Mary Queen of Scots (51 page)

Jedburgh was one of the important towns in the Scottish border country, lying on the edge of the wild terrain which led across to the Anglo-Scottish border itself. Here Mary had arrived in early October to hold a justice eyre. She inhabited a ‘bastel-house’, or fortified dwelling, in the main street, still visible today in its original form. While she was in the midst of administering justice, news came that her lieutenant on the borders, Bothwell, had been seriously wounded in a foray there, and was now lying in danger of death at the castle of Hermitage. The queen did not immediately take any action, but five or six days later, when her business had been completed, she decided to pay Bothwell a visit, not so much to express her sympathy, as for the practical reason that he was her lieutenant and one of her chief advisers, especially on the perennially vexed border questions, and she needed to consult with him. Bedford, reporting the incident, and the earl’s recovery, commented that the queen of Scots would certainly have been sorry to lose Bothwell, but made no remotely
bawdy suggestion about the loss, which was by implication a strictly political or administrative one.

On 16 October, the queen, accompanied by her half-brother Moray and a large number of her court, as well as a quantity of soldiers, decided to ride over to the Hermitage, visit Bothwell, and since this border fortress was not prepared to receive the luxurious burden of a royal stay, return to Jedburgh that same day. Hermitage Castle was a thirteenth-century fortress, gaunt and forbidding in appearance, in the centre of Liddesdale. Lying on the left bank of the Hermitage water, twelve miles south of Hawick, it was a true military outpost, where up to 1,000 men and 200 horsemen could be stationed in times of danger. Already it had acquired cruel and mournful memories from earlier violent scenes in Scottish history, and being close to the English border, it was understandable that the queen should not wish to linger there overnight. In any case the day’s journey meant a ride of only a little over fifty miles. Although a good day’s ride at the time was considered to be thirty to forty miles, it was always considered possible to ride more than fifty miles in emergencies: the ride was not an outstanding hardship to a queen accustomed to daily hunting and riding hard in the saddle all her life, who had ridden twenty-five miles pillion to Dunbar when six months pregnant. The decision to make the visit within the day was certainly a practical one under the circumstances.
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However, on her return from Hermitage Queen Mary fell violently and seriously ill. Undoubtedly the ride contributed to the final impetus of her collapse, but she had evidently been sickening in her habitual and, as it seemed, nervous fashion for some sort of breakdown for weeks, since the situation with Darnley seemed to admit no solution. In a confidential letter to Archbishop Beaton, Mary’s ambassador in Paris, Maitland attributed her illness entirely to her disagreements with Darnley – ‘he misuses himself so far towards her that it is an heartbreak for her to think that he should be her husband …’.
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Physical and mental stress now apparently combined to produce an attack of illness so severe that many of those who observed Mary in the throes of it formed the opinion that she was unlikely to recover, even if she was not already dead. First the queen was seized by a prolonged fit of vomiting – ‘more than sixty times’ – so long and severe that she several times fell into unconsciousness; two days later, she could neither speak nor see, and had frequent convulsions. There was a temporary recovery, but by 25 October she had become so rapidly ill again – ‘all her limbs were so contracted, her face was so distorted, her eyes closed, her mouth fast and her feet and arms stiff and cold’ – that she was once more considered to be on the verge of death. Since she was generally believed to be sinking, Mary was publicly prayed for in the churches of Edinburgh as Knox’s
History
testifies.
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By her own account to Nau, Mary’s servants thought she was dead, and started to open the windows of the little room where she lay; Moray was accused of trying to lay his hands on silver plate and rings; mourning dresses were ordered and funeral arrangements discussed. In Maitland’s more laconic account to Cecil, it was admitted that her life had actually been despaired of for half an hour. The situation was saved by the queen’s physician, Arnault, who seeing some signs of life in her arms, bandaged her very tightly, including her toes and legs from the ankle upwards, and then having her mouth opened by force, poured wine down it. He then administered a clyster, the queen vomited an amount of corrupt blood, and subsequently began to recover.
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Out of these facts, dramatic enough in themselves, Buchanan wove a lecherous fairy story in which the queen rode like a maniac to be by Bothwell’s side the moment she received the news of his mishap (which as we have seen is quite contradicted by the facts), fell ill through having thus gratified her unlawful passions during her short stay at Hermitage (Moray’s presence at the interview is ignored) and subsequently had Bothwell moved into the room below hers at Jedburgh, so that they could continue their love-making conveniently during their mutual convalescences
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– once again almost ludicrously far from the truth. In fact, the queen was occupied at Jedburgh far away from Bothwell, once more in making provisions for her kingdom in the event of her death. When she felt herself to be
in extremis
she called the nobles into her room, including Moray, and attempted to dictate some sort of settlement which would ensure a calm inheritance for her son – for it is the son who is to succeed, not the father, and Mary specified that Darnley was not to seize the crown ‘to which he laid claim by right’. Her first concern is for the young prince, who is to have no evil company around him during his ‘youth head’ – here perhaps
Queen Mary was influenced by the example of Darnley, who often tried to excuse his failings on the ground that he had been corrupted by bad companions. Darnley is once more castigated for ingratitude: ‘My lords, you know the goodness that I have used towards some whom I have advanced to a great degree of honour and pre-eminence above others; who, notwithstanding, has used … ingratitude towards me, which has engendered the displeasure that presently most grieves me, and is also the cause of my sickness. I pray lord mend them.’ Perhaps her most interesting words of all were on the subject of religion, where she pleaded for the tolerance which she had shown during her life to the Protestants, to be shown after her death to the Catholics: ‘I have pressed none of you that professes religion by your conscience … I pray you, brother earl of Moray, that you trouble none.’ When Father Edmund Hay, a Jesuit in Paris on his way to Scotland reported the scene round the bedside of the apparently dying woman in a letter to St Francis Borgia of 6 November
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he said that, although she affirmed her desire to die in the (Catholic) religion which her predecessors, the kings of Scotland, had practised for 1,364 years, yet she frankly admitted that she had been neglectful not only in government of the realm, but also, and chiefly, in promoting the Catholic religion.

