cannot expect finality, and our verdicts or hypotheses may be
changed by the emergence of some hitherto unknown piece of evidence.
Already we have seen too many ingenious theories overthrown. From the
defence of Mary by Goodall (1754) to the triumphant certainties of
Chalmers (1818), to the arguments of MM. Philippson and Sepp, of Mr.
Hosack, and of Sir John Skelton (1880-1895), increasing knowledge of
facts, new emergence of old MSS. have, on the whole, weakened the
position of the defence. Mr. Henderson’s book ‘The Casket Letters and Mary
Stuart’ (First Edition 1889) is the last word on the matter in this
country. Mr. Henderson was the first to publish in full Morton’s sworn
Declaration as to the discovery, inspection, and safe keeping of the fatal
Casket and its contents. Sir John Skelton’s reply[1] told chiefly against
minor points of criticism and palæography.
The present volume is not a Defence of Mary’s innocence. My object is to
show, how the whole problem is affected by the discovery of the Lennox
Papers, which admit us behind the scenes, and enable us to see how Mary’s
prosecutors, especially the Earl of Lennox, the father of her murdered
husband, got up their case. The result of criticism of these papers is
certainly to reinforce Mr. Hosack’s argument, that there once existed a
forged version of the long and monstrous letter to Bothwell from Glasgow,
generally known as ‘Letter II.’ In this book, as originally written, I had
myself concluded that Letter II., as it stands, bears evidence of
garbling. The same is the opinion of Dr. Bresslau, who accepts the other
Casket Papers as genuine. The internal chronology of Letter II. is
certainly quite impossible, and in this I detected unskilled dove-tailing
of genuine and forged elements. But I thought it advisable to rewrite the
first half of the Letter, in modern English, as if it were my own
composition, and while doing this I discovered the simple and ordinary
kind of accident which may explain the dislocation of the chronology, and
remove the evidence to unskilled dove-tailing and garbling. In the same
spirit of rather reluctant conscientiousness, I worked out the scheme of
dates which makes the Letter capable of being fitted into the actual
series of events. Thus I am led, though with diffidence, to infer that,
though a forged version of Letter II. probably once existed, the Letter
may be, at least in part, a genuine composition by the Queen. The fact,
however, does not absolutely compel belief, and, unless new manuscripts
are discovered, may always be doubted by admirers of Mary.
Sir John Skelton, in his ‘Maitland of Lethington,’ regarded the supposed
falsification of Letter II. as an argument against all the Casket Letters
(‘false in one thing, false in all’). But it is clear that forgery may be
employed to strengthen the evidence, even of a valid cause. If Mary’s
enemies deemed that the genuine evidence which they had collected was
inadequate, and therefore added evidence which was not genuine, that
proves their iniquity, but does not prove Mary’s innocence. Portions of
the Letter II., and of some of the other Letters, have all the air of
authenticity, and suffice to compromise the Queen.
This inquiry, then, if successfully conducted, does not clear Mary, but
solves some of the darkest problems connected with her case. I think that
a not inadequate theory of the tortuous and unintelligible policy of
Maitland of Lethington, and of his real relations with Mary, is here
presented. I also hope that new light is thrown on Mary’s own line of
defence, and on the actual forgers or contaminators of her Letters, if the
existence of such forgery or contamination is held to be possible.
By study of dates it is made clear, I think, that the Lords opposing Mary
took action, as regards the Letters, on the very day of their discovery.
This destroys the argument which had been based on the tardy appearance of
the papers in the dispatches of the period, an argument already shaken by
the revelations of the Spanish Calendar.
Mary’s cause has, hitherto, been best served by her accusers, most injured
by her defenders. For political and personal reasons her enemies, her
accomplices, or the conscious allies of her accomplices, perpetually
stultified themselves and gave themselves the lie. Their case was
otherwise very badly managed. Their dates were so carelessly compiled as
to make their case chronologically impossible. Their position, as stated,
probably by George Buchanan and Makgill, in ‘The Book of Articles,’ and
the ‘Detection,’ is marred by exaggerations and inconsistencies. Buchanan
was by no means a critical historian, and he was here writing as an
advocate, mainly from briefs furnished by Lennox, his feudal chief, the
father of the murdered Darnley. These briefs we now possess, and the
generosity of Father Pollen, S.J., has allowed me to use these hitherto
virgin materials.
The Lennox Papers also enable us to add new and dramatically appropriate
anecdotes of Mary and Darnley, while, by giving us some hitherto unknown
myths current at the moment, they enable us to explain certain
difficulties which have puzzled historians. The whole subject throws a
lurid light on the ethics and the persons of the age which followed the
Reformation in Scotland. Other novelties may be found to emerge from new
combinations of facts and texts which have long been familiar, and
particular attention has been paid to the subordinate persons in the play,
while a hitherto disregarded theory of the character of Bothwell is
offered; a view already, in part, suggested by Mignet.
The arrangement adopted is as follows:
First, in two preliminary chapters, the characters and the scenes of the
events are rapidly and broadly sketched. We try to make the men and women
live and move in palaces and castles now ruinous or untenanted.
Next the relations of the characters to each other are described, from
Mary’s arrival in Scotland to her marriage with Darnley; the murder of
Riccio, the interval of the eleven predicted months that passed ere beside
Riccio lay ‘a fatter than he,’ Darnley: the slaying of Darnley, the
marriage with Bothwell, the discovery of the Casket, the imprisonment at
Loch Leven, the escape thence, and the flight into England.
Next the External History of the Casket Letters, the first hints of their
existence, their production before Elizabeth’s Commission at Westminster,
and Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, with the obscure intrigues of the
Commission at York, and the hasty and scuffling examinations at
Westminster and Hampton Court, are described and explained.
Next the Internal Evidence of the Letters themselves is criticised.
Finally, the later history of the Letters, with the disappearance of the
original alleged autograph texts, closes the subject.
Very minute examination of details and dates has been deemed necessary.
The case is really a police case, and investigation cannot be too anxious,
but certain points of complex detail are relegated to Appendices.
In writing the book I have followed, as Socrates advises, where the
_Logos_ led me. Several conclusions or theories which at first beguiled
me, and seemed convincing, have been ruined by the occurrence of fresher
evidence, and have been withdrawn. I have endeavoured to search for, and
have stated, as fully as possible, the objections which may be urged to
conclusions which are provisional, and at the mercy of criticism, and of
fresh or neglected evidence.
The character of Mary, _son naturel_, as she says, or is made to say in
the most incriminating Letter, is full of fascination, excellence and
charm. Her terrible expiation has won the pity of gentle hearts, and
sentiment has too often clouded reason, while reaction against sentiment
has been no less mischievous. But History, the search for truth, should be
as impersonal as the judge on the bench. I am not unaccustomed to be
blamed for ‘destroying our illusions,’ but to cultivate and protect
illusion has never been deemed the duty of the historian. Mary, at worst,
and even admitting her guilt (guilt monstrous and horrible to contemplate)
seems to have been a nobler nature than any of the persons most closely
associated with her fortunes. She fell, if fall she did, like the
Clytæmnestra to whom a contemporary poet compares her, under the almost
demoniacal possession of passion; a possession so sudden, strange and
overpowering that even her enemies attributed it to ‘unlawful arts.’
I have again to acknowledge the almost, or quite, unparalleled kindness of
Father Pollen in allowing me to use his materials. He found transcripts of
what I style the ‘Lennox MSS.’ among the papers of the late learned Father
Stevenson, S.J. These he collated with the originals in the University
Library at Cambridge. It is his intention, I understand, to publish the
whole collection, which was probably put together for the use of Dr.
Wilson, when writing, or editing, the ‘Actio,’ published with Buchanan’s
‘Detection.’ Father Pollen has also read most of my proof-sheets, but he
is not responsible for any of my provisional conclusions. I have also
consulted, on various points, Mr. George Neilson, Dr. Hay Fleming, Mr. A.
H. Millar, and others.
Miss Dorothy Alston made reduced drawings, omitting the figures, of the
contemporary charts of Edinburgh, and of Kirk o’ Field. Mr. F. Compton
Price supplied the imitations of Mary’s handwriting, and the facsimiles in
Plates A B, B A, &c.
For leave to photograph and publish the portrait of Darnley and his
brother I have to acknowledge the gracious permission of his Majesty, the
King.
The Duke of Hamilton has kindly given permission to publish photographs of
the Casket at Hamilton Palace (see Chapter XVIII.).
The Earl of Morton has been good enough to allow his admirable portraits
of Mary (perhaps of 1575) and of the Regent Morton to be reproduced.
Mr. Oliphant, of Rossie, has placed at my service his portrait of Mary as
a girl, a copy, probably by Sir John Medina, of a contemporary French
likeness.
To the kindness of the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour and Miss Balfour we owe
the photographs of the famous tree at Whittingham, Mr. Balfour’s seat,
where Morton, Lethington, and Bothwell conspired to murder Darnley.
The Lennox Papers are in the Cambridge University Library.
_The Suppressed Confessions of Hepburn of Bowton_
Too late for notice in the body of this book, the following curious piece
of evidence was observed by Father Ryan, S.J., in the Cambridge MS. of
the deposition of Hepburn of Bowton. This kinsman and accomplice of
Bothwell was examined on December 8, 1567, before Moray, Atholl,
Kirkcaldy, Lindsay, and Bellenden, Lord Justice Clerk. The version of his
confession put in at the Westminster Conference, December 1568, will be
found in Anderson, ii. 183-188, and in Laing, ii. 256-259. The MS. is in
Cotton Caligula, C.I. fol. 325. It is attested as a ‘true copy’ by
Bellenden. But if we follow the Cambridge MS. it is _not_ a true copy. A
long passage, following ‘and lay down with him,’ at the end, is omitted.
That passage I now cite:
‘Farther this deponar sayis that he inquirit at my lord quhat securitie he
had for it quhilk wes done, because their wes sic ane brute and murmo{r}
in the toun And my lord ansuerit that diuerse noblemen had subscrivit the
deid with him And schew the same band[2] to the deponar, quhairat wes the
subscriptionis of the erles of huntlie, ergile, boithuile altogether, and
the secretares subscriptioun far beneth the rest. And insafar as the
deponar remembers this was the effect of it, it contenit sum friuose
[frivolous?] and licht caussis aganis the king sic as hys behavio{r}
contrar the quene, quhilk band wes in ane of twa silver cofferis and wes
in dunbar, and the deponar saw the same there the tyme that they wer thare
after the quenis revissing And understandis that the band wes with the
remanent letters, and putt in the castell be george dalgleis. Inquirit
quha deuisit that the king suld ludge at the kirk of feild?
‘Answeris S{r} James balfo{r} can better tell nor he And knew better and
befoir the deponer yof. And quhen the Quene wes in glasgow my lord
Boithuile send the deponar to S{r} James balfo{r} desiring that he wald
cum and meit my lord at the kirk of feild To quhome Schir James ansuerit,
“will my lord cum thair? gif he cum it wer gude he war quiet.” And yit
they met not at that place than nor at natyme thairefter to the deponers
knawledge.
‘Thair wes xiiii keyis quhilkis this deponer efter the murtho{r} keist in
the grevvell hoill [? quarrel-hoill, _i.e._ quarry hole] betuix the abbay
and leith. And towardes the makers of the keyis they were maid betuix
Leuestoun and S{r} James balfo{r} and thai twa can tell. Item deponis that
Ilk ane that wer of the band and siclike the erle of Morton and Sy{r}
James balfo{r} suld haif send twa men to the committing of the murther.
And the erle boithuile declarit to the deponar are nyt or twa afore the
murtho{r} falland in talking of thame that wer in the kingis chalmer My
lord said that Sandy Durham wes ane gude fallowe and he wald wische that
he weir out of the same.
‘This is the trew copy, etc.’
Perhaps few will argue that this passage has been fraudulently inserted in
the Cambridge MS. If not, Bellenden lied when he attested the mutilated
deposition to be a true copy. His own autograph signature attests the
Cambridge copy. Moray, who heard Bowton make his deposition, was a partner
to the fraud. The portion of the evidence burked by Moray is corroborated,
as regards the signatures of the band for Darnley’s murder, by Ormistoun,
much later (Dec. 13, 1573) in Laing, ii. 293. Ormistoun, however, probably
by an error of memory, says that he saw what Bothwell affirmed to be the
signature of Sir James Balfour, in addition to those spoken of by Bowton,
namely Argyll, Bothwell, Huntly, and Lethington. This statement as to
Balfour Bowton withdrew in his dying confession as published. Bowton’s
remark that Lethington’s signature came ‘far beneath the rest’ sounds
true. Space would be left above for the signatures of men of higher rank
than the secretary.
Bowton saw the band at Dunbar (April-May, 1567, during Mary’s detention
there), ‘in one of two silver coffers.’ He only ‘understands’ that the
band was ‘with the remanent letters, and put in the Castle by George
Dalgleish.’ If ‘the remanent letters’ are the Casket Letters, and if
Bowton, at Dunbar, had seen them with the band, and read them, his
evidence would have been valuable as to the Letters. But as things are, we
have merely his opinion, or ‘understanding,’ that certain letters were
kept with the band, as Drury, we know, asserted that it was in the Casket
with the other papers, and was destroyed, while the Letters attributed to
Mary ‘were kept to be shown.’ Of course, if this be true, Morton lied
when he said that the contents of the Casket had neither been added to
nor diminished.
Next, Bowton denied that, to his knowledge, Bothwell and Balfour met at
the Kirk o’ Field, while Mary was at Glasgow, or at any other time. If
Bowton is right, and he was their go-between, Paris lied in his Deposition
where he says that Bothwell and Sir James had passed a whole night in Kirk
o’ Field, while Mary was at Glasgow.[3]
Bowton’s confession that Morton ‘should have sent two men to the
committing of the murder,’ explains the presence of Archibald Douglas,
Morton’s cousin, with Binning, his man. These two represented Morton.
Finally, Bowton’s confession in the Cambridge MS. joins the copy of his
confession put in at Westminster, on the point of the fourteen false keys
of Kirk o’ Field, thrown by Bowton into a gravel hole. Unless then the
Cambridge MS. is rejected, the Lord Justice Clerk and Moray deliberately
suppressed evidence which proved that Moray was allied with two of
Darnley’s murderers in prosecuting his sister for that crime. Such
evidence, though extant, Moray, of course, dared not produce, but must
burke at Westminster.
I have shown in the text (p. 144) that, even on Bowton’s evidence as
produced at Westminster, Moray was aware that Bothwell had allies among
the nobles, but that, as far as the evidence declares, he asked no
questions. But the Cambridge MS. proves his full knowledge, which he
deliberately suppressed. The Cambridge MS. must either have been furnished
to Lennox, before the sittings at Westminster; or must have been the
original, or a copy of the original, later supplied to Dr. Wilson while
preparing Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’ the ‘Actio,’ and other documents for the
press in November 1571.[4] It will be observed that when Lethington was
accused of Darnley’s murder, in September 1569, Moray could not well have
prosecuted him to a conviction, as his friends, Atholl and Kirkcaldy,
having been present at Bowton’s examination, knew that Moray knew of
Lethington’s guilt, yet continued to be his ally. The Cambridge copy of
the deposition of Hay of Tala contains no reference to the guilt of Morton
or Lethington; naturally, for Morton was present at Hay’s examination.
Finally, the evidence of Binning, in 1581, shows that representatives of
Lethington and Balfour, as well as of Morton, were present at the murder,
as Bowton, in his suppressed testimony, says had been arranged.
It is therefore clear that Moray, in arraigning his sister with the aid of
her husband’s assassins, could suppress authentic evidence. Mary’s
apologists will argue that he was also capable of introducing evidence
less than authentic.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ 1
II. THE MINOR CHARACTERS 28
III. THE CHARACTERS BEFORE RICCIO’S MURDER 45
IV. BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE 71
V. BETWEEN THE BAPTISM AND THE MURDER 105
VI. THE MURDER OF DARNLEY 123
VII. THE CONFESSIONS OF PARIS 154
VIII. MARY’S CONDUCT AFTER THE MURDER 171
IX. THE EMERGENCE OF THE CASKET LETTERS 193
X. THE CASKET LETTERS 208
XI. THE LETTERS AT THE CONFERENCE OF YORK 237
XII. THE LETTERS AT WESTMINSTER AND HAMPTON COURT 266
XIII. MARY’S ATTITUDE AFTER THE CONFERENCE 283
XIV. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE LETTERS 290
XV. THE SIX MINOR CASKET LETTERS 322
XVI. THE CASKET SONNETS 344
XVII. CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS 346
XVIII. LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS 365
_APPENDICES_
A. THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL 371
B. THE BURNING OF LYON KING OF ARMS 374
C. THE DATE OF MARY’S VISIT TO GLASGOW 379
D. THE BAND FOR DARNLEY’S MURDER 381
E. THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS 385
THE CASKET LETTERS:
LETTER I. PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION
AT RECORD OFFICE 391
" II. PUBLISHED SCOTS AND ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 393
" III. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION AT HATFIELD 414
" IV. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION 416
" V. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION AT HATFIELD 417
" VI. PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION 418
" VII. SCOTS VERSION 419
" VIII. ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION 420
" IX. THE FRENCH ‘SONNETS’ 422
CRAWFORD’S DEPOSITION 427
INDEX 433
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES_
MARY STUART _Frontispiece_
_From the Portrait in the Collection of the Earl of
Morton._
MARY AT EIGHTEEN _To face p._ 4
DARNLEY ABOUT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN " 10
THE REGENT MORTON " 30
_From the Portrait in the Collection of the Earl of
Morton._
LE DEUIL BLANC " 48
_Sketch by Janet, 1561._
HOUSE OCCUPIED BY QUEEN MARY AT JEDBURGH " 94
_OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF EDINBURGH " 40
THE OLD TOWER, WHITTINGHAM " 116
THE WHITTINGHAM TREE " 118
_After a Drawing by Richard Doyle._
THE WHITTINGHAM TREE (External View) " 120
KIRK O’ FIELD SITE IN 1646, SHOWING EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY " 126
KEY PLAN OF KIRK O’ FIELD " 130
PLACARD OF MARY, 1567 (Mary as a Mermaid) " 174
TWO SONNETS FROM THE CAMBRIDGE MS. (Plate A) " 344
EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND (Plates A B, B A) " 362
HANDS OF MARY BEATON, KIRKCALDY, LETHINGTON AND MARY
FLEMING (Plate C) " 364
SIDE OF CASKET WITH ARMS OF HAMILTON (Plate D) " 366
RAISED WORK ON ROOF OF CASKET (Plate D) " 366
CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY (Plate E) " 368
FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN
‘STRICKEN UP’ (Plate E) " 368
MODERN IMITATION OF MARY’S HAND (Plate F) " 420
_Errata_
Page 38, lines 20-23, _the sentence should read_: Holyrood is altered by
buildings of the Restoration; where now is the chapel where Mary prayed,
and the priests at the altar were buffeted?
Page 165, line 21, _for_ Blackadder, _read_ Blackader.
Page 175, line 18, _for_ Mr. James Spens, _read_ Mr. John Spens.
Pages 196-205, 320, 355: Melville was _not_ ‘the bearer,’ as erroneously
stated in Bain, ii. 336.
THE MYSTERY OF MARY STUART
I
_DRAMATIS PERSONÆ_
History is apt to be, and some think that it should be, a mere series of
dry uncoloured statements. Such an event occurred, such a word was
uttered, such a deed was done, at this date or the other. We give
references to our authorities, to men who heard of the events, or even saw
them when they happened. But we, the writer and the readers, _see_
nothing: we only offer or accept bald and imperfect information. If we try
to write history on another method, we become ‘picturesque:’ we are
composing a novel, not striving painfully to attain the truth. Yet, when
we know not the details;--the aspect of dwellings now ruinous; the hue and
cut of garments long wasted into dust; the passing frown, or smile, or
tone of the actors and the speakers in these dramas of life long ago; the
clutch of Bothwell at his dagger’s hilt, when men spoke to him in the
street; the flush of Darnley’s fair face as Mary and he quarrelled at
Stirling before his murder--then we know not the real history, the real
truth. Now and then such a detail of gesture or of change of countenance
is recorded by an eyewitness, and brings us, for a moment, into more vivid
contact with the past. But we could only know it, and judge the actors and
their conduct, if we could see the personages in their costume as they
lived, passing by in some magic mirror from scene to scene. The stage, as
in Schiller’s ‘Marie Stuart,’ comes nearest to reality, if only the facts
given by the poet were real; and next in vividness comes the novel, such
as Scott’s ‘Abbot,’ with its picture of Mary at Loch Leven, when she falls
into an hysterical fit at the mention of Bastian’s marriage on the night
of Darnley’s death. Far less intimate than these imaginary pictures of
genius are the statements of History, dull when they are not
‘picturesque,’ and when they are ‘picturesque,’ sometimes prejudiced,
inaccurate, and misleading.
We are to betake ourselves to the uninviting series of contradictory
statements and of contested dates, and of disputable assertions, which are
the dry bones of a tragedy like that of the ‘Agamemnon’ of Æschylus. Let
us try first to make mental pictures of the historic people who play their
parts on what is now a dimly lighted stage, but once was shone upon by the
sun in heaven; by the stars of darkling nights on ways dimly discerned; by
the candles of Holyrood, or of that crowded sick-room in Kirk o’ Field,
where Bothwell and the Lords played dice round the fated Darnley’s couch;
or by the flare of torches under which Mary rode down the Blackfriars Wynd
and on to Holyrood.
The foremost person is the Queen, a tall girl of twenty-four, with brown
hair, and sidelong eyes of red brown. Such are her sidelong eyes in the
Morton portrait; such she bequeathed to her great-great-grandson, James,
‘the King over the Water.’ She was half French in temper, one of the proud
bold Guises, by her mother’s side; and if not beautiful, she was so
beguiling that Elizabeth recognised her magic even in the reports of her
enemies.[5]
‘This lady and Princess is a notable woman,’ said Knollys; ‘she showeth a
disposition to speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, and to be very
familiar. She showeth a great desire to be avenged of her enemies, she
showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory,
she delighteth much to hear of hardiness and valiance, commending by name
all approved hardy men of her country, although they be her enemies, and
concealeth no cowardice even in her friends.’
There was something ‘divine,’ Elizabeth said, in the face and manner which
won the hearts of her gaolers in Loch Leven and in England. ‘Heaven bless
that sweet face!’ cried the people in the streets as the Queen rode by, or
swept along with the long train, the ‘targetted tails’ and ‘stinking pride
of women,’ that Knox denounced.
She was gay, as when Randolph met her, in no more state than a burgess’s
wife might use, in the little house of St. Andrews, hard by the desecrated
Cathedral. She could be madly mirthful, dancing, or walking the black
midnight streets of Edinburgh, masked, in male apparel, or flitting ‘in
homely attire,’ said her enemies, about the Market Cross in Stirling. She
loved, at sea, ‘to handle the boisterous cables,’ as Buchanan tells.
Pursuing her brother, Moray, on a day of storm, or hard on the doomed
Huntly’s track among the hills and morasses of the North; or galloping
through the red bracken of the October moors, and the hills of the
robbers, to Hermitage; her energy outwore the picked warriors in her
company. At other times, in a fascinating languor, she would lie long
abed, receiving company in the French fashion, waited on by her Maries,
whose four names ‘are four sweet symphonies,’ Mary Seton and Mary Beaton,
Mary Fleming and Mary Livingstone. To the Council Board she would bring
her woman’s work, embroidery of silk and gold. She was fabled to have
carried pistols at her saddle-bow in war, and she excelled in matches of
archery and pall-mall.
[Illustration: Mary at Eighteen.]
Her costumes, when she would be queenly, have left their mark on the
memory of men: the ruff from which rose the snowy neck; the brocaded
bodice, with puffed and jewelled sleeves and stomacher; the diamonds,
gifts of Henri II. or of Diane; the rich pearls that became the spoil of
Elizabeth; the brooches enamelled with sacred scenes, or scenes from
fable. Many of her jewels--the ruby tortoise given by Riccio; the enamel
of the mouse and the ensnared lioness, passed by Lethington as a token
into her dungeon of Loch Leven; the diamonds bequeathed by her to one whom
she might not name; the red enamelled wedding-ring, the gift of Darnley;
the diamond worn in her bosom, the betrothal present of Norfolk--are, to
our fancy, like the fabled star-ruby of Helen of Troy, that dripped with
blood-gouts which vanished as they fell. Riccio, Darnley, Lethington,
Norfolk, the donors of these jewels, they were all to die for her, as
Bothwell, too, was to perish, the giver of the diamond carried by Paris,
the recipient of the black betrothal ring enamelled with bones and tears.
‘Her feet go down to death,’ her feet that were so light in the dance,
‘her steps take hold on hell.... Her lips drop as an honeycomb, and her
mouth is smoother than oil. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a
two-edged sword.’ The lips that dropped as honeycomb, the laughing mouth,
could wildly threaten, and vainly rage or beseech, when she was entrapped
at Carberry; or could waken pity in the sternest Puritan when, half-clad,
her bosom bare, her loose hair flowing, she wailed from her window to the
crowd of hostile Edinburgh.
She was of a high impatient spirit: we seem to recognise her in an
anecdote told by the Black Laird of Ormistoun, one of Darnley’s murderers,
in prison before his execution. He had been warned by his brother, in a
letter, that he was suspected of the crime, and should ‘get some good way
to purge himself.’ He showed the letter to Bothwell, who read it, and gave
it to Mary. She glanced at it, handed it to Huntly, ‘and thereafter turnit
unto me, and turnit her back, and gave _ane thring_ with her shoulder, and
passit away, and spake nothing to me.’ But that ‘thring’ spoke much of
Mary’s mood, unrepentant, contemptuous, defiant.
Mary’s gratitude was not of the kind proverbial in princes. In September
1571, when the Ridolfi plot collapsed, and Mary’s household was reduced,
her sorest grief was for Archibald Beaton, her usher, and little Willie
Douglas, who rescued her from Loch Leven. They were to be sent to
Scotland, which meant death to both, and she pleaded pitifully for them.
To her servants she wrote: ‘I thank God, who has given me strength to
endure, and I pray Him to grant you the like grace. To you will your
loyalty bring the greatest honour, and whensoever it pleases God to set me
free, I will never fail you, but reward you according to my power.... Pray
God that you be true men and constant, to such He will never deny his
grace, and for you, John Gordon and William Douglas, I pray that He will
inspire your hearts. I can no more. Live in friendship and holy charity
one with another, bearing each other’s imperfections.... You, William
Douglas, be assured that the life which you hazarded for me shall never be
destitute while I have one friend alive.’
In a trifling transaction she writes: ‘Rather would I pay twice over, than
injure or suspect any man.’
In the long lament of the letters written during her twenty years of
captivity, but a few moods return and repeat themselves, like phrases in a
fugue. Vain complaints, vain hopes, vain intrigues with Spain, France, the
Pope, the Guises, the English Catholics, succeed each other with futile
iteration. But always we hear the note of loyalty even to her humblest
servants, of sleepless memory of their sacrifices for her, of unstinting
and generous gratitude. Such was the Queen’s ‘natural,’ _mon naturel_:
with this character she faced the world: a lady to live and die for: and
many died.
This woman, sensitive, proud, tameless, fierce, and kind, was browbeaten
by the implacable Knox: her priests were scourged and pilloried, her
creed was outraged every day; herself scolded, preached at, insulted; her
every plan thwarted by Elizabeth. Mary had reason enough for tears even
before her servant was slain almost in her sight by her witless husband
and the merciless Lords. She could be gay, later, dancing and hunting, but
it may well be that, after this last and worst of cruel insults, her heart
had now become hard as the diamond; and that she was possessed by the evil
spirits of loathing, and hatred, and longing for revenge. It had not been
a hard heart, but a tender; capable of sorrow for slaves at the galley
oars. After her child’s birth, when she was holiday-making at Alloa,
according to Buchanan, with Bothwell and his gang of pirates, she wrote to
the Laird of Abercairnie, bidding him be merciful to a poor woman and her
‘company of puir bairnis’ whom he had evicted from their ‘kindly rowme,’
or little croft.
Her more than masculine courage her enemies have never denied. Her
resolution was incapable of despair; ‘her last word should be that of a
Queen.’ Her plighted promise she revered, but, in such an age, a woman’s
weapon was deceit.
She was the centre and pivot of innumerable intrigues. The fierce nobles
looked on her as a means for procuring lands, office, and revenge on their
feudal enemies. To the fiercer ministers she was an idolatress, who ought
to die the death, and, meanwhile, must be thwarted and insulted. To
France, Spain, and Austria she was a piece in the game of diplomatic
chess. To the Pope she seemed an instrument that might win back both
Scotland and England for the Church, while the English Catholics regarded
her as either their lawful or their future Queen. To Elizabeth she was,
naturally, and inevitably, and, in part, by her own fault, a deadly rival,
whatever feline caresses might pass between them: gifts of Mary’s heart,
in a heart-shaped diamond; Elizabeth’s diamond ‘like a rock,’ a rock in
which was no refuge. Yet Mary was of a nature so large and unsuspicious
that, on the strength of a ring and a promise, she trusted herself to
Elizabeth, contrary to the advice of her staunchest adherents. She was no
natural dissembler, and with difficulty came to understand that others
could be false. Her sense of honour might become perverted, but she had a
strong native sense of honour.
One thing this woman wanted, a master. Even before Darnley and she were
wedded, at least publicly, Randolph wrote, ‘All honour that may be
attributed unto any man by a wife, he hath it wholly and fully.’ In her
authentic letters to Norfolk, when, a captive in England, she regarded
herself as betrothed to him, we find her adopting an attitude of
submissive obedience. The same tone pervades the disputed Casket Letters,
to Bothwell, and is certainly in singular consonance with the later, and
genuine epistles to Norfolk. But the tone--if the Casket Letters are
forged--may have been borrowed from what was known of her early submission
to Darnley.
The second _dramatis persona_ is Darnley, ‘The Young Fool.’ Concerning
Darnley but little is recorded in comparison with what we know of Mary. He
was the son, by the Earl of Lennox, a royal Stewart, of that daughter whom
Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., and widow of James IV., bore to her
second husband, the Earl of Angus. Darnley’s father regarded himself as
next to the Scottish crown, for the real nearest heir, the head of the
Hamiltons, the Duke of Chatelherault, Lennox chose to consider as
illegitimate. After playing a double and dishonest part in the troubled
years following the death of James V., Lennox retired to England with his
wife, a victim of the suspicions of Elizabeth.[6] The education of his
son, Henry, Lord Darnley, seems to have been excellent, as far as the
intellect and the body are concerned. The letter which, as a child of
nine, he wrote to Mary Tudor, speaking of a work of his own, ‘The New
Utopia,’ is in the new ‘Roman’ hand, carried to the perfection of
copperplate. The Lennox MSS. say that ‘the Queen was stricken with the
dart of love by the comliness of his sweet behaviour, personage, wit, and
vertuous qualities, as well in languages[7] and lettered sciencies, as
also in the art of music, dancing, and playing on instruments.’ When his
murderers had left his room at midnight, his last midnight, his
chamber-child begged him to play, while a psalm was sung, but his hand,
he replied, was out for the lute, so say the Lennox Papers. Physically he
was ‘a comely Prince of a fair and large stature, pleasant in countenance
... well exercised in martial pastimes upon horseback as any Prince of
that age.’ The Spanish Ambassador calls him ‘an amiable youth.’ But it is
plain that ‘the long lad,’ the _gentil hutaudeau_, with his girlish bloom,
and early tendency to fulness of body, was a spoiled child. His mother, a
passionate intriguer, kept this before him, that, as great-grandson of
Henry VII., and as cousin of Mary Stuart, he should unite the two crowns.
There were Catholics enough in England to flatter the pride of a future
king, though now in exile. This Prince _in partibus_, like his far-away
descendant, Prince Charles Edward, combined a show of charming manners,
when he chose to charm, with an arrogant and violent petulance, when he
deemed it safe to be insulting. At his first arrival in Scotland he won
golden opinions, ‘his courteous dealing with all men is well spoken of.’
As his favour with Mary waxed he ‘dealt blows where he knew that they
would be taken;’ he is said to have drawn his dagger on an official who
brought him a disappointing message, and his foolish freedom of tongue
gave Moray the alarm. It was soon prophesied that he ‘could not continue
long.’ ‘To all honest men he is intolerable, and almost forgetful of her
already, that has adventured so much for his sake. What shall become of
her or what life with him she shall lead, that already taketh so much
upon him as to control and command her, I leave it to others to think.’ So
Randolph, the English Ambassador, wrote as early as May, 1565. She was
‘blinded, transported, carried I know not whither or which way, to her own
confusion and destruction:’ words of omen that were fulfilled.
[Illustration: Darnley at about the age of 18.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
Whether Elizabeth let Darnley go to Scotland merely for Mary’s
entanglement, whether Mary fell in love with the handsome accomplished lad
(as Randolph seems to prove) or not, are questions then, and now,
disputed. The Lennox Papers, declaring that she was smitten by the arrow
of love; and her own conduct, at first, make it highly probable that she
entertained for the _gentil hutaudeau_ a passion, or a passionate caprice.
Darnley, at least, acted like a new chemical agent in the development of
Mary’s character. She had been singularly long-suffering; she had borne
the insults and outrages of the extreme Protestants; she had leaned on her
brother, Moray, and on Lethington; following or even leading these
advisers to the ruin of Huntly, her chief coreligionist. Though constantly
professing, openly to Knox, secretly to the Pope, her desire to succour
the ancient Church, she was obviously regarded, in Papal circles, as slack
in the work. She had been pliant, she had endured the long calculated
delays of Elizabeth, as to her marriage, with patience; but, so soon as
Darnley crossed her path, she became resolute, even reckless. Despite the
opposition, interested, or religious, or based on the pretext of religion,
which Moray and his allies offered, Mary wedded Darnley. She found him a
petulant, ambitious boy; sullen, suspicious, resentful, swayed by the
ambition to be a king in earnest, but too indolent in affairs for the
business of a king.
At tennis, with Riccio, or while exercising his great horses, his
favourite amusement, Darnley was pining to use his jewelled dagger. In the
feverish days before the deed it is probable that he kept his courage
screwed up by the use of stimulants, to which he was addicted. That he
devoted himself to loose promiscuous intrigue injurious to his health, is
not established, though, when her child was born, Mary warned Darnley that
the babe was ‘only too much his son,’ perhaps with a foreboding of
hereditary disease. A satirist called Darnley ‘the leper:’ leprosy being
confounded with ‘la grosse vérole.’ Mary, who had fainting fits, was said
to be epileptic.
Darnley, according to Lennox, represented himself as pure in this regard,
nor have we any valid evidence to the contrary. But his word was
absolutely worthless.
Outraged and harassed, broken, at last, in health, in constant pain,
expressing herself in hysterical outbursts of despair and desire for
death, Mary needed no passion for Bothwell to make her long for freedom
from the young fool. From his sick-bed in Glasgow, as we shall see, he
sent, by a messenger, a cutting verbal taunt to the Queen; so his own
friends declare, they who call Darnley ‘that innocent lamb.’ It is not
wonderful if, in an age of treachery and revenge, the character of Mary
now broke down. ‘I would not do it to him for my own revenge. My heart
bleeds at it,’ she says to Bothwell, in the Casket Letter II., if that was
written by her. But, whatever her part in it, the deed was done.
Of Bothwell, the third protagonist in the tragedy of Three, we have no
portrait, and but discrepant descriptions. They who saw his body, not yet
wholly decayed, in Denmark, reported that he must have been ‘an ugly
Scot,’ with red hair, mixed with grey before he died. Much such another
was the truculent Morton.[8] Born in 1536 or 1537, Bothwell was in the
flower of his age, about thirty, when Darnley perished. He was certainly
not old enough to have been Mary’s father, as Sir John Skelton declared,
for he was not six years her senior. His father died in 1556, and Bothwell
came young into the Hepburn inheritance of impoverished estates, high
offices, and wild reckless blood. According to Buchanan, Bothwell, in
early youth, was brought up at the house of his great-uncle, Patrick
Hepburn, Bishop of Moray, who certainly was a man of profligate life. It
is highly probable that Bothwell was educated in France.
‘Blockish’ or not, Bothwell had the taste of a bibliophile. One of two
books from his library, well bound, and tooled with his name and arms, is
in the collection of the University of Edinburgh. Another was in the
Gibson Craig Library. The works are a tract of Valturin, on Military
Discipline (Paris, 1555, folio), and French translations of martial
treatises attributed to Vegetius, Sextus Julius, and Ælian, with a
collection of anecdotes of warlike affairs (Paris, 1556, folio). The
possession of books like these, in such excellent condition, is no proof
of doltishness. Moreover, Bothwell appears to have read his ‘CXX Histoires
concernans le faite guerre.’ The evidence comes to us from a source which
discredits the virulent rhetoric of Buchanan’s ally.
It was the cue of Mary’s foes to represent Bothwell as an ungainly,
stupid, cowardly, vicious monster: because, he being such a man, what a
wretch must the Queen be who could love him! ‘Which love, whoever saw not,
and yet hath seen him, will perhaps think it incredible.... But yet here
there want no causes, for there was in them both a likeness, if not of
beauty or outward things, nor of virtues, yet of most extream vices.’[9]
Buchanan had often celebrated, down to December 1566, Mary’s extreme
virtues. To be sure his poem, recited shortly before Darnley’s death, may
have been written almost as early as James’s birth, in readiness for the
feast at his baptism, and before Mary’s intrigue with Bothwell could have
begun. In any case, to prove Bothwell’s cowardice, some ally of Buchanan’s
cites his behaviour at Carberry Hill, where he wishes us to believe that
Bothwell showed the white feather of Mary’s ‘pretty venereous pidgeon.’ As
a witness, he cites du Croc, the French Ambassador, an aged and sagacious
man. To du Croc he has appealed, to du Croc he shall go. That Ambassador
writes: ‘He’ (Bothwell) ‘told me that there must be no more parley, for he
saw that the enemy was approaching, and had already crossed the burn. He
said that, if I wished to resemble the man who tried to arrange a treaty
between the forces of Scipio and Hannibal, their armies being ready to
join in battle, like the two now before us, and who failed, and, wishing
to remain neutral, took a point of vantage, and beheld the best sport that
ever he saw in his life, why then I should act like that man, and would
greatly enjoy the spectacle of a good fight.’ Bothwell’s memory was
inaccurate, or du Croc has misreported his anecdote, but he was certainly
both cool and classical on an exciting occasion.
Du Croc declined the invitation; he was not present when Bothwell refused
to fight a champion of the Lords, but he goes on: ‘I am obliged to say
that I saw a great leader, speaking with great confidence, and leading his
forces boldly, gaily, and skilfully.... I admired him, for he saw that his
foes were resolute, he could not be sure of the loyalty of half of his own
men, and yet he was quite unmoved.’[10] Bothwell, then, was neither dolt,
lout, nor coward, as Buchanan’s ally wishes us to believe, for the purpose
of disparaging the taste of a Queen, Buchanan’s pupil, whose praises he
had so often sung.
In an age when many gentlemen and ladies could not sign their names,
Bothwell wrote, and wrote French, in a firm, yet delicate Italic hand, of
singular grace and clearness.[11] His enemies accused him of studying none
but books of Art Magic in his youth, and he may have shared the taste of
the great contemporary mathematician, Napier of Merchistoun, the inventor
of Logarithms. Both Mary’s friends and enemies, including the hostile
Lords in their proclamations, averred that Bothwell had won her favour by
unlawful means, philtres, witchcraft, or what we call Hypnotism. Such
beliefs were universal: Ruthven, in his account of Riccio’s murder, tells
us that he gave Mary a ring, as an antidote to poison (not that _he_
believed in it), and that both she and Moray took him for a sorcerer. On a
charge of sorcery did Moray later burn the Lyon Herald, Sir William
Stewart, probably basing the accusation on a letter in which Sir William
confessed to having consulted a prophet, perhaps Napier of Merchistoun,
the father, not the inventor of Logarithms.[12] Quite possibly Bothwell
may really have studied the Black Art in Cornelius Agrippa and similar
authors. In any case it is plain that, as regards culture, the author of
_Les Affaires du Conte de Boduel_, the man familiar with the Court of
France, where he had held command in the Scots Guards, and had probably
known Ronsard and Brantôme, must have been a _rara avis_ of culture among
the nobles at Holyrood. So far, then, Mary’s love for him, if love she
entertained, was the reverse of ‘incredible.’ It did not need to be
explained by a common possession of ‘extreme vices.’ The author, as usual,
overstates his case, and proves too much: Lesley admits that Bothwell was
handsome, an opinion emphatically contradicted by Brantôme.
Bothwell had the charm of recklessness to an unexampled degree. He was
fierce, passionate, unyielding, strong, and, in the darkest of Mary’s
days, had been loyal. He had won for her what Knollys tells us that she
most prized, victory. A greater contrast could not be to the false
fleeting Darnley, the bully with ‘a heart of wax.’ In him Mary had more
than enough of bloom and youthful graces: she could master him, and she
longed for a master. If then she loved Bothwell, her love, however wicked,
was not unnatural or incredible. He had been loved by many women, and had
ruined all of them.
Among the other persons of the play, Moray is foremost, Mary’s natural
brother, the son of her whom James V. loved best, and, it was said, still
dreamed of while wooing a bride in France. Moray is an enigma. History
sees him, as in Lethington’s phrase, ‘looking through his fingers,’
looking thus at Riccio’s and at Darnley’s murders. These fingers hide the
face. He was undeniably a sound Protestant: only for a brief while, in
Mary’s early reign, was he sundered from Knox. In war he was, as he aimed
at being, ‘a Captain in Israel,’ cool, courageous, and skilled. That he
was extremely acquisitive is certain. Born a royal bastard, and trained
for the Church, he clung as ‘Commendator’ to the Church’s property which
he held as a layman. His enormous possessions in land, collected partly by
means that sailed close to the wind, partly from the grants of Mary,
excited the rash words of Darnley, that they were ‘too large.’
An early incident in Moray’s life seems characteristic. The battle of
Pinkie was fought in 1547, when he was sixteen. Among the slain was the
Master of Buchan, the heir-apparent of the Earl of Buchan. He left a
child, Christian Stewart, who was now heiress of the earldom. In January
1550, young Lord James Stewart, though Prior of St. Andrews, contracted
himself in marriage with the little girl. The old earl was extravagant,
perhaps more or less insane, and was deep in debt. His lands were
mortgaged. In 1556 the Lord James bought and secured from the Regent, Mary
of Guise, the right of redemption. In 1562, being all powerful now with
Mary, he secured a grant of the ‘ward, non-entries, and reliefs of the
whole estates of the earldom of Buchan.’ Now, by the proclamation made,
as usual, before Pinkie fight, all these were left by the Crown, free, to
the heirs of such as might fall in the battle. Therefore they ought to
have appertained to Christian Stewart, whom Moray had not married, her
grandfather being dead. Moray secured everything to himself, by charters
from the Crown. The unlucky Christian went on living at Loch Leven, with
Moray’s mother, Lady Douglas. In February 1562 Moray wedded Agnes Keith,
daughter of the Earl Marischal. His brother, apparently without his
knowledge, then married Christian. Moray wrote a letter to his own mother
complaining of this marriage as an act of treachery. The Old Man peeps out
through the godly and respectful style of this epistle. Moray speaks of
Christian as ‘that innocent;’ perhaps she was not remarkable for
intellect. He adds that whoever tries to take from him the lady’s estates
will have to pass over ‘his belly.’ And, indeed, he retained the
possessions. The whole transaction does seem to savour of worldliness, to
be regretted in so good a man.
Moray continued, after he was pardoned for his rebellion, to add estate to
estate. He was a pensioner of England; from France he received valuable
presents. His widow endeavoured to retain the diamonds which Mary had
owned, and wished to leave attached to the Scottish crown. His ambition
was probably more limited than his covetousness, and the suspicion that he
aimed at being king, though natural, was baseless. While he must have
known, at least as well as Mary, the guilt of Morton, Lethington, Balfour,
Bothwell, and Argyll, he associated familiarly with them, before he left
Scotland prior to Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, and he used Bothwell’s
accomplices, including the Bishop who married Bothwell to Mary, in his
attack on the character of his sister. Whether he betrayed Norfolk, or
not, was a question between David Hume and Dr. Robertson. If to report
Norfolk’s private conversation to Elizabeth is to betray,[13] Moray was a
traitor, and did what Lethington scorned to do. But Moray’s most
remarkable quality was caution. He always had an _alibi_. He knew of
Riccio’s murder--and came to Edinburgh next day. He left Edinburgh in the
morning, some sixteen hours before the explosion of Kirk o’ Field. He left
Edinburgh for England and France, twelve days before the nobles signed the
document upholding Bothwell’s innocence, and urging him to marry the
Queen. He allowed Elizabeth to lie, in his presence, and about her
encouragement of his rebellion, to the French Ambassador. His own account
of his first interview with his sister, in prison at Loch Leven, shows him
as an adept in menace cruelly suspended over her helpless head. The
account of Mary’s secretary, Nau, is much less unfavourable to Moray than
his own, for obvious reasons.
As Regent he was bold, energetic, and ruthless: the suspicion of his
intention to give up a suppliant and fugitive aroused the tolerant ethics
of the Border. A strong, patient, cautious man, capable of deep reserve,
in his family relations, financial matters apart, austerely moral, Moray
would have made an excellent king, but as a Queen’s brother he was most
dangerous, when not permitted to be all powerful. He could not have
rescued Darnley, or saved Mary from herself, without risks which a Knox or
a Craig would certainly have faced, but which no secular leader in
Scotland would have dreamed of encountering. Did he wish to save the
doomed prince? A precise Puritan, he was by no means like a conscience
among the warring members of the body politic. Mary rejoiced at the news
of his murder, pensioned the assassin, and, of all people, chose an
Archbishop as her confidant.
Reviled by Mary’s literary partisans, Moray to Mr. Froude seemed ‘noble’
and ‘stainless.’ He was a man of his time, a time when every traitor or
assassin had ‘God’ and ‘honour’ for ever on his lips. At the hypocrisies
and falsehoods of his party, deeds of treachery and blood, Moray ‘looked
through his fingers.’
Infinitely the most fascinating character in the plot was William
Maitland, the younger, of Lethington. The charm which he exercised over
his contemporaries, from Mary herself to diplomatists like Randolph, and
men of the sword like Kirkcaldy of Grange, has not yet exhausted itself.
Readers of Sir John Skelton’s interesting book, ‘Maitland of Lethington,’
must observe, if they know the facts, that, in presence of Lethington, Sir
John is like ‘birds whom the charmer serpent draws.’ He is an advocate of
Mary, but of Mary as a ‘charming sinner.’ By Lethington he is dominated:
he will scarcely admit that there is a stain on his scutcheon, a
scutcheon, alas! smirched and defaced. Could a man of to-day hold an
hour’s converse with a man of that age, he would choose Lethington. He was
behind all the scenes: he held the threads of all the plots; he made all
the puppets dance at his will. Yet by birth he was merely the son of the
good and wise poet and essayist, Sir Richard Lethington, laird of a rugged
tower and of lands in Lauderdale, _pastorum loca vasta_. He was born about
1525, had studied in France, and was a man of classical culture, without a
touch of pedantry. As early as 1555, we find him arguing after supper with
Knox, on the lawfulness of bowing down in the House of Rimmon, attending
the Mass. Knox had the last word, for Lethington was usually tactful; in
argument Knox was a babe in the hands of the amateur theologian. Appointed
Secretary to Mary of Guise, in the troubled years of the Congregation,
Lethington deserted her and joined the Lords. He negotiated for them with
Cecil and Elizabeth, and almost to the last he was true to one idea, the
union of the crowns of England and Scotland in peace and amity.
Through all the windings of his policy that idea governed him if not
thwarted by personal considerations, as at the last. Before Mary’s arrival
in Scotland he hastened to make his peace with her, and her peace and
trust she readily granted. Lethington was the spoiled child of the
political world, ‘the flower of the wits of Scotland,’ as Elizabeth styled
him; was reckoned indispensable, was petted, caressed, and forgiven. He
not only withstood Knox, in the interests of religious toleration, but he
met him with a smile, with the weapons of _persiflage_, which riddled and
rankled in the vanity of the Reformer. Lethington was modern to the
finger-tips, a man of to-day, moving among the bravos, and using the
poisoned tools, of an age of violence and perfidy.
Allied by marriage to the Earl of Atholl, in hours of peril he placed the
Tay and the Pass of Killiecrankie between himself and the Law.
From the time of his restoration to Mary’s favour after Riccio’s murder,
his part in the obscure intrigue of Darnley’s murder, indeed all his
future course, is a mystery. Being now over forty he had long wooed and
just before the murder had won the beautiful Mary Fleming, of all the Four
Maries the dearest to the Queen. His letter to Cecil on his love affair is
a charming interlude. ‘He is no more fit for her than I to be a page,’
says the brawny, grizzled, Kirkcaldy of Grange. His devotion is often
ridiculed by perhaps envious acquaintances. But, from September 20, 1566,
Lethington was deep in every scheme against Darnley. He certainly signed
the murder ‘band.’ He was with Mary at Stirling (April 22-23, 1567) when,
if he did not know that Bothwell meant to carry her off (and perhaps he
really did not know), he was alone in his ignorance among the inner circle
of politicians. Yet he disliked the marriage, and was hated by Bothwell.
On the day of Mary’s _enlèvement_, Bothwell took Lethington, threatened
him, and, but for Mary, would probably have slain him. Passive as to
herself, she defended the Secretary with royal courage. Days darkened
round the Queen, the nobles rose in arms. Lethington, about June 7, fled
first to Livingstone’s house of Callendar, then joined Atholl and the
enemies of the Queen. We shall later attempt to unfold the secret springs
of his tortuous and fatal policy.
Lethington had been the Ahithophel of the age. ‘And the counsel of
Ahithophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had
enquired at the oracle of God.’ But the Lord ‘turned the counsel of
Ahithophel into foolishness.’ He wrought against Mary, just after she
saved his life from the dagger of Bothwell, some secret inexpiable
offence, besides public injuries. Fear of her vengeance, for she knew
something fatal to him, drove him into her party when her cause was
desperate. He escaped the gallows by a natural death; he had long been
smitten by creeping paralysis. Mary hated him dead, as after his betrayal
of her she had loathed him living.
Mary was sorely bested, then, between the Young Fool, the Furious Man, the
Puritan brother, and Michael Wylie (Machiavelli) as the Scots nicknamed
Lethington. She was absolutely alone. There was no man whom she could
trust. On every hand were known rebels, half pardoned, half reconciled.
Feuds, above all that of her husband and his clan, the Lennox Stewarts,
with the nearest heirs of the crown, the Hamiltons, broke out eternally.
The Protestants hated her: the Preachers longed to drag her down: the
English Ambassadors were hostile spies. France was far away, the Queen
Mother was her enemy: her kindred, the Guises, were cold or powerless. She
saw only one strong man who had been loyal, one protector who had served
her mother, and saved herself. That man was Bothwell.
Most inscrutable of the persons in the play is Bothwell’s wife, Lady Jane
Gordon, a daughter of Huntly, the dead and ruined Cock of the North. If we
may accept the Casket Sonnets, Lady Jane, a girl of twenty, resisted her
brother’s scheme to wed her to Bothwell. She preferred some one whom the
sonnet calls ‘a troublesome fool,’ and a note, in the Lennox Papers,
informs us that her first love was Ogilvy of Boyne, who consoled himself
with Mary Beaton. Still following the sonnets, we learn that the young
Lady Bothwell dressed ill, but won her wild husband’s heart by literary
love letters plagiarised from ‘some illustrious author.’ The existing
letters of the lady, written after the years of storm, are businesslike,
and deal with business. She consented to her divorce for a valuable
consideration in lands which she held till her death, in the reign of
Charles I. According to general opinion, Bothwell, as we shall see,
greatly preferred her to the Queen, and continued to live with her after
the divorce. Lady Bothwell kept the dispensation which enabled her to
marry Bothwell, though he was divorced from her for the want of it. She
married the Earl of Sutherland in 1573, and, after his death, returned _à
ses premiers amours_, wedding her old true love who had wooed her in her
girlhood, Ogilvy of Boyne. Their conversation must have been rich in
curious reminiscences. The loves and hatreds of their youth were extinct;
the wild hearts of Bothwell, Mary, Mary Beaton, Lethington, Darnley, and
the rest, had long ceased to beat, and these two were left, Darby and
Joan, alone in a new world.
II
_THE MINOR CHARACTERS_
Having sketched the chief actors in this tragedy, we may glance at the
players of subordinate parts. They were such men as are apt to be bred
when a religious and social Revolution has shaken the bases of morality,
when acquiescence in theological party cries confers the title of ‘godly:’
when the wealth of a Church is to be won by cunning or force, and when
feudal or clan loyalty to a chief is infinitely more potent than fidelity
to king, country, and the fundamental laws of morality. The Protestants,
the ‘godly,’ accused the Idolaters (the Catholics) of throwing their sins
off their shoulders in the confessional, and beginning anew. But the
godly, if naturally ruffians, consoled and cleared themselves by
repentances on the scaffold, and one felt assured, after a life of crime,
that he ‘should sup with God that night.’
The Earl of Morton is no minor character in the history of Scotland, but
his part is relatively subordinate in that of Mary Stuart. The son of the
most accomplished and perfidious scoundrel of the past generation, Sir
George Douglas, brother of Angus the brother-in-law of Henry VIII., Morton
had treachery in his blood. His father had alternately betrayed England of
which he was a pensioner, and Scotland of which he was a subject. By a
perverse ingenuity of shame, he had used the sacred Douglas Heart, the
cognisance of the House, the achievement granted to the descendants of the
Good Lord James, as a mark to indicate what passages in his treasonable
letters might be relied on by his English employers. In Morton’s father
and uncle had lived on the ancient inappeasable feud between Douglases and
Stewarts, between the Nobles and the Crown. It was a feud stained by
murder under trust, by betrayal in the field, and perfidy in the closet.
Morton was heir to the feud of his family, and to the falseness. When the
Reformation broke out, and the Wars of the Congregation against Idolatry,
Morton wavered long, but at length joined the Protestants when they were
certain of English assistance. Henceforth he was one of Mr. Froude’s
‘small gallant band’ of Reformers, and, as such, was hostile to Mary. His
sanctimonious snuffle is audible still, in his remark to Throckmorton at
the time when the Englishman probably saved the life of the Queen from the
Lords. Throckmorton asked to be allowed to visit Mary in prison: ‘The Earl
Morton answered me that shortly I should hear from them, but the day being
destined, as I did see, to the Communion, continual preaching, and common
prayer, they could not be absent, nor attend matters of the world, but
first they must seek the matters of God, and take counsel of Him who could
best direct them.’
A red-handed murderer, living in open adultery with the widow of Captain
Cullen, whom he had hanged, and daily consorting with murderers like his
kinsman, Archibald Douglas, the Parson of Glasgow, Morton approached the
Divine Mysteries. His private life was notoriously profligate; he added
avarice to his other and more genial peccadilloes. He intruded on the Kirk
the Tulchan Bishops, who were mere filters, or conduits, through which
ecclesiastical wealth flowed to the State. Yet he was godly: he was the
foe of Idolaters, and the Kirk, while deploring his excesses, cast on him
no unfavourable eye. He held the office of Chancellor, and, during the
raids and risings which were protests against Darnley’s marriage with
Mary, he was in touch with both parties, but did not commit himself. About
February, 1566, there seems to have been a purpose to deprive him of the
Seals. He seized the moment to join hands with Darnley in antagonism to
Riccio: he and his Douglases, George and Archibald, helped to organise the
murder of the favourite: Morton was then driven into England. At
Christmas, 1566, after signing a band, not involving murder, against
Darnley, he was pardoned, returned, was made acquainted with the scheme
for killing Darnley, but, he declared, declined to join without Mary’s
written warrant. His friend and retainer, Archibald Douglas, was present
at the laying of gunpowder in Kirk o’ Field. Morton presently signed a
band promising to aid and abet Bothwell, but instantly joined the nobles
who overthrew him. His retainers discovered the fatal Casket full of
Mary’s alleged letters to Bothwell, and he was one of the most ardent of
her prosecutors. Vengeance came upon him, fourteen years later, from
Stewart, the brother-in-law of John Knox.
[Illustration: The Regent Morton
From the portrait in the collection of the Earl of Morton.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
In person, Morton was indeed one of the Red Douglases. A good portrait at
Dalmahoy represents him with a common but grim set of features, and
reddish tawny hair, under a tall black Puritanic hat.
A jackal constantly attendant on Morton was his kinsman, Archibald
Douglas, a son of Douglas of Whittingham. In Archibald we see the
‘strugforlifeur’ (as M. Daudet renders Darwin) of the period. A younger
son, he was apparently educated for the priesthood, before the
Reformation. In 1565, he was made ‘Parson of Douglas,’ drawing the
revenues, and also was an Extraordinary Lord of Session. Involved in
Riccio’s murder, he fled to France (where he may have been educated), but
returned to negotiate Morton’s pardon. He was go-between to Morton,
Bothwell, and Lethington, in the affair of Darnley’s murder, and was
present at, or just before, the explosion, losing one of his embroidered
velvet dress shoes, in which he had perhaps been dancing at Bastian’s
marriage masque. He was also a spectator of the opening of the Casket
(June 21, 1567), and so zealous and useful against Mary, that, after her
defeat at Langside, he received the forfeited lands of the Laird of
Corstorphine, near Edinburgh. In 1568 he became an Ordinary, or regular
Judge of the Court of Session, and, later obtained the parish of Glasgow.
The messenger of the Kirk, who came to bid him prepare his first sermon,
found him playing cards with the Laird of Bargany. He had previously been
plucked in the examination for the ministry: this was his second chance.
Being examined he declined to attempt the Greek Testament; and requested
another minister to pray for him, ‘for I am not used to pray.’ His sermon
was not thought savoury. After Morton became Regent, Archibald, for money,
took the Queen’s side, and is accused of an ungrateful and unclerical
scheme to murder his cousin, Morton. Just for the devilry of it, and a
little money, he was intriguing, a traitor to Morton, his benefactor, with
Mary’s party, and also acting as a spy for Drury and the English. He was,
later, restored to his place on the Bench of Scottish Themis, crowded as
it was with assassins, but he fled to England when Morton was accused and
dragged down by Stewart of Ochiltree (1581). Morton, in his dying
declaration, remembered his grudge against Archibald or for some other
reason freely confessed _his_ iniquities. Archibald had distinguished
himself as a forger of letters intended to aid Morton, but was denounced
by his own brother, also a judge, Douglas of Whittingham. The later career
of this accomplished gentleman was a series of treacherous betrayals of
Mary. In England his charm and accomplishments recommended him to the
friendship of Fulke Greville, who did not penetrate his character. His
letters reveal a polished irony. He was for some time ambassador of James
VI. to Elizabeth, was again accused of forgery, and, probably, ended his
active career in rural retirement. History sees Archibald in the pulpit, a
Stickit Minister: on the Bench administering justice: hobbling hurriedly
from Kirk o’ Field in one shoe; watching the bursting open of the silver
Casket; playing cards, spying, dancing, and winning hearts, and forging
letters: a versatile man of considerable charm and knowledge of the world.
His life, after 1581, is a varied but always sordid chapter of romance.
A grimmer and a godlier man is Mr. John Wood, secretary of Moray, with
whom he had been in France, an austere person, a rebuker of Mary’s dances
and frivolity. He, too, was a Lord of Session, and was wont to spur Moray
on against Idolaters. We shall find him very busy in managing the Casket
Letters. He was slain by young Forbes of Reres, the son of the corpulent
Lady Reres, rumoured to have been the complacent confidant of Mary’s amour
with Bothwell. Reres had certainly no reason to love Mr. John Wood. George
Buchanan, too, is on the scene, the Latin poet, the Latin historian, who
sang of and libelled his Queen, his pupil. Old now, and a devoted partisan
of the Lennoxes, no man contributed more to the cause of Mary’s innocence
than Buchanan, so grossly inaccurate and amusingly inconsistent are his
various indictments of her behaviour. ‘He spak and wret as they that wer
about him for the tym infourmed him,’ says Sir James Melville, ‘for he was
becom sleprie and cairles.’ Melville speaks of a later date, but George’s
invectives against Mary are ‘careless’ in all conscience.
Besides these there is a pell-mell of men and women; crafty courteous
diplomatists like the two Melvilles; burly Kirkcaldy of Grange, a murderer
of the Cardinal, a spy of England when he was in French service, a secret
agent of Cecil, a brave man and good captain, but accused of forgery, and
by no means ‘the second Wallace of Scotland,’ the frank, manly,
open-hearted Greysteil of historical tradition. Huntly and Argyll make
little mark on the imagination: both astute, both full of promise, both
barren of accomplishment. The Hamiltons have a lofty position, but are
destitute of brains as of scruples; even the Archbishop, most unscrupulous
of all, is no substitute for Cardinal Beaton.
There is a crowd of squires; loyal, gallant Arthur Erskine, Willie
Douglas, who drew Mary forth of prison, the two Standens, English
equerries of Darnley, whose lives are unwritten romances (what one of them
did write is picturesque but untrustworthy), Lennox Lairds, busy Minto,
Provost of Glasgow, and Houstoun, and valiant dubious Thomas Crawford,
called ‘Gauntlets,’ and shifty Drumquhassel; spies like Rokeby, assassins
if need or opportunity arise; copper captains like Captain Cullen; and
most truculent of all, Bothwell’s Lambs, young Tala, who ceased reading
the Bible when he came to Court; and the Black Laird of Ormistoun, he who,
on the day of his hanging, said ‘With God I hope this night to sup.’ Said
he, ‘Of all men on the earth I have been one of the proudest and (_sic_)
high-minded, and most filthy of my body. But specially I have shed
innocent blood of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas therefore,
because the said Michael, having me lying on my back, having a pitchfork
in his hand, might have slain me if he pleased, but did it not, which of
all things grieves me most in conscience.... Within these seven years I
never saw two good men, nor one good deed, but all kind of wickedness; and
yet my God would not suffer me to be lost, and has drawn me from them as
out of Hell ... for the which I thank him, and I am assured that I am one
of his Elect.’ This devotee used to hang about Mary in Carlisle, when she
had fled into England. ‘Not two good men, nor one good deed,’ saw
Ormistoun, in seven long years of riding the Border, and following
Bothwell to Court or Warden’s Raid. Few are the good men, rare are the
good deeds, that meet us in this tragic History. ‘There is none that doeth
good, no, not one.’
But behind the men and the time are the Preachers of Righteousness, grim,
indeed, as their Geneva gowns, not gentle and easily entreated, crying
out on the Murderess, Adulteress, Idolatress, to be led to block or stake,
but yet bold to rebuke Bothwell when he had cowed all the nobles of the
land. The future was with these men, with the smaller barons or lairds,
and with sober burgesses, like the discreet author of the ‘Diurnal of
Occurrents,’ and with honest hinds, like Michael Hunter, whom Ormistoun
slew in cold blood. The social and religious cataclysm withdrew its waves:
a new Creed grew into the hearts of the people: intercourse with England
slowly abated the ruffianism of the Lords: slowly the Law extended to the
Border: swiftly the bonds of feudal duty were broken: but not in Mary’s
time.
One strange feature of the age we must not forget: the universal belief in
sorcery. Mary and Moray (she declares) both believed that Ruthven had
given her a ring of baneful magical properties. Foes and friends alike
alleged that Bothwell had bewitched Mary ‘by unleasom means,’ philtres,
‘sweet waters,’ magic. The preachers, when Mary fled, urged Moray to burn
witches, and the cliffs of St. Andrews flared with the flames wherein they
perished. The Lyon King at Arms, as has been said, died by fire,
apparently for confessed dealings with a wizard, who foretold the events
of the year, and for treasure hunting with the divining rod. A Napier of
Merchistoun did foretell Mary’s escape (according to Nau); this man,
_ayant réputation de grand magicien_, may have been the soothsayer: his
son sought for hidden treasure by divination. Buchanan tells how a dying
gentleman beheld Darnley’s fate in a clairvoyant vision: and how a dim
shapeless thing smote and awoke, successively, four Atholl men in
Edinburgh, on the night of the crime of Kirk o’ Field. Old rhyming
prophecies were circulated and believed. Knox himself was credited with
winning his sixteen-year-old bride by witchcraft, as Bothwell won Mary.
Men listened to his reports of his own ‘premonitions.’
When Huntly, one of the band for Darnley’s murder, died, his death was
strange. He had hunted, and taken three hares and a fox, after dinner he
played football, fell into a fit, and expired, crying ‘never a word save
one, looking up broad with his eyes, and that word was this, “Look, Look,
Look!”’ Unlike the dying murderer of Riccio, Ruthven, he perhaps did not
behold the Angel Choir. His coffers were locked up in a chamber, with
candles burning. Next day a rough fellow, banished by Lochinvar, and
received by Huntly, fell into unconsciousness for twenty-four hours, and
on waking, cried ‘_Cauld, cauld, cauld!_’ John Hamilton, opening one of
the dead Earl’s coffers, fell down with the same exclamation. Men carried
him away, and, returning, found a third man fallen senseless on the
coffer. ‘All wrought as the Earl of Huntly wrought in the death thraw.’
The chamber was haunted by strange sounds: the word went about that the
Earl was rising again. Says Knox’s secretary, Bannatyne, who tells this
tale, ‘I maun praise the Lord my God, and bless his holy name for ever,
when I behold the five that was in the conspiracy, not only of the King’s
[Darnley’s] and the second Regent’s murder, but also of the first Regent’s
murder. Four is past with small provision, to wit, Lethington, Argyll,
Bothwell, and last of all Huntly. I hope in God the fifth [Morton] shall
die more perfectly, and declare his life’s deeds with his own mouth,
making his repentance at the gallows foot.’ Part of his life’s deeds
Morton did declare on his dying day.
In such a mist of dark beliefs and dreads was the world living, beliefs
shared by Queen, preacher, and Earl, scholar, poet, historian, and the
simple secretary of Knox: while the sun shone fair on St. Leonard’s
gardens, and boys like little James Melville were playing tennis and golf.
The scenes in which the wild deeds were done are scarcely recognisable in
modern Scotland. Holyrood is altered by buildings of the Restoration; the
lovely chapel is a ruin, where Mary prayed, and the priests at the altar
were buffeted. The Queen’s chamber is empty, swept and garnished, as is
the little cabinet whereinto came the livid face of Ruthven, clad in
armour, and Darnley, half afraid, and Standen, later to boast, with
different circumstances, that he saved the Queen from the dirk of Patrick
Ballantyne. The blood of Riccio, outside the door of the state chamber, is
washed away: there are only a tourist or two in the long hall where Mary
leaned on Chastelard’s breast in the dance called ‘The Purpose’ or
‘talking dance.’ The tombs of the kings through which Mary stole,
stopping, says Lennox, to threaten Darnley above the new mould of Riccio’s
grave, have long been desecrated.
At Jedburgh we may still see the tall old house, with crow-stepped gables,
and winding stairs, and the little chambers where Mary tried to make so
good an end, and where the wounded Bothwell was tended. In the long
gallery above, Lethington, and Moray, and du Croc must have held anxious
converse, while physicians came and went, proposing uncouth remedies, and
the Confessor flitted through, and the ladies in waiting wept. But least
changed are the hills of the robbers, sweeping slopes of rough pasturage,
broken by marshes, and the foaming burns of October, through which Mary
rode to the wounded Bothwell in Hermitage Castle, now a huge shell of grey
stone, in the pastoral wastes.
Most changed of all is Glasgow, then a pretty village, among trees,
between the burn and the clear water of Clyde. The houses clustered about
the Cathedral, the ruined abodes of the religious, and the Castle where
Lennox and Darnley both lay sick, while Mary abode, it would seem, in the
palace then empty of its Archbishop. We see the little town full of armed
Hamiltons, and their feudal foes, the Stewarts of Lennox, who anxiously
attend her with suspicious glances, as she goes to comfort their young
chief.
In thinking of old Edinburgh, as Mary knew it, our fancy naturally but
erroneously dwells on the narrow wynds of the old town, cabined between
grimy slate-roofed houses of some twelve or fifteen stories in height,
‘piled black and massy steep and high,’ and darkened with centuries of
smoke, squalid, sunless, without a green tree in the near view, so we are
apt to conceive the Edinburgh of Queen Mary. But we do the good town
injustice: we are conceiving the Edinburgh of Queen Mary under the colours
and in the forms of the Edinburgh of Prince Charles and of Robert Burns.
There exists a bird’s-eye view of the city, probably done by an English
hand, in 1544. It looks a bright, red-roofed, sparkling little town, in
contour much resembling St. Andrews. At St. Andrews the cathedral forms,
as it were, the handle of a fan, from which radiate, like the ribs of the
fan, North Street, Market Street, and South Street, with the houses and
lanes between them. At Edinburgh the Castle Rock was the handle of the
fan. Thence diverged two spokes or ribs of streets, High Street and
Cowgate, lined with houses with red-tiled roofs. Quaint wooden galleries
were suspended outside the first floor, in which, not in the ground floor,
the front door usually was, approached by an outer staircase. Quaintness,
irregularity, broken outlines, nooks, odd stone staircases, were
everywhere. The inner stairs or turnpikes were within semicircular
towers, and these, with the tall crow-stepped gables, high-pitched roofs,
and dormer windows, made up picturesque clumps of buildings, perforated by
wynds. St. Giles’s Church occupied, of course, its present site, and the
‘ports,’ or gates which closed the High Street towards Holyrood, had
turrets for supporters. Through the gate, the Nether Bow, the Court suburb
of the Canongate ran down to Holyrood, with gardens, and groves, and green
fields behind the houses. The towers of the beautiful Abbey of Holyrood,
partly burned by the English in 1544, ended the line of buildings from the
Castle eastward.
[Illustration:
1. Kirk o’ Field Church
2. Holyrood
3. Canongate
4. Netherbow Port
5. Netherbow
6. St. Giles’s Church
7. Cowgate
8. Wynd leading to Kirk o’ Field
9. Castle
10. Calton Hill]
Far to the left of the town, on a wooded height, the highest and central
point of the landscape, we mark a tall rectangular church tower, crowned
with a crow-stepped high-pitched roof. It is the church of Kirk o’ Field,
soon to be so famous as the scene of Darnley’s death.
The blocks of buildings are intersected, we said, by narrow wynds, not yet
black, though, from Dunbar’s poem, we know that Edinburgh was
conspicuously dirty and insanitary. But the narrow, compact, bright little
town running down the spine of rock from the Castle to Holyrood, was on
every side surrounded by green fields, and there were still trout in the
Norloch beneath the base of the Castle cliff, where now the railway runs.
New town, of course, there was none. Most of the town of Mary’s age was
embraced by the ruinous wall, hastily constructed after the defeat and
death of James IV. Such was the city: of the houses we may gain an idea
from the fine old building traditionally called John Knox’s house: if we
suppose it neat, clean, its roof scarlet, its walls not grimy with
centuries of reek. The houses stood among green gardens, hedges, and
trees, and on the grassy hills between the city and the sea, and to the
east and west, were _châteaux_ and peel-towers of lords and lairds.
Such was Queen Mary’s Edinburgh: long, narrow, and mightily unlike the
picturesque but stony, and begrimed, and smoke-hidden capital of
to-day.[14]
‘There were fertile soil, pleasant meadows, woods, lakes, and burns, all
around,’ where now is nothing but stone, noisy pavement, and slate. The
monasteries of the Franciscans and Dominicans lay on either side of St.
Mary in the Fields, or Kirk of Field, with its college quadrangle and wide
gardens.[15] But, in Mary’s day, the monastic buildings and several
churches lay in ruins, owing to the recent reform of the Christian
religion, and to English invaders.
The palaces of the Cowgate and of the Canongate were the homes of the
nobles; the wynds were crowded with burgesses, tradesmen, prentices, and
the throng of artisans. These were less godly than the burgesses, were a
fickle and fiery mob, ready to run for spears, or use their tools to
defend their May-day sport of Robin Hood against the preachers and the
Bible-loving middle classes. Brawls were common, the artisans besieging
the magistrates in the Tolbooth, or the rival followings of two lairds or
lords coming to pistol-shots and sword-strokes on the causeway, while
burgesses handed spears to their friends from the windows. Among popular
pleasures were the stake, at which witches and murderesses of masters or
husbands were burned; and the pillory, where every one might throw what
came handy at a Catholic priest, and the pits in the Norloch where
fornicators were ducked. The town gates were adorned with spikes, on which
were impaled the heads of sinners against the Law.
Mary rode through a land of new-made ruins, black with fire, not yet green
with ivy. On every side, wherever monks had lived, and laboured, and dealt
alms, and written manuscripts, desolation met Mary’s eyes. The altars were
desecrated, the illumined manuscripts were burned, the religious skulked
in lay dress, or had fled to France, or stood under the showers of
missiles on the pillory. It was a land of fallen fanes, and of stubborn
blind keeps with scarce a window, that she passed through, with horse and
litter, lace, and gold, and velvet, and troops of gallants and girls. In
the black tall Tolbooth lurked the engines of torture, that were to strain
or crush the limbs of Bothwell’s Lambs. Often must Mary have seen, on the
skyline, the gallows tree, and the fruits which that tree bore, and the
flocking ravens; one of that company followed Darnley and her from
Glasgow, and perched ominous on the roof of Kirk o’ Field, croaking loudly
on the day of the murder. So writes Nau, Mary’s secretary, informed,
probably, by one of her attendants.
III
_THE CHARACTERS BEFORE RICCIO’S MURDER_
After sketching the characters and scenes of the tragedy, we must show how
destiny interwove the life-threads of Bothwell and Mary. They were fated
to come together. She was a woman looking for a master, he was a masterful
and, in the old sense of the word, a ‘masterless’ man, seeking what he
might devour. In the phrase of Aristotle, ‘Nature _wishes_’ to produce
this or that result. It almost seems as if Nature had long ‘wished’ to
throw a Scottish Queen into the hands of a Hepburn. The Hepburns were not
of ancient _noblesse_. From their first appearance in Scottish history
they are seen to be prone to piratical adventure, and to courting widowed
queens. The unhappy Jane Beaufort, widow of James I., and of the Black
Knight of Lome, died in the stronghold of a Hepburn freebooter. A Hepburn
was reputed to be the lover of Mary of Gueldres, the beautiful and not
inconsolable widow of James II. This Hepburn, had he succeeded in securing
the person of Mary’s son, the boy James III., might have played Bothwell’s
part. The name rose to power and rank on the ruin of the murdered James
III., and of Ramsay, his favourite, who had worn, but forfeited to the
Hepburn of the day, the title of Bothwell. The name was strong in the most
lawless dales of the Border, chiefly in Liddesdale, where the clans
alternately wore the cross of St. Andrew and of St. George, and
impartially plundered both countries. The more profitable Hepburn estates,
however, were in the richer bounds of Lothian.
The attitude and position of James Hepburn, our Bothwell, were, from the
first, unique. He was at once a Protestant, ‘the stoutest and the worst
thought of,’ and also an inveterate enemy of England, a resolute partisan
of Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, the Regent, in her wars against the
Protestant rebels, ‘the Lords of the Congregation.’ From this curious and
illogical position, adopted in his early youth, Bothwell never wandered.
He was to end by making Mary wed him with Protestant rites, while she
assured her confessor that she only did so in the hope of restoring the
Catholic Church! We must briefly trace the early career of Bothwell.
While Darnley was being educated in England, with occasional visits to
France, and while Mary was residing there as the bride of the Dauphin:
while Moray was becoming the leader of the Protestant opposition to Mary
of Guise (‘the Lords of the Congregation’), while Maitland was entering on
his career of diplomacy, Bothwell was active in the field. In 1558, after
Mary of Guise had been deserted by her nobles at Kelso, as her husband
had been at Fala, young Bothwell, being now Lieutenant-General on the
Border, made a raid into England. In the war between Mary of Guise, as
Regent, and the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, Bothwell fought on
her side. A Diary of the Siege of Leith (among the Lennox MSS.) describes
his activity in intercepting and robbing poor peaceful tradesmen. From
another unpublished source we learn that he, among others, condemned the
Earl of Arran (in absence) as the cause of the Protestant rebellion.[16]
On October 5, 1559, Bothwell seized, near Haddington, Cockburn of
Ormiston, who was carrying English gold to the Lords.[17] They, in
reprisal, sacked his castle of Crichton, and nearly caught him. He later
in vain challenged the Earl of Arran (the son of the chief of the
Hamiltons, the Duke of Châtelherault) to single combat. A feud of
far-reaching results now began between Arran and Cockburn on one side, and
Bothwell on the other. When Leith, held for Mary of Guise, in 1560, was
besieged by the Scots and English, Bothwell (whose estates had been sold)
was sent to ask aid from France. He went thither by way of Denmark, and
now, probably, he was more or less legally betrothed to a Norwegian lady,
Anne Throndssön, whom he carried from her home, and presently deserted.
Already, in 1559, he was said to be ‘quietly married or handfasted’ to
Janet Beaton, niece of Cardinal Beaton, and widow of Sir Walter Scott of
Buccleugh, the wizard Lady of Branxholme in Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last
Minstrel.’[18] She was sister of Lady Reres, wife of Forbes of Reres, the
lady said to have aided Bothwell in his amour with Mary. In 1567 one of
the libels issued after Darnley’s murder charged the Lady of Branksome
with helping Bothwell to win Mary’s heart by magic.
Anne Throndssön, later, accused Bothwell of breach of promise of marriage,
given to her and her family ‘by hand and mouth and letters.’ In 1560 the
Lady of Branksome circulated a report that Bothwell had wedded a rich wife
in Denmark: she does not seem to have been jealous.[19] An anonymous
writer represents Bothwell as having three simultaneous wives, probably
Anne, the Branxholme lady, and his actual spouse, Lady Jane Gordon, sister
of Huntly. But the arrangements in the first two cases were probably not
legally valid. There is no doubt that Bothwell, ugly or not, was a great
conqueror of hearts. He may have been _un beau laid_, and he possessed, as
we have said, the qualities, so attractive to many women, of utter
recklessness, of a bullying manner, of great physical strength, and of
a reputation for _bonnes fortunes_. That Bothwell was extravagant and a
gambler is probably true: and, in short, he was, to many women, a most
attractive character. To the virtuous, like Lady Jane Gordon, he would
appear as an agreeable brand to be snatched from the burning.
[Illustration: Le Dueil Blanc
Sketch by Janet 1561.
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
Dropping poor Anne Throndssön in the Netherlands, on his way from Denmark,
Bothwell, in 1560, went to the French Court, where he was made Gentilhomme
de la Chambre, but could not procure aid for Mary of Guise. He acquired
more French polish, and (so his enemies and his valet, Paris, said) he
learned certain infamous vices. Mary Stuart became a widow, and Dowager of
France, in December 1560: it is not certain whether or not Bothwell was in
her train at Joinville in April 1561.[20] After Mary’s return to Scotland
the old feud between Arran and Bothwell broke out afresh. Bothwell and
d’Elbœuf paid a noisy visit to the handsome daughter of a burgess, said to
be Arran’s mistress. There were brawls, and presently Bothwell attacked
Cockburn of Ormiston, the man he had robbed, Arran’s ally, and carried off
his son to Crichton Castle. This occurred in March, 1562, and, as early as
February 21, Randolph, the English minister at Holyrood, had ‘marked
something strange’ in Arran.[21] His feeble ambitious mind was already
tottering, which casts doubt on what followed. On March 25, Bothwell
visited Knox (whose ancestors had been retainers of the House of Hepburn),
and invited the Reformer to reconcile him with Arran. The feud, Bothwell
said, was expensive: he dared not move without a company of armed men.
Knox contrived a meeting at the Hamilton house near the fatal Kirk o’
Field. The enemies were reconciled, and next day went together to ‘the
Sermon,’ a spiritual privilege of which Bothwell was only too neglectful.
Knox had done a good stroke for the Anti-Marian Protestant party, of whose
left wing Arran was the leader.[22]
But alas for Knox’s hopes! Only three days after the sermon, on March 29,
Arran (who had been wont to confide his love-sorrows to Knox) came to the
Reformer with a strange tale. Bothwell had opened to him, in the effusions
of their new friendship, his design to seize Mary, and put her in Arran’s
keeping, in Dumbarton Castle. He would slay Mar (that is Lord James
Stuart, later Moray) and Lethington, whom he detested, ‘and he and I would
rule all,’ said Arran, who knew very well what sort of share he would be
permitted to enjoy in the dual control. I have very little doubt that the
impoverished, more or less disgraced Bothwell did make this proposal. He
was safe in doing so. If Arran accused him, Arran would, first, be
incarcerated, till he proved his charge (which he could not do), or,
secondly, Bothwell would appeal to Trial by Combat, for which he knew
that Arran had no taste. In his opinion, Bothwell merely meant to entrap
him, and his idea was to write to Mary and her brother. Whether Knox
already perceived that Arran was insane, or not, he gave him what was
perhaps the best advice--to be silent. Arran’s position was perilous. If
the plot came to be known, if Bothwell confessed all, then he would be
guilty of concealing his foreknowledge of it; like Morton in the case of
Darnley’s murder.
Arran did not listen to Knox’s counsel. He wrote to Mary and Mar, partly
implicating his own father; he then fled from his father’s castle of
Keneil, hurried to Fife, and was brought by Mar (Moray) to Mary at
Falkland, whither Bothwell also came, perhaps warned by Knox, who had a
family feudal attachment to the Hepburns. Arran now was, or affected to
be, distraught. He persisted, however, in his charge against Bothwell, who
was warded in Edinburgh Castle, while Arran’s father was deprived of
Dumbarton Castle.
The truth of Arran’s charge is uncertain. In any case, ‘the Queen both
honestly and stoutly behaves herself,’ Randolph wrote. While Bothwell lay,
a prisoner on suspicion, in Edinburgh Castle, Mary was come to a crisis in
her reign. Her political position, hitherto, may be stated in broad
outline. The strains of European tendencies, political and theological,
were dragging Scotland in opposite directions. Was the country to remain
Protestant, and in alliance with England, or was it to return to the
ancient league with France, and to the Church of Rome?
