25

“FALSE CALUMNIES”

MARY’S CONFESSOR, ROCHEMAMERET, HAD by now arrived in London, and on 26 July, de Silva reported an interview with him, in which Mameret had said that, until the question of Mary’s marriage to Bothwell was raised, he had never seen a woman of greater virtue, courage and uprightness. He insisted that she had had no knowledge of Darnley’s murder and that she was greatly grieved by it. Mameret disapproved of the collusive suits that had made the Bothwell marriage possible, which (he told de Silva) made it illegal, and also the Protestant nuptials, but said that Mary had sworn to him that she had married Bothwell with the hope of settling religion by that means. He assured the ambassador that “those who had risen against the Queen had not been moved by zeal to punish the King’s murder, as they had been enemies rather than friends of his; nor [had they been moved] in consequence of the marriage, as they had been all in favour of it and had signed their names to that effect; but their sole object had been a religious one, as they thought the Queen, being a Catholic, might settle religion in a way not to their liking.”¹Mameret’s view was somewhat narrow, for religion, of course, had not been the Lords’ only motivating factor.

Having read Throckmorton’s reports, an enraged Elizabeth defied Cecil and her Council, and wrote back on 27 July that she would not negotiate with the Scottish Lords while Mary was in prison, and that she was not impressed by the Lords’ “colourable defences” of their actions. She told him to threaten war if they dared to depose or execute their mistress. That day, he reported that the Lords were undecided as to what to do with Mary.²

Wasting no time, the Lords hurriedly crowned the Prince, as James VI, at Stirling, on 29 July. For the first time in Scottish history, the ceremony was conducted according to Protestant rites. Knox preached the sermon, Mar carried the young King in his arms, and Morton and Home took the oath on James’s behalf; but only thirteen peers were present, and the Hamiltons were excluded. Throckmorton, naturally, declined to attend. The ceremony was performed by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney—he who had married Mary and Bothwell—but the crown was too large for the baby’s head, and had to be held above it. In the church, Lindsay and Ruthven took an oath that Mary had resigned her throne voluntarily. There were joyful celebrations in Edinburgh, and also at Lochleven, where Mary was made painfully aware of the reason for them.³

At the end of July, according to Throckmorton, Bothwell was still staying with his uncle at Spynie Palace. It would be fortunate, Sir Nicholas observed, if Bothwell were executed “or died by God’s hand.”⁴Soon afterwards, Bothwell was betrayed to his enemies by the Bishop of Moray’s bastard sons, and was obliged to flee further north to Orkney, taking with him 200 followers.

Melville was making overtures to the Hamiltons, trying to induce them to join the Lords, but after being slighted at the coronation, the Hamiltons were in no mood for reconciliation. Years later, Melville wrote that he, Maitland and Grange were “secret favourers of the Queen” at this time, and “judged it fit that the whole country should be joined together in quietness, fearing that, in case civil war [broke out], it might endanger Her Majesty’s life.” Yet Maitland’s behaviour towards Mary, as reported by Throckmorton, argued otherwise. On 31 July, Throckmorton declared to Leicester that he himself had saved the Scottish Queen’s life, though to what continuance was uncertain.⁵His mission, after all, had not been entirely in vain, even if it had not achieved what Elizabeth wanted.

Moray had arrived in London on 23 July, and left on the 31st.⁶During his stay, he had meetings with Queen Elizabeth and de Silva; the latter reported that Moray had expressed sorrow for the conduct of the Lords towards the Queen, and “said he could not fail to strive for her liberty because, beside being her brother, he was much beholden to her; but still, Bothwell’s business and the King’s murder had much grieved him and had caused him to leave the country. He returned now to see what could be done in these troubles, although he feared they would be difficult to mend. Many of those concerned in the Queen’s detention were his closest adherents,” and if Bothwell liberated her by force, she might try to avenge herself on them. “He would therefore find some means by which she should remain Queen, but without sufficient liberty to do them any harm, whilst punishing at the same time the authors of the King’s murder.” De Silva “told him that the business might be remedied if Bothwell were put where the Queen is; and if he were captured, it might be easy to settle things. He thought so too, as he said, because they could kill him, and the Queen would then be free of him, and they would be safe.”

Not knowing that Mary had already abdicated, Moray had said he hoped to avoid her deposition, but that the discovery of the Casket Letters made that unlikely. He had been sent from Scotland details of one of the letters by a man who had read it—perhaps Elphinstone—and told de Silva something of its contents, which he said “proved beyond doubt” that the Queen had been “cognisant of the murder of her husband.” He added that he had not even told Elizabeth about it, “although she had given him many remote hints on the subject” of the Casket Letters.