Throughout this period of illness, Darnley scarcely showed himself as the devoted husband. He was in the west of Scotland when Mary fell ill and did not, as Buchanan and Knox afterwards stated, come rushing to his wife’s side. He paid the queen a brief visit eleven days after she first fell ill, and then returned to Glasgow. The queen’s apologists have sometimes cited this in turn as an example of callousness; however, the Diurnal of Occurrents, an unbiased chronicle of events, suggests that as he was hunting and hawking, he did not even hear of the illness until 27 October, whereupon he rode to Edinburgh and the next day to Jedburgh.
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At Jedburgh he received some fancied slight, of the sort Darnley was quick to perceive – so that he went back to Edinburgh and thence to Stirling. Possibly no special messenger had been sent to advise him of the illness: at any rate the picture of a breach in their relationship is a complete one.

The next episode in the mounting tragedy of Darnley took place at the end of November at the castle of Craigmillar, an enormous baronial edifice, founded by the Preston family, in the parish of Liberton, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Mary was still in the hands of her physicians, since her illness, and was apparently in a state of deep depression. Du Croc, the French ambassador, wrote to Beaton in Paris that she often repeated the words ‘I could wish to be dead’. Du Croc commented that no future
understanding could be expected between the queen and her husband for the two reasons of his arrogance and her suspicion: ‘The first is, the king will never humble himself as he ought; the other is, the Queen cannot perceive any nobleman speaking with the King, but that she presently suspects some contrivance between them.’
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Ever since the murder of Riccio, Mary evidently regarded herself as permanently threatened by some possible conspiracy on the part of Darnley. But Mary’s chief nobles, lodged with her at Craigmillar, were equally resolute in their hatred of Darnley, who had betrayed them over Riccio, and was yet still left nominally able to lord it over them as king of Scotland. Experience had not curbed Darnley’s arrogance: nor were nobles of the temperament of Moray, Argyll, Bothwell and Maitland likely to forgive and forget.

