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“POWERFUL CONSIDERATIONS”

ON 6 SEPTEMBER 1561, MARY appointed her Privy Council. Amongst its sixteen members, aside from Lord James and Maitland, were several men who would play a prominent part in her story. Bothwell was one of them. “She was pleased to reward me personally, far more generously and graciously than I deserved,” he wrote later, of his appointment and a gift of land that the Queen had given him in recognition of his loyalty to her mother and herself.¹That autumn, the English agent in Edinburgh, Thomas Randolph, observed a certain rapport between Mary and Bothwell, which was perhaps natural in the circumstances.

The other members of the new Privy Council were the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earls of Huntly, Argyll, Morton, Atholl, Glencairn, Errol, Montrose and Marischal, Lord Erskine, the Lord High Treasurer Robert Richardson, the Clerk Register James MacGill, and the Justice Clerk James Bellenden. Four—Huntly, Errol, Montrose and Atholl—were Catholics; most of the rest were staunch members of the Congregation.

George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly was Mary’s cousin, his mother having been Margaret Stewart, a bastard daughter of James IV. This powerful and wealthy magnate ruled north-eastern Scotland like an autonomous prince, and was now reappointed Chancellor, an office he had held since 1546. As the leading Catholic noble, Huntly might have led his co-religionists against the Lords of the Congregation, but instead he had briefly defected to the latter and so destroyed all hope of a Catholic revival. Not surprisingly, Mary did not trust him.

Unlike most of his colleagues, John Stewart, 4th Earl of Atholl was an honourable man with high principles, and would remain loyal to Mary until 1567, when her behaviour outraged his sense of propriety. He was no friend to Huntly, but co-operated with both Lord James and Maitland, becoming a friend of the latter. Atholl’s wife, Margaret Fleming, a sister of Mary Fleming, was reputed to be a witch and to have the power to cast spells.

Archibald Campbell, 5th Earl of Argyll, whose power base lay in the western Highlands, had been educated at the University of St. Andrews and in 1557 was one of the first to join the Lords of the Congregation. An epileptic, he was married to Mary’s only half-sister, Jean Stewart, the natural daughter of James V by Elizabeth Beaton, but the marriage was unhappy because of Argyll’s infidelities. Nor, according to Mary, was Lady Argyll “as circumspect in all things as she would wish her to be.”²The Queen even resorted to asking John Knox to “put them in unity,” but his intervention was ultimately unsuccessful, as the couple were divorced in 1573. Both the Earl and Countess stood high in Mary’s favour, while Argyll’s tolerance of her Catholic observances earned him a rebuke from Knox.

Another active member of the Congregation was Alexander Cunningham, 4th Earl of Glencairn, a man who was motivated more by religious fervour than by political considerations, and was loudly disapproving of Mary’s private Masses.

James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, the head of the powerful Douglas clan, was to be implicated heavily in Darnley’s murder. Now aged about fortyfive, he was a cousin of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, with whom he was involved in a long-standing battle for the disputed earldom of Angus. Morton was a staunch Protestant and a pensioner of Queen Elizabeth. Sir James Melville called him “witty in worldly affairs and policy,” but said he had “a crafty head.” He was illiterate, sadistic, unscrupulous and avaricious, and Mary was repelled by his uncouth and sometimes brutal manners, yet he was also an able and energetic politician. Morton’s promiscuity was notorious, but his private life was tragic: his wife was insane for the last twenty-two years of their marriage, and seven of their ten children had died young.

One of the most aggressive Protestants on the Council was the brutal Patrick, 6th Lord Lindsay of the Byres, who was married to Lord James’s half-sister, Euphemia Douglas. This man, who would one day become one of Mary’s most virulent enemies, was a creature of Knox and “a raging, furious, rude, ignorant man, nothing differing from a beast.”³It was he who had incited the mob to protest against Mary’s Mass.

It is necessary to examine the tensions and rivalry between certain nobles and to recount the actions of the Earl of Bothwell and his relations with the Queen during the first three years of her reign, in order to lay the basis for an understanding of later events. Despite an outward show of friendship for the Queen’s sake, there was bad blood between Bothwell and Lord James, and mutual hatred between Bothwell and the Hamiltons. Lord James was determined to undermine Mary’s confidence in Bothwell, and at his instance, Mary made the latter Lieutenant of the Borders in order to remove him from court and avoid clashes between him and the volatile Arran. Bothwell later claimed that the preferment shown him by Mary “incensed my enemies so greatly that they employed every falsity and malicious invention to put me out of favour with the Queen.”⁴

The unstable Arran was still cherishing vain hopes of marrying the Queen. In November, a casual remark by the Earl gave rise to an alarming rumour that he was intending to abduct her from Holyrood, which caused a momentary panic at court until it was proved baseless.⁵