During Mary’s first years in Scotland, she and the governing politicians,
her brother Moray and Maitland of Lethington, were fairly well agreed as
to general policy. With all her affection for her Church and her French
kinsmen, Mary could not hope, at present, for much more than a certain
measure of toleration for Catholics. As to the choice of the French or
English alliance, her ambitions appeared to see their best hope in an
understanding with Elizabeth, under which Mary and her issue should be
recognised as heirs of the English throne. So far the ruling politicians,
Moray, Lethington, and Morton, were sufficiently in accord with their
Queen. A restoration of the Church they would not endure. Not only their
theological tenets (sincerely held by Moray) opposed any such restoration,
but their hold of Church property was what they would not abandon save
with life. The Queen and her chief advisers, therefore, for years enjoyed
a _modus vivendi_: a pacific kind of compromise. Mary was so far from
being ardently Catholic in politics, that, while Bothwell was confined in
Edinburgh Castle, she accompanied Moray to the North, and overthrew her
chief Catholic supporter, Huntly, ‘the Cock of the North,’ and all but the
king of the Northern Catholics. Before she set foot in Scotland, he had
offered to restore her by force, and with her, the Church. She preferred
the alliance of her brother, of Lethington, and of _les politiques_, the
moderate Protestants. Huntly died in battle against his Queen; his family,
for the hour, was ruined; but Huntly’s son and successor in the title
represented the discontents and ambitions of the warlike North, as
Bothwell represented those of the warlike Borderers. Similarity of
fortunes and of desires soon united these two ruined and reckless men,
Huntly and Bothwell, in a league equally dangerous to Moray, to amity with
England, and, finally, to Mary herself.
To restore his family to land and power, Huntly was ready to sacrifice not
only faith and honour, but natural affection. Twice he was to sell his
sister, Lady Jane, once when he married her to Bothwell against her will:
once when, Bothwell having won her love, Huntly compelled or induced her
to divorce him. But these things lay in the future. For the moment, the
autumn of 1562, the Huntlys were ruined, and Bothwell (August 28, 1562),
in the confusion, escaped from prison in Edinburgh Castle. ‘Some whispered
that he got easy passage by the gates,’ says Knox. ‘One thing,’ he adds,
‘is certain, to wit, the Queen was little offended at his escaping.’[23]
He was, at least, her mother’s faithful servant.
We begin to see that the Protestant party henceforward suspected the Queen
of regarding Bothwell as, to Mary, a useful man in case of trouble.
Bothwell first fled to Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale. As
Lieutenant-General on the Border he commanded the reckless broken clans,
the ‘Lambs,’ his own Hepburns, Hays, Ormistouns of Ormistoun, and others
who aided him in his most desperate enterprises; while, as Admiral, he had
the dare-devils of the sea to back him.
Lord James now became Earl of Moray, and all-powerful; and Bothwell,
flying to France, was storm-stayed at Holy Island, and held prisoner by
Elizabeth. His kinsfolk made interest for him with Mary, and, on February
5, 1564, she begged Elizabeth to allow him to go abroad. In England,
Bothwell is said to have behaved with unlooked-for propriety. ‘He is very
wise, and not the man he was reported to be,’ that is, not ‘rash,
glorious, and hazardous,’ Sir Harry Percy wrote to Cecil. ‘His behaviour
has been courteous and honourable, keeping his promise.’ Sir John Forster
corroborated this evidence. Bothwell, then, was not loutish, but, when he
pleased, could act like a gentleman. He sailed to France, and says himself
that he became Captain of the Scottish Guards, a post which Arran had once
held. In France he is said to have accused Mary of incestuous relations
with her uncle, the Cardinal.
During Bothwell’s residence in England, and in France, the equipoise of
Mary’s political position had been disturbed. She had held her ground,
against the extreme Protestants, who clamoured for the death of all
idolaters, by her alliance with _les politiques_, led by Moray and
Lethington. Their ambition, like hers, was to see the crowns of England
and Scotland united in her, or in her issue. Therefore they maintained a
perilous amity with England, and with Elizabeth, while plans for a meeting
of the Queens, and for the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth’s heir, were
being negotiated. But this caused ceaseless fretfulness to Elizabeth, who
believed, perhaps correctly, that to name her successor was to seal her
death-warrant. The Catholics of England would have hurried her to the
grave, she feared, that they might welcome Mary. In the same way, no
conceivable marriage for Mary could be welcome to Elizabeth, who hated the
very name of wedlock. Yet, while Bothwell was abroad, and while
negotiations lasted, there was a kind of repose, despite the anxieties of
the godly and their outrages on Catholics. Mary endured much and endured
with some patience. One chronic trouble was at rest. The feud between the
Hamiltons, the nearest heirs of the crown, and the rival claimants, the
Lennox Stewarts, was quiescent.
The interval of peace soon ended. Lennox, the head of the House hateful to
the Hamiltons, was, at the end of 1564, allowed to return to Scotland, and
was reinstated in the lands which his treason had forfeited long ago. In
the early spring of 1565, Lennox’s son, Darnley, followed his father to
the North, was seen and admired by Mary, and the peace of Scotland was
shattered. As a Catholic by education, though really of no creed in
particular, Darnley excited the terrors of the godly. His marriage with
Mary meant, to Moray, loss of power; to Lethington, a fresh policy; to the
Hamiltons, the ruin of their hopes of royalty, while, by most men, Darnley
soon came to be personally detested.
Before it was certain that Mary would marry Darnley, but while the friends
and foes of the match were banding into parties, early in March 1565,
Bothwell returned unbidden to Scotland, and lurked in his Border fastness.
Knox’s continuator says that Moray told Mary that either he or Bothwell
must leave the country. Mary replied that, considering Bothwell’s past
services, ‘she could not hate him,’ neither could she do anything
prejudicial to Moray.[24] ‘A day of law’ was set for Bothwell, for May 2,
but, as Moray gathered an overpowering armed force, he sent in a protest,
by his comparatively respectable friend, Hepburn of Riccartoun, and went
abroad. Mary, according to Randolph, had said that she ‘altogether
misliked his home-coming without a licence,’ but Bedford feared that she
secretly abetted him. He was condemned in absence, but Mary was thought to
have prevented the process of outlawry. Dr. Hay Fleming, however, cites
Pitcairn’s ‘Criminal Trials,’ i. 462,[25] as proof that Bothwell actually
was outlawed, or put to the horn. Knox’s continuator, however, says that
Bothwell ‘was not put to the horn, for the Queen continually bore a great
favour to him, and kept him to be a soldier.’[26] The Protestants ever
feared that Mary would ‘shake Bothwell out of her pocket,’ against
them.[27]
Presently, her temper outworn by the perpetual thwartings which checked
her every movement, and regardless of the opposition of Moray, of the
Hamiltons, of Argyll, and of the whole Protestant community, Mary wedded
Darnley (July 29, 1565). Her adversaries assembled in arms, secretly
encouraged by Elizabeth, and what Kirkcaldy of Grange had prophesied
occurred: Mary ‘shook Bothwell out of her pocket’ at her opponents. In
July, she sent Hepburn of Riccartoun to summon him back from France.
Riccartoun was captured by the English, but Bothwell, after a narrow
escape, presented himself before Mary on September 20. By October, Moray,
the Hamiltons, and Argyll were driven into England or rendered harmless.
Randolph now reported that Bothwell and Atholl were all-powerful. The
result was ill feeling between Darnley and Bothwell. Darnley wished his
father, Lennox, to govern on the Border, but Mary gave the post to
Bothwell.[28] Her estrangement from Darnley had already begun. Jealousy of
Mary’s new secretary, Riccio, was added.
The relations between Darnley, Bothwell, Mary, and Riccio, between the
crushing of Moray’s revolt, in October 1565, and the murder of the
Italian Secretary, in March 1566, are still obscure. Was Riccio Mary’s
lover? What were the exact causes of the estrangement from Darnley, which
was later used as the spring to discharge on Riccio, and on Mary, the
wrath of the discontented nobles and Puritans? The Lennox Papers inform
us, as to Mary and Darnley, that ‘their love never decayed till their
return from Dumfries,’ whence they had pursued Moray into England.
Mary had come back to Edinburgh from Dumfries by October 18, 1565. Riccio
was already, indeed by September 22, complained of as a foreign upstart,
but not as a lover of Mary, by the rebel Lords.[29] The Lennox Papers
attribute the estrangement of Mary and Darnley to her pardoning without
the consent of the King, her husband, ‘sundry rebels,’ namely the
Hamiltons. The pardon implied humiliation and five years of exile. It was
granted about December 3.[30] The measure was deeply distasteful to
Darnley and Lennox, who had long been at mortal feud, over the heirship to
the crown, with the Lennox Stewarts. The pardon is attributed to the
influence of ‘Wicked David,’ Riccio. But to pardon perpetually was the
function of a Scottish prince. Soon we find Darnley intriguing for the
pardon of Moray, Ruthven, and others, who were not Hamiltons. Next, Lennox
complains of Mary for ‘using the said David more like a lover than a
husband, forsaking her husband’s bed and board very often.’ But this was
not before November. The ‘Book of Articles’ put in against Mary by her
accusers is often based on Lennox’s papers. It says ‘she suddenly altered
the same’ (her ‘vehement love’ of Darnley) ‘about November, for she
removed and secluded him from the counsel and knowledge of all Council
affairs.’[31] The ‘Book of Articles,’ like Lennox’s own papers, omits
every reference to Riccio that can be avoided. The ‘Book of Articles,’
indeed, never hints at his existence. The reason is obvious: Darnley had
not shone in the Riccio affair. Moreover the Lennox party could not accuse
Mary of a guilty amour before mid November, 1565, for James VI. was born
on June 19, 1566. It would not do to discredit his legitimacy. But, as
early as September 1565, Bedford had written to Cecil that ‘of the
countenance which Mary gave to David he would not write, for the honour
due to the person of a Queen.’[32] Thus, a bride of six weeks, Mary was
reported to be already a wanton! Moreover, on October 13, 1565, Randolph
wrote from Edinburgh that Mary’s anger against Moray (who had really
enraged her by rising to prevent her from marrying Darnley) came from some
dishonourable secret in Moray’s keeping, ‘not to be named for reverence
sake.’ He ‘has a thing more strange’ even than the fact that Mary ‘places
Bothwell in honour above every subject that she hath.’ As the ‘thing’ is
_not_ a nascent passion for Bothwell, it may be an amour with Riccio.[33]
Indeed, on October 18, 1565, he will not speak of the cause of mischief,
but hints at ‘a stranger and a varlet,’ Riccio.[34] Randolph and the
English diplomatists were then infuriated against Mary, who had expelled
their allies, Moray and the rest, discredited Elizabeth, their
paymistress, and won over her a diplomatic victory. Consequently this talk
of her early amour with Riccio, an ugly Milanese musician, need not be
credited. For their own reasons, the Lennox faction dared not assert so
early a scandal.
They, however, insisted that Mary, in November, ‘removed and secluded’
Darnley from her Council. To prevent his knowing what letters were
written, when he signed them with her, she had his name printed on an iron
stamp, ‘and used the same _in all things_,’ in place of his subscription.
This stamp was employed in affixing his signature to the ‘remission’ to
the Hamiltons.[35]
In fact, Darnley’s ambitions were royal, but he had an objection to the
business which kings are well paid for transacting. Knox’s continuator
makes him pass ‘his time in hunting and hawking, and such other pleasures
as were agreeable to his appetite, having in his company gentlemen willing
to satisfy his will and affections.’ He had the two Anthony Standens, wild
young English Catholics. While Darnley hunted and hawked, Lennox ‘lies at
Glasgow’ (where he had a castle near the Cathedral), and ‘takes, I hear,
what he likes from all men,’ says Randolph.[36] He writes (November 6)
that Mary ‘above all things desires her husband to be called King.’[37]
Yet it is hinted that she is in love with Riccio! On the same date ‘oaths
and bands are taken of all that ... acknowledge Darnley king, and liberty
to live as they list in religion.’ On November 19, Mary was suffering from
‘her old disease that commonly takes her this time of year in her side.’
It was a chronic malady: we read of it in the Casket Letters. From
November 14 to December 1, she was ill, but Darnley hunted and hawked in
Fife, from Falkland probably, and was not expected to return till December
4.[38] Lennox was being accused of ‘extortions’ at Glasgow, complained of
‘to the Council.’ Châtelherault was ‘like to speed well enough in his suit
to be restored,’ after his share in Moray’s rebellion.
Darnley was better engaged, perhaps, in Fife, than in advocating his needy
and extortionate father before the Council, or in opposing the limited
pardon to old Châtelherault. In such circumstances, Darnley was often
absent, either for pleasure, or because his father was not allowed to
despoil the West; while the Hamilton chief, the heir presumptive of the
throne, was treated as a repentant rebel, rather than as a feudal enemy.
He was an exile, and lost his ‘moveables’ and all his castles, so he told
Elizabeth.[39] During, or after, these absences of Darnley, that ‘iron
stamp,’ of which Buchanan complains, was made and used.
The Young Fool had brought this on himself. Mary already, according to
Randolph, had been heard to say that she wished Lennox had never entered
Scotland ‘in her days.’ Lennox, the father-in-law of the Queen, was really
a competitor for the crown. If Mary had no issue, he and Darnley desired
the crown to be entailed on them, passing over the rightful heirs, the
House of Hamilton. A father and son, with such preoccupations, could not
safely be allowed to exercise power. The father would have lived on
robbery, the son would have shielded him. Yet, so occupied was Darnley
with distant field sports, that, says Buchanan, he took the affair of the
iron stamp easily.[40] Next comes a terrible grievance. Darnley was driven
out, in the depth of winter, to Peebles. There was so much snow, the roads
were so choked, the country so bare, that Darnley might conceivably have
been reduced to ‘halesome parritch.’ Luckily the Bishop of Orkney, the
jovial scoundrel, ‘Bishop Turpy,’ who married Mary to Bothwell, and then
denounced her to Elizabeth, had brought wine and delicacies. This is
Buchanan’s tale. A letter from Lennox to Darnley, of December 20, 1565,
represents the father as anxious to wait on ‘Your Majesty’ at Peebles,
but scarcely expecting him in such stormy weather. Darnley, doubtless,
really went for the sake of the deer: which, in Scotland, were pursued at
that season. He had been making exaggerated show of Catholicism, at matins
on Christmas Eve, while Mary sat up playing cards.[41] Presently he was to
be the ally of the extreme Protestants, the expelled rebels. Moray was
said not to have two hundred crowns in the world, and was ready for
anything, in his English retreat. Randolph (Dec. 25) reported ‘private
disorders’ between Darnley and Mary, ‘but these may be but _amantium
iræ_,’ lovers’ quarrels.[42] Yet, two months before he had hinted broadly
that Riccio was the object of Mary’s passion.
On this important point of Mary’s guilt with Riccio, we have no
affirmative evidence, save Darnley’s word, when he was most anxious to
destroy the Italian for political reasons. Randolph, who, as we have seen,
had apparently turned his back on his old slanders, now accepted, or
feigned to accept, Darnley’s anecdotes of his discoveries.
It is strange that Mary at the end of 1565, and the beginning of 1566,
seems to have had no idea of the perils of her position. On January 31,
1566, she wrote ‘to the most holy lord, the Lord Pope Pius V.,’ saying:
‘Already some of our enemies are in exile, and some of them are in our
hands, but their fury, and the great necessity in which they are placed,
urge them on to attempt extreme measures.’[43] But, ungallant as the
criticism may seem, I fear that this was only a begging letter _in
excelsis_, and that Mary wanted the papal ducats, without entertaining any
great hope or intention of aiding the papal cause, or any real
apprehension of ‘extreme measures’ on the side of her rebels. Her
intention was to forfeit and ruin Moray and his allies, in the Parliament
of the coming March. She also wished to do something ‘tending to’ the
restoration of the Church, by reintroducing the spiritual lords. But that
she actually joined the Catholic League, as she was certainly requested to
do, seems most improbable.[44] Having arranged a marriage between Bothwell
and Huntly’s sister, Lady Jane Gordon, she probably relied on the united
strength of the two nobles in the North and the South. But this was a
frail reed to lean upon. Mary’s position, though she does not seem to have
realised it, was desperate. She had incurred the feud of the Lennox
Stewarts, Lennox and Darnley, by her neglect of both, and by Darnley’s
jealousy of Riccio. The chiefs of the Hamiltons, who could always be
trusted to counterbalance the Lennox faction, were in exile. Moray was
desperate. Lethington was secretly estranged. The Protestants were at
once angry and terrified: ready for extremes. Finally, Morton was
threatened with loss of the seals, and almost all the nobles loathed the
power of the low-born foreign favourite, Riccio.
Even now the exact nature of the intrigues which culminated in Riccio’s
murder are obscure. We cannot entirely trust the well-known ‘Relation’
which, after the murder, on April 2, Morton and Ruthven sent to Cecil. He
was given leave to amend it, and it is, at best, a partisan report. Its
object was to throw the blame on Darnley, who had deserted the
conspirators, and betrayed them. According to Ruthven, it was on February
10 that Darnley sent to him George Douglas, a notorious assassin, akin
both to Darnley and Morton. Darnley, it is averred, had proof of Mary’s
guilt with Riccio, and desired to disgrace Mary by slaying Riccio in her
presence. The negotiation, then, began with Darnley, on February 10.[45]
But on February 5 Randolph had written to Cecil that Mary ‘hath said
openly that she will have mass free for all men that will hear it,’ and
that Darnley, Lennox, and Atholl daily resort to it. ‘The Protestants are
in great fear and doubt what shall become of them. The wisest so much
dislike this state and government, that they design nothing more than the
return of the Lords, either to be put into their own rooms, or once again
to put all in hazard.’[46] ‘The wisest’ is a phrase apt to mean
Lethington. Now, on February 9, before Darnley’s motion to Ruthven,
Lethington wrote to Cecil: ‘Mary! I see no certain way unless we chop at
the very root; you know where it lieth.’[47] When Mary, later, was a
prisoner in England, Knox, writing to Cecil, used this very phrase, ‘If ye
strike not at the root, the branches that appear to be broken will bud
again’ (Jan. 2, 1570). When Lethington meant to ‘chop at the very root,’
on February 9, 1566, he undoubtedly intended the death of Riccio, if not
of Mary.
In four days (February 13) Randolph informed Leicester of Darnley’s
jealousy, and adds, ‘I know that there are practices in hand, contrived
between the father and son’ (Lennox and Darnley), ‘to come by the crown
against her will.’ ‘The crown’ may only mean ‘the Crown Matrimonial,’
which would, apparently, give Darnley regal power for his lifetime. ‘I
know that, if that take effect which is intended, David, with the consent
of the King, shall have his throat cut within these ten days. Many things
grievouser and worse than these are brought to my ears: yea, of things
intended against her own person....’[48]
The conspiracy seems to have been political and theological in its
beginnings. Mary was certainly making more open show of Catholicism: very
possibly to impress the French envoys who had come to congratulate her on
her marriage, and to strengthen her claim on the Pope for money. But
Lennox and Darnley were also parading Catholic devoutness: they had no
quarrel with Mary on this head. The Protestants, however, took alarm.
Darnley was, perhaps, induced to believe in Mary’s misconduct with Riccio
after ‘the wisest,’ and Lethington, had decided ‘to chop at the very
root.’ Ruthven and Morton then won Darnley’s aid: he consented to secure
Protestantism, and, by a formal band, to restore Moray and the exiles:
who, in turn, recognised him as their sovereign. Randolph, banished by
Mary for aiding her rebels, conspired with Bedford at Berwick, and sent
copies to Cecil of the ‘bands’ between Darnley and the nobles (March
6).[49]
Darnley himself, said Randolph, was determined to be present at Riccio’s
slaying. Moray was to arrive in Edinburgh immediately after the deed.
Lethington, Argyll, Morton, Boyd, and Ruthven were privy to the murder,
also Moray, Rothes, Kirkcaldy, in England, with Randolph and Bedford. It
is probable that others besides Riccio were threatened. There is a ‘Band
of Assurance for the Murder.’[50] Darnley says that he has enlisted
‘lords, barons, freeholders, gentlemen, merchants, and craftsmen to assist
us in this enterprise, which cannot be finished without great hazard. And
because it may chance that there be certain great personages present, who
may make them to withstand our enterprise, wherethrough certain of them
may be slain,’ Darnley guarantees his allies against the blood feud of the
‘great persons.’ These, doubtless, are Bothwell, Atholl, and Huntly. The
deed ‘may chance to be done in presence of the Queen’s Majesty, or within
her palace of Holyrood House.’ The band is dated March 1, in other texts,
March 5. The indications point to a design of killing Mary’s nobles, while
she, in her condition, might die of the shock. She was to be morally
disgraced. So unscrupulous were Mary’s foes that Cecil told de Foix, the
French Ambassador in London, how Riccio had been slain in Mary’s arms,
_reginam nefario stupro polluens_.[51] Cecil well knew that this was a
lie: and it is natural to disbelieve every statement of a convicted liar
and traitor like Darnley.
Just before the explosion of the anti-Riccio conspiracy, Bothwell _se
rangea_. Mary herself made a match for him (the contract is of February 9,
1566) with Lady Jane Gordon, a Catholic, a sister of Huntly, and a
daughter of that Huntly who fell at Corrichie burn. The lady was only in
her twentieth year. The parties being akin, a dispensation was necessary,
and was granted by the Pope, and issued by the Archbishop of St.
Andrews.[52] The marriage took place in the Protestant Kirk of the
Canongate, though the bride was a Catholic, and Mary gave the wedding
dress (February 24). The honeymoon was interrupted, on March 9, by the
murder of Riccio.
The conspirators made the fatal error of not securing Bothwell and Huntly
before they broke into Mary’s room and slew Riccio. While Bothwell,
Huntly, and Atholl were at large, the forces of the Queen’s party had
powerful friends in the North and on the Border. When the tumult of the
murderers was heard, these nobles tried to fight their way to Mary’s
assistance, but were overpowered by numbers, and compelled to seek their
apartments. An attempt was made to reconcile them to the situation, but
they escaped under cloud of night. In her letter to the French Court (May
1567) excusing her marriage with Bothwell, Mary speaks of his ‘dexterity’
in escaping, ‘and how suddenly by his prudence not only were we delivered
out of prison,’ after Riccio’s death, ‘but also that whole company of
conspirators dissolved....’ ‘We could never forget it,’ Mary adds, and
Bothwell’s favour had a natural and legitimate basis in the gratitude of
the Queen. Very soon after the outrage she had secretly communicated with
Bothwell and Huntly, ‘who, taking no regard to hazard their lives,’
arranged a plan for her flight by means of ropes let down from the
windows.[53] Mary preferred the passage through the basement into the
royal tombs, and, by aid of Arthur Erskine and Stewart of Traquair, she
made her way to Dunbar. Here Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell rallied to her
standard: Knox fled from Edinburgh, Morton and Ruthven with their allies
found refuge in England: the lately exiled Lords were allowed to remain in
Scotland: Darnley betrayed his accomplices, they communicated to Mary
their treaties with him, and the Queen was left to reconcile Moray and
Argyll to Huntly, Bothwell, and Atholl.
IV
_BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE_
Mary’s task was ‘to quieten the country,’ a task perhaps impossible. Her
defenders might probably make a better case for her conduct and prudence,
at this time, than they have usually presented. Her policy was, if
possible, to return to the state of balance which existed before her
marriage. She must allay the Protestants’ anxieties, and lean on their
trusted Moray and on the wisdom of Lethington. But gratitude for the
highest services compelled her to employ Huntly and Bothwell, who equally
detested Lethington and Moray. Darnley was an impossible and disturbing
factor in the problem. He had, publicly, on March 20, and privately,
declared his innocence, which we find him still protesting in the Casket
Letters. He had informed against his associates, and insisted on dragging
into the tale of conspirators, Lethington, who had retired to Atholl.
Moreover Mary must have despised and hated the wretch. Perhaps her hatred
had already found expression.
The Lennox MSS. aver that Darnley secured Mary’s escape to Dunbar ‘with
great hazard and danger of his life.’ Claude Nau reports, on the other
hand, that he fled at full speed, brutally taunting Mary, who, in her
condition, could not keep the pace with him. Nau tells us that, as the
pair escaped out of Holyrood, Darnley uttered remorseful words over
Riccio’s new-made grave. The Lennox MSS. aver that Mary, seeing the grave,
said ‘it should go very hard with her but a fatter than Riccio should lie
anear him ere one twelvemonth was at an end.’ In Edinburgh, on the return
from Dunbar, Lennox accuses Mary of threatening to take revenge with her
own hands. ‘That innocent lamb’ (Darnley) ‘had but an unquiet life’
(Lennox MSS.).
Once more, Mary had to meet, on many sides, the demand for the pardon of
the Lords who had just insulted and injured her by the murder of her
servant. On April 2, from Berwick, Morton and Ruthven told Throckmorton
that they were in trouble ‘for the relief of our brethren and the
religion,’ and expected ‘to be relieved by the help of our brethren, which
we hope in God shall be shortly.’[54] Moray was eager for their
restoration, which must be fatal to their betrayer, Darnley. On the other
side, Bothwell and Darnley, we shall see, were presently intriguing for
the ruin of Moray, and of Lethington, who, still unpardoned, dared not
take to the seas lest Bothwell should intercept him.[55] Bothwell and
Darnley had been on ill terms in April, according to Drury.[56] But
common hatreds soon drew them together, as is to be shown.
Randolph’s desire was ‘to have my Lord of Moray again in Court’ (April 4),
and to Court Moray came.
Out of policy or affection, Mary certainly did protect and befriend Moray,
despite her alleged nascent passion for his enemy, Bothwell. By April 25,
Moray with Argyll and Glencairn had been received by Mary, who had
forbidden Darnley to meet them on their progress.[57] With a prudence
which cannot be called unreasonable, Mary tried to keep the nobles apart
from her husband. She suspected an intrigue whenever he conversed with
them, and she had abundant cause of suspicion. She herself had taken
refuge in the Castle, awaiting the birth of her child.
Mary and Moray now wished to pardon Lord Boyd, with whom Darnley had a
private quarrel, and whom he accused of being a party to Riccio’s
murder.[58] On May 13, Randolph tells Cecil that ‘Moray and Argyll have
such misliking of their King (Darnley) as never was more of man.’[59]
Moray, at this date, was most anxious for the recall of Morton, who (May
24) reports, as news from Scotland, that Darnley ‘is minded to depart to
Flanders,’ or some other place, to complain of Mary’s unkindness.[60]
Darnley was an obstacle to Mary’s efforts at general conciliation, apart
from the horror of the man which she probably entertained. In England
Morton and his gang had orders, never obeyed, to leave the country:
Ruthven had died, beholding a Choir of Angels, on May 16.
At this time, when Mary was within three weeks of her confinement, the
Lennox Papers tell a curious tale, adopted, with a bewildering confusion
of dates, by Buchanan in his ‘Detection.’ Lennox represents Mary as trying
to induce Darnley to make love to the wife of Moray, while ‘Bothwell alone
was all in all.’ This anecdote is told by Lennox himself, on Darnley’s own
authority. The MS. is headed, ‘Some part of the talk between the late King
of Scotland and me, the Earl of Lennox, riding between Dundas and Lythkoo
(Linlithgow) in a dark night, taking upon him to be the guide that night,
the rest of his company being in doubt of the highway.’ Darnley said he
had often ridden that road, and Lennox replied that it was no wonder, he
riding to meet his wife, ‘a paragon and a Queen.’ Darnley answered that
they were not happy. As an instance of Mary’s ways, he reported that, just
before their child’s birth, Mary had advised him to take a mistress, and
if possible ‘to make my Lord ----’ (Moray) ‘wear horns, and I assure you I
shall never love you the worse.’ Lennox liked not the saying, but merely
advised Darnley never to be unfaithful to the Queen. Darnley replied, ‘I
never offended the Queen, my wife, in meddling with any woman in thought,
let be in deed.’ Darnley also told the story of ‘horning’ Moray to a
servant of his, which Moray ‘is privy unto.’
The tale of Darnley’s then keeping a mistress arose, says Lennox, from the
fact that one of two Englishmen in his service, brothers, each called
Anthony Standen, brought a girl into the Castle. The sinner was, when
Lennox wrote, in France. Nearly forty years after James VI. imprisoned him
in the Tower, and he wrote a romantic memoir of which there is a
manuscript copy at Hatfield.
Whatever Mary’s feelings towards Darnley, when making an inventory of her
jewels for bequests, in case she and her child both died, she left her
husband a number of beautiful objects, including the red enamel ring with
which he wedded her.[61] Whatever her feelings towards Moray, she lodged
him and Argyll in the Castle during her labour: ‘Huntly and Bothwell would
also have lodged there, but were refused.’[62] Sir James Melville (writing
in old age) declares that Huntly and Lesley, Bishop of Ross, ‘envied the
favour that the Queen showed unto the Earl of Moray,’ and wished her to
‘put him in ward,’ as dangerous. Melville dissuaded Mary from this course,
and she admitted Moray to the Castle, while rejecting Huntly and
Bothwell.[63]
James VI. and I. was born on June 19. Killigrew carried Elizabeth’s
congratulations, and found that Argyll, Moray, Mar, and Atholl were
‘linked together’ at Court. Bothwell had tried to prejudice Mary against
Moray, as likely to ‘bring in Morton during her child-bed,’ but Bothwell
had failed, and gone to the Border. ‘He would not gladly be in the danger
of the four that lie in the Castle.’ Yet he was thought to be ‘more in
credit’ with Mary than all the rest. If so, Mary certainly ‘dissembled her
love,’ to the proverbial extent. Darnley was in the Castle, but little
regarded.[64] Moray complained that his own ‘credit was yet but small:’ he
was with the Privy Council, Bothwell was not.[65] By July 11, Moray told
Cecil that his favour ‘stands now in good case.’[66]
He had good reason to thank God, as he did. According to Nau, Huntly and
Bothwell had long been urging Darnley to ruin Moray and Lethington, and
Darnley had a high regard for George Douglas, now in exile, his agent with
Ruthven for Riccio’s murder.[67] This is confirmed by a letter from Morton
in exile to Sir John Forster in July. Morton had heard from Scotland that
Bothwell and Darnley were urging Mary to recall the said George Douglas,
whom they expected to denounce Moray and Lethington as ‘the devisers of
the slaughter of Davy.’ ‘I now find,’ says Morton, ‘that the King and
Bothwell are not likely to speed, as was written, for the Queen likes
nothing of their desire.’[68]
Thus Mary was protecting Moray from the grotesque combination of Bothwell
and Darnley. This is at a time when ‘Bothwell was all in all,’ according
to Lennox, and when she had just tried to embroil Moray and her husband by
bidding Darnley seduce Lady Moray. By Moray’s and Morton’s own showing,
Moray’s favour was ‘in good case,’ and he was guarded from Darnley’s
intrigues.
However, Buchanan makes Mary try to drive Darnley and Moray to dagger
strokes after her ‘deliverance.’[69] We need not credit his tale of Mary’s
informing Darnley that the nobles meant to kill him, and then calling
Moray out of bed, half-naked, to hear that he was to be killed by Darnley.
All that is known of this affair of the hurried Moray speeding through the
corridors in his dressing-gown, comes from certain notes of news sent by
Bedford to Cecil on August 15. ‘The Queen declared to Moray that the King
had told her he was determined to kill him, finding fault that she bears
him so much company. The King confessed that reports were made to him that
Moray was not his friend, which made him speak that of which he repented.
The Queen said that she could not be content that either he or any else
should be unfriend to Moray.’ ‘Any else’ included Bothwell. ‘Moray and
Bothwell have been at evil words for Lethington. The King has departed; he
cannot bear that the Queen should use familiarity with man or woman.’[70]
This may be the basis of Buchanan’s legend. Moray and Darnley hated each
other. On the historical evidence of documents as against the partisan
legends of Lennox and Buchanan, Mary, before and after her delivery, was
leaning on Moray, whatever may have been her private affection for
Bothwell. She even confided to him ‘that money had been sent from the
Pope.’ Moray was thus deep in her confidence. That she should distrust
Darnley, ever weaving new intrigues, was no more than just. His wicked
folly was the chief obstacle to peace.
Peace, while Darnley lived, there could not be. Morton was certain to be
pardoned, and of all feuds the deadliest was that between Morton and
Darnley, who had betrayed him. Meanwhile Mary’s dislike of Darnley must
have increased, after her fear of dying in child-birth had disappeared.
When once the nobles’ were knitted into a combination, with Lethington
restored to the Secretaryship (for which Moray laboured successfully
against Bothwell), with Morton and the Douglases brought home, Darnley was
certain to perish. Lennox was disgraced, and his Stewarts were powerless,
and Darnley’s own Douglas kinsmen were, of all men, most likely to put
their hands in his blood: as they did. Mary was his only possible shelter.
Nothing was more to be dreaded by the Lords than the reconciliation of the
royal pair; whom Darnley threatened with the vengeance he would take if
once his foot was on their necks. But of a sincere reconciliation there
was no danger.
A difficult problem is to account for the rise of Mary’s passion for
Bothwell. In February, she had given him into the arms of a beautiful
bride. In March, he had won her sincerest gratitude and confidence. She
had, Lennox says, bestowed on him the command of her new Guard of
harquebus men, a wild crew of mercenaries under dare-devil captains. But
though, according to her accusers, her gratitude and confidence turned to
love, and though that love, they say, was shameless and notorious, there
are no contemporary hints of it in all the gossip of scandalous
diplomatists. We have to fall back on what Buchanan, inspired by Lennox,
wrote after Darnley’s murder, and on what Lennox wrote himself in language
more becoming a gentleman than that of Buchanan. If Lennox speaks truth,
improper relations between Mary and Bothwell began as soon as she
recovered from the birth of her child. He avers that Mary wrote a letter
to Bothwell shortly after her recovery from child-bed, and just when she
was resisting Bothwell’s and Darnley’s plot against Moray and Lethington.
Bothwell, reading the letter among his friends, exclaimed, ‘Gyf any faith
might be given to a princess, they’ (Darnley and Mary) ‘should never be
togidder in bed agane.’ A version in English (the other paper is in Scots)
makes Mary promise this to Bothwell when he entered her room, and found
her washing her hands. Buchanan’s tales of Mary’s secret flight to Alloa,
shortly after James’s birth, and her revels there in company with Bothwell
and his crew of pirates, are well known. Lennox, however, represents her
as departing to Stirling, ‘before her month,’ when even women of low
degree keep the house, and as ‘taking her pleasure in most uncomely
manner, arraied in homely sort, dancing about the market cross of the
town.’
According to Nau, Mary and her ladies really resided at Alloa as guests of
Lord Mar, one of the least treacherous and abandoned of her nobles.
Bedford, in a letter of August 3, 1566, mentions Mary’s secret departure
from Edinburgh, her intended meeting with Lethington (who had been exiled
from Court since Riccio’s death), at Alloa, on August 2, and her
disdainful words about Darnley. He adds that Bothwell is the most hated
man in Scotland: ‘his insolence is such that David [Riccio] was never more
abhorred than he is now,’ but Bedford says nothing of a love intrigue
between Bothwell and Mary.[71] The visit to Alloa, with occasional returns
to Edinburgh, is of July-August.
In August, Mary, Bothwell, Moray, and Darnley hunted in Meggatdale, the
moorland region between the stripling Yarrow and the Tweed. They had poor
sport: poachers had been busy among the deer. Charles IX., in France, now
learned that the royal pair were on the best terms;[72] and Mary’s
Inventories prove that, in August, she had presented Darnley with a
magnificent bed; by no means ‘the second-best bed.’ In September she also
gave him a quantity of cloth of gold, to make a caparison for his
horse.[73] Claude Nau reports, however, various brutal remarks of Darnley
to his wife while they were in Meggatdale. By September 20, Mary,
according to Lethington, reconciled Bothwell and himself. This was a very
important event. The reconciliation, Lethington says, was quietly managed
at the house of a friend of his own, Argyll, Moray, and Bothwell alone
being present. Moray says: ‘Lethington is restored to favour, wherein I
trust he shall increase.’[74] This step was hostile to Darnley’s
interests, for he had attempted to ruin Lethington. It is certain, as we
shall see, that all parties were now united in a band to resist Darnley’s
authority, and maintain that of the Queen, though, probably, nothing was
said about violence.
At this very point Buchanan, supported and probably inspired by Lennox,
makes the guilty intimacy of Mary and Bothwell begin in earnest. In
September, 1566, Mary certainly was in Edinburgh, reconciling Lethington
to Bothwell, and also working at the budget and finance in the Exchequer
House. It ‘was large and had pleasant gardens to it, and next to the
gardens, all along, a solitary vacant room,’ says Buchanan. But the real
charm, he declares, was in the neighbourhood of the house of David
Chalmers, a man of learning, and a friend of Bothwell. The back door of
Chalmers’s house opened on the garden of the Exchequer House, and
according to Buchanan, Bothwell thence passed, through the garden, to
Mary’s chamber, where he overcame her virtue by force. She was betrayed
into his hands by Lady Reres.[75]
This lady, who has been mentioned already, was the wife of Arthur Forbes
of Reres. His castle, on a hill above the north shore of the Firth of
Forth, is now but a grassy mound, near Lord Crawford’s house of Balcarres.
The lady was a niece of Cardinal Beaton, a sister of the magic lady of
Branksome, and aunt of one of the Four Maries, Mary Beaton. Buchanan
describes her as an old love of Bothwell, ‘a woman very heavy, both by
unwieldy age and massy substance;’ her gay days, then, must long have been
over. She was also the mother of a fairly large family. Cecil absurdly
avers that Bothwell obtained his divorce by accusing himself of an amour
with this fat old lady.[76] Knox’s silly secretary, Bannatyne, tells us
that the Reformer, dining at Falsyde, was regaled with a witch story by a
Mr. Lundie. He said that when Lady Atholl and Mary were both in labour, in
Edinburgh Castle, he came there on business, and found Lady Reres lying
abed. ‘He asking her of her disease, she answered that she was never so
troubled with no bairn that ever she bare, for the Lady Atholl had cast
all the pain of her child-birth upon her.’[77] It was a case of
Telepathy. Lady Reres had been married long enough to have a grown-up son,
the young Laird of Reres, who was in Mary’s service at Carberry Hill
(June, 1567). According to Dr. Joseph Robertson, Lady Reres was wet-nurse
to Mary’s baby. But, if we trust Buchanan, she was always wandering about
with Mary, while the nurseling was elsewhere. The name of Lady Reres does
not occur among those of Mary’s household in her _Etat_ of February 1567.
We only hear of her, then, from Buchanan, as a veteran procuress of vast
bulk who, at some remote period, had herself been the mistress of
Bothwell.
A few days after the treasonable and infamous action of Bothwell in
violating his Queen, we are to believe that Mary, still in the Exchequer
House, sent Lady Reres for that hero. Though it would have been simple and
easy to send a girl like Margaret Carwood, Mary and Margaret must needs
let old Lady Reres ‘down by a string, over an old wall, into the next
garden.’ Still easier would it have been for Lady Reres to use the key of
the back door, as when she first admitted Bothwell. But these methods were
not romantic enough: ‘Behold, the string suddenly broke, and down with a
great noise fell Lady Reres.’ However, she returned with Bothwell, and so
began these tragic loves.
This legend is backed, according to Buchanan, by the confession of
Bothwell’s valet, George Dalgleish, ‘which still remaineth upon record,’
but is nowhere to be found. In Dalgleish’s confession, printed in the
‘Detection,’ nothing of the kind occurs. But a passage in the Casket
Sonnet IX. is taken as referring to the condoned rape:
Pour luy aussi j’ai jeté mainte larme,
Premier, quand il se fist de ce corps possesseur,
Duquel alors il n’avoit pas le cœur.
In the Lennox MSS. Lennox himself dates the beginning of the intrigue with
Bothwell about September, 1566. But he and Buchanan are practically but
one witness. There is no other.
As regards this critical period, we have abundant contemporary
information. The Privy Council, writing to Catherine de’ Medici, from
Edinburgh, on October 8, make Mary, ten or twelve days before (say
September 26), leave Stirling for Edinburgh, on affairs of the Exchequer.
She offered to bring Darnley, but he insisted on remaining at Stirling,
where Lennox visited him for two or three days, returning to Glasgow.
Thence he wrote to Mary, warning her that Darnley had a vessel in
readiness, to fly the country. The letter reached Mary on September 29,
and Darnley arrived on the same day. He rode to Mary, but refused to enter
the palace, because three or four of the Lords were in attendance. Mary
actually went out to see her husband, apparently dismissed the Lords, and
brought him to her chamber, where he passed the night. On the following
day, the Council, with du Croc, met Darnley. He was invited, by Mary and
the rest, to declare his grievances: his attention was directed to the
‘wise and virtuous’ conduct of his wife. Nothing could be extracted from
Darnley, who sulkily withdrew, warning Mary, by a letter, that he still
thought of leaving the country. His letter hinted that he was deprived of
regal authority, and was abandoned by the nobles. To this they reply that
he must be _aimable_ before he can be _aimé_, and that they will never
consent to his having the disposal of affairs.[78]
A similar account was given by du Croc to Archbishop Beaton, and, on
October 17, to Catherine de’ Medici, no friend of Mary, also by Mary to
Lennox.[79]
We have not Darnley’s version of what occurred. He knew that all the
powerful Lords were now united against him. Du Croc, however, had frequent
interviews with Darnley, who stated his grievance. It was not that
Bothwell injured his honour. Darnley kept spies on Mary, and had such a
noisy and burlesque set of incidents occurred in the garden of Exchequer
House as Buchanan reports, Darnley should have had the news. But he merely
complained to du Croc that he did not enjoy the same share of power and
trust as was his in the early weeks of his wedding. Du Croc replied that
this fortune could never again be his. The ‘Book of Articles’ entirely
omits Darnley’s offence in the slaying of Riccio. Du Croc was more
explicit. He told Darnley that the Queen had been personally offended, and
would never restore him to his authority. ‘He ought to be well content
with the honour and good cheer which she gave him, honouring and treating
him as the King her husband, and supplying his household with all manner
of good things.’ This goes ill with Buchanan’s story about Mary’s
stinginess to Darnley. It is admitted by the Lennox MSS. that she did not
keep her alleged promise to Bothwell, that she and Darnley should never
meet in the marriage bed.
When Mary had gone to Jedburgh, to hold a court (about October 8), du Croc
was asked to meet Darnley at some place, apparently Dundas, ‘three leagues
from Edinburgh.’ Du Croc thought that Darnley wished Mary to ask him to
return. But Darnley, du Croc believed, intended to hang off till after the
baptism of James, and did not mean to be present on that occasion (_pour
ne s’y trouver point_). He had, in du Croc’s opinion, but two causes of
unhappiness: one, the reconciliation of the Lords with the Queen, and
their favour; the other, a fear lest Elizabeth’s envoy to the baptism
might decline to recognise him (_ne fera compte de luy_). The night-ride
from Dundas to Linlithgow, in which (according to Lennox) Darnley told the
tale of Mary’s advice to him to seduce Lady Moray, must have occurred at
this very time, perhaps after the meeting with du Croc, three leagues from
Edinburgh. In his paper about the night-ride, Lennox avers that Mary
yielded to Bothwell’s love, before this ride and conversation. But he does
not say that he himself was already aware of the amour, and his whole
narrative leaves the impression that he was not. We are to suppose that,
if Buchanan’s account is true, the adventures of the Exchequer House and
of Lady Reres were only known to the world later. Certainly no suspicion
of Mary had crossed the mind of du Croc, who says that he never saw her so
much loved and respected; and, in short, there is no known contemporary
hint of the beginning of the guilty amour, flagrant as were its alleged
circumstances. This point has, naturally, been much insisted upon by the
defenders of Mary.
It must not escape us that, about this time, almost every Lord, from Moray
downwards, was probably united in a signed ‘band’ against Darnley. The
precise nature of its stipulations is uncertain, but that a hostile band
existed, I think can be demonstrated. The Lords, in their letter of
October 8 to Catherine, declare that they will never consent to let
Darnley manage affairs. The evidence as to a band comes from four sources:
Randolph, Archibald Douglas, a cousin and ally of Morton, Claude Nau,
Mary’s secretary, and Moray himself.
First, on October 15, 1570, Randolph, being in Edinburgh after the death
of the Regent Moray, writes: ‘Divers, since the Regent’s death, either to
cover their own doings or to advance their cause, have sought to make him
odious to the world. The universal bruit runs upon three or four persons’
(Bothwell, Lethington, Balfour(?), Huntly, and Argyll) ‘who subscribed
upon a bond promising to concur and assist one another in the late King’s
death. This bond was kept in the Castle, in a little coffer covered with
green, and, after the apprehension of the Scottish Queen at Carberry Hill,
was taken out of the place where it lay by the Laird of Lethington, in
presence of Mr. James Balfour.... This being a thing so notoriously known,
as well by Mr. James Balfour’s own report, as testimony of other who have
seen the thing, is utterly denied to be true, _and another bond produced
which they allege to be it, containing no such matter, at the which, with
divers other noblemen’s hands, the Regent’s was also made, a long time
before the bond of the King’s murder was made_, and now they say that if
it can be proved by any bond that they consented to the King’s death, the
late Regent is as guilty as they, and for testimony thereof (as Randolph
is credibly informed) have sent a bond to be seen in England, which is
either some new bond made among themselves, and the late Regent’s hand
counterfeited at the same (which in some cases he knows has been done), or
the old bond at which his hand is, containing no such matter.’ Randolph
adds, as an example of forgery of Moray’s hand, the order for Lethington’s
release by Kirkcaldy to whom Robert Melville attributed the forgery.[80]
Thus both sides could deal in charges of forging hands.
But what is ‘the old band,’ _signed by Moray_ ‘a long time before the bond
of the King’s murder was made’? To this question we probably find a reply
in the long letter written by Archibald Douglas to Mary, in April, 1583,
when he (one of Darnley’s murderers) was an exile, and was seeking, and
winning, Mary’s favour. Douglas had fled to France after Riccio’s murder,
but was allowed to return to Scotland, ‘to deal with Earls Murray, Athol,
Bodvel, Arguile, and Secretary Ledington,’ in the interests of a pardon
for Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay. This must have been just after September
20, when the return of Lethington to favour occurred. But Murray, Atholl,
Bothwell, Argyll, and Lethington told Douglas that they had made a band,
with other noblemen, to this effect: that they ‘were resolved to obey your
Majesty as their natural sovereign, _and have nothing to do with your
husband’s command whatsoever_.’ So the Lords also told Catherine de’
Medici. They wished to know, before interfering in Morton’s favour,
whether he would also sign this anti-Darnley band, which Morton and his
accomplices did. Archibald Douglas then returned, with their signatures,
to Stirling, at the time of James’s baptism, in mid December, 1566. Morton
and his friends were then pardoned on December 24.[81] This anti-Darnley
band, which does not allude to _murder_, must be that produced in 1570,
according to Randolph, by ‘divers, since Moray’s death, either to cover
their own doings, or to advance their own cause, seeking to make him
odious to the world.’ We thus find Moray, and all the most powerful
nobles, banded against Darnley, some time between September and December
1566.
Now, Claude Nau, inspired by Mary, attributes Darnley’s murder to a band
‘written by Alexander Hay, at that time one of the clerks of the Council,
and signed by the Earls of Moray, Huntly, Bothwell, and Morton, by
Lethington, James Balfour, and others.’ Moray certainly did not sign the
murderous band kept in the green-covered coffer, nor, as he alleged at his
death, did Morton. But Nau seems to be confusing _that_ band with the band
of older date, to which, as Randolph admits, and as Archibald Douglas
insists, Moray, Morton, and others put their hands, Morton signing as late
as December 1566.
Nau says: ‘They protested that they were acting for the public good of the
realm, pretending that they were freeing the Queen from the bondage and
misery into which she had been reduced by the King’s behaviour. They
promised to support each other, and to avouch that the act was done
justly, licitly, and lawfully by the leading men of the Council. They had
done it in defence of their lives, which would be in danger, they said, if
the King should get the upper hand and secure the government of the realm,
at which he was aiming.’[82] Randolph denies that there was any hint of
murder in the band signed by Moray. Archibald Douglas makes the gist of it
‘that they would have nothing to do with your husband’s command
whatsoever.’ Nau speaks of ‘the act,’ but does not name murder explicitly
as part of the band. Almost certainly, then, there did exist, in autumn
1566, a band hostile to Darnley, and signed by Moray and Morton. It seems
highly probable that the old band, made long before the King’s murder, and
of a character hostile to Darnley’s influence, and menacing to him, is
that which Moray himself declares that he did sign, ‘at the beginning of
October,’ 1566. When Moray, in London, on January 19, 1569, was replying
to an account (the so-called ‘Protestation of Argyll and Huntly’) of the
conference at Craigmillar, in November 1566, he denied (what was not
alleged) that he signed any band _there_: at Craigmillar. ‘This far the
subscriptioun of bandes be me is trew, that indeed I subscrivit ane band
with the Erlis of Huntlie, Ergile, and Boithvile in Edinburgh, at the
begynning of October the same yeir, 1566: quhilk was devisit in signe of
our reconciliatioun, in respect of the former grudgis and displesouris
that had been amang us. Whereunto I wes constreinit to mak promis, before
I culd be admittit to the Quenis presence or haif ony shew of hir
faveur....’[83]
Now Moray had been admitted to Mary’s presence two days after the death of
Riccio, before her flight to Dunbar. On April 25, 1566, Randolph writes
from Berwick to Cecil: ‘Murray, Argyll, and Glencairn are come to Court. I
hear his (Moray’s) credit shall be good. The Queen wills that all
controversies shall be taken up, in especial that between Murray and
Bothwell.’[84] On April 21, 1566, Moray, Argyll, Glencairn, and others
were received by Mary in the Castle, and a Proclamation was made to soothe
‘the enmity that was betwixt the Earls of Huntly, Bothwell, and
Murray.’[85] Thenceforward, as we have proved in detail, Moray was
ostensibly in Mary’s favour. Moray would have us believe that he only
obtained this grace by virtue of his promise to sign a band with Huntly,
Bothwell, and Argyll: the last had been on his own side in his rebellion.
But the band, he alleges, was not signed till October, 1566, though the
promise must have been given, at least his ‘favour’ with Mary was
obtained, in April. And Moray signed the band precisely at the moment when
Darnley was giving most notorious trouble, and had just been approached
and implored by Mary, the Council, and the French ambassador. That was the
moment when the Privy Council assured Catherine that they ‘would never
consent’ to Darnley’s sovereignty. Why was that moment selected by Moray
to fulfil a promise more than four months old? Was the band not that
mentioned by Randolph, Archibald Douglas, and Nau, and therefore, in some
sense, an anti-Darnley band, not a mere ‘sign of reconciliation’? The
inference appears legitimate, and this old band signed by Moray seems to
have been confused, by his enemies, with a later band for Darnley’s
murder, which we may be sure that he never signed. He only ‘looked through
his fingers.’
On October 7, or 8, or 9, Mary left Edinburgh to hold a Border session at
Jedburgh. She appears to have been in Jedburgh by the 9th.[86] On October
7, Bothwell was severely wounded, in Liddesdale, by a Border thief. On
October 15, Mary rode to visit him at Hermitage.[87] Moray, says Sir John
Forster to Cecil (October 15), was with her, and other nobles. Yet
Buchanan says that she rode ‘with such a company as no man of any honest
degree would have adventured his life and his goods among them.’ Life,
indeed, was not safe with the nobles, but how Buchanan errs! Du Croc,
writing from Jedburgh on October 17, reports that Bothwell is out of
danger: ‘the Queen is well pleased, his loss to her would have been
great.’[88] Buchanan’s account of this affair is, that Mary heard at
Borthwick of Bothwell’s wound, whereon ‘she flingeth away like a mad
woman, by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of winter’ (early
October!), ‘first to Melrose, then to Jedburgh. There, though she heard
sure news of his life, yet her affection, impatient of delay, could not
temper itself; but needs she must bewray her outrageous lust, and in an
inconvenient time of the year, despising all incommodities of the way and
weather, and all dangers of thieves, she betook herself headlong to her
journey.’ The ‘Book of Articles’ merely says that, after hearing of
Bothwell’s wound, she ‘took na kindly rest’ till she saw him--a prolonged
_insomnia_. On returning to Jedburgh, she prepared for Bothwell’s arrival,
and, when he was once brought thither, then perhaps by their excessive
indulgence in their passion, Buchanan avers, Mary nearly died.
All this is false. Mary stayed at least five days in Jedburgh before she
rode to Hermitage, whither, says Nau, corroborated by Forster, Moray
accompanied her. She fell ill on October 17, a week before Bothwell’s
arrival at Jedburgh. On October 25, she was despaired of, and some thought
she had passed away. Bothwell arrived, in a litter, about October 25.
Forster says October 15, wrongly. These were no fit circumstances for
‘their old pastime,’ which they took ‘so openly, as they seemed to fear
nothing more than lest their wickedness should be unknown.’ ‘I never saw
her Majesty so much beloved, esteemed, and honoured,’ du Croc had written
on October 17.
[Illustration: House occupied by Queen Mary at Jedburgh.
G. W. Wilson & Co. Aberdeen photo
Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]
Buchanan’s tale is here so manifestly false, that it throws doubt on his
scandal about the Exchequer House. That Mary abhorred Darnley, and was
wretched, is certain. ‘How to be free of him she sees no outgait,’ writes
Lethington on October 24. He saw no chance of reconciliation.[89] That she
and Bothwell acted profligately together while he was ill at Hermitage,
and she almost dead at Jedburgh, is a grotesquely malevolent falsehood.
Darnley now visited Jedburgh: it is uncertain whether or not he delayed
his visit long after he knew of Mary’s illness. Buchanan says that he was
received with cruel contempt.[90] In some pious remarks of hers when she
expected death, she only asks Heaven to ‘mend’ Darnley, whose misconduct
is the cause of her malady.[91] On November 20, Mary arrived at
Craigmillar Castle, hard by Edinburgh. Du Croc mentions her frequent
exclamation, ‘I could wish to be dead,’ and, from Darnley, and his own
observation, gathered that Darnley would never humble himself, while Mary
was full of suspicions when she saw him converse with any noble. For
disbelieving that reconciliation was possible du Croc had several reasons,
he says; he may have detected the passion for Bothwell, but makes no
allusion to that subject; and, when Darnley in December behaved sullenly,
his sympathy was with the Queen. In the ‘Book of Articles’ exhibited
against Mary in 1568, it is alleged that, at Kelso, on her return from
Jedburgh, she received a letter from Darnley, wept, told Lethington and
Moray that she could never have a happy day while united to her husband,
and spoke of suicide. Possibly Darnley wrote about his letter against her
to the Pope, and the Catholic Powers. But the anecdote is dubious. She
proceeded to Craigmillar Castle.
Then came the famous conference at Craigmillar. Buchanan says (in the
‘Detection’) that, in presence of Moray, Huntly, Argyll, and Lethington,
she spoke of a divorce, on grounds of consanguinity, the Dispensation
‘being conveyed away.’ One of the party said that her son’s legitimacy
would be imperilled. So far the ‘Book of Articles’ agrees with the
‘Detection.’ Not daring to ‘disclose her purpose to make away her son’
(the ‘Book of Articles’ omits this), she determined to murder her husband,
and her son. A very different story is told in a document sent by Mary to
Huntly and Argyll, for their signatures, on January 5, 1569. This purports
to be a statement of what Huntly had told Bishop Lesley. He and Argyll
were asked to revise, omit, or add, as their recollection served, sign,
and return, the paper which was to be part of Mary’s counter-accusations
against her accusers.[92] The document was intercepted, and was never seen
nor signed by Huntly and Argyll. The statement, whatever its value (it is
merely Lesley’s recollection of remarks by Huntly), declares that Moray
and Lethington roused Argyll from bed, and suggested that, to induce Mary
to recall Morton (banished for Riccio’s murder), it would be advisable to
oblige Mary by ridding her of Darnley. Huntly was next brought in, and,
last, Bothwell. They went to Mary’s rooms, and proposed a divorce. She
objected that this would, or might, invalidate her son’s legitimacy, and
proposed to retire to France. Lethington said that a way would be found,
and that Moray would ‘look through his fingers.’ Mary replied that nothing
must be done which would stain her honour and conscience. Lethington
answered that, if they were allowed to guide the matter, ‘Your Grace shall
see nothing but good, and approved by Parliament.’
Though Huntly and Argyll never saw this piece, they signed, in September,
1568, another, to like purpose. Starting from the same point, the desire
to win Morton’s pardon, they say that they promised to secure a divorce,
either because the dispensation for Mary’s marriage was not published
(conceivably the marriage occurred before the dispensation was granted) or
for adultery: or to bring a charge of treason against Darnley, ‘or quhat
other wayis to dispeche him; quhilk altogidder hir Grace refusit, as is
manifestlie knawin.’[93] It is plain, therefore, that Huntly and Argyll
would have made no difficulty about signing the Protestation which never
reached them.
While Buchanan’s tale yields no reason for Mary’s consent to pardon the
Riccio murderers (whom of all men she loathed), Huntly and Argyll supply a
partial explanation. In Buchanan’s History, it is casually mentioned,
later, that Mary wished to involve Moray and Morton in the guilt of
Darnley’s murder. But how had Morton returned to Scotland? Of _that_, not
a word.[94] In truth, both French and English influence had been used;
Bothwell, acting ‘like a very friend,’ says Bedford, and others had openly
added their intercessions. James’s baptism was an occasion for an amnesty,
and this was granted on Christmas Eve. The pardon might well have been
given, even had no divorce or murder of Darnley been intended, but the
step was most threatening to Darnley’s safety, as the exiles hated him
with a deadly hatred. On the whole, taking the unsigned ‘Protestation’ of
Huntly and Argyll with the document which they did sign, it seems
probable, or certain, that a conference as to getting rid of Darnley, in
some way, was held at Craigmillar, where Moray certainly was.
Moray, in London, was shown the intercepted ‘Protestation,’ and denied
that anything was said, at Craigmillar, in his hearing ‘tending to ony
unlawfull or dishonourable end.’[95] But, if the Protestation can be
trusted, nothing positively unlawful was proposed. Lethington promised
‘nothing but good, and approved by Parliament.’ Moray also denied having
signed a ‘band,’ except that of October 1566, but about a ‘band’ the
Protestation says nothing. Moray _may_ have referred to what (according to
the ‘Diurnal,’ pp. 127, 128) Hay of Talla said at his execution (January
3, 1568). He had seen a ‘band’ signed by Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll,
Lethington, and Sir James Balfour. The first four, at least, were at
Craigmillar. Buchanan, in the ‘Detection,’ gives Hay’s confession, but not
this part of it. Much later, on December 13, 1573, Ormistoun confessed
that, about Easter, after the murder, Bothwell tried to reassure him by
showing him a ‘contract subscryvit be four or fyve handwrittes, quhilk he
affirmit to me was the subscription of the erle of Huntlie, Argyll, the
Secretar Maitland, and Sir James Balfour.’ The contract or band stated
that Darnley must be got rid off ‘by ane way or uther,’ and that all who
signed should defend any who did the deed. It was subscribed a quarter of
a year before the murder, that is, taking the phrase widely, after the
Craigmillar conference.[96]
What did Lethington mean, at Craigmillar, by speaking of a method of
dealing with Darnley which Parliament would approve? He may have meant to
arrest him, for treason, and kill him if he resisted. That this was
contemplated, at Craigmillar, we proceed to adduce the evidence of Lennox.
This hitherto unknown testimony exists, in inconsistent forms, among the
several indictments which Lennox, between July and December, 1568, drew up
to show to the English Commissioners who, at York and Westminster,
examined the charges against Mary. In the evidence which we have hitherto
seen, the plans of Mary’s Council at Craigmillar are left vague, and
Mary’s objections, as described by Huntly and Argyll, are spoken of as
final. Mention is made of only one conference, without any sequel. But
Lennox asserts that there was at least one other meeting, at Craigmillar,
between Mary and her advisers. His information is obviously vague, but he
first makes the following assertions.
‘In this mean time’ (namely in December 1566, when the Court was at
Stirling for James’s baptism), ‘his father, being advertised [‘credibly
informed’][97] that at Craigmillar the Queen and certain of her Council
_had concluded_ upon an enterprise to the great peril and danger of his
[‘Majesty’s’] person, which was that he should have been _apprehended and
put in ward_, which rested’ (was postponed) ‘but only on the finishing of
the christening and the departure of the said ambassadors, which thing
being not a little grievous unto his father’s heart, did give him warning
thereof; whereupon he, by the advice of sundry that loved him, departed
from her shortly after the christening, and came to his father to Glasgow,
being fully resolved with himself to have taken ship shortly after, and to
have passed beyond the seas, but that sickness prevented him, which was
the cause of his stay.’
In this version, Lennox is warned, by whom he does not say, of a plan,
formed at Craigmillar, to arrest Darnley. The plan is not refused by the
Queen, but is ‘concluded upon,’ yet postponed till the christening
festivities are over. _Nothing is said about the design to kill Darnley if
he resists._ The scheme is communicated to Darnley by Lennox himself.
Next comes what seems to be the second of Lennox’s attempts at producing a
‘discourse.’ This can be dated. It ends with the remark that, after
Langside fight, Mary spoke with Ormistoun and Hob Ormistoun, ‘who were of
the chiefest murderers of the King, her husband.’ These men now live with
the Laird of Whithaugh, in Liddesdale, ‘who keepeth in his house a
prisoner, one Andrew Carre, of Fawdonside, by her commandment.’ This was
Andrew Ker of Faldonside, the most brutal of the murderers of Riccio. Now
on October 4, 1568, in a list of ‘offences committed by the Queen’s
party,’ a list perhaps in John Wood’s hand, we read that Whithaugh, and
other Elliots, ‘took ane honest and trew gentleman, Ker of Faldonside, and
keep him prisoner by Mary’s command;’ while Whithaugh cherishes the two
Ormistouns.[98] This discourse of Lennox, then, is of, or about, October
4, 1568, and was prepared for the York Conference to inquire into Mary’s
case, where it was not delivered.
He says: ‘How she used him (Darnley) at Craigmillar, my said Lord Regent
(Moray), who was there present, can witness. One thing I am constrainit to
declare, which came to my knowledge by credible persons, which was that
certain of her familiar and privy counsellors, of her faction and
Bothwell’s, should present her a letter at that house, subscribed with
their hands, the effect of which letter was to apprehend the King my son’s
person, and to put him in ward, and, _if he happened to resist them, to
kill him_: she answered that the ambassadors were come,[99] and the
christening drew near, so that the time would not then serve well for that
purpose, till the triumph was done, and the ambassadors departed to their
country.... Also I, being at Glasgow about the same time, and having
intelligence of the foresaid device for his apprehension at Craigmillar,
did give him warning thereof;’ consequently, as he was also ill-treated at
Stirling, Darnley went to Glasgow, ‘where he was not long till he fell
sick.’ Lennox here adds the plot to kill Darnley if he resisted arrest.
His reference to certain of Mary’s Privy Council, who laid the plot,
cannot have been grateful to Lethington, who was at York, where Lennox
meant to deliver his speech.
The final form taken by Lennox’s account of what occurred at Craigmillar
looks as if it were a Scots draft for the ‘Brief Discourse’ which he
actually put in, in English, at Westminster, on November 29, 1568. He
addresses Norfolk and the rest in his opening sentences. The Privy Council
who made the plot are they ‘_of thay dayis_,’ which included Moray,
Argyll, Huntly, Lethington, and Bothwell. These Lords, or some of them,
either subscribe ‘a lettre’ of warrant for Darnley’s capture alive or
dead, or ask Mary to sign one; Lennox is not certain which view is
correct. She answered that they must delay till the ambassadors departed.
‘But seeing in the mean time this purpose divulgate,’ she arrested the
‘reportaris,’ namely Hiegait, Walker, the Laird of Minto (we do not
elsewhere learn that he was examined), and Alexander Cauldwell. Perceiving
‘that the truth was like to come to light, she left off further
inquisition.’
This version does not state that Lennox, or any one else, revealed the
Craigmillar plot for his arrest to Darnley. It later describes a quarrel
of his with Mary at Stirling, and adds, ‘Being thus handled, at the end of
the christening he came to me to Glasgow.’ This tale of a plot to arrest,
and, if he resisted, to kill Darnley, corresponds with Paris’s statement
that Bothwell told him, ‘We were much inclined to do it lately, when we
were at Craigmillar.’
This evidence of Lennox, then, avers that, after the known conference at
Craigmillar, which Lethington ended by saying that ‘you shall see nothing
but good, and approved of by Parliament,’ there was another conference. On
this second occasion some of the Privy Council suggested the arrest of
Darnley, who, perhaps, was to be slain if he resisted. Parliament might
approve of this measure, for there were reasons for charging Darnley with
high treason. Mary, says Lennox, accepted the scheme, but postponed it
till after the Baptism. Within two or three weeks Lennox heard of the
plan, and gave Darnley warning. But Lennox’s three versions are hesitating
and inconsistent: nor does he cite his authority for the conspiracy to
kill Darnley.
V
_BETWEEN THE BAPTISM AND THE MURDER_
Mary passed from Craigmillar and Edinburgh to the baptism of her son James
at Stirling. The 17th December, 1566, was the crowning triumph of her
life, and the last. To the cradle came the Ambassadors of France and
England bearing gifts: Elizabeth, the child’s godmother, sent a font of
enamelled gold. There were pageants and triumphs, fireworks, festivals,
and the chanting of George Buchanan’s Latin elegiacs on Mary, the _Nympha
Caledoniæ_, with her crowns of Virtue and of Royalty. Above all, Mary had
won, or taken, permission to baptize the child by the Catholic rite, and
Scotland saw, for the last time, the ecclesiastics in their splendid
vestments. Mary busied herself with hospitable kindnesses, a charming
hostess in that dark hold where her remote ancestor had dirked his guest
between the table and the hearth. But there was a strange gap in the
throng of nobles. The child’s father, though in the Castle, did not attend
the baptism, was not among the guests, while the grandfather, Lennox,
remained apart at his castle in Glasgow.
According to du Croc, who was at Stirling, Darnley announced his intention
to depart, two days before the christening, but remained and sulked.
A month before the ceremony, du Croc had expected Darnley to sulk and stay
away. At Stirling he declined to meet Darnley, so bad had his conduct
been, and said that, if Darnley entered by one door of his house, he would
go out by the other. It has been averred by Camden, writing in the reign
and under the influence of James I., when King of England, that the
English ambassador, Bedford, warned his suite not to acknowledge Darnley
as King, and punished one of them, who, having known him in England,
saluted him. Nau says that Darnley refused to associate with the English,
unless they would acknowledge his title of King, and to do this they had
been forbidden by the Queen of England, their mistress,[100] who knew that
Darnley kept up a more or less treasonable set of intrigues with the
English Catholics.[101] Bedford, a sturdy Protestant, could not be a
_persona grata_ to Darnley: and, as to Darnley’s kingship, his own father,
in 1568, rather represented him as an English subject. On the other side
we have only the evidence of Sir James Melville, gossiping long after the
event, to the effect that Bedford, when leaving Stirling, charged him with
a message to Mary. He bade her ‘entertain Darnley as she had done at the
beginning, for her own honour and advancement of her affairs,’ which
warning Melville repeated to her.[102] But there was an awkwardness as
between ‘the King’ and the English, nor do we hear that Bedford made any
advance to Darnley, whose natural sulkiness is vouched for by all
witnesses.
As to what occurred at Stirling in regard to Darnley’s ill-treatment, the
Lennox MSS. are copious. Mary, ‘after an amiable and gentle manner,’
induced him to go to Stirling before her, without seeing the ambassadors.
At Stirling, ‘she feigned to be in a great choler against the King’s
tailors, that had not made such apparel as she had devised for him against
the triumph.’ Darnley, to please her, kept out of the way of the
ambassadors. She dismissed his guards, Lennox sent men of his own, and
this caused a quarrel.[103] Darnley flushed with anger, and Mary said, ‘If
he were a little daggered, and had bled as much as my Lord Bothwell had
lately done, it would make him look the fairer.’ This anecdote (about
which, in June 1568, while getting up his case, Lennox made inquiries in
Scotland) is given both in English and Scots, in different versions. The
‘Book of Articles’ avers that Bothwell himself was in fear, and was
strongly guarded.
While all at Stirling seemed gay, while Mary played the hostess admirably,
du Croc found her once weeping and in pain, and warned his Government
that ‘she would give them trouble yet’ (December 23).[104] Mary had causes
for anxiety of which du Croc was not aware. Strange rumours filled Court
and town. A man named Walker, a retainer of her ambassador at Paris,
Archbishop Beaton, reported that the Town Clerk of Glasgow, William
Hiegait, was circulating a tale to the effect that Darnley meant to seize
the child prince, crown him, and rule in his name. Now for months Darnley
had been full of mad projects; to seize Scarborough, to seize the Scilly
Islands, and the scheme for kidnapping James had precedents enough.
Darnley was in frequent communication with the discontented Catholics of
the North and West of England, and his retainers, the Standens, were young
men yearning for adventures. ‘Knowing I am an offender of the laws, they
professed great friendship,’ wrote William Rogers to Cecil, with some
humour.[105]
A rumour of some attempt against Mary reached Archbishop Beaton, in Paris,
at the end of 1566, through the Spanish Ambassador there, who may have
heard of it from the Spanish Ambassador in London, with whom the English
Catholics were perpetually intriguing. There is a good deal of evidence
that Darnley had been complaining of Mary to the Pope and the Catholic
Powers, as insufficiently zealous for the Church. Darnley, not Mary, was
the Scottish royal person on whom the Church ought to rely,[106] and Mary,
says Knox’s continuator, saw his letters, by treachery. Consumed with
anger at his degraded position, so unlike the royalty for which he
hungered, and addicted to day dreams about descents on Western England,
and similar wild projects, Darnley may possibly, at this time, have
communicated to the English Catholics a project for restoring himself to
power by carrying off and crowning his child. This fantasy would drift
through the secret channels of Catholic diplomacy to the Spanish
Ambassador in Paris, who gave Beaton a hint, but declined to be explicit.
Mary thanked Beaton for his warning, from Seton, on February 18, nine days
after Darnley’s death.[107] ‘But alas! it came too late.’ Mary added that
the Spanish ambassador in London had also given her warning.
There may, then, have been this amount of foundation for the report which,
according to Walker, at Stirling, Hiegait was circulating about
mid-December 1566. Stirling was then full of ‘honest men of the Lennox,’
sent thither by Lennox himself (as he says in one of his manuscript
discourses), because Darnley’s usual guard had been withdrawn. Mary
objected to the presence of so many of Lennox’s retainers, and there arose
that furious quarrel between her and her husband. Possibly Mary, having
heard Walker’s story of Darnley’s project, thought that his Lennox men
were intended to bear a hand in it.
In any case Walker filled Mary’s ears, at Stirling--as she wrote to
Archbishop Beaton, her ambassador in France, on January 20, 1567--with
rumours of ‘utheris attemptatis and purposis tending to this fyne.’ He
named Hiegait ‘for his chief author,’ ‘quha,’ he said, ‘had communicat the
mater to hym, as apperyt, of mynd to gratify us; sayand to Walcar, “gif I
had the moyen and crydet with the Quenis Majestie that ze have, I wald not
omitt to mak hir previe of sic purpossis and bruitis that passes in the
cuntrie.”’ Hiegait also said that Darnley could not endure some of the
Lords, but that he or they must leave the country. Mary then sent for
Hiegait, before the Council, and questioned _him_. He (probably in fear of
Lennox) denied that he had told Walker the story of Darnley’s project, but
he had heard, from Cauldwell, a retainer of Eglintoun’s, that Darnley
himself was to be ‘put in ward.’ Eglintoun, ‘a rank Papist,’ was described
by Randolph as never a trustworthy Lennoxite, ‘never good Levenax.’ His
retainer, Cauldwell, being summoned, expressly denied that he ever told
the rumour about the idea of imprisoning Darnley, to Hiegait. But Hiegait
informed the Laird of Minto (a Stewart and a Lennoxite), who again told
Lennox, who told Darnley, by whose desire Cauldwell again spoke to
Hiegait. The trail of the gossip runs from Cauldwell (the estate of that
name is in Eglintoun’s country, Ayrshire) to Hiegait, from him to Stewart
of Minto, from him to Lennox, and from Lennox to Darnley. Possibly
Eglintoun (the cautious Lord who slipped away when Ainslie’s band was
being signed, and hid under straw, after the battle of Langside) was the
original source of the rumour of Darnley’s intended arrest. This is a mere
guess. If there was a very secret plot, at Craigmillar, to arrest Darnley,
we cannot tell how it reached Hiegait. Mary ‘found no manner of
concordance’ in their answers, and she rebuked Walker and Hiegait in her
own name, and that of their master, Beaton himself.[108] These men, with
Minto, were allied with Lennox, and one of them may have been his
authority for the story of the second Craigmillar conference.
We now see why it was that, in the height of her final triumph, the
christening festival at Stirling Mary wept and was ill at ease. Her
husband’s conduct was intolerable: now he threatened to leave before the
ceremony, next he stayed on, a dismal figure behind the scenes. His guard
of Lennox men might aim at slaying Bothwell, or Mary might think, on
Walker’s evidence, that they intended to kidnap her child. Worse followed,
when she and her Council examined Walker. Out came the tale of Hiegait,
and Queen and Council, if they had really plotted to arrest Darnley, knew
that their scheme was discovered and was abortive. Finally, on December
24, either in consequence of Lennox’s warning, or because Morton, Lindsay,
and the other Riccio conspirators whom he betrayed were pardoned, Darnley
rode off to his father at Glasgow. There he fell ill, soon after his
arrival, but Lennox’s MSS. never hint that he was poisoned at Stirling (as
Buchanan declares), or that he fell sick when he had ridden but a mile
from the town. That they deny.
After Darnley’s departure, Moray, with Bedford, the English Ambassador,
went to St. Andrews, and other places in Fife. Till January 2, 1567, when
she returned to Stirling, Mary was at Drummond Castle, and at
Tullibardine, where, says Buchanan, she and Bothwell made love in corners
‘so that all were highly offended.’ After January 13, she visited Calendar
House, and then went to Holyrood.
It is said that she never wrote to Darnley till after January 14, when she
took her child to Edinburgh, with the worst purposes, Buchanan declares.
Then she wrote to Darnley, the Lennox Papers inform us, excusing herself,
and offering to visit him in his sickness at Glasgow. Darnley told her
messenger verbally, say the Lennox MSS., that the Queen must judge herself
as to the visit to him. ‘But this much ye shall declare unto her, that I
wish Stirling to be Jedburgh, and Glasgow to be the Hermitage, and I the
Earl of Bothwell as I lie here, and then I doubt not but she would be
quickly with me undesired.’ This was a tactless verbal message, and, if
given, must have proved to Mary that Darnley suspected her amour.
Moreover, this Lennoxian story, that Mary offered the visit, and that
Darnley replied with reserve, and with an insult to be verbally delivered,
agrees ill with what is said in the deposition (December, 1568) of
Lennox’s retainer, Thomas Crawford. According to Crawford, ‘after theire
metinge and shorte spekinge together she asked hym of hys lettres, wherein
he complained of the crueletye of som.’ ‘He answered that he complained
not without cause....’ ‘Ye asked me what I ment bye the crueltye specified
in my lettres, yt procedeth of you onelye that wille not accept mye
_offres_ and repentance.’ Now, in the Lennox Papers this ‘innocent lamb’
has nothing to repent of, and has made no offers. These came from Mary’s
side.[109]
The Lennox account goes on to say that later Mary sent ‘very loving
messages and letters unto him to drive all suspicions out of his mind,’ a
passage copied by Buchanan in his History. Darnley, therefore, after
Mary’s visit to Glasgow, returned with her to Edinburgh, ‘contrary to his
father’s will and consent.’ Lennox, however, here emphatically denies that
either he or Darnley suspected any murderous design on the part of the
Queen. Yet, in Letter II., she is made to say that he ‘fearit his liff,’
as the passage is quoted in the ‘Book of Articles.’[110] As to the story
that Darnley’s illness at Glasgow was caused by poison; poison, of course,
was suspected, but, if the Casket Letters are genuine, Mary therein calls
him ‘this pocky man,’ and Bedford says that he had small-pox: a disease
from which Mary had suffered in early life.[111] He also reports that Mary
sent to Darnley her own physician, though Buchanan says ‘All this while
the Queen would not suffer so much as a physician to come at him.’ In the
‘Book of Articles’ she refuses to send her apothecary. Bedford never hints
at scandalous doings of Mary and Bothwell at Stirling.
On January 20, from Edinburgh, Mary wrote that letter to Archbishop Beaton
in Paris, as to the Hiegait and Walker affair, which we have already
cited. She also expressed her desire that her son should receive the
titular captaincy of the Scots Guard in France, though, according to
Buchanan, she determined at Craigmillar to ‘make away with’ her child.
Nothing in Mary’s letter of January 20, to Beaton, hints at her desire of
a reconciliation with Darnley. Yet, on or about the very day when she
wrote it, she set forth towards Glasgow.
The date was January 20, as given by the Diary of Birrel, and in the
‘Diurnal.’ The undesigned coincidence of diaries kept by two Edinburgh
citizens is fairly good evidence.[112] Drury makes her arrive at Glasgow
on January 22. What occurred between Mary and her husband at Glasgow is
said to be revealed in two of her Casket Letters written to Bothwell.
Their evidence, and authenticity, are to be discussed later: other
evidence to the point we have none, and can only say, here, that, at the
end of January, Mary brought Darnley, his face covered with taffeta, to
the house of Kirk o’ Field, just beside the wall of Edinburgh, where the
University buildings now stand.
Here he was in an insecure and dangerous house, close to a palace of his
feudal foes, the Hamiltons. The Lennox MSS. declare that ‘the place was
already prepared with [undermining and] trains of powder therein.’[113] We
return to this point, which was later abandoned by the prosecution.
Darnley, say the Lennox MSS., wished to occupy the Hamilton House, near
Kirk o’ Field, but Mary persuaded him that ‘there passed a privy way [to]
between the palace and it,’ Kirk o’ Field, ‘which she could take without
going through the streets.’ The Lennox author adds that, on the night of
the murder, Bothwell and his gang ‘came the secret way which she herself
was wont to come to the King her husband.’ The story of the secret way
recurs in Lennox MSS., and, of course, is nonsense, and was dropped. There
was no subterranean passage from Holyrood to Kirk o’ Field. Bothwell and
the murderers, in their attack on the Kirk o’ Field, had no such
convenience for the carriage of themselves and their gunpowder. It is
strange that Lennox and his agents, having access to several of the
servants of Darnley, including Nelson who survived the explosion, accepted
at one time, or expected others to accept, this legend of a secret
passage. Edinburgh tradition holds that there was such a tunnel between
Holyrood and the Castle, which may be the basis of this fairy-tale.
The tale of the secret passage, then, is told, in the Lennox MSS., as the
excuse given by Mary to Darnley for lodging him in Kirk o’ Field, not in
the neighbouring house of the Hamiltons. But, in the ‘Book of Articles,’
we read that the Archbishop of St. Andrews was then living in the Hamilton
House ‘onely to debar the King fra it.’ The fable of the secret way,
therefore, was dropped in the final version prepared by the accusers.
Mary, whether she wrote the Casket Letters or not, was, demonstrably,
aware that there was a plot against Darnley, before she brought him to a
house accessible to his enemies. It is certain that, hating and desiring
to be delivered from Darnley, she winked at a conspiracy of which she was
conscious, and let events take their course. This was, to all appearance,
the policy of her brother James, ‘the Good Regent Moray;’ and one of
Mary’s apologists, Sir John Skelton, is inclined to hold that this _was_
Mary’s attitude. He states the hypothesis thus: ‘that Mary was not
entirely unaware of the measures which were being taken by the nobility to
secure in one way or other the removal of Darnley; that, if she did not
expressly sanction the enterprise, she failed, firmly and promptly, to
forbid its execution.’ Hence she was in ‘an equivocal position,’ could not
act with firmness and dignity, and in accepting Bothwell could not be
accounted a free agent, yielded to force, and, with a heavy heart,
‘submitted to the inevitable.’[114]
[Illustration: THE OLD TOWER, WHITTINGHAM]
That Mary knew of the existence of a plot is proved by a letter to her
from Morton’s cousin, Archibald Douglas, whose character and career are
described in the second chapter, ‘Minor Characters.’ In a letter of 1583,
written by Douglas to win (as he did win) favour and support from Mary,
during his exile in England, he says that, in January, 1567, about the
18th or 19th, Bothwell and Lethington visited Morton at Whittingham, his
own brother’s place, now the seat of Mr. A. J. Balfour. The fact of the
visit is corroborated by Drury’s contemporary letter of January 23,
1567.[115] After they had conferred together, Morton sent Archibald
Douglas with Bothwell and Lethington to Edinburgh, to learn what answer
Mary would make to a proposal of a nature unknown to Archibald, so he
says. ‘Which’ (answer) ‘being given to me by the said persons, as God
shall be my judge, was no other than these words, “Schaw to the Earl
Morton that the Queen will hear no speech of the matter appointed to
him,”’ _i.e._ arranged with him. Now Morton’s confession, made before his
execution, was to the effect that Bothwell, at Whittingham, asked him to
join the conspiracy to kill Darnley, but that he refused, unless Bothwell
could procure for him a written warrant from the Queen. Obviously it was
to get this warrant that Archibald Douglas accompanied Lethington and
Bothwell to Edinburgh. But Bothwell and Lethington (manifestly after
consulting Mary) told Douglas that ‘the Queen will hear no speech of that
matter.’ Douglas, though an infamous ruffian, could not have reported to
Mary, when attempting, successfully, to win her favour, a compromising
fact which she, alone of living people, must have known to be false. Mary
was not offended.[116] Taking, then, Morton’s statement that he asked
Bothwell, at Whittingham, for Mary’s warrant, with Douglas’s statement to
Mary herself, that he accompanied Lethington and Bothwell from Whittingham
to Edinburgh, and was informed by them that the Queen ‘would hear no
speech of the matter,’ we cannot but believe that ‘the matter’ was mooted
to her. Therefore, in January, 1567, she was well aware that
_something_ was intended against Darnley by Bothwell, Lethington, and
others.[117]
[Illustration: THE WHITTINGHAM TREE
(_After a Drawing by Richard Doyle_)]
Yet her next step was to seek Darnley in Glasgow, where he was safe among
the retainers of Lennox, and thence to bring him back to Edinburgh, where
his deadly foes awaited him.
Now this act of Mary’s cannot be regarded as merely indiscreet, or as a
half-measure, or as a measure of passive acquiescence. Had she not brought
Darnley from Glasgow to Edinburgh, under a semblance of a cordial
reconciliation, he might, in one way or another, have escaped from his
enemies. The one measure which made his destruction certain was the
measure that Mary executed, though she was well aware that a conspiracy
had been framed against the unhappy lad. Even if he wished to come to
Edinburgh, uninvited by her, she ought to have refused to bring him.
We can only escape from these conclusions by supposing that Archibald
Douglas, destitute and in exile, hoped to enter into Mary’s good graces by
telling her what she well knew to be a lie; namely that Bothwell and her
Secretary had declared that she would not hear of the matter proposed to
her. Douglas tells us even more. While seeking to conciliate Mary, in his
letter already cited, he speaks of ‘the evil disposed minds of the most
part of your nobility against your said husband ... which I am assured was
sufficiently known to himself, _and to all that had judgment never so
little in that realm_.’ Mary had judgment enough, and, according to the
signed declaration of her friends, Huntly and Argyll (Sept. 12, 1568),
knew that the scheme was, either to divorce Darnley, or convict him of
treason, ‘or in what other ways to _dispatch him_.’ These means, say
Huntly and Argyll, she ‘altogether refused.’ Yet she brought Darnley to
Kirk o’ Field!