The letter Moray described was said to have been written in Mary’s handwriting on three sheets of paper, and to have been signed by her and sent to Bothwell. It said that he was not to delay putting into execution that which had been ordered because her husband [Darnley] 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 a house where the explosion was arranged for the night upon which one of her servants was to be married. He [Bothwell] was to try and get rid of his wife, either by putting her away or poisoning her, since he knew that she [Mary] 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.⁷

Even allowing for details becoming garbled in the telling, and a couple of vague similarities to the text of Casket Letter II, this letter cannot be identified with any of the Casket Letters as they are known today. To begin with, it was signed by Mary; none of the Casket Letters bear signatures. Secondly, it was allegedly written before Mary went to Glasgow to fetch Darnley; the first of the known Casket Letters was meant to have been sent from Glasgow. Thirdly, it mentions poison as the preferred method of killing, which Mary is going to administer herself; in Casket Letter II, there is only a reference to “a more secret invention by medicine” that Bothwell is to find, while the blowing up of the house is not referred to in any of the letters. Fourthly, it shows Mary urging Bothwell to divorce or poison his wife—again, this is not mentioned in the letters that survive, although Buchanan refers to it appearing in a letter Mary wrote to Bothwell from Glasgow. Fifthly, how could Darnley be using fair words to Mary if he was absent in Glasgow? Relations between them had been so bad before his departure that Mary could in no way have anticipated that he would speak to her so movingly.

This all suggests that the letter of which details were sent to Moray was an early attempt by the Lords at forgery or manipulation that was later rejected in favour of something more subtle. Buchanan certainly knew of this letter, and so did Lennox, as will be seen. If it had been genuine, then it would have provided prima facie evidence against Mary that would have bolstered the Lords’ case; but it was never used against her, which argues its spuriousness. Why it should have been rejected in favour of other letters that were less explicit is a mystery, for subtlety was not a feature of the Lords’ propaganda campaign against Mary. The only explanation can be that, when it came to producing this letter in public as evidence, the Lords realised that there was something in it that betrayed its dubious authenticity.

Moray told de Silva that the worst thing Mary had done, in his opinion, was to pet and fondle Darnley only hours before he was murdered with her connivance. He was appalled by it, and “grieved for the honour of his father’s House.” The perceptive de Silva was not taken in by Moray’s protestations of goodwill towards Mary. “By his manner of speech and the difficulties he raised, it seemed to me that, although he always returned to his desire to help the Queen, this is not altogether his intention. I gather that the Lords can depend on him better than his sister can, although he says he will do his best for her. I am more inclined to believe that he will do it for himself, if he finds a chance.”⁸

By 5 August, Throckmorton was more optimistic about gaining Mary’s consent to a divorce: now that she had miscarried, there was nothing to bind her to Bothwell any more, apart from the hope that he would rescue her. Throckmorton reported that all his efforts were now directed towards saving her life rather than restoring her to the throne.⁹Two days later, the news of Mary’s abdication reached London, and an enraged Elizabeth’s first reaction was to recall Throckmorton and snarl about declaring war on the Lords.¹⁰Her plan was either to send English troops to Scotland, or to bribe the Hamiltons to rise against the Lords on Mary’s behalf, but Cecil warned her that her intervention might cost Mary her life. Elizabeth furiously accused him of being lukewarm in Mary’s cause, but, as they were arguing, Throckmorton’s letter arrived, which lent weight to Cecil’s warning and made Elizabeth pause. Four days later, she changed her mind and decided not to make war on the Scots. Instead, she ordered Throckmorton to stay at his post and promote the Regency of Moray, which seemed the best guarantee of Mary’s safety; however, if the Lords harmed Mary in the meantime, Throckmorton was to threaten them in the strongest terms with England’s vengeance. However, by 9 August, Throckmorton had managed to wring a promise from Maitland that Mary “shall not die any violent death unless some new accident chance”; he was now, more than ever, convinced that he had saved her life.¹¹

Bothwell had just arrived in the Orkney Isles in the far north, where he made an attempt to raise more men, but was thwarted by the machinations of Balfour’s brother Gilbert, Bailiff of Orkney, who prevented him from establishing a secure base on the islands. He and his followers therefore took to piracy, harrying English and Danish shipping from the four men-of-war that, as Lord Admiral of Scotland, he had commandeered before sailing north.¹²

The Lords were now determined to pursue Bothwell and kill him, and on 10 August, the Dundee authorities were ordered to fit out four ships for an expedition against him, which was to be led by Kirkcaldy of Grange and Tullibardine. That day, Grange wrote to Bedford: “Although I be no good seaman, I promise he [Bothwell] shall either carry me with him, or else I shall bring him dead or quick to Edinburgh.”¹³