In December, Bothwell resolved to discredit Arran. He had learned that the puritanical Earl was secretly having an affair with the daughter of an Edinburgh merchant, Alison Craig, “a good, handsome wench”⁶whom Bothwell himself wished to seduce. One night, Bothwell and his friends, Mary’s favourite half-brother Lord John Stewart and her uncle René de Guise, Marquis d’Elbeouf, all masked, arrived at Alison Craig’s house, hoping to surprise the couple in flagrante delicto, but Arran was not there. Not wishing to lose face, they returned the next night, drunk; when they were refused entry, they broke down the doors and ransacked the house, only to find that Arran had already escaped by a back way.⁷

On Christmas Eve, 300 armed Hamiltons, affronted by the insult to Arran, converged upon the city seeking Bothwell, who in turn raised 500 supporters, intent upon retaliation. Edinburgh was in an uproar. Meanwhile, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, outraged by Bothwell’s behaviour towards one of its most stalwart supporters, had complained to the Queen. The next day, after Lord James, Argyll and Huntly had managed to disperse the armed factions, Mary reprimanded Bothwell and the other culprits, then sent Bothwell to his castle at Crichton for two weeks in the interests of keeping the peace, and said she trusted that the matter would be forgotten.⁸When the General Assembly demanded that Bothwell and his friends be tried and punished for “this heinous crime,” Mary refused, and so, wrote Knox, “deluded the just petition of her subjects.”

Bothwell had certainly not forfeited Mary’s favour. In January, she went to Crichton Castle for the wedding of his sister Janet to Lord John Stewart. Bothwell hosted the lavish celebrations,⁹while Lord James was also present. On 30 January, Mary secretly created James Earl of Moray; the vast estates that went with the earldom were, however, in the possession of the unsuspecting Earl of Huntly, and it would require a certain diplomacy, if not force, to get them back, hence the secrecy. A week later, Lord James was married by Knox to Agnes Keith, daughter of William, Earl Marischal, in St. Giles’s Kirk, and on the same day Mary publicly conferred on him the earldom of Mar, which he resigned soon afterwards in favour of Lord Erskine.

In February, at Bothwell’s instigation, and through the mediation of John Knox, Arran and Bothwell were reconciled at Chatelherault’s newly built mansion at Kirk o’Field, south of Edinburgh.¹⁰But Arran was becoming increasingly eccentric. In March, he went to the Queen and accused Bothwell and himself of treasonably plotting to kidnap her and carry her off to Dumbarton Castle so that Arran could, as Bothwell allegedly suggested, use “her person at your pleasure until she agree to whatsoever thing you desire”; then they would murder Lord James and Maitland and seize control of the government. According to Bothwell, Lord James had put Arran up to making these accusations¹¹and, as a result of what Bothwell termed “these false suggestions,” was able to order them both “into close arrest in the prison of Edinburgh Castle” without benefit of trial.¹²Thomas Randolph, however, reported that Bothwell was “found guilty on his own confession in some points.”¹³

For some time, anxious doubts had been expressed about Arran’s sanity. Randolph had noticed that he was “drowned in dreams and feedeth himself with fantasies.”¹⁴Now, “he began to rave and speak of devils, witches and such like, fearing that all men about came to kill him.”¹⁵Clearly, he was no longer responsible for his actions, and it is impossible to tell whether or not his accusations against Bothwell were based on truth or were simply the product of a deranged mind. It should be remembered, however, that five years later Bothwell did in fact abduct the Queen and carry her off to one of his castles, and it may be that in 1562, despite his protestations of innocence, he was indeed plotting a similar thing, with a view to overthrowing Lord James.

Chatelherault came to Mary, weeping at the disgrace of his son, but although she received him “with all gentleness,”¹⁶he was made to surrender Dumbarton Castle. After being declared insane and chained in a dark cell for four years, Arran was released from prison and committed into his mother’s care. Utterly mad, he spent forty-seven years in confinement, dying in 1609.

As soon as the Earl of Lennox learned of Mary’s return to her kingdom, he sent a messenger to her with a plea for the restitution of his Scottish estates and permission to return to Scotland. In December, Queen Elizabeth got wind of this and other questionable activities from her spies in Yorkshire¹⁷ and, alarmed to hear that the Lennoxes were plotting to marry their son Darnley to Mary, placed the whole family under house arrest in London. In February 1562, the English ports were closed in case Darnley tried to escape,¹⁸but in April he gave his gaolers the slip; Randolph reported a rumour that he had gone to France.¹⁹In consequence of this, Lennox was sent to the Tower and his wife and younger son Charles placed under house arrest at Sheen, Surrey. Lennox was interrogated several times by the Privy Council, and in May Cecil drew up a list of fifteen articles against the Countess, but there was little that could be proved against them. Meanwhile, the Council was trying in vain to establish Lady Lennox’s illegitimacy.