Shall we argue that, pitying his illness, and returning to her old love,
she deemed him safest in her society? In that case she might have carried
him from Glasgow to Dumbarton Castle, or dwelt with him in the hold where
she gave birth to James VI.--in Edinburgh Castle. But she brought him to
an insecure house, among his known foes.
Mary’s conduct towards Darnley, after Craigmillar, and before his murder,
and her behaviour later as regards Bothwell, are always capable of being
covered by one or other special and specious excuse. On this occasion she
brings Darnley to Edinburgh that a tender mother may be near her child;
that a loving wife may attend a repentant husband, who cannot be so safe
anywhere as under the ægis of her royal presence. In each and every case
there is a special, and not an incredible explanation. But one cause, if
it existed, would explain every item of her conduct throughout, from
Craigmillar to Kirk o’ Field: she hated Darnley. On the hypothesis of her
innocence, and accepting the special pleas for each act, Mary was a weak,
ailing, timid, and silly woman, with ‘a heart of wax.’ On the
hypothesis of her guilt, though ailing, worn, wretched, she had ‘a heart
of diamond,’ strong to scheme and act a Clytæmnestra’s part, even _contre
son naturel_. The _naturel_ of Clytæmnestra, too, was good, says Zeus in
the Odyssey. But in her case, ‘Love was a great master.’
[Illustration: THE WHITTINGHAM TREE
(_External view_)]
Still, we have seen no contemporary evidence, or hint of evidence, that
love for Bothwell was Mary’s master. Her conduct, from her recovery of
power, after Riccio’s murder, to her reconciliation of Lethington with
Bothwell, is, on the face of it, in accordance with the interests and
wishes of her brother, Moray, who hated Bothwell. As the English envoy,
Randolph, had desired, she brought Moray to Court. She permitted him to
attend in the Castle while she was in child-bed, and ‘refused Bothwell.’
She protected Moray from Bothwell’s and Darnley’s intrigues. She took
Moray’s side, as to the readmission of Lethington to favour, though
Bothwell stormed. She even made Moray her confidant as to money received
from the Pope: perhaps Moray had his share! Lethington and Moray, not
Bothwell, seem to have had her confidence. At Moray’s request she annulled
her restoration of consistorial jurisdiction to Archbishop Hamilton. Moray
and Lethington, not Bothwell, opened the proposals at Craigmillar. Such is
the evidence of history. On the other side are the scandals reported by
Buchanan, and, in details, Buchanan erred: for example, as to the ride to
Hermitage.
If Mary knew too much, how much was known by ‘the noble, stainless Moray’?
As to Moray’s foreknowledge of Darnley’s murder, can it be denied? He did
not deny that he was at Craigmillar during the conference as to
‘dispatching’ Darnley. If the news of the plan for arresting or killing
him reached underlings like Hiegait and Walker, could it be hidden from
Moray, the man most in Mary’s confidence, and likely to be best served by
spies? He glosses over his signature to the band of early October,
1566--the anti-Darnley band--as if it were a mere ‘sign of reconciliation’
which he promised to subscribe ‘before I could be admitted to the Queen’s
presence, or have any show of her favour.’ But, when he did sign, he had
possessed Mary’s favour for more than three months, and she had even saved
him from a joint intrigue of Bothwell and Darnley. In January, 1569, Moray
declared that, except the band of early October, 1566, ‘no other band was
proposed to me in any wise,’ either before or after Darnley’s murder. And
next he says that he would never subscribe any band, ‘howbeit I was
earnestly urged and pressed thereto by the Queen’s commandment.’[118] Does
he mean that no band was proposed to him, and yet that the Queen did press
him to sign a band? Or does he mean that he would never have signed, even
if the Queen had asked him to do so? We can never see this man’s face; the
fingers through which he looks on at murder hide his shifty eyes.
VI
_THE MURDER OF DARNLEY_
It is not easy for those who know modern Edinburgh to make a mental
picture of the Kirk o’ Field. To the site of that unhappy dwelling the
Professors now daily march, walking up beneath the frowning Castle, from
modern miles of stone and mortar which were green fields in Mary’s day.
The students congregate from every side, the omnibuses and cabs roll by
through smoky, crowded, and rather uninteresting streets of shops: the
solid murky buildings of the University look down on a thronged and busy
populace which at every step treads on history, as Cicero says men do at
Athens. On every side are houses neither new enough to seem clean, nor old
enough to be interesting: there is not within view a patch of grass, a
garden, or a green tree. The University buildings cover the site of Kirk
o’ Field, but the ghosts of those who perished there would be sadly at a
loss could they return to the scene.
In Mary’s time whoever stood on the grassy crest of the Calton Hill,
gazing on Edinburgh, beheld, as he still does, Holyrood at his feet, and,
crowning the highest point of the central part of the town, the tall
square tower of the church of St. Mary in the Fields, on the limit of the
landscape. In going, as Mary often went, from Holyrood to Kirk o’ Field,
you walked straight out of the palace, and up the Canongate, through
streets of Court suburb, with gardens behind the houses. You then reached
the gate of the town wall, called the Nether Port, and entered the street
of the Nether Bow, which was a continuation of the High Street. By any one
of the lanes, or wynds, which cut the Nether Bow at right angles on the
left, you reached the Cowgate (the street of palaces, as Alesius, the
Reformer, calls it), running from the Castle parallel to the High Street
and its continuation, the Nether Bow. From the Cowgate, you struck into
one or other of the wynds which led to the grounds of what were, in Mary’s
time, the ruined church and houses of the Dominican monastery, or Black
Friars, and to Kirk o’ Field.
Beyond this, all is very difficult to explain and understand. The church
of Kirk o’ Field, and the quadrangle of houses tenanted, just as in Oxford
or Cambridge, by the Prebendaries and Provost of that collegiate church,
lay, at an early date, _outside_ of the walls of Edinburgh. This is proved
by the very name of the collegiate church, ‘St. Mary in the Fields.’ But
by 1531, a royal charter speaks of ‘the College Church of the Blessed
Virgin Mary in the Fields, _within the walls_ of the burgh of Edinburgh,’
the city wall having been recently extended in that direction.[119] The
monastery of the Black Friars, close to Kirk o’ Field, was also included,
by 1531, within the walls of the burgh. But the town wall which encircled
Kirk o’ Field and the Black Friars on the south, was always in a ruinous
condition. In 1541, we find the Town Council demanding that ‘ane honest
substantious wall’ shall be made in another quarter.[120] In 1554, the
Provost and Prebendaries of Kirk o’ Field granted part of their grounds to
the Duke of Châtelherault, because their own houses had been ‘burned down
and destroyed by their auld enemies of England,’ in the invasions of
1544-1547.[121] In 1544-1547, the town wall encircling Kirk o’ Field on
the south must also have been partially ruined. Châtelherault built on the
ground thus acquired, quite close to Kirk o’ Field, a large new house or
château from which, according to George Buchanan, Archbishop Hamilton sent
forth ruffians to aid in Darnley’s murder.
By 1557, we find that the town wall, at the point where it encircled the
Black Friars, in the vicinity of Kirk o’ Field, was ‘fallen down,’ and was
to be ‘reedified and mended.’[122] By August, 1559, the Town Council
protest against a common passage through the ‘slap,’ or ‘slop,’ the broken
gap, in the Black Friars ‘yard dyke’ (garden wall) ‘at the east end of the
block-house.’ This gap, therefore, is to be built up again, ‘conform in
work to the town wall next adjacent,’ but it appears that this was never
done. When Bothwell went to the murder, he got into the Black Friars
grounds, whence he made his way into Darnley’s garden, either by climbing
through a ‘slap’ or gap in the wall, or by sending an accomplice through,
who opened the Black Friars gate. This ruinous condition of the town wall
was partly due to the habitual negligence of the citizens: partly to the
destruction which fell, in 1559-1560, on the religious houses and
collegiate churches. So, in February, 1560, we find the town treasurer
ordered to pull down the walls of the Black Friars, and use the stones to
‘build the town walls therewith.’[123] On August 11, 1564, we again hear
of repairing slaps, or gaps, ‘and in especial _the new wall at the
college_, so that no part thereof be climable.’ The college may be Kirk o’
Field, where the burgesses already desired to build a college, the parent
of Edinburgh University. On the day after Darnley’s murder (Feb. 11, 1567)
the treasurer was ordered ‘to take away the hewen work of the back door of
the Provost’s lodging of the Kirk o’ Field, and to build up the same door
with lime and sand.’ Conceivably this ‘back door,’ now to be built up and
closed, was that door in Darnley’s house which opened through the town
wall. Finally, on May 7, 1567, the Treasurer was bidden ‘to build _the
wall of the town decayed and fallen down on the south side_ of the Provost
of the Kirk o’ Field’s lodging, to be built up of lime and stone,
conform to the height and thickness of the _new wall_ elsewhere [ellis]
builded, and to pass lineally with the same to the wall of the church yard
of the said church, and to leave no door nor entry in the said new
wall.’[124]
[Illustration: KIRK O’ FIELD SITE IN 1646
25 is the Town Wall. _w_ indicates the University, including Hamilton
House
_y_ indicates a rectangular ruin, Darnley’s house (?)]
All these facts prove that the old wall which enclosed Kirk o’ Field and
the Black Friars on the south had fallen into disrepair, and that new
walls had for some time before the murder been in course of building. Now,
in the map of 1647, we find a very neat and regular wall, to the south of
the site that had been occupied by Kirk o’ Field. Whereas, in Darnley’s
time, there had been a gate called Kirk o’ Field Port to the left, or
west, of the Kirk o’ Field, by 1647 there was no such name, but, instead,
Potter Row Port, to the left, or west, of the University buildings; by
1647 these included Hamilton House, and the ground covered by Kirk o’
Field. This wall, extant in 1647, I take to be ‘the new wall,’ passing
lineally ‘to the wall of the church yard’ of Kirk o’ Field. It supplied
the place of the wall which, in the chart of 1567 (p. 130), ran south and
north past the gable of Kirk o’ Field.
Thus Kirk o’ Field, in February, 1567, had, to the south of it, an old
decayed town wall, much fallen down, and was thus _within_ that town wall.
But ‘it is traditionally said,’ writes the editor of Keith, Mr. Parker
Lawson, in 1845, ‘that the house of the Provost of Kirk o’ Field’ (in
which house, or the one next to it, Darnley was blown up) ‘stood as near
as possible _without_ the then city walls.’[125] Scott follows this
opinion in ‘The Abbot.’ Yet certainly Kirk o’ Field was not without, but
within, the ruinous town wall mentioned in the Burgh Records of May 7,
1567. How are we to understand this discrepancy?
The accompanying chart, drawn from a coloured design sent to the English
Government in February, 1567, ought to be _reversed_, as in a mirror. So
regarded, we are facing Kirk o’ Field, and are looking from south to
north. At our left hand, or westward, is the gate or port in the town
wall, called ‘the Kirk o’ Field Port.’ If we pass through it, if the chart
be right we are in Potter Row. Just from the Port of Kirk o’ Field, the
town wall runs due north, for a few yards: then runs due east, enclosing
the church yard of Kirk o’ Field, on the north, and the church itself,
shown in ruins, the church, as usual, running from east to west. After
running west to east for some fifty yards, the town wall, battlemented and
loopholed, turns at a right angle, and runs due south to north, being thus
continued till it reaches the northern limit of the plan. Now this wall,
here running due south to north, is not the ‘wall of the town decayed and
fallen down on the south side of the Provost of Kirk o’ Field’s lodgings,’
as described in the Burgh Records of May 7, 1567. This wall, on the other
hand, leaves the collegiate quadrangle of Kirk o’ Field inside it, on the
_east_, and the ruined gable of Darnley’s house, a gable running from east
to west, abuts on this wall, having a door through the wall into the
Thieves’ Row. It is true that one of Darnley’s servants, Nelson, who
escaped from the explosion, declared that the gallery of Darnley’s house,
and the gable which had a window ‘through the town wall,’ ran _south_.
But, by the contemporary chart, the only part of Darnley’s house which was
in contact with the town wall ran east to west, and impinged on the town
wall, which here ran south to north. Again, in the map of 1647, the wall
of that date no longer runs south to north, but is continued ‘lineally’
from that short part of the town wall, in the chart of 1567, which _did_
run west to east, forming there the northern wall of the church yard of
Kirk o’ Field. This continuation was ordered to be made by the Town
Council on May 7, 1567, three months after Darnley’s murder. Further, in
1646, Professor Crawford wrote that the lodgings of the Provost of Kirk o’
Field, in 1567, ‘had a garden on the _south_, betwixt it and the _present_
town wall.’[126]
Now the ruins of Darnley’s house, in the map of 1647, have a space of
garden between them and ‘the _present_ town wall,’ the wall of 1647. But,
in 1567, the gable of Darnley’s house actually impinged on, and had a
window and a door through the town wall on, the _west_ according to the
chart.
The chart, then, _reversed_, shows the whole position thus. On our left,
the west, is the ruined Kirk o’ Field church, the church yard being
bordered, on the north, by the town wall, here running, for a short way,
east and west. After the town wall turns at a right angle and runs south
to north, it is continued west and east by a short prolongation of some
ten yards, having a gate in it. Next, running west to east, are two tall
houses, forming the south side of a quadrangle. These Crawford (1646)
seems to have regarded as the Provost’s lodgings. The east side of the
quadrangle consists of four small houses, as does the north side. The west
side of the quadrangle was Darnley’s house. It was in the shape of an
inverted L, thus Г. The long limb faced the quadrangle, the short limb
touched the town wall, and had a door through it, into the Thieves’ Row.
Beyond the Thieves’ Row were gardens, in one of which Darnley’s body and
that of his servant, Taylor, were found after the explosion. Mary’s room
in the short limb of the Г had a garden door, opening into Darnley’s
garden. Behind Darnley’s garden were the grounds of the Black Friars
monastery. On the night of the murder Bothwell conveyed the gunpowder into
the Black Friars grounds, entering by the gate or through the broken Black
Friars wall to the north side of the quadrangle, and thence into Darnley’s
garden, and so, by Mary’s garden door, into Mary’s chamber: as the
depositions of the accomplices declare.
[Illustration:
1. Kirk o’ Field Port
2. Church of St. Mary-in-the-Fields
3. Thieves’ Row
4. Door from Darnley’s House into Thieves’ Row
5. Ruins of Darnley’s House
6. Darnley’s Body
7. Darnley’s Garden
8. Grounds of the Black Friars
9. Hamilton House
10. Potter Row
11. Town Wall]
The whole quadrangle lay amidst wide waste spaces of gardens and trees,
with scattered cottages, and with Hamilton House, a hostile house, hard
by. Such was the situation of Kirk o’ Field, Church and College
quadrangle, as shown by the contemporary plan. The difficulties are caused
by the wall, in the chart, running south to north, having Darnley’s house
abutting on it at right angles. The old ruined wall, on the other hand,
was to the south of the quadrangle, as was the wall of 1647. When or why
the wall running from south to north was built, I do not know, possibly
after 1559, out of the stones of the Black Friars.[127] The new work was
done under James Lindsay, treasurer in 1559, and Luke Wilson, treasurer in
1560. Perhaps the wall running south to north was the work of these two
treasurers. At all events, there the wall was, or there it is in the
contemporary design, to the confusion of antiquaries, bewildered between
the south to north wall of the chart, as given, and the new wall seen in
the map of 1647, a wall which was to the south of Kirk o’ Field, while, in
the map of 1647, there is no trace of the south to north wall of the chart
of 1567.
Having located Darnley’s house, as forming the west side of a small
college quadrangle among gardens and trees, we now examine the interior
of his far from palatial lodgings.
The two-storied house (the arched vaults on which it probably stood not
counting as a story?) was just large enough for the invalid, his servants,
and his royal nurse. There was a ‘hall,’ probably long and not wide, there
was a lower chamber, used by Mary, which could be entered either from the
garden, or from the passage, opened into by the front door, from the
quadrangle. Mary’s room had two keys, and one must have locked the door
from the passage; the other, the door into the garden. If the former was
kept locked, so that no one could enter the room by the usual way, the
powder could be introduced, without exciting much attention, by the door
opening on the garden. In the chamber above Mary’s, where Darnley lay,
there were also a cabinet and a garderobe. There was a cellar, probably
the kind of vaulted crypt on which houses of the period were built, like
Queen Mary’s House in St. Andrews. From the ‘cellar’ the door, which we
have mentioned, led through the town wall into the Thieves’ Row. Whoever
has seen Queen Mary’s House at Jedburgh (much larger than Kirk o’ Field),
or the Queen’s room at St. Andrews, knows that royal persons, in Scotland,
were then content with very small apartments. A servant named Taylor used
to share Darnley’s sleeping-room, as was usual; three others, including
Nelson, slept in a ‘little gallery,’ which apparently ran at right angles
from Darnley’s chamber to the town wall. He had neither his own guard, nor
a guard of Lennox men, as at Stirling.
If the rooms were small, the tapestries and velvet were magnificent, and
in odd contrast with Mary’s alleged economic plan of taking a door from
the hinges and using it as a bath-cover. This last anecdote, by Nelson,
appears to be contradicted by Hay of Tala. ‘Paris locked the door that
passes up the turnpike to the King’s chamber.’[128] The keys appear to
have wandered into a bewildering variety of hands: a superfluous jugglery,
if Bothwell, as was said, had duplicate keys.
Mary often visited Darnley, and the Lennox documents give us copious, if
untrustworthy, information as to his manner of life. They do not tell us,
as Buchanan does, that Mary and the vast unwieldy Lady Reres used to play
music and sing in the garden of Kirk o’ Field, in the balmy nights of a
Scotch February! But they do contain a copy of a letter, referred to by
Buchanan, which Darnley wrote to Lennox three days before his death.
‘My Lord,--I have thought good to write to you by this bearer of my
good health, I thank God, which is the sooner come through the good
treatment of such as hath this good while concealed their good will; I
mean of my love the Queen, which I assure you hath all this while, and
yet doth, use herself like a natural and loving wife. I hope yet that
God will lighten our hearts with joy that have so long been afflicted
with trouble. As I in this letter do write unto your Lordship, so I
trust this bearer can satisfy you the like. Thus thanking almighty God
of our good hap, I commend your Lordship into his protection.
‘From Edinburgh the vii of February,
‘Your loving and obedient son,
‘HENRY REX.’
The Queen, we are told, came in while Darnley was writing, read the
letter, and ‘kissed him as Judas did the Lord his Master.’
‘The day before his death she caused the rich bed to be taken down, and a
meaner set up in its place, saying unto him that that rich bed they should
both lie in the next night, but her meanings were to save the bed from the
blowing up of the fire of powder.’[129] There has been a good deal of
controversy about this odd piece of economy, reported also by Thomas
Nelson, Darnley’s surviving servant. Where was the bed to be placed for
the marriage couch? Obviously not in Holyrood, and Mary’s own bed in the
room below Darnley’s is reported by Buchanan to have been removed.[130]
The lost bed which was blown up was of velvet, ‘violet brown,’ with gold,
had belonged to Mary of Guise, and had been given to Darnley, by Mary, in
the previous autumn.
Mary’s enemies insist that, apparently on the night of Friday, February 7,
she wrote one of the Casket Letters to Bothwell. The Letter is obscure, as
we shall see, but is interpreted to mean that her brother, Lord Robert
Stuart, had warned Darnley of his danger, that Darnley had confided this
to Mary, that Mary now asked Bothwell to bring Lord Robert to Kirk o’
Field, where she would confront him with Darnley. The pair might come to
blows, Darnley might fall, and the gunpowder plot would be superfluous.
This tale, about which the evidence is inconsistent, is discussed
elsewhere. But, in his MSS., Lennox tells the story, and adds, ‘The Lord
Regent’ (Moray) ‘can declare it, who was there present.’ Buchanan avers
that Mary called in Moray to sever the pair, in hopes that he would be
slain or compromised: not a plausible theory, and not put forward in the
‘Book of Articles.’
Mary twice slept in the room under Darnley’s, probably on the 5th and 7th
of February. In the Lennox MSS. the description of Darnley’s last night
varies from the ordinary versions. ‘The present night of his death she
tarried with him till eleven of the clock, which night she gave him a
goodly ring,’ the usual token of loyalty. This ring is mentioned in a
contemporary English ballad, and by Moray to de Silva (August 3, 1567),
also in the ‘Book of Articles.’ Mary is usually said to have urged, as a
reason for not sleeping at Kirk o’ Field on the fatal night, her sudden
recollection of a promise to be present at Holyrood, at the marriage of
her servant, Sebastian. This, indeed, is her own story, or Lethington’s,
in a letter written in Scots to her ambassador in France, on February 10,
or 11, 1567. But, in the Lennox MSS., it is asserted that Bothwell and
others reminded her of her intention to ride to Seton, early next morning.
Darnley then ‘commanded that his great horses should have been in a
readiness by 5 o’clock in the morning, for that he minded to ride them at
the same hour.’ After Mary had gone, he remembered, says Lennox, a word
she had dropped to the effect that nearly a year had passed since the
murder of Riccio, a theme on which she had long been silent. She was
keeping her promise, given over Riccio’s newly dug grave, that ‘a fatter
than he should lie anear him ’ere the twelvemonth was out.’ His servant
comforted him, and here the narrator regrets that Darnley did not
‘consider and mark such cruel and strange words as she had said unto him,’
for example, at Riccio’s grave. He also gives a _précis_ of ‘her letter
written to Bothwell from Glasgow before her departure thence.’ This is the
mysterious letter which was never produced or published: it will be
considered under ‘External Evidence as to the Casket Letters.’
After singing, with his servants, Psalm V., Darnley drank to them, and
went to bed. Fifty men, says the Lennox author, now environed the house,
sixteen, under Bothwell, ‘came the secret way by which she herself was
wont to come to the King her husband’ (a mere fairy tale), used the
duplicate keys, ‘opened the doors of the garden and house,’ and so entered
his chamber, and suffocated him ‘with a wet napkin stipt in vinegar.’ They
handled Taylor, a servant, in the same way, and laid Darnley in a garden
at some distance with ‘his night gown of purple velvet furred with
sables.’ None of the captured murderers, in their confessions, knew
anything of the strangling, which was universally believed in, but cannot
easily be reconciled with the narratives of the assassins. But had they
confessed to the strangling, others besides Bothwell would have been
implicated, and the confessions are not worthy of entire confidence.[131]
The following curious anecdote is given by the Lennox MSS. After Mary’s
visit to Bothwell at Hermitage (October, 1566) her servants were wondering
at her energy. She replied: ‘Troth it was she was a woman, but yet was she
more than a woman, in that she could find in her heart to see and behold
that which any man durst do, and also could find in her heart to do
anything that a man durst do, if her strength would serve her thereto.
Which appeared to be true, for that some say she was present at the murder
of the King, her husband, in man’s apparel, which apparel she loved
oftentimes to be in, in dancing secretly with the King her husband, and
going in masks by night through the streets.’ These are examples of the
sayings and reports of her servants, which, on June 11, 1568, Lennox urged
his friends to collect. This romantic tale proved too great for the belief
of Buchanan, if he knew it. But Lethington told Throckmorton in July,
1567, that the Lords had proof against Mary not only in her handwriting,
but by ‘sufficient witnesses.’ Doubtless they saw her on the scene in male
costume! Naturally they were never produced.
If an historical event could be discredited, like a ghost story, by
discrepancies in the evidence, we might maintain that Darnley never was
murdered at all. The chief varieties of statement are concerned (1) with
the nature of his death. Was he (_a_) taken out of the house and
strangled, or (_b_) strangled in trying to escape from the house, or (_c_)
strangled in the house, and carried outside, or (_d_) destroyed by the
explosion and the fall? Next (2), accepting any of the statements which
represent Darnley as being strangled (and they are, so far, unanimous at
the time of the event), who were the stranglers? Were they (_a_) some of
Bothwell’s men, (_b_) men of Balfour’s or Huntly’s, or (_c_) servants of
Archbishop Hamilton, as the Lennox faction aver, or (_d_) Douglases under
Archibald Douglas? Finally (3) was Kirk o’ Field (_a_) undermined by the
murderers, in readiness for the deed, before Darnley’s arrival from
Glasgow, or (_b_) was the powder placed in the Queen’s bedroom, under
Darnley’s, on the night of the crime; or (_c_) was it then placed in the
vaults under the room on the first floor which was occupied by the Queen?
The reader will find that each of these theories was in turn adopted by
the accusers, and that selections were made, later, by the accusers of
Morton, and Archibald Douglas, and Archbishop Hamilton, just as happened
to suit the purpose of the several prosecutors at the moment. Moreover it
is not certain that the miscreants who blew up the house themselves knew
the whole details of the crime.
Our plan must be, first, to compare the contemporary descriptions of the
incident. Taking, first, the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ we find that the
explosion took place at ‘two hours before none;’ which at that time meant
2 A.M. The murderers opened the door with false keys, and strangled
Darnley, and his servant, Taylor, ‘in their naked beds,’ then threw the
bodies into a garden, ‘beyond the Thief Row’ (see the sketch, p. 131),
returned, and blew up the house, ‘so that there remained not one stone
upon another undestroyed.’ The names of the miscreants are given, ‘as
alleged,’ Bothwell, Ormistoun of that ilk; Hob Ormistoun his uncle;
Hepburn of Bowton, and young Hay of Tala. All these underlings were later
taken, confessed, and were executed. The part of the entry in the
‘Diurnal’ which deals with them, at least, is probably not contemporary.
The men named professed to know nothing of the strangling. For what it is
worth the entry corroborates the entire destruction of the house, which
would imply a mine, or powder in the vaulted cellars. The contemporary
drawing shows the whole house utterly levelled with the ground.[132]
Birrel, in his Diary, says, ‘The house was raised from the ground with
powder, and the King, if he had not been cruelly strangled, after he fell
out of the air, with his garters, he had lived.’ An official account says,
‘Of the whole lodging, walls and other, there is nothing remaining, no,
not one stone above another, but all either carried far away, or dung in
dross to the very groundstone.’[133] This could only be done by a mine,
but the escape of Nelson proves exaggeration. This version is also in
Mary’s letter to Archbishop Beaton (February 10, or 11), written in Scots,
probably by Lethington, and he, of course, may have exaggerated, as may
the Privy Council in their report to the same effect.[134] Clernault, a
Frenchman who carried the news, averred that a mine was employed. Sir
James Melville says that Bothwell ‘made a train of powder, or had one made
before, which came under the house,’ but Darnley was first strangled ‘in a
low stable,’ by a napkin thrust into his mouth.[135] The Lennox MSS. say
that Darnley was suffocated ‘with a wet napkin steeped in vinegar.’ The
Savoyard Ambassador, Moretta, on returning to France, expressed the
opinion that Darnley fled from the house, when he heard the key of the
murderers grate in the keyhole, that he was in his shirt, carrying his
dressing gown, that he was followed, dragged into a little garden outside
his own garden wall (the garden across the Thieves’ Row), and there
strangled. Some women heard him exclaim, ‘Pity me, kinsmen, for the love
of him who pitied all the world.’[136] His kinsmen were Archibald and
other Douglases. Buchanan, in his ‘Detection,’ speaks of ‘the King’s
lodging, _even from the very foundation_, blown up.’ In the ‘Actio,’ or
Oration, printed with the ‘Detection,’ the writer, whoever he was, says,
‘they had _undermined the wall_,’ and that Mary slept under Darnley’s
room, lest the servants should hear ‘the noise of the underminers
working.’
The ‘Detection’ and ‘Actio’ were published to discredit Mary, long after
the murderers had confessed that there was no mine at all, that the powder
was laid in Mary’s room. In the ‘Book of Articles,’ the powder is placed
‘in the laich house,’ whether that means the arched ground floor, or
Mary’s chamber; apparently the latter, as we read, ‘she lay in the house
under the King, where also thereafter the powder was placed.’[137] This is
made into conformity with the confessions of Bothwell’s men, according to
whom but nine or ten were concerned in the deed. But Moray himself, two
months after the murder, told de Silva that ‘it is undoubted that over
thirty or forty persons were concerned’ (the fifty of the Lennox Paper)
‘and _the house ... was entirely undermined_.’[138] When Morton, long
afterwards, was accused of and executed for the deed, the dittay ran that
the powder was under the ‘angular stones and within the vaults.’ In the
mysterious letter, attributed to Mary, and cited by Moray and the Lennox
Papers, the ‘preparation’ of the Kirk o’ Field is at least hinted at. The
‘Book of Articles’ avers that, ‘from Glasgow, by her letters and
otherwise,’ Mary ‘held him’ (Bothwell) ‘continually in remembrance of the
said house,’ which she _did_, in the letter never produced, but not in any
of the Casket Letters, unless it be in a note, among other suspicious
notes, ‘Of the ludgeing in Edinburgh.’[139] The Lennox MSS., as we saw,
say ‘the place was already prepared with “undermining and” trains of
powder therein.’ The whole of the narratives, confirmed by Moray, and by
the descriptions of the ruin of the house, prove that the theory of a
prepared mine was entertained, till Powrie, Tala, and Bowton made their
depositions, and, in the ‘Actio,’ an appendix to Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’
and the indictment of Morton, even after that. But when the accusers, of
whom some were guilty themselves, came to plead against Mary, they
naturally wished to restrict the conspiracy to Bothwell and Mary. The
strangling disappears. The murderers are no longer thirty, or forty, or
fifty. The powder is placed in Mary’s own room, not in a mine. All this
altered theory rests on examinations of prisoners.
What are they worth? They were taken in the following order: Powrie, June
23, Dalgleish, June 26, before the Privy Council. Powrie was again
examined in July before the Privy Council, and Hay of Tala on September
13. A note of news says that Tala was taken in Fife on September 6, 1567
(annotated) ‘7th (Nicolas and Bond).’[140] Tala ‘can _bleke_ [blacken]
some great men with it’--the murder. But as Mr. Hosack cites Bedford to
Cecil, September 5, 1567, Hay of Tala ‘opened the whole device of the
murder, ... and went so far as to touch a great many not of the smallest,’
such as Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and others, no doubt.[141] Even Laing,
however, admits that ‘the evidence against Huntly was suppressed carefully
in Hay’s deposition.’[142] In Dec.-Jan. 1567-68, anonymous writings say
that, if the Lords keep Tala and Bowton alive, they could tell them who
subscribed the murder bond, and pray the Lords not to seem to lay all the
weight on Mary’s back. A paper of Questions to the Lords of the Articles
asks why Tala and Bowton ‘are not compelled openly to declare the manner
of the King’s slaughter, and who consented thereunto.’[143]
The authors of these Questions had absolute right on their side. Moray no
more prosecuted the quest for all murderers of Darnley than Mary had done.
To prove this we need no anonymous pamphlets or placards, no contradictory
tattle about secret examinations and dying confessions. When Mary’s case
was inquired into at Westminster (December, 1568), Moray put in as
evidence the deposition of Bowton, made in December, 1567. Bothwell, said
Bowton, had assured him that the crime was devised ‘by some of the
noblemen,’ ‘other noblemen had entrance as far as he in that matter.’[144]
This was declared by Bowton in Moray’s own presence. The noble and
stainless Moray is not said to ask ‘What noblemen do you mean?’ No torture
would have been needed to extract their names from Bowton, and Moray
should at once have arrested the sinners. But some were his own allies,
united with him in accusing his sister. So no questions were asked. The
papers which, between Dec.-Jan. 1567-68, did ask disagreeable questions
must have been prior to January 3, 1568, when Tala, Bowton, Dalgleish, and
Powrie, after being ‘put to the knowledge of an assize,’ were executed;
their legs and arms were carried about the country by boys in baskets!
According to the ‘Diurnal,’ Tala incriminated, before the whole people
round the scaffold, Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and Balfour,
with divers other nobles, and the Queen. On January 7, Drury gave the same
news to Cecil, making Bowton the confessor, and omitting the charge
against Mary. The incriminated noblemen at once left Edinburgh, ‘which,’
says the ‘Diurnal,’ ‘makes the matter ... the more probable.’[145]
Meanwhile Moray ‘looked through his fingers,’ and carried the incriminated
Lethington with him, later, as one of Mary’s accusers, while he purchased
Sir James Balfour!
What, we ask once more, in these circumstances, are the examinations of
the murderers worth, after passing through the hands of the accomplices?
On December 8, 1568, Moray gave in the written records of the examinations
to the English Commissioners. We have, first, Bothwell’s servant, Powrie,
examined before the Lords of the Secret Council (June 23, July 3, 1567).
He helped to carry the powder to Kirk o’ Field on February 9, but did not
see what was done with it. Dalgleish, examined at Edinburgh on June 26,
1567, before Morton, Atholl, the Provost of Dundee, and Kirkcaldy, said
nothing about the powder. Tala was examined, on September 13, at
Edinburgh, before Moray, Morton, Atholl, the Lairds of Loch Leven and
Pitarro, James Makgill, and the Justice Clerk, Bellenden. No man
implicated, except Morton, was present. Tala said that Bothwell arranged
to lay the powder in Mary’s room, under Darnley’s. This was done; the
powder was placed in ‘the nether house, under the King’s chamber,’ the
plotters entering by the back door, from the garden, of which Paris had
the key. Thus there would be no show at the front door, in the
quadrangle, of men coming and going: they were in Mary’s room, but did not
enter by the front door. Next, on December 8, Bowton was examined at
Edinburgh before Moray, Atholl, Lindsay, Kirkcaldy of Grange, and
Bellenden. He implicated Morton, Lethington, and Balfour, but, at
Westminster, Moray suppressed the evidence utterly. (See Introduction, pp.
xiii-xviii, for the suppressions). Next we have the trial of Bowton, Tala,
Powrie, and Dalgleish, on January 3, 1568, before Sir Thomas Craig and a
jury of burgesses and gentlemen. The accused confessed to their previous
depositions. The jury found them guilty on the depositions alone, found
that ‘the whole lodging was raised and blown in the air, and his Grace
[Darnley] was murdered treasonably, and most cruelly slain and destroyed
by them therein.’ When Mr. Hosack asserts that these depositions ‘were
taken before the Lords of the Secret Council, namely Morton, Huntly,
Argyll, Maitland, and Balfour,’ he errs, according to the documents cited.
Only Powrie is described as having been examined ‘before the Lords of the
Secret Council.’ Mr. Hosack must have known that Huntly and Argyll were
not in Edinburgh on June 23, when Powrie was examined.[146] We can only
say that Powrie’s depositions, made before the Lords of the Secret
Council, struck the keynote, to which all later confessions, including
that of Bothwell’s valet, Paris, correspond.[147] Thus vanish, for the
moment, the mine and the strangling, while the deed is done by powder in
Mary’s own chamber. Nobody is now left in the actual crime save Bothwell,
Bowton, Tala, Powrie, Dalgleish, Wilson, Paris, Ormistoun, and Hob
Ormistoun. They knew of no strangling.[148]
But on February 11, 1567, two women, examined by a number of persons,
including Huntly, stated thus: Barbara Mertine _heard_ thirteen men, and
_saw_ eleven, pass up the Cowgate, and _saw_ eleven pass down the Black
Friars wynd, after the explosion. She called them traitors. May Crokat (by
marriage Mrs. Stirling), in the service of the Archbishop of St. Andrews
(whose house was adjacent to Kirk o’ Field), heard the explosion, thought
it was in ‘the house above,’ ran out, saw eleven men, caught one by his
silk coat, and ‘asked where the crack was.’ They fled.[149] The avenging
ghost of Darnley pursued his murderers for twenty years, and, in their
cases, we have later depositions, and letters. Thus, as to the men
employed, Archibald Douglas, that reverend parson and learned Lord of
Session, informed Morton that he himself ‘was at the deed doing, and came
to the Kirk o’ Field yard with the Earls of Bothwell _and Huntly_.’
Douglas, at this time (June, 1581), had fled from justice to England:
Morton was underlying the law. Morton’s confession was made, in 1581, on
the day of his execution, to the Rev. John Durie and the Rev. Walter
Balcanquell, who wrote down and made known the declaration. On June 3,
1581, Archibald Douglas’s servant, Binning, was also executed. He
confessed that Archibald lost one of his velvet mules (dress shoes) on the
scene, or on the way from the murder. Powrie had ‘deponed’ that three of
Bothwell’s company wore ‘mulis,’ whether for quiet in walking, or because
they were in evening dress, having been at Bastian’s wedding masque and
dance. Douglas, in a collusive trial before a jury of his kinsmen, in
1586, was acquitted, and showed a great deal of forensic ability.[150]
It is thus abundantly evident that the depositions of the murderers put in
by Mary’s accusers did not tell the whole truth, whatever amount of truth
they may have told. We cannot, therefore, perhaps accept their story of
placing the powder in Mary’s room, where it could hardly have caused the
amount of damage described: but that point may be left open. We know that
Bothwell’s men were not alone in the affair, and the strangling of
Darnley, and the removal of his body, with his purple velvet sable-lined
dressing gown (attested by the Lennox MSS.), may have been done by the men
of Douglas and Huntly.
The treatment of the whole topic by George Buchanan is remarkable. In the
‘Book of Articles,’ levelled at Mary, in 1568, Darnley is blown up by
powder placed in Mary’s room. In the ‘Detection,’ of which the first draft
(in the Lennox MSS.) is of 1568, reference for the method of the deed is
made to the depositions of Powrie and the others. In the ‘History,’ there
are _three_ gangs, those with Bothwell, and two others, advancing by
separate routes. They strangle Darnley and Taylor, and carry their bodies
into an adjacent garden; the house is then blown up ‘from the very
foundations.’ Buchanan thus returns to the strangling, omitted, for
reasons, in the ‘Detection.’ Darnley’s body is unbruised, and his
dressing-gown, lying near him, is neither scorched nor smirched with dust.
A light burned, Buchanan says, in the Hamilton House till the explosion,
and was then extinguished; the Archbishop, contrary to custom, was lodging
there, with ‘Gloade,’ says a Lennox MS. ‘Gloade’ is--Lord Claude
Hamilton![151] While Buchanan was helping to prosecute Mary, he had not a
word to say about the strangling of Darnley, and about the dressing-gown
and slippers laid beside the corpse, though all this was in the papers of
Lennox, his chief. Not a word had he to say about the three bands of men
who moved on Kirk o’ Field, or the fifty men of the Lennox MS. The crime
was to be limited to Bothwell, his gang, and the Queen, as was convenient
to the accusers. Later Buchanan brought into his ‘History’ what he kept
out of the ‘Detection’ and ‘Book of Articles,’ adding a slur on
Archbishop Hamilton.
Finally, when telling, in his ‘History,’ how the Archbishop was caught at
Dumbarton, and hanged by Lennox, without trial, Buchanan has quite a fresh
version. The Archbishop sent six or eight of his bravoes, with false keys
of the doors (what becomes of Bothwell’s false keys?) to Kirk o’ Field.
They strangle Darnley, and lay him in a garden, and then, on a given
signal, other conspirators blow up the house. Where is Bothwell? The
leader of the Archbishop’s gang told this, under seal of confession, to a
priest, a very respectable man (_viro minime malo_). This respectable
priest first blabbed in conversation, and then, when the Archbishop was
arrested, gave evidence derived from the disclosure of a Hamilton under
seal of confession. The Archbishop mildly remarked that such conduct was
condemned by the Church. Later, the priest was executed for celebrating
the Mass (this being his third conviction), and he repeated the story
openly and fully. The tale of the priest was of rather old standing. When
collecting his evidence for the York Commission of October, 1568, Lennox
wrote to his retainers to ask, among other things, for the deposition of
the priest of Paisley, ‘that heard and testified the last exclamation of
one Hamilton, which the Laird of Minto showed to Mr. John Wood,’ who was
then helping Lennox to get up his case (June 11, 1568).[152] Buchanan has
yet another version, in his ‘Admonition to the Trew Lordis:’ here the
Archbishop sends only four of his rogues to the murder.
Buchanan’s plan clearly was to accuse the persons whom it was convenient
to accuse, at any given time; and to alter his account of the method of
the murder so as to suit each new accusation. Probably he was not
dishonest. The facts ‘were to him ministered,’ by the Lords, in 1568, and
also by Lennox. Later, different sets of facts were ‘ministered’ to him,
as occasion served, and he published them without heeding his
inconsistencies. He was old, was a Lennox man, and an advanced Liberal.
Of one examination, which ought to have been important, we have found no
record. There was a certain Captain James Cullen, who wrote letters in
July 13 to July 18, 1560, from Edinburgh Castle, to the Cardinal of
Lorraine. He was then an officer of Mary of Guise, during the siege of
Leith.[153] In the end of 1565, and the beginning of 1566, Captain Cullen
was in the service of Frederic II. of Denmark, and was trying to enlist
English sailors for him.[154] Elizabeth refused to permit this, and
Captain Cullen appears to have returned to his native Scotland, where he
became, under Bothwell, an officer of the Guard put about Mary’s person,
after Riccio’s murder. On February 28, 1567, eighteen days after Darnley’s
murder, Scrope writes that ‘Captain Cullen with his company have the
credit nearest her’ (Mary’s) ‘person.’ On May 13, Drury remarks, ‘It was
Captain Cullen’s persuasion, for more surety, to have the King strangled,
and not only to trust to the powder,’ the Captain having observed, in his
military experience, that the effects of explosions were not always
satisfactory. ‘The King was long of dying, and to his strength made debate
for his life.’[155]
To return to honest Captain Cullen: after Bothwell was acquitted, and had
issued a cartel offering Trial by Combat to any impugner of his honour,
some anonymous champion promised, under certain conditions, to fight. This
hero placarded the names of three Balfours, black John Spens, and others,
as conspirators; as ‘doers’ he mentioned, with some companions, Tala,
Bowton, Pat Wilson, and James Cullen. On April 25, the Captain was named
as a murderer in Elizabeth’s Instructions to Lord Grey.[156] On May 8,
Kirkcaldy told Bedford that Tullibardine had offered, with five others, to
fight Ormistoun, ‘Beynston,’ Bowton, Tala, Captain Cullen, and James
Edmonstone, who, says Tullibardine, were at the murder. On June 16, 1567,
the day after Mary’s capture at Carberry, Scrope writes, ‘The Lords have
taken Captain Cullen, who, after some strict dealing [torture], has
revealed the King’s murder with the whole matter thereof.’[157] Scrope was
mistaken. He had probably heard of the capture of Blackader, who was
hanged on June 24, denying his guilt. He had no more chance than had James
Stewart of the Glens with a Campbell jury. His jury was composed of Lennox
men, Darnley’s clansmen. Our Captain had not been taken, but on September
15 Moray told Throckmorton that Kirkcaldy, in Shetland, had captured
Cullen, ‘one of the very executors, he may clear the whole action.’[158]
Did Captain Cullen clear the whole action? We hear no more of his
embarrassing revelations. But we do know that he was released and returned
to the crimping trade: he fought for the Castle in 1571, was taken in a
cupboard and executed. He had a pretty wife, the poor Captain, coveted and
secured by Morton.
VII
_THE CONFESSIONS OF PARIS_
Fatal depositions, if trustworthy, are those of the valet lent by Bothwell
to Mary, on her road to Glasgow, in January, 1567. The case of Paris is
peculiar. He had escaped with Bothwell, in autumn, 1567, to Denmark, and,
on October 30, 1568, he was extradited to a Captain Clark, a notorious
character. On July 16, 1567, the Captain had killed one Wilson, a seaman
‘much esteemed by the Lords,’ of Moray’s faction. They had quarrelled
about a ship that was ordered to pursue Bothwell.[159] Nevertheless, in
July, 1568, Clark was Captain of the Scots in Danish service, and was
corresponding with Moray.[160] Clark could easily have sent Paris to
England in time for the meetings of Commissioners to judge on Mary’s case,
in December-January, 1568-1569. But Paris was not wanted: he might have
proved an awkward witness. About August 30, 1569, Elizabeth wrote to Moray
asking that Paris might be spared till his evidence could be taken. To
spare him was now impossible: Paris was no more. He had arrived from
Denmark in June, 1569, when Moray was in the North. Why had he not arrived
in December, 1568, when Mary’s case was being heard at Westminster? He had
been examined on August 9, 10, 1569, and was executed on August 15 at St.
Andrews. A copy of his deposition was sent to Cecil, and Moray hoped it
would be satisfactory to Elizabeth and to Lennox.[161]
In plain truth, the deposition of Paris was not wanted, when it might have
been given, at the end of 1568, while Moray and Lethington and Morton were
all working against Mary, before the same Commission. Later, differences
among themselves had grown marked. Moray and Lethington had taken opposed
lines as to Mary’s marriage with Norfolk in 1569, and the terms of an
honourable settlement of her affairs. Lethington desired; Moray, in his
own interest as Regent, opposed the marriage. A charge of guilt in
Darnley’s murder was now hanging over Lethington, based on Paris’s
deposition. The cloud broke in storm, he was accused by the useful
Crawford, Lennox’s man, in the first week of September, 1569. Three weeks
earlier, Moray had conveniently strengthened himself by taking the so long
deferred evidence of Paris. Throughout the whole affair the witnesses were
very well managed, so as to produce just what was needed, and no more.
While Lethington and other sinners were working with Moray, then only
evidence to the guilt of Bothwell and Mary was available. When Lethington
became inconvenient, witness against him was produced. When Morton, much
later (1581), was ‘put at,’ new evidence of _his_ guilt was not lacking.
Captain Cullen’s tale did not fit into the political combinations of
September, 1567, when the poor Captain was taken. It therefore was not
adduced at Westminster or Hampton Court. It was judiciously burked.
Moray did not send the ‘authentick’ record of Paris’s deposition to Cecil
till October, 1569, though it was taken at St. Andrews on August 9 and
10.[162] When Moray at last sent it, he had found that Lethington
definitely refused to aid him in betraying Norfolk. The day of
reconciliation was ended. So Moray sent the ‘authentick’ deposition of
Paris, which he had kept back for two months, in hopes that Lethington
(whom it implicated) might join him in denouncing Norfolk after all.
Paris, we said, was examined (there is no record showing that he ever was
tried) at St. Andrews. On the day of his death, Moray caused Sir William
Stewart, Lyon King at Arms, by his own appointment, to be burned for
sorcery. Of _his_ trial no record exists. He had been accused of a
conspiracy against Moray, whom he certainly did not admire, no proof had
been found, and he was burned as a wizard, or consulter of wizards.[163]
The deposition of Paris on August 10 is in the Record Office, and is
signed at the end of each page with his mark. _We are not told who heard
the depositions made._ We are only told that when it was read to him
before George Buchanan, John Wood (Moray’s man), and Robert Ramsay, he
acknowledged its truth: Ramsay being the writer of ‘this declaration,’
that is of the deposition. He wrote French very well, and was a servant of
Moray. There is another copy with a docquet asserting its authenticity,
witnessed by Alexander Hay, Clerk of the Privy Council, who, according to
Nau, wrote the old band against Darnley (October, 1566), and who was a
correspondent of Knox.[164] Hay does not seem to mean that the deposition
of Paris was taken in his presence, but that II. is a correct copy of
Number I. If so, he is not ‘guilty of a double fraud,’ as Mr. Hosack
declares. Though he omits the names of the witnesses, Wood, Ramsay, and
Buchanan, he does not represent himself as the sole witness to the
declaration. He only attests the accuracy of the copy of Number I. Whether
Ramsay, Wood, and Buchanan examined Paris, we can only infer: whether they
alone did so, we know not: that he was hanged and quartered merely on the
strength of his own deposition, we think highly probable. It was a great
day for St. Andrews: a herald was burned, a Frenchman was hanged, and a
fourth of his mortal remains was fixed on a spike in a public place.
Paris said, when examined in August, 1569, that on Wednesday or Thursday
of the week of Darnley’s death, Bothwell told him in Mary’s room at Kirk
o’ Field, Mary being in Darnley’s, that ‘_we Lords_’ mean to blow up the
King and this house with powder. But Bowton says, that till the Friday,
Bothwell meant to kill Darnley ‘in the fields.’[165] Bothwell took Paris
aside for a particular purpose: he was suffering from dysentery, and said,
‘Ne sçais-tu point quelque lieu là où je pouray aller...?’ ‘I never was
here in my life before,’ said Paris.
Now as Bothwell, by Paris’s own account (derived from Bothwell himself),
had passed an entire night in examining the little house of Kirk o’ Field,
how could he fail to know his way about in so tiny a dwelling? Finally,
Paris found _ung coing ou trou entre deux portes_, whither he conducted
Bothwell, who revealed his whole design.
Robertson, cited by Laing, remarks that the narrative of Paris ‘abounds
with a number of minute facts and particularities which the most dexterous
forger could not have easily assembled and connected together with any
appearance of probability.’ The most bungling witness who ever perjured
himself could not have brought more impossible inconsistencies than Paris
brings into a few sentences, and he was just as rich in new details, when,
in a second confession, he contradicted his first. In the insanitary, and,
as far as listeners were concerned, insecure retreat ‘between two doors,’
Bothwell bluntly told Paris that Darnley was to be blown up, because, if
ever he got his feet on the Lords’ necks, he would be tyrannical. The
motive was political. Paris pointed out the moral and social
inconveniences of Bothwell’s idea. ‘You fool!’ Bothwell answered, ‘do you
think I am alone in this affair? I have Lethington, who is reckoned one of
our finest wits, and is the chief undertaker in this business; I have
Argyll, Huntly, Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay. These three last will never
fail me, for I spoke in favour of their pardon, and I have the signatures
of all those whom I have mentioned, and we were inclined to do it lately
when we were at Craigmillar; but you are a dullard, not fit to hear a
matter of weight.’ If Bothwell said that Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay
signed the band, he, in all probability, lied. But does any one believe
that the untrussed Bothwell, between two doors, held all this talk with a
wretched valet, arguing with him seriously, counting his allies, real or
not, and so forth? Paris next (obviously enlightened by later events)
observed that the Lords would make Bothwell manage the affair, ‘but, when
it is once done, they may lay the whole weight of it on you’ (which, when
making his deposition, he knew they had done), ‘and will be the first to
cry _Haro!_ on you, and pursue you to death.’ Prophetic Paris! He next
asked, What about a man dearly beloved by the populace, and the French?
‘No troubles in the country when _he_ governed for two or three years, all
was well, money was cheap; look at the difference now,’ and so forth.
‘Who is the man?’ asked Bothwell. ‘Monsieur de Moray; pray what side does
he take?’
‘He won’t meddle.’
‘Sir, he is wise.’
‘Monsieur de Moray, Monsieur de Moray! He will neither help nor hinder,
but it is all one.’
Bothwell, by a series of arguments, then tried to make Paris steal the key
of Mary’s room. He declined, and Bothwell left the appropriate scene of
this prolonged political conversation. It occupies more than three closely
printed pages of small type.
Paris then devotes a page and a half to an account of a walk, and of his
reflections. On Friday, Bothwell met him, asked him for the key, and said
that _Sunday_ was the day for the explosion. Now, in fact, _Saturday_ had
been fixed upon, as Tala declared.[166] Paris took another walk, thought
of looking for a ship to escape in, but compromised matters by saying his
prayers. On Saturday, after dinner, Bothwell again asked for the key:
adding that Balfour had already given him a complete set of false keys,
and that they two had passed a whole night in examining the house. So
Paris stole the key, though Bothwell had told him that he need not, if he
had not the heart for it. After he gave it to Bothwell, Marguerite
(Carwood?) sent him back for a coverlet of fur: Sandy Durham asked him for
the key, and he referred Sandy to the _huissier_, Archibald Beaton. This
Sandy is said in the Lennox MSS. to have been warned by Mary to leave the
house. He was later arrested, but does not seem to have been punished.
On Sunday morning, Paris heard that Moray had left Edinburgh, and said
within himself, ‘O Monsieur de Moray, you are indeed a worthy man!’ The
wretch wished, of course, to ingratiate himself with Moray, but his want
of tact must have made that worthy man wince. Indeed Paris’s tactless
disclosures about Moray, who ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and did
sneak off, may be one of the excellent reasons which prevented Cecil from
adding Paris’s deposition, when he was asked for it, to the English
edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection.’[167] When the Queen was at supper, on
the night of the crime, with Argyll (it really was with the Bishop of
Argyll) and was washing her hands after supper, Paris came in. She asked
Paris whether he had brought the fur coverlet from Kirk o’ Field. Bothwell
then took Paris out, and they acted as in the depositions of Powrie and
the rest, introducing the powder. Bothwell rebuked Tala and Bowton for
making so much noise, which was heard above, as they stored the powder in
Mary’s room. Paris next accompanied Bothwell to Darnley’s room, and
Argyll, silently, gave him a caressing dig in the ribs. After some loose
babble, Paris ends, ‘And that is all I know about the matter.’
This deposition was made ‘without constraint or interrogation.’ But it was
necessary that he should know more about the matter. Next day he was
_interrogué_, doubtless in the boot or the pilniewinks, or under threat of
these. He _must_ incriminate the Queen. He gave evidence now as to
carrying a letter (probably Letter II. is intended) to Bothwell, from Mary
at Glasgow, in January, 1567. His story may be true, as we shall see, if
the dates put in by the accusers are incorrect: and if another set of
dates, which we shall suggest, are correct.
Asked as to familiarities between Bothwell and Mary, he said, on
Bothwell’s information, that Lady Reres used to bring him, late at night,
to Mary’s room; and that Bothwell bade him never let Mary know that Lady
Bothwell was with him in Holyrood! Paris now remembered that, in the long
conversation in the hole between two doors, Bothwell had told him not to
put Mary’s bed beneath Darnley’s, ‘for that is where I mean to put the
powder.’ He disobeyed. Mary made him move her bed, and he saw that she was
in the plot. Thereon he said to her, ‘Madame, Monsieur de Boiduel told me
to bring him the keys of your door, and that he has an inclination to do
something, namely to blow the King into the air with powder, which he will
place here.’
This piece of evidence has, by some, been received with scepticism, which
is hardly surprising. Paris places the carrying of a letter (about the
plot to make Lord Robert kill Darnley?) on Thursday night. It ought to be
Friday, if it is to agree with Cecil’s Journal: ‘Fryday. She ludged and
lay all nycht agane in the foresaid chalmer, and frome thence wrayt, that
same nycht, the letter concerning the purpose of the abbott of
Halyrudhouse.’ On the same night, Bothwell told Paris to inform Mary that
he would not sleep till he achieved his purpose, ‘were I to trail a pike
all my life for love of her.’ This means that the murder was to be on
Friday, which is absurd, unless Bothwell means to wake for several nights.
Let us examine the stories told by Paris about the key, or keys, of Mary’s
room. In the first statement, Paris was asked by Bothwell at the
Conference between Two Doors, for the _key_ of Mary’s room. This was on
Wednesday or Thursday. On Friday, Bothwell asked again for the _key_, and
said the murder was fixed for Sunday, which it was not, but for Saturday.
On Saturday, Bothwell again demands _that key_, after dinner. He says that
he has duplicates, from James Balfour, of all the keys. Paris takes the
_key_, remaining last in Mary’s room at Kirk o’ Field, as she leaves it to
go to Holyrood. Paris keeps the _key_, and returns to Kirk o’ Field. Sandy
Durham, Darnley’s servant, asks for the key. Paris replies that keys are
the affair of the Usher. ‘Well,’ says Durham, ‘since you don’t want to
give it to me!’ So, clearly, Paris kept it. On Sunday night, Bothwell bade
Paris go to the Queen’s room in Kirk o’ Field, ‘and when Bowton, Tala, and
Ormistoun shall have entered, and done what they want to do, you are to
leave the room, and come to the King’s room and thence go where you
like.... The rest can do without you’ (in answer to a remonstrance), ‘for
they have keys enough.’ Paris then went into the kitchen of Kirk o’ Field,
and borrowed and lit a candle: meanwhile Bowton and Tala entered the
Queen’s room, and deposited the powder. Paris does not _say_ that he let
them in with the _key_, which he had kept all the time; at least he never
mentions making any use of it, though of course he did.
In the second statement, Paris avers that he took the _keys_ (the number
becomes plural, or dual) on Friday, not on Saturday, as in the first
statement, and _not_ after the Queen had left the room (as in the first
statement), but while she was dressing. He carried them to Bothwell, who
compared them with other, new, false keys, examined them, and said ‘They
are all right! take back these others.’ During the absence of Paris, the
keys were missed by the Usher, Archibald Beaton, who wanted to let Mary
out into the garden, and Mary questioned Paris _aloud_, on his return.
This is not probable, as, by his own second statement, he had already told
her, on Wednesday or Thursday, that Bothwell had asked him for the keys,
as he wanted to blow Darnley sky high. She would, therefore, know why
Paris had the keys of her room, and would ask no questions.[168] On
Saturday, after dinner, Bothwell bade him take the _key_ of Mary’s room,
and Mary also told him to do so. He took it. Thus, in statement II., he
has his usual De Foe-like details, different from those equally minute in
statement I. He takes the keys, or key, at a different time, goes back
with them in different circumstances, is asked for them by different
persons, and takes a key _twice_, once on Friday, once on Saturday, though
Bothwell, having duplicates that were ‘all right’ (_elles sont bien_), did
not need the originals. As to these duplicates, Bowton declared that,
after the murder, he threw them all into a quarry hole between Holyrood
and Leith.[169] Tala declared that Paris had a key of the back door.[170]
Nelson says that Beaton, Mary’s usher, kept the keys: he and Paris.[171]
Paris, of course under torture or fear of torture, said whatever might
implicate Mary. On Friday night, in the second statement, Paris again
carried letters to Bothwell; if he carried them both on Thursday and
Friday, are both notes in the Casket Letters? The Letter of Friday was
supposed to be that about the affair of Lord Robert and Darnley. On
Saturday Mary told Paris to bid Bothwell send Lord Robert and William
Blackadder to Darnley’s chamber ‘to do what Bothwell knows, and to speak
to Lord Robert about it, for it is better thus than otherwise, and he will
only have a few days’ prison in the Castle for the same.’ Bothwell replied
to Paris that he would speak to Lord Robert, and visit the Queen. This was
on Saturday _evening_ (_au soyr_), after the scene, whatever it was or was
not, between Darnley and Lord Robert on Saturday _morning_.[172] As to
_that_, Mary ‘told her people in her chamber that Lord Robert had enjoyed
a good chance to kill the King, because there was only herself to part
them.’ Lennox in his MSS. avers that Moray was present, and ‘can declare
it.’ Buchanan says that Mary called in Moray to separate her wrangling
husband and brother, hoping that Moray too would be slain! Though the
explosion was for Sunday night, Mary, according to Paris, was still urging
the plan of murder by Lord Robert on Saturday night, and Bothwell was
acquiescing.
The absurd contradictions which pervade the statements of Paris are
conspicuous. Hume says: ‘It is in vain at present to seek improbabilities
in Nicholas Hubert’s dying confession, and to magnify the smallest
difficulty into a contradiction. It was certainly a regular judicial
paper, given in regularly and judicially, and ought to have been canvassed
at the time, if the persons whom it concerned had been assured of their
own innocence.’ They never saw it: it was authenticated by no judicial
authority: it was not ‘given in regularly and judicially,’ but was first
held back, and then sent by Moray, when it suited his policy, out of
revenge on Lethington. Finally, it was not ‘a dying confession.’ Dying
confessions are made in prison, or on the scaffold, on the day of death.
That of Paris ‘took God to record, at the time of his death’ (August 15),
‘that this murder was by your’ (the Lords’) ‘counsel, invention, and
drift committed,’ and also declared that he ‘never knew the Queen to be
participant or ware thereof.’ So says Lesley, but we have slight faith in
him.[173] He speaks in the same sentence of similar dying confessions by
Tala, Powrie, and Dalgleish.
I omit the many discrepant accounts of dying confessions accusing or
absolving the Queen. Buchanan says that Dalgleish, in the Tolbooth,
confessed the Exchequer House _fabliau_, and that this is duly recorded,
but it does not appear in his Dying Confession printed in the ‘Detection.’
In his, Bowton says that ‘the Queen’s mind was acknowledged thereto.’ The
Jesuits, in 1568, were informed that Bowton, at his trial, impeached
Morton and Balfour, and told Moray that he spared to accuse him, ‘because
of your dignity.’[174] These statements about dying confessions were
bandied, in contradictory sort, by both sides. The confession of Morton,
attested, and certainly not exaggerated, by two sympathetic Protestant
ministers, is of another species, and, as far as it goes, is evidence,
though Morton obviously does not tell all he knew. The part of Paris’s
statement about the crime ends by saying that Huntly came to Bothwell at
Holyrood, late on the fatal night, and whispered with him, as Bothwell
changed his evening dress, after the dance at Holyrood, for a cavalry
cloak and other clothes. Bothwell told Paris that Huntly had offered to
accompany him, but that he would not take him. Morton, in his dying
confession, declared that Archibald Douglas confessed that he and Huntly
were both present: contradicting Paris as to Huntly.
The declarations of Paris were never published at the time. On November 8,
1571, Dr. Wilson, who was apparently translating something--the
‘Detection’ of Buchanan, or the accompanying Oration (‘Actio’), into sham
Scots--wrote to Cecil, ‘desiring you to send unto me “Paris” closely
sealed, and it shall not be known from whence it cometh.’ Cecil was
secretly circulating libels on Mary, but ‘Paris’ was not used. His
declarations would have clashed with the ‘Detection’ as written when only
Bothwell and Mary were to be implicated. The truth, that there was a great
_political_ conspiracy, including some of Mary’s accusers, and perhaps
Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven (for so Paris makes Bothwell say), would have
come out. The fact that Moray ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and sneaked
off, would have been uttered to the world. The glaring discrepancies would
have been patent to criticism. So Cecil withheld documents unsuited to his
purpose of discrediting Mary.[175]
The one valuable part of Paris’s declarations concerns the carrying of a
Glasgow letter. And that is only valuable if we supply the accusers with
possible dates, in place of their own impossible chronology, and if we
treat as false their tale[176] that Bothwell ‘lodged in the town’ when he
returned from Calendar to Edinburgh. The earlier confessions, especially
those of Tala, were certainly mutilated, as we have seen, and only what
suited the Lords came out. That of Paris was a tool to use against
Lethington, but, as it also implicated Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven, with
Argyll and Huntly, who might become friends of Morton and Moray, Paris’s
declaration was a two-edged sword, and, probably, was little known in
Scotland. In England it was judiciously withheld from the public eye.
Goodall writes (1754): ‘I well remember that one of our late criminal
judges, of high character for knowledge and integrity, was, by reading it
[Paris’s statement], induced to believe every scandal that had been thrown
out against the Queen.’ A criminal judge ought to be a good judge of
evidence, yet the statements of Paris rather fail, when closely inspected,
to carry conviction.
Darnley, in fact, was probably strangled by murderers of the Douglas and
Lethington branches of the conspiracy. On the whole, it seems more
probable that the powder was placed in Mary’s room than not, though all
contemporary accounts of its effects make against this theory. As touching
Mary, the confessions are of the very slightest value. The published
statements, under examination, of Powrie, Dalgleish, Tala, and Bowton do
not implicate her. That of Bowton rather clears her than otherwise. Thus:
the theory of the accusers, supported by the declaration of Paris, was
that, when the powder was ‘fair in field,’ properly lodged in Mary’s room,
under that of Darnley, Paris was to enter Darnley’s room as a signal that
all was prepared. Mary then left the room, in the time required ‘to say a
paternoster.’ But Bowton affirmed that, as he and his fellows stored the
powder, Bothwell ‘bade them make haste, before the Queen came forth of the
King’s house, for if she came forth before they were ready, they would not
find such commodity.’ This, for what it is worth, implies that no signal,
such as the entrance of Paris, had been arranged for the Queen’s
departure. The self-contradictory statements of Paris can be torn to
shreds in cross-examination, whatever element of truth they may contain.
The ‘dying confessions’ are contradictorily reported, and all the reports
are worthless. The guilt of some Lords, and their alliance with the other
accusers, made it impossible for the Prosecution to produce a sound case.
As their case stands, as it is presented by them, a jury, however
convinced, on other grounds, of Mary’s guilt, would feel constrained to
acquit the Queen of Scots.
VIII
_MARY’S CONDUCT AFTER THE MURDER_
Nothing has damaged Mary’s reputation more than her conduct after the
murder of Darnley. Her first apologist, Queen Elizabeth, adopted the line
of argument which her defenders have ever since pursued. On March 24,
1567, Elizabeth discussed the matter with de Silva. Her emissary to spy
into the problem, Killigrew, had dined in Edinburgh at Moray’s house with
Bothwell, Lethington, Huntly, and Argyll. All, except Moray, were
concerned in the crime, and this circumstance certainly gave force to
Elizabeth’s reasoning. She told de Silva, on Killigrew’s report, that
grave suspicions existed ‘against Bothwell, and others who are with the
Queen,’ the members, in fact, of Moray’s little dinner party to Killigrew.
Mary, said Elizabeth, ‘did not dare to proceed against them, in
consequence of the influence and strength of Bothwell,’ who was Admiral,
and Captain of the Guard of 500 Musketeers. Elizabeth added that, after
Killigrew left Scotland, Mary had attempted to take refuge in the Castle,
but had been refused entry by the Keeper, who feared that Bothwell would
accompany Mary and take possession. This anecdote is the more improbable
as Killigrew was in London by March 24, and the Earl of Mar was deprived
of the command of the Castle on March 19.[177] To have retired to the
Castle, as on other occasions of danger, and to have remained there, would
have been Mary’s natural conduct, had the slaying of Darnley alarmed and
distressed her. Those who defend her, however, can always fall back, like
Elizabeth, on the theory that Bothwell, Argyll, Huntly, and Lethington
overawed her; that she could not urge the finding of the murderers, or
even avoid their familiar society, any more than Moray could rescue or
avenge Darnley, or abstain from sharing his salt with Bothwell.[178] De
Silva inferred from Moray’s talk, that he believed Bothwell to be
guilty.[179]
The first efforts of Mary and the Council were to throw dust in the eyes
of France and Europe. The Council met on the day of Darnley’s death. There
were present Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, Atholl, Caithness,
Livingstone, Cassilis, Sutherland, the Bishop of Galloway (Protestant),
the Bishop of Ross, the treasurer, Flemyng, Bellenden, Bothwell, Argyll,
Huntly, and Lethington. Of these the last four were far the most powerful,
and were in the plot. They must have dictated the note sent by express to
France with the news. The line of defence was that the authors of the
explosion had just failed to destroy ‘the Queen and most of the nobles and
lords in her suite, who were with the King till near midnight.’ This was
said though confessedly the explosion did not occur till about two in the
morning. The Council add that Mary escaped by not staying all night at
Kirk o’ Field. God preserved her to take revenge. Yet all the Court knew
that Mary had promised to be at Holyrood for the night, and the
conspirators must have seen her escort returning thither with torches
burning.[180] The Lennox MSS., in a set of memoranda, insist that Mary
caused a hagbut to be fired, as she went down the Canongate, for a signal
to Bothwell and his gang. They knew that she was safe from any explosion
at Kirk o’ Field.
On the same day, February 10 (11?), Mary, or rather Lethington for Mary,
wrote, in Scots, the same tale as that of her Council, to Beaton, her
ambassador in Paris. She had just received his letter of January 27,
containing a vague warning of rumoured dangers to herself. The warning she
found ‘over true’ (it probably arose from the rumour that Darnley and
Lennox meant to seize the infant Prince). The explosion had been aimed at
her destruction; so the letter said. ‘It wes dressit alsweill for us as
for the King:’ she only escaped by chance, or rather because ‘God put it
in our hede’ to go to the masque. Now all the world concerned knew that
Mary was not in Kirk o’ Field at two in the morning, and Mary knew that
all the world knew.[181] To be sure she did not actually write this
letter. Who had an interest in this supposed plot of general destruction
by gunpowder? Not Lennox and Darnley, of course; not the Hamiltons, not
Mary and the Lords who were to be exploded. Only the extreme Protestants,
whose leader, Moray, left on the morning of the affair, could have
benefited by the gunpowder plot. In Paris, on February 21, the deed was
commonly regarded as the work of ‘the heretics, who desire to do the same
by the Queen.’[182]
This was the inference--namely, that the Protestants were guilty--which
the letters of Mary and the Council were meant to suggest. To defend Mary
we must suppose that she, and the innocent members of Council, were
constrained by the guilty members to approve of what was written, or were
wholly without guile. The secret was open enough. According to Nau, Mary’s
secretary, she had remarked, as she left Kirk o’ Field at midnight, ‘Jesu,
Paris, how begrimed you are!’ The story was current. Blackwood makes Mary
ask ‘why Paris smelled so of gunpowder.’ Had Mary wished to find the
guilty, the begrimed Paris would have been put to the torture at once. The
sentinels at the palace would have been asked who went in and out after
midnight. Conceivably, Mary was unable to act, but, if her secretary tells
truth as to the begrimed Paris, she could have no shadow of doubt as to
Bothwell’s guilt. A few women were interrogated, as was Nelson, Darnley’s
servant, but the inquiry was stopped when Nelson said that Mary’s servants
had the keys. Rewards were offered for the discovery of the guilty, but
produced only anonymous placards, denouncing some who were guilty, as
Bothwell, and others, like ‘Black Mr. James Spens,’ against whom nothing
was ever proved.
[Illustration: PLACARD OF MARCH 1567. MARY AS A MERMAID]
It were tedious and bewildering to examine the gossip as to Mary’s private
demeanour. If she had Darnley buried beside Riccio, she fulfilled the
prophecy which, Lennox tells us, she made over Riccio’s new-made grave,
when she fled from Holyrood after the murder of the Italian: ‘ere a
twelvemonth was over, a fatter than he should lie beside him.’ What she
did at Seton and when (Lennox says that, at Seton, she called for the tune
_Well is me Since I am free_), whether she prosecuted her amour with
Bothwell, played golf, indulged in the unseasonable sport of archery or
not, is matter of gossip. Nor need we ask how long she sat under
candle-light, in darkened, black-hung chambers.[183] She assuredly made no
effort to avenge her husband. Neither the strong and faithful
remonstrances of her ambassador in France, nor the menace of Catherine de
Medicis, nor the plain speaking of Elizabeth, nor a petition of the godly,
who put this claim for justice last in a list of their own demands, and
late (April 18), could move Mary. Bothwell ‘ruled all:’ Lethington,
according to Sir James Melville, fell into the background of the Court. He
had taken nothing by the crime, for which he had signed the band, and it
is quite conceivable that Bothwell, who hated him, had bullied him into
signing. He may even have had no more direct knowledge of what was
intended, or when, than Moray himself. He can never have approved of the
Queen’s marriage with Bothwell, which was fatal to his interests. He was
newly married, and was still, at least, on terms with Mary which warranted
him in urging her to establish Protestantism--or so he told Cecil. But to
Bothwell, Mary was making grants in money, in privileges, and in beautiful
old ecclesiastical fripperies: chasubles and tunicles all of cloth of
gold, figured with white, and red, and yellow.[184] Lennox avers, in the
Lennox Papers, that the armour, horses, and other effects of Darnley were
presented by Mary to Bothwell. Late in March Drury reported that, in the
popular belief, Mary was likely to marry him.
From the first Lennox had pleaded for the arrest and trial of Bothwell and
others whom he named, but who never were tried. Writers like Goodall have
defended, Laing and Hill Burton have attacked, the manner of Bothwell’s
Trial (April 12). Neither for Lennox nor for Elizabeth, would Mary delay
the process. As usual in Scotland, as when Bothwell himself, years before,
or when John Knox still earlier, or when, later, Lethington, was tried,
either the accused or the accuser made an overwhelming show of armed
force. It was ‘the custom of the country,’ and Bothwell, looking dejected
and wretched, says his friend, Ormistoun, was ‘cleansed’ in the promptest
manner, Lennox merely entering a protest. The Parliament on April 19
restored Huntly and others to forfeited lands, ratified the tenures of
Moray, and offended Mary’s Catholic friends by practically establishing
the Kirk. On the same night, apparently after a supper at Ainslie’s
tavern, many nobles and ecclesiastics signed a band (‘Ainslie’s band’). It
ran thus: Bothwell is, and has been judicially found, innocent of
Darnley’s death. The signers therefore bind themselves, ‘as they will
answer to God,’ to defend Bothwell to the uttermost, and to advance his
marriage with Mary. If they fail, may they lose every shred of honour, and
‘be accounted unworthy and faithless Traytors.’
A copy of the names of the signatories, as given to Cecil by John Read,
George Buchanan’s secretary, ‘so far as John Read might remember,’ exists.
The names are Murray (who was not in Scotland), Argyll, Huntly, Cassilis,
Morton, Sutherland, Rothes, Glencairn, Caithness, Boyd, Seton, Sinclair,
Semple, Oliphant, Ogilvy, Ross-Halkett, Carlyle, Herries, Home,
Invermeath. ‘Eglintoun subscribed not, but slipped away.’[185] Names of
ecclesiastics, as Lesley, Bishop of Ross, appear in copies where Moray’s
name does not.[186] It is argued that Moray may have signed before leaving
Scotland, that this may have been a condition of his license to depart.
Mary’s confessor told de Silva that Moray did not sign.[187] That the
Lords received a warrant for their signatures from Mary, they asserted at
York (October, 1568), but was the document mentioned later at Westminster?
That they were coerced by armed force, was averred later, but not in
Kirkcaldy’s account of the affair, written on the day following. No
Hamilton signs, at least if we except the Archbishop; and Lethington, with
his friend Atholl, seems not even to have been present at the Parliament.
On April 21 (Monday), Mary went to Stirling to see her son, and try to
poison him, according to a Lennox memorandum. On the 23rd, she went to
Linlithgow; on the 24th, Bothwell, with a large force, seized her, Huntly,
and Lethington, at a disputed place not far from Edinburgh. He then
carried her to his stronghold of Dunbar. Was Mary playing a collusive
part? had she arranged with Bothwell to carry her off? The Casket Letters
were adduced by her enemies to prove that she was a party to the plot. As
we shall see when examining the Letters if we accept them they leave no
doubt on this point. But precisely here the darkness is yet more obscured
by the enigmatic nature of Mary’s relations with Lethington, who, as
Secretary, was in attendance on her at Stirling and Linlithgow. It will
presently be shown that, as to Lethington’s policy at this moment, and for
two years later, two contradictory accounts are given, and on the view we
take of his actions turns our interpretation of the whole web of intrigue.
Whether Mary did or did not know that she was to be carried off, did
Lethington know? If he did, it was his interest to ride from Stirling, by
night, through the pass of Killiecrankie, to his usual refuge, the safe
and hospitable house of Atholl, before the abduction was consummated.
Bothwell’s success in wedding Mary would mean ruin to Lethington’s
favourite project of uniting the crowns on the head of Mary or her child.
It would also mean Lethington’s own destruction, for Bothwell loathed him.
To this point was he brought by his accession to the band for Darnley’s
murder. His natural action, then, if he knew of the intended abduction,
was to take refuge with Atholl, who, like himself, had not signed
Ainslie’s band. If Lethington was ignorant, others were not. Bothwell had
chosen his opportunity with skill. He had an excellent excuse for
collecting his forces. The Liddesdale reivers had just spoiled the town of
Biggar, ‘and got much substance of coin (corn?), silks, and horses,’ so
wrote Sir John Forster to Cecil on April 24.[188] On the pretext of
punishing this outrage, Bothwell mustered his forces; but politicians less
wary than Lethington, and more remote from the capital, were not deceived.
They knew what Bothwell intended. Lennox was flying for his life, and was
aboard ship on the west coast, but, as early as April 23, he wrote to tell
his wife that Bothwell was to seize Mary. A spy in Edinburgh (Kirkcaldy,
by the handwriting), and Drury in Berwick, knew of the scheme on April 24,
the day of the abduction. If Mary did not suspect what Lennox knew before
the event, she was curiously ignorant, but, if Lethington was ignorant, so
may she have been.[189]
What were the exact place and circumstances of Mary’s arrest by Bothwell,
whether he did or did not offer violence to her at Dunbar, whether she
asked succour from Edinburgh, we know not precisely. At all events, she
was so far compromised, actually violated, says Melville,[190] that, not
being a Clarissa Harlowe, she might represent herself as bound to marry
Bothwell. Meanwhile Lethington was at Dunbar with her, a prisoner ‘under
guard,’ so Drury reports (May 2). By that date, many of the nobles,
including Atholl, had met at Stirling, and, despite their agreement to
defend Bothwell, in Ainslie’s band, Argyll and Morton, as well as Atholl
and Mar, had confederated against him, Atholl probably acting under advice
secretly sent by Lethington. ‘The Earl Bothwell thought to have slain him
in the Queen’s chamber, had not her Majesty come between and saved him,’
says Sir James Melville, who had been released on the day after his
capture between Linlithgow and Edinburgh.[191] Different rumours prevailed
as to Lethington’s own intentions. He was sometimes thought to be no
unwilling prisoner, and even to have warned Atholl not to head the
confederacy against Bothwell (May 4).[192] Mary wrote to quiet the banded
Lords at Stirling (about May 3), and Lethington succeeded in getting a
letter delivered in which he expressed his desire to speak with Cecil,
declaring that Mary meant to marry Bothwell. He had only been rescued from
assassination by Mary, who said that, ‘if a hair of Lethington’s head
perished, she would cause Huntly to forfeit lands, goods, and life.’[193]
Could the Queen who protected Lethington be in love with Bothwell?
Mary, then, was, in one respect at least, no passive victim, at Dunbar,
and Lethington owed his life to her. He explained that his letters,
apparently in Bothwell’s interest, were extorted from him, ‘but
immediately by a trusty messenger he advertised not to give credit to
them.’[194] Meantime he had arranged to escape, as he did, later. ‘He will
come out to shoot with others, and between the marks he will ride upon a
good nag to a place where both a fresh horse and company tarries for
him.’[195] Lethington made his escape, but not till weeks later, when he
fled first to Callendar, then to the protection of Atholl; he joined the
Lords, and from this moment the question is, was he, under a pretext of
secret friendship, Mary’s most deadly foe (as she herself, Morton, and
Randolph declared) or her loyal servant, working cautiously in her
interests, as he persuaded Throckmorton and Sir James Melville to believe?
My own impression is that Mary, Morton, and Randolph were right in their
opinion. Lethington, under a mask of gratitude and loyalty, was urging,
after his escape, the strongest measures against Mary, till circumstances
led him to advise ‘a dulce manner,’ because (as he later confessed to
Morton)[196] Mary was likely to be restored, and to avenge herself on him.
Mary, he knew, could ruin him by proving his accession to Darnley’s
murder. His hold over her would be gone, as soon as the Casket Letters
were produced before the English nobles: he had then no more that he could
do, but she kept her reserve of strength, her proof against him. His bolt
was shot, hers was in her quiver. This view of the relations (later to be
proved) between Lethington and the woman whose courage saved his life,
explains the later mysteries of Mary’s career, and part of the problem of
the Casket Letters.
Meanwhile, in the first days of May, the Queen rushed on her doom. Despite
the protestations of her confessor, who urged that a marriage with
Bothwell was illegal: despite the remonstrances of du Croc, who had been
sent from France to advise and threaten, despite the courageous
denunciation of Craig, the Protestant preacher, Mary hurried through a
collusive double process of divorce, proclaimed herself a free agent,
created Bothwell Duke of Orkney, and, on May 15, 1567, wedded him by
Protestant rites, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, later one of her
official prosecutors, performing the ceremony.[197] To her or to
Lethington’s own letter of excuse to the French Court, we return later.
Mary, even on the wedding-day, was miserable. Du Croc, James Melville, and
Lethington, who had not yet escaped, were witnesses of her wretchedness.
She called out for a knife to slay herself.[198] Mary was ‘the most
changed woman of face that in so little time without extremity of sickness
they have seen.’ A Highland second-sighted woman prophesied that she
should have five husbands. ‘In the fifth husband’s time _she shall be
burned_, which death divers speak of to happen to her, and it is said she
fears the same.’ This dreadful death was the legal punishment of women who
killed their husbands. The fires of the stake shone through Mary’s dreams
when a prisoner in Loch Leven. Even Lady Reres, now supplanted by a sister
of Bothwell’s, and the Lady of Branxholme, ‘both in their speech and
writing marvellously rail, both of the Queen and Bothwell.’[199]
A merry bridal!
Mary’s defenders have attributed her sorrow to the gloom of a captive,
forced into a hated wedlock. De Silva assigned her misery to a galling
conscience. We see the real reasons of her wretchedness, and to these we
must add the most poignant, Bothwell’s continued relations with his wife,
who remained in his Castle of Crichton. He, too, was ‘beastly suspicious
and jealous.’ No wonder that she called for a knife to end her days, and
told du Croc that she never could be happy again.
Meanwhile the Lords, from the first urged on by Kirkcaldy, who said (April
26) that he must avenge Darnley or leave the country, were banded, and
were appealing to Elizabeth for help, which she, a Queen, hesitated to
lend to subjects confederated against a sister Queen. Kirkcaldy was the
dealer with Bedford, who encouraged him, but desired that the Prince
should be brought to England. Robert Melville dealt with Killigrew (May
27). Bothwell, to soothe the preachers, attended sermons, Mary invited
herself to dinner with her reluctant subjects; the golden font, the
christening gift of Elizabeth, was melted down and coined for pay to the
guard of musketeers (May 31). Huntly asked for leave to go to the north.
Mary replied bitterly that he meant to turn traitor, like his father. This
distrust of Huntly is clearly expressed in the Casket Letters.[200] On May
30, Mary summoned an armed muster of her subjects. On June 6, Lethington
carried out his deferred scheme, and fled to the Lords. On the 7th, Mary
and Bothwell retired to Borthwick Castle. On June 11, the Lords advanced
to Borthwick. Bothwell fled to Dunbar.[201] The Lords then retired to
Dalkeith, and thence, on the same night, to Edinburgh. Thither Mary had
sent a proclamation, which is still extant, bidding the citizens to arm
and free her, not from Bothwell, but from the Lords. An unwilling captive
would have hurried to their protection. The burgesses permitted the Lords
to enter the town. Mary at once, on hearing of this, sent the son of Lady
Reres to the commander of Edinburgh Castle, bidding him fire his guns on
the Lords. He disobeyed. She then fled in male apparel to Dunbar,
Bothwell meeting her a mile from Borthwick (June 11). On June 12, the
Lords seized the remains of the golden font, and the coin already struck.
On the 13th, James Beaton joined Mary and Bothwell at Dunbar, and found
them mustering their forces. He returned, with orders to encourage the
Captain of the Castle, but was stopped.
Next day (14th) the Lords made a reconnaissance towards Haddington, and
Atholl, with Lethington, rode into Edinburgh, at the head of 200 horse.