Moray returned to Edinburgh on 11 August, to a rapturous welcome on the part of those who regarded him as their Protestant saviour, and immediately took control of the government.¹⁴Some of the Lords feared that Moray would be too lenient with his sister, while Argyll, Boyd, Livingston and others tried to negotiate with him for her release, with no success. Tullibardine urged her death, on the grounds that, if freed, she might marry again and have issue, which was a thing to be feared. Again, Throckmorton begged the Lords not to execute Mary, and warned that her death might provoke the Hamiltons to attempt the throne. Maitland replied smoothly that he had heard from Archbishop Hamilton that the Hamiltons, who had hitherto supported Mary, were in favour of her being executed, for then all the nobles would be able to come together without fear of the future.¹⁵

The Hamiltons had, until Mary’s abdication, been plotting a marriage between her and Lord John Hamilton, Chatelherault’s second son, which they hoped would follow her mooted divorce from Bothwell, and which would ensure a Hamilton succession. Now they were ready to betray her, having realised that only the life of an infant lay between them and the throne. That this was their motivation is clear from the fact that, as a condition of their support for the Lords, they insisted that Darnley’s brother, Lord Charles Stuart, be excluded from the succession. Throckmorton was disgusted that noblemen “could have such double faces and such traitorous minds.”¹⁶

By 13 August, Balfour had resigned his governorship of Edinburgh Castle to Grange,¹⁷in return for “a large grant of money” and church lands, an acquittance of all concern in Darnley’s murder—which would not have been necessary had he not been involved—and Moray’s priory of Pittenweem in Fife.¹⁸Throckmorton says he left “on good composition” with the Lords,¹⁹but Grange was obviously the better man for the job. Later, Balfour was made President of the Court of Session.

On 15 August, Moray visited Mary at Lochleven. She greeted him with “great passion and weeping,” but he was “cold and reserved.” It was a painful meeting, in which he caused her great distress by his reproaches for her conduct, and gave her “such injurious language as was likely to break her heart. The injuries were such as they cut the thread of love betwixt him and the Queen for ever.” Mary insisted she was “innocent of all that could be laid to her charge” and that God would in the end “manifest her innocence,” but after she had objected to Moray being appointed Regent, he left her with “nothing but the hope of God’s mercy.”²⁰

When he returned the next day, his mood was more conciliatory. He told Mary that he could not obtain her liberty, but “would assure her of her life and, as much as lay in him, the preservation of her honour” by preventing the publication of her letters, but if she made trouble and persisted in her inordinate affection for Bothwell, her life would be in peril and he would not be able to save her. However, if she lamented her past sins, “so as it might appear she detested her former life and intended a more modest behaviour,” and if she showed abhorrence for Darnley’s murder and “minded no revenge to the Lords and others who had sought her reformation,” she might “one day be restored to the throne.” Believing this, Mary kissed Moray and begged him to accept the Regency.²¹

In London, later that month, Lady Lennox told de Silva that “the Queen of Scots admitted to her brother that she knew the conspiracy for her husband’s murder.”²²Moray, however, made no mention of this in his account to Throckmorton. Lady Lennox was naturally happy to spread any calumny about the woman who, she believed, had murdered her son.

Moray returned to Edinburgh on 19 August. After speaking with him, Throckmorton reported that Moray meant to have obedience to the young King’s government if it cost him his life. However, he was not disposed to execute Mary, or keep her in perpetual prison. It was clear to Throckmorton that, rather than sympathising with Mary, Moray concurred with the Lords, “yea, and as seriously as any one of them.”²³

By 14 August, Bothwell and his fleet had arrived in the Shetland Isles, where he hired two more ships.²⁴Five days later, Grange and Tullibardine embarked with nine warships to seek him out. They sailed first to Orkney, then, finding he was not there, pressed on to Shetland.

Moray was proclaimed Regent on 22 August.²⁵Scotland now had a Protestant government, swept to power on a platform of public virtue, and committed to bringing Darnley’s murderers to justice. Moray proved a popular ruler and a good administrator. He restored order to the troubled kingdom, and peace in the Borders—in January 1568, Drury was to report that that troublesome region had not been quieter for forty years.²⁶The Hamiltons, however, did not welcome Moray’s appointment.

Moray trusted Maitland no more than Mary did, suspecting—possibly with good reason—that the Secretary was a secret supporter of the Queen, although Melville says that all who found fault with the Regent’s harsh attitude towards his sister “lost his favour.” From the first, Moray banned Maitland from his counsels, and thereafter, the former colleagues were on increasingly bad terms.