In June, Lennox made a humble submission to the Queen, but Elizabeth was not inclined to mercy. The following month, his wife appealed to Cecil for his release, as he was “in close prison” and had “a disease which solitariness is most against.”²⁰Lennox perhaps suffered from claustrophobia, or, it has been suggested, from depression or terrors arising from a guilty conscience over his savage treatment of his young hostages in 1544. Cecil ignored the letter.

In December 1561, disappointed that Mary had not sent any representatives to the Catholic Council of Trent, Pope Pius IV intimated that he thought she would do little for the faith unless pressure was put upon her. That very month, she approved an Act of Parliament for financing the Protestant Kirk out of former Catholic revenues. In June 1562, when a Papal Nuncio, the Jesuit Father Nicholas de Gouda, arrived secretly in Scotland with proposals from the Pope, Mary rejected them all. In Randolph’s opinion, she had no intention of oversetting the reformed religion, and this seemed to be confirmed by the action she took against Huntly, the leading Catholic peer, who might have been her ally in any counter-reformation.

In August, Mary embarked on what was ostensibly a progress to the Highlands, but in fact turned out to be a military campaign to destroy the might of the Gordons. This was thought by some to be at the instigation of Lord James, who was proclaimed Earl of Moray that August and was intent on reclaiming the Moray estates, but Mary herself was a prime mover in the matter, and not without provocation: Huntly’s son, Sir John Gordon, had been imprisoned for brawling in Edinburgh, and the Huntly clan were determined to avenge the insult. Moreover, Lord John, who had since escaped, was now threatening to abduct the Queen and force her to marry him. After Mary had been refused entry to Inverness Castle, Huntly surrendered, but soon afterwards broke into open rebellion. At the Battle of Corrichie, near Aberdeen, on 28 October, the Gordons were defeated by an army led by the new Earl of Moray: Huntly dropped dead on the battlefield, from either a heart attack or a stroke, and Sir John was later beheaded; the Queen, watching at Moray’s insistence, screamed and fainted when the executioner bungled his work. She was also present when Huntly’s embalmed corpse was tried and condemned for treason before Parliament in 1563 in Edinburgh. The Huntly estates were then declared forfeit, and the late Earl’s heir, Lord George Gordon, who had played no part in the rebellion, was tried for treason and condemned to death, but Mary defied Moray and refused to sign the warrant, so he was imprisoned at Dunbar instead. Morton was made Lord Chancellor in place of Huntly.

The fall of the Gordons left the Protestant party all the more powerful. Moray had now eliminated or neutralised several of his enemies. Yet Bothwell remained a thorn in his side. At the end of August, Bothwell had escaped from his prison in Edinburgh Castle by prising loose a bar from his window and climbing down the castle rock;²¹then he had made for Hermitage Castle, one of his strongholds in the Borders. From there, he wrote to Mary to “find out what the Queen’s real thoughts and intentions were towards me,”²²but Randolph reported in September, “Anything he can do or say can little prevail. Her purpose is to put him out of the country.”²³Bothwell, however, “discovered that she knew well enough that I had been accused only through motives of personal hatred and envy, but that, for the time being, she was quite unable to give me any help or assistance. But she sent a message to say that I was to do the best I could for myself.”²⁴

Moray demanded that Bothwell surrender himself on pain of indictment for treason, but Bothwell deemed it prudent to leave Scotland. “I decided to take ship to France, but a tempest drove me to England.” Washed up on the Northumbrian coast, he remained in hiding until 7 January, when he was taken prisoner and confined in Tynemouth Castle. It was at this time that Moray and Maitland—and Randolph—began to be concerned about Mary’s dealings with Bothwell. On 22 January, Randolph reported that the Lords “suspect the Queen to be more favourable to Lord Bothwell than there be good cause,” and that they did not want him to return to Scotland. It was probably with their connivance that, in February 1563, on Queen Elizabeth’s orders, he was sent to London, where he was imprisoned in the Tower. At the end of May, he was released on parole, but not immediately allowed to leave England.²⁵At this time, Anna Throndssen was granted a safe-conduct by the Scottish government to return to Norway.

By December 1563, Bothwell was in Northumberland, a free man. From now on, he would loyally work for Mary in secret, for it was too dangerous for him to do so openly: he had numerous enemies in Scotland. According to Randolph, Bothwell secretly visited Mary at Dunbar in February 1564, then rode to London carrying letters for her. During 1564, Randolph reported several more secret meetings with Mary in Scotland. All of this implies that Mary was beginning to find Moray’s tutelage irksome, and that she was seeking new counsellors. There is no suggestion in any of Randolph’s reports, or elsewhere, that she was emotionally involved with Bothwell at this time, or considering him as a future husband.