Lethington then for three hours dealt with the Keeper of the Castle, Sir
James Balfour, his associate in the band for Darnley’s murder. Later,
according to Randolph, they opened a little coffer of Bothwell’s which had
a covering of green cloth, and was deposited in the Castle, and took out
the band. Was this coffer the Casket? Such coffers had usually velvet
covers, embroidered. Lethington won over Balfour, who surrendered the
Castle presently. This was the deadliest stroke at Mary, and it was dealt
by him whose life she had just preserved.
Next day the Lords marched to encounter Bothwell, met him posted on
Carberry Hill, and, after many hours of manœuvres and negotiations, very
variously reported, the Lords allowed Bothwell to slip away to Dunbar (he
was a compromising captive), and took Mary, clad unqueenly in a ‘red
petticoat, sleeves tied with points, a velvet hat and muffler.’ She
surrendered to Kirkcaldy of Grange: on what terms, if on any, is not to
be ascertained. She herself in Nau’s MS. maintains that she promised to
join in pursuing Darnley’s murderers, and ‘claimed that justice should be
done upon certain persons of their party now present, who were guilty of
the said murder, and were much astonished to find themselves discovered.’
But, by Nau’s own arrangement of his matter, Mary can only have thus
accused the Lords (there is other evidence that she did so) _after_
Bothwell, at parting from her, denounced to her Morton, Balfour, and
Lethington, giving her a copy of the murder band, signed by them, and
bidding her ‘take good care of that paper.’ She did ‘take good care’ of
some paper, as we shall see, though almost certainly not the band, and not
obtained at Carberry Hill.[202] She asked for an interview with Lethington
and Atholl, both of whom, though present, denied that they were of the
Lords’ party. Finally, after parting from Bothwell, assuring him that, if
found innocent in the coming Parliament, she would remain his loyal wife,
she surrendered to Kirkcaldy, ‘relying upon his word and assurance, which
the Lords, in full Council, as he said, had solemnly warranted him to
make.’ So writes Nau. James Beaton (whose narrative we have followed)
merely says that she made terms, which were granted, that none of her
party should be ‘invaded or pursued.’[203] Sir James Melville makes the
Lords’ promise depend on her abandonment of Bothwell.[204]
Whatever be the truth as to Mary’s surrender, the Lords later excused
their treatment of her not on the ground that they had given no pledge,
but on that of her adhesion to the man they had asked her to marry.
According to Nau, Lethington persuaded the Lords to place her in the house
then occupied by Preston, the Laird of Craigmillar, Provost of Edinburgh.
She asked, at night, for an interview with Lethington, but she received no
answer. Next morning she called piteously to Lethington, as he passed the
window of her room: he crushed his hat over his face, and did not even
look up. The mob were angry with Lethington, and Mary’s guards dragged her
from the window. On the other hand, du Croc says that Lethington, on
hearing her cries, entered her room, and spoke with her, while the mob was
made to move on.[205] Lethington told du Croc that, when Mary called to
him, and he went to her, she complained of being parted from Bothwell. He,
with little tact, told her that Bothwell much preferred his wife. She
clamoured to be placed in a ship with Bothwell, and allowed to drift at
the wind’s will.[206] Du Croc said to Lethington that he hoped the pair
would drift to France, ‘where the king would judge righteously, for the
unhappy facts are only too well proved.’ This is a very strong opinion
against Mary. Years later, when Lethington was holding Edinburgh Castle
for Mary, he told Craig that, after Carberry ‘I myself made the offer to
her that, if she would abandon my Lord Bothwell, she should have as
thankful obedience as ever she had since she came to Scotland. But no ways
would she consent to leave my Lord Bothwell.’[207] Lethington’s word is of
slight value.
To return to Nau, or to Mary speaking through Nau, on June 16 Lethington
did go to see her: ‘but in such shame and fear that he never dared to lift
his eyes to her face while he spoke with her.’ He showed great hatred of
Bothwell, and said that she could not be allowed to return to him: Mary,
marvelling at his ‘impudence,’ replied that she was ready to join in the
pursuit of Darnley’s murderers: who had acted chiefly on Lethington’s
advice. She then told him plainly that he, Morton, and Balfour had chiefly
prevented inquiry into the murder. _They_ were the culprits, as Bothwell
had told her, showing her the signatures to the murder band, when parting
from her at Carberry. She reminded Lethington that she had saved his life.
If Lethington persecuted her, she would tell what she knew of him. He
replied, angrily, that she would drive him to extremities to save his own
life, whereas, if matters were allowed to grow quiet, he might one day be
of service to her. If he were kept talking, and so incurred the suspicion
of the Lords, her life would be in peril. To ‘hedge,’ Lethington used to
encourage Mary, when she was in Loch Leven. But he had, then, no
‘assurance’ from her, and, on a false alarm of her escape, mounted his
horse to fly from Edinburgh.[208] Thus greatly do the stories of Mary and
of Lethington differ, concerning their interview after Carberry. Perhaps
Mary is the more trustworthy.
On June 17, 1567, John Beaton wrote to his brother, Mary’s ambassador in
Paris. He says that no man was allowed to speak to Mary on June 16, but
that, in the evening, she asked a girl to speak to Lethington, and pray
him to have compassion on her, ‘and not to show himself so extremely
opposed to her as he does.’[209] Beaton’s evidence, being written the day
after the occurrences, is excellent, and leaves us to believe that, in the
darkest of her dark hours in Scotland, insulted by the populace, with
guards placed in her chamber, destitute of all earthly aid, Mary found in
extreme opposition to her the man who owed to her his lands and his life.
And why was Lethington thus ‘extremely opposed’? First, Mary, if free,
would join Bothwell, his deadly foe. Secondly, he knew from her own lips
that Mary knew his share in Darnley’s murder, and had proof. While she
lived, the sword hung over Lethington. He, therefore, insisted on her
imprisonment in a place whence escape should have been impossible. He is
even said to have advised that she should be secretly strangled. Years
later, when time had brought in his revenges, and Lethington and Kirkcaldy
were holding the Castle for Mary, her last hope, Lethington explained his
change of sides in a letter to his opponent, Morton. Does Morton hate him
because he has returned to the party of the Queen? He had advised Morton
to take the same course, ‘being assured that, with time, she would recover
her liberty (as yet I have no doubt but she will). I deemed it neither
wisdom for him nor me to deserve particular ill will at her hands.’ This
was a frank enough explanation of his own change of factions. If ever Mary
came to her own, Lethington dreaded her feud. We shall see that as soon as
she was imprisoned, Lethington affected to be her secret ally. Morton
replied that ‘it was vain in Lethington to think that he could deserve
more particular evil will at Mary’s hands than he had deserved
already.’[210]
Lethington could not be deeper in guilt towards Mary than he was, despite
his appearance of friendship. The ‘evil will’ which he had incurred was
‘particular,’ and could not be made worse. In the same revolution of
factions (1570-73) Randolph also wrote to Lethington and Kirkcaldy asking
them why they had deserted their old allies, Morton and the rest, for the
Queen’s party. ‘You yourselves wrote against her, and were the chiefest
causes of her apprehension, and imprisonment’ (at Loch Leven), ‘and
dimission of her crown.... So that you two were her chiefest occasion of
all the calamities, _as she hath said_, that she is fallen into. You, Lord
of Lethington, _by your persuasion and counsel to apprehend her, to
imprison her, yea, to have taken presently the life from her_.’[211] To
this we shall return.
When we add to this testimony Mary’s hatred of Lethington, revealed in
Nau’s MS., a hatred which his death could not abate, though he died in her
service, we begin to understand. Sir James Melville and Throckmorton were
(as we shall see) deluded by the ‘dulce manner’ of Lethington. But, in
truth, he was Mary’s worst enemy, till his bolt was shot, while hers
remained in her hands. Then Lethington, in 1569, went over to her party,
as a charge of Darnley’s murder, urged by his old partisans, was hanging
over his head.
Meanwhile, after Mary’s surrender at Carberry, the counsel of Lethington
prevailed. She was hurried to Loch Leven, after two dreadful days of tears
and frenzied threats and entreaties, and was locked up in the Castle on
the little isle, the Castle of her ancestral enemies, the Douglases. There
she awaited her doom, ‘the fiery death.’
IX
_THE EMERGENCE OF THE CASKET LETTERS_
I. First hints of the existence of the letters
The Lords, as we have seen, nominally rose in arms to punish Bothwell
(whom they had acquitted), to protect their infant Prince, and to rescue
Mary, whom they represented as Bothwell’s reluctant captive. Yet their
first success, at Carberry Hill, induced them, not to make Bothwell
prisoner, but to give him facilities of escape. Their second proceeding
was, not to release Mary, but to expose her to the insults of the
populace, and then to immure her, destitute and desperate, in the island
fortress of the Douglases.
These contradictions between their conduct and their avowed intentions
needed excuse. They could not say, ‘We let Bothwell escape because he knew
too much about ourselves: we imprisoned the Queen for the same good
reason.’ They had to protect themselves, first against Elizabeth, who
bitterly resented the idea that subjects might judge princes: next,
against the possible anger of the rulers of France and Spain; next,
against the pity of the mobile populace. There was also a chance that
Moray, who was hastening home from France, might espouse his sister’s
cause, as, indeed, at this moment he professed to do. Finally, in the
changes of things, Mary, or her son, might recover power, and exact
vengeance for the treasonable imprisonment of a Queen.
The Lords, therefore, first excused themselves (as in Lethington’s
discourses with du Croc) by alleging that Mary refused to abandon
Bothwell. This was, no doubt, true, though we cannot accept Lethington’s
word for the details of her passionate behaviour. Her defenders can fall
back on the report of Drury, that she was at this time with child, as she
herself informed Throckmorton, while Nau declares that, in Loch Leven, she
prematurely gave birth to twins. Mary always had a plausible and possible
excuse: in this case she could not dissolve her marriage with Bothwell
without destroying the legitimacy of her expected offspring. Later, in
1569, when she wished her marriage with Bothwell to be annulled, the Lords
refused assent. In the present juncture, of June, 1567, with their Queen a
captive in their hands, the Lords needed some better excuse than her
obstinate adherence to the husband whom they had selected for her. They
needed a reason for their conduct that would have a retro-active effect:
namely, positive proof of her guilt of murder.
No sooner was the proof wanted than it was found. Mary was imprisoned on
June 16: her guilty letters to Bothwell, the Casket Letters, with their
instigations to Darnley’s murder and her own abduction, were secured on
June 20, and were inspected, and entrusted to Morton’s keeping, on June
21. To Morton’s declaration about the discovery and inspection of the
Casket and Letters, we return in chronological order: it was made in
December, 1568, before the English Commissioners who examined Mary’s case.
The Lords were now, with these letters to justify them, in a relatively
secure position. They could, and did, play off France against England:
both of these countries were anxious to secure the person of the baby
Prince, both were obliged to treat with the Lords who had the alliance of
Scotland to bestow. Elizabeth wavered between her desire, as a Queen, to
help a sister Queen, and her anxiety not to break with the dominant
Scottish party. The Lords had hanged a retainer of Bothwell, Blackader,
taken after Carberry, who denied his guilt, and against whom nothing was
proved: but he had a Lennox jury. Two other underlings of Bothwell, his
porter Powrie and his ‘chamber-child’ Dalgleish, were taken and examined,
but their depositions, as reported by the Lords themselves, neither
implicated Mary, nor threw any light on the date at which the idea of an
explosion was conceived. It was then believed to have been projected
before Mary went to bring Darnley from Glasgow. This opinion reflected
itself in what was conceivably the earlier forged draft, never publicly
produced, of the long ‘Glasgow Letter’ (II.) Later information may have
caused that long letter to be modified into its present shape, or, as
probably, induced the Lords to fall back on a partly genuine letter, our
Letter II.
The Lords did by no means make public use, at first, of the Letters which
they had found, and were possibly garbling. We shall later make it clear,
it is a new point, that, on the very day of the reading, the Lords sent
Robert Melville post haste to Elizabeth, doubtless with verbal information
about their discovery. Leaving Edinburgh on June 21, the day of the
discovery, Melville was in London on June 23 or 24, dispatched his
business, and was in Berwick again on June 28. He carried letters for
Moray in France, but, for some reason, perhaps because the letters were
delayed or intercepted, Moray had to be summoned again. Meanwhile the
Lords, otherwise, kept their own counsel.[212] For reasons of policy they
let their good fortune ooze out by degrees.
On June 25, Drury, writing from Berwick, reports that ‘the Queen has had a
_box_,’ containing papers about her intrigues with France. ‘It is
promised Drury to have his part of it.’ This rumour of a ‘box’ _may_ refer
to the capture of the Casket.[213] On June 29, Drury again wrote about the
‘box,’ and the MSS. in it, ‘part in cipher deciphered.’ Whether this ‘box’
was the Casket, a false account of its contents being given to Drury, is
uncertain. We hear no more of it, nor of any of Mary’s own papers and
letters to her: no letters to her from Bothwell are reported.
The earliest known decided reference to the Letters is that of the Spanish
Ambassador, de Silva, writing from London on July 12, 1567. He says that
du Croc, the French Ambassador to Mary, has passed through town on his
return from Scotland. The French Ambassador in London, La Forest, reports
to de Silva that Mary’s ‘adversaries assert positively that they know she
had been concerned in the murder of her husband, which was proved by
letters under her own hand, copies of which were in his [whose?]
possession.’[214] Major Martin Hume writes, in his Preface to the
Calendar, ‘The many arguments against their genuineness, founded upon the
long delay in their production, thus disappear.’
It does not necessarily follow, however, that the letters of which du Croc
probably carried copies (unless La Forest merely bragged falsely, to vex
his Spanish fellow diplomatist) were either wholly genuine, or were
identical with the letters later produced. It is by no means certain that
Lethington and Sir James Balfour had not access, before June 21, to the
Casket, which was in Balfour’s keeping, within Edinburgh Castle. Randolph
later wrote (as we have already seen) that the pair had opened a little
‘coffer,’ with a green cloth cover, and taken out the band (which the pair
had signed) for Darnley’s murder.[215] Whether the Casket was thus early
tampered with is uncertain. But, as to du Croc’s copies of the Letters,
the strong point, for the accusers, is, that, when the Letters were
published, in Scots, Latin, and French, four years later, we do not hear
that any holders of du Croc’s copies made any stir, or alleged that the
copies did not tally with those now printed, in 1571-1573, by Mary’s
enemies. This point must be kept steadily in mind, as it is perhaps the
chief objection to the theory which we are about to offer. But, on
November 29, 1568, when Mary’s accusers were gathered in London to attack
her at the Westminster Conference, La Forest’s successor, La Mothe
Fénelon, writes to Charles IX. that they pretend to possess incriminating
letters ‘_escriptes et signées de sa main_;’ written and _signed_ by her
hand. Our _copies_ are certainly not signed, which, in itself, proves
little or nothing, but Mary’s contemporary defenders, Lesley and
Blackwood, urge that there was not even a pretence that the Letters were
signed, and this plea of theirs was not answered.
My point, however, is that though La Forest, according to de Silva, had
copies in July 1567, his successor at the English Court, doubtless well
instructed, knows nothing about them, as far as his despatch shows. But he
does say that the accusers are in search of evidence to prove the Letters
authentic, not forged.[216] He says (November 28) to Catherine de’ Medici,
that he thinks the proofs of Mary’s accusers ‘very slender and extremely
impertinent,’ and he has been consulted by Mary’s Commissioners.[217]
Of course it is possible that La Mothe Fénelon was not made acquainted
with what his predecessor, La Forest, knew: but this course of
secretiveness would not have been judicious. For the rest, the Court of
France was not in the habit of replying to pamphlets, like that which
contained copies of the Letters. It is unlikely that the copies given to
La Forest were destroyed, but we have no hint or trace of them in France.
Conceivably even if they differed (as we are to argue that they perhaps
did) from the Letters later produced, the differences, though proof of
tampering, did not redound to Mary’s glory. At the time when France was
negotiating Alençon’s marriage with Elizabeth, and a Franco-English
alliance (January-July, 1572), in a wild maze of international, personal,
and religious intrigue, while Catherine de’ Medici was wavering between
massacre of the Huguenots and alliance with them, it is far from
inconceivable that La Forest’s copies of the Letters were either
overlooked, or not critically and studiously compared with the copies now
published. To vex Elizabeth by criticism of two sets of copies of Letters
was certainly not then the obvious policy of France: though the published
Letters were thrust on the French statesmen.
The letters of La Mothe Fénelon, and of Charles IX., on the subject of
Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’ contain no hint that they thought the Letters,
therein published, spurious. They only resent their publication against a
crowned Queen.[218] The reader, then, must decide for himself whether La
Forest’s copies, if extant, were likely to be critically scanned and
compared with the published Letters, in 1571, or in the imbroglio of 1572;
and whether it is likely that, if this was done, and if the two copies did
not tally, French statesmen thought that, in the circumstances, when
Elizabeth was to be propitiated, and the Huguenots were not to be
offended, it was worth while to raise a critical question. If any one
thinks that this course of conduct--the critical comparison of La Forest’s
copies with the published copies, and the remonstrance founded on any
discrepancies detected--was the natural inevitable course of French
statecraft, at the juncture--then he must discredit my hypothesis. For my
hypothesis is, that the Letters extant in June and July, 1567, were not
wholly identical with the Letters produced in December, 1568, and later
published. It is hazarded without much confidence, but certain
circumstances suggest that it may possibly be correct.
To return to the management of the Letters in June-July, 1567. The Lords,
Mary’s enemies, while perpetually protesting their extreme reluctance to
publish Letters to Mary’s discredit, had now sent the rumour of them all
through Europe. Spain, and de Silva, were at that time far from friendly
to Mary. On July 21, 1567, de Silva writes: ‘I mentioned to the Queen
[Elizabeth] that I had been told that the Lords held certain letters
proving that the Queen [Mary] had been cognisant of the murder of her
husband.’ (The Letters, if they prove anything, prove more than that.)
‘She told me it was not true, _although Lethington had acted badly in the
matter_, and if she saw him she would say something that would not be at
all to his taste.’ Thus Elizabeth had heard the story about Letters (from
Robert Melville, as we indicate later?) and--what had she heard about
Lethington?[219] On June 21, the very day of the first inspection of the
Letters, Lethington had written to Cecil.[220] On June 28, Lethington
tells Cecil that, by Robert Melville’s letters, he understands Cecil’s
‘good acceptance of these noblemen’s quarrel’ for punishment of Darnley’s
murder and preservation of the Prince, ‘and her Majesty’s’ (Elizabeth’s)
‘gentle answer by Cecil’s furtherance.’[221] Yet, to de Silva, Elizabeth
presently denounced the ill behaviour of Lethington in the matter, and,
appearing to desire Mary’s safety, she sent Throckmorton to act in her
cause. To the Lords and Lethington, by Robert Melville, she sent a gentle
answer: Melville acting for the Lords. To Mary she averred (June 30) that
Melville ‘used much earnest speech on your behalf’ (probably accusing
Lethington of fraud as to the Letters), ‘yet such is the general report of
you to the contrary ... that we could not be satisfied by him.’[222]
Melville, we must remember, was acting for the Lords, but he is described
as ‘heart and soul Mary’s.’ He carried the Lords’ verbal report of the
Letters--but he also discredited it, blaming Lethington. Why did he not do
so publicly? At the time it was unsafe: later he and Lethington were
allies in the last stand of Mary’s party.
We do not know how much Elizabeth knew, or had been told; or how much she
believed, or what she meant, by her denunciation of Lethington, as regards
his conduct in the affair of the Letters. But we do know that, on June 30,
the Lords gave the lie, as in later proclamations they repeatedly did, to
their own story that they had learned the whole secret of Mary’s guilt on
June 21. On June 30, they issued, under Mary’s name, and under her signet,
a summons against Bothwell, for Darnley’s murder, and ‘for taking the
Queen’s most noble person by force to her Castle of Dunbar, detaining her,
_and for fear of her life making her promise to marry him_.’[223] The
Lords of Council in Edinburgh, at this time, were Morton (confessedly
privy to the murder, and confessedly banded with Bothwell to enable him to
marry Mary), Lethington, a signer of the band for Darnley’s murder;
Balfour, who knew all; Atholl, Home, James Makgill, and the Justice Clerk,
Bellenden--who had been in trouble for Riccio’s murder.[224] The same men,
several guilty, were spreading _privately_ the rumour of Mary’s wicked
Letters: and, at the same hour, were _publicly_ absolving her, in their
summons to Bothwell. As late as July 14, they spoke to Throckmorton of
Mary, ‘with respect and reverence,’ while alleging that ‘for the Lord
Bothwell she would leave her kingdom and dignity to live as a simple
damsel with him.’ Who can believe one word that such men spoke?
They assured Throckmorton that du Croc ‘carried with him matter little to
the Queen’s’ (Mary’s) ‘advantage:’ possibly, though not certainly, an
allusion to his copies of the Letters of her whom they spoke of ‘with
respect and reverence,’ and promised ‘to restore to her estate’--if she
would abandon Bothwell.[225]
‘I never saw greater confusion among men,’ says Throckmorton, ‘for often
they change their opinions.’ They were engaged in ‘continual preaching and
common prayer.’ On July 21, they assured Elizabeth that Mary was forced to
be Bothwell’s wife ‘by fear and other unlawful means,’ and that he kept
his former wife in his house, and would not have allowed Mary to live with
him for half a year. Yet Mary was so infatuated that, after her surrender,
‘he offered to give up realm and all, so she might enjoy him.’ This
formula, we shall see later, the Lords placed thrice in Mary’s mouth,
first in a reported letter of January, 1567 (never produced), next in a
letter of Kirkcaldy to Cecil (April 20), and now (July 21).[226]
At this time of Throckmorton’s mission, Lethington posed to him thus. ‘Do
you not see that it does not lie in my power to do that I would fainest
do, which is to save the Queen, my mistress, in estate, person, and in
honour?’ He declared that the preachers, the populace, and the chief
nobles wished to take Mary’s life.[227] Lethington thus drove his bargain
with Throckmorton. ‘If Elizabeth interferes,’ he said in sum, ‘Mary dies,
despite my poor efforts, and Elizabeth loses the Scottish Alliance.’ But
Throckmorton believed that Lethington really laboured to secure Mary’s
life and honour. His true object was to keep her immured. Randolph, as we
saw, accuses him to his face of advising Mary’s execution, or
assassination. By his present course with Throckmorton he kept Elizabeth’s
favour: he gave himself out as Mary’s friend.
The Lords at last made up their minds. On July 25, Lindsay was sent to
Loch Leven to extort Mary’s abdication, consent to the coronation of her
son, and appointment of Moray, or failing him, other nobles, to the
Regency. ‘If they cannot by fair means induce the Queen to their purpose,
they mean to charge her with tyranny for breach of those statutes which
were enacted in her absence. Secondly they mean to charge her with
incontinence with Bothwell, and others. Thirdly, they mean to charge her
with the murder of her husband, _whereof they say they have proof by the
testimony of her own handwriting_, which they have recovered, as also by
sufficient _witnesses_.’ The witnesses were dropped. Probably they were
ready to swear that Mary was at the murder in male costume, as in a legend
of the Lennox Papers! Lethington brought this news to Throckmorton between
ten and eleven at night.[228] It was the friendly Lethington who told
Throckmorton about the guilty Letters.
The Lords had, at last, decided to make use of the Letters attributed to
Mary, and of the ‘witnesses,’ and by these, or other modes of coercion,
they extorted her assent (valueless, so Throckmorton and Robert Melville
let her know, because she was a prisoner) to their proposals.[229] Despite
their knowledge of the Letters, the Lords, in proclamations, continued to
aver that Bothwell had ravished her by fear, force, and other unlawful
means, the very means of coercing Mary which they themselves were
employing. The brutality, hypocrisy, and low vacillating cunning of the
Lords, must not blind us to the fact that they certainly, since late in
June, held new cards, genuine or packed.
It is undeniable that the first notices of the Letters, by de Silva, prove
that the Lords, about the date assigned by Morton, did actually possess
themselves of useful documents. Their vacillations as to how and when they
would play these cards are easily explained. Their first care was to
prejudice the Courts of France, Spain, and Elizabeth against Mary by
circulating the tale of their discovery. If they had published the papers
at once, they might then have proceeded to try and to execute, perhaps (as
the Highland seeress predicted) to _burn_ Mary. The preachers urged them
to severity, but some of them were too politic to proceed to extremes,
which might bring in Elizabeth and France as avengers. But, if Mary was to
be spared in life, to publish the Letters at once would ruin their value
as an ‘awe-bond.’ They could only be used as a means of coercing Mary,
while they were unknown to the world at large. If the worst was known,
Mary would face it boldly. Only while the worst was not generally known
could the Letters be used to ‘blackmail’ her. Whether the Letters were, in
fact, employed to extort Mary’s abdication is uncertain. She was advised,
as we said, by Throckmorton and Robert Melville, that her signature, while
a captive, was legally invalid, so she signed the deeds of abdication,
regency, and permission to crown her son. For the moment, till Moray
arrived, and a Parliament was held, the Lords needed no more. Throckmorton
believed that he had saved Mary’s life: and Robert Melville plainly told
Elizabeth so.[230]
Thus it is clear that the Lords held documents, genuine, or forged, or in
part authentic, in part falsified. Their evasive use of the papers, their
self-contradictions in their proclamations, do not disprove this fact. But
were the documents those which they finally published? This question, on
which we may have new light to throw, demands a separate investigation.
X
_THE CASKET LETTERS_
II. A POSSIBLY FORGED LETTER
Were the documents in the possession of the Lords, after June 21, those
which they later exhibited before Elizabeth’s Commissioners at Westminster
(December, 1568)? Here we reach perhaps the most critical point in the
whole inquiry. A Letter to Bothwell, attributed to Mary, was apparently in
the hands of the Lords (1567-1568), a Letter which was highly
compromising, _but never was publicly produced_. We first hear of this
Letter by a report of Moray to de Silva, repeated by de Silva to Philip of
Spain (July, 1567).
Before going further we must examine Moray’s probable sources of
information as to Mary’s correspondence. From April 7, to the beginning of
July, he had been out of Scotland: first in England; later on the
Continent. As early as May 8, Kirkcaldy desired Bedford to forward a
letter to Moray, bidding him come to Normandy, in readiness to return,
(and aid the Lords,) now banding against Bothwell.[231] ‘He will haste
him after he has seen it.’ Moray did not ‘haste him,’ his hour had not
come. He was, however, in touch with his party. On July 8, a fortnight
after the discovery of the Casket, Robert Melville, at ‘Kernye’ in Fife,
sends ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Cecil. John is to go on to Moray, and
(Lethington adds, on July 9) a packet of letters for Moray is to be
forwarded ‘with the greatest diligence that may be.’ Melville says, as to
‘Jhone a Forret’ (whom Cecil, in his endorsement, calls ‘Jhon of
Forrest’), ‘Credit the bearer, who knows all occurrents.’ Can ‘Jhone a
Forret’ be a cant punning name for John Wood, sometimes called ‘John a
Wood,’ by the English, a man whom Cecil knew as Moray’s secretary? John
Wood was a Fifeshire man, a son of Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, and from Fife
Melville was writing. Jhone a Forret is, at all events, a bearer whom, as
he ‘knows all occurents,’ Cecil is to credit.[232] This Wood is the very
centre of the secret dealings of Mary’s enemies, of the Lords, and Lennox.
Cecil, Elizabeth, and Leicester are asked to ‘credit’ him, later, as Cecil
‘credited’ ‘Jhone a Forret.’
Up to this date (July 8) when letters were sent by the Lords to Moray, he
was, or feigned to be, friendly to his sister. On that day a messenger of
his, from France, was with Elizabeth, who told Cecil that Moray was vexed
by Mary’s captivity in Loch Leven, and that he would be ‘her true servant
in all fortunes.’ He was sending letters to Mary, which the Lords were
not to see.[233] His messenger was Nicholas Elphinstone, who was not
allowed to give Mary his letters.[234] After receiving the letters sent to
him from Scotland on July 8, Moray turned his back on his promises of
service to Mary. But, before he received these letters, Archbishop Beaton
had told Alava that Moray was his sister’s mortal enemy and by him
mistrusted.[235] Moray’s professions to Elizabeth may have been a blind,
but his letters for Mary’s private eye have a more genuine air.
Moray arrived in England on July 23.
About July 22, Mary’s confessor, Roche Mameret, a Dominican, had come to
London. He was much grieved, he said to de Silva, by Mary’s marriage with
Bothwell, which, as he had told her, was illegal. ‘He swore to me solemnly
that, till the question of the marriage with Bothwell was raised, he never
saw a woman of greater virtue, courage, and uprightness....’ Apparently he
knew nothing of the guilty loves, and the Exchequer House scandal. ‘She
swore to him that she had contracted the marriage’ with the object of
settling religion by that means, though Bothwell was so stout a Protestant
that he had twice married Catholic brides by Protestant rites! ‘As
regarded the King’s murder, her confessor has told me’ (de Silva) ‘that
she had no knowledge whatever of it.’ Now de Silva imparted this fact to
Moray, when he visited London, as we saw, in the end of July, 1567, and
after Moray had seen Elizabeth. He gave de Silva the impression that
‘although he always returned to his desire to help the Queen, this is not
altogether his intention.’ Finally, Moray told de Silva ‘something that he
had not even told this Queen, although she had given him many remote hints
upon the subject.’ The secret was that Mary had been cognisant of
Darnley’s murder. ‘This had been proved beyond doubt by a letter which the
Queen had written to Bothwell, containing more than three double sheets
(_pliegos_) of paper, written with her own hand and _signed_ with her
name; in which she says in substance that he is not to delay putting into
execution that which he had been ordered (_tenia ordenado_), because her
husband used such fair words to deceive her, and bring her to his will,
that she might be moved by them if the other thing were not done quickly.
She said that she herself would go and fetch him [Darnley], and would stop
at a house on the road where she would try to give him a draught; but if
this could not be done, she would put him in the house _where the
explosion was arranged for the night upon which one of her servants was to
be married_. He, Bothwell, was to try to get rid of his wife either by
putting her away or poisoning her, since he knew that she, the Queen, had
risked all for him, her honour, her kingdom, her wealth, _which she had in
France_, and her God; contenting herself with his person alone.... Moray
said he had heard of this letter from a man who had read it....’[236]
As to ‘hearing of’ this epistle, the reader may judge whether, when the
Lords sent ‘Jhone a Forret’ (probably John Wood) to Moray, and also sent a
packet of letters, they did not enclose copies of the Casket Letters as
they then existed. Is it probable that they put Moray off with the mere
hearsay of Jhone a Forret, who ‘knows all occurrents’? If so, Jhone, and
Moray, and de Silva, as we shall prove, had wonderfully good verbal
memories, like Chicot when he carried in his head the Latin letter of
Henri III. to Henri of Navarre.
Mr. Froude first quoted de Silva’s report of Moray’s report of this
bloodthirsty letter of Mary’s: and declared that Moray described
accurately the long Glasgow Letter (Letter II.).[237] But Moray, as Mr.
Hosack proved, described a letter totally and essentially different from
Letter II. That epistle, unlike the one described by Moray, is _not_
signed. We could not with certainty infer this from the want of signatures
to our copies; their absence might be due to a common custom by which
copyists did not add the writer’s signature, when the letter was otherwise
described. But Mary’s defenders, Lesley and Blackwood, publicly complained
of the absence of signatures, and were not answered. This point is not
very important, but in the actual Casket Letter II. Mary does not say, as
in Moray’s account, that there is danger of Darnley’s ‘bringing her round
to his will.’ She says the reverse, ‘The place will hold,’ and, therefore,
she does not, as in Moray’s report, indicate the consequent need of hurry.
She does not say that ‘she herself will go and fetch him;’ she was there
already: this must be an error of reporting. She does not speak of ‘giving
him a draught’ in a house on the road. She says nothing of a house where
‘the explosion was arranged.’ No explosion had been arranged, though some
of the earlier indictments drawn up by Lennox for the prosecution declare
that this was the case: ‘The place was already prepared with [undermining
and] trains of powder therein.’[238] This, however, was the early theory,
later abandoned, and it occurs in a Lennox document which contains a
letter of Darnley to the Queen, written three days before his death. The
Casket Letter II. says nothing about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell,
nor much, in detail, about Mary’s abandonment of her God, her wealth _in
France_, and her realm, for her lover. On the other hand she regards God
as on her side. In short, the letter described by Moray to de Silva agrees
in no one point with any of the Letters later produced and published:
except in certain points provocative of suspicion. Mr. Froude thought that
it did harmonise, but the opinion is untenable.
De Silva’s account, however, is only at third hand. He merely reports what
Moray told him that _he_ had heard, from ‘a man who had read the letter.’
We might therefore argue that the whole reference is to the long Casket
Letter II., but is distorted out of all knowledge by passing through three
mouths. This natural theory is no longer tenable.
In the Lennox Papers the writer, Lennox, breaks off in his account of
Darnley’s murder to say, ‘And before we proceed any further, I cannot omit
to declare and call to remembrance her Letter written to Bothwell from
Glasgow before her departure thence, together with such cruel and strange
words “unto” him, which he her husband should have better considered and
marked, but that “the” hope “he” had to win her “love” now did blind him;
together that it lieth not in the power of man to prevent that which the
suffering will of God determineth. The contents of her letter to the said
Bothwell was to let him understand that, although the flattering and sweet
words of him with whom she was then presently, the King her husband, has
almost overcome her, yet the remembering the great affection which she
bore unto him [Bothwell] there should no such sweet baits dissuade her, or
cool her said affection from him, but would continue therein, yea though
she should thereby abandon her God, put in adventure the loss of her dowry
in France, “hazard” such titles as she had to the crown of England, as
heir apparent thereof, and also the crown of the realm; wishing him then
present in her arms; therefore bid him go forward with all things,
according to their enterprize, and that the place and everything might be
finished as they had devised, against her coming to Edinburgh, which
should be shortly. And for the time of execution thereof she thought it
best to be the time of Bastian’s marriage, which indeed was the night of
the King her husband’s murder. She wrote also in her letter that the said
Bothwell should “in no wise fail” in the meantime to dispatch his wife,
and to give her the drink as they had devised before.’[239]
Except as regards the draught to be given to Darnley, in a house by the
way, and Mary’s promise ‘to go herself and fetch him,’ this report of the
letter closely tallies, not with Casket Letter II., but with what the man
who had read it told Moray, and with what Moray told de Silva. Did there
exist, then, such a compromising letter accepted by Moray’s informant, the
‘man who read the letter,’ and recorded by Lennox in a document containing
copy of a letter from Darnley to himself?
This appears a natural inference, but it is suggested to me that the brief
reports by Moray and Lennox are ‘after all not so very different’ from
Letter II. ‘If we postulate a Scots translation’ (used by Moray and
Lennox) ‘_with the allusions explained by a hostile hand in the margin_,
then those who professed to give a summary of its “more than three double
pages” in half a dozen lines’ (there are thirty-seven lines of Lennox’s
version in my hand, and Mary wrote large) ‘would easily take the striking
points, not from the Letter, though it was before their eyes, but from the
explanations; which were, of course, much more impressive than that
extraordinary congeries of inconsequences,’ our Letter II.
To this we reply that, in Moray’s and Lennox’s versions, we have
expansions and additions to the materials of Letter II. All the tale about
poisoning Darnley in a house on the way is not a hostile ‘explanation,’
but an addition. All the matter about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell
is not an explanation, but an addition. Marginal notes are brief
summaries, but if Moray and Lennox quoted marginal notes, these were so
expansive that they may have been longer than the Letter itself.
Take the case of what Mary, as described in the Letter, is to forfeit for
Bothwell’s sake. Lennox is in his catalogue of these goods more copious
than Moray: and Letter II., in place of these catalogues, merely says
‘honour, conscience, hazard, nor greatness.’ Could a marginal annotator
expand this into the talk about God, her French dowry, her various titles
and pretensions? Marginal notes always abbreviate: Moray and Lennox
expand; and they clearly, to my mind, cite a common text. Lennox has in
his autograph corrected this passage and others.
Moray’s and Lennox’s statements about the poisoning, about the divorce or
poisoning for Lady Bothwell, about Bastian (whose marriage Letter II.
mentions as a proof of Darnley’s knowledge of Mary’s affairs), about the
‘finishing and preparing of the place’ (Kirk o’ Field), about ‘the house
on the way,’--can all these be taken from marginal glosses, containing
mere gossip certainly erroneous? If so, never did men display greater
stupidity than Lennox and Moray. Where it was important to quote a letter,
both (according to the theory which has been suggested) neglect the Letter
and cite, not marginal abbreviations, but marginal _scholia_ containing
mere tattle. If Moray truly said that he had only ‘heard of the Letter
from a “man who had read it,”’ is it conceivable that the man merely cited
the marginal glosses to Moray, while Lennox also selected almost nothing
but the same glosses? But, of all impossibilities, the greatest is that
the author of the glosses expanded ‘honour, conscience, hazard, and
greatness’ (as in Letter II.) into the catalogue beginning with God, in
which Moray and Lennox abound. ‘Honour, conscience, hazard, and
greatness,’ explain themselves. They need no such long elaborate
explanation as the supposed scholiast adds on the margin. Where we do find
such contemporary marginal notes, as on the Lennox manuscript copy of the
Casket Sonnets, they are brief and simply explain allusions. Thus Sonnet
IV. has, in the Lennox MSS.,
‘un fascheux sot qu’elle aymoit cherement:’
_elle_ being Lady Bothwell.
The marginal note is ‘This is written of the Lord of Boyn, who was alleged
to be the first lover of the Earl of Bothwell’s wife.’[240] We must
remember that Lennox was preparing a formal indictment, when he reported
the same Letter as Moray talked of to de Silva; and that, when the Casket
Letters were produced, his discrepancies from Letter II. might perhaps be
noticed even in an uncritical age. He would not, therefore, quote the
_scholia_ and neglect the Letter.
The passage about Lady Bothwell’s poison or divorce is perhaps mirrored
in, or perhaps originated, Lesley’s legend that she was offered a writing
of divorce to sign, with a bowl of poison to drink if she refused. In
fact, she received a valuable consideration in land, which she held for
some forty years, as Countess of Sutherland.[241] Suppose that the
annotator recorded this gossip about the poisoning of Lady Bothwell on the
margin. Could a man like Moray be so foolish as to recite it _viva voce_
as part of the text of a letter?
Once more, the hypothetical marginal notes of explanation explain
nothing--to Moray and Lennox. They knew from the first about Bastian’s
marriage, and the explosion. The passage about poisoning Darnley ‘in a
house by the way’ does not explain, but contradicts, the passage in Letter
II., where Mary does not say that she is poisoning Darnley, but suggests
that Bothwell should find ‘a more secret way by medicine,’ later. Lennox
and Moray, again, of all people, did not need to be told, by an annotator,
what Mary’s possessions and pretensions were. Finally, the lines about
poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell are not a note explanatory of
anything that occurs in Letter II., nor even an annotator’s added piece of
information; for Lennox cites them, perhaps, from the Letter before him,
‘_She wrote also in her letter_, that the said Bothwell should in no wise
fail to give his wife the drink as they had devised’--The Mixture as
Before! Thus there seems no basis for the ingenious theory of
_marginalia_, supposed to have been cited, instead of the Letter, by
Lennox and Moray.
It has again been suggested to me, by a friend interested in the problem
of the Casket Letters, that Moray and Lennox are both reporting mere
gossip, reverberated rumours, in their descriptions of the mysterious
Letter. It is hinted that Lennox heard of the Letters, perhaps from
Buchanan, before Lennox left Scotland. In that case Lennox heard of the
Letters just two months before they were discovered. He left Scotland on
April 23, the Casket was opened on June 21. Buchanan certainly was not
Moray’s informant: Jhone a Forret carried the news.
As to the idea that Moray and Lennox both report a fortuitous congeries of
atoms of gossip, Moray and Lennox both (1) begin their description with
Mary’s warning that Darnley’s flatteries had almost overcome her.
(2) Both speak to the desirability of speedy performance, but Lennox does
not, like Moray, assign this need to the danger of Mary’s being won over.
(3) Moray does, and Lennox does not, say that Mary ‘will go and fetch’
Darnley, which cannot have been part of a letter purporting to be written
at Glasgow.
(4) Moray does, and Lennox does not, speak of poisoning Darnley on the
road. From a letter of three sheets no two persons will select absolutely
the same details.
(5) Moray and Lennox both give the same catalogue, Lennox at more length,
of all that Mary sacrifices for Bothwell.
(6) Both Moray and Lennox make Mary talk of the house where the explosion
is already arranged: at least Lennox talks of its being ‘prepared,’ which
may merely mean made inhabitable.
(7) Both make her say that the night of Bastian’s marriage will be a good
opportunity.
(8) Both make Mary advise Bothwell to poison his wife, Moray adding the
alternative that he may divorce her.
(9) Lennox does, and Moray does not, mention the phrase ‘wishing him then
in her arms,’ which occurs in Casket Letter II. The fact does not
strengthen the case for the authenticity of Letter II.
As to order of sequence in these nine items, they run,
1. Moray 1. Lennox 1.
2. Moray 2. Lennox 2.
3. Moray 3. (an error) Lennox 0.
4. Moray 4. Lennox 0.
5. Moray 8. = = Lennox 5.
6. Moray 6. Lennox 6.
7. Moray 7. Lennox 7.
8. Moray 5. = = Lennox 8.
9. Moray 0. Lennox 9.
Thus, in four out of nine items (Moray 3 being a mere error in reporting),
the sequence in Moray’s description is the same as the sequence in that of
Lennox. In one item Moray gives a fact not in Lennox. In one Lennox gives
a fact not in Moray. In the remaining items, Moray and Lennox give the
same facts, but that which is fifth in order with Lennox is eighth in
order with Moray.
Mathematicians may compute whether these coincidences are due to a mere
fortuitous concurrence of atoms of gossip, possessing a common basis in
the long Glasgow Letter II., and in the facts of the murder, and
accidentally shaken into the same form, and almost the same sequence, in
the minds of two different men, _at two different times_.
My faith in fortuitous coincidence is not so strong. Is it possible that
the report of Lennox and the report of Moray, both of them false, as far
as regards Letter II., or any letter ever produced, have a common source
in a letter at one time held by the Lords, but dropped by them?
The sceptic, however, will doubtless argue, ‘We do not know the date of
this discourse, in which Lennox describes a letter to very much the same
effect as Moray does. May not Lennox have met Moray, in or near London,
when Moray was there in July, 1567? May not Moray have told Lennox what he
told de Silva, and even more copiously? What he told was (by his account)
mere third-hand gossip, but perhaps Lennox received it from him as gospel,
and sat down at once, and elaborated a long “discourse,” in which he
recorded as fact Moray’s tattle. By this means de Silva and Lennox would
offer practically identical accounts of the long letter; accounts which,
indeed, correspond to no known Casket Letter, but err merely because
Moray’s information was hearsay, casual, and unevidential.’ ‘Why,’ my
inquirer goes on, ‘do you speak of Lennox and Moray giving their
descriptions of the Letter _at two different times_?’
The answer to the last question may partly be put in the form of another
question. Why should Lennox be making a long indictment, of seven folio
pages, against Mary, in July, 1567, when Moray was passing through town on
his way from France to Scotland? Mary was then a prisoner in Loch Leven.
Lennox, though in poverty, was, on July 16, 1567, accepted as a
Joint-Regent by Mary, if Moray did not become Regent, alone.[242] On July
29, 1567, James VI. was crowned, a yearling King, and it was decided that
if Moray, who had not yet arrived in Scotland, refused to be Regent alone,
Lennox should be joined with him and others on a Commission of
Regency.[243] Moray, of course, did not refuse power, nor did Lennox go to
Scotland. But, even if Lennox had really been made a co-Regent when Moray
held his conversation about the Letter with de Silva, he would have had,
at that moment, no need to draw up his ‘discourse’ against Mary. The Lords
had subdued her, had extorted her abdication, and did not proceed to
accuse their prisoner. Again, even if they had meant to try her at this
time, that would not explain Lennox’s supposed conduct in then drawing up
against her an indictment, including the gossip about her Letter, which
(on the hypothesis) he had, at that hour, obtained from Moray, in London.
This can easily be proved: thus. The document in which Lennox describes
the Letter was never meant for a _Scottish_ court of justice. It is
carefully made out _in English_, by an English scribe, and is elaborately
corrected in Lennox’s hand, as a man corrects a proof-sheet. Consequently,
this early ‘discourse’ of Lennox’s, with its description of the murderous
letter, never produced, was meant, not for a Scottish, but for an English
Court, or meeting of Commissioners. None such could be held while Mary was
a prisoner in Scotland: and no English indictment could then be made by
Lennox. He must have expected the letter he quoted to be produced: which
never was done.
Therefore Lennox did not weave this discourse, and describe the mysterious
Letter, while Moray was giving de Silva a similar description, at London,
in July, 1567. Not till Mary fled into England, nearly a year later, May
15, 1568, not till it was determined to hold an inquiry in England (about
June 30, 1568), could Lennox construct an indictment in English, to go
before English Commissioners. Consequently his description of the letter
was not written at the same time (July, 1567) as Moray described the
epistle to de Silva. The exact date when Lennox drew up his first
Indictment, including his description of the Letter described by Moray, is
unknown. But it contains curious examples of ‘the sayings and reports’ of
Mary’s own _suite_, as to words spoken by her in their own ears. Therefore
it would seem to have been written _after_ June 11, 1568, when Lennox
wrote to Scotland, asking his chief clansmen to collect ‘the sayings of
her servants and their reports.’[244] Again, as late as August 25, 1568,
Lennox had not yet received permission from Elizabeth to go to the meeting
of the Commission of Inquiry which it was then intended to hold at
Richmond. Elizabeth ‘flatly denied him,’ though later she assented.[245]
Thus Lennox’s composition of this indictment with its account of the
mysterious epistle, may be provisionally dated between, say, July 1 (when
he might have got a letter of information from Scotland in answer to his
request for information) and August 25, 1568.
But an opponent, anxious to make the date of Lennox’s knowledge of the
poisonous letter seem early, may say, ‘Probably Lennox, in July, 1567,
when Moray was in London, met him. Probably Moray told Lennox what he
would not tell Elizabeth. Probably Lennox then wrote down Moray’s
secondhand hearsay gossip about the letter, kept it, and, later, in 1568,
copied it into his discourse to go before English Commissioners. Moray’s
verbal report is his only source, and Moray’s was hearsay gossip. We have,
so far, no proof that the letter described by Lennox and Moray ever
existed.’
To this I reply that we know nothing of communication between Lennox and
Moray in July, 1567, but we do know when Lennox began to collect evidence
for the ‘discourse,’ in which this mysterious letter is cited. In June,
1568, Mary complained to Elizabeth that Lady Lennox was hounding Lennox on
to prosecute her. Mary had somehow got hold of letters of Wood and of Lady
Lennox.[246] We also infer that, when Lennox first took up his task, he
may have already seen Scots translations of the Casket Letters as they
then existed. We know too that he had now an adviser who should not have
allowed him to make a damaging error in his indictment, such as quoting a
non-existent letter. This adviser was John Wood. After Mary’s flight into
England (May 16, 1568) Moray had sent, on May 21, his agent, John Wood
(‘Jhone a Forret’?), to London, where he was dealing with Cecil on June 5,
1568.[247] Now Wood carried with him Scots translations of the Casket
Letters, as they then existed. This is certain, for, on June 22, Moray
sent to the English Council the information that Wood held these
translations, and Moray made the request that the ‘judges’ in the case
might see the Scots versions, and say whether, if the French originals
corresponded, they would be reckoned adequate proof of Mary’s guilt.[248]
The judges, that is the Commissioners who sat at York in October,
apparently did not, in June, see Wood’s copies: their amazement on seeing
them later, at York, is evidence to that. But Lennox, perhaps, did see the
Scots versions in Wood’s hands. On June 11, from Chiswick, as has been
said, Lennox wrote three letters to Scotland; one to Moray, one to his
retainers, the Lairds of Houstoun and Minto, men of his own clan; and one
to other retainers, Thomas Crawford, Robert Cunningham, and Stewart of
Periven. To Moray he said that of evidence against Mary ‘there is
sufficiency in her own hand-writ, _by the faith of her letters_, to
condemn her.’ But he also wanted to collect extraneous evidence, in
Scotland.
Here Lennox writes as one who has seen, or been told the contents of, the
Casket Letters on which he remarks. And well might he have seen them, for
his three despatches of June 11 are ‘all written on the same sheets, _and
in the same hand_,’ as two letters written and sent, on the following day,
by John Wood, from Greenwich, to Moray and Lethington. Thus Wood, or his
secretary, wrote out all five epistles.[249] Consequently Wood, who had
translations of the Casket Letters, was then with Lennox, and was likely
to be now and then with him, till the Conference at York in October. On
October 3, just before the Conference at York, Lady Lennox tells Cecil
that she means to speak to Mr. John Wood, if he is at Court, for he knows
who the murderers are.[250] And Wood carried to Lennox, at York, Lady
Lennox’s despatches.[251] Being allied with Wood, as the Chiswick and
Greenwich letters of June 11, 12, prove, and writing to Wood’s master,
Moray, about Mary’s Casket Letters, it is hardly probable that Lennox had
not been shown by Wood the Scots versions of the Casket Letters, then in
Wood’s custody. And when, about this date or later, Lennox composed the
long indictment against Mary, and quoted the letter already cited by
Moray, it is hardly credible that he described the long poisonous document
from mere hearsay, caught from Moray in the previous year. It is at least
as likely, if not much more so, that his description of the long letter
was derived from a translation of the letter itself, as it then existed in
the hands of Wood. Is it probable that Wood (who was known to have in his
custody the Letters to which Lennox refers, in his epistle to Moray of
June 11) could withhold them from the father of the murdered Darnley, a
noble who had been selected by the Lords as a co-Regent with Moray, and
who was, like himself, a correspondent of Moray and an eager prosecutor of
the Queen? If then Wood did in June, 1568, show to Lennox the Casket
Letters as they then existed, when Lennox presently described the long
murderous letter, he described what he had seen, namely a _pièce de
conviction_ which was finally suppressed. And that it was later than his
meeting with Wood, on June 11, 1568, that Lennox prepared his elaborate
discourse, is obvious, for what reason had he to compose an indictment
before, in June or later, it became clear that Mary’s case would be tried
in England?
Not till June 8 did Elizabeth send to Moray, bidding him ‘impart to her
plainly all that which shall be meet to inform her of the truth for their
defence in such weighty crimes’ as their rebellion against Mary.[252]
Mary, Elizabeth declared, ‘is content to commit the ordering of our case
to her,’ and Moray has consented, through Wood, ‘to declare to us your
whole doings.’ Elizabeth therefore asks for Moray’s evidence against Mary.
From that date, June 8, the negotiations for some kind of trial of Mary
went on till October, 1568. In that period, Lennox must have written the
discourse in which he cites the false letter, and in that period he had
the aid of Wood, in whose hands the Scots translations were.
The inference that Lennox borrowed his description of a long poisonous
epistle from a forged letter, a very long letter, then in Wood’s custody
with the rest, and occupying the place later taken by Letter II., is
natural, and not illogical, but rather is in congruence with the relations
between Wood and Lennox. The letter described had points in common with
Letter II. (as when Mary wishes Bothwell in her arms) and with the Casket
Sonnets. It certainly was not a genuine document, and certainly raises a
strong presumption that fraud was being attempted by Mary’s enemies. But
we need not, for that reason, infer that Letter II. is a forgery. It may
be genuine, and may have been in the hands of Mary’s enemies. Yet they may
have tried to improve upon it and make it more explicit, putting forward
to that end the epistle quoted by Lennox and Moray. If so they later fell
back on Letter II., possibly garbled it, and suppressed their first
version.
Lennox, as we shall see, did not rest on his earlier form of the
indictment, with its description of Mary’s letter about poisoning Darnley
and Lady Bothwell, which he originally drew up, say in July-August, 1568.
In his letters from Chiswick he asked for all sorts of evidence from
Scotland. He got it, and, then, dropping his first indictment (which
contained only parts of such matter), he composed a second. That second
document was perhaps still unfinished, or imperfect, just before the
meeting of Commissioners at York (October 6, 1568).
That the second indictment, about October 1, 1568, was still in the
making, I at first inferred from the following passage which occurs in a
set of pieces of evidence collected for Lennox, but without date. ‘Ferder
your h. sall have advertisement of, as I can find, but it is gude that
this mater’ (Lennox’s construction of a new indictment) ‘be not endit
quile’ (until) ‘your h. _may haif copie of the letter_, quhilk I sall haif
at _York_, so sone as I may haif a traist berar’ (a trusty bearer to carry
the copy to Lennox). So I read the letter, but Father Pollen, no doubt
correctly, in place of ‘York’ reads ‘your h.;’ that is, ‘Your Honour,’ a
common phrase. The date yielded by ‘York’ therefore vanishes. We can,
therefore, only infer that this correspondent, writing not to Lennox, it
appears, but to some one, Wood perhaps, engaged in getting up the case,
while sending him information for his indictment, advises that it be not
finished till receipt of a copy of a certain letter, which is to be sent
by a trusty bearer. It may be our Letter II. We can have no certainty. In
his new indictment, substituted for his former discourse, Letter II. is
the only one to which Lennox makes distinct allusion.
He now omits the useful citations of the mysterious epistle which he had
previously used; and, instead, quotes Letter II. The old passages cited
were more than good enough for Lennox’s purpose, but they are no longer
employed by him. There can be no doubt as to which of his discourses is
the earlier and which the later. That containing the report of Mary’s
letter which agrees with Moray’s report to de Silva, lacks the numerous
details about Hiegait, Crawford, Mary’s taunts to Darnley, their quarrel
at Stirling, and so forth, and we know that, on June 11, 1568, Lennox had
sent to Scotland asking for all these particulars. They all duly appear in
the second discourse which contains reference to Letter II. They are all
absent from the discourse which contains the letter about the scheme for
poisoning Darnley and Lady Bothwell. Therefore that indictment is the
earlier: written on evidence of Darnley’s servants, and from ‘the sayings
and reports’ of Mary’s servants.
For what reason should Lennox drop the citations from the poisonous
letter, which he quoted in his earlier discourse, if such a letter was to
be produced by the Lords? The words were of high value to his argument.
But drop them he did in his later discourse, and, in place of them, quoted
much less telling lines from Letter II.
All this is explained, if Letter II. was a revised and less explicit
edition of the letter first reported on by Lennox; or if the letter first
quoted was an improved and more vigorous version of a genuine Letter II.
Mr. Hosack, when he had only Moray’s account of the mysterious letter
before him, considered it fatal to the authenticity of Letter II., which
he thought a cleverly watered-down version of the mysterious letter, and,
like it, a forgery. Mr. Hosack’s theory is reinforced by Lennox’s longer
account of the mysterious epistle. But he overlooked the possibility that
Letter II. may not be a diluted copy of the forgery, but a genuine
original on which the forgery was based. It may be asked, if the Letter
touched on by Lennox and Moray was a forged letter, why was it dropped,
and why was another substituted before the meeting of Commissioners at
York? As we have only brief condensed reports of the Letter which never
was produced, our answer must be incomplete. But Moray’s description of
the document speaks of ‘the house where the explosion was arranged,’
before Mary left Edinburgh for Glasgow. Now, according to one confession,
taken after the finding of the Casket, namely on December 8, 1567, the
explosion was not dreamed of ‘till within two days before the
murder.’[253] Therefore Mary could not, on reflection, be made to write
that the gunpowder plot was arranged before January 21, 1567, for that
contradicted the confession, and the confession was put in as evidence.
The proceedings of Mary’s accusers, therefore, may have taken the
following line. First, having certainly got hold of a silver casket of
Mary’s, about June 21, 1567, they either added a forgery, or, perhaps,
interpolated, as her Lords said, ‘the most principal and substantious’
clauses. They probably gave copies to du Croc: and they told Throckmorton
that they had not only letters, but _witnesses_ of Mary’s guilt. These
witnesses doubtless saw Mary at the murder ‘in male apparel,’ as Lennox
says some declared that she was. But these witnesses were never produced.
They sent, probably, by ‘Jhone a Forret,’ copies to Moray, one of which,
the mysterious letter, in July, 1567, he partly described to de Silva. In
June, 1568, they sent translated copies into England with Wood. These were
not seen by Sussex, Norfolk, and Sadleyr (the men who, later, sat as
Commissioners at York), but Wood, perhaps, showed them, or parts of them,
to Lennox, who cited portions of the mysterious Letter in his first
indictment. But, when Moray, Morton, Lethington, and the other
Commissioners of the Lords were bound for the Inquiry at York, they looked
over their hand of cards, re-examined their evidence. They found that the
‘long letter’ cited by Moray and Lennox contradicted the confession of
Bowton, and was altogether too large and mythical. They therefore
manufactured a subtler new edition, or fell back upon a genuine Letter II.
If so, they would warn Lennox, or some one with Lennox, in framing his new
indictment, to wait for their final choice as to this letter. He did
wait, received a copy of it, dropped the first edition of the letter, and
interwove the second edition, which may be partly genuine, with his
‘discourse.’
This is, at least, a coherent hypothesis. There is, however, another
possible hypothesis: admirers of the Regent Moray may declare. Though
capable of using his sister’s accomplices to accuse his sister, ‘the noble
and stainless Moray’ was not capable of employing a forged document. On
returning to Scotland he found that, in addition to the falsified Letter,
there existed the genuine Letter II., really by Mary. Like a conscientious
man, he insisted that the falsified Letter should be suppressed, and
Letter II. produced.
This amiable theory may be correct. It is ruined, however, if we are right
in guessing that, when Moray sent Wood into England with Scots versions of
the Letters (May, 1568), he may have included among these a copy of the
falsified Letter, which was therefore cited by Lennox.
There is another point of suspicion, suggested by the Lennox Papers. In
Glasgow Letter II., Mary, writing late at night, is made to say, ‘I cannot
sleep as thay do, and as I wald desyre, _that is in zour armes_, my deir
lufe.’ In the Lennox account of the letter quoted by Moray to de Silva,
she ‘_wishes him then present in her arms_.’ In the Lennox Paper she
speaks of Darnley’s ‘sweet baits,’ ‘_flattering_ and sweet words,’ which
have ‘almost overcome her.’ In the English text of Letter II., Darnley
‘used so many kinds of _flatteries_ so coldly and wisely as you would
marvel at.’ His speeches ‘would make me but to have pity on him.’ Finally,
in the Lennox version of the unproduced Letter, Mary represents herself as
ready to ‘abandon her God, put in adventure the loss of her dowry in
France, hazard such titles as she had to the crown of England, as heir
apparent thereof, and also to the crown of the realm.’ Nothing of this
detailed kind occurs, we have seen, in the Letters, as produced. Similar
sentiments are found, however, in the first and second Casket Sonnets. ‘Is
he not in possession of my body, of my heart which recoils neither from
pain, nor dishonour, nor uncertainty of life, nor offence of kindred, nor
worse woe? For him I esteem all my friends less than nothing.... I have
hazarded for him name and conscience; for him I desire to renounce the
world ... in his hands and in his power I place my son’ (which she did not
do), ‘my honour, my life, my realm, my subjects, my own subject soul.’
It is certainly open, then, to a defender of Mary to argue that the
Letters and Sonnets, as produced and published, show traces of the ideas
and expressions employed in the letter described by Moray, and by Lennox.
Now that letter, certainly, was never written by Mary. It had to be
dropped, for it was inconsistent with a statement as to the murder put
forward by the prosecution; Bowton’s examination.
In short, the letter cited by Moray, and by Lennox, the long letter from
Glasgow, looks like a sketch, later modified, for Letter II., or a forgery
based on Letter II., and suggests that forgeries were, at some period,
being attempted. As the Glasgow Letter (II.), actually produced, also
contains (see ‘The Internal Evidence’) the highly suspicious passage
tallying verbally with Crawford’s deposition, there is no exaggeration in
saying that the document would now carry little weight with a jury.
Against all this we must not omit to set the failure to discredit the
Letters, when published later, by producing the contemporary copies
reported by de Silva to be in the hands of La Forest, or du Croc, as early
as July, 1567. But the French Government (if ever it had the copies) was
not, as we have said, when Buchanan’s ‘Detection’ was thrust on the
courtiers, either certain to compare La Forest’s copies and the published
Letters critically, or to raise a question over discrepancies, if they
existed. In any case neither Charles IX., nor La Mothe Fénelon, in 1571,
wrote a word to suggest that they thought the Casket Papers an imposture.
XI
_THE LETTERS AT THE CONFERENCE OF YORK_
In tracing the history of the mysterious letter cited by Moray in July,
1567, and by Lennox about July, 1568, we have been obliged to diverge from
the chronological order of events. We must return to what occurred
publicly, as regards the Letters, after Throckmorton was told of their
existence, by Lethington in Scotland in July, 1567. Till May, 1568, Mary
remained a prisoner in Loch Leven. For some time after July, 1567, we hear
nothing more of the Letters. Elizabeth (August 29) bade Throckmorton tell
Mary’s party, the Hamiltons, that ‘she well allows their proceedings as
far as they concern the relief of the Queen.’ On August 30, Moray asked
Cecil to move Elizabeth ‘to continue in her good will of him and his
proceedings!’[254] Elizabeth, then, was of both parties: but rather more
inclined to that of Mary, despite Throckmorton’s report as to Mary’s
Letters. They are next alluded to by Drury, writing from Berwick on
October 28, 1567. ‘The writings which comprehended the names and consents
of the chief for the murdering of the King is turned into ashes, the same
not unknown to the Queen (Mary) and the same which concerns her part kept
to be shown.’[255]
On December 4, the Lords of the Privy Council, ‘and other barons and men
of judgement,’ met in Edinburgh. They were mainly members of the
Protestant Left.[256] Their Declaration (to be reported presently) was the
result, they tell us, of several days of reasoning and debate. Nor is it
surprising that they found themselves in a delicate posture. Some of them
had been in the conspiracy; others had signed the request to Bothwell that
he would marry the Queen, and had solemnly vowed to defend his quarrel,
and maintain his innocence. Yet if they would gain a paper and
Parliamentary security for their lives and estates (subject to be
attainted and forfeited if ever Mary or her son came to power, and wished
to avenge Darnley’s murder and the Queen’s imprisonment), they must prove
that, in imprisoning Mary, they had acted lawfully. This they
demonstrated, though ‘most loth to do so,’ by asking Parliament to approve
of all their doings since Darnley’s death (which included their promise to
defend Bothwell, and their advice to Mary to marry him). And Parliament
was to approve, because their hostile acts ‘was in the said Queen’s own
default, in as far as by divers her private letters, written and
subscribed with her own hand, and sent by her to James, Earl Bothwell,
chief executor of the said horrible murder, as well before the committing
thereof as thereafter, and by her ungodly and dishonourable proceeding in
a private marriage with him; ... it is most certain that she was privy,
art and part, and of the actual device and deed of the forementioned
murder, ... and therefore justly deserves whatsoever has been attempted or
shall be used toward her for the said cause....’
From the first, it seems, ‘all men in their hearts were fully persuaded of
the authors’ of the crime. Bothwell, to be sure, had been acquitted, both
publicly and privately, by his peers and allies. Moray had invited an
English envoy to meet him, at a dinner where all the other guests were
murderers. People, however, only ‘awaited until God should move the hearts
of some to enter in the quarrel of avenging the same’--which they did by
letting Bothwell go free, and entrapping Mary! The godly assemblage then
explains how ‘God moved the hearts of some.’ The nobles were ‘in just
fear’ of being ‘handled’ like Darnley, ‘perceiving the Queen so thrall and
bloody’ (_sic_: probably a miswriting for ‘blindly’) ‘affectionate to the
private appetite of that tyrant,’ Bothwell.
The Council thus gave the lie to their own repeated averments, that
Bothwell caused Mary to wed him by fear and force. Now she is gracefully
spoken of as ‘bloody affectionate.’
It will be observed that, like Moray earlier, they here describe Mary’s
Letters as ‘signed.’ The Casket Letters (in our copies) are unsigned. The
originals may have been signed, they were reported to La Forest to be
signed as late as December, 1568.
On December 15, a Parliament met in Edinburgh. According to Nau, Mary’s
secretary, inspired by her, she had already written from prison a long
letter to Moray. ‘She demanded permission to be heard in this Parliament,
either in person or by deputy, thereby to answer the false calumnies which
had been _published_ about her since her imprisonment.’ Mary offered to
lay down her crown ‘of free will,’ and to ‘submit to all the rigour of the
laws’ which she desired to be enforced against Darnley’s murderers. None
should be condemned unheard. If not heard, she protested against all the
proceedings of the Parliament.[257]
This may be true: this was Mary’s very attitude when accused at
Westminster. Mary made the same assertion as to this demand of hers to be
heard, in her ‘Appeal to Christian Princes,’ in June, 1568.[258] Not only
had she demanded leave to be present, and act as her own advocate, but
Atholl and Tullibardine, she said, had admitted the justice of her
claim--and just it was. But neither then, nor at Westminster in December,
1568, was Mary allowed to appear and defend herself. She knew too much,
could have proved the guilt of some of her accusers, and would have broken
up their party. A Scots Parliament always voted with the dominant faction.
The Parliament passed an Act in the sense of the resolution of the Council
and assessors. The Letters, however, are now described, in this Act, not
as ‘signed’ or ‘subscribed,’ but as ‘written wholly with her own
hand.’[259] No valuable inference can be drawn from the discrepancy.
Nau says not a word about the Letters, but avers that Herries protested
that Mary might not have signed her abdication by free will: her signature
might even have been forged. He asked leave, with others, to visit her at
Loch Leven, but this was refused. ‘Following his example, many of the
Lords refused to sign the Acts of this Parliament.’[260] It appears that
the Letters really were ‘produced’ in this Parliament, for Mary’s Lords
say so in their Declaration of September 12, 1568, just before the
Commissioners met at York. They add that ‘there is in no place’ (of ‘her
Majesty’s writing’) ‘mention made, by which her highness might be convict,
albeit it were her own handwriting, as it is not.’ The Lords add, ‘and
also the same’ (Mary’s ‘writing’) ‘is devysit by themselves in some
principal and substantious clauses.’[261] This appears to mean that, while
the handwriting of the Letters is not Mary’s, parts of the substance were
really hers, ‘principal and substantious clauses’[262] being introduced by
the accusers.
This theory is upheld by Gerdes, and Dr. Sepp, with his hypothesis that
the Casket Letters consist of a Diary of Mary’s, mingled with letters of
Darnley’s, and interpolated with ‘substantious clauses.’[263] When the
originals were produced in England, none of Mary’s party were present to
compare them with the Letters shown in the Scottish Parliament.
The Letters are not remarked on again till after Mary’s escape from Loch
Leven, and flight into England (May 16, 1568), when Moray writes about
them on June 22, 1568.
Wood, in May, as we saw, had carried with him into England copies of the
Letters translated into our language: so says the instruction given by
Elizabeth’s Government to Middlemore. Moray understood that Elizabeth
intended to ‘take trial’ of Mary’s case, ‘with great ceremony and
solemnities.’ He is ‘most loth’ to accuse Mary, though, privately or
publicly, his party had done so incessantly, for a whole year. Now he asks
that those who are to judge the case shall read the Scots translations of
the Letters in Wood’s possession (why in Scots, not in the original
French?), and shall say whether, if the French originals coincide, the
evidence will be deemed sufficient.
Whatever we may think of the fairness of this proposal, it is clear that
the French texts, genuine or forged, as they then stood, were already in
accordance with the Scots texts, to be displayed by Wood. If the
mysterious letter was in Wood’s hands in Scots, doubtless Moray had a
forged French version of it. Any important difference in the French texts,
when they came to be shown, would have been fatal. But, apparently, they
were not shown at this time to Elizabeth.
It is unnecessary to enter on the complicated negotiations which preceded
the meeting of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, at York (October, 1568), with
Mary’s representatives, and with Moray (who carried the Casket with him)
and his allies, Buchanan, Wood, Makgill, Lethington, and others. Mary had
the best promises from Elizabeth. She claimed the right of confronting her
accusers, from the first. If the worst came to the worst, if the Letters
were produced, she believed that she had valid evidence of the guilt of
Morton and Lethington, at least. In a Lennox Paper, of 1569, we read:
‘Whereas the Queen said, when she was in Loch Leven, that she had that in
black and white that would cause Lethington to hang by the neck, which
Letter, if it be possible, it were very needful to be had.’ Nau says that
Bothwell, on leaving Mary at Carberry, gave her a band for Darnley’s
murder, signed by Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, ‘and told her
to take good care of that paper.’ Some such document, implicating
Lethington at least, Mary probably possessed ‘in black and white.’ The
fact was known to her accusers, she had warned Lethington as we saw (p.
189), and their knowledge influenced their policy. When Wood wrote to
Moray, from Greenwich, on June 12, 1568, as to Scottish Commissioners to
meet Elizabeth’s, and discuss Mary’s case, he said that it was much
doubted, in England, whether Lethington should be one of them. To
Lethington he said that he had expected Mary to approve of his coming,
‘but was then surely informed she had not only written and accused him,
and my Lord of Morton as privy to the King’s murder, but affirmed she had
both their handwritings to testify the same, which I am willed to signify
to you, that you may consider thereof. You know her goodwill towards you,
and how prompt of spirit she is to invent anything that might tend to your
hurt. The rest I remit to your wisdom.... Mr. Secretary’ (Cecil) ‘and Sir
Nicholas’ (Throckmorton) ‘are both direct against your coming here to this
trial.’[264] But it was less unsafe for Lethington to come, and perhaps
try to make his peace with Mary, than to stay in Scotland. Mary also, in
her appeal to all Christian Princes, declares that the handwriting of
several of her accusers proves that they are guilty of the crime they lay
to her charge.[265] It is fairly certain that she had not the murder band,
but something she probably did possess. And Nau says that she had told
Lethington what she knew on June 16, 1567.
If the Casket Letters were now produced, and if Mary were allowed to
defend herself, backed by her own charms of voice and tears, then some, at
least, of her accusers would not be listened to by that assemblage of
Peers and Ambassadors before which she constantly asked leave to plead,
‘in Westminster Hall.’ The Casket Letters, produced by men themselves
guilty, would in these circumstances be slurred as probable forgeries.
Mary would prefer not to come to extremities, but if she did, as Sussex,
one of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, declared, in the opinion of some ‘her
proofs would fall out the better.’
This I take to have been Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, this was her
last line of defence. Indeed the opinion is corroborated by her letter
from Bolton to Lesley (October 5, 1568). She says that Knollys has been
trying _tirer les vers du nez_ (‘to extract her secret plans’), a phrase
used in Casket Letter II. ‘My answer is that I would oppose the truth to
their false charges, _and something which they perchance have not yet
heard_.’[266] Mr. Froude thinks that Mary trusted to a mere theatrical
denial, on the word of a Queen. But I conceive that she had a better
policy; and so thought Sussex.
Much earlier, on June 14, 1568, soon after her flight into England, Mary
had said to Middlemore, ‘If they’ (her accusers) ‘will needs come, desire
my good sister, the Queen, to write that Lethington and Morton (who be
two of the wisest and most able of them to say most against me) may come,
and then let me be there in her presence, face to face, to hear their
accusations, and to be heard how I can make my own purgation, but I think
Lethington would be very loath of that commission.’[267]
Lethington knew Mary’s determination. Wood gave him warning, and his
knowledge would explain his extraordinary conduct throughout the
Conference at York, and later. As has been said, Mary and he were equally
able to ‘blackmail’ each other. Any quarrel with Moray might, and a
quarrel finally did, bring on Lethington the charge of guilt as to
Darnley’s murder. Once accused (1569), he was driven into Mary’s party,
for Mary could probably have sealed his doom.
As to what occurred, when, in October, the Commission of Inquiry met at
York, we have the evidence of the letters of Elizabeth’s Commissioners,
Norfolk, Sussex, and Sadleyr. We have also the evidence of one of Mary’s
Commissioners, Lesley, Bishop of Ross, given on November 6, 1571, when he
was prisoner of Elizabeth, in the Tower, for his share in the schemes of
the Duke of Norfolk. All confessions are suspicious, and Lesley’s alleged
gossip against Mary (she poisoned her first husband, murdered Darnley, led
Bothwell to Carberry that he might be slain, and would have done for
Norfolk!) is reported by Dr. Wilson, who heard it![268] ‘Lord, what a
people are these, what a Queen, and what an ambassador!’ cries Wilson, in
his letter to Burghley. If Lesley spoke the words attributed to him by
Wilson, we can assign scant value to any statement of his whatever: and we
assign little or none to Wilson’s.
In his confession (1571) he says that, when he visited Mary, at Bolton,
about September 18, 1568, she told him that the York Conference was to end
in the pardon, by herself, of her accusers: her own restoration being
implied. Lesley answered that he was sorry that she had consented to a
conference, for her enemies ‘would utter all that they could,’ rather than
apologise. He therefore suggested that she should not accuse them at all,
but work for a compromise. Mary said that, from messages of Norfolk to his
sister, Lady Scrope, then at Bolton, she deemed him favourable to her, and
likely to guide his fellow-commissioners: there was even a rumour of a
marriage between Norfolk and herself. Presently, says Lesley, came Robert
Melville, ‘_before our passing to York_,’ bearing letters from Lethington,
then at Fast Castle. Lethington hereby (according to Lesley) informed Mary
that Moray was determined to speak out, and was bringing the letters,
‘whereof he’ (Lethington) ‘had recovered the copy, and had caused his
wife’ (Mary Fleming) ‘write them, which he sent to the Queen.’ He added
that he himself was coming merely to serve Mary: _how_ she must inform
him by Robert Melville. This is Lesley’s revelation. The statements are
quite in accordance with our theory, that Lethington, now when there was
dire risk that the Letters might come out publicly, and that Mary would
ruin him in her own defence, did try to curry favour with the Queen: did
send her copies of the Letters.
For what it is worth, Lesley’s tale to this effect has some shadowy
corroboration. At Norfolk’s Trial for Treason (1571), Serjeant Barham
alleged that Lethington ‘stole away the Letters, and kept them one night,
and caused his wife to write them out.’ _That_ story Barham took from
Lesley’s confession. But he added, from what source we know not, ‘Howbeit
the same were but copies, translated out of French into Scots: which, when
Lethington’s wife had written them out, he caused to be sent to the
Scottish Queen. She laboured to translate them again into French, as near
as she could to the originals wherein she wrote them, but that was not
possible to do, but there was some variance in the phrase, by which
variance, as God would, the subtlety of that practice came to light.’
‘What if all this be true? What is this to the matter?’ asked the
Duke.[269]
What indeed? Mary had not kept copies of her letters to Bothwell, if she
wrote them. She was short of paper when she wrote Letter II., if she wrote
it, and certainly could make no copy: the idea is grotesque. What
‘subtlety of practice’ could she intend?[270] Conceivably, if Lethington
sent her copies of both French and Scots (which is denied), she may have
tried whether she could do the Scots into the French idioms attributed to
her, and, if she could not, might advance the argument that the French was
none of hers. Barham avers that she received no French copies. But did
Lesley say, with truth, that she received any copies? Here, confession for
confession, that of Robert Melville gives the lie to Lesley’s. Melville
(who, years later, had been captured with Lethington and Kirkcaldy of
Grange in the Castle) was examined at Holyrood, on October 19, 1573.[271]
According to Lesley, Melville rode to Bolton with Lethington’s letters
from Fast Castle, _before_ the meeting of Commissioners at York. But
Melville denies this: his account runs thus:
‘Inquirit quhat moved him to ryde to the quene in England the tyme that
the erll of morey Regent was thair, he not being privie therto? Answeris
it wes to get a discharge of sic thingis as she had gotten from him. And
that the Regent wes privie to the same and grantit him licence to follow
efter. Bot wald not let him pas in company wt him. _And denys that he past
first to bolton bot come first to York._’
If Melville told truth, then he did not secretly visit Mary before the
Conference, and she did not deal then with Lethington, or receive copies
of the Casket Letters, or bid any one ‘stay these rigorous accusations and
travail with the Duke of Norfolk in her favour,’ as Lesley confessed.[272]
The persons who examined Melville, in 1573, were acquainted with Lesley’s
confession of 1571, and Melville is deliberately and consciously
contradicting the evidence of Lesley. Both confessed when in perilous
circumstances. Which of the two can we believe?
On Saturday, October 2, Mary’s Commissioners arrived in York, but Wood did
not ride in from London till October 8.[273] Moray and the other
Commissioners of the Lords came in on Sunday, followed, an hour later, by
the English negotiators: ‘mediators,’ Mary calls them. Then began a
contest of intrigue and infamy. If we believe Melville, he no sooner
arrived in York than Moray sent him to Bolton, ‘to deal with the Queen as
of his awin heid,’--that is, as if the proposal were an unofficial
suggestion of his own. He was to propose a compromise: the Lords were not
to accuse her, and she was to stay in England with a large allowance,
Moray still acting as Regent. ‘The Quene did take it verie hardlie at the
begyning ... bot in the end condescendit to it, swa that it come of [part
obliterated] the Quene of England’s sute.’ Melville was then kept going to
and from Bolton, till the Commissioners departed to London. On this
statement Moray, apparently as soon as the Commissioners met at York,
treated with Mary for a compromise in his favour, and Mary assented,
though reluctantly.[274]
Turning to the reports of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, we find that, on
October 4, they met Mary’s Commissioners, and deemed their instructions
too limited. Mary’s men proposed to ask for larger license, and,
meanwhile, to proceed. But Herries (Oct. 6) declared that he would ‘in no
ways say all in this matter that he knew to be true.’[275] Moray and
Lethington, already ‘though most sorry that it is now come to that point,’
said that they must disclose what they knew. Lethington by no means tried
to ‘mitigate these rigours intended,’ as in the letter which Lesley says
that he sent to Mary by Melville. He already boasted of what ‘they could
an’ they would.’ Probably Lethington, to use a modern phrase, was
‘bluffing.’ Nothing could suit him worse than a public disclosure of the
letters, laying him open to a _riposte_ from Mary if she were allowed to
be present, and speak for herself. His game was to threaten disclosure,
and even to make it unofficially, so as to frighten Mary into silence, and
residence in England, while he kept secretly working for another
arrangement with Norfolk, behind the backs of the other English
Commissioners.
This was a finesse in which Lethington delighted, but it was a most
difficult game to play. His fellows, except Morton, not a nervous man,
were less compromised than he, or not compromised at all, and they might
break away from him, and offer in spite of him (as they finally did) a
public disclosure of the Letters. The other English Commissioners, again,
might not take their cue from Norfolk. Above all, Norfolk himself must be
allowed to see the Letters, and yet must be induced to overlook or
discredit the tale of the guilt of Mary, which they revealed. This was the
only part of Lethington’s arduous task in which he succeeded, and here he
succeeded too well.[276]
On October 6, Norfolk, writing for himself, told Cecil that, from the talk
of Mary’s enemies, ‘the matter I feare wyll fall owte very fowle.’[277] On
October 8, Mary’s men produced their charges against the Lords. The
signers were Lesley, Lord Livingstone (who certainly knew whether the
anecdote about himself, in the Glasgow Letter II., was true or not),
Herries (who, in June, had asked Elizabeth what she intended to do if Mary
was proved guilty), Cockburn of Skirling, a Hamilton, commendator or lay
abbot of Kilwinning, and Lord Boyd.
Lennox, who was present at York,[278] burning for leave to produce his
indictment, had asked his retainers to collect evidence against Herries,
Fleming, Lord Livingstone, ‘and all these then in England,’ with Mary. On
this head Lennox got no help, except so far as an anecdote, in the Casket
Letter II., implied Livingstone’s knowledge of Mary’s amour with Bothwell.
He, therefore, in a paper which we can date about October 4, 1568,[279]
suggests ‘that the Lord Livingstone may be examined upon his oath of the
words between his mistress and him at Glasgow, mentioned in her own
letter.’ But this very proper step was never taken: nor was Lennox then
heard. The words might have been used, but that would not prove Mary’s
authorship of the letter containing them. They might have been supplied by
Lady Reres, after her quarrel with Mary in April-May, 1567. Moray next
desired to know--
1. Whether the English Commissioners had authority to pronounce Mary
guilty or not guilty. (She had protested (Oct. 7) that she ‘was not
subject to any judge on earth.’)
2. Whether the Commissioners will promise to give verdict instantly.
3. Whether, if the verdict was ‘guilty,’ Mary would be handed over to
them, or kept prisoner in England.
4. Whether, in that case, Elizabeth would recognise Moray as Regent.
Till these questions were answered (they were sent on to Elizabeth), Moray
could not ‘enter to the accusation.’[280] Hitherto they had been ‘content
rather to hide and conceal than to publish and manifest to the world’
Mary’s dishonour. They had only told all Europe--in an unofficial way. The
English Commissioners waited for Elizabeth’s reply. On the 11th October,
Moray replied to the charges of Mary, without accusing her of the murder.
He also ‘privately,’ and unofficially, showed to the English Commissioners
some of the Casket Papers. Lethington, Wood (?), Makgill, and Buchanan (in
a new suit of black velvet) displayed and interpreted the documents. They
included a warrant of April 19, signed by Mary, authorising the Lords to
sign the Ainslie band, advising Bothwell to marry her.[281] Of this
warrant we hear nothing, as far as I have observed, at Westminster.[282]
Calderwood, speaking of Morton’s trial in 1581, says that ‘he had,’ for
signing Ainslie’s band, ‘a warrant from the Queen, which none of the rest
had.’[283] At York, the Lords said that all of them had this warrant.
‘Before they had this warrant, there was none of them that did, or would,
set to their hands, saving only the Earl of Huntly.’ Yet they also alleged
that they signed ‘more for fear than any liking they had of the same.’
They alleged that they were coerced by 200 musketeers.[284] Now Kirkcaldy,
on April 20, 1567, reports the signing of the Band on the previous day, to
Bedford, but says not a word of the harquebus men. They are not mentioned
till ten days later.
Lethington kindly explained the reason for Mary’s abduction, which
certainly needs explanation. A pardon for that, he told the English Lords,
would be ‘sufficient also for the murder.’ The same story is given in the
‘Book of Articles,’ the formal impeachment of Mary.[285] Presently the
English Commissioners were shown ‘one horrible and long letter of her own
hand, containing foul matter and abominable ... with divers fond ballads
of her own hand, which letters, ballads, and other writings before
specified, were closed in a little coffer of silver and gilt, heretofore
given by her to Bothwell.’
After expressing abhorrence, the three Commissioners enclose extracts,
partly in Scots.[286] The Commissioners, after seeing the papers
unofficially, go on to ask how they are to proceed. Their letter has been
a good deal modified, by the authors, in a rather less positive and more
sceptical sense than the original, which has been deciphered.[287]
On the same day, Norfolk wrote separately to Pembroke, Leicester, and
Cecil. He excused the delays of the Scots: ‘they stand for their lives,
lands, goods, and they are not ignorant, if they would, for it is every
day told them, that, as long as they abstain from touching their Queen’s
honour, she will make with them what reasonable end they can devise....’