Elizabeth, not surprisingly, refused to recognise either Mary’s abdication or James VI’s title and Moray’s Regency, and recalled Throckmorton immediately (he left on 30 August). In response, a sanguine Moray wrote with some insight to Cecil: “Although the Queen’s Majesty your mistress outwardly seems not altogether to allow the present state here, yet doubt I not but Her Highness in her heart likes it well enough.”²⁷For the time being, as if to confirm the truth of this, Elizabeth—having realised that the French did not intend to interfere in Scotland—made no serious efforts to restore Mary or overthrow Moray. Although diplomatic relations between England and Scotland had been officially broken off, Moray and Cecil continued to correspond in private. And while Moray told Cecil that his new office was neither welcome nor pleasing,²⁸there is no doubt that the change of government suited both very well.

Grange’s ships reached the Shetlands at the beginning of September, but Bothwell narrowly evaded capture and was driven by gales towards Norway with two men-of-war and 140 men; among them, perhaps, was Paris.²⁹Bothwell’s other ships were taken, however, and Hay, Hepburn and Cullen, being found on board, were placed under arrest before being conveyed back to Edinburgh, where they were thrown into prison. When interrogated, Hay initially told his captors that Bothwell and Huntly had murdered the King.

Bothwell later claimed that his plan was to go to France by way of Denmark, “where I could make arrangements for the dispatch of troops and naval forces to Scotland.” He felt sure that Mary would approve of this move, “but to make certain of this, I managed to get details of this plan to her. In her opinion, [it] was excellent, and she begged me to put it into effect as soon as possible.”³⁰Bothwell does not reveal his means of communication with Mary, but it is clear that some people at Lochleven were becoming increasingly sympathetic towards her, and one of them may have smuggled messages. A holograph letter from Mary was later found on Bothwell’s ship: in it, she complained of the treatment meted out to her by the Lords, and lamented that no friends had stood by her, so it must have been written after she was confined at Lochleven.³¹It is unlikely, given that Mary was constantly watched while she was in the Black Turnpike, that she had managed to get out a letter to Bothwell from there, as the Lords claimed she had tried to do.

But Bothwell’s scheme did not work out as he had planned. On 2 September, his ship sailed into Bergen, where it was his misfortune to be recognised by Anna Throndssen, the woman he had jilted after promising to marry her, and various other creditors, who took their complaints to Frederick II, King of Denmark and Norway.³²As a result, at the end of September, Bothwell was placed in honourable confinement in Copenhagen Castle while Frederick decided what was to be done with him.³³It did not help that there had also been found on Bothwell’s ship a copy of the proclamation branding him as the murderer of the King and an outlaw with a price on his head; nor that, during his short rule in Scotland, Bothwell had shown himself friendly towards Sweden, with whom Frederick was at war. Nevertheless, his imprisonment was not entirely punitive, for the King was well aware of Bothwell’s importance as a useful political hostage.

On 5 September, Bedford reported that Hay had made a deposition revealing “the whole device of the murder, declaring who were the executioners of the same, and went so far as to touch a great many, not of the smallest.”³⁴ Drury informed Cecil that Hay was being spared until the great personages he had accused could be arrested.³⁵But this did not happen. Obviously Hay had “touched” far too many people, for on 13 May, he made a second deposition, accusing only Bothwell.³⁶The other names had evidently been suppressed.

Sandy Durham was also in the Tolbooth at this time, but there is no record of what happened to him. On 15 September, Moray, reporting the return of Grange and Tullibardine with their prisoners, commented that few of those taken were “notable men, excepting Cullen, who chanced by God’s provision in our hands, and being his chamberchild and one of the very executors, he may make us clear in the whole action as it proceeded.”³⁷Moray’s meaning is obscure: was Cullen Bothwell’s cabin-mate on board ship, and did the Regent hope to get from him an account of how Bothwell had managed to escape? Or, which is more likely, had Cullen been Bothwell’s protégé (the word “chamberchild” may have homosexual connotations) and one of the “executors” of Darnley’s murder, and was Moray hoping that he would give details of it to the Lords? If so, why did Moray not rely on Cullen’s earlier testimony, in which he had revealed “the whole manner and circumstance” of the murder? He may have desired to hear it for himself, having been out of Scotland in July, or he may have wanted it put into the form of a deposition, none having been taken before. What is more likely, however, is that Cullen had revealed nothing useful during his earlier interrogation, but that Moray believed that he was able to do so. When this proved not to be the case, Cullen was released. He was next heard of in 1570–1 as an officer of the Edinburgh garrison. Hepburn did not make a deposition until 8 December.³⁸