In November 1562, Lennox had been released from the Tower and allowed to join his wife at Sheen, on condition that he undertook never to “enter into any private bond or practice with any state without the Queen’s licence.”²⁶ Lady Lennox was also required to promise that she would never again attempt to marry Lord Darnley to the Queen of Scots. Soon afterwards, the Earl and Countess, and in particular Lord Darnley, who had returned from wherever he had been hiding, were back in favour at court, where Elizabeth could keep an eye on them. Alvaro de Quadra reported to Philip II: “Many people think that, if the Queen of Scots does marry a person unacceptable to this Queen, the latter will declare as her successor the son of Lady Margaret, whom she now keeps in the palace and shows such favour to as to make this appear probable.”²⁷Darnley’s new status at court is evident from the fact that, in June 1564, he was deputed to receive the new Spanish ambassador, Guzman de Silva, and conduct him to his first audience with the Queen.²⁸

Meanwhile, there had been a major court scandal in Scotland. Pierre de Boscotel de Chastelard, a gallant French aristocrat and descendant of the Chevalier Bayard, was an accomplished musician and poet who had come from France in Mary’s entourage in 1561, but soon afterwards returned in the company of his patron, the son of the Constable of France. Late in 1562, he made his way back to Scotland and, when he passed through London, let it be known that he was going north “to see his lady love.”²⁹

That lady was Mary herself, for whom Chastelard had apparently conceived a rash and inordinate affection, and she received him with such warmth that he believed his feelings were reciprocated. Thereafter he was often at court; the Queen obviously enjoyed his company and danced with him during the New Year festivities. Soon he was addressing passionate love sonnets to her. The English agent, Thomas Randolph, who was hostile to Mary and had an appetite for scurrilous gossip, claimed afterwards that she permitted too great a degree of familiarity with “so unworthy a creature and abject a varlet,”³⁰and Knox, who later wrote an account of the affair, disapproved, relating how “Chastelard was so familiar in the Queen’s cabinet that scarcely could any of the nobility have access to her.” She “would lie upon Chastelard’s shoulder, and sometimes privily she would steal a kiss of his neck. And this was honest enough, for it was the gentle entreatment of a stranger.” Nevertheless, it was highly unusual conduct in a queen.

Some writers have argued that Mary’s unwise encouragement of Chastelard’s attentions was merely part of the ritual game of courtly love, which was accepted behaviour at the French court, but not understood in Scotland. However, when virtuous matrons accepted the homage and addresses of an admirer, they did not normally permit such physical intimacy, and it appears that, by her indiscreet and imprudent dealings with Chastelard, Mary was indeed in danger of compromising her much-vaunted honour.

One evening early in 1563, Chastelard went beyond the bounds of decorum when he secreted himself under the Queen’s bed at Holyrood. After he was discovered by her grooms, he was soundly reprimanded and banished from Scotland on Mary’s orders.

Undeterred and unhindered, Chastelard followed the Queen on a progress into Fife, where, at Rossend Castle near Burntisland, he again forced his way into her bedchamber while two of her ladies were about to disrobe her, then tried to embrace her; he later claimed he had come to beg forgiveness, but others, including the Queen herself, believed he intended to rape her. Moray, hearing her cries for help, rushed into the room and laid hold of Chastelard. This time, since her honour had been so outrageously compromised and her security threatened, the Queen was in no mood to be merciful, but when she cried, “Thrust your dagger into the villain!” Moray wisely refused, insisting that Chastelard be publicly tried and condemned to death.³¹Mary wondered fearfully if Moray would let Chastelard speak in his defence, to which her half-brother coldly replied, “I shall do, Madam, what in me lieth to save your honour.”³²

On 22 February, after the Queen had refused several pleas for a pardon, Chastelard was beheaded in the market-place at St. Andrews. Mary, against her will, was forced by Moray to be present. The condemned man refused any spiritual comfort on the scaffold, but instead recited Ronsard’s “Ode to Death,”³³then, looking directly at the Queen, he cried out, “O cruel dame!” Knox, anxious to emphasise the scandalous nature of the affair, pointed out that “dame” in this context meant “mistress,” and commented, “What that complaint imported, lovers may divine.” Knox also recounted how Chastelard “begged licence to write to France the cause of his death, which was for having been found in a very suspicious position. And so received he the reward of his dancing, for he lacked his head, that his tongue should not utter the secrets of our Queen.”