In fact, as Melville has told us, he himself was their go-between for the
compromise. Norfolk adds that there are two ways, by justice public and
condign, ‘if the fact shall be thought as detestable and manifest to you,
as, for aught we can perceive, it seemeth here to us,’ or, if Elizabeth
prefer it, ‘to make such composition as in so broken a cause may be.’
Norfolk seems in exactly the mind of an honourable man, horrified by
Mary’s guilt, and anxious for her punishment. He either dissembled, or was
a mere weathercock of sentiment, or, presently, he found reason to doubt
the authenticity of what he had been shown. Lethington, we saw, showed the
letters, unofficially, on October 11. On October 12, Knollys had a talk
with Mary. ‘When,’ asked she, ‘will they proceed to their odious
accusations, or will they stay and be reconciled to me, or what will my
good sister do for me?’ Surely an innocent lady would have said, ‘Let them
do their worst: I shall answer them. A reconciliation with dastardly
rebels I refuse.’ That was not Mary’s posture: ‘But,’ she said, ‘if they
will fall to extremities they shall be answered roundly, and at the full,
and then are we past all reconciliations.’ So wrote Knollys to Norfolk, on
October 14.[288] Mary would fall back on her ‘something in black and
white.’
On October 13, Lesley and Boyd rode to Bolton, says Knollys, and told Mary
what Lethington had done: his privy disclosure of her Letters. He himself
was doubtless their informant, his plan being to coerce her into a
compromise.
Of all things, it now seemed most unlikely that Norfolk would veer round
to Mary’s side, and desire to marry her. But this instantly occurred, and
the question is, had he seen reason to doubt the authenticity of the
letter which so horrified him? Had Lethington told him something on that
long ride which they took together, on Saturday, October 16?[289] As shall
be shown, in our chapter on the Possible Forgers, this may be what
Lethington had done, and over-done. He had shaken Norfolk’s belief in the
Letter, so much that Norfolk presently forbade Mary to accept a
compromise!
The evidence of Lesley is here, as usual, at cross purposes. In his
confession (November 6, 1571) he says that Robert Melville took him to
Lethington’s lodgings, _after_ Lethington had secretly shown the Letters.
‘We talked almost a whole night.’ Lethington said that Norfolk favoured
Mary, and wished Moray to drop the charges and arrange a compromise.
Meanwhile in a letter to Mary (after October 16)[290] Lesley first, as in
his confession, says that he has conferred with Lethington ‘great part of
a night.’ Lethington had ridden out with Norfolk, on October 16, and
learned from him that Elizabeth aimed at delay, and at driving Moray to do
his very worst. When they had produced ‘all they can against you,’
Elizabeth would hold Mary prisoner, till she could ‘show you favour.’
Norfolk therefore now advised Mary to feign submission to Elizabeth, who
would probably be more kind in two or three months.[291] If so,
Lethington’s words had not yet their full effect, or Norfolk dissembled.
If we are to believe Sir James Melville, who was at York, Norfolk also
conferred with Moray himself, who consulted Lethington and Sir James; but
not the other Commissioners, his allies. His friends advised him to listen
to Norfolk. We have Moray’s own account of the transaction. In October,
1569, when Norfolk was under the suspicion of Elizabeth, Moray wrote to
her with his version of the affair.[292] ‘When first in York I was moved
to sue familiar conference with the Duke as a mean to procure us
expedition.’ He found the Duke ‘careful to have her schame coverit, hir
honour repairit, schew(ed) hir interest to the title of the crown of
England.... It was convenient she had “ma” (more) children,’ who would be
friends of Moray, and so on. The guileless Regent dreamed ‘of nothing less
than that Norfolk had in any way pretended to the said marriage.’ But
_now_ (1569) Moray sees that Norfolk’s idea was to make him seem the
originator of the marriage.
Meanwhile Robert Melville was still (he says) negotiating between Mary and
Moray, on the basis of Mary’s abdication and receipt of a large pension
from Scotland. Melville rode to London to act for Mary on October 25.[293]
But, before that date, on October 16, Elizabeth wrote to Norfolk as to the
demands of Moray made on October 11, and under the influence of what she
had now learned from her Commissioners as to the Casket Letters, and,
perhaps, of suspicions of Norfolk. Practically, she removed the Conference
to London, ordering Norfolk so to manage that Mary should think her
restoration was to be arranged.[294] Mary weakly consented to the change
of _venue_ (October 22). She sent Lesley and Herries to represent her in
London.
At this moment, namely (October 22) when Mary consented to the London
Conference, it seems that she expected a compromise on the lines discussed
between Moray and herself. She would resign the crown, and live affluently
in England, while Moray would not produce his accusations, and would
exercise the Regency. This course would be fatal to Mary’s honour, in the
eyes of history, but contemporaries would soon forget all, except that
there had been gossip about compromising letters. The arrangement proposed
was, then, reluctantly submitted to by Mary, according to Robert Melville.
But it occurred to Norfolk that he could hardly marry a woman on whom such
a blot rested, or, more probably, that his ambition would gain little by
wedding a Queen retired, under a cloud, from her realm. If I am right, he
had now come, under Lethington’s influence, to doubt the authenticity of
the Casket Letters.
That Norfolk opposed compromise appears from Robert Melville’s deposition.
On arriving in London, he met Herries, who, rather to his surprise, knew
the instructions of Mary to Robert himself. ‘The Lord Herries sayand to
this deponair that he’ (Melville) ‘was cum thither with sic commission to
deale privelie with the Quene of England, howbeit thair wes mair honest
men thair’ (than Melville). ‘The men that had bene the caus of hir
trouble’ (Morton and the rest) ‘wald be prefarit in credit to thame. This
berair (Melville) be the contraire affirmit that the caus of his cumming
thair wes to be a witness in caise he should be called upon,’ namely to
the fact that Mary did not sign her abdication (at Loch Leven) as a free
agent. Melville goes on to say that, ‘in the tyme quhan it was thocht that
course’ (the compromise with Murray) ‘should have past furthair, thair com
a writing from the quene to the Bishop of Ross that the Scotch partie
heard the Bishop reid, and partly red himself, bearing amangis uther
purposis that the Duke of Norfolk had send liggynnis’ (Liggens, or Lygons
his messenger) ‘to hir and forbid hir to dimitt hir crown. And sa the
Bishop willit the Secretair’ (Lethington) ‘to lief of that course’ (the
compromise) ‘as a thing the Quene (Mary) was not willing to, without the
Duke’ (Norfolk) ‘gaif hir counsail thairto.’[295]
Thus it appears that Norfolk prevented Mary from pursuing her compromise
(which Lethington was favouring in his own interest) and from abdicating,
leaving the Letters unproduced. Lethington had shaken his faith in the
authenticity of the Casket Letters. That Mary should have acquiesced in a
compromise demonstrates that she dreaded Moray’s accusations. That, at a
word from Norfolk, she reconsidered and altered her plan, proves that she
could, in her opinion, outface her accusers, and indicates that Norfolk
now distrusted the genuine character of the Letters. She knew, if not by
the copies of her Letters which Lethington did (or did not) send her, at
least by Lesley’s report of that which Lethington showed the English
Commissioners, what her enemies could do. She would carry the war into
Africa, accuse her accusers, and, in a dramatic scene in Westminster Hall,
before the Peers and the foreign Ambassadors, would rout her enemies.
That, if accused, she would not be allowed to be present, and to reply,
did not occur to her. Such injustice was previously unknown. That she
would be submitting to a judge, or judges, she could overlook, or would,
later, protest that she had never done. According to Nau, she had made the
same offer to defend herself (as we have seen) to Moray, before the Scots
Parliament of December, 1567.
Mary’s plan was magnificent. Sussex himself, writing from York, on October
22, saw the force of her tactics.[296] He speaks, as well he might, of
‘the inconstancy and subtleness of the people with whom we deal.’ Mary
must be found guilty, or the matter must be huddled up ‘with a show of
saving her honour.’ ‘The first, I think, will hardly be attempted, for two
causes: the one for that if her adverse party accuse her of the murder by
producing of her letters, she will deny them, and accuse the most of them
of manifest consent to the murder, _hardly to be denied_; so as, upon the
trial on both sides, _her proofs will judicially fall out best_, as it is
thought.’ The other reason for not finding Mary guilty was that, if little
James died, the Hamiltons were next heirs. This would not suit Moray, he
(like Norfolk) would now wish for more children of Mary’s, to keep the
Hamiltons out, but, if she were now defamed, there would be a difficulty
as to their succession to the crown. So Sussex believed (rightly) that a
compromise was intended, for which Lethington, as he says, had been
working at York, while Robert Melville was also engaged. Sussex then
states the compromise in the same terms as Robert Melville did, adding
that Moray would probably hand his proofs over to Mary, and clear her by a
Parliamentary decree. The Hamiltons had other ideas. ‘You will find
Lethington wholly bent to composition.’ A general routing out of evidence
did not suit Lethington.
To Sussex, the one object was to keep Mary in England; a thing easy if
Moray produced his proofs, and if Elizabeth, ‘by virtue of her
superiority over Scotland,’ gave a verdict against Mary. But Sussex
thought that the proofs of Moray ‘will not fall out sufficiently to
determine judicially, if she denies her letters.’
This was the opinion of a cool, unprejudiced, and well-informed observer.
Mary’s guilt could not, he doubted, be judicially proved. Moray’s party,
he might have added, would have been ruined by an acknowledgment of
English suzerainty. The one thing was to prevent the Scots from patching a
peace with Mary. And, to that end, though Sussex does not say so, Mary
must not be allowed to appear in her own defence.
On October 30, Elizabeth held a great Council at Hampton Court. Mary’s
Commissioners, and then those of the Lords, were to have audience of her.
Mary’s men were to be told that Elizabeth wished ‘certain difficulties
resolved.’ To the Lords, she would say that they should produce their
charges: if they were valid, Elizabeth would protect them, and detain Mary
during their pleasure. As Mary was sure to hear of this plan, she was to
be removed from Bolton to Tutbury, which was not done till later. Various
peers were to be added to the English Commission, but not the foreign
Ambassadors; though, on June 20, the Council reckoned it fair to admit
them.[297]
Mary heard of all this, and of Moray’s admission to Elizabeth’s
presence, from Hepburn of Riccartoun, Bothwell’s friend and kinsman
(November 21).[298] On November 22, therefore, she wrote to bid her
Commissioners break up the Conference, if she, the accused, was denied the
freedom to be present, conceded to Moray, the accuser. Nothing could be
more correct, but, at the same time, in ‘a missive letter’ Mary suggested
to her Commissioners that they should again try to compromise, saving her
crown and honour.[299] These would not have been saved by the compromise
which, according to Robert Melville, Norfolk forbade her to make.
XII
_THE LETTERS AT WESTMINSTER AND HAMPTON COURT_
The Commission opened on November 25 at Westminster, after Elizabeth had
protested that she would not ‘take upon her to be judge.’[300]
On the 26th Moray put in a written Protestation, as to their reluctance in
accusing Mary. They then put in an ‘Eik,’ or addition, with the formal
charge.[301] On the 29th November, the Lords said that this charge might
be handed to Mary’s Commissioners. Lennox appeared as an accuser, and put
in ‘A Discourse of the Usage’ of Darnley by Mary: the last of his
Indictments. It covered three sheets of paper. Mary’s men now entered,
received Moray’s accusation, retired, discussed it, and asked for a delay
for consideration. On December 1, they returned. Moray’s ‘Eik’ of
accusation had been presented to Mary’s Commissioners on November 29.
James Melville says that Lethington was not present, had ‘a sore heart,’
and whispered to Moray that he had shamed himself for ever. The Letters
would come out. Mary would retort. Lethington would be undone. Mary’s men
might have been expected, as they asked for a delay, to protract it till
they could consult their mistress. The wintry weather was evil, the roads
were foul, communication was slow, and the injustice to Mary of keeping
her at four or five days’ distance from her representatives was
disgraceful. Instead of consulting her, the Commissioners for Mary met the
English on December 1.
They had none of her courage, and Herries had plainly shown to Elizabeth
his want of confidence in Mary’s innocence. In June he had asked Elizabeth
what she meant to do if appearances proved against Mary. And he told Mary
that he had done so.[302] He now read a tame speech, inveighing against
the accusers, and declaring that, when the cause should be further tried,
some of them would be proved guilty of entering into bands for Darnley’s
murder. Lesley followed, stating that he and his fellows must see
Elizabeth, and communicate to her Mary’s demand to be heard in person,
before Elizabeth, the Peers, and the Ambassadors; while the accusers must
be detained till the end of the cause.[303] On December 3, Lesley and the
rest presented these demands to Elizabeth at Hampton Court. The Council
later put the request before legal advisers, who replied at length. They
answered that even God (though He was fully acquainted with all the
circumstances) did not condemn Adam and Eve unheard. But as to Mary’s
non-recognition of a mortal judge, that was absurd. If she meant to be
heard, she tacitly acknowledged the jurisdiction: which is perfectly true.
A door must be open or shut. Thirdly, it was ridiculous to ask Elizabeth
to be present, but only as a spectator. Fourthly, it was no less absurd to
ask all the nobles to attend a trial which might be long, but they might
choose representatives, if Mary desired it, to appear when convenient.
Fifthly, it was ridiculous to demand the presence of ambassadors, who
would be neither prosecutors, defenders, judges, clerks, nor witnesses:
they could only be lookers-on, like other people. That the scene should be
London was reasonable, but it might be elsewhere.
There was this addition (_puis est adjouxté_), ‘We think this voluntary
offer’ (of Mary) ‘so important that, in our opinion, all her demands
should be granted, without prejudice or contravention to the Queen of
England, so that none may be able to say a word against the manner of
procedure.’[304]
To myself it appears that the majority of the civilians consulted returned
the reply which insists that Mary must be tried with acknowledgment of
jurisdiction, if she is to be heard at all, and that the addition,
declaring her demands just, is the conclusion of a minority. Mary wanted
the pomp and publicity of a great trial, which, after all, was to be a
mere appeal to public opinion. As Queen of Scots, she could not destroy
the fruits of Bannockburn and the wars of Independence, by acknowledging
an English sovereign as her Judge and Superior. She could not return to
the position of John Balliol under Edward I. She had been beguiled into
confiding her cause to Elizabeth, and this was the result.
On December 4, Mary’s men, without consulting her, made a fatal error.
Before seeing Elizabeth they met Leicester and Cecil, in a room apart, and
asked that Elizabeth should be informed of their readiness, even now, to
make a compromise, with surety to Moray and his party. Now Mary had
declared to Knollys that, if once Moray accused her publicly, they were
‘past all reconciliation.’ That was the only defensible position, yet her
Commissioners, perhaps with her approval, receded from it. Elizabeth
seized the opportunity. It was better, she said, and rightly, for her
sister’s honour, that Mary’s accusers should be charged with their
audacious defaming of their Queen, and punished for the same, unless they
could show ‘apparent just causes of such an attempt.’ In fact, Elizabeth
must see the Letters, or cause them to be seen by her nobles. She could
not admit Mary in person while, as at present, there seemed so little to
justify the need of her appearance--for the Letters had not yet been
shown. When they were shown, it would probably turn out, she said, that
Mary need not appear at all.
The unhappy Scottish Commissioners tried to repair a blunder, which
clearly arose from their undeniable want of confidence in their cause. The
proposal for a compromise, they said, was entirely their own. We remember
that, by Norfolk’s desire, Mary had already refused a compromise to which
she had once consented. She would probably, in the now existing
circumstances, have adhered to her resolution.[305]
On December 6, Moray and his party were at Westminster to produce their
proofs. But Lesley put in a protest that he must, in that case, withdraw.
The English Commissioners declared that, in this protest, Elizabeth’s
words of December 4 were misrepresented: her words (as to seeing Moray’s
proofs) having, in fact, been utterly ambiguous. She had first averred
that Moray must be punished if he should be unable to show some apparent
just causes ‘of such an attempt,’ and then, at a later stage of the
conversation, had ‘answered that she meant not to require any proofs.’ So
runs the report, annotated and endorsed by Cecil.[306] But now the Council
were sitting to receive the proofs which Elizabeth had first declared that
she would, and then that she would not ask for, while, after vowing that
she would not ask for them, she had said that she ‘would receive them for
her own satisfaction’!
The words of the protest by Mary’s Commissioners described all this, and
the production of proofs in Mary’s absence, as ‘a preposterous
order.’[307] No more preposterous proceedings were ever heard of in
history. The English Commissioners, seizing on the words ‘a preposterous
order,’ declined to receive the protest till it should be amended, and at
once called on Moray to produce his proofs. Moray then put in the ‘Book of
Articles,’ ‘containing certain conjectures,’ a long arraignment of Mary.
In the Lennox Papers is a shorter collection of ‘Probable and Infallyable
Conjectures,’ an early form of Buchanan’s ‘Detection.’ The ‘Book of
Articles’ occupies twenty-six closely printed pages, in Hosack, who first
published it, and is written in Scots.[308] The band for Bothwell’s
marriage is said to have been made at Holyrood, and Mary’s signature is
declared to have been appended later. This mysterious band seems to have
reached Cecil _unofficially_, and is marked ‘To this the Queen gave
consent the night before the marriage,’ May 14 (cf. p. 254). Nothing is
noted as to Darnley’s conduct in seeking to flee the realm in September,
1566, and this account is given of the well-known scene in which Mary, the
Council, and du Croc attempted to extract from him his grievances. ‘He was
rejected and rebuked opinlie in presence of diverse Lords then of her
previe counsale, quhill he was constrenit to return to Streviling.’
Though less inaccurate than the ‘Detection,’ the ‘Book of Articles’ is a
violent _ex parte_ harangue.
Moray also put in the Act of Parliament of December, 1567. The English
heard the ‘Book of Articles’ and the Act read aloud, on the night of
December 6. On the 7th,[309] Moray hoped that they were satisfied. They
declined to express an opinion. Moray retired with his company, and
returned bearing, at last, The Casket. Morton, on oath, declared that his
account of the finding of the Casket was true, and that the contents had
been kept unaltered. Then a contract of marriage, said to be in Mary’s
hand, and signed, but without date, was produced. The contract speaks of
Darnley’s death as a past event, but they ‘did suppose’ that the deed was
made _before_ the murder. They may have based this suspicion on Casket
Letter III. (or VIII.) which, as we shall show, fits into no _known_ part
of Mary’s relations with Bothwell. Another contract, said to be in
Huntly’s hand, and dated April 5, was next exhibited. Papers as to
Bothwell’s Trial were shown, and those for his divorce. The Glasgow Letter
I. (which in sequence of time ought to be II.) was displayed in French,
and then Letter II.[310] _Neither letter is stated to have been copied in
French from the French original_, and we have no copies of the original
French, which, however, certainly existed. Next day (December 8) Moray
produced seven other French writings ‘in the lyk Romain hand,’ which seven
writings, ‘_being copied_, weare red in Frenche, and a due collation made
thereof as neare as could be by reading and inspection, and made to accord
with the originals, which the said Erle of Murray required to be
redelivered, and did thereupon deliver the copies being collationd, the
tenours of which vii wrytinges hereafter follow in ordre, _the first being
in manner of a sonnett_, “O Dieux ayez de moy etc.”’ Apparently all the
sonnets here count as one piece, the other six papers being the Casket
Letters III.-VIII.
No French contemporary copies of Letters I. II. have been discovered, as
in the cases of III. IV. V. VI. It is notable that while the sonnets, and
Letters III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. are said to have been copied from the
French, this is not said of Letters I. and II. The English versions of I.
and II. have been collated with the French, whether in copies or the
originals. Perhaps no French copies of these have been found, because no
copies were ever made: the absence of the copies in French is deplorable.
The next things were the depositions (not the dying confessions, which
implicated some of the Lords) of Tala, Bowton, Powrie, and Dalgleish, and
other legal documents. It does not appear that Mary’s warrant for the
signing of the Ainslie band, though exhibited at York, was again
produced.[311] On the 9th the Commissioners read the Casket Papers ‘duly
translated into English.’ They had been translated throughout the night,
probably, and very ill translated they were, to judge by the extant
copies.[312] Several of the copies are endorsed _in Scots_. Lesley now put
in a revised and amended copy of his Protest of December 6. Morton put in
a written copy of his Declaration as to the finding of the Casket, and
swore to its truth.[313]
Morton’s tale is that, as he was dining with Lethington in Edinburgh, on
June 19, 1567, four days after Mary’s surrender at Carberry, ‘a certain
man’ secretly informed him that Hepburn, Parson of Auldhamstokes, John
Cockburn, brother of Mary’s adherent, Cockburn of Skirling, and George
Dalgleish, a valet of Bothwell’s (and witness, at his divorce, to his
adultery), had entered the Castle, then held by Sir James Balfour, who
probably betrayed them. Morton sent Archibald Douglas (the blackest
traitor of the age) and two other retainers to seize the men. Robert
Douglas, brother of Archibald, caught Dalgleish in the Potter Row, not far
from the Kirk o’ Field Gate, with charters of Bothwell’s lands. Being
carried before Morton, Dalgleish denied that he had any other charge: he
was detained, and, on June 20, placed in the Tolbooth. Being put into some
torture engine, he asked leave to go with Robert Douglas to the Potter
Row, where he revealed the Casket. It was carried to Morton at 8 o’clock
at night, and, next day, June 21, was broken open, ‘in presence of Atholl,
Mar, Glencairn, Morton, Home, Semple, Sanquhar, the Master of Graham,
Lethington, Tullibardine, and Archibald Douglas.’ The Letters were
inspected (_sichtit_) and delivered over to Morton, who had in no respect
altered, added to, or subtracted from them.
True or false, and it is probably true, the list of persons present adds
nothing to the credibility of Morton’s account. The Commissioners of Mary
had withdrawn; there could not be, and there was not, any
cross-examination of the men named in Morton’s list, as witnesses of the
opening of the Casket. Lethington alone, of these, was now present, if
indeed he appeared at this sitting, and _his_ emotions may be imagined!
The rest might learn, later, that they had been named, from Lethington,
after he joined Mary’s cause, but it is highly improbable that Lethington
wanted to stir this matter again, or gave any information to Home (who was
with him in the long siege of the Castle). Sanquhar and Tullibardine,
cited by Morton, signed the band for delivering Mary from Loch Leven; so
much effect had the ‘sichting’ of the Casket Letters on _them_. The story
of Morton is probably true, so far: certainly the Lords, about June 21,
got the Casket, whatever its contents then were. But that the contents
remained unadded to and unimpaired, and unaltered, is only attested by
Morton’s oath, and by the necessary silence of Lethington, who, of all
those at Westminster, alone was present at the ‘sichting,’ on June 21,
1567. But Lethington dared not speak, even if he dared to be present. If
any minute was made of the meeting of June 21, if any inventory of the
documents in the Casket was then compiled, Morton produced neither of
these indispensable corroborations at Westminster. His peril was perhaps
as great as Lethington’s, but he was of a different temperament.
The case of the Prosecution is full of examples of such unscientific
handling by the cautious Scots, as the omission of minutes of June 21.
Next, on December 9, a written statement by Darnley’s servant, Nelson, who
survived the explosion, was sworn to by the man himself. His evidence
chiefly bore on the possession of the Keys of Kirk o’ Field by Mary’s
servants, and her economy in using a door for a cover of the ‘bath-vat,’
and in removing a black velvet bed. We have dealt with it already (p.
133).
Next was put in Crawford’s deposition as to his conversations with Darnley
at Glasgow. This was intended to corroborate Letter II., but, as shall
later be shown, it produces the opposite effect.[314] At an unknown date,
Cecil received the Itinerary of Mary during the period under examination,
which is called ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ and is so drawn up as to destroy
Moray’s case, if we accept its chronology. We know not on what authority
it was compiled, but Lennox, on June 11, had asked his retainers to
ascertain some of the dates contained in this ‘Journal.’
On December 14[315] Elizabeth added Northumberland and Westmorland to her
Commissioners. They not long after rose in arms for Mary’s cause.
Shrewsbury, Huntingdon, Worcester, and Warwick also met, at Hampton Court.
They were to be made to understand the case, and were told to keep it
secret. Among the other documents, on December 14, the _originals_ of the
Casket Letters ‘being redd, were duly conferred and compared for the
manner of writing and fashion of orthography, with sundry other letters,
long time heretofore written and sent by the said Quene of Scots to the
Quene’s majesty. And next after, there was produced and redd a declaration
of the Erle of Morton of the manner of the finding of the said lettres, as
the same was exhibited upon his othe, the ix of December. In collation
whereof’ (of _what_?) ‘no difference was found. Of all which letters and
writings, the true copies are contained in the memorialls of the actes of
the sessions of the 7 and 8 of December.’ Apparently the ‘collation’ is
intended to refer to the comparison of the Casket Letters with those of
Mary to Elizabeth. Mr. Froude runs the collation into the sentence
preceding that about Morton, in one quotation.
The confessions of Tala, Bowton, and Dalgleish were also read, and, ‘as
night approached’ (about 3.30 P.M.), the proceedings ended.[316]
The whole voluminous proceedings at York and Westminster were read
through: the ‘Book of Articles’ seems to have been read, _after_ the
Casket Letters were read, but this was not the case. On a brief December
day, the Council had work enough, and yet Mr. Froude writes that the
Casket Letters ‘were examined long and minutely by each and every of the
Lords who were present.’[317] We hear of no other examination of the
handwriting than this: which, as every one can see, from the amount of
other work, and the brevity of daylight, must have been very rapid and
perfunctory.
There happens to be a recent case in which the reputation of a celebrated
lady depended on a question of handwriting. Madame Blavatsky was accused
of having forged the letters, from a mysterious being named Koot Hoomi,
which were wont to drift out of metetherial space into the common
atmosphere of drawing-rooms. A number of Koot Hoomi’s _later_ epistles,
with others by Madame Blavatsky, were submitted to Mr. Netherclift, the
expert, and to Mr. Sims of the British Museum. Neither expert thought that
Madame Blavatsky had written the letters attributed to Koot Hoomi. But Dr.
Richard Hodgson and Mrs. Sidgwick procured earlier letters by Koot Hoomi
and Madame Blavatsky. They found that, in 1878, and 1879, the letter _d_,
as written in English, occurred 210 times as against the German _d_, 805
times. But in Madame Blavatsky’s earlier hand the English _d_ occurred but
15 times, to 2,200 of the German _d_. The lady had, in this and other
respects, altered her writing, which therefore varied more and more from
the hand of Koot Hoomi. Mr. Netherclift and Mr. Sims yielded to this and
other proofs: and a cold world is fairly well convinced that Koot Hoomi
did not write his letters. They were written by Madame Blavatsky.[318]
The process of counting thousands of isolated characters, and comparing
them, was decidedly not undertaken in the hurried assembly on that short
winter day at Hampton Court, when the letters ‘were long and minutely
examined by each and every of the Lords who were present,’ as Mr. Froude
says. On the following day (December 15) the ‘Book of Articles’ was read
aloud; though the minute of December 14 would lead us to infer that it was
read on that day. The minute states that ‘there was produced a writing in
manner of Articles ... but, before these were read,’ the Casket Letters
were studied. One would imagine that the ‘Book of Articles’ was read on
the same day, after the Casket Letters had been perused. The deposition of
Powrie, the Casket contracts, and other papers followed, and then another
deposition of Crawford, which had been put in on December 13.
This deposition is in the Lennox MSS. in the long paper containing the
description of the mysterious impossible Letter, which Moray also
described, to de Silva. Crawford now swore that Bowton and Tala, ‘at the
hour of their death,’ confessed, to him, that Mary would never let
Bothwell rest till he slew Darnley. Oddly enough, even Buchanan, or
whoever gives the dying confessions of these men, in the ‘Detection,’ says
nothing about their special confession to Crawford.[319] The object of
Crawford’s account appears clearly from what the contemporaries, for
instance the ‘Diurnal,’ tell us about the public belief that the
confession ‘fell out in Mary’s favour.’
Hepburne, Daglace, Peuory, to John Hey, mad up the nesse,
Which fowre when they weare put to death the treason did confesse;
And sayd that Murray, Moreton to, with others of ther rowte
Were guyltie of the murder vyl though nowe they loke full stowte.
Yet some perchaunce doo thinke that I speake for affection heare,
Though I would so, thre thousan can hearin trew witness beare
Who present weare as well as I at thexecution tyme
& hard how these in conscience pricte confessed who did the cryme.[320]
A number of Acts and other public papers were then read; ‘the whole lying
altogether on the council table, were one after another showed, rather “by
hap” as they lay on the table than by any choice of their natures, as it
might had there been time.’ Mr. Henderson argues, as against Hosack,
Schiern, and Skelton, that this phrase applies only to the proceedings of
December 15, not to the examination of the Casket Letters. This seems more
probable, though it might be argued, from the prolepsis about reading the
‘Book of Articles’ on the 14th, that the minutes of both days were written
together, on the second day, and that the hugger-mugger described applies
to the work of both days. This is unimportant; every one must see that the
examination of handwriting was too hasty to be critical.
The assembled nobles were then told that Elizabeth did not think she
_could_ let Mary ‘come into her presence,’ while unpurged of all these
horrible crimes. The Earls all agreed that her Majesty’s delicacy of
feeling, ‘as the case now did stand,’ was worthy of her, and so ended the
farce.[321]
Mr. Froude, on the authority (apparently) of a Simancas MS., tells us that
‘at first only four--Cecil, Sadleyr, Leicester, and Bacon--declared
themselves convinced.’[322] Lingard quotes a Simancas MS. saying that the
nobles ‘showed some heart, and checked a little the terrible fury with
which Cecil sought to ruin’ Mary.[323] Camden (writing under James VI.)
says that Sussex, Arundel, Clinton, and Norfolk thought that Mary had a
right to be heard in person. But Elizabeth held this advantage: Mary would
not acknowledge her as a judge: she must therefore admit Mary to her
presence, if she admitted her at all, _not_ as a culprit. Elizabeth (who
probably forgot Amy Robsart’s affair) deemed herself too good and pure to
see, not as a prisoner at the Bar, a lady of dubious character. Thus all
was well. Mary was firmly discredited (though after all most of the nobles
presently approved of her marriage to Norfolk), yet she could not plead
her cause in person.
XIII
_MARY’S ATTITUDE AFTER THE CONFERENCE_
The haggling was not ended. On December 16, 1568, Elizabeth offered three
choices to Lesley: Mary might send a trusty person with orders to make a
direct answer; or answer herself to nobles sent by Elizabeth; or appoint
her Commissioners, or any others, to answer before Elizabeth’s
Commissioners.[324] Lesley fell back on Elizabeth’s promises: and an
anecdote about Trajan. On December 23 or 24, Mary’s Commissioners received
a letter by her written at Bolton on December 19.[325] Mr. Hosack says
that ‘she commanded them forthwith to charge the Earl of Moray and his
accomplices’ with Darnley’s murder.[326] But that was just what Mary did
not do as far as her letter goes, though on December 24, Herries declared
that she did.[327] Friends and foes of Mary alike pervert the facts. Mary
first said that she had received the ‘Eik’ in which her accusers lied,
attributing to her the crimes of which they are guilty. She glanced
scornfully at the charge that _she_ meant to murder her child, whom _they_
had striven to destroy in her womb, at Riccio’s murder: ‘intending to have
slane him and us both.’ She then, before she answers, asks to see the
copies and originals of the Casket Letters, ‘the principal writings, if
they have any produced,’ which she as yet knew not. And then, if she may
see Elizabeth, she will prove her own innocence and her adversaries’
guilt.
Thus she does not by any means bid her friends _forthwith_ to accuse her
foes. That would have been absurd, till she had seen the documents brought
against her as proofs. But, to shorten a long story, neither at the
repeated request of her Commissioners, nor of La Mothe, who demanded this
act of common justice, would Elizabeth permit Mary to see either the
originals, or even copies, of the Casket Letters. She promised, and broke
her promise.[328]
This incident left Mary with the advantage. How can an accused person
answer, if not allowed to see the documents in the case? We may argue that
Elizabeth refused, because politics drifted into new directions, and
inspired new designs. But Mary’s defenders can always maintain that she
never was allowed to see the evidence on which she was accused. From
Mary’s letter of December 19, or rather from Lesley’s précis of it
(‘Extract of the principall heidis’) it is plain that she does not bid her
Commissioners accuse anybody, _at the moment_. But, on December 22,
Lindsay challenged Herries to battle for having said that Moray, and ‘his
company here present,’ were guilty of Darnley’s death. Herries admitted
having said that _some_ of them were guilty. Lindsay lies in his throat if
he avers that Herries spoke of him specially: and, on that quarrel,
Herries will fight. And he will fight any of the principals of them if
they sign Lindsay’s challenge, ‘and I shall point them forth and fight
with some of the traitors therein.’ He communicated the challenge and
reply to Leicester.[329] Herries probably hoped to fight Morton and
Lethington.
On the 24th, Moray having complained that he and his company were
slandered by Mary’s Commissioners, Lesley and Herries answered ‘that they
had special command sent to them from the Queen their Mistress, to lay the
said crime to their charge,’ and would accuse them. They were appointed to
do this on Christmas Day, but only put in an argumentative answer to
Moray’s ‘Eik.’ But on January 11, when Elizabeth had absolved both Moray
and Mary (a ludicrous conclusion) and was allowing Moray and his company
to go home, Cecil said that Moray wished to know whether Herries and
Lesley would openly accuse him and his friends, or not. They declared that
Mary had bidden them make the charge, and that they had done so, _on the
condition_ that Mary first received copies of the Casket documents. As
soon as Mary received these, they would name, accuse, and prove the case,
against the guilty. They themselves, as private persons, had only hearsay
evidence, and would accuse no man. Moray and his party offered to go to
Bolton, and be accused. But Mary (as her Commissioners at last understood)
would not play her card, her evidence in black and white, till she saw the
hand of her adversaries, as was fair, and she was never allowed to see the
Casket documents.[330] Mary’s Commissioners appear to have blundered as
usual. They gave an impression, first that they would accuse
unconditionally, next that they sneaked out of the challenge.[331] But, in
fact, Mary had definitely made the delivery to her of the Casket Letters,
originals or even copies, and her own presence to plead her own cause, the
necessary preliminary conditions of producing her own charges and proofs.
Mary’s attitude as regards the Casket Papers is now, I think,
intelligible. There was a moment, as we have seen, during the intrigues at
York, when she consented to resign her crown, and let the matter be hushed
up. From that position she receded, at Norfolk’s desire. The Letters were
produced by her adversaries, at Westminster and at Hampton Court. She then
occupied at once her last line of defence, as she had originally planned
it. If allowed to see the documents put in against her, and to confront
her accusers, she would produce evidence in black and white, which would
so damage her opponents that her denial of the Letters would be accepted
by the foreign ambassadors and the peers of England. ‘Her proofs will
judicially fall out best as is thought,’ Sussex wrote, and he may have
known what ‘her proofs’ were.
If we accept this as Mary’s line, we can account, as has already been
hinted, for the extraordinary wrigglings of Lethington. At York, as
always, he was foremost to show, or talk of the Casket Papers, _in
private_, as a means of extorting a compromise, and hushing up the affair:
_publicly_, he was most averse to their production. Whether he had a hand
in falsifying the papers we may guess; but he knew that their public
exhibition would make Mary desperate, and drive her to exhibit _her_
‘proofs.’ These would be fatal to himself.
We have said that Mary never forgave Lethington: who had been the best
liked of her advisers, and, in his own interests, had ever pretended to
wish to proceed against her ‘in dulse manner.’ Why did she so detest the
man who, at least, died in her service?
The proofs of her detestation are found all through the MS. of her
secretary, Claude Nau, written after Lethington’s death. They cannot be
explained away, as Sir John Skelton tries to do, by a theory that the
underlings about Mary were jealous of Lethington. Nau had not known him,
and his narrative came direct from Mary herself. It is, of course,
worthless as evidence in her favour, but it is highly valuable as an index
of Mary’s own mind, and of her line of apology _pro vita sua_.
Nau, then, declares (we have told all this, but may recapitulate it) that
the Lords, in the spring of 1567, sent Lethington, and two others, to ask
her to marry Bothwell. Twice she refused them, objecting the rumours about
Bothwell’s guilt. Twice she refused, but Lethington pointed out that
Bothwell had been legally cleared, and, after the Parliament of April,
1567, they signed Ainslie’s band. Yet no list of the signers contains the
name of Lethington, though, according to Nau, he urged the marriage. After
the marriage, it was Lethington who induced the Lords to rise against
Bothwell, with whom he was (as we elsewhere learn) on the worst terms.
Lethington it was who brought his friend and kinsman, Atholl, into the
rising. At Carberry Hill, Mary wished to parley with Lethington and
Atholl, who both excused themselves, as not being in full agreement with
the Lords. She therefore yielded to Kirkcaldy; and Bothwell, ere she rode
away, gave her the murder band (this can hardly be true), signed by
Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, bidding her keep it carefully.
Entrapped by the Lords, Mary, by Lethington’s advice, was imprisoned in
the house of the Provost of Edinburgh. Lethington was ‘extremely opposed’
to her, in her dreadful distress; he advised imprisonment in Loch Leven;
he even, Randolph says, counselled the Lords to slay her, some said to
strangle her, while persuading Throckmorton that he was her best friend.
Lethington tried to win her favour in her prison, but, having ‘no
assurance from her,’ fled on a false report of her escape. Lethington
fought against her at Langside, and Mary knew very well why, though he
privately displayed the Casket Letters, he secretly intrigued for her at
York. Even his final accession (1569) to her party, and his death in her
cause, did not win her forgiveness.
She dated from Carberry Hill her certain knowledge of his guilt in the
murder, which she always held in reserve for a favourable opportunity.
But, as she neither was allowed to see the Casket Letters, nor to appear
in person before the Peers, that opportunity never came.
To conclude this part of the inquiry: Mary’s attitude, as regards the
Letters, was less that of conscious innocence, than of a player who has
strong cards in her hand and awaits the chance of bringing out her
trumps.
XIV
_INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE LETTERS_
LETTER I
This Letter, usually printed as Letter I., was the first of the Casket
Letters which Mary’s accusers laid before the Commission of Inquiry at
Westminster (December 7, 1568).[332] It does not follow that the accusers
regarded this Letter as first in order of composition. There exists a
contemporary copy of an English translation, hurriedly made from the
French; the handwriting is that of Cecil’s clerk. The endorsing is, as
usual, by a Scot, and runs, ‘Ane short Lettre from Glasco to the Erle
Bothwell. Prufes her disdaign against her husband.’ Possibly this Letter,
then, was put in _first_, to prove Mary’s hatred of Darnley, and so to
lead up to Letter II., which distinctly means murder. If the accusers,
however, regarded this piece (Letter I.) as first in order of composition,
they did not understand the meaning and drift of the papers which they had
seized.[333]
Letter I., so called, must be, in order of composition, a sequel to Letter
II. The sequence of events would run as follows: if we reject the
chronology as given in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ a chronological summary handed
to Cecil, we know not by whom, and supply the prosecution with a feasible
scheme of time. ‘Cecil’s Journal’ makes Mary leave Edinburgh on January
21, stay at Lord Livingstone’s house of Callendar (not Callander in
Perthshire) till January 23, and then enter Glasgow. If this is right,
Letters I. and II. are forgeries, for II. could not, by internal evidence,
have been finished before Mary’s second night, at least, in Glasgow,
which, if she arrived on January 23, would be January 24. Consequently it
could not (as in the statement of Paris, the alleged bearer) reach
Bothwell the day before his departure for Liddesdale, which ‘Cecil’s
Journal’ dates on January 24. Moreover, on the scheme of dates presented
in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ Mary must have written and dispatched Letter I. on
the morning of January 25 to Bothwell, whom it could not reach (for he was
then making a raid on the Elliots, in Liddesdale), and Mary must, at the
same time, have been labouring at the long Letter II. All this, with other
necessary inferences from the scheme of dates, is frankly absurd.[334]
The defenders of Mary, like Mr. Hosack, meet the Lords on the field of
what they regard as the Lords’ own scheme of dates, and easily rout them.
In a court of law this is fair procedure; in history we must assume that
the Lords, if the Journal represents their ideas, may have erred in their
dates. Now two contemporary townsmen of Edinburgh, Birrel, and the author
of the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ coincide in making Mary leave Edinburgh on
January 20. Their notes were separately written, without any possible idea
that they might be appealed to by posterity as evidence in a State
criminal case. The value of their testimony is discussed in Appendix C,
‘The date of Mary’s Visit to Glasgow.’
Provisionally accepting the date of the two diarists, we find that the
Queen left Edinburgh on January 20, slept at Callendar, and possibly
entered Glasgow on January 21. Drury from Berwick said that she entered on
January 22, which, again, makes the letter impossible. Let us, however,
suppose her to begin her long epistle, Letter II., at Glasgow on the night
of January 21, finish it in the midnight hours of January 22, and send it
to Bothwell by Paris (his valet, who had just entered _her_ service) on
January 23. Paris, in his declaration of August 10, 1569, avers that he
met Bothwell, gave him the letter, stayed in Edinburgh till next day,
again met Bothwell returning from Kirk o’ Field, then received from him
for Mary a letter, a diamond (ring?), and a loving message; he received
also a letter from Lethington, and from both a verbal report that Kirk o’
Field was to be Darnley’s home. Paris then returned to Glasgow. If Paris,
leaving Edinburgh ‘after dinner,’ say three o’clock, on the 24th, did not
reach Glasgow till the following noon, then the whole scheme of time
stands out clearly. He left Glasgow on January 23, with the long Letter
(II.) which Mary wrote on January 21 and 22. He gave it to Bothwell on the
23rd, received replies ‘after dinner’ on the 24th, slept at Callendar or
elsewhere on the way, and reached Glasgow about noon on January 25. If,
however, Paris reached Glasgow on the day he left Edinburgh (January 24),
the scheme breaks down.
If he did not arrive till noon on the 25th, all is clear, and Letter I.
falls into its proper place as really Letter II., and is easily
intelligible. Its contents run thus: Mary, who left Bothwell on January
21, upbraids him for neglect of herself. She expected news, and an answer
to her earlier Letter (II.) dispatched on the 23rd, and has received none.
The news she looked for was to tell her what she ought to do. If no news
comes, she will, ‘according to her commission,’ take Darnley to
Craigmillar on Monday: she actually did take him on Monday, as far as
Callendar. But she is clearly uncertain, when she writes on January 25, as
to whether Craigmillar has been finally decided upon. A possible
alternative was present to her mind. After describing the amorous Darnley,
and her own old complaint, a pain in the side, she says, ‘If Paris doth
bring back unto me that for which I have sent, it should much amend me.’
News of Bothwell, brought by Paris, will help to cure her. She had
expected news on the day before, January 24.
Nothing could be more natural. Mary and Bothwell had parted on January 21.
She should have heard from him, if he were a punctual and considerate
lover, on the 23rd; at latest Paris should have brought back on the 24th
his reply to her long letter, numbered II. but really I. But the morning
of ‘this Saturday’ (the 25th) has dawned, and brought no news, no answer,
no Paris. (That is, if Paris either slept in Edinburgh on the night of the
24th, or somewhere on the long dark moorland road.) Impatient of three
days’ retarded news, ignorant as to whether Craigmillar is fixed on for
Darnley, or not, without a reply to the letter carried to Bothwell by
Paris (Letter II.), Mary writes Letter I. on January 25. It is borne by
her chamberlain, Beaton, who is going on legal business to Edinburgh.
Nothing can be simpler or more easily intelligible.
There remains a point of which much has been made. In the English, but not
in the Scots translation, Mary says, ‘_I send this present to Lethington_,
to be delivered to you by Beaton.’ The Scots is ‘I send this be Betoun,
quha gais’ to his legal business. Nothing about Lethington. On first
observing this, I inferred--(_a_) that Lethington had the reference to
himself cut out of the Scots version, as connecting him with the affair.
(_b_) I inferred that Lethington could have had no hand in forging the
original French (if forging there was), because he never would have
allowed his name to appear in such a connection. Later I observed that
several Continental critics had made similar inferences.[335] But all this
is merely one of the many mare’s-nests of criticism. For proof of the
futility of such deductions see Appendix E, ‘The Translation of the Casket
Letters.’
On the whole, I am constrained to regard Letter I. as possibly authentic
in itself, and as affording a strong presumption that there was an
authentic Letter II. Letter I. was written, and sent on a chance
opportunity, just because no answer had been received to the Letter
wrongly numbered II. This was a circumstance not likely to be invented.
LETTER II
Round this long Letter, of more than 3,000 words, the Marian controversy
has raged most fiercely. Believing that they had demonstrated its lack of
authenticity, the Queen’s defenders have argued that the charges against
her must be false. A criminal charge, supported by evidence deliberately
contaminated, falls to the ground. But we cannot really argue thus: the
Queen may have been guilty, even if her foes perjured themselves on
certain points, in their desire to fortify their case. Yet the objections
to Letter II. are certainly many and plausible.
1. While the chronology of ‘Cecil’s Journal’ was accepted, the Letter
could not be regarded as genuine. We have shown, however, that by
rectifying the dates of the accusers, the external chronology of the
Letter can be made to harmonise with real time.
2. The existence of another long letter, never produced (the letter cited
by Moray and Lennox) was another source of suspicion. While we had only
Moray’s account of the letter in July 1567, and while Lennox’s version of
about the same date in 1568 was still unknown, Mr. Hosack argued thus:
‘What is the obvious and necessary inference? Is it not that the forgers,
in the first instance, drew up a letter couched in far stronger terms than
that which they eventually produced?’ ‘Whenever,’ says Robertson, ‘a paper
is forged with a particular intention, the eagerness of the forger to
establish the point in view, his solicitude to cut off all doubts and
cavils, and to avoid any appearance of uncertainty, seldom fail of
prompting him to use expressions the most explicit and full to his
purpose.’ ‘In writing this passage, we could well imagine,’ says Mr.
Hosack, ‘that the historian had his eye on the Simancas’ (Moray’s)
‘description of the Glasgow Letter (II.), but he never saw it.... We must
assume that, upon consideration, the letter described by Moray, which
seems to have been the first draft of the forgery, was withdrawn, and
another substituted in its place.’[336] This reasoning, of course, is
reinforced by the discovery of Lennox’s account of the Letter. But Mr.
Hosack overlooked a possibility. The Lords may have, originally, after
they captured the Casket, forged the Letter spoken of by Moray and Lennox.
But they may actually have discovered Letter II., and, on reflection, may
have produced _that_, or a garbled form of that, and suppressed the
forgery. To Letter II. they _may_ have added ‘substantious clauses,’ but
if any of it is genuine, it is compromising.
3. One of the internal difficulties is more apparent than real. It turns
on the internal chronology, which seems quite impossible and absurd, and
must, it is urged, be the result of treacherous dovetailing. The
circumstance that Crawford, a retainer of Lennox, was put forward at the
Westminster Commission, in December, 1568, to corroborate part of the
Letter makes a real difficulty. He declared that Darnley had reported to
him the conversations between himself and the Queen, described by Mary, in
Letter II., and that he wrote down Darnley’s words ‘immediately, at the
time,’ for the use of Lennox. But Crawford proved too much. His report
was, partly, an English translation of the Scots translation of the French
of the Letter. Therefore he either took his corroborative evidence from
the Letter, or the Letter was in part based on Crawford’s report, and
therefore was forged. Bresslau, Cardauns, Philippson, Mr. Hosack, and Sir
John Skelton adopted the latter alternative. The Letter, they say, was
forged, in part, on Crawford’s report.
4. The contents of the Letter are alien to Mary’s character and style:
incoherent, chaotic, out of keeping.
We take these objections in the order indicated. First, as to the internal
dates of the Letter. These are certainly impossible. Is this the result of
clumsy dovetailing by a forger?
There is no date of day of the month or week, but the Letter was clearly
begun on the night of Mary’s arrival in Glasgow (by our theory, January
21). Unless it was finished in the night of January 22, and sent off on
January 23, it cannot be genuine: cannot have reached Bothwell in time. We
are to suppose that, on sitting down to write, Mary made, first, a list of
twelve heads of her discourse, on a separate sheet of paper, and then
began her epistle on another sheet. Through paragraphs 1, 2, 3,[337] she
followed the sequence of her notes of heads, and began paragraph 4, ‘The
King sent for Joachim’ (one of her servants) ‘yesternicht, and asked why I
lodged not beside him.’[338]
If this means that Mary was in Glasgow on the day before she began
writing, the dates cannot be made to harmonise with facts. For her first
night of writing must then be January 22, her second January 23; Bothwell,
therefore, cannot receive the letter till January 24, on which day he went
to Liddesdale, and Paris, the bearer, declared that he gave the letter to
Bothwell the day _before_ he rode to Liddesdale.
The answer is obvious. Joachim probably reached Glasgow on the day before
Mary’s arrival, namely on January 20. It was usual to send the royal beds,
carpets, tapestries, and ‘cloth of State’ in front of the travelling
prince, to make the rooms ready before he came. Joachim would arrive with
the upholstery a day in advance of Mary. Therefore, on her first night,
January 21, she can speak of what the King said to Joachim ‘yesterday.’
The next indication of date is in paragraphs 7, 8. Paragraph 7 ends: ‘The
morne I wil speik to him upon this point’ (part of the affair of Hiegait);
paragraph 8 is written on the following day: ‘As to the rest of Willie
Hiegait’s, he’ (Darnley) ‘confessit it, bot it was the morne efter my
cumming or he did it.’ The English is, ‘The rest as [to?] Wille Hiegait
[he?] hath confessed, but it was the next day that he’ (Darnley) ‘came
hither,’ that is, came so far on in his confession. Paragraph 8,
therefore, tells the results of that examination of Darnley, which Mary
promised at the end of paragraph 7 to make ‘to-morrow.’ We are now in a
new day, January 22, at night.
But, while paragraphs 9, 10, 11 (about 500 words) intervene, paragraph 12
opens thus, ‘_This is my first journey_’ (day’s work); ‘_I will end
to-morrow_. I write all, of how little consequence so ever it be, to the
end you may take of the whole that shall be best for your purpose. I do
here a work that I hate much, _but I had begun it this morning_.’[339]
Here, then, after 500 words confessedly written on her _second_ night,
Mary says that this is her _first_ day’s work. The natural theory is that
here we detect clumsy dovetailing by a forger, who has cut a genuine
letter into pieces, and inserted false matter. But another explanation may
be suggested. Mary, on her first night, did not really stop at paragraph
7: ‘I will talk to him to-morrow on that point.’ _These words happened to
come at the foot of her sheet of paper._ She took up another fresh page,
and wrote on, ‘This is my first journey ...’ down to ‘I had begun it this
morning.’ Then she stopped and went to bed. Next night (January 22) she
took up the same sheet or page as she had written three sentences on, the
evening before, but _she took it up on the clean side_, and did not
observe her words ‘This is my first journey.... I had begun it this
morning’ till she finished, and turned over the clean side. She then
probably ran her pen lightly across the now inappropriate words, written
on the previous night, ‘This is my first journey,’ as she erased lines in
her draft for a sonnet in the Bodleian Library.[340] The words, as in the
case of the sonnet in the Bodleian, remained perfectly legible, and the
translators--not intelligent men--included them in their versions.
The letter should run from paragraph 7, ‘I will talk to him to-morrow upon
that point’ to paragraph 12, ‘This is my first journey.... I had begun it
this morning.’ Then back to paragraph 8, ‘As to the rest of Willie
Hiegait’s,’ and so straight on, merely omitting the words written on the
previous night, ‘This is my first journey, ... but I had begun it this
morning.’
Mary’s mistake in taking for virgin a piece of paper which really had
writing on the verso, must have occurred to most people: certainly it has
often occurred to myself.
There is one objection to this theory. In paragraph 25, at the end of the
letter, Mary apologises for having written part of a letter on a sheet
containing the memoranda, or list of topics, which, as we saw, she began
by writing. She says, in Scots, ‘Excuse that thing that is scriblit’ (MS.
C,[341] ‘_barbulzeit_’) ‘for I had na paper _yesterday_ quhan I _wrait_
that of ye memoriall.’ The English runs, ‘Excuse also that I scribbled,
for I had yesternight no paper _when I took the paper of a memorial_.’
Now the part of Mary’s letter which is on the same paper as the
‘memorial,’ or scribbled list of topics, must have been written, _not_
‘yesternight,’ but ‘to-night’ (on the night of January 22), unless she is
consciously writing in the early morning, after 12 P.M., January 22; in
the ‘wee sma’ hours ayont the twal’,’ of January 23: which does not seem
probable.
If this however meets the objection indicated, the chronology of the
letter is consistent; it is of the night of January 21, and the night of
January 22, including some time past midnight. The apparent breaks or
‘faults,’ then, are not the result of clumsy dovetailing by a forger, but
are the consequence of a mere ordinary accident in Mary’s selection of
sheets of paper.
We now come to the objections based on Crawford’s Deposition. Of Letter
II., as we have it, paragraph 2, in some degree, and paragraphs 6 (from
‘Ye ask me quhat I mene be the crueltie’), 7, 9, 10, and parts of 21 also
exist, with, in many places, verbal correspondence in phrase, _in another
shape_. The correspondence of phrase, above all in 6, is usually with the
_Scots_ translation, sometimes, on the other hand, with the _English_.
Consequently, as will be seen on comparison of the Scots Letter II. with
this other form of part of its contents, these two texts have a common
source and cannot be independent.[342] This new form is contained in a
Deposition, made on oath by a gentleman, a retainer of Lennox, named
Thomas Crawford, the very man who met Mary outside Glasgow (Letter II. 2).
He had attended Darnley in Glasgow, and had received from Darnley, and
written, a verbatim report of his discussions with Mary. Crawford was
therefore brought forward, by the accusers, on December 9, 1568, before
the Commission of Inquiry at Westminster. The object was to prove that no
one alive but Mary could have written Letter II., because she, and she
only, could know the nature of her private talk with her husband, as
reported in Letter II., and, therefore, no one could have forged the
Letter in which that talk was recorded. Providentially, however, Darnley
had informed Crawford about those private talks, and here was Crawford, to
corroborate Letter II.
But it escaped the notice of the accusers that all the world, or all whom
Crawford chose to inform as to what Darnley told him about these
conversations, might know the details of the talk even better than Mary
herself. For the precise words would fade from Mary’s memory, whereas
Crawford, as he swore, had written them down at once, as reported to him
by Darnley, probably as soon as Mary left his sick-room. The written copy
by Crawford must have preserved the words with fidelity beyond that of
human memory, and the written words were in the custody of Crawford, or of
Lennox, so long as they chose to keep the manuscript. This fact is proved
on Crawford’s oath. On December 9, 1568, before the Commissioners, he
swore that, when with Darnley, in Glasgow, in January, 1567, ‘he was
secretly informed by the King of all things which had passed betwixt the
said Queen and the King, ... to the intent that he should report the same
to the Earl of Lennox, his Master, and that he did, _immediately at the
same time, write the same word by word_ as near as he could possibly carry
the same away.’ He was certain that his report of Mary’s words to himself,
‘the words now reported in his writing,’ ‘are the very same words, on his
conscience, that were spoken,’ while Darnley’s reports of Mary’s talk
(also contained in Crawford’s written deposition) are the same in effect,
‘though not percase in all parts the very words themselves.’[343]
We do not know whether what Crawford now handed in on December 9, 1568,
was an English version of his own written verbatim Scots report done in
January, 1567; or a copy of it; or whether he copied it from Letter II.,
or whether he rewrote it from memory after nearly two years. The last
alternative may be dismissed as impossible, owing to the verbal identity
of Crawford’s report with that in the Scots version of the French Letter
attributed to Mary. Another thing is doubtful: whether Lennox, at
Chiswick, on June 11, 1568, did or did not possess the report which
Crawford wrote for him in January, 1567. Lennox, on June 11, as we saw,
wrote to Crawford asking ‘what purpose Crawford held with her’ (Mary) ‘at
her coming to the town’ of Glasgow. He did not ask what conversation Mary
then held with Darnley. Either he had that principal part of Crawford’s
report, in writing, in his possession, or he knew nothing about it (which,
if Crawford told truth, is impossible), or he forgot it, which is next to
impossible. All he asked for on June 11 was Crawford’s recollection about
what passed between himself and Mary ere she entered Glasgow, concerning
which Crawford nowhere says that he made any written memorandum. Lennox,
then, on June 11, 1568, wanted Crawford’s recollections of his own
interview with the Queen, either to corroborate Letter II., if it then
existed; or for secret purposes of Wood’s, who was with him.
It will be observed that Crawford’s account of this interview of his with
Mary presents some verbal identities with Letter II. And this is notable,
for these identities occur where neither Crawford nor the Letter is
reporting the speeches on either side. _These_ might easily be remembered,
for a while, by both parties. But both parties could not be expected to
coincide verbally in phrases descriptive of their meeting, and its
details. Thus, Crawford, ‘I _made my Lord, my Master’s humble
commendations, with the excuse that he came not to meet her_.’ In Letter
II. we read ‘_He made his_’ (Lennox’s) ‘_commendations, and excuses unto
me, that he came not to meet me_.’
The excuses, in Crawford, are first of Lennox’s bad health (_not_ in the
Letter); next, that he was anxious ‘because of _the sharp words that she
had spoken of him to Robert Cunningham_, his servant,’ &c.
In Letter II. this runs: ‘considering _the sharp words that I had spoken
to Cunningham_.’ Crawford next introduces praises of Lennox which are not
in the Letter, but, where a speech is reported, he uses the very words of
the Scots translation of Letter II., which vary from the words in the
English translation.
It follows that, even here, the Letter, in the Scots version, and
Crawford’s Deposition, have one source. Either Crawford took the Scots
translation, and (while keeping certain passages) modified it: or the
maker of the Letter borrowed from Crawford’s Deposition. In the former
case, the sworn corroboration is a perjury: in the latter, the Letter is a
forgery.
Crawford has passages which the Letter has not: they are his own
reflections. Thus, after reporting Darnley’s remark about the English
sailors, with whom he denied that he meant to go away (Letter II. 19),
Crawford has, what the Letter has not: ‘And if he had’ (gone away) ‘it had
not been without cause, seeing how he was used. For he had neither to
sustain himself nor his servants, and needed not make further rehearsal
thereof, seeing she knew it as well as he.’ Is this Crawford’s addition or
Darnley’s speech? Then there is Crawford’s statement that Mary never
stayed more than two hours, at a time, with Darnley--long enough, in an
infected room of which the windows were never opened. It is here, after
the grumble about Mary’s brief stay, that Crawford adds, ‘She was very
pensive, whereat he found fault.’
Now Darnley may have told Crawford (though Crawford does not give this as
part of the conversation), ‘I was vexed by the Queen’s moodiness,’ or the
like. But it is incredible that Mary herself should also say, in the
Letter, just before she mentions going to supper after her first brief
interview (_Scots_) ‘he fand greit fault that I was pensive’ (Letter II.
5[344]). To Mary’s defenders this phrase appears to be borrowed by the
forger of the Letter from Crawford’s Deposition; not borrowed by Crawford,
out of place and at random (with a skip from Letter II. 5 to Letter II.
19), and then thrust in after his own reflections on the brevity of Mary’s
visits to Darnley. For Crawford is saying that her visits were not only
short, but sulky. On the other hand, in the Letter the writer is made to
contrast Darnley’s blitheness with her gloom.
Crawford does not report, what the Letter makes Mary report, Darnley’s
unconcealed knowledge of her relations with Bothwell, at least in the
passage, ‘It is thocht, and he belevis it to be trew, that I have not the
power of myself unto myself, and that because of the refuse I maid of his
offeris.’
Crawford ends with his own reply to Darnley, as to Mary’s probable
intentions: ‘I answered I liked it not, because she took him to
Craigmillar,’ not to Holyrood. The ‘Book of Articles,’ we know, declares
that Mary ‘from Glasgow, be hir _letteris_ and utherwise, held Bothwell
_continewally_ in rememberance of _the said house_,’ that is, Kirk o’
Field. But the Letters produced do nothing of the kind. Craigmillar, as we
have seen, is dwelt on. In the Deposition the idea of Darnley’s being
carried away as a prisoner is introduced as an original opinion of
Crawford’s, expressed privately to Darnley, and necessarily unknown to
Mary when she wrote Letter II. But it occurs thus, in Letter II. 9, after
mention of a litter which Mary had brought for his conveyance, and to
which Darnley, who loved riding of all things, made objection. ‘I trow he
belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner’--a passage _not_ in the
English translation. Darnley replied to Crawford’s remark about his being
taken as ‘a prisoner’ that ‘he thought little else himself.’ It is
reckoned odd that Mary in the Letter makes him ‘think little else
himself.’ ‘I trow he belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner.’
For these reasons some German defenders of Mary have decided that the
parts of Letter II. which correspond with Crawford’s Deposition must have
been borrowed from that Deposition by a forger of the Letter. About June,
1568, Lennox, on this theory, would lend a copy of Crawford’s report (made
in January, 1567, at Glasgow) to Wood, and, on returning to Scotland, Wood
might have the matter of Crawford’s report worked into Letter II.
I had myself been partly convinced that this was the correct view. But the
existence of Mary’s memoranda, and the way in which they influence Letter
II., seem to me an almost insuperable proof that part, at least, of Letter
II. is genuine. It may, however, be said that the memoranda were genuine,
but not compromising, and that the Letter was based, by forgers, on the
memoranda (accidentally left lying in her Glasgow room, by Mary) and on
Crawford’s report, obtained from Lennox. This is not impossible. But the
craft of the forger in making Mary, on her second night of writing, find
her forgotten memoranda (II. 15), be reminded by them of her last
neglected item (‘Of Monsieur de Levingstoun’), and then go on (II. 16) to
tell the anecdote of Livingstone, never publicly contradicted by him,
seems superhuman. I scarcely feel able to believe in a forger so clever.
Yet I hesitate to infer that Crawford, when asked to corroborate the
statements in the Letter, took his report from the Letter itself, and
perjured himself when he said, on oath, that his Deposition was derived
from a writing taken down from Darnley’s lips ‘immediately at the time.’
I should come to this conclusion with regret and with hesitation. It is
disagreeable to feel more or less in doubt as to Crawford’s honour. We
know nothing against Crawford’s honour, unless it be that he was cruel to
the Hamilton tenantry, and that he deposed to having received confessions
on the scaffold, from Bothwell’s accomplices, implicating Mary.[345] These
do not occur in the dying confessions printed with Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’
though Bowton hinted something against Mary, when he was in prison; so
that trustworthy work informs us. Thus Crawford’s second Deposition, as to
the dying confessions, is certainly rather suspicious. We know nothing
else against the man. He lived to be a trusted servant of James VI. (but
so did the infamous Archibald Douglas); he denounced Lethington of guilt
in the murder; he won fame by the capture of Dumbarton Castle. Yet some
are led to suspect that, when asked to corroborate a passage in a letter,
he simply took the corroboration, _textually_, from the letter itself. If
not the Letter is a forgery.
Mr. Henderson (who does not admit the verbal correspondence of Letter and
Deposition) clearly sees no harm in this course. ‘It is by no means
improbable that Crawford refreshed his recollection by the aid of the
Letter, which, in any case, he may have seen before he prepared his
statement.’ But he swore that he wrote a statement, from Darnley’s lips,
‘immediately at the time.’[346] He said nothing about losing the paper,
which he wrote in January, 1567. (Mr. Henderson says it ‘had apparently
been destroyed’--why ‘apparently’?) But, according to Mr. Henderson, ‘he
may have seen the letter before he prepared his statement. Probably he
would have been ready to have admitted this.’ He would have had an evil
encounter with any judge to whom he admitted that, being called to
corroborate part of a letter, written in French, he copied his
corroborating statement, verbally on the whole, from a Scots translation
of the letter itself! I do not think that Crawford would have been ‘ready
to admit’ this unconscionable villainy. Yet we must either believe that he
was guilty of it, or that the Letter was forged.
There is one indication which, for what it is worth, corroborates the
truth of Crawford’s oath. He swore that he had written down Darnley’s
report of conversations with Mary ‘immediately at the time,’ in order that
he, in turn, might report them to Lennox, ‘because the said Earl durst not
then, for displeasure of the Queen, come abroad,’ and speak to Darnley
himself. But Crawford never swore, or said, that he wrote down his own
conversation with Mary. Now, on June 11, 1568, Lennox does not ask for
what Crawford swore that he _wrote_, much the most important part of his
evidence, the account of Darnley’s talks with Mary. Lennox does not ask
for _that_, for what Crawford swore that he wrote ‘immediately at the
time.’ He merely asks ‘what purpois’ (talk) ‘Thomas Crawford held with the
Queen at her coming to the town.’ This may be understood to mean that
Lennox already held, and so did not need, Crawford’s written account,
dictated by Darnley to him, of the conversations between Mary and Darnley.
For that document, if he had it not, Lennox would most certainly ask, but
ask he did not. Therefore, it may be argued, Lennox had it all the while
in his portfolio, and therefore, again, parts of Letter II. are borrowed
from Crawford’s written paper of January, 1567.[347]
In that case, we clear Crawford’s character for probity, but we destroy
the authenticity of Letter II.[348] I confess that this last argument,
with the fact that we have no evidence against the character of Crawford,
a soldier of extraordinary daring and resource, and a country gentleman,
not a politician, rather disturbs the balance of probabilities in favour
of the theory that he borrowed his Deposition textually from the Letter,
and increases the probability that the Letter is a forgery based on the
Deposition.[349]
5. The contents of the Letter are said to be incoherent and inconsistent
with Mary’s style and character. The last objection is worthless. In the
Letter she says that she acts ‘against her natural’--_contre son
naturel_--out of character. As for incoherence, the items of her memoranda
are closely followed in sequence, up to paragraph 8, and the interloping
part in paragraph 12. The rest, the work of the second night, _is_
incoherent, as Mary’s moods, if she was guilty, must have been.
Information, hatred, remorse, jealousy, and passion are the broken and
blended strata of a mind rent by volcanic affections. The results in the
Letter are necessarily unlike the style and sentiment of Mary’s authentic
letters, except in certain very remarkable features.
Either Mary wrote the Letter or a forger wished to give the impression
that this occurred. He wanted the world to believe that the Queen, her
conscience tortured and her passion overmastering her conscience, could
not cease to converse with her lover while paper served her turn. Her
moods alternate: now she is resolved and cruel, now sick with horror, but
still, sleepless as she is, she must be writing. Assuredly if this Letter
be, in part at least, a forgery, it is a forgery by a master in the
science of human nature. We seem to be admitted within the room where
alone a light burns through the darkling hours, and to see the tormented
Queen who fears her pillow. She writes, ‘I would have almaist had pitie of
him.... He salutes everybody, yea unto the least, and makes pitious
caressing unto them, to make them have pitie on hym,’ a touching picture.
There is a pendant to this picture of Darnley, in Buchanan’s ‘History.’ He
is speaking of Mary’s studied neglect of Darnley at the time of his son’s
christening (December, 1566). Darnley, he says, endured all ‘not only with
patience; he was seen trying to propitiate her unjust anger in every way,
_that humbly, and almost in servile fashion_, he might keep some share in
her good graces.’[350] What an etching is this of the man, a little while
since so haughty and tyrannous, ‘dealing blows where he knew that they
would be taken’! Again the passage (Letter II. 11) about Mary’s heart
wherein only Bothwell’s ‘shot’ can make a breach, does certainly seem (as
Laing notes) to refer to a sonnet of Mary’s favourite poet, Ronsard.
Depuis le jour que la première flèche
De ton bel oëil m’avança la douleur,
Et que sa blanche et sa noire couleur,
Forçant ma force, _au cœur me firent brèche_.
As in later letters, the writer now shows jealousy of Bothwell’s wife.
The writer again and again recurs to her remorse. ‘Remember how, gyf it
were not to obey you, I had rather be deid or I dyd it, my heart bleides
at it.... Alas, I nevir deceivit anybody; but I remit me altogidder to
your will.’ The voice of conscience ‘deepens with the deepening of the
night,’ a very natural circumstance showing the almost inhuman art of the
supposed forger. What ensues is even more remarkable. Throughout, Mary
professes absolute submission to Bothwell; she is here, as Sir John
Skelton remarks, ‘the bond slave and humble minister of Bothwell’s
ambition.’ He argues that she was really ‘the last woman in the world who
would have prostrated herself in abject submission at the feet of a
lover.’[351] But, in a later letter to Norfolk, when she regarded herself
as affianced to him, Mary says ‘as you please command me, for I will, for
all the world, follow your commands....’ She promises, in so many words,
‘humble submission’--though, conceivably, she may here mean submission to
Elizabeth.[352] Again, ‘I will be true and obedient to you, as I have
promised.’[353] There are other similar passages in the letters to
Norfolk, indicating Mary’s idea of submission to a future husband, an
attitude which, according to Randolph, she originally held towards
Darnley. These letters to Norfolk, of course, were not dictated by
passion. Therefore, under stress of passion or of a passionate caprice,
Mary might naturally assume a humility otherwise foreign to her nature. It
would be a joy to her to lay herself at her lover’s feet: the argument _a
priori_, from character, is no disproof of the authenticity of this part
of the Letter.
On the whole, these reasons are the strongest for thinking the Letter, in
parts, probably genuine. The Lords _may_, conceivably, have added ‘some
principal and substantious clauses,’ such as the advice to Bothwell ‘to
find out some more secret invention by medicine’ (paragraph 20), and they
_may_ have added the words ‘of the ludgeing in Edinburgh’ (Kirk o’ Field)
to the dubious list of directions which we find at the end of the Scots,
but not in the English, version. There is no other reference to Kirk o’
Field, though the ‘Book of Articles’ says that there were many. And there
were many, in the forged letter! Paris, indeed, confessed that Mary told
him that Letter II. was to ask where Darnley should be placed, at
Craigmillar or Kirk o’ Field. But the evidence of Paris is dubious.
Lennox was very anxious, as was the author of the ‘Book of Articles,’ to
prove that the Kirk o’ Field plan was arranged between Bothwell and Mary,
before she went to meet Darnley at Glasgow in January, 1567. We have
already seen that the ‘Book of Articles’ makes Mary and Bothwell ‘devise’
this house ‘before she raid to Glasgow,’ and ‘from Glasgow by her letters
and otherwise she held him continually in remembrance of the said house.’
The ‘Book of Articles’ also declares that she ‘wrote to Bothwell to see if
he might find out _a more secret way by medicine to cut him off_’ than the
Kirk o’ Field plan. Now this phrase, ‘a more secret invention by
medicine,’ occurs in Letter II. 20, but is instantly followed by ‘for he
should take medicine and the bath at _Craigmillar_:’ not a word of the
house in Edinburgh.
Next, we find Lennox, like the author of the ‘Book of Articles,’ hankering
after, and insisting on, a mention of the ‘house in Edinburgh’ in Mary’s
Letters. There exists an indictment by Lennox in Scots, no doubt intended
to be, as it partly was, later done into English. The piece describes
Moray as present with the English Commissioners, doubtless at York, in
October, 1568. This indictment in Scots is by one who has seen Letter II.,
or parts of it, for we read ‘Of quhilk purpos reported to Heigat she makes
mention in hir lettre sent to Boithuile from Glasgow, meaning sen that
purpose’ (the plan of arresting Darnley) ‘wes reveled that he suld invent
_a mare secrete way be medecine to cutt him of_’ (the very phrase used in
the ‘Book of Articles’) ‘as alsua puttes the said Boithuil in mynde of the
house in Edinburgh, divisit betwix thame for the King hir husband’s
distructioune, termand thair ungodlie conspiracy “thair affaire.”’
Now Mary, in Letter II., does not ‘put Bothwell in mind of the house in
Edinburgh,’ nor does she here use the expression ‘their affair,’ though in
Letter III. she says ‘your affair.’ In Buchanan’s mind (if he was, as I
feel convinced, the author of the ‘Book of Articles’) the forged letter
described by Moray and Lennox, with its insistence on Kirk o’ Field, was
confused with Letter II., in which there is nothing of the sort. The same
confusion pervades Lennox’s indictment in Scots, perhaps followed by
Buchanan. When parts of the Scots indictment are translated into Lennox’s
last extant English indictment, we no longer hear that Kirk o’ Field is
mentioned in the Letters, but we _do_ read of ‘such a house in Edinburgh
as she had prepared for him to finish his days in’--which Mary had not
done when she wrote Letter II. Consequently the memorandum at the end of
Letter II., ‘remember zow of the ludgeing in Edinburgh,’ a memorandum
_not_ in the English translation, may have been added fraudulently to
prove the point that Kirk o’ Field was, from the first, devised for
Darnley’s destruction.[354] These passages, in any case, prove that the
false letter reported by Moray and Lennox haunted the minds of Lennox and
Buchanan to the last.
The evidence of Nelson, Darnley’s servant,[355] later with Lady Lennox, to
the effect that Craigmillar was proposed, but that Darnley rejected it,
may be taken either as corroboration of the intention to lodge Darnley at
Craigmillar (as is insisted on in Letters I. and II.) or as one of the
sources whence Letter II. was fraudulently composed. On the whole,
however, the Craigmillar references in the Letters have an air of
authenticity. They were not what the accusers wanted; they wanted
references to Kirk o’ Field, and these they amply provided in the Letter
about poisoning Lady Bothwell, echoes of which are heard in the ‘Book of
Articles,’ and in Lennox’s indictment in Scots.
The letter described by Moray and Lennox, when both, at different dates,
were in contact with Wood, was full of references to Kirk o’ Field, which
are wholly absent in Letters I. and II. The letter known to Moray and
Lennox was probably forged in the interval between June 21 and July 8,
1567, when (July 8) the Lords sent ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Moray. As I shall
make it evident that Robert Melville was sent to inform Elizabeth about
the capture of the Casket on the very day of the event, the pause of
seventeen days before the sending of ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Moray is very
curious. In that time the letter noticed by Moray and Lennox may have been
forged to improve the evidence against Mary. At all events its details
were orally circulated. But I think that, finding this letter
inconsistent, and overcharged, the Lords, in December, 1568, fell back on
the authentic, or partially authentic, Letter II., and produced that. My
scheme of dates for that Letter need not necessarily be accepted. My
theory that Mary made a mistake as to her sheets of paper which caused the
confusion of the internal chronology is but a conjecture, and the
objection to it I have stated. The question is one of the most delicately
balanced probabilities. Either Lennox, from January 1567 onwards,
possessed the notes which Crawford swore that he wrote concerning
Darnley’s conversation (in which case much of Letter II. is a forgery
based on Crawford), or Crawford, in December 1568, deliberately perjured
himself. The middle course involves the unlikely hypothesis that Crawford
did take notes ‘immediately at the time;’ but that they were lost or
destroyed; and that he, with dishonest stupidity, copied his deposition
from Letter II. There appears to me to be no hint of the loss or
disappearance of the only notes which Crawford swore that he made.
Consequently, on either alternative, the conduct of the prosecutors is
dishonest. Dishonesty is again suggested by the mysterious letter which
Moray and Lennox cite, and which colours both Lennox’s MS. discourses and
the ‘Book of Articles.’ But, on the other hand, parts of Letter II. seem
beyond the power of the Genius of Forgery to produce. Perhaps the least
difficult theory is that Letter II. is in part authentic, in part
garbled.[356]
XV
_THE SIX MINOR CASKET LETTERS_
If the accusers had authentic evidence in Letters I. and II., they needed
no more to prove Mary’s guilt. But the remaining six Letters bear on
points which they wished to establish, such as Mary’s attempt to make her
brother, Lord Robert, assassinate her husband, and her insistence on her
own abduction. There are some difficulties attendant on these Letters. We
take them in order. First Letter III. (or VIII.). This Letter, the third
in Mr. Henderson’s edition, is the eighth and last in that of Laing. As
the Letter, forged or genuine, is probably one of the last in the series,
it shall be discussed in its possible historical place.
LETTER III (IV)
Of this Letter, fortunately, we possess a copy of the French
original.[357] The accusers connected the letter with an obscure intrigue
woven while Darnley was at Kirk o’ Field. Lord Robert Stuart, Mary’s
half-brother, commendator of Holyrood, is said by Sir James Melville to
have warned Darnley of his danger. Darnley repeated this to Mary, but Lord
Robert denied the story. The ‘Book of Articles’ alleges that Mary then
tried to provoke a fight between her husband and her brother on this
point. Buchanan adds that, when Darnley and Lord Robert had their hands on
their swords, Mary called in Moray to part them. She hoped that he would
‘get the redder’s stroke,’ and be killed, or, if Darnley fell, that Moray
would incur suspicion. As usual Buchanan spoils his own case. If Mary did
call in Moray to separate the brawlers, she was obviously innocent, or
repented at the last moment. Buchanan’s theory is absurd, but his
anecdote, of course, may be false. Lennox, in his MSS., says that Moray
was present at the quarrel.[358]
The indications of the plot, in the Letter, are so scanty, that the
purpose has to be read into them from the alleged facts which the Letter
is intended to prove.[359] I translate the copy of the French original.
‘I watched later up there’ (at Kirk o’ Field?) ‘than I would have done,
had it not been to draw out [‘of him,’ in Scots] what this bearer will
tell you: that I find the best matter to excuse your affair that could be
offered. I have promised him’ (Darnley?) ‘to bring him’ (Lord Robert?) ‘to
him’ (Darnley?) ‘to-morrow: if you find it good, put order to it. Now,
Sir, I have broken my promise, for you have commanded me not to send or
write. Yet I do it not to offend you, and if you knew my dread of giving
offence you would not have so many suspicions against me, which, none the
less, I cherish, as coming from the thing in the world which I most desire
and seek, namely your good grace. Of that my conduct shall assure me, nor
shall I ever despair thereof, so long as, according to your promise, you
lay bare your heart to me. Otherwise I shall think that my misfortune, and
the fair attitude[360] of those’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘who have not the third
part of the loyalty and willing obedience that I bear to you, have gained
over me the advantage won by the second love of Jason [Creusa or Glauce?]
Not that I compare you _à un si malheureuse_’ (_sic_) ‘nor myself to one
so pitiless [as Medea] however much you make me a little like her in what
concerns you; or [but?] to preserve and guard you for her to whom alone
you belong, if one can appropriate what one gains by honourably, and
loyally, and absolutely loving, as I do and will do all my life, come what
pain and misery there may. In memory whereof and of all the ills that you
have caused me, be mindful of the place near here’ (Darnley’s chamber?).
‘I do not ask you to keep promise with me to-morrow’ (the Scots has,
wrongly, ‘I crave with that ye keepe promise with me the morne,’ which
Laing justifies by a false conjectural restoration of the French), ‘but
that we meet’ (_que nous truvions = que nous nous trouvions ensemble_?),
‘and that you do not listen to any suspicion you may have without letting
me know. And I ask no more of God than that you may know what is in my
heart which is yours, and that He preserve you at least during my life,
which shall be dear to me only while my life and I are dear to you. I am
going to bed, and wish you good night. Let me know early to-morrow how you
fare, for I shall be anxious. And keep good watch if the bird leave his
cage, or without his mate. Like the turtle I shall abide alone, to lament
the absence, however short it may be. What I cannot do, my letter [would
do?] heartily, if it were not that I fear you are asleep. For I did not
dare to write before Joseph’ (Joseph Riccio) ‘and bastienne (_sic_) and
Joachim, who only went away when I began.’
This Letter is, in most parts, entirely unlike the two Glasgow letters in
style. They are simple and direct: this is obscure and affected. As Laing
had not the transcript of the original French (a transcript probably
erroneous in places) before him, his attempts to reconstruct the French
are unsuccessful. He is more happy in noting that the phrase _vous m’en
dischargeres votre cœur_, occurs twice in Mary’s letters to
Elizabeth[361] (_e.g._ August 13, 1568). But to ‘unpack the heart’ is, of
course, a natural and usual expression. If Darnley is meant by the bird in
the cage, the metaphor is oddly combined with the comparison (a stock one)
of Mary to a turtle dove. Possibly the phrase ‘I do _not_ ask that you
keep promise with me to-morrow,’ is meant to be understood ‘I do not ask
you to keep promise except that we may meet,’ as Laing supposes. But (1)
the sense cannot be got out of the French, (2) it does not help the
interpretation of the accusers if, after all, Mary is only contriving an
excuse for a meeting between herself and Bothwell. The obscure passage
about the turtle dove need not be borrowed from Ronsard, as Laing thinks:
it is a commonplace. The phrase which I render ‘what I cannot do, my
letter [would do] heartily, if it were not that I fear you are asleep,’
the Scots translates ‘This letter will do with ane gude hart, that thing
quhilk I cannot do myself gif it be not that I have feir that ze ar in
sleiping.’ The French is ‘ce que je ne puis faire ma lettre de bon cœur si
ce nestoit que je ay peur que soyes endormy.’ Laing, reconstructing the
French, says, ‘Ce que je ne saurois faire moi-même; that is, instigate
Lord Robert to commit the murder.’ The end of the phrase he takes ‘in its
figurative sense, _d’un homme endormi_; slow, or negligent.’ Thus we are
to understand ‘what I cannot do, my letter would do heartily--that is
excite you to instigate my brother to kill my husband, if I were not
afraid that you were slow or negligent.’ This is mere nonsense. The writer
means, apparently, ‘what I cannot do, my letter would gladly do--that is
salute you--if I were not afraid that you are already asleep, the night
being so far advanced.’ She is sorry if her letter arrives to disturb his
sleep.
It needs much good will, or rather needs much ill will, to regard this
Letter as an inducement to Bothwell to make Lord Robert draw on Darnley.
Mary, without Bothwell’s help, could have summoned Lord Robert on any
pretext, and then set him and Darnley by the ears. The date of Mary’s
attempt to end Darnley by her brother’s sword, Buchanan places ‘about
three days before the King was slain.’ ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ as we saw,
places it on February 8. Darnley was murdered after midnight of February
9. Paris said that, to the best of his memory, he carried letters on the
Friday night, the 7th, from Mary, at Kirk o’ Field, to Bothwell. On
Saturday, Mary told her attendants of the quarrel between Darnley and Lord
Robert. ‘Lord Robert,’ she said, ‘had good means of killing the King at
that moment, for there was then nobody in the chamber to part them but
herself.’ These are rather suspicious confessions.[362] Moreover, Lennox,
in his MSS., says that Moray was present at the incident, and could bear
witness at Westminster. The statement of Paris is confused: he carried
letters both on Thursday and Friday nights (February 6 and 7), and his
declaration about all this affair is involved in contradictions.