According to the ‘Protestation’ of Huntly and Argyll (written in January 1569 when Huntly and Argyll formed part of the Marian party), Moray and Maitland now broached the subject of a divorce to Argyll; Huntly was then brought in, finally Bothwell; then the queen was approached. Maitland opened up the argument by saying that means would be found for Mary to divorce Darnley, if she would only pardon Morton and the other Riccio assassins (who were still in exile). The queen promised her consent, but said that the divorce must be legally obtained without prejudice to her son. Maitland then suggested ‘other means’, and in a famous phrase told the queen that ‘Moray would look through his fingers’. At this the queen quickly asked them to do nothing against her honour, and Maitland replied: ‘Let us guide the matter among us, and your Grace shall see nothing but good, and approved by Parliament.’
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This was in effect to be the case of Mary’s supporters in later years, to prove her innocence over the death of Darnley. They maintained that the queen, although anxious to rid herself of Darnley, could not have known that the nobles actually intended to kill him, since Maitland had assured her that whatever happened would have parliamentary approval. But of course Mary was not, and was never intended to be, one of the executive conspirators; the details of the deed were not within the province of her concern. At Craigmillar she made it clear that she wished to be rid of Darnley, much as Henry
II
had once exclaimed: ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ of Thomas à Becket; she made two further points of vital interest to her – firstly that her child must not run the risk of bastardy, and secondly that ‘her honour’ was not to be impugned. Maitland reassured her on both these points: but it was difficult to see what ‘other means’ he was contemplating except perhaps a treason trial of Darnley before Parliament, which would result in his execution. Mary, however, did not examine the
situation so candidly in her own mind. She was a queen and a woman; as a woman she wished to be rid of an intolerable marital situation; as a queen she expected her nobles to help in a difficult governmental problem of order; there could be no benefit to her thinking too far or too clearly into how the nobles proposed to carry out her wishes. If Moray was quoted as intending to ‘look through his fingers’, Queen Mary on the other hand, intended to keep her own hands tightly across her eyes.

It seems virtually certain that a bond was then drawn up and signed at Craigmillar by those nobles who intended to get rid of Darnley, including Maitland, Bothwell, Argyll, Huntly and James Balfour, with Morton signing later on his return to Scotland much as a bond was signed before the murder of Riccio. Following the parallel with the Riccio bond, it is unlikely that the murder was specifically mentioned, for the death of Riccio had never been alluded to in the official document. The project could be put more vaguely, especially as Sir James Balfour, who had a legal training, probably played an important part in drawing it up. The hostile
Book of Articles
described the bond as follows: ‘It was thought expedient and most profitable for the common wealth, by the whole nobility and lords underscribed, that such a young fool and proud tyrant should not reign or bear rule over them; and that for diverse causes, therefore, that these all had concluded that he should be put off by one way or another; and whosoever should take the deed in hand, or do it, they should defend and fortify as themselves.’
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But the actual bond does not survive for inspection, although its existence was mentioned in the confession of Bothwell’s henchman, John Hepburn of Bolton, who said that Bothwell showed it to him, and later Ormiston, another henchman, executed in 1573, described it in his death-bed confession to a priest. The queen later told Nau that when she parted from Bothwell for the last time before the battle of Carberry Hill, he pressed into her hand a piece of paper and told her to guard it well, since it was the evidence of the complicity of the other lords in the murder – those very lords who were now drawn up in battle array against them, and accusing Bothwell alone of the crime. If this account is accepted, the incriminating paper must have been taken from her after her capture and destroyed. Moray’s part in the whole affair remains obscure: he did not sign the Craigmillar bond although he certainly knew of its contents. He afterwards protested that he had taken part in, and approved of, nothing that was illegal. In view of Maitland’s assurance to Mary that Moray would ‘look through his fingers’, it seems likely that it was Moray’s intention to leave the actual execution of the deed to others, while approving the result and hoping to benefit from it. If he
believed that it was intended to seize Darnlcy for trial for treason, and kill him in the act, he could perhaps stretch his conscience sufficiently to cover the statement that he had approved of nothing illegal.
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Moray was therefore several degrees closer than Mary in his knowledge of what was planned, although in their general attitudes to the subject, the responses of brother and sister were not dissimilar.