In March, however, Maitland informed de Quadra that Chastelard had confessed he had been sent by Mary’s Protestant enemies in France to “sully the honour of the Queen” and so wreck her chances of marrying Don Carlos; he had meant to remain all night underneath her bed “and go out in the morning so that he could escape after being seen.” According to Chastelard, a “Madame de Curosot” and others whose names Mary would not allow Maitland to entrust to paper had given him his instructions.³⁴In Paris, the Venetian ambassador learned from the Guises that Chastelard had been sent by “Madame de Cursolles,”³⁵and the story was independently corroborated by the Spanish ambassador in Paris.³⁶“Madame de Cursolles” was probably a code name for the wife of the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny.³⁷

If this is true, then, to a degree, Chastelard had succeeded in his mission and “thereby injured Her Majesty,”³⁸for the whole distasteful episode left Mary’s reputation somewhat tarnished. She had shown herself not only lax in her conduct, but also vengeful and vicious, belying Brantôme’s claim that she never had “the heart to see poor criminals fall under the sword of justice.” And, not for the last time, she had unwisely preferred a foreigner above her nobles. Even if her involvement had been entirely innocent, she had, by her foolish behaviour, laid herself open to criticism by her enemies.

Thereafter, to preserve her reputation, the Queen ordered Mary Fleming to sleep in her bedchamber.

Mary had also lost credit with the Catholics. By this time, the Pope was having serious doubts about her commitment to the Catholic cause, and he was given further reason for concern after Easter when she had Archbishop Hamilton imprisoned for saying Mass. Later that year, she approved further legislation benefiting the Protestant Church, while in March 1564, she publicly proclaimed her resolve to maintain religion as she had found it on her return to Scotland. In June that year, the Pope wrote again, urging Mary to promote the Catholic Church in Scotland, but although she replied in October assuring him of her devotion to the faith, in December her Parliament passed another Act against the Mass. Mary had also told the Cardinal of Lorraine that she would send representatives to the Council of Trent, but she failed to keep her word. It was little wonder that King Philip was wary of marrying his son to her.

In the spring of 1563, Mary sent Maitland to London to press her rights to the English succession. There were, however, three obstacles in her way: her continued refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, her determination to marry Don Carlos, and the antipathy of most of the English towards her. Elizabeth had fretted for a long time about the prospect of Mary allying with a great Catholic power; now, she came up with a solution that would assure her own security and the friendship of Scotland.

For four years, Elizabeth had been carrying on a very public affair with her Master of Horse, Lord Robert Dudley, to whom Mary had disparagingly referred as “her horsemaster.” Dudley was the son and grandson of traitors, and when, in 1560, his wife was found dead with her neck broken, rumour, probably unjustifiably, credited him with her murder and there was a huge scandal, which put paid to his chances of ever marrying Elizabeth, who would never allow herself to be adjudged guilty by association. Nevertheless, their relationship continued, and there was endless speculation as to whether they were really lovers.

Now Elizabeth conceived the idea of making a great personal sacrifice and proposing as a husband for the Queen of Scots Lord Robert, of whose loyalty she was assured and who could be trusted to promote England’s interests in Scotland. Lord Robert, however, was against the plan from the first, and horrified at the prospect of having to abandon his ambition to be King Consort of England. But Elizabeth was adamant, and, without naming any names, told Maitland that, if Mary would allow her to choose a husband for her, she might proclaim her her heir. The astute Maitland soon guessed that she was referring to Dudley, but could hardly believe it, since Dudley was so far below Mary in rank and had a dubious reputation. Even Randolph, who had been instructed to pave the way for public acceptance of Dudley in Scotland, was praying that he would not have to disclose to Mary the identity of the husband that Elizabeth was proposing for her. But Elizabeth wanted to keep Mary guessing.

In the autumn of 1563, Don Carlos fell down a staircase and fractured his skull, causing paralysis and blindness. His physicians performed a trepanning operation that restored his faculties but left him insane and subject to violent fits, during one of which he tried to murder his father. None of this was made public, but it was soon known that he was in poor health, and King Philip began to ward off all attempts to negotiate a marriage for his son. At the same time, England and France were doing their best to block a match between Don Carlos and Mary, and she began to realise that her expectations might be frustrated, although she did not entirely give up hope of a happy conclusion.

By February 1564, Mary, at the suggestion of Moray and Maitland,³⁹was toying with the idea of marrying Lord Darnley, in the hope of winning the support of the English Catholics. On 14 April, Randolph expressed to Cecil the opinion that she would “at length let fall her anchor between Dover and Berwick, though perchance not in the port that you wish she should.”⁴⁰Darnley would be a means to the English succession, and, as far as Mary was concerned, as a Catholic, might support her in her private wish to restore the old faith, and help her to gain the political independence she craved. From now on, “the Queen was beset with reports about him [and] a correspondence was carried on between them on both sides.”⁴¹

In March, Mary was informed by a cringing Randolph that it was Dudley, not Darnley, whom Elizabeth was offering as a husband. Although she received the news patiently and agreed to consider the matter, there can be no doubt that she was deeply affronted and, despite the fact that Moray, Maitland and Knox were in favour of the match, she secretly tried to reopen negotiations for a marriage with Don Carlos. But King Philip finally dashed her hopes in August because of his son’s mental state, much to the relief of Queen Elizabeth and the Protestant party in Scotland.