It seemed that Mary’s cause was hopelessly lost. On 15 September, Argyll and Huntly came to terms with Moray, and Argyll was given a place on the Regency Council.³⁹But the Hamiltons were determined to overthrow Moray, and had formed their own confederacy for this purpose. At a meeting in September, they announced their appointment of Lord John Hamilton (acting for the exiled Chatelherault), Argyll and Huntly as regents, and stated that the aims of their confederacy were to pursue Darnley’s murderers and liberate Mary. But their embryonic coup was easily suppressed by Moray, whose rule was rapidly gaining popular support.⁴⁰On 1 October, Dunbar Castle, which had been held for Bothwell by his adherent Patrick Hay of Whitelaw against the Lords since the Earl’s flight, finally fell (the Lords had it destroyed in 1568). The only fortress left in royalist hands was the mighty stronghold of Dumbarton in the west which was being held by Lord Fleming for the Queen. Also on 1 October, a long list of sixty-two Summonses of Forfeiture for the murder of the King was drawn up by the Council. Naturally, there were some significant omissions: none of the Douglases, for example, were mentioned. Soon afterwards, Lord Herries, who had supported the Queen, submitted to Moray, although he privately remained loyal to Mary. By the middle of October, Moray was able to tell Cecil that Scotland was quiet.⁴¹ Even Elizabeth had come to terms with the fact that she could do nothing to change the situation there.

On 11 November, Moray appointed Morton Chancellor in place of Huntly. That month, the Lords acquitted Bothwell’s uncle, the Bishop of Moray, of complicity in Darnley’s murder, which was absurd, considering that the Bishop had never been implicated in it. This may, however, have been a politic exercise to demonstrate the fairness and impartiality of the Lords, who were prepared to acquit Bothwell’s partisans as well as condemn them.

At the end of September, Drury had reported that Mary had put on weight and, “instead of choler, makes a show of mirth.” In October, Bedford wrote: “The Queen is as merry and wanton⁴²as at any time since she was detained,” and had “drawn divers to pity her, who before envied her, and would her evil.” Now, on 28 November, Drury gleefully reported “a suspicion of over-great familiarity” between the Queen and eighteen-year-old George Douglas, brother of Sir William, which had increased “more and more, and [is] worse spoken of than I may write.”⁴³In December, Drury wrote that Mary had asked Moray to consent to her marriage to Douglas, once she was free of Bothwell—whom she was no longer refusing to abandon—but that Moray had told her that Douglas “was overmean a marriage for Her Grace.”⁴⁴Mary may have seen Douglas as a means of escape, but Cecil claimed that Douglas had fallen into “a fantasy of love” with her. Nau, however, gives the impression that his affection for Mary was chivalrous and platonic, but whatever its nature, he was still sent away from Lochleven. Furthermore, the rumours reported by Drury gave rise to the later bruit that Mary had borne Douglas a child.

Drury also reported on 28 November that the Lords had met to discuss the documents in the silver casket. He revealed that “the writings which did comprehend the names and consents of the chiefs for murdering of the King are turned to ashes,” but that evidence incriminating Mary had been “kept to be shown”⁴⁵at the Parliament that had just been summoned to meet in December. The “writings” that had been destroyed almost certainly included the copy of the Craigmillar Bond that Bothwell had entrusted to Mary, which Argyll must have surrendered to Moray. The destruction of the Craigmillar Bond is proof of the Lords’ awareness that it incriminated them in Darnley’s murder and that they could not therefore use it against Bothwell. It has been claimed that they would hardly have informed Drury of its destruction, but there were among the Lords a growing number of those who secretly supported Mary, and his informant may well have been one of them.

On 4 December, emboldened by the success of their coup and the support of the people for their government, the Lords framed an Act of Council formally charging Mary with Darnley’s murder, and also with an intent to murder her son. The Act stated that “the cause and occasion of the taking of the Queen’s person on 15 June last was in the said Queen’s own default, inasfar as by divers her privy letters written and subscribed with her own hand, and sent to James, Earl of Bothwell, chief executioner of the horrible murder, it is most certain that she was privy, art and part, and of the actual devise and deed of the murder of the King, her lawful husband.” The document was signed by Morton, Maitland and Balfour, all of whom had been implicated in the murder, and twenty-seven others. This was the first official reference to the Casket Letters, and the first occasion on which the Lords formally accused Mary of Darnley’s murder. They had realised by now that they were unlikely to lay hands for some time on their first scapegoat, Bothwell, so they had decided to bring Mary to justice instead, for several reasons. They had to justify their continuing imprisonment of her now that she had abandoned Bothwell, satisfy the people’s thirst for vengeance, damn the swelling wave of sympathy for the imprisoned Queen by a timely reminder of her misdeeds and crimes, and at the same time remove a possible focus for rebellion. Above all, they needed to justify their deposition and imprisonment of the Queen in Parliament, and thereby safeguard themselves from charges of treason. For many days, the Lords had debated what to do about the Casket Letters before coming to the conclusion that the only course to take was to “open and reveal the truth of the whole matter from the beginning, plainly and uprightly, which, insofar as the manifestation thereof may tend to the dishonour of the Queen, they are most loath to enter in.”⁴⁶Nevertheless, they were going to do it.