According to the confession of Hay of Tala, it was on February 7 that
Bothwell arranged the method by gunpowder. When he had just settled that,
Mary, _ex hypothesi_, disturbed him with the letter on the scheme of using
Lord Robert and a chance scuffle: an idea suggested to her by what she had
extracted, that very night, from Darnley--namely, the warning whispered to
him by Lord Robert. She thinks that, if confronted, they will fight,
Darnley will fall, and this will serve ‘pour excuser votre affaire,’ as
the Letter says. Buchanan adds in his ‘History,’ that Bothwell was present
to kill anybody convenient (fol. 350). It was a wildly improbable scheme,
especially if Mary, as Buchanan says, called in Moray to stop the quarrel,
or share the blame, or be killed by Bothwell.
That the Letter, with some others of the set, is written in an odd,
affected style, does not yield an argument either to the attack or the
defence. If it is unlikely that Mary practised two opposite kinds of
style, it is also unlikely that a forger, or forgers, would venture on
attributing to her the practice. To this topic there will be opportunities
of returning.
LETTER IV
This Letter merely concerns somebody’s distrust of a maid of Mary’s. The
maid is about to be married, perhaps to Bastian, but there is nothing
said that identifies either the girl, or the recipient of the letter. Its
tone, however, is that of almost abjectly affectionate submission, and
there is a note of a common end, to which the writer and the recipient are
working, _ce à quoy nous tandons tous deux_. If Mary dismisses the maid,
she, in revenge, may reveal her scheme. The writer deprecates the
suspicions of her correspondent, and all these things mark the epistle as
one in this series. As it proves nothing against Mary, beyond affection
for somebody, a common aim with him, and fear that the maid may spoil the
project, there could be no reason for forging the Letter. A transcript of
the original French is in the Record Office.[363] The translators have
blundered over an important phrase from ignorance of French.[364]
LETTER V
On the night of April 19, 1567, Bothwell obtained the signatures of many
nobles to ‘Ainslie’s Band,’ as it is called, a document urging Mary to
marry Bothwell.[365] On Monday, April 21, Mary went to Stirling, to see
her child. She was suspected of intending to hand him over to Bothwell. If
she meant to do this, her purpose was frustrated. On Wednesday, April 23,
she went to Linlithgow, and on Thursday, April 24, was seized by Bothwell,
near Edinburgh, and carried to Dunbar. This Letter, if genuine, proves her
complicity; and is intended to prove it, if forged. On the face of it, the
Letter was written at Stirling. Mary regrets Bothwell’s confidence in an
unworthy person, Huntly, the brother of his wife. Huntly has visited her,
and, instead of bringing news as to how and when the abduction is to
managed, has thrown cold water on the plot. He has said that Mary can
never marry a married man who abducts her, and that the Lords _se
dédiroient_, which the Scots translator renders ‘the Lordis wald unsay
themselves, and wald deny that they had said.’ The reference is to their
acquiescence in the Ainslie band of April 19. Mary, as usual, displays
jealousy of Bothwell, who has ‘two strings to his bow,’ herself and his
wedded wife. The Letter implies that, for some reason, Mary and Bothwell
had not arranged the details of the abduction before they separated. A
transcript of the original French is at Hatfield; the English translation,
also at Hatfield, is not from the French, but is a mere Anglicising of the
Scots version. Oddly enough the French copy at Hatfield, unlike the rest,
is in a Roman hand, such as Mary wrote. The hand resembles that of the
copyist of the Casket Sonnets in the Cambridge (Lennox) MSS., and that of
Mary Beaton, but it is not Mary Beaton’s hand.
LETTER VI
This Letter still deals with the manner of the _enlèvement_. Mary is now
reconciled to the idea of trusting Huntly.
She advises Bothwell as to his relations with the Lords. The passage
follows:--
‘Methinkis that zour services, and the lang amitie, having ye gude will of
ye Lordis, do weill deserve ane pardoun, gif above the dewtie of ane
subject yow advance yourself, not to constrane me, bot to assure yourself
of sic place neir unto me, that uther admonitiounis or forane [foreign]
perswasiounis may not let [hinder] me from consenting to that, that ye
hope your service sall mak yow ane day to attene; and to be schort, to mak
yourself sure of the Lordis and fre to mary; and that ye are constraint
for your suretie, and to be abill to serve me faithfully, to use are
humbil requeist, joynit to ane importune actioun.
‘And to be schort, excuse yourself, and perswade thame the maist ye can,
yat ye ar constranit to mak persute aganis zour enemies.’
Now compare Mary’s excuses for her marriage, and for Bothwell’s conduct,
as written in Scots by Lethington, her secretary, in May, 1567, for the
Bishop of Dunblane to present to the Court of France.[366] First she tells
at much length the tale of Bothwell’s ‘services, and the lang amitie,’ as
briefly stated in Letter VI. Later she mentions his ambition, and
‘practising with ye nobillmen secretly to make yame his friendis.’ This
answers to ‘having ye gude will of ye Lordis,’ in the Letter. In the
document for the French Court, Mary suggests, as one of Bothwell’s motives
for her abduction, ‘incidentis quhilk mycht occur to frustrat him of his
expectatioun.’ In the Letter he is ‘constrainit for his suretie, to carry
her off.’ Finally, in the Memorial for the French Court, it is said that
Bothwell ‘_ceased never till be persuasionis and importune sute
accumpaneit not the less with force_,’ he won Mary’s assent. In Letter VI.
she advises him to allege that he is obliged ‘_to use ane humble requeist
joynit to ane importune action_.’ Letter VI., in fact, is almost a
succinct _précis_, before the abduction, of the pleas and excuses which
Mary made to the French Court after her marriage. Could a forger have
accidentally produced this coincidence? One could: according to Sir John
Skelton the letter to her ambassador ‘is understood to have been drawn by
Maitland.’[367] The letter of excuses to France is a mere expansion of the
excuses that, in the Casket Letter which we are considering, Mary advises
Bothwell to make to the Lords. Either, then, this Letter is genuine, or
the hypothetical forger had seen, and borrowed from, the Memorial
addressed in May to the Court of France. This alternative is not really
difficult; for Lethington, as secretary, must have seen, and may even (as
Skelton suggests) have composed, the Scots letter of excuses carried to
France by the Bishop of Dunblane, and Lethington had joined Mary’s enemies
before they got possession of the Casket and Letters. Oddly enough, the
letter to the ambassador contains a phrase in Scots which Lethington had
used in writing to Beaton earlier, Mary ‘could not find ane outgait.’[368]
No transcript of the original French, and no English translation, have
been found.
LETTER VII
This Letter purports to follow on another, ‘sen my letter writtin,’ and
may be of Tuesday, April 22, as Mary reports that Huntly is anxious about
what he is to do ‘after to-morrow.’ She speaks of Huntly as ‘your
brother-in-law that _was_,’ whereas Huntly, Bothwell not being divorced,
was still his brother-in-law. Huntly is afraid that Mary’s people, and
especially the Earl of Sutherland, will die rather than let her be carried
off. We do not know, from other sources, that Sutherland was present. Mary
implores Bothwell to bring an overpowering force. No transcript of the
original French, nor any English translation, is known. Mary must have
written two of these letters (and apparently eleven sonnets also) while
ill, anxious, and busy, on the 22nd, at Stirling, with the third on the
23rd, either at Stirling or Linlithgow. She could hardly get answers to
anything written as late as the 22nd, before Bothwell arrived at Haltoun,
near Linlithgow, on the night of April 23.
LETTER VIII (III IN HENDERSON)
There are differences of opinion as to the date of this curious Letter,
and as to its place in the series. The contemporary transcript, made
probably for the Commissioners on December 9, 1568, is in the Record
Office. I translate the Letter afresh, since it must be read before any
inference as to its date and importance can be drawn.
‘Sir,--If regret for your absence, the pain caused by your forgetfulness,
and by fear of the danger which every one predicts to your beloved person,
can console me, I leave it to you to judge; considering the ill fortune
which my cruel fate and constant trouble have promised me, in the sequel
of sorrows and terrors recent and long passed; all which you well know.
But, in spite of all, I will not accuse you either of your scant
remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, or of
the coldness of your letters, I being so much your own that what pleases
you pleases me. And my thoughts are so eagerly subject to yours that I am
fain to suppose that whatsoever comes from you arises not from any of the
aforesaid causes, but from such as are just and reasonable, and desired by
myself. Which is the final order that you have promised me to take for the
safety[369] and honourable service of the sole support of my life, for
whom alone I wish to preserve it, and without which I desire only instant
death. And to show you how humbly I submit me to your commands, I send
you, by Paris, in sign of homage, the ornament’ (her hair) ‘of the head,
the guide of the other members, thereby signifying that, in investing you
with the spoil of what is principal, the rest must be subject to you with
the heart’s consent. In place of which heart, since I have already
abandoned it to you, I send you a sepulchre, of hard stone, painted black,
_semé_ with tears and bones.[370] I compare it to my heart, which, like
it, is graven into a secure tomb or receptacle of your commands, and
specially of your name and memory, which are therein enclosed, like my
hair in the ring. Never shall they issue forth till death lets you make a
trophy of my bones, even as the ring is full of them’ (_i.e._ in enamel),
‘in proof that you have made entire conquest of me, and of my heart, to
such a point that I leave you my bones in memory of your victory, and of
my happy and willing defeat, to be better employed than I deserve. The
enamel round the ring is black, to symbolise the constancy of her who
sends it. The tears are numberless as are my fears of your displeasure, my
tears for your absence, and for my regret not to be yours, to outward
view, as I am, without weakness of heart or soul.
‘And reasonably so, were my merits greater than those of the most perfect
of women, and such as I desire to be. And I shall take pains to imitate
such merits, to be worthily employed under your dominion. Receive this
then, my only good, in as kind part as with extreme joy I have received
your marriage’ (apparently, from what follows, a contract of marriage or a
ring of betrothal), ‘which never shall leave my bosom till our bodies are
publicly wedded, as a token of all that I hope or desire of happiness in
this world. Now fearing, my heart, to weary you as much in the reading as
I take pleasure in the writing, I shall end, after kissing your hands,
with as great love as I pray God (O thou, the only prop of my life!) to
make your life long and happy, and to give me your good grace, the only
good thing which I desire, and to which I tend. I have shown what I have
learned to this bearer, to whom I remit myself, knowing the credit that
you give him, as does she who wishes to be ever your humble and obedient
loyal wife, and only lover, who for ever vows wholly to you her heart and
body changelessly, as to him whom I make possessor of my heart which, you
may be assured, will never change till death, for never shall weal or woe
estrange it.’
The absurd affectation of style in this Letter, so different from the
plain manner of Letters I. and II., may be a poetical effort by Mary, or
may be a forger’s idea of how a queen in love ought to write. In the
latter case, to vary the manner so much from that of the earlier Letters,
was a bold experiment and a needless.
Mary, to be brief, sends to Bothwell a symbolic mourning ring, enclosing
her hair. It is enamelled in black, with tears and bones. Such a ring is
given by a girl to her lover, as a parting token, in the _Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles_ (xxvi.), a ring _d’or, esmailée de larmes noires_.[371] She
promises always to keep the ‘marriage’ (that is the contract of marriage,
or can it be a ring typical of marriage?) in her bosom, till the actual
wedding in public. Now she had a sentimental habit of wearing love tokens
‘in her bosom.’ She writes to Norfolk from Coventry (December, 1569), ‘I
took the diamant from my Lord Boyd, which I shall keep unseene about my
neck till I give it agayn to the owner of it and of me both.’[372]
As to the Contract of Marriage (if Mary wore that in her bosom[373]), two
alleged contracts were produced for the prosecution. One was a ‘contract
or promise of marriage’ by Mary to Bothwell, in the Italic hand, and in
French; the hand was said to be Mary’s own. It was undated, and a
memorandum in the ‘Detection’ says, ‘Though some words therein seme to the
contrary, yet is on credible groundes supposed to have been made and
written by her befoir the death of her husband.’ The document explicitly
mentions that ‘God has taken’ Darnley. The document, or jewel, treasured
by Mary would, of course, be Bothwell’s solemn promise, or token of
promise, the counterpart of hers to him, published in Buchanan.[374]
Now there also existed a contract, said to be in Huntly’s hand, and signed
by Mary and Bothwell, of date April 5 (at Seton), 1567. But this contract
speaks of the process of divorce ‘intentit’ between Bothwell and his
‘pretensit spouse.’ Now that suit, on April 5, was not yet before the
Court (though some documents had been put in), nor did Lady Bothwell move
in the case till after Mary’s abduction.
If Mary kept _this_ contract, and if it be correctly dated, then Letter
VIII. is not of January-February, but of April, 1567.
If Mary regarded herself as now privately married, this pose would explain
the phrase ‘your brother-in-law _that was_,’ in Letter VIII. But this is
stretching possibilities.
Mr. Hosack has argued that the Letter just translated was really written
to Darnley, between whom and Mary some private preliminary ceremony of
marriage was said to have passed. In that case the words _par Paris_, ‘I
send you by Paris, &c.,’ are a forged interpolation, as Paris was not in
Mary’s service till January, 1567. The opening sentence about the danger
which, as every one thinks, menaces her correspondent, might refer to
Darnley. But the tone of remonstrance against indifference, suspicion, and
violated promises, is the tone of almost all the Casket Letters, and does
not apply to Darnley--before his public marriage.
As to the ‘heart in a ring,’ Mary, as Laing notes, had written to
Elizabeth ‘Je vous envoye mon cœur en bague.’ The phrase in the Letter,
_seul soutien de ma vie_, also occurs in one of the Casket Sonnets.
To what known or alleged circumstances in Mary’s relations with Bothwell
can this Letter refer? The alternatives are (1) either to her receipt of
Bothwell’s answer to Letter II., which Paris (on our scheme of dates) gave
to Mary on January 25, at Glasgow; (2) to the moment of her stay at
Callendar, where she arrived, with Darnley, on January 27, taking him on
January 28 to Linlithgow, whence, on January 29, ‘she wraytt to Bothwell.’
She had learned at Linlithgow, on January 28, by Hob Ormistoun, that
Bothwell was on his way from Liddesdale.[375] Or (3) does the letter refer
to Monday, April 21, when she was at Stirling till Wednesday, April 23,
when she went to Linlithgow, Bothwell being ‘at Haltoun hard by,’ and
carrying her off on April 24?[376]
Taking first (1)--we find Mary acknowledging in this letter the receipt of
Bothwell’s ‘marriage.’ If this is a contract, did Bothwell send it in the
letter which, according to Paris, he wrote on January 24, accompanying it
with a diamond? ‘Tell the Queen,’ said Bothwell, ‘that I send her this
diamond, which you are to carry, and that if I had my heart I would send
it willingly, but I have it not.’ The diamond, a ring probably, might be
referred to in Bothwell’s letter as a marriage or betrothal ring (French,
_union_). In return Mary would send her mourning ring; ‘the stone I
compare to my heart.’
This looks well, but how could Mary, who, _ex hypothesi_, had just
received a ring, a promise or contract of marriage, and a loving message,
complain, as she does, of ‘the coldness of your letters,’ ‘your violated
promise,’ ‘your forgetfulness,’ ‘your want of care for me’? Danger to
Bothwell, in Liddesdale, she might fear, but these other complaints are
absolutely inconsistent with the theory that Bothwell had just sent a
letter, a ring, a promise of marriage, and a loving verbal message. We
must therefore dismiss hypothesis 1.
(2) Did Mary send this Letter on January 29 from Linlithgow? She had no
neglect to complain of _there_; for, according to her accusers, she was
met by Hob Ormistoun, with a letter or message. Paris says this was at
Callendar, where she slept on January 27.[377] In that case Bothwell was
yet more prompt. Again, Mary had now no fear of danger to Bothwell’s
person, as she had just learned that Bothwell had left perilous
Liddesdale. Here, once more, there is no room, reason, or ground for her
complaints. Again, in the Letter she says that she sends the mourning ring
‘by Paris.’ But, if we are to believe Paris, she did not do so. He gave
her Bothwell’s letter, received from Bothwell’s messenger, at Callendar,
January 27. She answered it at bedtime, gave it to Paris to be given to
Bothwell’s messenger, enclosing a ring, and the messenger carried ring and
letter to Bothwell. She could not write, ‘I have sent you by Paris’ the
ring, if she did nothing of the sort. Later, according to Paris, she did
send him, with the bracelets, from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, where he met
Bothwell, just mounting to ride and join Mary and Darnley on their return.
The Letter, then, does not fit the circumstances of one written either at
Callendar, January 27 (Paris), or at Linlithgow, January 29 (‘Cecil’s
Journal’).
(3) That the ring, and the lamentations, were carried, by Paris, from
Linlithgow to the neighbouring house of Haltoun, where Bothwell lay, on
the night of April 23, the night before he bore Mary off to Dunbar, is not
credible. Nothing indicates her receipt of token or contract of marriage
at that date. The danger to Bothwell was infinitesimal. He was not
neglecting Mary, he was close to her, and only waiting for daylight to
carry her off. He wrote in reply, Paris says, and verbally promised to
meet her, ‘on the road, at the bridge.’[378]
To a man who was thus doing his best to please her, a man whom she was to
meet next day, Mary could not be writing long, affected complaints and
lamentations. She would write, if at all, on details of the business on
hand. No ring was carried by Paris, according to his own deposition.
Thus the contents of the Letter do not fit into any recorded or alleged
juncture in Mary’s relations with Bothwell, after January 21, 1567, when
Paris (whom the Letter mentions) first entered her service. Laing places
the Letter last in the series, and supposes that the ring and letter were
sent from Linlithgow, to Bothwell hard by (at Haltoun), the night before
the ‘ravishment.’ But he does not make it plain that the contents of the
Letter are really consistent with its supposed occasion.[379] When was
Bothwell absent from Mary, cold, forgetful, and in danger, between the
return from Glasgow, and the abduction? The Letter does not help the case
of the prosecution.
We have exhausted the three conceivable alternatives as to the date,
occasion, and circumstances of this Letter. Its contents fit none of
these dates and occasions. Mr. Froude adds a fourth alternative. This
Letter ‘was written just before the marriage’[380] when Bothwell (whose
absence is complained of) was never out of Mary’s company.
There is not, in short, an obvious place for this Letter in the recorded
circumstances of Mary’s history, though the lack of obviousness may arise
from our ignorance of facts.
XVI
_THE CASKET SONNETS_
When the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan was first published, La Mothe Fénelon,
French ambassador in England, writing to Charles IX., described the
Sonnets as the worst, or most compromising, of all the evidence. They
never allude to Darnley, and must have been written after his death. As is
well known, Brantôme says that such of Mary’s verses as he had seen were
entirely unlike the Casket Sonnets, which are ‘too rude and unpolished to
be hers.’ Ronsard, he adds, was of the same opinion. Both men had seen
verses written hastily by Mary, and still ‘unpolished,’ whether by her, or
by Ronsard, who may have aided her, as Voltaire aided Frederick the Great.
Both critics were, of course, prejudiced in favour of the beautiful Queen.
Both were good judges, but neither had ever seen 160 lines of sonnet
sequence written by her under the stress of a great passion, and amidst
the toils of travel, of business, of intense anxiety, all in the space of
two days, April 21 to April 23.
[Illustration: PLATE A
TWO SONNETS FROM THE CAMBRIDGE MS.
The hand somewhat resembles that of Mary in early youth, and that of Mary
Beaton
The copyist is unknown]
That the most fervent and hurried sonneteer should write eleven sonnets in
such time and circumstances is hard to believe, but we must allow for
Mary’s sleepless nights, which she may have beguiled by versifying. It
is known that a distinguished historian is occupied with a critical
edition of these Sonnets. We may await his decision as to their relations
with the few surviving poems of the Queen. My own comparison of these does
not convince me that the favoured rhymes are especially characteristic of
Mary. The topics of the Casket Sonnets, the author’s inability to remove
the suspicions of the jealous Bothwell; her protestations of submission;
her record of her sacrifices for him; her rather mean jealousy of Lady
Bothwell, are also the frequent topics of the Casket Letters. The very
phrases are occasionally the same: so much so as to suggest the suspicion
that the Letters may have been modelled on the Sonnets, or the Sonnets on
the Letters. If there be anything in this, the Sonnets are probably the
real originals. Nothing is less likely than that a forger would think of
such a task as forging verses by Mary: nor do we know any one among her
enemies who could have produced the verses even if he had the will. To
suspect Buchanan is grotesque. On the theory of a literary contest between
Mary and Lady Bothwell for Bothwell’s affections, something is to be said
in the following chapter. Meanwhile, I am obliged to share the opinion of
La Mothe Fénelon, that, as proof of Mary’s passion for Bothwell, the
Sonnets are stronger evidence than the Letters, and much less open to
suspicion than some parts of the Letters.
XVII
_CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS_
A few words must be said as to a now obsolete difficulty, the question as
to the language in which the Letters were originally written. That
question need not be mooted: it is settled by Mr. Henderson’s ‘Casket
Letters.’ The original language of the epistles was French.
I. The epistles shown at Westminster were certainly in French, which was
not (except in the first one or two sentences) the French later published
by the Huguenots. _That_ French was translated from the Latin, which was
translated from the Scots, which was translated from the original French.
Voluminous linguistic criticisms by Goodall, Hosack, Skelton, and others
have ceased, therefore, to be in point.
II. Many phrases, whether as mirrored in the Scots and English
translations, or as extant in contemporary copies of the original French,
can be paralleled from authentic letters of Mary’s. Bresslau proved this
easily, but it was no less easily proved that many of the phrases were
conventional, and could be paralleled from the correspondence of Catherine
de’ Medici and other contemporary ladies. A forger would have ample
opportunities of knowing Mary’s phrasing and orthography. It would be easy
for me to write a letter reproducing the phrasing and orthography, which
is very distinctive, of Pickle the Spy. No argument against forgery can be
based on imitations of peculiarities of phrase and spelling which the
hypothetical forger was sure to know and reproduce.
But phrasing and spelling are not to be confounded with tone and style.
Now the Letters, in tone, show considerable unity, except at one point.
Throughout Mary is urging and spurring an indifferent half-hearted wooer
to commit an abominable crime, and another treasonable act, her abduction.
Really, to judge from the Letters, we might suppose Bothwell to be almost
as indifferent and reluctant as Field-Marshal Keith was, when the Czarina
Elizabeth offered him her hand. Keith put his foot down firmly, and
refused, but the Bothwell who hesitated was lost. It is Mary who gives him
no rest till he carries her off: we must blame Bothwell for not arranging
the scheme before parting from Mary in Edinburgh; to be sure, Buchanan
declares in his History that the scheme _was_ arranged. In short, we
become almost sorry for Bothwell, who had a lovely royal bride thrust on
him against his will, and only ruined himself out of reluctance to
disoblige a lady. It is the old Irish tale of Diarmaid and Grainne over
again.
But, on the other hand, Letter II. represents Mary as tortured by remorse
and regret. Only to please Bothwell would she act as she does. Her heart
bleeds at it. We must suppose that she not only grew accustomed to the
situation, but revelled in it, and insisted on an abduction, which even
Lethington could only explain by her knowledge of the _apices juris_, the
sublimities of Scots law. A pardon for the abduction would, in Scots law,
cover the murder.
Such is the chief difference in tone. In style, though the fact seems to
have been little if at all noticed, there are two distinct species. There
is the simple natural style of Letters I., II., and the rest, and there is
the alembicated, tormented, precious, and affected style of Letters VIII.
(III.) and IV. Have we any other examples, from Mary’s hand, of the
obscure affectations of VIII. (III.) and IV.? Letter VIII., while it
contains phrases which recur in the Casket ‘Sonnets,’ is really more
contorted and _symboliste_ in manner than the verses. These ‘fond ballads’
contain, not infrequently, the same sentiments as the Letters, whether the
Letters be in the direct or in the affected style. Thus, in Letter II.,
where Lady Bothwell and Mary’s jealousy of her are the theme, we read ‘Se
not hir’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘quhais feinzeit teiris should not be sa mekle
praisit or estemit as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk I sustene
for to merite her place.’ Compare Sonnets ii. iii.:
Brief je feray de ma foy telle preuve,
Qu’il cognoistra sans faulte ma constance,
Non par mes pleurs ou fainte obeyssance
Comme autres font, mais par divers espreuve.
In both passages the writer contrasts the ‘feigned tears,’ ‘feigned
obedience’ of Bothwell’s wife with her own practical proofs of devotion:
in the Sonnet using ‘them’ for ‘her’ as in Letter IV.
A possible, but unexpected explanation of the extraordinary diversity of
the two styles, I proceed to give. We have briefly discussed the Sonnets,
which (despite the opinion of Ronsard) carry a strong appearance of
authenticity, though whether their repetitions of the matter and phrasing
of the Letters be in favour of the hypothesis that _both_ are authentic
might be argued variously. Now from the Sonnets it appears that Lady
Bothwell was endeavouring to secure her bridegroom’s heart in a rather
unlooked-for manner: namely, by writing to him elaborately literary love
letters in the artificial style of the age of the Pleiad. As the Sonnets
say, she wooes him ‘par les escriptz tout fardez de sçavoir.’ But Mary
maintains that Lady Bothwell is a mere plagiarist. Her ingenious letters,
treasured by Bothwell, and the cause of his preference for her, are
empruntés de quelque autheur luisant!
We have already tried to show that Bothwell was not the mere ‘brave stupid
strong-handed Border noble,’ ‘the rough ignorant moss-trooper,’ but a man
of taste and culture. If the Sonnets be genuine, there was actually a
contest in literary excellence between Bothwell’s wife and his royal
mistress. This queer rivalry would account for the style of Letter VIII.,
in which Mary labours to prove to Bothwell, as it were, that she is as
capable as his wife of writing a fashionable, contorted, literary style,
if she chooses: in poetry, too, if she likes. We naturally feel sorry for
a man of action who received, at a moment when decisive action was
needful, such an epistle as Letter VIII., and we naturally suppose that he
never read it, but tossed it into the Casket with an explosion of profane
words. But it is just conceivable that Bothwell had a taste for the
‘precious,’ and that, to gratify this taste, and eclipse Lady Bothwell,
Mary occasionally wrote in the manner of Letter VIII. or quoted Jason,
Medea, and Creusa.
This hypothesis, far-fetched as it may seem, at all events is naturally
suggested by Sonnet VI. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that
a dexterous forger would sit down to elaborate, whether from genuine
materials or not, anything so much out of keeping with his Letter II. as
is his Letter VIII. Yet Letter VIII., as we saw, cannot be connected with
any known moment of the intrigue.
While the Letters thus vary in style, in tone of sentiment they are all
uniform, except Letter II. We are to believe that the forger deliberately
laid down a theory of this strange wooing. The Queen throughout is much
more the pursuer than the pursued. Bothwell is cold, careless, breaks
promises, is contemptuously negligent, does not write, is suspicious,
prefers his wedded wife to his mistress. Contemporary gossip averred that
this, in fact, was his attitude. Thus, after Mary had been sent to Loch
Leven, Lethington told du Croc that ‘Bothwell had written several times to
his first wife, Lady Bothwell, since he lay with the Queen, and in his
letters assured Lady Bothwell that he regarded her as his wife, and the
Queen as his concubine.’ Lethington reported this to Mary herself, who
discredited the fact, but Lethington relied on the evidence of Bothwell’s
letters.[381] How could he know anything about them? The belief in
Bothwell’s preference of his wife was general, and, doubtless, it may be
urged that this explains the line taken by the forger.
The passion, in the Letters, is all on the side of Mary. By her eternal
protests of entire submission she recalls to us at once her eager service
to Darnley in the first days of their marriage, and her constant promises
of implicit obedience to Norfolk. To Norfolk, as to Bothwell (we have
already shown), she expresses her hope that ‘you will mistrust me no
more.’[382] ‘If you be in the wrong I will submit me to you for so
writing, and ax your pardon thereof.’ She will beg pardon, even if Norfolk
is in the wrong! Precisely in the same tone does Mary (in Letter VIII.),
after complaining of Bothwell’s forgetfulness, say, ‘But in spite of all I
will not accuse you, either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and
still less of your broken promise, seeing that what pleases you pleases
me.’
This woman, whose pride is said to be in contradiction with her
submission, as expressed in the Casket Letters, writes even to Elizabeth,
‘Je me sousmetray à vos commandemants.’[383] In Letter VIII. Bothwell is
congratulated on ‘votre victoire et mon agreable perte.’ To Elizabeth Mary
writes ‘Vous aurés fayt une profitable conqueste de moy.’
That any forger should have known Mary so well as to place her,
imaginatively, as regarded Bothwell, in the very attitude which we see
that, on occasion, she chose later to adopt in fact, as regarded Norfolk,
is perhaps beyond belief. It may be urged that she probably, in early
days, wrote to Darnley in this very tone, that Darnley’s papers would fall
into his father’s hands, and that Lennox would hand them over as materials
to the forger. But ‘it is to consider too curiously to consider thus.’
Such are the arguments, for the defence and the attack, which may be drawn
from internal evidence of style. To myself this testimony seems rather in
favour of the authenticity of considerable and compromising portions of
the papers.
Letter VIII. (intended to prove a contract of marriage with Bothwell)
remains an enigma to me: the three Letters proving Mary’s eagerness for
the abduction are not without suspicious traits. The epistle about
bringing Lord Robert to kill Darnley in a quarrel is involved in the
inconsistencies which we have shown to beset that affair. The note about
the waiting-woman was hardly worth forging, compromising as it is. Letter
I. seems to me certainly authentic, if we adopt the scheme of dates
suggested, and reject that of ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ which appears to be
official, and answers to Lennox’s demands for dates. It may be merely
Lennoxian, but no other scheme of chronology is known to have been put in
by the accusers. Letter I., if our dates are admitted, implies the
existence of a letter answering to Letter II., which I have had to regard
as, in some parts at least, genuine. If forgery and tampering were
attempted (as I think they certainly were in the letter never produced,
but described by Lennox and Moray, and perhaps in other cases), who was
the criminal?
My reply will have been anticipated. Whoever held the pen of the forger,
Lethington must have directed the scheme. This idea, based on we know not
what information, though I shall offer a conjecture, occurred to
Elizabeth, as soon as she heard the first whisper of the existence of the
Letters, in June-July, 1567. On July 21, de Silva mentioned to her what he
had heard--that the Lords held certain Letters ‘proving that the Queen had
been cognisant of the murder of her husband. She told me it was not true,
though Lethington had behaved badly in the matter.’[384] The person from
whom Elizabeth thus early heard something connecting Lethington, in an
evil way, with the affair must have been Robert Melville. His position was
then peculiar. He was first accredited to Elizabeth, on June 5, 1567, by
Mary, Bothwell, and Lethington.[385] Melville left Scotland, for Mary, on
June 5, returned to Scotland, and again rode to London on June 21, as the
envoy of some of her enemies. Now June 21 was the day of the opening of
the Casket, and inspection of its contents. A meeting of the Privy Council
was held on that day, but Lethington’s name is not among those of the
nobles who attended it.[386] The minutes of the Council say not a word
about the Casket, though the members attending Council were, with several
others, present, so Morton declared, at the opening of the Casket. Though
not at the Council, Lethington was at the Casket scene, according to
Morton. And on that very day, Lethington wrote a letter to Cecil, the
bearer being Robert Melville, who, says Lethington, is sent ‘on _sudden_
dispatch.’[387] Melville, in addition to Lethington’s letter, carried a
verbal message to Cecil, as the letter proves. We may glean the nature of
the verbal message from the letter itself.
We know that the Lords, in December of the same year, publicly and in
Parliament, and with strange logic, declared that the ground of their
rising and imprisonment of Mary was her guilt as revealed in letters
written by her hand, though these were not discovered when the Lords
imprisoned Mary. Now Lethington, in his dispatch to Cecil, carried by
Melville the day of the Casket finding, says that the bearer, Mr. Robert
Melville, ‘can report to you at length the ground of the Lords’ so just
and honourable cause.’ Presently that ‘ground’ was declared to be the
evidence of the Casket Letters. Melville then would verbally report this
new ‘ground’ to Cecil and Elizabeth. He was dispatched at that very date
for no other reason. The Lords were Melville’s employers, but his heart
was sore for Mary. Elizabeth, on June 30, tells Mary (Throckmorton carried
her letter) that ‘your own faithful servant, Robert Melville, used much
earnest speech on your behalf.’[388] What Elizabeth knew about
Lethington’s bad behaviour as to the Letters, and spoke of to de Silva,
she must have heard from Robert Melville. She did not, as far as we are
aware, mention her knowledge of the subject till de Silva introduced it on
July 21, but only from Melville could she learn whatever she did learn
about Lethington. Throckmorton, her envoy to Scotland, did not mention the
Letters till July 25, four days after Elizabeth spoke to de Silva. ‘Jhone
a Forret,’ whom the Lords sent through London on July 8 to bring Moray,
was not exactly the man to blame Lethington and discredit the Letters: for
he was probably John Wood, later a chief enemy of Mary.
Suspicions of Lethington, later, were not confined to Elizabeth alone. In
Mary’s instructions to her Commissioners (Sept. 9, 1568) she says, ‘There
are divers in Scotland, both men and women, that can counterfeit my
handwriting, and write the like manner of writing which I use [the ‘Roman’
or Italic] as well as myself, _and principally such as are in company with
themselves_,’[389] as Lethington then was.
Lesley stated the matter thus: ‘There are sundry can counterfeit her
handwriting, who have been brought up in her company, of whom there are
some assisting themselves’ (the Lords) ‘as well of other nations as of
Scots, as I doubt not both your highness’ (Elizabeth) ‘and divers others
of your Highness’s Court, has seen sundry letters sent here from Scotland,
which would not be known from her own handwriting.’[390]
All this is vague, and Mary’s reference to _women_, Lesley’s reference to
those ‘brought up in her company,’ glance, alas! at the Queen’s Maries.
Mary Livingstone, wedded to John Sempil, was not on the best terms with
Queen Mary about certain jewels. Mary Fleming was Lethington’s wife. Mary
Beaton’s aunts were at open feud with the Queen. A lady, unnamed, was
selected as the forger by the author of ‘L’Innocence de la Royne
d’Escosse’ (1572).
To return to Lethington. In 1615, Camden, writing, as it were, under the
eye of James VI. and I., declared that Lethington ‘had privately hinted to
the Commissioners at York, that he had counterfeited Mary’s hand
frequently.’[391] There is nothing incredible, _a priori_, in the story.
Between October 11, 1568 (when Norfolk, having been _privately_ shown the
Letters, was blabbing, even to his servant Bannister, his horror of Letter
II.), and October 16, when Lethington rode out with Norfolk, and the
scheme for his marrying Mary struck deep root, something may have been
said. Lethington may have told Norfolk that perhaps the Letters were
forged, that he himself, for amusement, had imitated Mary’s hand. As a
fact, the secretaries of two of the foremost of contemporary statesmen did
write to the innumerable bores who beset well-known persons, in hands
hardly to be distinguished from those of their chiefs. Norfolk, as Laing
says, did acknowledge, at his trial, that Lethington ‘moved him to
consider the Queen as not guilty of the crimes objected.’ Lethington
appears to have succeeded; possibly by aid of the obvious argument that,
if _he_ could imitate Mary’s hand for pastime, others might do it for evil
motives. Nay, we practically know, and have shown, that Lethington did
succeed in making Norfolk, to whom, five days before, he had offered the
Letters as proofs of Mary’s guilt, believe that she had not written them.
For, as we have seen, whereas Mary at this time was making a compromise
with Moray, Norfolk persuaded her to abandon that course. Thus Lethington,
on October 11, 1568, made Norfolk believe in the Letters; on October 16,
he made him disbelieve or doubt.
We are not to suppose Lethington so foolish as to confess that he was
himself the forger. Even if Lethington did tell Norfolk that he had often
imitated Mary’s hand, he could not have meant to accuse himself in this
case. His son, in 1620, asked Camden for his authority, and we know not
that Camden ever replied. He never altered his statement, which meant no
more than that, by the argument of his own powers of imitating Mary’s
handwriting, Lethington kept urging the Duke of Norfolk to doubt her
guilt.[392] Lethington’s illustration of the ease with which Mary’s
writing could be imitated is rather, if he used it, a proof that he did
_not_ hold the pen which may have tampered with the Casket Letters. Our
reasons for suspecting him of engaging, though not as penman, in the
scheme are:
1. Elizabeth’s early suspicion of Lethington, and the probability that
Robert Melville, who had just parted from Lethington, inspired that
suspicion.
2. The probability, derived from Randolph’s letter, already cited, that
Lethington had access to the Casket before June 21, 1567, but after
Mary’s capture at Carberry.
3. Of all men Lethington, from his knowledge of Mary’s disgust at his
desertion, ingratitude, and ‘extreme opposition’ to her, in her darkest
hour, and from his certainty that Mary held, or professed to hold,
documentary proof of his own guilt, had most reason to fear her, and
desire and scheme her destruction.
4. Kirkcaldy of Grange, on April 20, 1567, months before the Letters were
discovered, wrote to Cecil that Mary ‘has said that she cares not to lose
(a) _France_, (b) _England_, and (c) _her own_ country’ for Bothwell.[393]
Compare, in the Lennox version of the letter never produced (p. 214)--
(_a_) The loss of her dowry in _France_.
(_b_) Her titles to the crown of _England_.
(_c_) The crown _of her realm_.
Unless this formula of renunciations, _in this sequence_, was a favourite
of Mary’s, in correspondence and in general conversation, its appearance,
in the letter not produced, and in Kirkcaldy’s letter written before the
Casket was captured, _donne furieusement à penser_.
5. Another curious coincidence between a Casket Letter (VII.) and Mary’s
instructions to the Bishop of Dunblane, in excuse of her marriage, has
already been noticed. We may glance at it again.
INSTRUCTIONS
We thocht his continuance in the awayting upon us ... had procedit
onelie upoun the ackawlegeing of _his dewtie, being our borne
subject_.
The _persuasionis_ quhilk oure friendis or his unfriendis _mycht cast
out for his hinderence_ ...
Sa ceased he nevir till be persuasionis and _importune sute,
accumpaneit nottheles with force_.
LETTER VII.
Gif _abone the dewtie of ane subject_ yow advance yourself.
That uther admonitiounis or forane _persuasiounis_ may not let me from
consenting ...
To use _ane humbil requiest joynit to ane importune action_.
The whole scheme of excuse given in Letter VII. is merely expanded into
the later Instructions, a piece of eleven pages in length. ‘The
Instructions are understood to have been drawn by Lethington,’ says Sir
John Skelton; certainly Mary did not write them, as they stand, for they
are in Scots. ‘Many things we resolved with ourselves, but never could
find ane outgait,’ say the Instructions. ‘How to be free of him she has no
outgait,’ writes Maitland to Beaton. If Lethington, as Secretary, penned
the Instructions, who penned Letter VII.?
6. We have already cited Randolph’s letter to Kirkcaldy and Lethington,
when they had changed sides, and were holding the Castle for the Queen.
But we did not quote all of the letter. Lethington, says Randolph, with
Grange, is, as Mary herself has said, the chief occasion of all her
calamities, by his advice ‘to apprehend her, to imprison her; yea, to have
taken presently the life from her.’ This follows a catalogue of
Lethington’s misdeeds towards Mary, exhaustive, one might think. But it
ends, ‘_with somewhat more that we might say, were it not to grieve you
too much herein_.’ What ‘more’ beyond arrest, loss of crown, prison, and
threatened loss of life, was left that Lethington could do against Mary?
The manipulation of the Casket Letters was left: ‘somewhat more that we
might say, were it not to grieve you too much herein.’[394]
Randolph had been stirring the story of Lethington’s opening the coffer in
a green cover, in the autumn of 1570. Charges and counter-charges as to
the band for murdering Darnley had been flying about. On January 10, 1571,
Cecil darkly writes to Kirkcaldy that of Lethington he ‘has heard such
things as he dare not believe.’[395] This cannot refer to the declaration,
by Paris, that Lethington was in the murder, for _that_ news was stale
fifteen months earlier.
As to the hand that may have done whatever unfair work was done, we can
hope for no certainty. Robert Melville, in 1573, being taken out of the
fallen Castle, and examined, stated that ‘he thinkis that the lard of
Grange’ (Kirkcaldy) ‘counterfaitit the Regentis’ (Moray’s) ‘handwrite,
that was sent to Alixr Hume that nycht.’ But we do not accuse Kirkcaldy.
There is another possible penman, Morton’s jackal, a Lord of Session,
Archibald Douglas. That political forgery was deemed quite within the
province of a Scottish Judge, or Lord of Session, in the age of the
Reformation, we learn from his case. A kinsman of Morton, one of Darnley’s
murderers, and present, according to Morton, at the first opening of the
Casket, Archibald was accused by his elder brother, William Douglas of
Whittingham, of forging letters from Bishop Lesley to Lennox, the
favourite of James VI., and others (1580-1581).[396] Of course a Lord of
Session might bear false witness against his brother in the flesh, and on
the Bench. But perhaps Archibald himself, a forger of other letters,
forged the Casket Letters; he had been in France, and may have known
French. All things are conceivable about these Douglases.
It is enough to know that experts in forgery, real or reputed, were among
Mary’s enemies. But, for what they are worth, the hints which we can still
pick up, and have here put together, may raise a kind of presumption that,
if falsification there was, the manager was Lethington. ‘The master wit of
Lethington was there to shape the plot,’ said Sir John Skelton, though
later he fell back on Morton, with his ‘dissolute lawyers and unfrocked
priests’--like Archie Douglas.
I do not, it will be observed, profess to be certain, or even
strongly inclined to believe, that there was any forgery of Mary’s
writings, except in the case of the letter never produced. But, if forgery
there was, our scraps and hints of evidence point to Lethington as manager
of the plot.
[Illustration: PLATE A B
EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND
One of these two is, in part, not genuine, but imitated]
[Illustration: PLATE B A
EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND
In one some parts are not genuine, but imitated
The text is Mary to Elizabeth, B. Museum, Calig. C.I. Number 421 in Bain.
Calendar II. p. 659 (1900)]
As to problems of handwriting, they are notoriously obscure, and the
evidence of experts, in courts of justice, is apt to be conflicting. The
testimony in the case of Captain Dreyfus cannot yet have been forgotten.
In Plates BA, AB the reader will find a genuine letter of Mary to
Elizabeth, and a copy in which some of the lines are not her own, but have
been imitated for the purpose of showing what can be done in that way.
‘The puzzle is’ to discover which example is entirely by the Queen, and
which is partly in imitation of her hand. In Plate F is an imitation of
Mary’s hand, as it might have appeared in writing Letter VIII (Henderson’s
Letter III.). An imitator as clever as Mr. F. Compton Price (who has
kindly supplied these illustrations) would easily have deceived the crowd
of Lords who were present at the comparison of the Casket Letters with
genuine epistles of Mary to Elizabeth.
Scotland, in that age, was rich in ‘fause notaries’ who made a profession
of falsification. In the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, just before Mary’s
fall, we find a surgeon rewarded for healing two false notaries, whose
right hands had been chopped off at the wrists. (Also for raising up a
dead woman who had been buried for two days.) But these professionals
were probably versed only in native forms of handwriting, whereas that of
Mary, as of Bothwell, was the new ‘Roman’ hand. An example of Mary
Beaton’s Roman hand is given in Plate C. Probably she had the same
writing-master as her Queen, in France, but her hand is much neater and
smaller than that of Mary, wearied with her vast correspondence. Probably
Mary Beaton, if she chose, could imitate the Queen’s hand, especially as
that hand was, before the Queen had written so much. The ‘Maries’ of Mary
Stuart, Mary Beaton, and Mary Flemyng are all very similar. But to a
layman, Mary Beaton’s hand seems rather akin to that of the copyist of the
Sonnets in the Cambridge MSS. (Plate A). The aunts of Mary Beaton, Lady
Reres and the Lady of Branxholme, were, after April 1567, on the worst
terms with the Queen, railing at her both in talk and in letters. But that
Mary Beaton forged the Casket Letters I utterly disbelieve.
Kirkcaldy, whose signature is given, could not have adapted fingers
hardened by the sword-hilt to a lady’s Roman hand. Maitland of Lethington,
whose signature follows Kirkcaldy’s, would have found the task less
impossible, and, if there is any truth in Camden’s anecdote, may perhaps
have been able to imitate the Queen’s writing. But if any forged letters
or portions of letters were exhibited, some unheard-of underling is most
likely to have been the actual culprit.
[Illustration: PLATE C
HANDS OF MARY BEATON, KIRKCALDY, LETHINGTON, AND MARY FLEMING]
XVIII
_LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS_
The best official description of the famous Casket is in the Minutes of
the Session of Commissioners at Westminster, on December 7, 1568. It was
‘a small gilt coffer, not fully one foot long, being garnished in many
places with the Roman (_Italic_) letter F set under a king’s crown.’ This
minute is in the hand of Cecil’s clerk, and is corrected by Cecil.[397]
The Casket was obviously long in shape, not square, like a coffer
decorated with Mary’s arms, as Dowager of France, with thistles and other
badges, the property of M. Victor Luzarche, and described by him in ‘Un
Coffret de Bijoux de Marie Stuart’ (Tours, 1868). Possibly the Casket was
the _petite boyte d’argent_, which Mary intended to bequeath to Margaret
Carwood, if she herself died in childbed in 1566.[398]
The Casket with the Letters was in Morton’s hands till shortly before his
death in 1581. On November 8, 1582, Bowes, Elizabeth’s envoy in Scotland,
wrote to Walsingham about the Casket. He had learned from a bastard of
Morton’s, the Prior (lay) of Pluscarden, that the box was now in the
possession of Gowrie, son of the Ruthven of Riccio’s murder, and himself
engaged in that deed. Gowrie was at this time master of James’s person.
Bowes thought that Gowrie would not easily give up the Casket to
Elizabeth, who desired it.[399]
After trying to get agents to steal the Casket, Bowes sought to induce
Gowrie to give it up, with promises of ‘princely thanks and gratuity.’
Gowrie was not willing to admit the fact of possession, but Bowes proved
that the coffer had reached him through Sandy Jordan, a servant of the
late Earl of Morton. Gowrie then said that, without the leave of James,
and of the nobles, who had dragged down Mary, he could not part with the
treasure, as the Letters warranted their action--undertaken before they
knew that such Letters existed! However, Gowrie promised to look for the
Casket, and consider of the matter. On November 24, Bowes again wrote.
Mary was giving out that the Letters ‘were counterfeited by her rebels,’
and was trying to procure them, or have them destroyed. To keep them would
involve danger to Gowrie. Bowes would obtain the consent of the other
lords interested, ‘a matter more easy to promise than to perform;’ finally
Gowrie ought to give them to Elizabeth ‘for the _secrecy_ and benefit of
the cause.’ Mary’s defenders may urge that this ‘secrecy’ is suspicious.
Gowrie would think of it, but he must consult James, which, Bowes said,
‘should adventure great danger to the cause.’ On December 2, Bowes
wrote about another interview with Gowrie, who said that the Duke of
Lennox (Stewart d’Aubigny, the banished and now dead favourite of James)
had sought to get the Letters, and that James knew where they were, and
nothing could be done without James’s consent.[400]
[Illustration: PLATE D
SIDE OF CASKET WITH ARMS OF HAMILTON
RAISED WORK ON ROOF OF CASKET]
Gowrie was executed for treason in May, 1584, and of the Casket no more is
heard. Goodall, in 1754, supposed that the Earl of Angus got it as
Morton’s ‘heir by tail,’ whereas we know that Gowrie succeeded Morton as
custodian. In an anonymous writer of about 1660, Goodall found that ‘the
box and letters were at that time to be seen with the Marquis of Douglas;
and it is thought by some they are still in that family, though others say
they have since been seen at Hamilton.’[401] In 1810, Malcolm Laing, the
historian, corresponded on the subject with Mr. Alexander Young,
apparently the factor, or chamberlain, of the Duke of Hamilton. He could
hear nothing of the Letters, but appears to have been told about a silver
casket at Hamilton, rather less than a foot in length. A reproduction of
that casket, by the kindness of the Duke of Hamilton, is given in this
book. Laing maintained that, without the F’s, crowned as mentioned in
Cecil’s minute, the casket could not be Mary’s Casket. In any case it is a
beautiful work of art, of Mary’s age, and has been well described by Lady
Baillie-Hamilton in ‘A Historical Relic,’ _Macmillan’s Magazine_.[402]
Lady Baillie-Hamilton, when staying at Hamilton Palace, asked to be shown
a ring which Mary bequeathed to Lord John Hamilton, created Marquis in
1599. The ring was produced from a silver box, which also contained
papers. One of these, written probably about 1700-1715, gave the history
of the box itself. It was ‘bought from a Papist’ by the Marchioness of
Douglas, daughter of George (first Marquis of Huntly). In 1632 this lady
became the second wife of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Her eldest
son married Lady Anne Hamilton, heiress of James, first Duke of Hamilton,
who later became Duchess of Hamilton in her own right, her husband (Lord
William Douglas, later Earl of Selkirk) bearing the ducal title. The
Marchioness of Douglas bought the box from a papist at an unknown date
after 1632, the box being sold as the Casket. The Marchioness ‘put her own
arms thereon,’ the box having previously borne ‘the Queen’s arms.’ The
Marchioness bequeathed her plate to her son, Lord John Douglas, who sold
it to a goldsmith. The daughter-in-law of the Marchioness, namely the
Duchess of Hamilton, purchased the box from the goldsmith, as she had
learned from the Marchioness that it was the historical Casket, and, by
her husband’s desire, she effaced the arms of the Marchioness, and put on
her own, as may be seen in Plate D. Only one key was obtained by the
Duchess, and is shown lying beside the Casket. The lock has been, at
some time, ‘stricken up,’ as Morton says that the lock of the Casket was
(see Plate E). The box is ‘not fully a foot long’; it measures eight
inches in length. The scroll-work (Plate E) and bands have been gilded,
but the whole piece has not been ‘overgilt,’ as in Morton’s description.
That by the English Commissioners at York, ‘a little coffer of silver and
gilt,’ better describes the relic. It is pronounced to be ‘French work of
the early part of the sixteenth century,’ but Lady Baillie-Hamilton
observes that the scroll-work closely resembles the tooling on a book of
Catherine de’ Medici, now in the British Museum.
[Illustration: PLATE E
CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY
FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN ‘STRICKEN UP’]
Is the Hamilton Casket the historical Casket? It has the advantage of a
fairly long pedigree in that character, as we have seen. But where are
‘the many Roman letters F set under a king’s crown,’ of Cecil’s
description, which is almost literally copied in the memorandum added to
the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection’? Buchanan did not insert
this memorandum, it is merely borrowed from Cecil’s description, a fact of
which Lady Baillie-Hamilton was not aware. There is no room on the panel
now occupied by the Duchess of Hamilton’s arms for _many_ crowned F’s.
Only a cypher of two F’s interlaced and crowned could have found space on
that panel. Conceivably F’s were attached in some way, and later removed,
but there is no trace of them. We can hardly suppose that, as in the case
of the coffer with a crimson cover, which was sent to Mary at Loch Leven,
the crowned F’s were worked in gold on the covering velvet. Dr. Sepp, in
1884, published, in a small pamphlet, the document rediscovered by Lady
Baillie-Hamilton. He was informed that there were small crowned F’s
stamped on the bottom of the box, but these Lady Baillie-Hamilton accounts
for as ‘the mark of a French silversmith, consisting of a distinctive sign
surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and a crown.’ Thus for lack of any certainty
about the ‘many or sundry’ crowned F’s, this beautiful piece of work
shares in the doubt and mystery which seem inseparable from Mary Stuart.
Very possibly the Hamilton Casket may be the other of the ‘twa silver
cofferis’ seen by Hepburn of Bowton at Dunbar (see p. xvi). Tradition,
knowing that the Casket had been Mary’s, would easily confuse it with the
other more famous coffer, full of evils as the Casket of Pandora.
APPENDIX A
THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL
Monsieur Jusserand, the well-known writer on English and Scottish
literature, has kindly allowed me to print the following letter on the
burial-place of Bothwell, and on the body which is traditionally regarded
as his corpse.
Légation de France, à Copenhague, December 26, 1900.
MY DEAR LANG,--Our poor Queen’s last scoundrel lies low in a darksome
place.
The Faarvejle church is quite isolated on a little eminence formerly
washed by the water of a fiord now dried up (the work of an agricultural
company which expected great benefits and lost much money instead). There
is no village around; the houses are scattered rather thinly throughout
the country--a very frequent case in Denmark.
[Illustration: FAARVEJLE CHURCH (ACTUAL STATE).
(1) A side chapel used for burials, now attached to the Zytphen-Adeler
family. ‘Bothwell’ was buried in it, and removed to the vault under the
chancel when the Z.-A. family had some time adopted it.
(2) The entrance porch, with a fine oak door ornamented with iron work
representing the dragons of ‘Drags’-holm.]
This church is, however, the one from which the castle of Dragsholm has
ever, ecclesiastically, depended. Castle and church are at some distance:
about twenty miles drive.
The castle was formerly a royal one; it was so in Bothwellian times.[403]
Little remains of the old building; it was burnt during the Swedish wars
in the seventeenth century; and rebuilt by the Zytphen-Adeler family (of
Dutch origin); it still belongs to them.
Only the walls have been preserved; they are of red brick; but the actual
owner has caused them to be whitewashed throughout. The characteristic
great tower it used to have in Hepburnian times has been destroyed. Almost
no trace of any style is left, and the house, big as it is, is plain
enough. The park around it is fine, with plenty of deer, hares, &c. The
sea is near at hand and you see it from the walls.
As for the mummy, it lies in an oak coffin now preserved in a vault under
the floor of the nave in the Faarvejle church. This vault is under the
passage in the middle, near the step leading to the choir. The wooden
planks on the floor are removed, a ladder is provided, and you find
yourself in a subterranean chamber, with coffins piled on the top of one
another, right and left. ‘Bothwell’s’ stands apart on the left; it is an
oak chest; as it was in a bad state, the present Baron Zytphen-Adeler has
caused it to be placed in another one, with a sheet of glass allowing the
head to be seen. But he kindly allowed me to see the body complete. The
man must have been rather tall, not very; the hands and feet have a very
fine and aristocratic appearance; the mummifying process may have
something to do with this appearance; yet I think some of it came from
nature. The head is absolutely hairless; the face is close shaven; the
skull has no hair. I noticed, however, on the top of it faint traces of
reddish-brown hair, but extremely close cropped. Horace Marryat, who saw
it in 1859, says (in the same innocent fashion as if he had been
performing a pious rite) that he ‘severed a lock of his red and silver
hair.’ If he really did so, he must have severed all that was left.
(‘Residence in Jutland,’ 1860.)
The skin remains; the nose, very prominent and arched, is complete; the
mouth _very_ broad. The jawbone is prominent (partly on account of the
drying up of the flesh). The hind part of the skull is broad and deep. The
arms are folded on the chest, below which the body is still wrapped in its
winding sheet, only the feet emerging from it. The head lies on some white
stuff which seems to be silk. All about the body is a quantity of
vegetable remains, looking like broken sticks; they told me it was hops,
supposed to have preserving qualities.
As for the authenticity of the relic, there is no absolute proof. It is
probable and likely; not certain. That Bothwell died in Dragsholm and was
buried in Faarvejle church is certain. The coffin has no mark, no
inscription, no sign whatever allowing identification. But, if not
Bothwell, who can this be--for there _it_ is? That careful embalming is
not a usual process; the other people buried in the church either have
their names on their coffins or are not of such importance as to justify
such a costly process.
A careful burial and no name on the tomb tally rather well with the
circumstances: for the man was a great man, the husband of a Queen; and
yet what was to be done with his body? would he not be sent back to
Scotland some day? what rites should be allowed him? Even before his
death Bothwell had become, so to say, anonymous; and, to get rid of
importunities, the Danish King, Fred. II., had allowed the rumour of his
death to be spread several years before it happened.
The question remains an open one. J. J. A. Worsaae believed in the
authenticity of the relic. The professor of anatomy, I. Ibsen, has also
pronounced in its favour. Others have disagreed. Anatomici certant.
APPENDIX B
THE BURNING OF LYON KING OF ARMS
Among the mysteries of Mary’s reign, none is more obscure than the burning
of Sir William Stewart, the Lyon King at Arms: at St. Andrews, in August,
1569. In 1560, Stewart was Ross Herald, and carried letters between Mary
and Elizabeth.[404] On February 11, 1568, when Moray was Regent, we find
Stewart sent on a mission to Denmark. He was to try to obtain the
extradition of Bothwell, or, at least, to ask that he might be more
strictly guarded.[405] Now we know that, according to Moray, Bothwell’s
valet, Paris, did not arrive in Scotland from Denmark till June, 1569,
though he was handed over to Captain Clark in October, 1568. Miss
Strickland conjectured that Sir William Stewart, now Lyon Herald, brought
back Paris from Denmark, learned from him that Mary was innocent, and
Moray’s associates culpable, and so had to be put out of the way. But the
Lyon Herald returned to Scotland without Paris, a year before Paris; for
he was in Scotland by July, 1568, and Paris did not land till June, 1569.
On July 20, 1568, Drury informs Cecil that Moray ‘has understanding who
has determined to kill him,’ and has enlisted a bodyguard of thirty
gentlemen. Drury adds--I cite him in his native orthography--
‘I send unto your h. herewt. some pease off the woorke that the conjurers
that dyd vse theyre develysshe skyle dyd devyse above Edenborogh, the
platte whereoff I sente you before paynted.[406] And so ajayne I humbly
take my leave.
‘Some money they fownde. Will Stwart kyng off herauldee one off the parte
players he that they judge schoold be the fynder off the threasure,
schoold be the rejente.’
Here Drury speaks of ‘conjurers,’ who have played some prank involving
discovery of a treasure. Stewart was one of the party, but what is meant
by ‘he that they judge should be finder of the treasure, should be
Regent’? There is, apparently, some connection between the treasure hunt
and the plot to kill Moray, and Stewart is mixed up with the magic of the
treasure hunters. We know that Napier of Merchistoun, inventor of
Logarithms, was to assist Logan of Restalrig to find treasure, ‘by arts to
him known,’ at a later date. Probably the divining rod was to be employed,
as in a case cited by Scott.
But in 1568, Napier of the Logarithms was only a boy of eighteen.
Returning to the plot to kill Moray: on August 14, 1568, Patrick Hepburn,
bastard of the Bishop of Moray, and cousin of Bothwell, was taken in
Scone, by Ruthven and Lindsay, brought before Moray at Stirling, and
thence taken to Edinburgh. He was examined, revealed the nature of the
plot, and gave up the names of his accomplices.[407]
This Patrick Hepburn was parson of Kynmoir by simoniacal arrangement with
his father, the Bishop. It seems possible that Stewart met Bothwell, when
he was in Denmark, in the spring of the year, and induced him to arrange a
conspiracy with his cousin, Patrick Hepburn. Before Hepburn was taken, the
Lyon Herald, on August 2, fled to Dumbarton, where he was safe under the
protection of Lord Fleming, then holding Dumbarton Castle for Mary.[408]
The Herald ‘was suspecte of conspiracy against the life of the Regent, the
Earll of Moray.’ He lost his place as Lyon King at Arms, and Sir David
Lindsay was appointed to the office, held under James V. by his poet
namesake. On August 19, Sir William Stewart wrote, from Dumbarton, a
letter to a lord, not named. This lord had written to ask Fleming to give
up Stewart, who believes that he was instigated by some other. ‘For I
cannot think that you can be so ingrate as to seek my innocent life and
blood, considering that I have so favourably and so oft forewarned you of
the great misery that you are like to fall into now, for not following my
counsel and admonitions made oft and in due time.’ Here we see Stewart
claiming foreknowledge of events. ‘Desist, I pray you, to seek further my
blood, for as I shall answer to the eternal God, I never conspired or
consented to the Earl of Moray’s death.... I fear you not, nor none of
that monstrous faction, for, as God is the defender of innocents, so is he
the just and severe punisher of cruel monsters and usurpers, who spare not
to execute all kind of cruelty, under the pretext of religion and
justice.... But there be some of his own secret Council that both directly
and indirectly have sought that bloody usurper’s life, whom I shall name
as occasion shall serve....’ Stewart again protests his own innocence,
apparently with conviction. He ends ‘I pray you be favourable to the
Parson of Kenmore’ (Patrick Hepburn), ‘and with such as have meddled with
my apparel, bows, and books, to keep all well till meeting, which will be
soon God willing....’[409]
This letter shows Stewart as a believer in foreknowledge of events, as one
who hates Moray, ‘a bloody usurper,’ and as acquainted with a plot against
Moray by his intimates. Lethington and Sir James Balfour were more or less
at odds with Moray, about this time, but we have no evidence that they
conspired to kill him.
How it happened we do not know, but Stewart was captured, despite the
protection of Dumbarton Castle. On October 4, 1568, his reception there
was one of the charges made, perhaps by John Wood, against Mary’s party,
‘Lord Fleming refusing his delivery.’[410] At all events, on August 5,
1569, we find Stewart imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, as also was Paris,
who, says Moray, arrived at Leith in June of the year. On August 5, both
men were taken to St. Andrews, ‘there to be punished according to their
demerits.’[411]
On the same day, August 5, 1569, Stewart wrote from the Castle a piteous
letter to ‘the most merciful Regent.’ He declared, as to the conspiracy of
1568, that he only knew of it by public talk. ‘The bruit of your Grace’s
murder was tossed up and down at Edinburgh.’ Even if Stewart foreknew and
concealed the plot, ‘yet till the principal devisers are tried and
convicted, I cannot be accused.’ Stewart himself first heard of the
conspiracy on July 21, 1568, from Patrick Hepburn. The comptroller
(Tullibardine) had, on that day, ‘purged himself’ of the affair at
Stirling. Now July 21 was the day after Drury gave his second notice of
the treasure-hunt by magic, somehow involving a new regent, in which
Stewart was concerned. Stewart cannot be accurate in referring his first
hearsay knowledge of the conspiracy to July 21, 1568.
He goes on excusing himself. He could not believe that the persons
implicated by Patrick Hepburn ever contemplated the murder of Moray, who
knows their names. Moreover, there is some one who predicted many events
to Stewart, such as Darnley’s murder, the fall of Bothwell, ‘the death of
Lyon Herald, and my promotion, the Queen’s deliverance,’ Langside, ‘and
other predictions which have proved true.’ This soothsayer said that Moray
was only in danger from ‘domestical treason.’ Therefore, Stewart
disbelieved wholly in Patrick Hepburn’s story of a plot, and so did not
divulge it. As witness, he cites ‘a certain courtier’ to whom he had given
the same reason for his scepticism, in the middle of July, 1568. He adds
that he thinks it wrong, following St. Paul, to resist ‘tyrants and
usurpers.’ He regarded Moray as a tyrant and usurper, we have seen, in
August, 1568. He ends by offering disclosures, privately, and asking for
mercy.[412]
On August 15, 1569, ‘William Stewart, being convictit for witcherie, was
burnt, and the said Paris, convictit for ane of the slayaris of the King,
wes hangit in Sanctandrois,’ says the ‘Diurnal.’
Now, why was Lyon Herald burned? If there was a conspiracy, in July, 1568,
no others suffered for it. It was easy to convict Stewart for ‘witchery’:
he confessed to dealings with a soothsayer, and the Kirk was beginning its
campaign against witches. But what was the political or personal reason
for Moray’s cruelty? Had he seen Stewart’s letter of August 19, 1568?
As to the soothsayer, he may have been a familiar spirit, but he may also
have been the Laird of Merchistoun, Napier, the father of the inventor of
Logarithms. One of his prophecies to Stewart dealt with Mary’s escape from
Loch Leven. And Nau, Mary’s secretary, writes, ‘The Laird of Merchistoun,
who had the reputation of being a great wizard, made bets with several
persons, to the amount of 500 crowns, that by the 5th of May, her Majesty
would be out of Loch Leven.’[413]
Thus there were two wizard Lairds of Merchistoun, the scientific son (the
treasure-hunter for the laird of Restalrig) and his father.
For the rest, the conspiracy against Moray, in July, 1568, and the secret
as to the cause of Lyon Herald’s death, remain mysterious.[414]
APPENDIX C
THE DATE OF MARY’S VISIT TO GLASGOW
The question of the possibility that Letter II. may be authentic turns on
dates. If the Lords are right in declaring, in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ that
Mary left Edinburgh on January 21, 1567, and arrived in Glasgow on January
23, then the evidence of the Letter is incompatible with that of Paris,
and one or both testimonies must be abandoned. They fare no better if we
accept the statement of Drury, writing from Berwick, that Mary entered
Glasgow on January 22. It is shown in the text that, if we accept the date
as given in Birrel’s ‘Diary,’ and also in the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents’: if
we make Mary leave Edinburgh on January 20, and (contrary to Drury and
‘Cecil’s Journal’) make her enter Glasgow on January 21, then the Letter
may be brought into harmony with the statement of Paris.
Of course it may be argued that the ‘Diurnal’ and Birrel’s ‘Diary’
coincide in an error of date. The ‘Diary’ of Birrel describes itself as
extending from 1532 to 1605. One man cannot have kept a daily note of
events for seventy-three years. The ‘Diary,’ in fact, is _not_ a daily
record. There is but one entry for 1561, one for 1562, one for 1565, ten
for 1566, and twenty-four for 1567; up to Mary’s surrender at Carberry
(June 15). The ‘Diurnal,’ for our period, is more copious, and is by a
contemporary, though probably he did not always write his remarks on the
day of the occurrence noted.
From August 19, 1561, to June 15, 1567, the ‘Diurnal’ and the ‘Diary’
record in common twenty-one events, with date. In seven of these cases
they differ, as to date. They differ as to the day of Mary’s departure
from Edinburgh to Jedburgh, as to the departure of the ambassadors from
Stirling, as to the arrival of Mary with her infant child in Edinburgh
(January, 1567), as to the return of Mary and Darnley from Glasgow, as to
the day of Darnley’s burial, as to the day of opening Parliament, and as
to the attack on Borthwick Castle by the Lords: while the ‘Diurnal’ makes
the explosion at Kirk o’ Field occur at 2 A.M. on February 10, but ends
the Parliament on April 29, which is absurd. When the dates are correctly
known from other sources, and when the ‘Diary’ and the ‘Diurnal’ coincide
as to these dates, then, of course, we may accept their authority. But
when, as in the case of Mary’s departure from Edinburgh, and arrival in
Glasgow, the ‘Diary’ and ‘Diurnal’ oppose ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ and Drury’s
version, every reader must estimate the value of their coincidence for
himself. If their date, January 20, is correct, then a letter may have
been written, and sent, and received, and the facts, so far, are
corroborated by Paris’s deposition.
The argument of Chalmers, that Mary was at Edinburgh till January 24,
because there are entries as if of her presence there in the Register of
Privy Seal, is not valid, as such entries were occasionally made in the
absence of the King or Queen.
APPENDIX D
THE BAND FOR DARNLEY’S MURDER
This Band, which is constantly cited in all the troubles from 1567 to
1586, is a most mysterious document. We have seen that Mary’s secretary,
Nau, wilfully or accidentally confuses it with an anti-Darnley band signed
by Morton, Moray, and many others, early in October, 1566. We have also
seen that Randolph, in 1570, distinguishes between this ‘old band’ and the
band for the murder, which, he says, Lethington and Balfour abstracted
from a little coffer in the Castle, covered with green cloth or velvet,
immediately after Mary surrendered at Carberry. I have ventured the theory
that this carefully covered little coffer may have been the Casket
itself.[415] Drury, again, in November, 1567, reports that the band has
been burned, while the papers as to Mary are ‘kept to be shewn.’ But, in
Scotland, till Morton’s execution in June, 1581, the murder band was
believed to be extant: at least Sir James Balfour, if he chose, could give
evidence about it. What Mary wished to be believed as to this matter, we
have seen in Nau, who wrote under her inspiration between 1575 and 1587.
He asserts that Bothwell, ‘to ease his conscience’ gave Mary a copy of the
band, when he rode away from Carberry (June 15, 1567). He showed Mary the
signatures of Morton, Balfour, Lethington, and others. She kept the
document, and, when she met Morton on Carberry Hill, told him that he was
one of the chief murderers, as she had learned. He slunk away.[416]
Probably Mary did accuse Morton, at Carberry. When he was executed (June
3, 1581) Sir John Foster, from Alnwick, sent an account of the trial to
Walsingham. In the evidence against Morton was ‘the Queen’s confession
when she was taken at Carberry Hill. She said he was the principal man
that was the deed-doer, and the drawer of that purpose.’ Morton certainly
was not present, and it is as good as certain that he did not sign the
band. Still, Mary, at Carberry, charged him with complicity.[417]
We have seen that Mary, ever after Carberry, also inculpated Lethington,
and vowed that she had something in black and white which would hang him.
Something she probably did possess, but not a band signed also by Morton.
Concerning the murder-band, Hay of Tala, before execution (January 3,
1568), ‘in presence of the whole people,’ named as subscribers ‘Bothwell,
Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, Balfour, with divers other nobles.’[418] Hay
saw their signatures, but not that of Morton. ‘He said my Lord Bothwell
said to him that he subscribed the same.’ The Black Laird (December 13,
1573), when in a devout and penitent condition, said that Bothwell had
shown him the contract, ‘subscribed by four or five handwrites, which, he
affirmed to me, was the subscription of the Earl of Huntly, Argyll, the
secretary Maitland, and Sir James Balfour.’ Ormistoun repeated part of the
contents: the paper was drawn up by Balfour, a Lord of Session.[419] (See
Introduction, pp. xiii-xviii.)
Morton, we know, was accused of Darnley’s death, and arrested, at the end
of December, 1580. Archibald Douglas was sought for, but escaped into
England. Elizabeth sent Randolph down to save Morton: Hunsdon was to lead
an army over the Border. Every kind of violence was designed, and forgery
was attempted, but Randolph had to fly to Berwick, at the end of March.
Meanwhile the arch traitor, Balfour, had been summoned from France, as an
evidence against Morton. But he was not of much use. On January 30, 1581,
he wrote from Edinburgh to Mary. He had arrived in Scotland on December
17, 1580, when he found Morton in the height of power. Balfour secretly
approached James’s new favourite, Stewart d’Aubigny, recently created Earl
of Lennox. By giving them information ‘_had from your Majesty’s self_, and
partly by other intelligence which I knew and learned from others,’ he
gave them grounds for Morton’s arrest. But Morton, he says, trusting to
the lack of testimony from the absence of Archibald Douglas, boldly
‘denies all things promised by him to Bothwell in that matter,’ ‘except
his signature to the band whereof I did send the copy to your Majesty.’
Now that was only ‘Ainslie’s band,’ made _after_ the murder, on April 19,
1567, to defend Bothwell’s quarrel. On an extant copy Randolph has
written, ‘upon this was grounded thacusation of therle Morton.’[420] This
was no hanging matter, and Balfour either had not or would not produce the
murder band. He therefore asks Mary for further information: ‘all that
your Majesty has heard or known thereinto.’[421]
Balfour and Mary corresponded in cypher through Archbishop Beaton, her
ambassador in France. On March 18, 1580, she had written to Beaton, ‘if
possible make Balfour write to me fully about the band which he has seen,
with the signatures, for the murder of my late husband, the King, or let
him give you a copy in his own hand.’ If she really possessed the band
which Nau says Bothwell gave her at Carberry, she needed no copy from
Balfour. She does not seem to have believed in him and his band. On May
20, 1580, she writes to Beaton: ‘I put no faith in what Balfour has sent
me, so far, and cannot trust him much having been so wretchedly betrayed
by him,’ for Balfour had put Morton on the trail of the Casket, had sold
the Castle, and later, had betrayed Kirkcaldy and Lethington when they
held the Castle against Morton. However, she sent to Balfour a civil
message, and bade him go on undermining Morton, in which he succeeded, in
the following year. But the murder-band was never produced. On March 16,
1581, Randolph described a conference which had passed between him and
James VI. ‘I spoke again of the _band in the green box_, containing the
names of all the chief persons consenting to the King’s murder, which Sir
James Balfour either hath or can tell of.’ Randolph, who was working for
Morton, obviously knew that _he_ did not sign that band: otherwise he
would have avoided the subject.[422]
We have no account of Morton’s trial, save what Foster tells Walsingham.
‘The murder of the King was laid to him by four or five witnesses. The
first is the Lord Bothwell’s Testament’ (usually thought to be forged),
‘the second, Mr. Archibald Douglas, when he was his man.’ But Douglas,
surely, dared not appear in Court, or in Scotland. Foster clearly means
that Archibald’s servant, Binning, proved _his_ guilt, and that it
reflected on Morton, whose ‘man’ Archibald was, in 1567, and later. Next
came the charge that Morton ‘spoke with’ Bothwell, as he confessed that he
did, at Whittingam, about January 20, 1567, when he says that he declined
to join the plot without Mary’s written warrant. How could this be known,
except through Mary or Archibald Douglas? Possibly his brother, at whose
house the conference was held, may have declared the matter, as he
‘split,’ in 1581, on Archibald, and all concerned. ‘And then’ Morton was
condemned on ‘the consenting to the murder of the King’ (how was _that_
proved?), on Ainslie’s band to support Bothwell’s quarrel, ‘no person
being excepted,’ and finally, ‘the Queen’s confession at Carberry Hill,’
when she confessed nothing, but accused Morton.
Mary’s conduct, as far as it can be construed, looks as if she knew very
little either about Morton or the murder-band. If Bothwell told her
anything, what he told her was probably more or less untrue.
APPENDIX E
THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS
The casual treatment of the Casket Letters by Mary’s accusers, and by the
English Commissioners, is demonstrated by an inspection of the texts as
they now exist. One thing is absolutely certain, the Letters were
produced, at Westminster and Hampton Court, in the original French,
whether that was forged, or garbled, or authentic. This is demonstrated by
the occurrence, in the English translation, of the words ‘I have taken the
worms out of his nose.’ This ugly French phrase for extracting a man’s
inmost thoughts is used by Mary in an authentic letter.[423] But the Scots
version of the passage runs, ‘I have drawn all out of him.’ Therefore the
English translator had a French original before him, _not_ the French
later published by the Huguenots, where for _tiré les vers du nez_, we
find _j’ay sçeu toutes choses de luy_.
Original French letters were therefore produced; the only doubt rests on
part of Crawford’s deposition, where it verbally agrees with Letter II.
But we may here overlook Crawford’s part in the affair, merely reminding
the reader that the French idioms in that portion of the Letter (Scots
version) which most closely resembles his very words, in his deposition,
may have come in through the process of translating Crawford’s Scots into
French, and out of French into Scots again, to which we return.
The Casket Letters were produced, in French, on December 7 and 8. On
December 9, the English Commissioners read them, ‘being duly translated
into English.’[424] We are never told that the Scottish Lords prepared and
produced the _English_ translations. These must have been constructed on
December 7 and 8, in a violent hurry. So great was the hurry that Letter
VI. was not translated from French at all: the English was merely done,
and badly done, out of the Scots. Thus, Scots, ‘I am wod;’ English, ‘I am
wood.’ As far as this Letter goes, there need have been no original French
text.[425] In this case (Letter VI.) the English is the Scots Anglified,
word for word. The same easy mode of translating French is used in Letter
V.; it is the Scots done word for word into English. In Letters I. and
II., M. Philippson makes it pretty clear that the English translator had a
copy of the Scots version lying by him, from which he occasionally helped
himself to phrases. M. Cardauns, in _Der Sturz der Maria Stuart_, had
proved the same point, which every one can verify. Dozens of blunders
occur in the English versions, though, now and then, they keep closer to
the originals than do the Scots translators.
Of this we give a singular and significant proof. In the Scots of Letter
I. the first sentence ends, ‘Ze promisit to mak me advertisement of zour
newis from tyme to tyme.’ The next sentence begins: ‘The waiting upon
yame.’ In the English we read ‘at your departure you promised to send me
newes from you. _Nevertheless I can learn none_:’ which is not in the
Scots, but is in the published French, ‘et toutes fois je n’en puis
apprendre.’ The _published_ French is translated from the Latin, which is
translated from the Scots, but each of the French _published_ letters
opens with a sentence or two from the _original_ French: thus the
published French, in one of these sentences, keeps what the Scots omits.
Therefore, the Scots translator undeniably, in the first paragraph of
Letter I., omitted a clause which was in his French original, and is in
the English translation. Consequently, when, in the same short letter, the
English has, and the Scots has not, ‘_to Ledington, to be delivered to
you_,’ we cannot, as most critics do, and as Herr Bresslau does, infer
that Lethington had that mention of him deliberately excised from the
Scots version, as likely to implicate him in the murder. It did not
implicate him. Surely a Queen may write to her Secretary of State, on
public affairs, even if she is planning a murder with her First Lord of
the Admiralty. When the Scots translator omits a harmless clause, by
inadvertence, in line 6, he may also, by inadvertence, omit another in
line 41.
From these facts it follows that we cannot acquit Lethington of a possible
share in the falsification of the Letters, merely because a reference to
him, in the original French, existed, and was omitted in the Scots text.
He need not have struck out the clause about himself, because the Scots
translator, we see, actually omits another clause by sheer inadvertence.
In the same way Mr. Henderson’s text of the Casket Letters exhibits
omissions of important passages, by inadvertence in copying.
Again, we can found no argument on omissions or changes, in the English
versions. That text omits (in Letter II.), what we find in the Scots, the
word _yesternight_, in the clause ‘the King sent for Joachim
_yesternight_.’ M. Philippson argues that this was an intentional
omission, to hide from the English commissioners the incongruity of the
dates. The translators, and probably the commissioners, did not look into
things so closely. The English translators made many omissions and other
errors, because they were working at top speed, and Cecil’s marginal
corrections deal with very few of these blunders. On them, therefore, no
theory can be based. Nor can any theory be founded on clauses present in
the English, but not in the Scots, as in Letter II., Scots, ‘I answerit
but rudely to the doutis yat wer in his letteris,’ to which the English
text appends, ‘as though there had been a meaning to pursue him.’ This,
probably, was in the French; but we must not infer that Lennox had it
suppressed, in the Scots, as a reference to what he kept concealed, the
rumour of Darnley’s intention to seize and crown the child prince. The
real fact is that the Scots translator, as we have seen, makes inadvertent
omissions.
The English text is sometimes right where the Scots is wrong. Thus, Sir
James Hamilton told Mary, as she entered Glasgow, that Lennox sent the
Laird of Houstoun to tell him that he (Lennox) ‘wald never have belevit
that he (Sir James) wald have persewit him, nor zit accompanyit him with
the Hamiltounis.’ The English has what seems better, ‘he,’ Lennox, ‘wold
not have thought that he would have followed and accompany himself with
the Hamiltons.’ In the end of a paragraph (3), the Scots is gibberish:
Scots, ‘nevertheless he speikis gude, at the leist his son’: English
(_Henderson_), ‘and they so speakith well of them, at least his sonne,’
‘and then he speaketh well of them’ (Bain). The English then omits (Scots)
‘I se na uthir Gentilman bot thay of my company.’
In the next line (Scots) ‘The King send for Joachim yesternicht,’ the
English omits ‘yesternicht,’ probably by inadvertence. The word has a
bearing on the chronology of the Letter, and its omission in the English
text may be discounted. It is a peculiarity of that text to write ‘he’ for
‘I,’ and a feature of Mary’s hand accounts for the error. Where Darnley,
in the Scots, says, ‘I had rather have passit with yow,’ the sentence
follows ‘I trow he belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner.’ This
is not in the English, but recurs in the end of Crawford’s Deposition, ‘I
thought that she was carrying him away rather as a prisoner than as a
husband.’ Probably the sentence, omitted in English, was in the French:
whether derived from Crawford’s Deposition or not. Presently the English
gives a kind of date, not found in the Scots. Scots, ‘I am in doing of ane
work heir that I hait greitly.’ The English adds, ‘_but I had begun it
this morning_.’ Now, to all appearance, she had ‘begun it’ the night
before. How did ‘but I had begun it this morning’ get into the English?
For the answer see page 300. Even in the first set of Memoranda there are
differences: Scots, ‘The purpois of Schir James Hamilton.’ English, ‘The
talk of Sir James Hamilton _of the ambassador_.’
There are other mistranslations, and English omissions: the English
especially omits the mysterious second set of notes. What appears most
distinctly, from this comparison, is the hasty and slovenly manner of the
whole inquiry. The English translators had some excuse for their bad work;
the Scots had none for their omissions and misrenderings.
Letter III. (or VIII.) and Letter IV. I have translated, in the body of
this book, from the copies of the French originals.
In Letter V. the copy of the French original enables us to clear up the
sense. It is a question about a maid or lady in waiting, whom Bothwell, or
somebody else, wishes Mary to dismiss. The French is, ‘et si vous ne me
mondes [mandez] ce soir ce que volles que j’en fasse, Je mendeferay [m’en
deferay] au hazard de _la_ fayre entreprandre ce qui pourroit nuire à ce à
quoy nous tandons tous deus.’ The Scots has ‘I will red myself of _it_,
and cause _it_ to be interprysit and takin in hand, quhilk micht be
hurtful to that quhair unto we baith do tend.’ The English is the Scots,
Anglified.
The real sense, of course, is ‘if you do not let me know to-night what
step you want me to take, I shall get rid of _her_, at the risk of making
_her_ attempt something which might harm our project.’ We have no other
known contemporary English translations. Of the four known, two (I. II.)
are made with a frequent glance at the Scots, two are merely the Scots
done into English, without any reference to the French. Nothing but the
hasty careless manner of the whole inquiry accounts for these
circumstances.
The most curious point connected with the translations is Crawford’s
deposition. It was handed in on December 9, 1568. Whoever did it out of
Crawford’s Scots into English had obviously both the Scots and English
versions of Letter II. before him. Where the deposition is practically
identical with the corresponding passages of Letter II., the transcriber
of it into English usually followed the Scots version of Letter II. But
there is a corrected draft in the Lennox MSS. at Cambridge, which proves
that the Angliciser of Crawford’s Scots occasionally altered it into
harmony with the English version of Letter II. Thus, in the first
paragraph, the original draft of Crawford in English has, like the Scots
version of Letter II., ‘the _rude_ words that I had spoken to Cunningham.’
But, in the official copy, in English, of Crawford, and in the Lennox
draft of it, ‘rude’ is changed into ‘_sharpe_ wordes,’ and so on. The part
of Crawford which corresponds with Letter II. is free from obvious literal
renderings of the French idiom, as Mr. Henderson remarks.[426] These
abound in the English version of the corresponding part of Letter II.,
but are absent here in the Scots translation. It is, therefore, open to
argument that Crawford did make notes of Darnley’s and Mary’s talk; that
these were done into ‘the original French,’ and thence retranslated into
the Scots (free from French idiom here) and into the English, where traces
of French idiom in this passage are frequent.
THE CASKET LETTERS
I print the Scots Texts with one or two variations from C (the Cambridge
MS.) and Y (the Yelverton MS.). The English Texts are given, where they
are not merely taken direct from the Scots translations; these and
Crawford’s Deposition are from MSS. in the Record Office and Hatfield
Calendar.
