The Mystery of Mary Stuart

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.

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.

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 - See the sketch, coloured, in Bannatyne Miscellany, vol. i. p. 184.]

‘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 - See description by Alesius, about 1550, in Bannatyne Miscellany, i. 185-188.] 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 - Information from Father Pollen, S.J.] On October 5, 1559, Bothwell seized, near Haddington, Cockburn of Ormiston, who was carrying English gold to the Lords.[17 - This gentleman must not be confused with Ormistoun of Ormistoun, in Teviotdale, ‘The Black Laird,’ a retainer of Bothwell.] 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 - Riddell, Inquiry into the Law and Practice of the Scottish Peerage, i. 427. Joseph Robertson, Inventories, xcii., xciii. Schiern, Life of Bothwell, p. 53.] 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 - Randolph to Cecil, Edinburgh, Sept. 23, 1560. Foreign Calendar, 1560-61, p. 311.] 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.

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 - Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots, p. 236, note 32.] 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 - Cal. For. Eliz. 1561-62, iv. 531-539.] 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 - Knox, Laing’s edition, ii. 322-327. Randolph to Cecil ut supra.]

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 - Knox, ii. 347.] 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 - Knox, ii. 473.] ‘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 - Hay Fleming, p. 359, note 29.] 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 - Knox, ii. 479.] The Protestants ever feared that Mary would ‘shake Bothwell out of her pocket,’ against them.[27 - See Cal. For. Eliz. 1565, 306, 312, 314, 319, 320, 327, 340, 341, 347, 351.]

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 - Calendar, Bain, ii. 223.] 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 - Bain, ii. 213.] 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 - Ibid. ii. 242, 243.] 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 - Hosack, i. 524.] 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 - Cal. For. Eliz. 1564-5, 464.] 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 - Bain, ii. 222-223.] Indeed, on October 18, 1565, he will not speak of the cause of mischief, but hints at ‘a stranger and a varlet,’ Riccio.[34 - Bain, ii. 225. Cal. For. Eliz. 1564-5, 464, 495. Hay Fleming, pp. 380, 381.] 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 - 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.’]

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 - October 31, 1565. Bain, ii. 232.] He writes (November 6) that Mary ‘above all things desires her husband to be called King.’[37 - Bain, ii. 234.] 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 - Randolph to Cecil, Nov. 19, Dec. 1, 1565. Bain, ii. 241, 242.] 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 - Bain, ii. 242.] 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 - Buchanan, Historia, 1582, fol. 210.] 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 - Bain, ii. 247.] 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 - 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.] 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 - Nau, p. 192.] 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 - The subject is discussed, with all the evidence, in Hay Fleming, pp. 379, 380, note 33.] 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 - Ruthven’s Narrative. Keith, iii. 260. There are various forms of this Narrative; one is in the Lennox MSS.] 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 - Goodall, i. 274.] ‘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 - Bain, ii. 255.] 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 - Printed in a scarce volume, Maitland’s Narrative, and in Tytler, iii. 215. 1864.]

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 - Bain, ii. 259-261.]