Attention should be drawn to the fact that, in the Act, the Lords stated that the reason they had taken the Queen into custody on 15 June was the proof of her guilt that was evident from the Casket Letters, yet these letters were not in fact discovered until nearly a week later. Furthermore, the Act is known to us through a copy sent to Cecil; it is not mentioned in the record of the Council’s proceedings for 4 December 1567 that is preserved in the Register House in Edinburgh.

On 8 December, Mary reached twenty-five, the age at which Scottish sovereigns were deemed to have attained their majority, and at which they could rescind any grants of land bestowed during their minority. Aware that Parliament was soon to assemble, she wrote to Moray on that day, begging to be allowed to appear before Parliament to “vindicate her innocence” and answer the false calumnies which had been published about her since her imprisonment. She would submit herself to all the rigour of the laws, according to which she earnestly desired that proceedings should be taken for the punishment of all persons who might be found guilty of the murder of the late King. There was no law which permitted anyone to be condemned outright without his cause having been heard, if it touched but the welfare of the least of her subjects. It was much more reasonable, then, that justice should be done to her, their Queen, in a matter which touched her honour, which was dearer to her than her life.

Moray sent back a brisk refusal.⁴⁷There was a high degree of self-interest involved in his decision, as well as political considerations. Too many of the Confederate Lords had received grants from Mary, and they were determined that she should never have the opportunity of cancelling them.

Nau claims that, at this time, Moray was scheming to make himself King, taking the view that he “could presently rid himself” of young James. “Many of his party were now earnest with him to declare himself King. With these views, Moray had employed various persons to discover how he might establish his legitimacy by proving the marriage which he was now advised to assert as having been secretly contracted between King James V and his mother, although she was then married to another man. This proposition was then abandoned, for Moray saw there was faint hope of the success which he had expected.”

Parliament met on 15 December, and passed an Act declaring that Mary’s abdication, James’s coronation and Moray’s Regency were all “lawful and perfect.” Another Act ratified “the retention of our Sovereign Lord’s mother’s person” and stated that the conduct of the Lords had been fully justified by her actions, “inasmuch as it was clearly evident, both by the evidence from divers her privy letters written wholly with her own hand to the Earl of Bothwell, and her marriage to Bothwell, that she was privy, art and part, of the actual devise and deed” of Darnley’s murder. The Act had effectively tried and condemned Mary without her being heard. There were objections from Huntly, Herries and others, but they were speedily overruled.⁴⁸

Some historians have made much of the fact that the words “and subscribed,” which appeared in the Act of Council of 4 December, do not appear in the Act of Parliament. None of the Casket Letters that were later produced in evidence against Mary was signed, and it may be that the Lords noticed their error in the Act of Council and were quick to amend it in the Act of Parliament. It has also been suggested that the Act of Council found among Cecil’s papers is a forgery,⁴⁹but why such a document should have been counterfeited is a mystery. In addition it has been claimed that the signatures and addresses were removed from the Casket Letters between 4 and 15 December.⁵⁰Yet the discrepancy may be due to simple error: after all, Bothwell is referred to as “James, Earl of Bothwell” in the Act of Council, and as “James, sometime Earl of Bothwell” in the Act of Parliament.

A declaration by the Queen’s loyal nobles issued at Dumbarton in 1568 stated that “Her Majesty’s writing” was “produced in Parliament”;⁵¹in this document, the “writing” is constantly referred to as “it,” which suggests that only one piece of writing was produced. Yet there is no mention of this in any other source. If one or more of the Casket Letters were indeed produced in Parliament, no one questioned their veracity. There were too many vested interests involved and too many reputations to protect.⁵²

Between 15 and 20 December, Parliament re-enacted the legislation of the Reformation Parliament of 1560, and restated the Protestant Confession of Faith, which was the cornerstone of the reformed Kirk. It also repeated the Act of 1564 that declared Mary of age, so that no one could say that the Lords had forced a minor to abdicate. On 20 December, Parliament ratified the forfeiture of Bothwell’s titles and estates and declared him guilty of treason. This Act stated that the Queen had “suspected no evil from any of her subjects, least of all from him,” which appeared to exonerate her of the crimes of which she had just been declared guilty.⁵³On the day this Act was passed, Caithness protested, on behalf of all the jurors at Bothwell’s trial, that the evidence had not been adequate to justify his condemnation.⁵⁴

On 6 February 1568, Archbishop Beaton reported that Moray had been determined to prosecute Archbishop Hamilton in Parliament “on the plea that he had a hand in the murder, which is only a calumny.” If the report was true, Moray stayed his hand, but Lennox and his supporters certainly believed in the Archbishop’s guilt, which would have serious consequences for him later on.

