Mary Stuart (29 page)

Since the Scottish lords could not by any threat induce Mary to forsake Bothwell, the cunningest among them tried to gain the same end by craft. Maitland of Lethington, her old and at one time her faithful adviser, used finer means. His appeal was to her jealousy, for he told her (perhaps it was true, perhaps false; who knows since the words were uttered by a diplomatist?) that Bothwell had been unfaithful to her, that during the few weeks of their marriage he had resumed intimate relationships with his divorced wife, had told Lady Jane Gordon that he regarded her as his lawful spouse and the Queen as no more than a concubine. But Mary knew that she was surrounded by cheats, none of whose words were to be trusted. The information served only to drive her into a frenzy, with the result that Edinburgh saw the degrading sight of the Queen of Scotland behind barred windows with her dress torn, her breasts exposed, her hair hanging down, raging like a maniac, sobbing and shrieking, while she declared to the populace, touched in spite of frenzied hate, that it was their duty to free her, since she was being kept in duress by her own subjects.

The situation had become impossible. The Scottish lords would have been glad to yield a step or two. They felt, however, that they had now gone too far to retreat. It had become impossible for them to dream of reinstalling Mary Stuart in Holyrood as Queen. Yet they could not leave her in the provost’s house, surrounded by a raging mob, without incurring formidable responsibilities and arousing the anger of Elizabeth and all other foreign princes. The only man among them who had both courage and authority, Moray, was across the border. In his default, the other lords did not venture to come to a decision. The best they could do was to remove the Queen to some safer retreat, and for this purpose they selected Lochleven Castle. That stronghold was on an island in the lake of the same name. It belonged to Margaret Douglas, Moray’s mother, who would naturally not be too well disposed towards the daughter of Mary of Guise, for whom her lover James V had forsaken her.

The ominous word “imprisonment” was carefully avoided in the lords’ proclamation. The Queen was only “secluded” that “the person of Her Majesty might be kept from any communication with the aforesaid Earl Bothwell, and that she might not get into touch with those who wished to safeguard him from the just punishment of his crime.” The measure they adopted was a half-measure, a provisional measure, dictated by fear and prompted by an uneasy conscience. The rising against Queen Mary did not yet venture to declare itself a rebellion. All the blame was still laid upon the fugitive Bothwell. The secret determination to dethrone Mary was hidden away under cowardly though courteous words. To humbug the populace, which was still clamouring for judgement and execution of the “whore”, on the evening of 17th June Mary Stuart was conveyed to Holyrood under a guard of three hundred men. But as soon as the citizens had gone to bed, a little procession was formed to conduct the monarch to Lochleven. This gloomy ride lasted until dawn. In the twilight of dawn, when the waters of the lake were beginning to show themselves more clearly, she approached the solitary, inaccessible fortress where she was to stay, who knew how long? She was rowed thither, and the gates clashed to behind her. The passionate and gloomy ballad of Darnley and Bothwell was finished. Now began the melancholy envoy, the chronicle of perpetual imprisonment.

F
ROM THIS DAY, 17TH JUNE
1567, when the Scottish lords imprisoned their Queen in Lochleven Castle, Mary did not cease, until the day of her death, to be a focus of European unrest. She incorporated a newfangled problem, a revolutionary problem of far-reaching import. What was to be done with a monarch who was in sharp conflict with the people, and had proved unworthy to wear a crown? In this instance there can be no doubt that the sovereign lady had been to blame. By yielding to passion, Mary had brought about an impossible, an intolerable situation. Against the will of the nobility, the commonalty and the clergy, she had chosen for husband a man wedded to another woman, and a man universally regarded as the murderer of her late husband, the King of Scotland. She had disregarded law and defied morality. She still stubbornly refused to admit that her foolish marriage was invalid. Even her best friends were agreed that she could not continue to rule Scotland with this assassin by her side.

What means were there of compelling the Queen to abandon Bothwell or, as an alternative, to abdicate in favour of her son? There were none. In those days subjects had no constitutional rights against a monarch. Public opinion counted for nothing where a king or a queen was concerned. The people were not entitled to blame his or her actions; jurisdiction came to an end before the steps of a throne. The King was not, as today, the chief citizen of the state over which he ruled, but was himself the state, or stood above the state. Once he had been crowned and anointed he could neither lay down his office nor make it over to another. No one could rob the anointed of the Lord of his dignity, so that, from the absolutist outlook, it was easier to deprive a ruler of his life than of his crown. He could be murdered, but could not be deposed, for to use force against him signified an infraction of the hierarchical ordering of the cosmos. With her criminal marriage Mary had put the world in this dilemma. Her fate would decide, not an isolated conflict, but a philosophical principle.