LETTER I
PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION
It apeiris, that with zour absence thair is alswa joynit forgetfulnes,
seand yat at zour departing ze promysit to mak me advertisement of
zour newis from tyme to tyme. The waitting upon yame zesterday causit
me to be almaist in sic joy as I will be at zour returning, quhilk ze
have delayit langer than zour promeis was.
As to me, howbeit I have na farther newis from zow, according to my
commissioun, I bring the Man with me to Craigmillar upon Monounday
quhair he will be all Wednisday; and I will gang to Edinburgh to draw
blude of me, gif in the meane tyme I get na newis in ye contrarie fra
zow.
He is mair gay than ever ze saw him; he puttis me in remembrance of
all thingis yat may mak me beleve he luifis me. Summa, ze will say yat
he makis lufe to me: of ye quhilk I tak sa greit plesure, yat I enter
never where he is, bot incontinent I tak ye seiknes of my sair syde, I
am sa troubillit with it. Gif Paris bringis me that quhilk I send him
for, I traist it sall amend me.
I pray zow, advertise me of zour newis at lenth, and quhat I sall do
in cace ze be returnit quhen I am cum thair; for, in cace ze wirk not
wysely, I se that the haill burding of this will fall upon my
schoulderis. Provide for all thing, and discourse upon it first with
zourself. I send this be Betoun, quha gais to ane Day of Law of the
Laird of Balfouris. I will say na further, saifing that I pray zow to
send me gude newis of zour voyage. From Glasgow this Setterday in the
morning.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION AT THE RECORD OFFICE
(State Papers relating to Mary Queen of Scots, vol. ii. No. 62)
It seemyth that with your absence forgetfulness is joynid consydering
that at your departure you promised me to send me newes from you.
Neuertheless I can learn none. And yet did I yesterday looke for that
that shuld make me meryer then I shall be. I think you doo the lyke
for your returne, prolonging it more than you have promised.
As for me, if I hear no other matter of you, according to my
Commission, I bring the man Monday to Cregmillar, where he shall be
vpon Wednisdaye. And I go to Edinboroughe to be lett blud, if I haue
no word to the contrary.
He is the meryest that euer you sawe, and doth remember vnto me all
that he can, to make me beleve that he louith me. To conclude, you
wold saye that he makith love to me, wherein I take so muche plesure,
that I never com in there, but the payne of my syde doth take me. I
have it sore to daye. Yf Paris doth bring back unto me that for which
I have sent, it suld muche amend me.
I pray you, send me word from you at large, and what I shall doo if
you be not returnid, when I shall be there. For if you be not wyse I
see assuredly all the wholle burden falling vpon my shoulders. Prouide
for all and consyder well first of all. I send this present to
Ledinton to be delivered to you by Beton, who goith to one Day a lau
of Lord Balfour. I will saye no more vnto you, but that I pray God
send me good newes of your voyage.
From Glasco this Saturday morning.
LETTER II
PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION
1. Being departit from the place quhair I left my hart, it is esie to
be judgeit quhat was my countenance, seeing that I was evin als mekle
as ane body without ane hart; quhilk was the Occasioun that quhile
Denner tyme I held purpois to na body; nor zit durst ony present
thameselfis unto me, judging yat it was not gude sa to do.
2. Four myle or I came to the towne, ane gentilman of the Erle of
Lennox come and maid his commendatiounis unto me; and excusit him that
he came not to meit me, be ressoun he durst not interpryse the same,
becaus of the rude wordis that I had spokin to Cuninghame: And he
desyrit that he suld come to the inquisitioun of ye matter yat I
suspectit him of. This last speiking was of his awin heid, without ony
commissioun.
I answerit to him that thair was na recept culd serve aganis feir; and
that he wold not be affrayit, in cace he wer not culpabill; and that I
answerit bot rudely to the doutis yat wer in his letteris. Summa, I
maid him hald his toung. The rest wer lang to wryte.
3. Schir James Hammiltoun met me, quha schawit that the uther tyme
quhen he hard of my cumming he[427] departit away, and send Howstoun,
to schaw him, that he wald never have belevit that he wald have
persewit him, nor zit accompanyit him with the Hammiltounis. He
answerit, that he was only cum bot to see me, and yat he wald nouther
accompany Stewart nor Hammiltoun, bot be my commandement. He desyrit
that he wald cum and speik with him: He refusit it.
The Laird of Lusse, Howstoun, and Caldwellis sone, with xl. hors or
thairabout, come and met me. The Laird of Lusse said, he was chargeit
to ane Day of Law be the Kingis father, quhilk suld be this day,
aganis his awin hand-writ, quhilk he hes: and zit notwithstanding,
knawing of my cumming, it is delayit. He was inquyrit to cum to him,
quhilk he refusit, and sweiris that he will indure nathing of him.
Never ane of that towne came to speik to me, quhilk causis me think
that thay ar his; and neuertheles he speikis gude, at the leist his
sone. I se na uther Gentilman bot thay of my company.
4. The King send for Joachim zisternicht, and askit at him, quhy I
ludgeit not besyde him? And that he wald ryse the soner gif that wer;
and quhairfoir I come, gif it was for gude appointment? and gif I had
maid my estait, gif I had takin Paris [this berer will tell you
sumwhat upon this], and Gilbert to wryte to me? And yat I wald send
Joseph away. I am abaschit quha hes schawin him sa far; zea he spak
evin of ye mariage of Bastiane.
5. I inquyrit him of his letteris, quhairintill he plenzeit of the
crueltie of sum: answerit, that he was astonischit, and that he was sa
glaid to se me, that he belevit to die for glaidnes. He fand greit
fault that I was pensive.
6. I departit to supper. Yis beirer wil tell yow of my arryuing. He
prayit me to returne: the quhilk I did. He declairit unto me his
seiknes, and that he wald mak na testament, bot only leif all thing to
me; and that I was the caus of his maladie, becaus of the regrait that
he had that I was sa strange unto him. And thus he said: Ze ask me
quhat I mene be the crueltie contenit in my letter? it is of zow alone
that will not accept my offeris and repentance. I confess that I haue
failit, bot not into that quhilk I ever denyit; and siclyke hes failit
to sindrie of zour subjectis, quhilk ze haue forgeuin.
I am zoung.
Ze wil say, that ze have forgevin me oft tymes, and zit yat I returne
to my faultis. May not ane man of my age, for lacke of counsell, fall
twyse or thryse, or inlacke of his promeis, and at last repent
himself, and be chastisit be experience? Gif I may obtene pardoun, I
protest I sall never mak fault agane. And I crafit na uther thing, bot
yat we may be at bed and buird togidder as husband and wyfe; and gif
ze wil not consent heirunto, I sall never ryse out of yis bed. I pray
zow, tell me your resolutioun. God knawis how I am punischit for
making my God of zow, and for hauing na uther thocht but on zow; and
gif at ony tyme I offend zow, ze ar the caus, becaus quhen ony
offendis me, gif, for my refuge, I micht playne unto zow, I wald speik
it unto na uther body; bot quhen I heir ony thing, not being familiar
with zow, necessitie constranis me to keip it in my breist; and yat
causes me to tyne my wit for verray anger.
7. I answerit ay unto him, but that wald be ovir lang to wryte at
lenth. I askit quhy he wald pas away in ye _Inglis_ schip. He denyis
it, and sweiris thairunto; bot he grantis that he spak with the men.
Efter this I inquyrit him of the inquisitioun of Hiegait. He denyit
the same, quhill I schew him the verray wordis was spokin. At quhilk
tyme he said, that Mynto had advertisit him, that it was said, that
sum of the counsell had brocht an letter to me to be subscrivit to put
him in Presoun, and to slay him gif he maid resistance. And he askit
the same at Mynto himself; quha answerit, that he belevit ye same to
be trew. The morne I wil speik to him upon this Point.
8. As to the rest of Willie Hiegait’s, he confessit it, bot it was the
morne efter my cumming or he did it.
9. He wald verray fane that I suld ludge in his ludgeing. I refusit
it, and said to him, that he behovit to be purgeit, and that culd not
be done heir. He said to me, I heir say ze have brocht ane lytter with
zow; but I had rather have passit with zow. I trow he belevit that I
wald have send him away Presoner. I answerit, that I wald tak him with
me to Craigmillar, quhair the mediciner and I micht help him, and not
be far from my sone. He answerit, that he was reddy quhen I pleisit,
sa I wald assure him of his requeist.
He desyris na body to se him. He is angrie quhen I speik of Walcar,
and sayis, that he sal pluk the eiris out of his heid and that he
leis. For I inquyrit him upon that, and yat he was angrie with sum of
the Lordis, and wald threittin thame. He denyis that, and sayis he
luifis thame all, and prayis me to give traist to nathing aganis him.
10. As to me, he wald rather give his lyfe or he did ony displesure to
me. And efter yis he schew me of sa money lytil flattereis, sa cauldly
and sa wysely that ze will abasche thairat. I had almaist forzet that
he said, he could not dout of me in yis purpois of Hiegaite’s; for he
wald never beleif yat I, quha was his proper flesche, wald do him ony
evill; alsweill it was schawin that I refusit to subscrive the same;
But as to ony utheris that wald persew him, at leist he suld sell his
lyfe deir aneuch; but he suspectit na body, nor zit wald not; but wald
lufe all yat I lufit.
11. He wald not let me depart from him, bot desyrit yat I suld walk
with him. I mak it seme that I beleive that all is trew, and takis
heid thairto, and excusit my self for this nicht that I culd not walk.
He sayis, that he sleipis not weil. Ze saw him never better, nor speik
mair humbler. And gif I had not ane prufe of his hart of waxe, and yat
myne wer not of ane dyamont, quhairintill na schot can mak brek, but
that quhilk cummis forth of zour hand, I wald have almaist had pietie
of him. But feir not, the place sall hald unto the deith. Remember, in
recompence thairof, that ye suffer not zouris to be wyn be that fals
race that will travell na les with zow for the same.
I beleve thay[430] have bene at schuillis togidder. He hes ever the
teir in his eye; he salutis every body, zea, unto the leist, and makis
pieteous caressing unto thame, to mak thame have pietie on him. This
day his father bled at the mouth and nose; ges quhat presage that is.
I have not zit sene him, he keipis his chalmer. The king desyris that
I suld give him meit with my awin handis; bot gif na mair traist
quhair ze ar, than I sall do heir.
This is my first jornay. I sall end ye same ye morne.
12. I wryte all thingis, howbeit thay be of lytill wecht, to the end
that ze may tak the best of all to judge upon. I am in doing of ane
work heir that I hait greitly. Have ze not desyre to lauch to se me
lie sa weill, at ye leist to dissembill sa weill, and to tell him
treuth betwix handis? He schawit me almaist all yat is in the name of
the Bischop and Sudderland, and zit I have never twichit ane word of
that ze schawit me; but allanerly be force, flattering, and to pray
him to assure himself of me. And be pleinzeing on the Bischop, I have
drawin it all out of him. Ye have hard the rest.
13. We ar couplit with twa fals races; the devil sinder us, and God
knit us togidder for ever, for the maist faithful coupill that ever be
unitit. This is my faith, I will die in it.
Excuse I wryte evill, ye may ges ye half of it; bot I cannot mend it,
because I am not weil at eis; and zit verray glaid to wryte unto zow
quhen the rest are sleipand, sen I cannot sleip as thay do, and as I
wald desyre, that is in zour armes, my deir lufe, quhome I pray God to
preserve from all evill, and send zow repois: I am gangand to seik
myne till ye morne, quhen I sall end my Bybill; but I am faschit that
it stoppis me to wryte newis of myself unto zow, because it is sa
lang.
Advertise me quhat ze have deliberat to do in the mater ze knaw upon
this point, to ye end that we may understand utheris weill, that
nathing thairthrow be spilt.
14. I am irkit, and ganging to sleip, and zit I ceis not to
scrible[431] all this paper in sa mekle as restis thairof. Waryit mot
this pokische man be that causes me haif sa mekle pane, for without
him I suld have an far plesander subject to discourse upon. He is not
over mekle deformit, zit he hes ressavit verray mekle. He hes almaist
slane me with his braith; it is worse than zour uncle’s; and zit I cum
na neirer unto him, bot in ane chyre at the bed-seit, and he being at
the uther end thairof.
15. The message of the father in the gait.
The purpois of Schir James Hamilton.
Of that the Laird of Lusse schawit me of the delay.
Of the demandis that he askit at Joachim.
Of my estait.
Of my company.
Of the occasion of my cumming:
And of Joseph.
_Item_, The purpois that he and I had togidder. Of the desyre that he
hes to pleis me, and of his repentence.
Of the interpretatioun of his letter.
Of Willie Hiegaite’s mater of his departing.
Of Monsiure de Levingstoun.
16. I had almaist forzet, that Monsiure de Levingstoun said in the
Lady Reres eir at supper, that he wald drink to ye folk yat I wist of,
gif I wald pledge thame. And efter supper he said to me, quhen I was
lenand upon him warming me at the fyre, Ze have fair going to se seik
folk, zit ze cannot be sa welcum to thame as ze left sum body this day
in regrait, that will never be blyth quhill he se zow agane. I askit
at him quha that was. With that he thristit my body, and said, that
sum of his folkis had sene zow in fascherie; ze may ges at the rest.
17. I wrocht this day quhill it was twa houris upon this bracelet, for
to put ye key of it within the lock thairof, quhilk is couplit
underneth with twa cordounis. I have had sa lytill tyme that it is
evill maid; bot I sall mak ane fairer in the meane tyme. Tak heid that
nane that is heir se it, for all the warld will knaw it, becaus for
haist it was maid in yair presence.
18. I am now passand to my fascheous purpois. Ze gar me dissemble sa
far, that I haif horring thairat; and ye caus me do almaist the office
of a traitores. Remember how gif it wer not to obey zow, I had rather
be deid or I did it; my hart bleidis at it. Summa, he will not cum
with me, except upon conditioun that I will promeis to him, that I
sall be at bed and buird with him as of befoir, and that I sall leif
him na ofter: and doing this upon my word, he will do all thingis that
I pleis, and cum with me. Bot he hes prayit me to remane upon him
quhil uther morne.
He spak verray braifly at ye beginning, as yis beirer will schaw zow,
upon the purpois of the Inglismen, and of his departing: Bot in ye end
he returnit agane to his humilitie.[432]
19. He schawit, amangis uther purposis, yat he knew weill aneuch that
my brother had schawin me yat thing, quhilk he had spoken in
Striviling, of the quhilk he denyis ye ane half, and abone all, yat
ever he came in his chalmer. For to mak him traist me, it behovit me
to fenze in sum thingis with him: Thairfoir, quhen he requeistit me to
promeis unto him, that quhen he was haill we suld have baith ane bed:
I said to him fenzeingly, and making me to beleve his[433] promisis,
that gif he changeit not purpois betwix yis and that tyme, I wald be
content thairwith; bot in the meane tyme I bad him heid that he leit
na body wit thairof, becaus, to speik amangis our selfis, the Lordis
culd not be offendit nor will evill thairfoir: Bot thay wald feir in
respect of the boisting he maid of thame, that gif ever we aggreit
togidder, he suld mak thame knaw the lytill compt thay take of him;
and that he counsallit me not to purchas sum of thame by him.
Thay for this caus wald be in jelosy, gif at anis, without thair
knawledge, I suld brek the play set up in the contrair in thair
presence.
He said verray joyfully, And think zow thay will esteme zow the mair
of that? Bot I am verray glaid that ze speik to me of the Lordis; for
I beleve at this tyme ze desyre that we suld leif togidder in
quyetnes: For gif it wer utherwyse, greiter inconvenience micht come
to us baith than we ar war of: bot now I will do quhatever ze will do,
and will lufe all that ze lufe; and desyris zow to mak thame lufe in
lyke maner: For, sen thay seik not my lyfe, I lufe thame all equallie.
Upon yis point this beirer will schaw zow mony small thingis. Becaus I
have over mekle to wryte, and it is lait: I give traist unto him upon
zour word. Summa, he will ga upon my word to all places.
20. Allace! I never dissavit ony body: Bot I remit me altogidder to
zour will. Send me advertisement quhat I sall do, and quhatsaever
thing sall cum thairof, I sall obey zow. Advise to with zourself, gif
ze can find out ony mair secreit inventioun be medicine; for he suld
tak medicine and the bath at Craigmillar. He may not cum furth of the
hous this lang tyme.
21. Summa, be all that I can leirne, he is in greit suspicioun, and
zit notwithstanding, he gevis credit to my word; bot zit not sa far
that he will schaw ony thing to me: bot nevertheles, I sall draw it
out of him, gif ze will that I avow all unto him. Bot I will never
rejoyce to deceive ony body that traistis in me: Zit notwithstanding
ze may command me in all thingis. Have na evill opinioun of me for
that caus, be ressoun ze ar the occasion of it zourself; becaus, for
my awin particular revenge, I wald not do it to him.
He gevis me sum chekis of yat quhilk I feir, zea, evin in the quick.
He sayis this far, yat his faultis wer publeist: bot yair is that
committis faultis, that belevis thay will never be spokin of; and zit
thay will speik of greit and small. As towart the Lady Reres, he said,
I pray God that scho may serve zow for your honour: and said, it is
thocht, and he belevis it to be trew, that I have not the power of
myself into myself, and that becaus of the refuse I maid of his
offeris. Summa, for certanetie he suspectis of the thing ze knaw, and
of his lyfe. Bot as to the last, how sone yat I spak twa or thre gude
wordis unto him, he rejoysis, and is out of dout.
22. I saw him not this evening for to end your bracelet, to the quhilk
I can get na lokkis. It is reddy to thame: and zit I feir that it will
bring sum malhure, and may be sene gif ze chance to be hurt. Advertise
me gif ze will have it, and gif ze will have mair silver, and quhen I
sall returne, and how far I may speik. He inragis when he heiris of
Lethingtoun, or of zow, or of my brother. Of your brother he speikis
nathing.[434] He speikis of the Erle of Argyle. I am in feir quhen I
heir him speik; for he assuris himself yat he hes not an evill
opinioun of him. He speikis nathing of thame that is out, nouther gude
nor evill, bot fleis that point. His father keipis his chalmer I have
not sene him.
23. All the Hammiltounis ar heir, that accompanyis me verray
honorabilly. All the freindis of the uther convoyis me quhen I gang to
se him. He desyris me to come and se him ryse the morne betyme. For to
mak schort, this beirer will tell zow the rest. And gif I leirne ony
thing heir, I will mak zow memoriall at evin. He will tell zow the
occasioun of my remaning. Burne this letter, for it is ovir dangerous,
and nathing weill said in it: for I am thinkand upon nathing bot
fascherie. Gif ze be in Edinburgh at the ressait of it, send me word
sone.
24. Be not offendit, for I gif not ovir greit credite. Now seing to
obey zow, my deir lufe, I spair nouther honour, conscience, hasarde,
nor greitnes quhat sumevir tak it, I pray zow, in gude part, and not
efter the interpretatioun of zour fals gudebrother, to quhome, I pray
zou, gif na credite agains the maist faithful luifer that ever ze had,
or ever sall have.
Se not hir, quhais fenzeit teiris suld not be sa mekle praisit nor
estemit, as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk I sustene for to
merite hir place. For obtening of the quhilk aganis my naturall, I
betrayis thame that may impesche me. God forgive me, and God give zow,
my only lufe, the hap and prosperitie quhilk your humble and faithful
lufe desyris unto zow, quha hopis to be schortly ane uther thing to
zow, for the reward of my irksum travellis.
25. It is lait: I desyre never to ceis fra wryting unto zou; zit now,
efter the kissing of zour handis, I will end my letter. Excuse my
evill wryting, and reid it twyse over. Excuse that thing that is
scriblit,[435] for I had na paper zisterday quhen I wrait that of ye
memoriall. Remember upon zour lufe, and wryte unto hir, and that
verray oft. Lufe me as I sall do zow.
Remember zow of the purpois of the Lady Reres.
Of the Inglismen.
Of his mother.
Of the Erle of Argyle.
Of the Erle Bothwell.
Of the ludgeing in Edinburgh.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
(State Papers, Mary Queen of Scots, vol. ii. No. 65)
Being gon from the place, where I had left my harte, it may be easily
iudged what my Countenance was consydering what the body may without
harte, which was cause that till dynner I had used lyttle talk,
neyther wold any --pson-- body advance him selfe therunto, thinking
that it was not good so to doo.
Fowir myles from thence a gentleman of the Erle of Lennox cam and made
his commendations and excuses vnto me, that he cam not to meete me,
because he durst not enterprise so to doo, consydering the sharp
wordes that I had spoken to Conyngham, and that he desyred that I wold
com to the inquisition of the facte which I did suspecte him of. This
last was of his own head, without commission, and I told him that he
had no receipte against feare, and that he had no feare, if he did not
feele him self faulty, and that I had also sharply answeared to the
doubtes that he made in his letters as though ther had bene a meaning
to poursue him. To be short I have made him hold his peace; for the
reste it were to long to tell you. Sir James Hamilton came to meete
me, who told me that at another tyme he went his waye when he heard of
my comming, and that he sent unto him Houstoun, to tell him that he
wold not have thought, that he wold have followed and accompany him
selfe with the Hamiltons. He answeared that he was not com but to see
me; and that he would not follow Stuard nor Hamilton, but by my
commandment. He prayed him to go speake to him; he refused it.
The Lard Luce, Houstoun and the sonne of Caldwell, and about XLty
horse cam to meete me and he told that he was sent to one day a law
from the father, which shuld be this daye against the signing of his
own hand, which he hathe, and that, knowing of my comming, he hath
delayed it, and hath prayed him to go see him, which he hath refused
and swearith that he will suffer nothing at his handes. Not one of the
towne is come to --to see me-- speake with me, which makith me to
think that they be his, and then he speakith well of them at leaste
his sonne.
The King sent for Joachim and asked him, why I did not lodge nighe to
him, and that he wold ryse sooner and why I cam, whithir it wear for
any good appointment, that he[428] cam, and whithir I had not taken
Paris and Guilbert to write and that I sent Joseph. I wonder who hath
told him so muche evin of the mariage of Bastian. This bearer shall
tell you more vpon that I asked him of his letters and where he did
complayne of the crueltye of some of them. He said that he did dreme,
and that he was so glad to see me that he thought he shuld dye.
Indeede that he had found faulte with me....
I went my waye to supper. This bearer shall tell you of my arryving.
He praied me to com agayn, which I did: and he told me his grefe,
and that he wold make no testament, but leave all unto me and that I
was cause of his sicknes for the sorrow he had, that I was so strange
unto him. And (said he) you asked what I ment in my letter to speak of
cruelty. It was of your cruelty who will not accepte my offres and
repentance I avowe that I have done amisse, but not that I have always
disauowed; and so have many other of your subjects don and you have
well pardonid them.
I am young.
You will saye that you have also pardoned me many tymes and that I
returne to my fault. May not a man of my age for want of counsell,
fayle twise or thrise and mysse of promes and at the last repent and
rebuke him selfe by his experience? Yf I may obtayn this pardon I
protest I will neuer make faulte agayne. And I ask nothing but that we
may be at bed and table togiether as husband and wife; and if you
will not I will never rise from this bed. I pray you tell me your
resolution heerof. God knoweth that I am punished to have made my God
of you and had no other mynd but of you. And when I offende you
somtyme, you are cause thereof: for if I thought, whan anybody doth
any wrong to me, that I might for my refuge make my mone thereof unto
you, I wold open it to no other, but when I heare anything being not
familiar with you, I must keep it in my mynd and that --makith me out
of my wytt-- troublith my wittes for anger.
I did still answair him but that shall be too long. In the end I asked
him why he wold go in the English shipp. He doth disavow it and
swearith so, and confessith to have spoken to the men. Afterwards I
asked him of the inquisition of Hiegate. He denyed it till I told him
the very wordes, and then he said that Minto sent him word that it was
said, that som of the counsayle had brought me a letter to signe to
putt him in prison, and to kill him if he did resiste and that he
asked this of Minto himself, who said vnto him that he thought it was
true. I will talke with him to morrowe vpon that poynte. The rest as
Wille Hiegate hath confessed; but it was the next daye that he cam
hither.
In the end he desyred much that I shuld lodge in his lodging. I have
refused it. I have told him that he must be pourged and that could not
be don heere. He said unto me ‘I have hard saye that you have brought
the lytter, but I wold rather have gon with yourselfe.’ I told him
that so I wolde myself bring him to Cragmillar, that the phisicians
and I also might cure him without being farr from my sonne. He said
that he was ready when I wolde so as I wolde assure him of his
requeste.
He hath no desyre to be seen and waxeth angry when I speake to him of
Wallcar and sayth that he will pluck his eares from his head, and that
he lyeth; for I asked him before of that, and what cause he had to
complayne of some of the lords and to threaten them. He denyeth it,
and sayth that he had allready prayed them to think no such matter of
him. As for my selfe he wold rather lose his lyfe than doo me the
leaste displeasure; and then used so many kindes of flatteryes so
coldly and wysely as you wold marvayle at. I had forgotten that he
sayde that he could not mistrust me for Hiegate’s word, for he could
not beleve, that his own flesh (which was myselfe) wold doo him any
hurte; and in deed it was sayd that I refused to have him lett
bludd.[429] But for the others he wold at leaste sell his lyfe deare
ynoughe; but that he did suspecte nobody nor wolde, but wolde love all
that I did love.
He wold not lett me go, but wold have me to watche with him. I made as
though I thought all to be true and that I wold think vpon it, and
have excused myself from sytting up with him this nyght, for he sayth
that he sleepith not. You have never heard him speake better nor more
humbly; and if I had not proofe of his hart to be as waxe, and that
myne were not as a dyamant, no stroke but comming from your hand could
make me but to have pitie of him. But feare not for the place shall
contynue till death. Remember also, in recompense therof, not to
suffer yours to be won by that false race that wold do no lesse to
your selfe.
I think they have bene at schoole togither. He hath allwais the teare
in the eye. He saluteth every man, even to the meanest, and makith
much of them, that they may take pitie of him. His father hath bled
this daye at the nose and at the mouth. Gesse what token that is. I
have not seene him; he is in his chamber. The king is so desyrous,
that I shuld give him meate with my own hands, but trust you no more
there where you are than I doo here.
This is my first journay; I will end to morrow. I write all, how
little consequence so ever it be of, to the end that you may take of
the wholle, that shall be best _for you to judge_. I doo here a work
that I hate muche, _but I had begon it this morning_; had you not lyst
to laugh, to see me so trymly make a lie, at the leaste dissemble, and
to mingle truthe therewith? He hath almost told me all on the bishops
behalfe and of Sunderland, without touching any word unto him of that
which you had told me; but only by muche flattering him and praying
him to assure him selfe of me, and by my complayning of the bishop. _I
have taken the worms out_ of his nose. You have hard the rest.
We are tyed to by two false races. The _good yeere_ untye us from
them. God forgive me and God knytt us togither for ever for the most
faythfull couple that ever he did knytt together. This is my fayth; I
will dye in it.
Excuse it, yf I write yll; you must gesse the one halfe. I cannot doo
with all, for I am yll at ease, and glad to write unto you when other
folkes be a sleepe, seeing that I cannot doo as they doo, according to
my desyre, that is betwene your armes my dear lyfe whom I besech God
to preserve from all yll, and send you good rest as I go to seeke
myne, till to morrow in the morning that will end my bible. But it
greevith me, that it shuld lett me from wryting unto you of newes of
myself --long the same-- so much I have to write.
Send me word what you have determinid heerupon, that we may know the
one the others mynde for marryng of any thing.
I am weary, and am a sleepe, and yet I cannot forbeare scribbling so
long as ther is any paper. Cursed be this pocky fellow that troublith
me thus muche, for I had a pleasanter matter to discourse vnto you but
for him. He is not muche the worse, but he is yll arrayed. I thought I
shuld have bene kylled with his breth, for it is worse than your
uncle’s breth; and yet I was sett no nearer to him than in a chayr by
his bolster, and he lyeth at the furdre syde of the bed.
The message of the Father by the waye.
The talk of Sir James --Hamilton-- of the ambassador.
That the Lard a Luss hath tolde me of the delaye.
The questions that he asked of Jochim.
Of my state.
Of my companye.
And of the cause of my comming.
And of Joseph.
The talk that he and I haue had, and of his desyre to please me, of
his repentance, and of thinterpretation of his letter.
Of Will Hiegate’s doinges, and of his departure, and of the L. of
Levinston.
I had forgotten of the L. of Levinston, that at supper he sayd softly
to the Lady Reres, that he dronk to the persons I knew if I wold
pledge them. And after supper he sayd softly to me, when I was leaning
vpon him and warming myselfe, ‘You may well go and see sick folkes,
yet can you not be so welcom unto them as you have this daye left som
body in payne who shall never be meary till he haue seene you agayne.’
I asked him who it was; he tooke me about the body and said ‘One of
his folkes that hath left you this daye.’ Gesse you the rest.
This day I have wrought till two of the clock vpon this bracelet, to
putt the keye in the clifte of it, which is tyed with two laces. I
have had so little tyme that it is very yll, but I will make a fayrer;
and in the meane tyme take heed that none of those that be heere doo
see it, for all the world wold know it, for I have made it in haste in
theyr presence.
I go to my tedious talke. You make me dissemble so much that I am
afrayde therof with horrour, and you make me almost to play the part
of a traytor. Remember that if it weare not for obeyeng I had rather
be dead. My heart bleedith for yt. To be shorte, he will not com but
with condition that I shall promise to be with him as heretofore at
bed and borde, and that I shall forsake him no more; and vpon my word
he will doo whatsoever I will, and will com, but he hath prayed me to
tarry till after to morrow.
He hath spoken at the fyrst more stoutly, as this bearer shall tell
you upon the matter of the Englishmen and of his departure; but in the
end he cometh to his gentlenes agayne.
He hath told me, among other talk, that he knew well, that my brother
hath told me at Sterling that which he had said there, wherof he
denyed the halfe, and specially that he was in his chamber. But now to
make him trust me I must fayne somthing vnto him; and therfore when he
desyred me to promise that when he shuld be well we shuld make but one
bed, I told him fayning to believe his faire promises, that if he did
not change his mynd betwene this tyme and that, I was contented, so as
he wold saye nothing therof; for (to tell it betwen us two) the Lordis
wished no yll to him, but did feare lest, consydering the
threateninges which he made in case we did agree together, he wold
make them feel the small accompte they have made of him; and that he
wold persuade me to poursue som of them, and for this respecte shuld
be in jelousy if --by and by-- at one instant, without their knowledge
I did brake a game made to the contrary in their presence.
And he said unto me very pleasant and meary ‘Think you that they doo
the more esteem you therfore? But I am glad that you talked to me of
the Lordes. I hope that you desyre now that we shall lyve a happy
lyfe; for if it weare otherwise, it could not be but greater
inconvenience shuld happen to us both than you think. But I will doo
now whatsoever you will have me doo, and will love all those that you
shall love so as you make them to love me allso. For so as they seek
not my lyfe, I love them all egally.’ Therupon I have willed this
bearer to tell you many prety things; for I have to muche to write,
and it is late, and I trust him upon your worde. To be short, he will
go any where upon my word.
Alas! and I never deceived any body; but I remitt myself wholly to
your will. And send me word what I shall doo, and whatsoever happen to
me, I will obey you. Think also yf you will not fynd som invention
more secret by phisick, for he is to take physick at Cragmillar and
the bathes also, and shall not com fourth of long tyme.
To be short, for that that I can learn he hath great suspicion, and
yet, nevertheles trusteth upon my worde, but not to tell me as yet
anything; howbeit, if you will that I shall avow him, I will know all
of him; but I shall never be willing to beguile one that puttith his
trust in me. Nevertheles you may doo all, and doo not estyme me the
lesse therfore, for you are the cause therof. For, for my own revenge
I wold not doo it.
He giuith me certain charges (and these strong), of that that I fear
evin to saye that his faultes be published, but there be that committ
some secret faultes and feare not to have them spoken of lowdely, and
that ther is speeche of greate and small. And even touching the Lady
Reres, he said ‘God grant, that she serve you to your honour.’ And
that men may not think, nor he neyther, that myne owne power was not
in myselfe, seeing I did refuse his offres. To conclude, for a
suerety, he mistrustith vs of that that you know, and for his lyfe.
But in the end, after I had spoken two or three good wordes to him, he
was very meary and glad.
I have not sene him this night for ending your bracelet, but I can
fynde no claspes for yt; it is ready therunto, and yet I feare least
it should bring you yll happ, or that it shuld be known if you were
hurte. Send me worde, whether you will have it and more monney, and
whan I shall returne, and how farre I may speak. Now as farr as I
perceive _I may doo much with you_; gesse you whithir I shall not be
suspected. As for the rest, he is wood when he hears of Ledinton, and
of you and my brother. Of your brother he sayth nothing, but of the
Earl of Arguile he doth; I am afraide of him to heare him talk, at the
least he assurith himselfe that he hath no yll opinion of him. He
speakith nothing of those abrode, nether good nor yll, but avoidith
speaking of them. His father keepith his chamber; I have not seene
him.
All the Hamiltons be heere who accompany me very honestly. All the
friendes of the other doo come allwais, when I go to visitt him. He
hath sent to me and prayeth me to see him rise to morrow in the
morning early. To be short, this bearer shall declare unto you the
rest; and if I shall learne anything, I will make every night a
memoriall therof. He shall tell you the cause of my staye. Burn this
letter, for it is too dangerous, neyther is there anything well said
in it, for I think upon nothing but upon greefe if you be at
Edinboroughe.
Now if to please you, my deere lyfe, I spare neither honor,
conscience, nor hazard, nor greatnes, take it in good part, and not
according to the interpretation of your false brother-in-law, to whom
I pray you, give no credit against the most faythfull lover that ever
you had or shall have.
See not also her whose faynid teares you ought not more to regarde
than the true travails which I endure to deserve her place, for
obteyning of which, against my own nature, I doo betray those that
could lett me. God forgive me and give you, my only frend, the good
luck and prosperitie that your humble and faythfull lover doth wisshe
vnto you, who hopith shortly to be an other thing vnto you, for the
reward of my paynes.
I have not made one worde, and it is very late, althoughe I shuld
never be weary in wryting to you, yet will I end, after kyssing of
your handes. Excuse my evill wryting, and read it over twise. Excuse
also that [I scribbled], for I had yesternight no paper when took the
paper of a memorial. [Pray] remember your frend, and wryte vnto her
and often. Love me allw[ais as I shall love you].
LETTER III
ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION AT HATFIELD
(See Calendar of Hatfield Manuscripts, vol. i. pp. 376-77.)
J’ay veille plus tard la hault que je n’eusse fait si ce neust esté pour
tirer ce que ce porteur vous dira que Je treuve la plus belle commoditie
pour excuser vostre affaire que se pourroit presenter. Je luy ay promise
de le luy mener demain ^si^ vous le trouves bon mettes y ordre. Or
monsieur j’ay ja rompu ma promesse Car vous ne mavies rien comande ^de^
vous envoier ni escrire si ne le fais pour vous offencer et si vous
scavies la craint que j’en ay vous nauries tant des subçons contrairs que
toutesfois je cheris comme procedant de la chose du mond que je desire et
cherche le plus c’est votre ^bonne^ grace de laquelle mes deportemens
m’asseureront et je n’en disesperay Jamais tant que selon vostre promesse
vous m’en dischargeres vostre coeur aultrement je penseras que mon malheur
et le bien composer de ceux qui n’ont la troisiesme partie de la fidelité
ni voluntair obéissance que je vous porte auront gaigné sur moy l’avantage
de la seconde amye de Jason. Non que je vous compare a un si malheureuse
ni moy a une si impitoiable. Combien que vous men fassies un peu resentir
en chose qui vous touschat ou pour vous preserver et garder a celle a qui
seulle vous aporteins si lon se peult approprier ce que lon acquiert par
bien et loyalment voire uniquement aymer comme je fais et fairay toute ma
vie pour pein ou mal qui m’en puisse avenir. En recompence de quoy et des
tous les maulx dont vous maves este cause, souvenes vous du lieu icy pres.
Je ne demande que vous me tennes promesse de main mais que nous truvions
et que nadjousties foy au subçons quaures sans nous en certifier, et Je ne
demande a Dieu si non que coignoissies tout ce que je ay au coeur qui est
vostre et quil vous preserve de tout mal au moyns durant ma vie qui ne me
sera chere qu’autant qu’elle et moy vous serons agreables. Je m’en vois
coucher et vous donner le bon soir mandes moy de main comme vous seres
porté a bon heur. Car j’enseray en pein et faites bon guet si l’oseau
sortira de sa cage ou sens son per comme la tourtre demeurera seulle a se
lamenter de l’absence ^pour^ court quelle soit. Ce que je ne puis faire ma
lettre de bon coeur si ce nestoit que je ay peur que soyes endormy. Car je
nay ose escrire devant Joseph et bastienne et Joachim qui ne sont que
partir quand J’ay commence.
LETTER IV
ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION
(In the Record Office State Papers, Mary Queen of Scots, vol. ii. No. 63.)
Mon cueur helas fault il que la follie d’une famme dont vous connoisses
asses l’ingratitude vers moy soit cause de vous donner displesir veu que
je neusse sceu y remedier sans le scavoir; et despuis que men suis apersue
Je ne vous lay peu dire pour scauoir comment mi guovejernerois car en cela
ni aultre chose je ne veulx entreprandre de rien fayre sans en scavoir
votre volontay, laquelle je vous suplie me fayre entandre car je la
suiuray toute ma vie plus volontiers que vous ne me la declareres, et si
vous ne me mandes ce soir ce que volles que jen faise je men deferay au
hazard de la fayre entreprandre ce qui pourroit nuire a ce a quoy nous
tandons tous deus, et quant elle sera mariee je vous suplie donnes men vne
ou ien prandray telles de quoy vous contanteres quant a leur condition
mayes de leur langue ou fidelite vers vous ie ne vous en respondray Je
vous suplie qune opinion sur aultrui ne nuise en votre endroit a ma
constance. Soupsonnes moi may quant je vous en veulx rendre hors de doubte
et mesclersir ne le refeuses ma chere vie et permetes que je vous face
preuue par mon obeissance de ma fidelite et constance et subjection
volontaire, que je prands pour le plus agreable bien que je scaurois
resceuoir si vous le voulles accepter, et nen faytes la ceremonie car vous
ne me scauriez dauantage outrasger ou donner mortel ennuy.
LETTER V
ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION AT HATFIELD
Monsieur, helas pourquoy est vostre fiance mise en personne si indigne,
pour subçonner ce que est entierement vostre. Vous m’avies promise que
resouldries tout et que ^me^ manderies tous les jours ce que j’aurais a
faire. Vous nen aves rien fait. Je vous advertise bien de vous garder de
vostre =faulx beau frere= Il est venu vers moy et sens me monstrer rien de
vous me dist que --vous-- luy mandies qu’il vous escrive ce qu’auries a
dire, et ou, et quant vous me troveres et ce que faires touchant luy et la
dessubs m’a preschè que c’estoit une folle entrepri--n--se, et qu’avecques
mon honneur Je ne vous pourries Jamaiis espouser, veu qu’estant marié vous
m’amenies et que ses gens ne l’endureroient pas et que les seigneurs se
dediroient. Somme il est tout contrair. Je luy ay dist qu’estant venue si
avant si vous ne vous en retiries de vous mesmes que persuasion ne la mort
mesmes ne me fairoient faillir --de-- a ma promesse. Quant au lieu vous
estes trop negligent (pardonnes moy) de vous en remettre a moy. Choisisses
le vous mesmes et me le mandes. Et cependant je suis malade je differeray
Quant au propose cest trop tard. Il n’a pas tins a moy que n’ayes pense a
heure. Et si vous neussies non plus changé de --propos-- pensee depuis mon
absence que moy vous ne series a demander telle resolution. ^Or^ il ne
manque rien de ma part et puis que vostre negligence vous met tous deux au
danger d’un faux frere, s’il ne succede bien je ne me releveray Jamais. Il
vous envoy ce porteur. Car Je ne --m--’ose me fier a vostre frere de ces
lettres ni de la diligence, il vous dira en quelle estat Je suis, et Juges
quelle amendement--e-- m’a porté ce incertains Nouvelles. Je voudrais
estre morte. Car Je vois tout aller mal. Vous prometties bien autre chose
de vostre providence. Mais l’absence peult sur vous, qui aves deux cordes
a vostre arc. Depesches la responce a fin que Je ne faille et ne ^vous^
fies de ceste entrepri--n--se a vostre frere. Car il la dist, et si y est
tout contrair.
Dieu vous doint le bon soir.
LETTER VI
PUBLISHED SCOTS TRANSLATION
Of the place and ye tyme I remit my self to zour brother and to zow. I
will follow him, and will faill in nathing of my part. He findis mony
difficulteis. I think he dois advertise zow thairof, and quhat he desyris
for the handling of himself. As for the handling of myself, I hard it ains
weill devysit.
Me thinks that zour services, and the lang amitie, having ye gude will of
ye Lordis, do weill deserve ane pardoun, gif abone the dewtie of ane
subject yow advance yourself, not to constrane me, bot to asure yourself
of sic place neir unto me, that uther admonitiounis or forane
perswasiounis may not let me from consenting to that that ye hope your
service sall mak yow ane day to attene. And to be schort, to mak yourself
sure of the Lordis, and fre to mary; and that ye are constraint for your
suretie, and to be abill to serve me faithfully, to use ane humbil
requeist joynit to ane importune actioun.
And to be schort, excuse yourself, and perswade thame the maist ye can,
yat ye ar constranit to mak persute aganis zour enemies. Ze sall say
aneuch, gif the mater or ground do lyke yow; and mony fair wordis to
Lethingtoun. Gif ye lyke not the deid, send me word, and leif not the
blame of all unto me.
LETTER VII
SCOTS VERSION
My Lord, sen my letter writtin, zour brother in law yat was, come to me
verray sad, and hes askit me my counsel, quhat he suld do efter to morne,
becaus thair be mony folkis heir, and amang utheris the Erle of
Sudderland, quha wald rather die, considdering the gude thay have sa
laitlie ressavit of me, then suffer me to be caryit away, thay conducting
me; and that he feirit thair suld sum troubil happin of it: Of the uther
syde, that it suld be said that he wer unthankfull to have betrayit me. I
tald him, that he suld have resolvit with zow upon all that, and that he
suld avoyde, gif he culd, thay that were maist mistraistit.
He hes resolvit to wryte to zow be my opinioun; for he hes abaschit me to
se him sa unresolvit at the neid. I assure myself he will play the part of
an honest man: But I have thocht gude to advertise zow of the feir he hes
yat he suld be chargeit and accusit of tressoun, to ye end yat’ without
mistraisting him, ze may be the mair circumspect, and that ze may have ye
mair power. For we had zisterday mair than iii. c. hors of his and of
Levingstoun’s. For the honour of God, be accompanyit rather with mair then
les; for that is the principal of my cair.
I go to write my dispatche, and pray God to send us ane happy enterview
schortly. I wryte in haist, to the end ye may be advysit in tyme.
LETTER VIII
ORIGINAL FRENCH VERSION
(In the Record Office State Papers, Mary Queen of Scots, vol. ii. No. 66.)
Monsieur si lenuy de vostre absence celuy de vostre oubli la crainte du
dangier, tant promis d’un chacun a vostre tant ayme personne peuuent me
consoller Je vous en lesse a juger veu le malheur que mon cruel sort et
continuel malheur mauoient promis a la suite des infortunes et craintes
tant recentes que passes de plus longue main les quelles vous scaves mais
pour tout cela Je me vous accuserai ni de peu de souuenance ni de peu de
soigne et moins encores de vostre promesse violee ou de la froideur de vos
lettres mestant ja tant randue vostre que ce quil vous plaist mest
agreable et sont mes penses tant volonterement, aux vostres a subjectes
que je veulx presupposer que tout ce que vient de vous procede non par
aulcune des causes de susdictes ains pour telles qui son justes et
raisoinables et telles qui Je desir moy --mesme-- qui est lordre que maves
promis de prendre final pour la seurete et honnorable service du seul
soubtien de ma vie pour qui seul Je la veus conserver et sens lequel Je ne
desire que breve mort or pour vous tesmoigner combien humblement sous voz
commandemens Je me soubmets Je vous ay envoie en signe d’homage par paris
lornement du cheif conducteur des aultres membres inferant que vous
investant de sa despoille de luy qui est principal le rest ne peult que
vous estre subject et avecques le consentement du cueur au lieu du quel
puis que le vous ay Ja lesse Je vous envoie un sepulcre de pierre dure
poinct de noir seme d’larmes et de ossements, la pierre Je le la compare a
mon cueur qui comme luy est talle en un seur tombeau ou receptacle de voz
commandements et sur tout de vostre nom et memoire qui y sont enclos,
comme me cheveulz en la bague pour Jamais nen sortir que la mort ne vous
permet fair trophee des mes os comme la bague en est remplie en signe que
vous aves fayt entiere conqueste de moy, de mon cueur et iusque a vous en
lesser les os pour memoir de ṽr̃ẽ victoire et de mon agreable perte et
volontiere pour estre mieux employe que ie ne le merite Lesmail demiron
est noir qui signifie la fermete de celle que lenvoie les larmes sont sans
nombre ausi sont les craintes de vous desplair les pleurs de vostre
absence et de desplaisir de ne pouvoir estre en effect exterieur vostre
comme je suys sans faintise de cueur et desprit et a bon droit quant mes
merites seroint trop plus grands que de la plus perfayte que Jamais feut
et telle que je desire estre et mettray poine en condition de contrefair
pour dignement estre emploiee soubs vostre domination, reseues la donc mon
seul bien en aussi bonne part, comme avecques extreme Joie Jay fait vostre
mariage, qui jusques a celuy de nos corps en public ne sortira de mon
sein, comme merque de tout ce que Jay ou espere ni desire de felicite en
ce monde or craignant mon cueuer de vous ennuyer autant a lire que je me
plaire descrir Je finiray apres vous avoir baise les mains daussi grande
affection que je prie Dieu (O le seul soubtien de ma vie) vous la donner
longue et heureuse et a moy ṽr̃ẽ bonne grace le seul bien que je desire
et a quoy je tends Jay dit a ce porteur ce que Jay apris sur le quel Je me
remets sachant, le credit que luy donnes comme fait celle que vous veult
estre pour Jamais humble et obeisante loyalle femme et seulle amye qui
pour Jamais vous voue entierement le cueur le corps sans aucun changement
comme a celuy que J fait possesseur du cueur du quel vous pouves tenir
seur Jusques a la mort ne changera car mal ni bien onque ne estrangera.
[Illustration: PLATE F
MODERN IMITATION OF MARY’S HAND
The text is part of the ‘Original French’ of Letter VIII. (III.)
The purpose is to show how far Mary’s hand can be imitated]
LETTER IX
THE FRENCH ‘SONNETS’
O dieux ayes de moy compassion
E m’enseignes quelle preuue certane
Je puis donner qui ne luy semble vain
De mon amour et ferme affection.
Las n’est il pas ia en possession
Du corps, du cueur qui ne refuse peine
Ny dishonneur, en la vie incertane,
Offence de parents, ne pire affliction?
Pour luy tous mes amys i’estime moins que rien,
Et de mes ennemis ie veulx esperere bien.
I’ay hazardé pour luy & nom & conscience:
Ie veux pour luy au monde renoncer:
Ie veux mourire pour luy auancer.
Que reste il plus pour prouuer ma constance?
Entre ses mains & en son plein pouuoir
Je metz mon filz, mon honneur, & ma vie,
Mon pais, mes subjects mon ame assubiectie
Et toute à luy, & n’ay autre vouloir
Pour mon obiect que sens le disseuoir
Suiure ie veux malgré toute l’enuie
Qu’issir en peult, car ie nay autre envie
Que de ma foy, luy faire apparceuoir
Que pour tempest ou bonnace qui face
Iamais ne veux changer demeure ou place.
Brief ie farray de ma foy telle preuue,
Qu’il cognoistra sens feinte ma constance,
Non par mes pleurs ou feinte obeissance,
Come autres ont fait, mais par diuers espreuue.
Elle pour son honneur vous doibt obeissance
Moy vous obeissant i’en puys resseuoir blasme
N’estât, à mon regret, come elle vostre femme.
Et si n’aura pourtant en ce point préeminence
Pour son proffit elle vse de constance,
Car ce n’est peu d’honneur d’estre de voz biens dame
Et moy pour vous aymer i’en puix resseuoir blasme
Et ne luy veux ceder en toute l’obseruance
Elle de vostre mal n’a l’apprehension
Moy ie n’ay nul repos tant ie crains l’apparence
Par l’aduis des parents, elle eut vostre acointance
Moy maugre tous les miens vous port affection
Et de sa loyauté prenes ferme asseurance.
Par vous mon coeur & par vostre alliance
Elle a remis sa maison en honneur
Elle a jouy par vous de la grandeur
Dont tous les siens n’auoyent nul asseurance
De vous mon bien elle à eu la constance,[436]
Et a guagné pour vn temps vostre cueur,
Par vous elle a eu plaisir et bon heur,
Et pour vous a receu honneur & reuerence,
Et n’a perdu sinon la jouissance
D’vn fascheux sot qu’elle aymoit cherement.
Ie ne la plains d’aymer donc ardamment,
Celuy qui n’a en sens, ni en vaillance,
En beauté, en bonté, ni en constance
Point de seconde. Ie vis en ceste foy.
Quant vous l’aymes, elle vsoit de froideur.
Sy vous souffriez, pour s’amour passion
Qui vient d’aymer de trop d’affection,
Son doil monstroit, la tristesse de coeur
N’ayant plesir de vostre grand ardeur
En ses habitz, mon estroit sens fiction
Qu’elle n’auoyt peur qu’imperfection
Peult l’affasser hors de ce loyal coeur.
De vostre mort ie ne vis la peaur
Que meritoit tel mary & seigneur.
Somme de vous elle a eu tout son bien
Et n’a prise ne iamais estimé
Vn si grand heur sinon puis qu’il n’est sien
Et maintenant dist l’auoyr tant aymé.
Et maintenant elle commence à voire
Qu’elle estoit bien de mauuais iugement
De n’estimer l’amour d’vn tel amant
Et vouldroit bien mon amy desseuoir,
Par les escripts tout fardes de scauoir
Qui pour tant n’est en son esprit croissant
Ayns emprunté de quelque auteur eluissant.
A feint tresbien vn enuoy sans l’avoyr
Et toutesfois ses parolles fardez,
Ses pleurs, ses plaints remplis de fictions.
Et ses hautes cris & lamentations
Ont tant guagné que par vous sont guardes.
Ses lettres escriptes ausquells vous donnez foy
Et si l’aymes & croyez plus que moy.
Vous la croyes las trop ie l’appercoy
Et vous doutez de ma ferme constance,
O mon seul bien & mon seul esperance,
Et ne vous peux ie[437] asseurer de ma foy
Vous m’estimes legier je le voy,
Et si n’auez en moy nul asseurance,
Et soubconnes mon coeur sans apparence,
Vous deffiant à trop grande tort de moy.
Vous ignores l’amour que ie vous porte
Vous soubçonnez qu’autre amour me transporte,
Vous estimes mes parolles du vent,
Vous depeignes de cire mon las coeur
Vous me penses femme sans iugement,
Et tout cela augmente mon ardeur.
Mon amour croist & plus en plus croistra
Tant que je viuray, et tiendra à grandeur,
Tant seulement d’auoir part en ce coeur
Vers qui en fin mon amour paroitra
Si tres à cler que iamais n’en doutra,
Pour luy ie veux recercher la grandeure,
Et faira tant qu’en vray connoistra,
Que ie n’ay bien, heur, ni contentement,
Qu’ a l’obeyr & servir loyamment.
Pour luy iattendz toute bon fortune.
Pour luy ie veux guarder santé & vie
Pour luy tout vertu de suiure i’ay enuie
Et sens changer me trouuera tout vne.
Pour luy aussi ie jete mainte larme.
Premier quand il se fit de ce corps possesseur,
Du quel alors il n’auoyt pas le coeur.
Puis me donna vn autre dure alarme
Quand il versa de son sang maint drasme
Dont de grief il me vint lesser doleur,[438]
Qui me pensa oster la vie, & la frayeur
De[439] perdre las la seule rempar qui m’arme.
Pour luy depuis iay mesprise l’honneur
Ce qui nous peut seul prouoir de bonheur.
Pour luy iay hasarde grandeur[440] & conscience.
Pour luy tous mes parents i’ay quisté, & amys,
Et tous aultres respects sont a part mis.
Brief de vous seul ie cherche l’alliance.
De vous ie dis seul soubtein de ma vie
Tant seulement ie cherche m’asseurer,
Et si ose de moy tant presumer
De vous guagner maugré toute l’enuie.
Car c’est le seul desir de vostre chere amye,
De vous seruir & loyaument aymer,
Et tous malheurs moins que riens estimer,
Et vostre volunté de la mien suiure.
Vous conoistres avecques obeissance
De mon loyal deuoir n’omettant la science
A quoy i’estudiray pour tousiours vous complaire
Sans aymer rien que vous, soubs la suiection
De qui ie veux sens nulle fiction
Viure & mourir & à ce j’obtempere.
Mon coeur, mon sang, mon ame, & mon soussy,
Las, vous m’aues promes qu’aurois ce plaisir
De deuiser auecques vous à loysir,
Toute la nuit, ou ie languis icy
Ayant le coeur d’extreme peour transie,
Pour voir absent le but de mon desir
Crainte d’oubly vn coup me vient a saisir:
Et l’autrefois ie crains que rendursi
Soit contre moy vostre amiable coeur
Par quelque dit d’un meschant rapporteur.
Un autrefoys ie crains quelque auenture
Qui par chemin deturne mon amant,
Par vn fascheux & nouueau accident
Dieu deturne toute malheureux augure.
Ne vous voyant selon qu’aues promis
I’ay mis la main au papier pour escrire
D’vn different que ie voulou transcrire,
le ne scay pas quel sera vostre aduise
Mais ie scay bien qui mieux aymer sçaura
Vous diries bien qui plus y guagnera.
CRAWFORD’S DEPOSITION
(State Papers, Scotland, Elizabeth, vol. xiii. No. 14. Cal. Foreign State
Papers, Elizabeth, vol. viii. No. 954, February 1566-7.)
The Wordes betwixt the Q. and me Thomas Crawforde bye the waye as she
came to Glasco to fetche the kinge, when mye L. my Master sent me to
showe her the cause whye he came not to mete her him sellfe.
Firste I made my L. mye masters humble com̃endac̃ons vnto her Ma{ti} w{th}
thexcuse y{t} he came not to mete her praing her grace not to thinke it
was eath{r} for prowdnesse or yet for not knowinge hys duetye towardes her
highnesse, but onelye for want of hely{e} at y{e} present, and allso y{t}
he woulde not p'sume to com in her presence vntille he knewe farder her
minde bicause of the sharpe Wordes y{t} she had spoken of him to Robert
Cuningh{a}m hys servant in Sterling. Wherebye he thought he Was in her
Ma{tis} displesvre Notwithstanding he hathe sent hys servantᕦ and frendᕦ
to waite vppon her Ma{ti}.
She aunswered y{t} there was no recept against feare.
I aunswered y{t} mye L. had no feare for anie thinge he knewe in him
sellf, but onelye of the colde and vnkinde Wordes she had spoken to hys
servant.
She aunswered and said y{t} he woulde not be a fraide in case he were not
culpable.
I aunswered y{t} I knewe so farr of hys Lordsh. y{t} he desired nothing
more than y{t} the secretts vf everye creatures harte were writtē in
theire face.
She asked me yf I had anie farder com̃ission.
I aunswered no.
Then she com̃aunded me to holde mye peace.
The Wordes y{t} I rememb{r} were betwixt the Kinge and the Q. in
Glasco when she took him awaie to Edinbrowghe.
The Kinge for y{t} mye L. hys father was then absent and sicke, bye reason
whereof he could not speke w{th} him him sellfe, called me vnto him and
theise wordes that had then passed betwixt him and the Quene, he gaue me
in remembraunce to reporte vnto the said mye Lord hys father.
After theire metinge and shorte speking to geth{r} she asked him of his
lr̃es, wherein he complained of the cruelltye of som.
He aunswered y{t} he complained not w{th}owt cause and as he beleved, she
woulde graunte her sellfe when she was well advised.
She asked him of hys sicknesse, he answered y{t} she was the cause
thereof, and moreover he saide, Ye asked me What I ment bye the crueltye
specified in mye lr̃es, yt procedeth of yo{w} onelye y{t} wille not
accepte mye offres and repentaunce, I confesse y{t} I haue failed in som
thingᕦ, and yet greater fautes haue bin made to yo{w} sundrye times,
w{ch} ye haue forgiuē. I am but yonge, and ye will saye ye haue forgiuē me
diverse tymes. Maye not a man of mye age for lacke of Counselle, of w{ch}
I am verye destitute falle twise or thrise, and yet repent and be
chastised bye experience? Yf I haue made anye faile y{t} ye but thinke a
faile, howe so ever it be, I crave yo{r} ᵱdone and protest y{t} I shall
never faile againe. I desire no oth{r} thinge but y{t} we maye be to
geath{r} as husband and wife. And yf ye will not consent hereto, I desire
never to rise forthe of thys bed. Therefore I praye yo{w} give me an
aunswer here vnto. God knowethe howe I am punished for makinge mye god of
yo{w} and for having no oth{r} thowght but on yo{w}. And yf at anie tyme I
offend yo{w}, ye are the cause, for y{t} whẽ anie offendethe me, if for
mye refuge I might open mye minde to yo{w}, I woulde speak to no other,
but whē anie thinge ys spokē to me, and ye and I not beinge as husband and
wife owght to be, necessite compelleth me to kepe it in my breste and
bringethe me in suche melancolye as ye see me in.
She aunswered y{t} it semed him she was sorye for hys sicknesse, and she
woulde finde remedye therefore so sone as she might.
She asked him Whye he woulde haue passed awaye in Thenglishe shipp.
He aunswered y{t} he had spokē w{t} thenglishe mã but not of minde to goe
awaie w{t} him. And if he had, it had not bin w{th}owt cause consideringe
howe he was vsed. For he had neath{r} to susteine him sellfe nor hys
servantᕦ, and nede not make farder rehersalle thereof, seinge she knewe
it as well as he.
Then she asked him of the purpose of Hegate, he aunswered y{t} it was
tolde him.
She required howe and bye whome it was told him.
He aunswered y{t} the L. of Minto tolde him y{t} a lr̃e was presented to
her in Cragmiller made bye her own divise and subscribed by certeine
others who desired her to subscribe the same, w{ch} she refused to doe.
And he said that he woulde never thinke y{t} she who was his owne propre
fleshe, woulde do him anie hurte, and if anie oth{r} woulde do it, theye
shuld bye it dere, vnlesse theye took him sleping, albeit he suspected
none. So he desired her effectuouslye to beare him companye. For she ever
fownde som adoe to drawe her selfe frõ him to her owne lodginge and woulde
never abyde w{t} him past two howres at once.
She was verye pensiffe. Whereat he fownd faulte he said to her y{t} he was
adv{r}tised she had browght a litter w{t} her.
She aunswered y{t} bicause she vnderstoode he was not hable to ryde on
horseback, she brought a litter, y{t} he might be caried more softlye.
He aunswered y{t} yt was not mete for a sick mā to travelle y{t} coulde
not sitt on horsebacke and especiallye in so colde weather.
She aunswered y{t} she would take him to Cragmiller where she might be
w{t} him and not farre from her sonne.
He aunswered y{t} vppon condic̃on he would goe w{th} her w{ch} was that he
and she might be to geath{r} at bedde and borde as husband and wife, and
y{t} she should leaue him no more. And if she would promise him y{t},
vppon her worde he would goe w{th} her, where she pleised w{th}owt
respecte of anye dang{r} eath{r} of sicknesse, wherein he was, or
otherwise. But if she would not condescend thereto, he would not goe w{th}
her in anye wise.
She aunswered that her comminge was onelye to that effecte, and if she had
not bin minded thereto, she had not com so farre to fetche him, and so she
graunted hys desire and p{o}mised him y{t} it should be as he had spoken,
and therevppon gave him her hand and faithe of her bodye y{t} she woulde
love him and vse him as her husband. Notwithstanding before theye coulde
com to geath{r} he must be purged and clensed of hys sicknesse, w{ch} she
truisted woulde be shortlye for she minded to giue him the bathe at
Cragmill{r}. Than he said he would doe what soever she would have him doe,
and would love all that she loved. She required of him in especialle,
whome he loved of the nobilitie and Whome he hated.
He aunswered y{t} he hated no mã, and loved all alike well.
She asked him how he liked the Ladye Reresse and if he were angrye w{th}
her.
He aunswered y{t} he had litle minde of suche as she was, and wished of
God she might serve her to her hono{r}.
Then she desired him to kepe to him sellfe the promise betwixt him and
her, and to open it to nobodye. For ᵱadventure the Lordes woulde not
thinke welle of their suddine agrement, consideringe he and theye were at
some wordes before.
He aunswered that he knew no cause whye theye shulde mislike of it, and
desired her y{t} she would not move anye of thẽ against him even as he
woulde stirre none againste her, and y{t} theye would worke bothe in one
mind, otherwise it might tourne to great{r} inconvenience to them bothe.
She aunswered y{t} she never sowght anye waie bye him, but he was in fault
him sellfe.
He aunswered againe y{t} hys faultes were published and y{t} there were
y{t} made great{r} faultes than ever he made y{t} beleved were vnknownē,
and yet theye woulde speke of greate and smale.
Farder the Kinge asked me at y{t} present time what I thowght of hys
voyage. I aunswered y{t} I liked it not, bicause she tooke him to
Cragmill{r}. For if she had desired him w{th} her sellf or to have had hys
companye, she would haue taken him to hys owne howse in Edinbr̃. Where she
might more easely visit him, than to travelle two myles owt of the towne
to a gentlemãis house. Therefore mye opiniō was y{t} she tooke him awaye
more like a prison{r} than her husbande.
He aunswered y{t} he thowght litle lesse him sellf and feared him sellfe
indeid save the confidence, he had in her promise onelye, notwithstandinge
he woulde goe w{th} her, and put him sellfe in her handes, thowghe she
showlde cutte hys throate and besowghte God to be iudge vnto them bothe.
_Endorsed_: ‘Thomas Crawfordᕦ deposit.’
INDEX
Abercairnie, Laird of, Mary’s appeal to him on behalf of evicted
cottars, 8
‘Actio,’ the, quoted, on Darnley’s murder, 141, 142
‘Admonition to the Trew Lordis,’ cited, 151
Ainslie’s band, purport of, 177, 178;
defaulters from, 181;
Morton’s stipulation, 254;
signers of, 329, 330;
Morton’s adhesion to, 383
Alava, Beaton’s statement to him about Moray, 210
Alloa, Mary at, 80
‘Appeal to Christian Princes,’ cited, 240
Argyll, Earl of, disliked by Darnley, 73;
lodged by Mary in Edinburgh Castle during her labour, 73, 75;
at Craigmillar, 98;
Paris’s statement as to him and Mary on the night of Darnley’s murder,
161;
in confederation against Bothwell, 181;
cited, 38
Arran, Earl of, blamed by Bothwell as the cause of the Protestant
rebellion, 47;
feud with Bothwell, 47, 49;
reconciled to him through Knox, 50;
discloses to Knox Bothwell’s plot to seize Mary, 50;
apprises Mary of the plot, 51
Atholl, Earl of (member of council), 172;
confederated against Bothwell, 181;
cited, 203
Baillie Hamilton, Lady, on the Hamilton casket, 368, 369, 370
Balcanquell, Rev. Walter, receives Morton’s confession, 148
Balfour, Sir James, concerned in the murder ‘band’ against Darnley, 88,
90, 99;
gives Bothwell the keys of Mary’s room at Kirk o’ Field, 163;
persuaded by Lethington to surrender Edinburgh Castle, 186;
charged by Mary with complicity in Darnley’s murder, 189;
the Casket in his keeping, 198;
holds Edinburgh Castle, 274
Ballantyne, Patrick, said to have menaced Mary’s life, 38
‘Band of assurance for the murder’ of Riccio, 67, 68
Bannatyne (Knox’s secretary), his account of the death of the Earl of
Huntly, 38
Bannister (Norfolk’s servant), Norfolk’s statement to him regarding
Letter II., 357
Bargany, Laird of, at cards with Archibald Douglas, 32
Barham, Serjeant, asserts that Lethington stole the Casket Letters and
that his wife copied them, 248;
denies that Mary received French copies, 249
Beaton, Archbishop (Mary’s ambassador in France), communicates with Mary
about Hiegait and Walker, 110, 114;
affirms that Moray is Mary’s mortal enemy, 210
Beaton, Archibald (Mary’s usher), Mary’s concern for, 6;
misses the keys at Kirk o’ Field, 164, 165
Beaton, James (Archbishop Beaton’s brother), joins Mary at Dunbar, 186;
with her at Carberry Hill, 187;
on Lethington’s treacherous behaviour to Mary, 190
Beaton, Mary (one of the Queen’s Maries), 4;
and Ogilvy of Boyne, 26;
her aunts at feud with Mary, 356;
her handwriting, 364
Beaufort, Jane (widow of James I.), 45
Bedford, Earl of (Elizabeth’s ambassador), fears that Mary secretly
abetted Bothwell, 56;
on Riccio, 59;
declares Bothwell to be hated in Scotland, 80;
instructs his suite not to recognise Darnley as king, 106
Bellenden (Justice Clerk), member of council, 172, 203;
implicated in Riccio’s murder, 203
Binning (Archibald Douglas’s servant), his confession, 148
Birrel (‘Diary’), on the blowing up of Kirk o’ Field, 140;
on the date Mary left Edinburgh, 292;
nd that of her visit to Glasgow, 379, 380
Black Friars, the Dominican Monastery of, 124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 131
Blackader, William (Bothwell’s retainer), hanged denying his guilt, 153,
195;
cited, 165
Blackwood, on unsigned letters attributed to Mary, 198, 212
Blavatsky case, the, cited, 278, 279
Bolton, Mary at, 249, 250, 251, 283
Book of Articles, cited, 59, 86, 94, 95, 107, 114, 255, 271, 272, 278,
279, 280, 281, 316, 318 note, 322;
on the conference at Craigmillar, 96;
on Darnley’s murder, 141, 142, 148;
on the Glasgow letters, 308, 317;
its supposed author, 318
Borthwick Castle, Mary and Douglas at, 185
Bothwell (James Hepburn, Earl of), personal appearance, 14, 18;
age at Darnley’s murder, 14;
literary tastes, 15;
character as depicted by his foes, 15;
his courage in question, 16;
handwriting, 17;
study of works on art magic, 17;
accused of winning Mary’s favour by witchcraft, 17, 36;
his standard of culture compared with that of Scots nobles, 18;
masterful nature, 18;
hatred of Maitland of Lethington, 25;
epitome of early career, 46;
espouses the cause of Mary of Guise, 47;
seizes Cockburn of Ormiston, 47, 49;
deceives and deserts Anne Throndsön under promise of marriage, 47;
said to have had three wives simultaneously, 48;
at the French Court, 49;
feud and reconciliation with Earl of Arran, 47, 49, 50;
solicits Arran’s aid in a plot to seize Mary, 50;
warded in, but escapes from, Edinburgh Castle, 51, 53;
in league with Huntly, 53;
Lieut.-General and Admiral, 54;
Elizabeth’s prisoner at Holy Island, 54;
Captain of the Scottish Guards in France, 54;
said to have accused Mary of incestuous relations with her uncle the
Cardinal, 54;
returns to Scotland and his Border fastness, 56;
outlawed, 56;
summoned by Mary to assist her, 57;
ill-feeling towards Darnley, 57;
marries Lady Jane Gordon, 26, 68;
rescues Mary from prison after Riccio’s murder, 69;
intrigues with Darnley for the ruin of Moray and Lethington, 72, 73;
at the Border during Mary’s accouchement, 76;
Bedford’s statement that he was the most hated man in Scotland, 80;
reconciled by Mary to Lethington, 81;
his guilty intimacy with Mary, 82, 83;
concerned in the murder ‘band’ against Darnley, 90, 98, 99;
wounded in Liddesdale, 93;
visited by Mary at Hermitage Castle, 93;
his share in Darnley’s murder, 117, 118, 136, 139, 142, 144, 145, 147,
148, 149, 150, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 171,
172, 175;
escapes to Denmark, 154;
Paris’s evidence as to familiarities between him and Mary, 162;
his possession of the keys to Mary’s room at Kirk o’ Field, 163, 164,
165;
influence over Mary, 176;
objects of ‘Ainslie’s band,’ 177, 178, 181, 329, 330, 383;
seizes Mary and takes her to Dunbar, 179, 330, 332;
is created by Mary Duke of Orkney, and marries her, 183;
intimacy with his divorced wife after marriage with Mary, 27, 184;
at Carberry Hill, 16, 186;
gives Mary a copy of the Darnley murder band, 187;
summons from the Lords for Darnley’s murder and Mary’s abduction, 202;
tried and declared innocent of Darnley’s murder, 177;
Mary’s alleged letter inciting him to Darnley’s murder, 211, 212
(_see_ Casket Letter II.);
the Privy Council’s Declaration, 239;
Mary’s submissive attitude to him, 315;
said to have been present at the brawl between Darnley and Lord Robert
Stuart, 328;
advice given by Mary as to his relations with the Lords, 331;
ring sent him by Mary, 335, 337, 341;
betrothal ring given by him to Mary, 340;
letters to his wife after his marriage with Mary, 351;
place of his death and burial, 371, 372, 373.
_See_ Mary Stuart
Bothwell, Lady. _See_ Lady Jane Gordon
Bowes (Elizabeth’s envoy to Scotland), 365;
tries to induce Gowrie to give up the Casket, 366
Bowton, Hepburn of, his statement of Darnley’s murder, 143, 144, 146,
158, 165, 170, 233, 278, 280, 310;
dying confession, 167;
execution, 139
Boyd, Lord, 73
Brantôme, on Bothwell’s personal appearance, 18;
on the Casket Sonnets, 344
Branxholme, the Lady of, rails at Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, 184
Bresslau, Herr, on the Casket Letters, 387
Buchan, Earl of (grandfather of Christian Stewart), 19
Buchan, Master of, killed at Pinkie, 19
Buchanan, George (poet and historian), celebrates Mary’s virtues, 15;
his inaccurate accounts of her behaviour, 33, 34;
anecdotes of visions portending Darnley’s fate, 37;
tale of Mary at Alloa with Bothwell, 80;
on the guilty intimacy of Mary and Bothwell, 81;
respecting Lady Reres, 82, 83;
on the Craigmillar conference, 96, 97, 98;
Latin elegiacs on Mary, 105;
on Darnley’s murder, 141;
his treatment of the Darnley case, 148-151;
on Paris’s Deposition, 157;
on Darnley’s meek endurance of Mary’s slights, 314;
account of a brawl between Darnley and Lord Robert Stuart, 323, 328
Caithness, Earl of (member of council), 172
Calderwood, on Morton’s warrant from Mary for signing Ainslie’s band, 254
Callendar, Mary at, 112, 318 note
Camden, on Lethington counterfeiting Mary’s handwriting, 357, 358
Carberry Hill, Mary and Bothwell at, 186
Cardauns, M., on the translations of the Casket Letters, 386
Carwood, Margaret, Mary’s intended bequest of a casket to, 365
Casket, the, official description of, 365;
the one in possession of the Hamilton family, 367-370
Casket Letter I., its place in order of composition, 290, 291;
question of date, 291, 292;
intelligible if classed as Letter II., 293;
purport, 293;
reference to Lethington in English copy, 294;
possibly authentic and indicating a presumptively authentic Letter
II., 295;
published Scots and English translations, 391-393
Casket Letter II., shows Mary’s complicity in the murder of Darnley, 14;
not genuine if the chronology of Cecil’s Journal be accepted, 296;
authenticity opposed by the letter cited by Moray and Lennox, 296, 320;
probably garbled, 297, 300;
difficulties of internal chronology, 297;
Crawford’s corroboration of parts, 297;
theory of dovetailing by a forger, 300 et seq.;
objections based on Crawford’s written Deposition, 302-304;
verbal identities with Crawford’s account, 305, 306;
differences from, 307;
reveals Darnley’s unconcealed knowledge of Mary’s relations with
Bothwell, 307;
German theory respecting correspondence of deposition with, 308;
influence of Mary’s memoranda with regard to genuineness, 309;
forgery--balance of probabilities, 309, 313, 314;
not inconsistent with Mary’s style and character, 313;
shows Mary’s remorse and submission to Bothwell, 315;
reasons pointing to partial genuineness, 316;
the phrase ‘a more secret way by medicine,’ 317;
confused by Buchanan with the letter described by Moray and Lennox,
318;
the ‘ludgeing’ in Edinburgh, 318;
the Craigmillar reference, 319, 320;
represents Mary as tortured by remorse, 348;
published Scots and English translations, 393-414;
concerning, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 229, 232, 245, 253
Casket Letter III., copy of the French original, 322;
gives brawl between Darnley and Lord Robert Stuart, 323-328;
its affected style, 325, 328;
original French version at Hatfield, 414, 415
Casket Letter IV., subject of, 329;
original French version, 416
Casket Letter V., concerning Mary’s abduction by Bothwell, 329, 330;
the several translations, 330;
original French version at Hatfield, 417, 418
Casket Letter VI., Mary advises Bothwell as to his relations with the
Lords, 331;
her excuses for her marriage with Bothwell, 331, 332;
published Scots translation, 418
Casket Letter VII., subject of, 333;
coincidence with Mary’s instructions to Bishop of Dunblane, 359, 360;
Scots version, 419
Casket Letter VIII. (III. in Henderson): reproaches Bothwell with
coldness, 334;
concerning the enamel ring sent by Mary to Bothwell, 335;
refers to a betrothal ring received by her from Bothwell, 336;
affectation of its style, 336;
Mary’s gift of a symbolic mourning ring to Bothwell, 337, 341;
contract of marriage with Bothwell, 337, 338;
unknown date, 339;
theory of its having been written to Darnley, 339;
circumstances in Mary’s relations with Bothwell referred to, 339;
original French version, 420, 421
Casket Letter IX.: the French Sonnets, 422, 426
Casket Letters: their discovery, 195, 274, 275;
early tampering with suggested, 198, 199, 200, 208;
published in Scots, Latin, and French, 198;
Scots versions compared with French originals, 226, 243;
unsigned copies, 240;
Scots versions sent to Mary by Lethington’s wife, 248;
French copies, 273;
English translations, 274;
original language in which they were written, 346;
phraseology and orthography, 347;
tone and style, 347, 348;
compared with the Sonnets, 349, 350;
uniformity of sentiment and passion, 350, 351, 352;
authenticity considered, 352;
Lethington’s suspected garbling, 361;
Archibald Douglas a possible forger, 362;
translations of, 385-391.
_See_ under each Casket Letter
Casket Sonnets, 217;
Mary’s love for Bothwell depicted, 235;
topics of, 345;
prove Mary’s passion for Bothwell, 345;
compared with the Letters, 349;
the French, 422, 426
Cassilis (member of council), 172
Catherine de Medicis, 84, 85, 87, 89, 92, 192
Catholic League, the, 64
Cauldwell, Alexander (a retainer of Eglintoun’s), arrested by Mary, 103;
denies the rumour that Darnley was to be put in ward, 110, 111
Cecil (William Lord Burghley), his account of Riccio’s murder, 68;
avers that Bothwell obtained his divorce by accusing himself of an
amour with Lady Reres, 82;
circulates libels about Mary, but does not use Paris’s confession, 168;
knows of the existence of the Casket Letters and their proposed uses,
201;
Jhone a Forret’s mission to him, 209;
receives the Itinerary of Mary, 277, 291, 296;
on Mary’s stay at Callendar, 318 note;
Kirkcaldy’s letter to him, 359;
hints at Lethington’s manipulation of the Casket Letters, 361;
his description of the Casket, 369
Chalmers, David (a friend of Bothwell), 82
Charles IX. of France, 80;
resents the publication of the Casket Letters, 200
Chastelard, cited, 39
Chatelherault, Duke of (heir to the Scottish Crown), 10;
suit to be restored, 61;
acquires and builds a château on land near Kirk o’ Field, 125
Clark, Captain (in command of Scots in Danish service), Paris extradited
to him, 154, 374;
in correspondence with Moray, 154
Clernault (Frenchman), on the blowing up of Kirk o’ Field, 140
Cockburn of Ormiston, seized by Bothwell while carrying English money to
the Lords, 47;
his son carried off by Bothwell, 49
Coventry, Mary at, 337 and note
Craig (Protestant preacher), denounces Mary’s marriage with Bothwell,
183;
Lethington’s statement to him of his offer to Mary, 188
Craigmillar Castle, conference at, 91, 95, 96, 98, 99, 103, 319, 320
Crawford, Thomas (Lennox’s retainer), 35;
on Mary’s visit to Darnley at Glasgow, 113;
Lennox’s letter to him, 226;
deposition at Westminster, 276;
second deposition, 280, 310;
substantiates part of Letter II., 297;
verbal identities of his deposition with, and differences from, Letter
II., 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 385, 389, 390;
his private character, 309, 310, 312;
one indication of the truth of his oath, 311;
deposition anglicised from the Scots, 312;
full text of his deposition, 427-431
Crokat, May (Mrs. Stirling), sees the murderers of Darnley, 147
Cullen, Captain James (a soldier of fortune), 35;
officer of the guard to Mary, 151;
share in the Darnley murder, 152;
executed, 153;
his evidence burked, 156
Cunningham, Robert (Lennox’s retainer), Lennox’s letter to him, 226
Dalgleish, George (Bothwell’s valet), his confession regarding Darnley’s
murder, 84, 143, 144, 145, 146, 167, 195, 274, 278;
under torture reveals the Casket, 275;
executed, 144
Darnley, Henry Lord (son of Earl of Lennox), genealogy, 10;
letter to Mary Tudor, 10;
physical, moral and mental characteristics, 11, 18;
influence on Mary, 12;
marries her, 13, 57;
petulance and arrogance of his disposition, 13;
habits and health, 13;
on the possessions of Moray, 19;
his tragic end foretold in spiritual visions, 37;
at feud with the Lennox Stewarts, 58;
estranged from Mary, 59;
fondness for hunting, 60, 61, 62, 63;
removed from Mary’s Council, 60, 62;
at Peebles, 62;
affects to believe in, and have proofs of, Riccio’s amour with Mary,
63, 65, 67;
schemes with his father to obtain the crown, 66;
in league with Ruthven and Morton, 67;
present at Riccio’s slaying, 67;
list of those who aided him in the murder, 67;
his treachery to his associates after Riccio’s murder, 71;
Mary’s growing dislike of him, 73;
tale of Mary’s proposal to him to make Lady Moray his mistress, 74, 86;
urged to ruin Moray and Lethington, 76;
Mary’s gift of a bed to him, 81;
at Meggatdale with Mary, 81;
threatens to fly the country, 84, 85;
invited to state his grievances before the Council, 85;
powerful nobles against him, 85, 87;
determined not to be present at the baptism of his son, 86;
evidence of a signed ‘band’ against him, 87, 88, 90;
visits Mary at Jedburgh, 95, 96;
warned by Lennox of a plan to put him in ward, 101;
does not attend his son’s baptism, 105;
denied his title to the kingship, 106;
will not associate with the English therefor, 106;
anecdote of his treatment by Mary, at Stirling, 107;
wild projects attributed to him, 108;
complains of Mary to the Pope and Catholic Powers, 109;
rumours of his intended arrest, 111;
falls ill at Glasgow, 112;
his reply to Mary when she offers to visit him, 112;
Crawford’s account of his interview with Mary, 113;
returns with her to Edinburgh, 113;
the poison suggestion of his illness, 114;
brought to Kirk o’ Field, 115;
situation, environs, and interior of Kirk o’ Field, 123-133;
his letter to Lennox three days before his death, 133;
Mary’s interview with him on the eve of the explosion, 135;
his last hours, 136;
statements and theories of the manner of his death, 136, 138, 139,
140, 141, 142, 149, 150;
confessions of some of his murderers, 141-153;
his probable murderers, 169;
the band for his murder, 381-385
De Foix (French ambassador), Cecil’s account to him of Riccio’s murder,
68
De Silva (Spanish ambassador) discusses, with Elizabeth, Mary’s share in
Darnley’s murder, 171, 172;
knowledge of the Casket Letters, 197;
mentions their existence to Elizabeth, 201;
statement made to him by Mary’s confessor, 210;
Moray reports a guilty letter of Mary’s, 211, 214;
notifies Elizabeth of the Lords’ possession of the Casket Letters, 353
‘Detection,’ on the Craigmillar conference, 96;
on the Casket Letters, 200
‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ quoted, 36, 139, 292, 378, 380
Douglas, Archibald (cousin of Morton), the ‘parson of Glasgow,’ 30, 31;
in Riccio’s murder, 31;
in Darnley’s murder, 31, 147, 148, 274;
Morton’s go-between, 31;
judge of Court of Session, 32, 147;
career of treachery, 32, 33;
states the existence of the Darnley murder band, 87, 90;
letter to Mary in exile, 89;
account of the band signed by Moray, 91;
endeavours to propitiate Mary, 117, 118, 119;
considered as a forger of the Letters, 362
Douglas, George, concerned in Riccio’s murder, 65;
witness against Moray and Lethington, 76
Douglas, Lady (Moray’s mother), 20
Douglas, Robert (brother of Archibald), at the discovery of the Casket
Letters, 275
Douglas, Sir George (father of the Earl of Morton), his treacherous
character, 29
Douglas, William, rescuer of Mary from Loch Leven, 6, 7, 34
Douglas, William (of Whittingham), accuses his brother Archibald of
forging letters, 32, 362
Dragsholm, Castle of, in Denmark, where Bothwell died, 372, 373
Drummond Castle, Mary at, 112
Drumquhassel, 35
Drury, quoted, on Captain Cullen, 152;
aware of Bothwell’s projected seizure of Mary, 180;
stays Nelson at Berwick, 319 note
Du Croc (French ambassador), on Bothwell’s courage, 16;
on differences between Darnley and Mary, 85, 86, 95;
high opinion of Mary, 87;
on Bothwell’s wound, 93;
declines to meet Darnley, 106;
finds Mary in tears at Stirling, 107;
opposed to Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, 183;
on Lethington’s interview with Mary after Carberry, 188;
leaves Scotland with copies of Casket Letters, 197, 198, 199
Dunbar, Mary at, 180, 186
Dunblane, Bishop of, letter presented by him to the Court of France in
excuse of Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, 331, 333;
coincidence of Mary’s instruction to, with Letter VII., 359, 360
Durham, Sandy (Bothwell’s servant), asks Paris for the key of Kirk o’
Field, 163
Durie, Rev. John, receives Morton’s confession, 148
Edinburgh, Mary’s midnight revels in, 4;
in Mary’s time, 40, 41, 42;
insanitariness, 41;
street brawling, 43;
social condition, 43;
house in, referred to in Mary’s letters, 316, 317, 318
Edinburgh Castle, Bothwell prisoner in, 51, 53;
Mary gives birth to James VI. at, 75;
Sir James Balfour holds, 274
Eglintoun, Lord, an untrustworthy Lennoxite, 110, 111;
evades subscription to the Ainslie band, 178
Elizabeth, Queen, acknowledges Mary’s physical and mental charm, 3, 4;
regards her as a rival, 9;
opinion of Maitland of Lethington, 24;
pestered to recognise Mary as her successor, 55;
congratulations on birth of James VI., 76;
her baptismal gift as godmother, 105;
receives Paris’s deposition, 154;
discusses with De Silva Darnley’s murder, 171, 172;
Lords appeal to her against Mary, 184, 185;
wavers between Mary and the dominant Scots party, 195;
acquainted with the discovery of the Casket Letters, 196;
angry with Lethington about them, 201;
communicates with Mary in Lochleven, 202;
demands of Moray the reason of the Lords’ rebellion, 228, 229;
favourably inclined to Mary, 237;
removes the conference from York to London, 260;
her Council at Hampton Court, 264;
declines Mary’s appeal for a hearing before her, 269;
asks for the Letters, 269;
adds to commissioners at Westminster, 277;
debars Mary her presence, 281, 282;
offers Mary three choices, 283;
refuses to permit Mary the sight of originals or copies of the
Letters, 284;
absolves both Moray and Mary, 285;
suspects Lethington of tampering with Letters, 353, 355, 358;
acquaints Mary with Robert Melville’s efforts, 355
Elphinstone, Nicholas (Moray’s messenger), not allowed to give Mary
Moray’s letters at Loch Leven, 210
Erskine, Arthur, 34;
escorts Mary to Dunbar, 69
Faarvejle Church, Denmark, Bothwell’s body and grave in, 371 et seq.