Marriage with Darnley seemed the only alternative, and Mary began seriously to consider it. On 19 September, Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange informed Randolph that the Scots would never accept Dudley, “but if ye will earnestly press it, ye may cause us to take Lord Darnley.”⁴²However, Darnley and his family were English subjects and required Elizabeth’s permission to visit Scotland, and it was not likely that that would be forthcoming, for she was no fool and had guessed what was afoot. Fortunately, in June 1563, Elizabeth had written asking Mary to reverse the attainder on Lennox and allow him to return to be restored to his estates and settle his affairs in Scotland.⁴³ Hitherto, Mary had refused this request, but now she relented and informed Lennox that he might come; in some alarm, Elizabeth backtracked and secretly wrote urging Mary to refuse him entry to her kingdom, but Mary had given her word and would not go back on it. Elizabeth had to concede defeat in order to avoid giving offence, and granted Lennox a licence to leave England for three months, although she would not allow Lady Lennox or Darnley to accompany him, but kept them in England as hostages for his good behaviour.

In September, Lennox rode north. Considering his former reputation in Scotland, his reception by his Queen was exceptionally cordial. His rivals, the Hamiltons, were not pleased to see him, but on 27 September, at Mary’s behest, he and Chatelherault made a public and utterly insincere show of reconciliation. On 9 October, his restoration in blood was publicly proclaimed in Edinburgh, and it was confirmed by Parliament in December.⁴⁴ Lennox managed to win over the Protestants by displaying a renewed interest in the reformed faith and by giving extravagant gifts to members of the Privy Council. He also began cultivating the Catholic nobility. In all these doings, he was preparing the ground for Mary’s marriage to his son, who, rumour said, would soon follow him to Scotland, along with Lady Lennox. Randolph reported that there was “a marvellous good liking of the young Lord,” and that it was “in all men’s mouths” that the Queen had decided to marry him.⁴⁵

On 18 September, Mary had sent Sir James Melville to England to restore good relations with Elizabeth and secretly further Mary’s marriage plans. Melville noted that Elizabeth and Dudley were “inseparable” and concluded, quite incorrectly, that Elizabeth had had second thoughts about offering Dudley to Mary. Dudley himself sought him out and declared he had no wish to marry the Queen of Scots, and that the whole idea was a ploy of Cecil’s calculated to get rid of him. Elizabeth herself asked Melville if Mary had made up her mind about marrying Dudley, but he answered that such an important decision could not be made until there had been a meeting between the representatives of both monarchs; arrangements were to be made for such a conference to take place at Berwick.

Melville paid a visit to the Spanish embassy and made one last futile attempt to revive the idea of a marriage with Don Carlos, then wrote to Mary confirming that there was no hope of it. Melville also had “a secret charge” to see Lady Lennox in secret “to procure liberty for [Darnley] to go to Scotland, under the pretext of seeing the country and conveying his father back again to England.”⁴⁶The Countess welcomed Melville warmly and gave him expensive gifts for Mary, Moray and Maitland, “for she was in good hope that her son would speed better than [Dudley].”⁴⁷

Melville was present when, on 28 September, “with great solemnity,” Elizabeth formally created Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester, a strategem calculated to make Mary “think the more of him.” It was on this occasion that Melville first saw Darnley, who, “as nearest Prince of the Blood, did bear the sword of honour” before the Queen. After the ceremony was over, Elizabeth asked Melville, “How do you like my new creation?” Melville was carefully diplomatic, but Elizabeth was shrewd and, pointing towards Darnley, said, “And yet ye like better of yonder long lad!” Melville replied, “No woman of spirit would make choice of such a man, that was liker a woman than a man, for he is very lusty [pleasing], beardless and lady-faced.” Later, Melville recorded that he had spoken disparagingly because “I had no will that the Queen of England should think I liked Lord Darnley or had any eye or dealing that way.” Elizabeth later told him that Darnley “was one of the two that she had in her head to offer our Queen, as born within the realm of England,” but Melville wisely did not rise to the bait.⁴⁸

When Melville returned to Scotland, he may have carried with him the famous heart-shaped Lennox (or Darnley) Jewel, which was perhaps a gift from Lady Lennox to her husband, and may well have contained in its elaborate symbolism coded messages that could not be committed to paper. It used to be thought that this was a memorial ring made after the deaths of Darnley and Lennox, but its imagery is still not fully understood, and its style is that of the early 1560s.⁴⁹Its Scots legend, translated, reads, “Who hopes still constantly with patience shall obtain victory in their pretence [i.e., claim].”