When Mary heard of the Acts passed against her, she was horrified at these terrible slurs upon her honour, and fearful that she was in danger of death. In desperation, she appealed to both Elizabeth I and Catherine de’ Medici for help, but neither responded. In fact, each was more concerned to outbid the other for Mary’s black pearls, which, as has been noted, Moray finally sold to Elizabeth.

Around this time, Moray, Morton, Balfour and others visited Mary at Lochleven, but they showed her “such contempt and disdain that the breach ever afterwards grew wider. Moray could never bear her to insist, as she did earnestly and continually, that she ought to be discharged of the crimes imputed to her, about which she was much more solicitous than for her life and the re-establishment of her authority.” Mary showed herself particularly contemptuous of Balfour, who had betrayed her and Bothwell twice in June, and called him an “arch traitor” to his face, which caused him to hide himself behind the other Lords, “reddening excessively.”⁵⁵

By 22 December, only seven of the sixty-two persons summoned for Darnley’s murder remained at liberty: the Ormistons, James Murray, Patrick Wilson, Paris and two others. Wilson had disappeared, and was never caught. The Ormistons were still hiding out in Liddesdale, in the house in which Ker of Fawdonside was being held under arrest. Murray was in exile in England, and Paris was probably in Denmark with Bothwell.

Argyll, Huntly and Herries formally recognised Moray as Regent on 29 December,⁵⁶but although it seemed that Mary’s former supporters had one by one fallen away, by the end of that fateful year of 1567, public opinion was changing in her favour.

The new year of 1568 began with a public spectacle in Edinburgh, calculated to satisfy the demands of the people for justice and retribution. On 3 January, Hay, Hepburn, Powrie and Dalgleish were tried for treason and condemned, then immediately hanged and quartered at the Mercat Cross. According to their depositions, neither Powrie nor Dalgleish had done anything to merit death, but these depositions may not reflect the real truth, and anyway the Lords were not concerned with such niceties. The dismembered corpses of the executed wretches were displayed on pikes above the gates of Glasgow, Hamilton, Dumbarton, Ayr and other western towns, where support for Mary was strongest.

Drury claimed that, on the scaffold, Hepburn had declared that Huntly, Argyll and Maitland had all signed the bond for Darnley’s murder,⁵⁷and the Diurnal of Occurrents claims that Hay also named Bothwell, Balfour and “divers other nobles of the realm” and said that “Balfour and Maitland were notoriously known as the principal advisers and counsellors”; but this dying testimony was never offered in evidence against any of those named. Archbishop Beaton informed the Cardinal of Lorraine that all four of the condemned “confessed that they had amply deserved the punishment of death, yet declared the Queen’s innocence, and accused the greatest and chiefest on [the] Council, who were at that time sitting beside [them], especially Morton, Lethington and Balfour, and their own master, the Earl.”⁵⁸This testimony gave rise to uncomfortable rumours in Edinburgh that the servants were being made scapegoats for the masters, as well as demands that the Lords named “should suffer for their demerits,” and a fresh series of placards and broadsheets began to appear. One was posted outside Moray’s town house, and another to the very wall of the Council Chamber in the Tolbooth, which asked, “why John Hepburn and John Hay were not compelled openly to declare the manner of the King’s slaughter, and who consented thereto?” This whispering campaign served to bolster the Queen’s cause, especially when it became known that the nobles named by the condemned men had “incontinently departed” from Edinburgh, “which [made] the charge against them all the more probable.”⁵⁹

The Lennoxes were still convinced that Bothwell and Mary were the sole authors of their son’s slaughter, and in January 1568, they commissioned a memorial picture to proclaim to the world the deep sense of injustice they felt. Painted by a Dutchman, Livinius de Vogelaare, it shows Darnley’s mourning parents and younger brother kneeling before his armour-clad effigy in the chapel royal at Holyrood. In front of them kneels Darnley’s son, the infant James VI, and in the corner is a vignette of Mary’s defeat at Carberry Hill. The picture is littered with inscriptions, but most have been obliterated by time and clumsy restoration; one reads, “Arise, Lord, and avenge the innocent blood of the King my father.” The memorial was painted in London, and therefore does not give an accurate impression of Darnley’s real tomb, but its real impact was meant to be as a piece of powerful political propaganda, intended to provoke Queen Elizabeth to demand the ultimate penalty for Mary and the extradition of Bothwell, who was to suffer the same fate. Elizabeth’s petition to Frederick II to send Bothwell back to Scotland to face trial failed, and the Lennoxes did not live to see the execution of Mary on the English Queen’s orders, but The Memorial of Lord Darnley survives in the Royal Collection at Holyrood Palace as a searing testimony to their terrible and vengeful grief.⁶⁰