Fitzwilliam, John (of Gray’s Inn), Lesley’s letter to him, 286 note
Fleming, Dr. Hay, on Bothwell’s outlawry, 56
Fleming, Mary (Queen Mary’s favourite attendant), 4;
her love affair with Maitland of Lethington, 24;
when Lethington’s wife, copies the Letters, 247, 248
Fleming (member of council), 172
Forbes of Reres, kills Moray’s secretary, 33
Foster, Sir John, 54;
on Mary’s visit to Bothwell, 94;
on the Liddesdale reivers, 180
Froude, Mr. (historian), his opinion of Moray, 22;
on the discovery of the Casket Letters, 196;
on the Glasgow Letter, 212, 213;
on Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, 245
Galloway, Bishop of (member of council), 172
Glasgow, in the sixteenth century, 39;
Darnley ill at, 112
Glasgow Letter, the, 135, 162, 168, 211, 212, 213, 214, 225, 229, 255.
_See_ Letter II.
Glencairn, Earl of, received by Mary at Edinburgh Castle, 73, 92
Goodall, quoted, 312 note
Gordon, John (Mary’s servant), 7
Gordon, Lady Jane (daughter of Huntly, the Cock of the North), wife of
Bothwell, 26, 53, 68;
her literary love letters, 26;
conditions of her consent to a divorce with Bothwell, 27, 218;
relations with Bothwell after her divorce, 27, 184;
marries the Earl of Sutherland, and, on his death, Ogilvy of Boyne,
27, 218;
literary contest with Mary, 349, 350
Gowrie, Earl of, in possession of the Casket Letters, 366;
Bowes seeks to obtain them from him, 366;
insists on James’s consent before giving them up, 367;
executed for treason, 367
Greville, Fulke, attracted by the personality of Archibald Douglas, 33
Gueldres, Mary of (widow of James II.), 45
Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, resides at Hamilton House to
prevent Darnley’s occupation, 116;
there on the eve of Kirk o’ Field explosion, 149;
accessory to Darnley’s murder, 150;
member of council, 172;
hanged by Lennox, 150
Hamilton Casket, the, doubts as to its being the true Casket, 369
Hamilton, present Duke of, the Casket in his possession, 367, 368
Hamilton House, 115, 116, 131, 149
Hamilton, John, singular death of, 37
Hamilton, Lord Claude (Gloade), 149
Hampton Court, 264, 279
Handwriting, problems of, 363, 364
Hay, the Younger, of Tala, his complicity in Darnley’s murder, 35, 90,
143, 144, 145, 146, 157, 160, 165, 169, 328;
confession, 278;
execution, 139, 280
Henderson, quoted, on Letter II. and Crawford’s Deposition, 310, 312
note;
his text of the Casket Letters, 387
Henri II. of France, 5
Hepburn of Riccartoun (Bothwell’s agent), 56, 57
Hepburn, Patrick (Bishop of Moray), Bothwell’s great-uncle, 14
Hepburn, Patrick (parson of Kynmoir), evidence to a plot to kill Moray,
375, 376, 377, 378
Hepburns, the, character of, 45, 46
Hermitage Castle, Bothwell visited by Mary at, 39, 54, 93, 94
Herries, Lord, on Mary’s abduction, 241;
at the York Conference, 251;
at Westminster, 267;
challenged to battle by Lindsay, 285
Hiegait, William (Town Clerk of Glasgow), arrested by Mary, 103;
his tale of Darnley’s scheme to kidnap James VI., 108, 109, 110;
denies same before the Council, 110, 111;
cited, 301
Holy Island, Bothwell prisoner at, 54
Holyrood, fable of secret passage between it and Kirk o’ Field, 115, 116;
its environs, 124;
Sebastian’s marriage, 136
Hosack, Mr., on the authenticity of Letter II., 232;
on Glasgow Letter, 296
Hubert, Nicholas, his dying confession, 166
Hume, on Hubert’s confession, 166
Hume, Major Martin, on the Casket Letters, 197
Hunter, Michael, slain by the Black Laird of Ormistoun, 35, 36
Huntly, Earl of (Cock of the North), Mary’s chief Catholic supporter, 52;
dies in battle against her, 53
Huntly, Earl of (son of the Cock of the North; Bothwell’s
brother-in-law), influences his sister Lady Jane in her marriage
to and divorce from Bothwell, 53;
rescues Mary from prison after Riccio’s murder, 69;
complicity in Darnley’s murder, 90, 167, 168;
at Craigmillar, 98;
evidence against him suppressed, 143;
on the Council, 172;
Mary distrusts him, 330;
trusts him, 331;
manner of his death, 37, 38
James V. of Scotland, 18
James VI. of Scotland (I. of England), birth of, 59, 75;
baptism, 105;
his godmother Queen Elizabeth’s gift, 105;
crowned, 222
James Stuart (Mary’s great-great-grandson), 3
Jedburgh, Mary at, 93, 94, 95, 96
Jhone a Forret (? John Wood), supposed bearer of copies of Casket
Letters to Moray and Cecil, 209, 212, 219, 226, 233, 321 note
Joachim (a servant of Mary), cited, 298, 299
Jordan, Sandy (Earl of Morton’s servant), bearer of the Casket to
Gowrie, 366
Jusserand, M., on the corpse of Bothwell, 14 note;
on Bothwell’s remains and burial place, 371 et seq.
Keith, Agnes (daughter of the Earl Marischal), married to Moray, 20
Ker, Andrew, of Faldonside (one of Riccio’s murderers), 101, 152 note
Killigrew, his report of the Darnley case, 171
Kirk o’ Field (St. Mary in the Fields), 41, 124;
house prepared for Darnley, 115, 140, 141, 142;
blown up, 140;
site, situation, and environs, 123-132;
map of 1647 and chart of 1567, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131;
interior of the house, 132, 133;
cited in Letter II., 316, 317
Kirkcaldy of Grange, 34;
action against Mary, 184, 185;
Mary’s surrender to him at Carberry Hill, 187;
letter to Cecil, 359
Knollys, his estimate of the character of Mary, 3;
Mary’s accusation against him, 245;
on Mary at the York Conference, 257
Knox, John, denounces the fripperies of women, 4;
in argument on the Mass with Maitland of Lethington, 23, 24;
credited with winning a bride by witchcraft, 37;
patches up a reconciliation between Bothwell and Arran, 50;
Arran reveals to him Bothwell’s plot to seize Mary, 51;
on Bothwell’s escape from Edinburgh Castle, 53;
on Darnley’s sporting tastes, 60;
his drastic advice in the case of Mary, 66;
witch story concerning Lady Reres related to him, 82
Koot Hoomi’s (Blavatsky case) correspondence, cited, 278, 279
La Forest (French ambassador), reports the existence of letters proving
Mary’s complicity in the death of Darnley, 197;
his copies and the published Letters, 200
La Mothe Fénelon (French ambassador), on the Lords’ possession of
Letters written and signed by Mary, 198, 199;
on their publication in ‘Detection,’ 200;
pleads for Mary to be allowed to see originals or copies of Casket
Letters, 284;
opinion of the Casket Sonnets, 344, 345
Laing, Malcolm (historian), on Letter III., 325, 326;
on the Hamilton Casket, 367
Lennox, Earl of (Darnley’s father), 10;
forfeited estates restored, 55;
complains of Mary’s intimacy with Riccio, 58;
a competitor for the Scottish crown, 62;
wishes to see Darnley at Peebles, 62, 63;
schemes to get the crown for Darnley, 66;
accuses Mary of threatening to avenge Riccio with her own hands, 72;
avers that improper relations began between Mary and Bothwell soon
after the birth of James VI., 79;
on Mary’s behaviour at Stirling, 80;
warned of a plot to put Darnley in ward, 100;
‘Discourse’ prepared by him for York conference, 101;
‘Brief Discourse’ put in at Westminster, 102;
on a second conference at Craigmillar, 103;
not present at James VI.’s baptism, 105;
sends men to guard Darnley at Stirling, 107, 110, 111;
Minto, Walker, and Hiegait working in his interests, 111;
denies that either Darnley or himself suspected foul play from Mary,
113;
Darnley’s letter to him respecting Mary, 133;
urges the collection of the sayings and reports of all Mary’s
servants, 138;
account of his son’s murder, 141;
asks for the deposition of the priest of Paisley, 150;
states that Mary caused a hagbut to be fired as a signal for the Kirk
o’ Field explosion, 173;
describes Mary’s conduct at Seton, 175;
asks for the arrest of Bothwell, 176;
flight after his son’s death, 180;
his account of the Glasgow Letter tallies with Moray’s, 214, 215;
his additions to and differences from that Letter, 216 et seq.;
marginal note to Sonnet IV., 217, 218;
common source of his and Moray’s reports, 221;
proposed co-regency, 223;
collects extraneous evidence regarding Mary, 224, 226;
avers that Wood knows the murderers of Darnley, 227;
knowledge of the contents of the Casket Letters, 227, 228;
his indictments against Mary, 222, 223, 229, 230;
cites Letter II., 231;
activity in getting up evidence against Mary before the York
Commissioners, 253;
attitude at Westminster, 266;
on Crawford’s talk with Mary, 311, 312 note;
seeks to prove that the Kirk o’ Field plan was arranged between
Bothwell and Mary before Mary met Darnley at Glasgow, 316;
Papers, quoted, 58, 59, 74
Lennox, Lady, Mary complains to Elizabeth of her, 225
Lesley (Bishop of Ross), considers Bothwell a handsome man, 18;
wishes Mary to put Moray in ward, 75;
Huntly’s statement to, respecting Mary’s counter accusations, 96;
member of council, 172, 178;
asserts the Letters were not signed, 198;
on unsigned Letters attributed to Mary, 212;
one of Mary’s commissioners at York, 246;
share in the schemes of the Duke of Norfolk, 246;
report of an interview with Mary at Bolton, 247;
confession contradicted by Melville’s, 250;
conference with Lethington about the Letters, 258;
pleads for Mary to be heard in person before Elizabeth, 267;
protests against Moray’s production of the Letters, 270;
Elizabeth’s three choices to him, 283;
charge against Moray and the Lords, 285;
curious letter to John Fitzwilliam, 286 note;
on counterfeiters of Mary’s handwriting, 356
Lethington, Sir Richard (father of Maitland of Lethington), 23
Lethington (William Maitland, the younger), early life and culture, 23;
arguments with Knox, 23, 24;
Secretary to Mary of Guise, 23;
desires the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, 23;
friendly advances to Mary before her arrival in Scotland, 24;
character, 24;
allied by marriage with the Earl of Atholl, 24;
love affair with Mary Fleming, 24;
in every scheme against Darnley, 25;
dislikes and is hated by Bothwell, 25;
joins Mary’s enemies, 25;
nicknamed Michael Wylie (Machiavelli), 26;
political principles, 52;
counsels drastic measures against Riccio, 66;
reconciled by Mary to Bothwell, 81;
concerned in the murder ‘band’ against Darnley, 88, 90;
his method of dealing with Darnley, which Parliament would support,
98, 99, 103;
favours a project of marriage between Norfolk and Mary, 155;
charged with complicity in the Darnley murder, 155, 156, 159;
refuses to aid Moray in betraying Norfolk, 156;
in attendance on Mary, 179;
prisoner at Dunbar, 179, 180, 181;
declares that Mary means to marry Bothwell, 181;
escapes from Bothwell, 182;
question of friendship for or enmity to Mary, 182;
flies to confederated Lords, 185;
persuades Sir J. Balfour to surrender Edinburgh Castle, 186;
interview with Mary, 188, 189;
reasons for his treachery to Mary, 190, 191, 192;
statement to Throckmorton respecting his conduct towards her, 204;
Randolph accuses him of advising Mary’s death, 204;
statement to Throckmorton about the letters, 205;
Mary’s documentary charge against him, 243, 244;
conduct at the York Conference, 246, 252;
accused of stealing the Casket Letters, and having them copied by his
wife, 248;
explains the reason for Mary’s abduction, 255;
his privy disclosure of the Letters, 257;
shakes Norfolk’s belief in same, 258;
discriminating attitude between private and public exhibition of
Letters, 287;
writes letter to be presented to the French Court concerning Mary’s
marriage with Bothwell, 331;
directs the scheme of garbling the Casket Letters, 353;
(?) despatches Melville to Cecil on the day of the finding of the
Casket Letters, 355;
privately hints that he had counterfeited Mary’s handwriting, 357,
358;
case against him, 358, 359;
‘Instructions’ drawn by him, 360;
Randolph hints at his tampering with the Letters, 361;
Herr Bresslau’s inferences of tampering, 387
Liddesdale reivers, the, 180
Lindsay, Sir David, pardoned, 112;
the Lords send him to Loch Leven to induce Mary to abdicate, 204;
challenges Herries to combat on Moray’s account, 285;
appointed Lyon King at Arms, 376
Livingstone, Lord, member of council, 172;
his knowledge of Mary’s amour with Bothwell, 253
Livingstone, Mary (Queen Mary’s attendant), 4;
wife of John Sempil, 356;
on ill terms with Mary, 356
Loch Leven, Mary imprisoned at, 192;
Lindsay sent to, to extort her abdication, 204;
Mary’s escape from, 242
Logan of Restalrig, treasure-finding, 375
Lords, Scots, of the Privy Council, banded against Mary, 185;
success at Carberry Hill, 195;
Casket Letters in their possession, 196, 201;
summons against Bothwell, 202;
their mixed character, motives, and statements, 203, 204;
demand of Mary her abdication, 204;
formulate charges against her, 205;
extort from her a consent to their proposals, 205;
vacillations with regard to the Letters, 206, 207;
obtain Mary’s signature to her abdication, 206;
forward copies of Casket Letters to Moray, 212;
publish their Declaration, 238;
accuse Mary of being privy to Darnley’s murder, 239;
on Mary’s handwriting, 241;
cause of their action against Mary, 355
Luzarche, M. Victor, his Coffret de Bijoux, 365
Maitland of Lethington. _See_ Lethington
Mameret, Roche (Mary’s confessor), on the character of the Queen, 210
Mar, Earl of, entertains Mary at Alloa, 80;
deprived of the custody of Edinburgh Castle, 172;
confederated against Bothwell, 181
Marryat, Mr. Horace, and the body of Bothwell, 373
Mary of Gueldres, 45
Mary of Guise, Regent, 19;
her secretary Lethington, 23;
deserted by her nobles, 47;
Bothwell espouses her cause, 47
Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland: the Morton portrait, 3;
periwig, 3 note;
midnight revels and masculine energy, 4, 5, 8;
her ‘four Maries,’ 4;
costumes and jewels and their donors, 5;
moods, spirit, and gratitude, 5, 6, 7;
brow-beaten by Knox, 7;
causes provoking hardness of heart, 8;
centre of intrigue, 8, 9;
Elizabeth’s rival, 9;
disposition to yield to masterful men, 9;
Bothwell’s defects instanced against her, 15;
presented by Ruthven with a ring as an antidote to poison, 17, 36;
pensions the assassin of Moray, 22;
kindness to Lethington, 24;
Morton her prosecutor, 31;
virulence of the Preachers of Righteousness against her, 35, 36;
‘bewitched’ by Bothwell, 36;
social condition of Scotland when she became queen, 43;
informed by Arran of Bothwell’s plot to seize her, 51;
political position during her first years in Scotland, 52, 53, 54;
her compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism, 52;
suspected by the Protestant party of favouring Bothwell, 53;
intercedes with Elizabeth to allow Bothwell to go to France, 54;
efforts to fix her as Elizabeth’s successor, 55;
sees Darnley and admires him, 12, 55;
action in Bothwell’s outlawry, 56;
weds Darnley, 13, 57;
summons Bothwell from France against her opponents, 57;
estrangement from Darnley, 13, 57;
political use made of her intimacy with Riccio, 58;
twitted with favouring Riccio and Bothwell, 59;
anger against Moray, 56;
amour with Riccio not credible, 60, 63;
removes Darnley from her Council, 60;
illness, 61;
letter to Pius V., 63, 64;
arranges Bothwell’s marriage with Lady Jane Gordon, 64;
insists on free Mass for all men, 65;
schemes for killing Riccio in her presence, 68;
rescued by Bothwell, Huntly, and Atholl after Riccio’s murder, 69;
at Dunbar, 69, 70, 71;
seeks to quiet the country, 71;
growing hatred of Darnley, 71;
threatens that a fatter than Riccio should soon lie anear him, 72;
pardon of the rebel Lords demanded of her, 72;
befriends Moray, 73;
represented by Lennox as trying to induce Darnley to make love to
Moray’s wife, 74;
her bequests to Darnley, 75;
allows Moray and Argyll to be at the Castle during her accouchement,
75;
gives birth to James VI., 75;
protects Moray from Darnley and Bothwell, 77;
Darnley’s jealousy of her favour to Moray, 77;
increasing dislike to Darnley, 78, 80;
passion for Bothwell, 18, 26, 79;
conduct at Alloa and Stirling, 80;
gift of a bed to Darnley, 81;
reconciles Lethington and Bothwell, 81;
Buchanan’s account of her amour with Bothwell, 82, 83;
this legend supported by Sonnet IX. and Dalgleish’s confession, 84;
strained relations with Darnley, 84, 85;
in Jedburgh at a Border session, 93;
visits wounded Bothwell at Hermitage Castle, 93, 94;
illness at Jedburgh, 94;
returns to Craigmillar Castle, 95;
letter from Darnley, 95;
divorce proposed, 96;
Buchanan insinuates her desire to involve Moray in the Darnley murder,
97;
Lennox’s statement that she would have Darnley in ward after James’s
baptism, 100, 102;
arrests Hiegait, Walker, Laird of Minto, Cauldwell, 103;
festivities at the baptism of her child at Stirling, 105;
baptizes him by the Catholic rite, 105;
Bedford’s advice, 106;
treatment of Darnley at Stirling, 107;
anxiety concerning Darnley’s projects, 108, 109;
warned by Beaton and the Spanish ambassador of Darnley’s intention to
kidnap James VI., 109;
causes Hiegait and Walker to be questioned before the Council, 110;
distress of mind, 111;
at Drummond Castle, Tullibardine, Callendar, and Holyrood, 112;
letter to Beaton, 110, 114;
offers to visit sick Darnley at Glasgow, 112;
Crawford’s account of her visit to Darnley, 113;
induces Darnley to return with her to Edinburgh, 113, 119;
brings him to Kirk o’ Field, 115;
aware of the plot against Darnley, 116, 117;
refuses a written warrant asked for by the conspirators, 118;
hypotheses for her conduct, 120, 121;
her shift of beds at Kirk o’ Field, 134, 162;
story drawn from a Casket Letter, 135, 136, 142;
visits Darnley on the eve of the explosion, 135;
at the marriage of her servant Sebastian that same night, 135, 136,
173;
curious anecdote respecting her, 137;
at supper with the Bishop of Argyle on the night of the murder, 161;
Paris’s evidence as to familiarities between her and Bothwell, 162;
Bothwell asks for the key of her room at Kirk o’ Field, 163, 164, 165;
said to have endeavoured to incite her brother Lord Robert Stuart
against Darnley, 135, 165, 166, 323-328, 353;
dying confessions regarding her participation, 167, 169, 170;
theory of her accusers, 170;
conduct after Darnley’s murder, 171;
her letters from and to Beaton, 173;
inference which her letters were meant to suggest, 174;
makes no effort to avenge Darnley, 175, 176;
seized by Bothwell and conveyed to Dunbar, 179;
evidence of the Casket Letters as to her collusion, 179;
Lethington’s attitude towards her, 182;
creates Bothwell Duke of Orkney and is married to him, 183;
her distrust of Huntly, 185;
appeals to the loyalty of her subjects, 185;
surrenders to Kirkcaldy at Carberry Hill, 186;
parting with Bothwell, 187;
conditions of her surrender, 187;
interview with Lethington, 188, 189;
complains of being parted from Bothwell, 188, 194;
denounces Lethington and the members of the Darnley murder band, 189;
incarcerated in Loch Leven Castle, 192;
reported to have prematurely given birth to twins, 194;
motives of the Lords against her, 194;
the compromising Casket Letters, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201,
202, 203, 205, 206, 207 (_see_ Casket Letters);
communication from Elizabeth respecting Melville, 202;
her abdication demanded by the Council, and charges formulated
against her, 204, 205;
signs the deeds of her abdication, 207;
her confessor’s opinion of her, 210;
the Glasgow Letter, 135, 162, 168, 211, 212, 213, 214, 225, 229, 255;
complains to Elizabeth of Lady Lennox, 225;
the Glasgow Letter as rendered in the Lennox Papers, 234, 235;
her love for Bothwell as presented in the Casket Sonnets, 235;
the Glasgow Letter discredited, 236;
the Lords’ specific charge against her, 239;
demands to be heard in the Parliament at Edinburgh, 240;
escapes from Loch Leven, 242;
claims the right of confronting her accusers, 243;
her line of defence, 243, 245;
on the handwriting of her accusers, 244;
letter to Lesley, 245;
Lesley’s details of an interview with her at Bolton, 248;
copies of the letters forwarded to her by Lethington, 248, 249;
theory of her translation of Scots copies into French, 249 note;
arrival of her commissioners at York, 250;
assents to Moray’s compromise, 251;
attitude at York, 257;
consents to the removal of inquiry from York to London, 260;
terms of her compromise, 260, 262, 265;
change in her plan of defence, 262;
plea for a hearing before Elizabeth, 267, 268;
injury done to her cause by friends’ renewed efforts for a compromise,
269, 270;
withdrawal of her commissioners from Westminster, 275;
refuses to acknowledge Elizabeth as a judge, 282;
her letter from Bolton, 283;
asks to see the copies and originals of the Casket Letters, 284;
makes their delivery a condition of her production of charges and
proofs, 286, 287;
causes of her detestation of Lethington, 288;
her submissive attitude to both Bothwell and Norfolk, 315;
suggestion of marriage with Norfolk, 155;
distrusts Huntly, 330;
trusts him, 331;
her excuses for marrying Bothwell, addressed to the French Court, 331,
332;
sends Bothwell a symbolic mourning ring, 337;
letter to Norfolk from Coventry, 337 and note;
contract of marriage with Bothwell, 338;
receives betrothal ring from Bothwell(?), 340;
hypothesis of her contest in literary excellence with Lady Bothwell,
350;
tone of her letters to Norfolk, 351;
suspicions of Lethington in her instructions to her commissioners,
356;
coincidence between Letter VII. and her instructions to the Bishop of
Dunblane, 331, 359, 360;
facsimiles of her own and imitated handwriting, 363, 364;
date of her visit to Glasgow, 379, 380;
charges Balfour, Morton and Lethington with complicity in Darnley’s
murder, 189, 382
Meggatdale, Mary and Darnley at, 81
Melville, Robert, against Mary, 185;
sent to Elizabeth with news of the discovery of the Casket Letters,
196, 201, 320, 355;
acting for the Lords, 202;
denies his visit to Mary at Bolton before going to commissioners at
York, 249, 250;
Lesley’s confession contravened by his, 250;
Moray sends him to Bolton to compromise with Mary, 251;
negotiates with Mary on a compromise, 259;
his statement, 261;
sent by Lethington on ‘sudden despatch’ to Cecil, 354, 355;
friendly efforts in Mary’s behalf, 355;
suspects Kirkcaldy of Grange of counterfeiting Moray’s handwriting, 361
Melville, Sir James, on George Buchanan’s veracity as a historian, 34;
dissuades Mary from putting Moray in ward, 75;
on Darnley’s murder, 140;
on Bothwell’s behaviour in the Queen’s chamber, 181;
at the York conference, 259
Mertine, Barbara, encounters the murderers of Darnley, 147
Middlemore, Mary’s statement to him regarding her accusers, 245
Minto, Laird of, arrested by Mary, 103;
working in Lennox’s interests, 111;
cited, 150
Moray, Regent (natural son of James V.), an enigma, 19;
Protestant and warrior, 19;
acquisitiveness, 19, 20;
secures the Buchan estates in spite of the legal rights of Christian
Stewart, 20;
marries Agnes Keith, 20;
ambition, 20;
treachery and caution, 21, 22;
alibis, 21;
as Regent, 22;
Mr. Froude’s estimate of him, 22;
his secretary, John Wood, 33;
believes that Ruthven gave Mary a ring with magical properties, 36;
urged by the preachers to burn witches, 36;
political bias and theological tenets, 52;
tells Mary that either he or Bothwell must quit Scotland, 56;
his rising to prevent Mary marrying Darnley, 59;
seeks for the restoration of Morton and Ruthven, 72;
in favour with Mary, 73, 76, 121;
permitted by Mary to reside in the Castle during her accouchement, 75;
said to be banded against Darnley, 89, 90, 91, 92, 98;
denies that any unlawful ends were mooted at Craigmillar, 98;
winks at the conspiracy against Darnley, 116, 122;
account of the numbers engaged in Darnley’s murder, 141;
laxity in their prosecution, 144, 145;
gives records of examinations to English commissioners, 145;
reasons for not summoning Paris as witness, 154, 155;
opposes marriage between Mary and Norfolk, 155;
takes the evidence of Paris, 155;
delays in forwarding it to Cecil, 156;
seeks to betray Norfolk, 156;
story of his presence at a wrangle between Darnley and Lord Robert
Stuart, 166, 323, 327;
informed of the Casket Letters, 196 note;
his sources of information as to Mary’s correspondence, 208;
from friend becomes enemy of Mary, 209, 210;
reports a guilty letter from Mary to Bothwell, 211, 213;
his additions to and differences from the Glasgow letter, 216 et seq.;
common source of his and Lennox’s reports, 221;
‘not capable’ of employing a forged document, 234;
‘most loth’ to accuse Mary, 242;
Scots translations and French originals of Casket Letters, 242;
treats for a compromise with Mary at York, 251;
seeks to know the powers of the English commissioners at York, 253;
exhibits ‘privately’ to them the Casket Letters and other papers, 254;
confers with Norfolk at York, 259;
puts in his proofs at Westminster, 266, 270, 271, 272, 273;
complains of being slandered by Mary’s commissioners, 285;
Mary’s joy at the news of his murder, 22
Moretta (Savoyard ambassador), on Darnley’s murder, 140
Morton, Earl of, joins the Protestants, 29;
sanctimonious remark to Throckmorton, 29;
private life, 30;
schemes with all parties in his own ends, 30;
helps to organise the murder of Riccio, 30;
portrait of, 31;
Regent, 32;
political principles, 52;
in league with Darnley to restore Moray, 67;
Moray endeavours his recall, 73;
feud with Darnley, 78;
pardoned, 89, 112;
concerned in Darnley’s murder, 31, 90;
desires the Queen’s warrant before proceeding to extremities with
Darnley, 117;
his confession, 118, 147, 148, 167, 168;
confederated against Bothwell, 181;
advised by Lethington to espouse Mary’s cause, 191;
accused by Mary of Darnley’s murder, 244;
Casket Letters entrusted to him, 195, 365;
declaration at Westminster respecting them, 272;
his story of the discovery of the Casket Letters, 274, 275, 276, 277;
in his dying declaration denounces Archibald Douglas, 32;
executed, 382
Napier of Merchistoun (soothsayer), 17, 36
Napier of Merchistoun (inventor of logarithms), 17;
treasure-finding, 375
Nau, Claude, on Mary’s escape to Dunbar, 72;
on the motives of Darnley’s murderers, 90;
on Mary’s abdication, 241;
on the band for Darnley’s murder given to Mary by Bothwell, 243;
account of Lethington’s conduct towards Mary, 288
Nelson (Darnley’s servant), in Kirk o’ Field at the explosion, 116;
on the position of Kirk o’ Field, 129;
escape, 140;
statement on the custody of the keys, 165, 175;
evidence at Westminster, 276;
on Darnley’s refusal to stay at Craigmillar, 319;
detained by Drury at Berwick, 319 note
Norfolk, Duke of, his proposed marriage with Mary, 155;
schemes, 246;
on the York commission of inquiry, 246, 252;
excuses delays of Scots Lords, 256;
for a compromise, 256;
confers with Moray, 259;
opposes a compromise, 261, 262;
doubts authenticity of Letters and would marry Mary, 257, 258, 259,
262;
prevents Mary from abdicating, 262;
Mary’s submissive attitude to him, 315;
Lethington asks him not to believe in Mary’s guilt, 357, 358
Northumberland, Earl of, in arms for Mary, 277
Ogilvy of Boyne, loved by Lady Jane Gordon and Mary Beaton, 26;
marries the divorced Lady Bothwell, 27, 218
Orkney, Bishop of, marries Mary to Bothwell, 62, 183
Orkney, Duke of, Bothwell created, 183
Ormistoun, Black Laird of (one of Darnley’s murderers), his treatment by
Mary in prison, 6;
his exordium before being hanged, 35;
confession of a murder-band against Darnley, 99;
executed, 139
Ormistoun, Hob (one of Darnley’s murderers), 101, 139, 339, 341;
executed, 139
Paris (Nicholas Hubert), on the Craigmillar plot against Darnley, 103;
escapes with Bothwell to Denmark, 154;
extradited to Captain Clark, 154;
evidence taken by Moray, 155, 156;
nature of his deposition and the circumstances under which it was
made, 156-170;
account of Lady Reres, 162;
receipt and delivery of Glasgow Letter, 292, 293, 299;
on the Glasgow Letter, 316, 327;
cited, 339, 340, 341, 342;
hanged at St. Andrews, 157, 378
Percy, Sir Harry, on Bothwell, 54
Periwigs, worn by Mary, 3 note
Philippson, M., on the translations of the Casket Letters, 386, 388
Pinkie, battle of, 19
Pitcairn’s ‘Criminal Trials,’ cited, 56
Pius V., Mary’s letter to him on political matters, 63
Pluscarden, Prior of, and the Casket, 365
Pollen, Father, cited, 230
Powrie (Bothwell’s servant), statement of, concerning Darnley’s murder,
142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 195, 280
Preston, Laird of Craigmillar (Provost of Edinburgh), Mary imprisoned in
his house, 188
Price, Mr. F. Compton, cited, 363
Ramsay, Robert (Moray’s servant), hears Paris avouch the truth of his
deposition, 157
Randolph (English ambassador at Holyrood), his opinion of Darnley, 11,
12;
on the Earl of Arran, 49;
reports Bothwell and Atholl all-powerful, 57;
on Lennox at Glasgow, 61;
reports ‘private disorders’ between Mary and Darnley, 63;
on Mary’s demand for free Mass for all men, 65;
aware of Darnley’s and Lennox’s schemes for obtaining the crown, 66;
favours Moray, 73;
on a murder-band, kept in a casket, aimed at Darnley, 87;
on the conduct of Lethington and Kirkcaldy towards Mary, 194, 360;
accuses Lethington of advising Mary’s death, 204;
hints at Lethington having tampered with the Letters(?), 361
Read, John (Buchanan’s secretary), supplies Cecil with a list of the
signatories to Ainslie’s band, 177
‘Relation,’ the, cited on Riccio’s murder, 65
Reres, Lady, alleged confidant of Mary’s amour with Bothwell, 33, 48,
82, 83;
telepathic story assigned to her, 82;
Paris’s account of her as a go-between, 162;
rails at Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, 184
Reres, Laird of (son of Lady Reres), 83
Riccio, David, his intimacy with Mary, 58, 59;
complained of as a foreign upstart by Scots nobles, 58, 65;
reasons for discrediting his amour with Mary, 60;
Darnley’s hatred and jealousy of him, 63, 64, 65, 66;
‘band of assurance’ for his murder, 67;
nobles and others concerned, 67;
murdered, 69
Ridolfi plot, the, 6
Robertson, Dr. Joseph, on Lady Reres as wet nurse to Mary’s baby, 83;
on the Paris deposition, 158;
on the Glasgow Letter, 296
Rogers, William, informs Cecil of Darnley’s design to seize the Scilly
Isles, 108 note
Ronsard (poet), quoted, 314;
on the Casket Sonnets, 344, 349
Ross, Bishop of. _See_ Lesley
Ruthven Earl of, his account of Riccio’s murder, 17;
presents Mary with a ring as an antidote to poison, 17;
conspiring with Darnley, 67;
seeks refuge in England, 70;
his dying vision, 37;
death, 73
Sadleyr (one of Elizabeth’s commissioners), at the York inquiry, 246
St. Andrews, in Mary’s time, 40
St. Mary in the Fields. _See_ Kirk o’ Field
Sanquhar, signs the band for delivering Mary from Loch Leven, 275, 276
Scarborough, Darnley’s designs on, 108
Schiller’s ‘Marie Stewart,’ cited, 2
Scilly Isles, Darnley’s designs on, 108 note
Scots Parliament, Casket Letters produced before, 241
Scottish Guards (in France), Bothwell captain of, 54
Scott’s ‘Abbot,’ cited, 2
Scrope, quoted, on Captain Cullen, 151-3
Sebastian (Mary’s servant), his marriage at Holyrood, 136, 148
Sempil, John, husband of Mary Livingstone, 356
Sepp, Dr., on the Casket Letters, 242
Seton, Mary (Mary’s attendant), ‘the finest busker of a woman’s hair,’
3, 4
Seton, Mary’s conduct at, 175
Skelton, Sir John, on Bothwell’s age, 14;
his ‘Maitland of Lethington’ cited, 23;
on Mary’s knowledge of the plot against Darnley, 116, 117;
on Mary’s submissive attitude to Bothwell, 315
Sorcery, belief in, in the sixteenth century, 36
Spens (Black Mr. John), 175
Standen (brothers Anthony), one of them boasts that he saved Mary from
assassination, 38;
Darnley’s companions, 60;
their immorality put to Darnley’s account, 75;
romantic memoirs of one of them imprisoned in the Tower, 75;
assist Darnley in his schemes, 108;
the younger, 137, 319 note
Stewart, Christian (heiress to the Buchan earldom), contracted in
marriage with Lord James Stewart, 19;
legal inheritress to Buchan estates, 20;
married to Lord James, 20
Stewart d’Aubigny (Duke of Lennox), James’s banished favourite, 367
Stewart, Lord James (Moray’s brother), contracts himself in marriage to
the Buchan child-heiress, 19;
secures the right of redemption of the Buchan estates, 19;
marries the heiress but loses the estates, 20
Stewart of Periven (Lennox’s retainer), 226
Stewart of Traquair, escorts Mary to Dunbar, 69
Stewart, Sir William (Lyon Herald), burnt for sorcery, 17, 36, 156,
374-379
Stirling, Mary at, 80;
baptism of James VI. at, 105, 106, 107;
full of ‘honest men of the Lennox,’ 109
Strickland, Miss, on Darnley’s signature to State documents, 60 note
Stuart, Lord Robert (Mary’s brother), account of him drawn from a Casket
Letter, 135;
concerned in Darnley’s murder, 162, 165, 166;
Mary’s alleged attempt to provoke a quarrel between him and Darnley,
323, 327
Sussex, Earl of (one of Elizabeth’s commissioners), on Mary’s defence,
245;
believes in an intended compromise, 263;
doubts in judicial proof of Mary’s guilt, 264;
on Mary’s proofs, 287
Sutherland, Earl of, marries Bothwell’s divorced wife, 27;
member of council, 172
Tala. _See_ Hay of Tala
Taylor (Darnley’s servant), killed at Kirk o’ Field, 132, 137, 139, 148
‘The Purpose’ or talking dance, 39
Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas (English envoy), visits Mary in prison, 29;
in communication with Lords of Council, 203, 204;
Lethington acquaints him with Casket Letters, 205, 237;
mentions them to Elizabeth, 355
Throndssön, Anne (Norwegian lady), Bothwell’s treatment of her, 47;
alleges breach of promise of marriage against Bothwell, 48
Tombs of the Kings, the, 39
Tulchan bishops, the, 30
Tullibardine, Mary at, 112
Tullibardine, signs band for releasing Mary from Loch Leven, 276
Walker (Archbishop Beaton’s retainer), on Darnley’s plot to kidnap the
infant James, 108, 110, 111
Walsingham, Sir Francis, and the Casket Letters, 365
Westminster Conference, proceedings at, 240, 266, 270-276
Westmorland, Earl of, in arms for Mary, 277
Whithaugh, Laird of, holds Ker of Faldonside prisoner, 101;
shelters the Ormistouns, 101
Wilson, Dr., asks Cecil for Paris’s confession, 168;
on Mary, 247
Witchcraft and sorcery, 17, 36
Wood, John (Moray’s secretary), helps Lennox in his case against Mary,
150;
hears Paris testify to his deposition, 157;
bears letters to Moray and Cecil, 209, 226;
in custody of the Casket Letters, 196, 227, 228, 229;
on Lethington as a commissioner at Mary’s trial, 244;
slain by Forbes of Reres, 33
York, Commission of Inquiry at, 101, 226, 227, 230, 233, 246, 250 et seq.
Zytphen-Adeler, Baron, his care of Bothwell’s remains, 372
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Blackwood’s Magazine_, December, 1889.
[2] Bond.
[3] Laing, ii. 284.
[4] See Murdin, p. 57.
[5] Among the mysteries which surround Mary, we should not reckon the
colour of her hair! Just after her flight into England, her gaoler, at
Carlisle, told Cecil that in Mary Seton the Queen had ‘the finest busker
of a woman’s hair to be seen in any country. Yesterday and this day she
did set such a curled hair upon the Queen, that was said to be a perewyke,
that showed very delicately, and every other day she hath a new device of
head dressing that setteth forth a woman gaily well.’ Henceforth Mary
varied the colour of her ‘perewykes.’ She had worn them earlier, but she
wore them, at least at her first coming into England, for the good reason
that, in her flight from Langside, she had her head shaved, probably for
purposes of disguise. So we learn from Nau, her secretary. Mary was
flying, in fact, as we elsewhere learn, from the fear of the fiery death
at the stake, the punishment of husband-murder. Then, and then only, her
nerve broke down, like that of James VIII. at Montrose; of Prince Charles
after Culloden; of James VII. when he should have ridden with Dundee to
the North and headed the clans.
[6] The papers used by Lennox in getting up his indictment against Mary
are new materials, which we often have occasion to cite.
[7] Mr. Henderson doubts if Darnley knew French.
[8] M. Jusserand has recently seen the corpse of Bothwell. Appendix A.
[9] _Actio_, probably by Dr. Wilson, appended to Buchanan’s _Detection_.
[10] Teulet, ii. p. 176. Edinburgh, June 17, 1567.
[11] See a facsimile in Teulet, ii. 256.
[12] Appendix B. ‘Burning of the Lyon King at Arms.’
[13] The private report is in the Lennox MSS.
[14] See the sketch, coloured, in Bannatyne _Miscellany_, vol. i. p. 184.
[15] See description by Alesius, about 1550, in Bannatyne _Miscellany_, i.
185-188.
[16] Information from Father Pollen, S.J.
[17] This gentleman must not be confused with Ormistoun of Ormistoun, in
Teviotdale, ‘The Black Laird,’ a retainer of Bothwell.
[18] Riddell, _Inquiry into the Law and Practice of the Scottish Peerage_,
i. 427. Joseph Robertson, _Inventories_, xcii., xciii. Schiern, _Life of
Bothwell_, p. 53.
[19] Randolph to Cecil, Edinburgh, Sept. 23, 1560. Foreign Calendar,
1560-61, p. 311.
[20] Hay Fleming, _Mary Queen of Scots_, p. 236, note 32.
[21] Cal. For. Eliz. 1561-62, iv. 531-539.
[22] Knox, Laing’s edition, ii. 322-327. Randolph to Cecil _ut supra_.
[23] Knox, ii. 347.
[24] Knox, ii. 473.
[25] Hay Fleming, p. 359, note 29.
[26] Knox, ii. 479.
[27] See Cal. For. Eliz. 1565, 306, 312, 314, 319, 320, 327, 340, 341,
347, 351.
[28] Calendar, Bain, ii. 223.
[29] Bain, ii. 213.
[30] _Ibid._ ii. 242, 243.
[31] Hosack, i. 524.
[32] Cal. For. Eliz. 1564-5, 464.
[33] Bain, ii. 222-223.
[34] Bain, ii. 225. Cal. For. Eliz. 1564-5, 464, 495. Hay Fleming, pp.
380, 381.
[35] Miss Strickland avers that ‘existing documents afford abundant proof,
that whenever Darnley and the Queen were together, his name was written by
his own hand.’
[36] October 31, 1565. Bain, ii. 232.
[37] Bain, ii. 234.
[38] Randolph to Cecil, Nov. 19, Dec. 1, 1565. Bain, ii. 241, 242.
[39] Bain, ii. 242.
[40] Buchanan, _Historia_, 1582, fol. 210.
[41] Bain, ii. 247.
[42] The Foreign Calendar cites Randolph up to the place where _amantium
iræ_ is quoted, but omits that. The point is important, if it indicates
that Randolph had ceased to believe in Mary’s amour with Riccio. Cf. Bain,
ii. 248.
[43] Nau, p. 192.
[44] The subject is discussed, with all the evidence, in Hay Fleming, pp.
379, 380, note 33.
[45] _Ruthven’s Narrative._ Keith, iii. 260. There are various forms of
this Narrative; one is in the Lennox MSS.
[46] Goodall, i. 274.
[47] Bain, ii. 255.
[48] Printed in a scarce volume, _Maitland’s Narrative_, and in Tytler,
iii. 215. 1864.
[49] Bain, ii. 259-261.
[50] Goodall, i. 266-268.
[51] Hosack, ii. 78, note 3.
[52] See Dr. Stewart, _A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Queen of
Scots_, pp. 93, 94.
[53] This is alleged by Mary, and by Claude Nau, her secretary.
[54] Goodall, i. 264, 265.
[55] Bain, ii. 289.
[56] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 51.
[57] Bain, ii. 276. Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 52.
[58] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 62.
[59] Bain ii. 278.
[60] _Ibid._ ii. 281.
[61] See Joseph Robertson’s _Inventories_, 112.
[62] Bain, ii. 283.
[63] Melville, pp. 154, 155.
[64] Bain, ii. 288, 289.
[65] Bain, ii. 290.
[66] Bain, ii. 294.
[67] Nau, 20, 22.
[68] Bain, ii. 296.
[69] _Detection_, 1689, pp. 2, 3.
[70] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 118.
[71] Stevenson, _Selections_, pp. 163-165.
[72] Cheruel, _Marie Stuart et Catherine de Médicis_, p. 47.
[73] Robertson, _Inventories_, p. 167.
[74] Bain, ii. 300.
[75] _Detection_ (1689), p. 4.
[76] Bain, ii. 440.
[77] Bannatyne, _Journal_, p. 238. This transference of disease, as from
Archbishop Adamson to a pony, was believed in by the preachers.
[78] Teulet, _Papiers d’État_, ii. 139-146, 147, 151. See also Keith, ii.
448-459.
[79] Frazer, _The Lennox_, ii. 350, 351.
[80] Cal. For. Eliz. ix. 354, 355.
[81] Laing, ii. 331, 334.
[82] Nau, p. 35.
[83] Bain, ii. 599, 600.
[84] Bain, ii. 276.
[85] _Diurnal_, p. 99.
[86] See the evidence in Hay Fleming, 414, note 61.
[87] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 139. _Diurnal_, 101.
[88] Teulet, ii. 150.
[89] Laing, ii. 72.
[90] Hay Fleming, 418, 419.
[91] _Queen Mary at Jedburgh_, p. 23.
[92] Bain, ii. 597-599. Anderson, iv. pt. ii. 186. Keith, iii. 290-294.
[93] Goodall, ii. 359.
[94] _Historia_, fol. 214.
[95] Keith, iii. 294. Bain, ii. 600.
[96] Laing, ii. 293, 294.
[97] The original MS. has been corrected by Lennox, in the passages within
brackets. The italics are my own.
[98] Bain, ii. 516, 517.
[99] De Brienne came to Craigmillar on November 21, 1566, _Diurnal_.
[100] Nau, p. 33.
[101] Bain, ii. 293, 310.
[102] Melville, p. 172. (1827.)
[103] Crawford, in his deposition against Mary, says that she spoke sharp
words of Lennox, at Stirling, to his servant, Robert Cunningham.
[104] Keith, i. xcviii.
[105] Bain, ii. 293. This Rogers it was who, later, informed Cecil that
‘gentlemen of the west country’ had sent to Darnley a chart of the Scilly
Isles. If Darnley, among other dreams, thought of a descent on them, as he
did on Scarborough, he made no bad choice. Mr. A. E. W. Mason points out
to me that the isles ‘commanded the Channel, and all the ships from the
north of England,’ which passed between Scilly and the mainland,
twenty-five miles off. The harbours being perilous, and only known to the
islesmen, a small fleet at Scilly could do great damage, and would only
have to run back to be quite safe. Darnley, in his moods, was capable of
picturing himself as a pirate chief.
[106] Hay Fleming, p. 415, note 63.
[107] Labanoff, ii.
[108] Labanoff, i. 396-398. Mary to Beaton, Jan. 20, 1567.
[109] Hosack, ii. 580. Crawford’s deposition.
[110] Hosack, i. 534.
[111] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 163, 164. January 9, 1567.
[112] See Appendix C, ‘The date of Mary’s visit to Glasgow.’
[113] The ‘undermining and’ are words added by Lennox himself to the MS.
They are important.
[114] _Maitland of Lethington._
[115] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 167-168.
[116] On July 16, 1583, she wrote from Sheffield to Mauvissière, the
French Ambassador, bidding him ask the King of France to give Archibald
Douglas a pension, ‘because he is a man of good understanding and
serviceable where he chooses to serve, as you know.’ She intended to
procure his pardon from James (Labanoff, v. 351, 368). She employed him,
and he betrayed her.
[117] Laing, ii. 223-236.
[118] Bain, ii. 599, 600.
[119] _Registrum de Soltre_, p. xxxv, Bannatyne Club, 1861.
[120] Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, March 14, 1541.
[121] _Registrum de Soltre_, xxxvii.
[122] Burgh Records, Nov. 5, 1557.
[123] Burgh Records, Feb. 19, 1560, March 12, 1560.
[124] Burgh Records.
[125] Keith, ii. 151, 152. Editor’s note.
[126] _Registrum de Soltre_, p. xli.
[127] Burgh Records, Feb. 19, March 12, 1560.
[128] Laing, ii. 254.
[129] Lennox MSS.
[130] See Hay Fleming, p. 434.
[131] Lennox’s sources must have been Nelson and the younger Standen, to
whom Bothwell gave a horse immediately after the murder. Standen returned
to England four months later.
[132] _Diurnal_, 105, 106.
[133] Keith, i. cii.
[134] Register Privy Council, i. 498.
[135] Melville, p. 174, Bannatyne Club.
[136] Labanoff, vii. 108, 109, Paris. March 16, 1567.
[137] Hosack, i. 536, 537.
[138] Spanish Calendar, i. 635, April 23.
[139] Hosack, i. 534. The ‘Book of Articles,’ of 1568, was obviously
written under the impression left by a forged letter of Mary’s, or by the
reports of such a letter, as we shall show later. Yet the author cites a
Casket Letter as we possess it.
[140] Bain, ii. 393.
[141] This is not, I think, a letter of September 5, but of September 16,
but in Foreign Calendar Elizabeth, viii. p. 342, most of the passage
quoted by Mr. Hosack is omitted.
[142] Laing, ii. 28.
[143] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. p. 392.
[144] Laing, ii. 256.
[145] _Diurnal_, 127, 128. Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 393.
[146] Hosack, ii. 245.
[147] This was obvious to Laing. Replying to Goodall’s criticism of verbal
coincidences in the confessions, Laing says, ‘as if in any subsequent
evidence concerning the same fact, the same words were not often dictated
by the same Commissioner, or recorded by the Clerk, from the first
deposition which they hold in their hands.’ It does not seem quite a
scientific way of taking evidence.
[148] See the Confessions, Laing, ii. 264.
[149] Bain, ii. 312, 313.
[150] Arnott and Pitcairn, _Criminal Trials_.
[151] Buchanan, _History_ (1582), fol. 215.
[152] _Maitland Miscellany_, iv. p. 119.
[153] French Foreign Office, _Registre de Depesches d’Ecosse_, 1560-1562,
fol. 112.
[154] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. p. 7, No. 31.
[155] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 229. Drury would not here add to our
confidence by saying that ‘Sir Andrew Ker’ (if of Faldonside) ‘with others
were on horseback near to the place for aid to the cruel enterprize if
need had been.’ Ker, a pitiless wretch, was conspicuous in the Riccio
murder, threatened Mary, and had but lately been pardoned. After Langside,
he was kept prisoner, in accordance with Mary’s orders, by Whythaugh. But
the Sir Andrew of Drury is another Ker.
[156] Bain ii. 321, 325.
[157] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 252.
[158] Bain, ii. 394. Cullen is spelled ‘Callan,’ and is described as
Bothwell’s ‘chalmer-chiel.’
[159] Bain, ii. 355.
[160] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 500. Hosack, i. 350, note 2, and Schiern’s
_Bothwell_.
[161] Laing, ii. 269.
[162] Bain, ii. 698.
[163] See Appendix B, ‘The Burning of the Lyon King at Arms.’
[164] Bain, ii. 667, 668.
[165] Laing, i. 256, 257.
[166] Laing, ii. 253.
[167] Murdin, i. 57.
[168] Laing, ii. 286, 287.
[169] Laing, ii. 259.
[170] Laing, ii. 254.
[171] Laing, ii. 267, 268.
[172] Laing, ii. 287.
[173] Anderson, 1, part II., 76, 77.
[174] Nau, Appendix ii. 151, 152. The Jesuits’ evidence was from letters
to Archbishop Beaton.
[175] Murdin, p. 57.
[176] In the ‘Book of Articles,’ and in the series of dated events called
‘Cecil’s Journal.’
[177] Hay Fleming, p. 444.
[178] Spanish Calendar, i. 628. For Moray’s dinner party, cf. Bain, ii.
317.
[179] Spanish Calendar, i. 635.
[180] Laing, ii. 244.
[181] Labanoff, ii. 2-4.
[182] Venetian Calendar, vii. 388, 389. There were rumours that Lennox had
been blown up with Darnley, and, later, that he was attacked at Glasgow,
on February 9, by armed men, and owed his escape to Lord Semple. It is
incredible that this fact should be unmentioned, if it occurred, by Lennox
and Buchanan.
[183] Hay Fleming, pp. 442-443.
[184] Robertson, _Inventories_, p. 53.
[185] Anderson, i. 112. Bain, ii. 322.
[186] Keith knew a copy in the Scots College at Paris, attested by Sir
James Balfour as ‘the authentick copy of the principall band.’ This copy
Sir James sent to Mary, in January, 1581, after Morton’s arrest. The names
of laymen are Huntly, Argyll, Morton, Cassilis, Sutherland, Errol,
Crawford, Caithness, Rothes, Boyd, Glamis, Ruthven, Semple, Herries,
Ogilvy, Fleming. John Read’s memory must have been fallacious. There are
eight prelates in Balfour’s band, including Archbishop Hamilton, the
Bishop of Orkney, who joined in prosecuting Mary, and Lesley, Bishop of
Ross (Keith, ii. 562-569). On the whole subject see a discussion by Mr.
Bain and Mr. Hay Fleming, in _The Genealogist_, 1900-1901. Some copies are
dated April 20. See Fraser, _The Melvilles_, i. 89.
[187] Spanish Calendar, i. 662.
[188] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 213.
[189] Bain, ii. 323, 324.
[190] Melville, p. 177.
[191] Melville, p. 178.
[192] Drury to Cecil, Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 222.
[193] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 223-224.
[194] May 6, Drury to Cecil.
[195] Drury to Cecil, May 6. Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 223, 224.
[196] Undated letter in Bannatyne, of 1570-1572.
[197] See Stewart’s _Lost Chapter in the History of Queen Mary_ for the
illegalities of the divorce. The best Catholic opinion is agreed on the
subject.
[198] Melville, 182. Teulet, ii. 153, 170.
[199] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 235.
[200] Drury to Cecil, Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 240.
[201] Dates from James Beaton’s letter of June 17. Laing, ii. 106, 115.
[202] Nau, 46-48.
[203] Laing, i. 113. June 17, 1567.
[204] Melville, p. 183.
[205] Teulet, ii. 179.
[206] Teulet, ii. 169, 170. June 17.
[207] Bannatyne’s _Memorials_, p. 126.
[208] Nau, 50-54.
[209] Laing, ii, 115.
[210] Bannatyne, _Journal_, 477, 482.
[211] Chalmers, _Life of Mary, Queen of Scots_ (1818), ii. 486, 487, note.
I do not understand Randolph to bring these charges merely on the ground
of Mary’s word. _That_ he only adds as corroboration, I think, of facts
otherwise familiar to him.
[212] Mr. Froude has observed that the Lords, ‘uncertain what to do, sent
one of their number in haste to Paris, to the Earl of Moray, to inform him
of the discovery of the Letters, and to entreat him to return
immediately.’ Mr. Hosack says that Mr. Froude owes this circumstance
‘entirely to his imagination.’ This is too severe. The Lords did not send
‘one of their number’ to Moray, but they sent letters which Robert
Melville carried as far as London, and, seventeen days later, they did
send a man who, if not ‘one of their number,’ was probably Moray’s agent,
John Wood (Hosack, i. 352).
[213] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. p. 261.
[214] Spanish Calendar, i. 657.
[215] Cal. For. Eliz. ix. pp. 354, 355.
[216] Fénelon, _Dépêches_ (1838), i. 19, 20.
[217] Fénelon, i. 22. To this point we shall return.
[218] La Mothe Fénelon, vii. 275-276.
[219] Cal. Span. i. 659.
[220] Bain, ii. 336.
[221] Bain, ii. 338.
[222] Bain, ii. 339.
[223] Bain, ii. 341.
[224] Melville to Cecil, July 1. Bain, ii. 343.
[225] Bain, ii. 350, 351.
[226] Bain, ii. 322, 360.
[227] _Ibid._ 358.
[228] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 297, 298. Keith, ii. 694, 700.
[229] Already, on July 16, Mary had offered verbally, by Robert Melville,
to the Lords, to make Moray Regent: or, failing him, to appoint a Council
of Regency, Châtelherault, Huntly, Argyll, Atholl, Lennox, and, ‘with much
ado,’ Morton, Moray, Mar, and Glencairn. But she would not abandon
Bothwell, as she was pregnant. Throckmorton does not say that she now
promised to sign an _abdication_. A letter of Mary’s, to Bothwell’s
captain in Dunbar, was intercepted, ‘containing matter little to her
advantage.’ It never was produced by her prosecutors (Throckmorton, July
18. Bain, ii. 355,356). Robert Melville, visiting her, declined to carry
such a letter to Bothwell. See his examination, in Addit. MSS. British
Museum, 33531, fol. 119 _et seq._
[230] Bain, ii. 367.
[231] Bain, ii. 328.
[232] _Ibid._ i. 346-348.
[233] Bain, ii. 346.
[234] _Ibid._ 354. July 16.
[235] Alava to Philip, July 17. Teulet, v. 29.
[236] De Silva, July 26, August 2. Spanish Calendar, i. 662, 665. I have
occasionally preferred the Spanish text to Major Hume’s translations. See
also Hosack, i. 215, 216.
[237] Froude, iii. 118. 1866.
[238] Lennox MSS.
[239] The words within inverted commas are autograph additions by Lennox
himself.
[240] Ogilvy of Boyne, who married his old love, Lady Bothwell, after the
death of her second husband, the Earl of Sutherland. See pp. 26, 27,
_supra_.
[241] _A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Stuart._
[242] Throckmorton to Elizabeth, July 18. Bain, ii. 355.
[243] Throckmorton to Elizabeth, July 31, 1567. Bain, ii. 370.
[244] _Maitland Miscellany_, vol. iv. part i. p. 119.
[245] Teulet, ii. 255, 256.
[246] Labanoff, ii. 106.
[247] Bain, ii. 423.
[248] _Ibid._ 441, 442.
[249] I do not know where the originals of these five letters now are.
They were among the Hamilton Papers, having probably been intercepted by
the Hamiltons before they reached Moray, Lethington, Crawford, and the
others.
[250] Bain, ii. 514.
[251] _Ibid._ 523, 524.
[252] For. Eliz. viii. 478, 479. Bain, ii. 426, 427.
[253] Bowton’s confession. Laing, ii. 256, 257.
[254] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 331.
[255] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 363.
[256] Moray, Morton, Glencairn, Errol, Buchan, Home, Ruthven, Semple,
Glamis, Lindsay, Gray, Graham, Ochiltree (Knox’s father-in-law),
Innermeith, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, Sir James Balfour (deeply
involved in the murder), Makgill, Lethington, Erskine of Dun, Wishart of
Pitarro, Kirkcaldy of Grange, and others of less note.
[257] Nau, pp. 71-73.
[258] Teulet, ii. 247.
[259] Act in Henderson, 177-185.
[260] Nau, 74, 75.
[261] Goodall, ii. 361. B. M. Titus, c. 12, fol. 157 (_olim_ 175). ‘And
gif it beis allegit, yat hir ma{tz} wretting producit in pliamẽt, sould
proiff hir g, culpable. It maybe ansrit yat yäre is na plane mentione maid
in it, be ye quhilk hir hienes may be convict Albeit it wer hir awin hand
wreitt, as it is not And als the same is cuttit (cullit?) be yame selfis
in sum principall & substantious clausis.’
[262] Sepp, _Tagebuch_, Munich, 1882.
[263] Bain, ii. 441, 442.
[264] _Maitland Club Miscellany_, iv. 120, 121.
[265] Teulet, ii. 248.
[266] Bain, ii. 517.
[267] Bain, ii. 434.
[268] Nov. 8, 1571. Murdin, p. 57.
[269] State Trials, i. 978.
[270] As to ‘the subtlety of that practice,’ which puzzled Mr. Froude,
Laing offers a highly ingenious conjecture. Mary was to do the Scots
translations, procured for her by Lethington, into her own French,
omitting the compromising portions. Lethington was next ‘privately to
substitute or produce the Queen’s transcript instead of the originals,
with the omission of those criminal passages, which might then be opposed
as interpolated in the translation.’ But in that case ‘some variance of
phrase’ by Mary could bring nothing ‘to light,’ for there would be no
originals to compare. Lethington, while slipping Mary’s new transcript
into the Casket (Laing, i. 145, 146), would, of course, remove the
original letters in French, leaving the modified transcript in their
place. ‘Variance of phrase’ between an original and a translation could
prove nothing. Moreover, if Lethington had access to the French letters,
it was not more dangerous for him to destroy them than to substitute a
version which Moray, Morton, Buchanan, and all concerned could honestly
swear to be false. The Bishop of Ross did, later, manage an ingenious
piece of ‘palming’ letters on Cecil, but, in the story of ‘palming’ fresh
transcripts into the Casket there is no consistency. Moreover Melville’s
word is at least as good as Lesley’s, and Melville denies the truth of
Lesley’s confession.
[271] British Museum Addit. MSS. 33531, fol. 119, _et seq._ The MS. is
much injured.
[272] Murdin, pp. 52, 58.
[273] Bain, ii. 524.
[274] Addit. MSS. _ut supra_.
[275] Goodall, ii. 111.
[276] Bain, ii. 518, 519.
[277] _Ibid._ 519.
[278] Bain, ii. 524.
[279] Lennox MSS.
[280] Bain, ii. 520, 521.
[281] Goodall, ii. 140.
[282] The production is asserted, Goodall, ii. 87.
[283] Calderwood, iii. 556.
[284] For the Ainslie Band, and the signatories, see Bain, ii. 322, and
Hay Fleming, p. 446, note 60, for all the accounts.
[285] Hosack, i. 543.
[286] There are two sets of extracts (Goodall, ii. 148-153): one of them
is in the Sadleyr Papers, edited by Sir Walter Scott, and in Haynes, p.
480. This is headed ‘A brief Note of the chief and principal points of the
Queen of Scots Letters written to Bothwell for her consent and procurement
of the murder of her husband, as far forth as we could by the reading
gather.’ The other set is in Scots, ‘Notes drawin furth of the Quenis
letters sent to the Erle Bothwell.’ If this were, as Miss Strickland
supposed, an abstract made and shown in June-July, it would prove, of
course, that Letter II. was then in its present shape, and would destroy
my hypothesis. But Cecil endorses it. ‘sent October 29.’ I think it
needless to discuss the notion that Lethington and his companions showed
only the Scots texts, and vowed that they were in Mary’s handwriting! They
could not conceivably go counter, first, to Moray’s statement (June 22,
1568) that the Scots versions were only translations. Nor could they,
later, produce the Letters in French, and pretend that both they and the
Scots texts were in Mary’s hand. Doubtless they showed the French (though
we are not told that they did), but the English Commissioners, odd as it
seems, preferred to send to Elizabeth extracts from the Scots.
[287] Bain, ii. 526-528. See also in Hosack, ii. 496-501, with the
obliterated lines restored.
[288] Bain, ii. 529-530.
[289] Bain, ii. 533, 534.
[290] Goodall, ii. 162-170. The dates here are difficult. Lesley certainly
rode to Bolton, as Knollys says, on October 13, a Wednesday. (See the
English Commissioners to Elizabeth. Goodall, ii. 173. York, October 17.)
By October 17, Lesley was again at York (Goodall, ii. 174). Therefore I
take it that Lesley’s letter to Mary (Bain, ii. 533, 534) is of October
18, or later, and that the ‘Saturday’ when Norfolk and Lethington rode
together, and when Lethington probably shook Norfolk’s belief in the
authenticity of the Casket Letters, is Saturday, October 16.
[291] Bain, ii. 533, 534.
[292] _Ibid._ ii. 693.
[293] Bain, ii. 541.
[294] _Ibid._ ii. 533.
[295] Addit. MSS. _ut supra_.
[296] His letter is given in full by Hosack, i. 518-522.
[297] Goodall, ii. 179-182.
[298] Bain, ii. 551.
[299] Goodall, ii. 182, 186.
[300] Goodall, ii. No. lxvi. 189.
[301] Anderson, iv. pt. ii. 115-121. Goodall, ii. 203-207.
[302] Teulet, ii. 237.
[303] Anderson, ii. 125-128. Bain, ii. 562, 563.
[304] See Hosack, i. 432, 583. The opinions of the Legists are taken from
La Mothe, i. 51, 54. December 15, 1568.
[305] Goodall, ii. 222-227. But compare her letter of Nov. 22, p. 265,
_supra_.
[306] Bain, ii. 565, 566.
[307] Goodall, ii. 229.
[308] In my opinion the book is by George Buchanan, who presents many
coincident passages in his _Detection_. On February 25, 1569, one Bishop,
an adherent of Mary’s, said, under examination, that ‘there were sundry
books in Latin against her, one or both by Mr. George Buchanan,’ books not
yet published (Bain, ii. 624). Can the _Book of Articles_ have been done
into Scots out of Buchanan’s Latin?
[309] When Goodall and Laing wrote (1754, 1804) the Minutes of December 7
had not been discovered.
[310] Bain, ii. 569, 570.
[311] Bain, ii. 571-573. (Cf. pp. 254, note 3, and 271, _supra_.)
[312] See Appendix E, ‘The Translation of the Casket Letters.’
[313] The extant copy is marked as of December viii. That is cancelled,
and the date ‘Thursday, December 29’ is given; the real date being
December 9. (Bain, ii. 576, 593, 730, 731.) This Declaration was one of
the MSS. of Sir Alexander Malet, bought by the British Museum in 1883. The
Fifth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission contains a summary, cited
by Bresslau, in _Kassetenbriefen_, pp. 21, 23, 1881. In 1889, Mr.
Henderson published a text in his _Casket Letters_. That of Mr. Bain, _ut
supra_, is more accurate (ii. 730 _et seq._). Mr. Henderson substitutes
Andrew for the notorious _Archibald_ Douglas, and there are other
misreadings in the first edition.
[314] See ‘The Internal Evidence,’ pp. 302-313.
[315] Mr. Bain omits December 13; see Goodall, ii. 252.
[316] Bain, ii. 579, 580.
[317] Froude, 1866, iii. 347.
[318] Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, vol. iii. pp. 282,
283, 294.
[319] See Bain, ii. 581, for Crawford; the matter of this his _second_
deposition, made on December 13, is not given; we know it from the Lennox
Papers. The _Diurnal_ avers that Tala, on the scaffold, accused Huntly,
Argyll, Lethington, Balfour, and others of signing the band for the
murder, ‘whereto the Queen’s grace consented.’ Naturally the Queen’s
accusers did not put the confession about Lethington forward, but if Tala
publicly accused Mary, why did they omit the circumstance?
[320] Ballad by _Tom Truth_, in Bain under date of December, 1568.
[321] Goodall, ii. 257-260. Bain, ii. 580, 581.
[322] Froude, viii. 484. Mr. Froude’s page-heading runs: ‘The English
nobles pronounce them’ (the Letters) ‘genuine.’ But this, as he shows in
the passage cited, they really did not do. They only said that Elizabeth
must not see Mary, ‘until some answer had been made first....’ However,
Elizabeth would not even let Mary see the Letters; and so no ‘answer’ was
possible.
[323] Lingard, vi. 94, note 2 (1855).
[324] Bain, ii. 583.
[325] Another account, by Lesley, but not ‘truly nor fully’ reported, as
Cecil notes, is in Groodall, ii. 260, 261. Compare La Mothe Fénelon, i.
82. Bain, ii. 585.
[326] Hosack, i. 460.
[327] Goodall, ii. 281.
[328] La Mothe, January 20, 30, 1569, i. 133-162.
[329] Goodall, ii. 272, 273.
[330] Goodall, ii. 307-309.
[331] Lesley, like Herries, had no confidence in Mary’s cause. On December
28, 1568, he wrote a curious letter to John Fitzwilliam, at Gray’s Inn.
Lesley, Herries, and Kilwinning (a Hamilton) had met Norfolk, Leicester,
and Cecil privately. The English showed the _Book of Articles_, but
refused to give a copy, which seems unfair, as Mary could certainly have
picked holes in that indictment. Lesley found the Englishmen ‘almost
confirmed in favour of our mistress’s adversaries.’ Norfolk and Cecil ‘war
sayrest’ (most severe), and Norfolk must either have been dissembling, or
must have had his doubts about the authenticity of the Casket Letters
shaken by comparing them with Mary’s handwriting. Lesley asks Fitzwilliam
to go to their man of law, ‘and bid him put our defences to the
presumptions in writ, as was devised before in all events, but we hope for
some appointment (compromise), but yet we arm us well.’ Mary, however,
would not again stoop to compromise. (Bain, ii. 592, 593.)
[332] Bain, ii. 570.
[333] In the Cambridge MS. of the Scots translations (C) our Letter II. is
placed first. This MS. is the earliest.
[334] It is indubitable that ‘Cecil’s Journal’ was supplied by the
prosecution, perhaps from Lennox, who had made close inquiries about the
dates.
[335] Bresslau, _Hist. Taschenbuch_, p. 71. Philippson, _Revue
Historique_, Sept., Oct., 1887, p. 31. M. Philippson suggests that
Lethington’s name may not have been mentioned in the French, but was
inserted (perhaps by Makgill, or other enemy of his, I presume) in the
English, to damage the Secretary in the eyes of the English Commissioners.
[336] Hosack, i. 217, 218.
[337] See the letter in Appendix, ‘Casket Letters.’
[338] ‘Yesternicht’ is omitted in the English. See Appendix E,
‘Translation of the Casket Letters.’
[339] The last italicised words are in the English translation, not in the
Scots.
[340] Hosack, ii. 24.
[341] Father Pollen kindly lent me collations of this Cambridge MS.
translation into Scots, marked by me ‘C.’
[342] See Letter and Crawford’s Deposition in Appendix. Mr. Henderson, in
his _Casket Letters_ (second edition, pp. xxvi, xxvii, 82-84), argues that
the interdependence of Crawford’s Deposition and of Letter II. ‘does not
seem to be absolutely proved.’ Perhaps no other critic doubts it.
[343] Goodall, ii. 246.
[344] The English runs, ‘Indeede that he had found faulte with me....’ Mr.
Bain notes ‘a blank left thus’ (Bain, ii. 723).
[345] Lennox MSS.
[346] Mr. Frazer-Tytler, who did not enter into the controversy, supposed
that Crawford’s Deposition was the actual written report, made by him to
Lennox in January 1567. If so, Letter II. is forged.
[347] Mr. Henderson writes (_Casket Letters_, second edition, p. xxvi):
‘It must be remembered that while Crawford affirms that he supplied Lennox
with notes of the conversation immediately after it took place, he does
not state that the notes were again returned to him by Lennox in order to
enable him to form his deposition.’ How else could he get them, unless he
kept a copy? ‘It is also absurd to suppose that Lennox, on June 11, 1568,
should have written to Crawford for _notes which he had already in his own
possession_.’ But Lennox did not do that; he asked, not for Mary’s
conversation with Darnley, but for Crawford’s with Mary, which Crawford
never says that he wrote down ‘at the time.’ Mr. Henderson goes on to
speak of ‘the notes having been lost,’ and ‘these documents had apparently
been destroyed’ (p. 84), of which I see no appearance.
[348] Goodall, ii. 246. _Maitland Club Miscellany_, iv. pt. i. p. 119. It
will be observed that while Crawford swears to having written down
Darnley’s report for Lennox ‘at the time,’ he says that he ‘_caused to be
made_’ the writing which he handed in to the Commissioners, ‘according to
the truth of his knowledge.’ Crawford’s Deposition handed in to the
Commissioners, in fact, has been ‘made,’ that is, has been Anglicised from
the Scots; this is proved by the draft in the Lennox Papers. This is what
Crawford means by saying that he ‘caused it to be made.’ There is a
corrected draft of the declaration in the Lennox MSS., but Crawford’s
original autograph text, ‘written with his hand’ (in Scots doubtless), was
retained by the Lords (Goodall, ii. 88).
[349] The Deposition, in Bain, ii. 313, is given under February, 1567, but
this copy of it, being in English, cannot be so early.
[350] _Historia_, fol. 213. Yet the Lennox _dossier_ represents Darnley as
engaged, at this very time, at Stirling, in a bitter and angry quarrel
with Mary. He may have been in contradictory moods: Buchanan omits the
mood of fury.
[351] _Maitland of Lethington_, ii. 337.
[352] Mary to Norfolk, Jan. 31, 1570. Labanoff, iii. 19.
[353] Labanoff, iii. 62.
[354] The prosecution is in rather an awkward position as to Bothwell’s
action when he returned to Edinburgh, after leaving Mary at Callendar,
which we date January 21, and they date January 23. _Cecil’s Journal_
says, ‘January 23 ... Erle Huntly and Bothwell returnit _that same nycht_
to Edynt [Edinburgh] _and Bothwell lay in the Town_.’ The _Book of
Articles_ has ‘Bot boithuell at his cuming to Edinburgh ludgit in the
toun, quhair customably he usit to ly at the abbay,’ that is, in Holyrood
(Hosack, i. 534). The author of the _Book of Articles_ clearly knew
_Cecil’s Journal_; perhaps he wrote it. Yet he makes Mary stay but one
night at Callendar; _Cecil’s Journal_ makes her stay two nights. However,
our point is that both sources make Bothwell lie in the town, not at
Holyrood, on the night of his return from Callendar. His object, they
imply, was to visit Kirk o’ Field privately, being lodged near it and not
in his official rooms. But here they are contradicted by Paris, who says
that when he brought Mary’s first Glasgow Letter to Bothwell he found him
in his chambers _at Holyrood_ (Laing, ii. 282).
[355] Nelson, according to Miss Strickland (_Mary Stuart_, ii. 178, 1873),
left Edinburgh for England, and was detained by Drury for some months at
Berwick. For this Miss Strickland cites Drury to Cecil, Berwick, February
15, 1567, a letter which I am unable to find in the MSS. But the lady is
more or less correct, since, on February 15, Mary wrote to Robert
Melville, in England, charging him, in very kind terms, to do his best for
Anthony Standen, Darnley’s friend, who was also going to England (Frazer,
_The Lennox_, ii. 7). A reference to Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 193, No. 1029,
shows that a letter of Mary to Drury, asking free passage for Standen and
four other Englishmen, is really of March 15, not of February 15. Again, a
letter of March 8, 1567, from Killigrew, at Edinburgh, to Cecil, proves
that ‘Standen, Welson, and Guyn, that served the late king, intend to
return home when they can get passport’ (Bain, ii. 347, No. 479). Now
‘Welson’ is obviously Nelson. On June 16, Drury allowed Standen to go
south (Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 252, No. 1305). Nelson, doubtless, also
returned to Lennox. It is odd that Lennox, having these two witnesses,
should vary so much, in his first indictment, from the accepted accounts
of events at Kirk o’ Field. This Anthony Standen is the younger of the two
brothers of the same name. The elder was acting for Darnley in France at
the time of the murder. He lived to a great age, recounting romances about
his adventures.
[356] Mr. Hay Fleming suggests that ‘Jhone a Forret’ may be Forret of that
ilk--of Forret near Cairnie. Of him I have no other knowledge.
[357] Hatfield MSS. Calendar, i. 376, 377.
[358] Melville, _Memoirs_, 173, 174. Hosack’s _Mary_, i. 536 (_The Book of
Articles_). Anderson, ii. 18, 19 (_Detection_). _Cecil’s Journal_, under
date Saturday, February 8, has ‘She confronted the King and my lord of
Halyrodhouse conforme to hir letter wryttin the nycht before:’ that is,
this Letter III.
[359] Mr. Hosack makes an error in averring that no letter as to this
intrigue was produced at Westminster or later; that the letter was only
shown at York in October, 1568. There and then Moray’s party ‘_inferred_,
upon a letter of her own hand, that there was another meane of a more
cleanly conveyance devised to kill the King’ (Goodall, ii. 142; Hosack, i.
409, 410). The letter was that which we are now considering.
[360] The Scots has ‘handling.’ The Cambridge MS. of the Scots translation
reads ‘composing of thame,’ from ‘le bien composer de ceux’ in the
original French.
[361] Dr. Bresslau notes several such coincidences, but stress cannot be
laid on phrases either usual, or such as a forger might know to be
favourites of Mary’s.
[362] Laing, ii. 286.
[363] _Mary Queen of Scots_, vol. ii. No. 63.
[364] ‘Je m’en deferay au hazard de _la_ faire entreprandre:’ the
translators, not observing the gender referring to the maid, have
blundered.
[365] It appears that they did not officially put in this compromising
Ainslie paper. Cecil’s copy had only such a list of signers ‘as John Read
might remember.’ His copy says that Mary approved the band on May 14,
whereas the Lords allege that she approved before they would sign. Bain,
ii. 321, 322. A warrant of approval was shown at York. Bain, ii. 526. Cf.
_supra_, p. 254, note 3.
[366] Labanoff, ii. 32-44.
[367] _Maitland of Lethington_, ii. 224.
[368] Lethington to Beaton, October 24, 1566; cf. Keith, ii. 542.
[369] ‘The safety,’ ‘la seurete.’ Mr. Henderson’s text has ‘la seincte.’
The texts in his volume are strangely misleading and incorrect, both in
the English of Letter II. and in the copies of the original French.
[370] This means a ring in black enamel, with representations of tears and
bones, doubtless in white: a fantastic mourning ring. Mary left a diamond
in black enamel to Bothwell, in June, 1566.
[371] This coincidence was pointed out to me by Mr. Saintsbury.
[372] By the way, she says to Norfolk, in the same Letter, ‘I am resolvid
that weale nor wo shall never remove me from yow, If yow cast me not
away.’ Compare the end of this Letter VIII.: ‘Till death nor weal nor woe
shall estrange me’ (jusques à la mort ne changera, _car mal ni bien oncque
ne m’estrangera_). Now the forger could not copy a letter not yet written
(Labanoff, iii. 5). This conclusion of her epistle is not on the same
level as the _customary_ conclusion--the prayer that God will give the
recipient long life, and to her--something else. _That_ formula was usual:
‘Je supplie Dieu et de vous donner bonne vie, et longue, et a moy l’eur de
votre bonne grasse.’ This formula, found in Mary’s Letters and in the
Casket Letters, also occurs in a note from Marguerite de France to the
Duchesse de Montmorency (De Maulde, _Women of the Renaissance_, p. 309). A
forger would know, and would insert the stereotyped phrase, if he chose.
[373] On the point of wearing a concealed jewel in her bosom, the curious
may consult the anecdote, ‘Queen Mary’s Jewels,’ in the author’s _Book of
Dreams and Ghosts_.
[374] In Laing, ii. 234.
[375] _Cecil’s Journal._
[376] _Cecil’s Journal._
[377] Laing, ii. 285.
[378] Laing, ii. 289.
[379] Laing, ii. 325, 326. Laing holds that between April 21 and April 23
Mary wrote Letters V. VI. VII. VIII. and Eleven Sonnets to Bothwell:
strange literary activity!
[380] Froude, iii. 75, note 1.
[381] Teulet, ii. 169, 170.
[382] Labanoff, iii. 5.
[383] Labanoff, iii. 64.
[384] Spanish Calendar, i. 659.
[385] Bain, ii. 329, 330.
[386] Privy Council Register.
[387] Bain, ii. 336. Sir John Skelton did not observe the coincidence
between the opening of the Casket and the ‘sudden dispatch’ of Robert
Melville to London. The letter in full is in _Maitland of Lethington_, ii.
226, 227.
[388] Bain, ii. 339.
[389] Goodall, ii. 342, 343.
[390] Goodall, ii. 388, 389.
[391] Camden, _Annals_, 143-5. Laing, i. 226.
[392] Laing, ii. 224-240.
[393] Bain, ii. 322.
[394] As to Randolph’s dark hint, Chalmers says, ‘he means their
participation in Darnley’s murder’ (ii. 487). But that, from Randolph’s
point of view, was no offence against Mary, and Kirkcaldy was not one of
Darnley’s murderers.
[395] Cal. For. Eliz. ix. 390.
[396] See Hosack, ii. 217, 218. Bowes to Walsingham, March 25, 1581.
_Bowes Papers_, 174. Ogilvie to Archibald Beaton. Hosack, ii. 550, 551.
[397] Bain, ii. 569.
[398] Robertson _Inventories_, 124.
[399] _Bowes Correspondence_, 236.
[400] Bowes, 265.
[401] Goodall, i. 35, 36.
[402] Vol. lxxx. 131, _et seq._
[403] Before the Reformation it belonged to the Bishops of Roskilde, and
was confiscated from them, Henry VIII.’s fashion.
[404] Bain, ii. 250.
[405] Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 413, 414.
[406] This picture seems to be lost.
[407] _Diurnal_, p. 134.
[408] Birrel’s _Diary_, p. 17.
[409] Cot. Lib. Calig. B. ix. fol. 272. Apud Chalmers, i. 441, 442.
[410] Bain, ii. 516.
[411] _Diurnal_, p. 146.
[412] Bain, ii. 665.
[413] Nau, p. 80.
[414] Chalmers’s date, as to Stewart’s expedition to Denmark, differs from
that of Drury.
[415] Such coffers were carefully covered. One had a cover of crimson
velvet, with the letter ‘F’ in silver and gold work (Maitland Club,
_Illustrations of Reigns of Mary and James_). Another coffer, with a cover
of purple velvet, is described in a tract by M. Luzarche (Tours, 1868).
[416] Nau, p. 48.
[417] Tytler, iv. 324, 1864.
[418] _Diurnal_, p. 127.
[419] Laing, ii. 293, 294.
[420] Bain, ii. 322.
[421] Laing, ii. 314-318.
[422] Tytler, iv. 323, 1864.
[423] Labanoff, ii. 213.
[424] Bain, ii. 576.
[425] Laing’s efforts to detect French idioms lead him to take ‘all
contrary’--as in
‘Mary, Mary,
All contrary,
How does your garden grow?’--
and ‘all goeth ill’ for French too literally translated.
[426] _Casket Letters_, pp. 82, 83.
[427] ‘He,’ that is, Lennox.
[428] ‘He,’ misread for ‘I.’
[429] The English translator apparently mistook ‘signer’ for ‘saigner.’
[430] ‘They’: Darnley and Lady Bothwell.
[431] ‘I cannot ceis to barbulze’ (Y).
[432] ‘Humanitie’ (C).
[433] His fair promises (C).
[434] ‘Your brother.’ Huntly.
[435] ‘Scriblit.’ Barbulzeit (C).
[436] Cambridge MS. ‘l’acointance.’
[437] Cambridge MS, ‘je’ omitted.
[438] Cambridge MS. ‘Dont de grief doil me vint ceste dolleur.’
[439] Cambridge MS. ‘Per.’
[440] Cambridge MS. ‘honneur.’
Transcriber’s Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Underlined passages are indicated by =underline=.
Passages that are struck through are indicated by --word--.
Passages raised above the printed line with a carat are indicated by
^word^.
Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
The original text contains letters with diacritical marks that are not
represented in this text version.
The original text includes an inverted L symbol that is represented as [L]
in this text version.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mystery of Mary Stuart" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.