Elizabeth, however, was apparently determined to push the Leicester marriage, offering the English succession as bait. In November, the English and Scottish commissioners met at Berwick, where it was made clear that the English Queen would “never willingly consent” to Mary marrying anyone other than Dudley. Moray and Maitland, angry that conditions should be attached to what they believed was Mary’s right, walked out of the meeting, then wrote to Cecil insisting that Elizabeth must declare Mary her heir before they would consent to their mistress marrying an Englishman. Elizabeth, predictably, ignored this demand, but still would not abandon the idea of a match between Leicester and Mary, and negotiations dragged futilely on for several more months.

In the autumn of 1564, Elizabeth, at Mary’s request, issued Bothwell with a safe-conduct enabling him to journey to France. By November, the Earl was in Paris. His release came as unwelcome news to the Protestant Lords, and Maitland even bribed one John Wemyss to induce Bothwell’s servants to poison him, although the attempt failed. In a memorial dated 3 February 1565,⁵⁰ Bothwell is listed amongst Lennox’s friends, so he presumably supported the Darnley marriage. By 10 February, Bothwell had been appointed Captain of the Scottish Guard in France. He later wrote, “I had received letters from the Queen of Scots for the French King and his Council, which made the request that I should enjoy such status and privileges as are granted to the nobility of my country according to the terms of an ancient treaty between France and Scotland.”⁵¹

Meanwhile, in Scotland, the Queen had a new favourite. In December, her French secretary, Pierre Raullet, was dismissed for accepting English bribes. He was replaced by an ambitious Italian, David Rizzio, one of the Queen’s musicians.

David Rizzio (or Riccio), was a native of Piedmont, and probably came of an ancient, patrician family. He had been born around 1533, and had come to Scotland in 1561 in the train of Robertino Solaro, Count Moretta, the Savoyard ambassador. The Queen was impressed with his fine bass voice and expertise on the lute, and persuaded him to remain at her court as part of a musical quartet formed by her valets de chambre.

Melville called Rizzio “a merry fellow and a good musician,” which probably explains why Mary enjoyed his company. He was witty, discreet and well informed, yet physically ill favoured: his enemies described him as hideously ugly, and it seems he was small, dark, swarthy and in some way deformed. What counted with Mary, though, was his loyalty, and that was never in dispute.

According to Melville, Rizzio “was not very skilful in inditing French letters,” and consequently “advices given by the Queen of England were misconstrued,” so Mary was often obliged to write her replies “over again by her own hand.” Yet for all his shortcomings, Mary came to rely upon him heavily and to take him increasingly into her confidence. As a result, Rizzio grew ever more influential and ever more arrogant and greedy, although, according to Melville, “he had not the prudence how to manage the same rightly.”

As a “sly, crafty foreigner” and a Catholic, “Seigneur Davie,” as they disparagingly called him, was predictably hated by most of the nobility as an upstart interloper. They bitterly resented “the extraordinary favour” shown him by the Queen, and Moray and Maitland feared, correctly, that Rizzio would supplant them in the Queen’s counsels. Because the Italian was so ill qualified for the job he was employed to do, Knox and many Protestant Lords suspected him of being a papal spy, and Melville put it to Mary that he was “a known minion of the Pope,” which she did not deny, but the Vatican never acknowledged his existence, and there is no record of him in its archives. Whatever the truth of this, Mary had certainly displayed poor judgement in promoting Rizzio and in openly and tactlessly preferring him over the Lords, who felt that they themselves, by virtue of their birth and status, should have been her natural counsellors.

Early in December 1564, both Mary and Lady Lennox requested Elizabeth to give Darnley leave to go to Scotland to assist his father in the legal settlement of his estates; Lady Lennox assured the Queen that the Earl and his son would return to England within a month. Not believing this for a moment, and knowing that Darnley was really being sent north to earn the Queen of Scots’ approval, Elizabeth initially refused to grant this favour; she was, after all, still hoping that Mary would accept Leicester, and Mary was now doing nothing to disabuse her of the idea. In fact, she had almost convinced Elizabeth, Maitland and Randolph that she meant after all to marry Dudley.

Over the next few weeks, Cecil and Leicester did their utmost to persuade Elizabeth to change her mind and let Darnley go to Scotland.⁵²Cecil’s policy was “to hold the Queen [Mary] unmarried as long as he could”; Darnley would provide a temporary diversion to gain time, and Cecil had persuaded himself that the young man would not dare marry Mary without Elizabeth’s consent, especially as his mother would be remaining in England as a hostage for his good behaviour, and Darnley stood to lose everything he owned in England if he defaulted.⁵³In Cecil’s view, Darnley was a political lightweight and a weathercock where religion was concerned, and in any case would be a less dangerous husband for Mary than a foreign Catholic prince. Cecil was backed by Leicester, who had pressing reasons of his own for wanting Mary to marry Darnley, and did all he could to promote the match, pointing out that Darnley would not dare to place the Lennox lands in England in jeopardy by remaining in Scotland without licence.