In faraway Denmark, having just been transferred to Malmoë Castle, on the opposite shore of the Sound to Copenhagen, Bothwell was also stating his case, but in a different manner. On 5 January, he dictated his memoirs, in French, to a Danish secretary appointed by Frederick II; Bothwell himself wrote the subheadings that appear in the margin. These memoirs were later published as Les Affaires du Conte de Boduel. Naturally, this was a highly sanitised version of events, for it was written in the hope of securing Bothwell’s release, and its aim was to present its author in the best possible light and his enemies as utter villains. It named, as “the leaders and principal authors of all this trouble and sedition,” Moray, Atholl, Glencairn, Morton, Mar, Lindsay, Maitland, Bellenden, MacGill, Home, Ruthven, Tullibardine, Preston and Balfour, amongst others—just about all of the ruling élite in Scotland. Bothwell concluded: “I have been falsely accused, detained without justification, and prevented from going about the business I have in certain kingdoms with various princes and noblemen for the freeing of my Princess.”⁶¹

On 13 January, Bothwell wrote to Frederick II explaining the factional strife in Scotland; it is clear from this letter that he was still corresponding with Mary, for he says that she has authorised him to offer Frederick the Isles of Orkney and Shetland in exchange for troops and ships. None of these letters between Bothwell and Mary has survived. It would appear that Mary was hoping that Bothwell would return at the head of an army and rescue her. But Frederick did not take up Bothwell’s offer—he was in fact hoping to get the Scottish government to give him Orkney and Shetland in exchange for his prisoner. In the meantime, “the Scottish King” was quite comfortably housed and allowed visitors and other privileges.

On 11 February 1568, Drury reported that Mary had been severely ill with “a disease in her side and a swelling in her arm, of whose sickness there ariseth divers bruits and reports in Scotland.”⁶²Because this illness occurred nine months after her abduction by Bothwell, there was talk that the Queen had secretly given birth to his child; her miscarriage the previous July was not common knowledge.

In 1659, Le Labourer, Louis XIV’s almoner, who edited and annotated the memoirs of the French diplomat, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de la Mauvissière,⁶³claimed in a footnote—without citing his source—that Mary “was brought to bed of a daughter at Lochleven, who, being privately transported to France, became a nun in the convent of Soissons.” In the nineteenth century, the writer Charlotte Mary Yonge wrote a novel about this child (whom she called Bride), entitled Unknown to History; in this version, the ship carrying the little girl to France is wrecked, but Bride is rescued by a kinsman of the Earl of Shrewsbury who later marries her to his son, Sir Humphrey Talbot.

Since’s Nau’s account of the Queen’s miscarriage of twins could only have come from Mary herself or her physician, it must be reliable. Even if the miscarriage story had been invented in the 1570s in order to protect the identity of the unknown Princess at Soissons, Mary’s pregnancy would never have advanced to full term without being detected by her gaolers. Furthermore, Mary later referred to James VI as “my only child.” Her illness of January/February 1568 was without doubt a recurrence of the old pain in her side, which was almost certainly caused by a gastric ulcer exacerbated by stress. Bishop Gilbert Burnet, in his History of My Own Time (1724–34), claimed, without any foundation, that Mary had borne a son to George Douglas.

By March 1568, relations between England and Scotland were warmer, but there was dissension amongst the Lords, who were beginning to be divided in their attitude to Mary. Maitland in particular was becoming strongly disaffected, and secretly sent the Queen a ring in token of his support. M. de la Forrest, the French ambassador in London, was of the opinion that two-thirds of the people in Scotland would rise against Moray if an opportunity arose, for it was felt “that the said Regent and his chief supporters should clear themselves of the murder of the late King—a thing much to be desired, for, for a long time, it has been confidently asserted that these men were accomplices in the said murder.”⁶⁴Taking advantage of the increasing upsurge in the Queen’s popularity, Seton and the Hamiltons openly declared for her, and in April, encouraged by the way things were going, Mary herself formulated plans for escape.

Alarmed in case the growing clamour should prejudice the thawing relations with England, Moray sent Nicholas Elphinstone to London with a copy of the Act of Parliament that had pronounced Mary guilty of the murder of Darnley, along with the black pearls that Elizabeth had so much coveted, at a reduced price.⁶⁵But Elizabeth refused to become embroiled in Scottish affairs.

On 25 March, Mary made an abortive attempt to escape from Lochleven. Soon afterwards, Moray visited her to upbraid her for her folly, only to be confronted by a woman in fighting spirit who angrily castigated him for passing the Act of Parliament that had authorised her detention.

Five weeks later, Mary did succeed in escaping.