A disgruntled Randolph, who had worked tirelessly for eighteen months to promote the Leicester marriage, and had apparently received certain information about Darnley, did not want the latter in Scotland, and warned Cecil on 14 December that Elizabeth would get the blame for “sending home so great a plague into this country.”⁵⁴But his remonstrances fell on deaf ears.

In late January, Elizabeth changed her mind and agreed to let Darnley go to Scotland. Her reasons for doing this have never been fully understood. She told the Spanish ambassador in London, Guzman de Silva, that it was because Leicester had refused point blank to marry Mary, and Darnley was the only viable alternative. Melville says it was because Elizabeth had been conned into believing that Mary would marry Leicester; perversely, she now feared losing him, and it was this that made her send Darnley north “in hope that he, being a handsome, lusty youth, should rather prevail, being present, than Leicester, who was absent.”⁵⁵Elizabeth knew, however, that a union between Mary and Darnley would pose a dynastic threat to her throne, yet she may have come to agree with Cecil that Darnley himself was less dangerous than she had feared. In fact, he might prove more of a liability to Mary than to Elizabeth, and so cause trouble in Scotland, in which case it would be to Elizabeth’s advantage to facilitate the marriage. Yet it would not be politic for her to be seen to encourage it, for she would have it appear that Mary had defied her wishes in rejecting Leicester, and could then use this as a pretext for denying Mary the English succession.

Had Elizabeth not wished Darnley to marry Mary, she would never have let him go to Scotland. The French diplomat, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de la Mauvissière, was adamant that Elizabeth had “cast her eyes on the young Lord Darnley to make a present of him to the Scottish Queen, and found means to persuade the Queen of Scots, by several powerful considerations, that there was not a marriage in Christendom which could bring her more certain advantages.” Later, Castelnau observed, “Her Majesty did not outwardly show the joy and pleasure which was in her heart when I told her that this marriage was advancing apace. On the contrary, she affected not to approve it: which thing, however, did rather hasten than retard it. And yet I am assured [that] she used all her efforts and spared nothing to get this marriage a-going.”⁵⁶De Silva also heard a rumour that the match had been arranged “with the concurrence of some of the great people here,”⁵⁷and Cecil himself told Paul de Foix, the French ambassador, in March, that the marriage of the Queen of Scots was an affair in the hands of his mistress.⁵⁸People in Scotland would tell Randolph that Elizabeth had sent Darnley on purpose to match their Queen “poorly and meanly,” while Mary herself later came to believe that Elizabeth had deliberately sent Darnley to her, knowing he might well ruin her.

Darnley was given leave of absence for three months, while Lennox’s licence was extended for the same period. On 3 February 1565, Darnley left for Scotland. Randolph was horrified to hear that he was on his way, for he had been convinced that his hard work for the Leicester marriage was about to bear fruit, and wrote angrily to Cecil of his fears that “one should come of whom there is so much spoken against. My whole care is to avoid the suspicion that the Queen’s Majesty [Elizabeth] was the mean and worker thereof.”

Meanwhile, an excited Lady Lennox, seeing the fulfilment of her ambitions within her grasp, was writing to Mary, urging her to take Darnley as her husband, and assuring her that he would be respectful, kind, companionable and utterly loyal. After being entertained at Berwick-upon-Tweed by the English Governor, Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, Darnley crossed the Scottish border on 10 February. The winter weather was particularly severe, but he pressed on to Dunbar, where he spent the night of 11 February, before proceeding to Haddington. On 12 February, he was entertained by Lord Seton at Seton Palace, then went on to Edinburgh the following day.⁵⁹Here, he spent three days as Randolph’s guest. As Cecil had instructed him, Randolph went out of his way to make him welcome and lent him horses. During this time, the Queen’s half-brother, Lord Robert Stewart, invited Darnley to dine at Holyrood Palace, and was very impressed with him. Darnley also visited his cousin, the Earl of Morton, and the Earl of Glencairn. Randolph reported that he had won good opinions: “His courteous dealing with all men deserves great praise, and is well spoken of.” However, he had caught “a little cold,” and did not want his mother informed, as she would be alarmed.⁶⁰

Edinburgh was abuzz, however, with speculation as to the meaning of the ghostly warriors that had been heard fighting in the streets at midnight on the three nights before Darnley’s arrival. In a superstitious and credulous age, many regarded them as a warning of what the young Lord’s coming portended for Scotland and its Queen.