That was why the Scottish lords, although the ceremonies were respected, were in so feverish a hurry to find a satisfactory solution. Looking back across the centuries, we can see that they felt uneasy at their own revolutionary deed, at having imprisoned their sovereign; and the fact is that they were prepared to make things easy for Mary’s reinstatement. It would be enough for her to admit her error by acknowledging her marriage with Bothwell to have been illegal. Then, though weakened doubtless in her hold on popular affection and in her authority, she could still have effected an honourable return to Holyrood, and could have chosen a worthier husband. But Mary remained unyielding. Regarding herself as infallible, she could not recognise that the rapid succession of scandals—that of Chastelard, of Rizzio, of Darnley and of Bothwell—had led people to regard her as incorrigibly light-minded. She would not make the slightest concession. In the face of Scotland, in the face of the world, she defended Bothwell the assassin, maintaining that she could not separate herself from him, for if she did so, his child, which she bore in her womb, would be a bastard. She continued to live in cloudland. A confirmed romanticist, she could not face realities; and, with a stubbornness which you may call foolish or splendid as you please, defied those who had marshalled their forces against her in a way that would lead her to a violent death. Nor her alone, for her grandson, Charles I, would in due time pay with his life for his claim to be an absolute ruler.

Still, at the outset she could count upon a certain amount of aid. So conspicuous a struggle between a sovereign ruler and her people could not leave the other crowned heads of Europe indifferent. Elizabeth, above all, was strongly on the side of the cousin she had so often opposed. This change of front on the part of the Queen of England, her ardent espousal of the cause of her rival, is usually regarded as one more sign of Elizabeth’s inconstancy. No doubt the Tudor monarch was fickle, was a weathercock in petticoats, but in this instance her behaviour was consistent. If she now stood shoulder to shoulder with the Queen of Scotland and the Isles, this does not mean that she was siding with Mary Stuart the woman, the woman whose recent behaviour had naturally aroused so much suspicion. Elizabeth was a queen supporting another queen, supporting the principle that sovereign rights are inviolable, and therefore fighting for her own cause as well as Mary’s. She did not feel sure enough of the loyalty of her nobles to look on inert while rebellious subjects took up arms against the queen of a neighbouring kingdom and flung her into prison. In defiance of Cecil, whose inclination was to extend assistance to the Protestant Scottish lords, Elizabeth was determined to force these rebels to return to their allegiance, thus defending herself while defending her cousin. For once, her words had the ring of truth when she said she was profoundly moved by what had happened. She hastened to promise her sisterly support to the imprisoned Queen, while at the same time blaming Mary’s conduct as a woman. She drew a sharp distinction between her private views and the position she adopted as a crowned head.

Probably in July 1567, Elizabeth wrote to Mary as follows:

These are plain words, and cutting as a knife. They show that Elizabeth, who had doubtless been kept well informed by her spies and Moray about all that happened at Kirk o’ Field, was convinced of Mary’s complicity in the murder of Darnley. With very little periphrasis, she pointed to Bothwell as the actual murderer, and did not try to wrap up the unpalatable assurance in courtly or diplomatic words. The above-quoted letter shows, beyond question, that Elizabeth Tudor was prepared to support Mary Stuart the Queen, and not her cousin Mary the woman, because in supporting the Queen she was fighting for her own hand. In this remarkable letter Elizabeth continues:

Elizabeth kept her word. She charged her special messenger to enter the strongest possible protest against the measures the rebels were taking against Mary, and to let the Scottish lords know that in the event of their using any violence towards her cousin she was determined to declare war. She fiercely reproved them for their presumptuousness in proposing to hold judgement upon an anointed queen. There was nothing in Holy Writ to justify subjects in deposing their heaven-given ruler. In no Christian monarchy was there any law authorising subjects to touch the person of their prince, to imprison him, or hale him before a court of assize. Elizabeth had been as much outraged as had been the Scottish lords by the murder of her cousin, the late King, and as much outraged as they by the Queen’s marriage to Bothwell. But she could neither tolerate nor condone their subsequent behaviour towards their Queen. By God’s ordinance they were her subjects and she was their ruler, and they therefore had no right to call her to account, since it was opposed to nature to make the head subordinate to the feet.

For the first time, however, Elizabeth encountered open resistance on the part of the Scottish lords, although most of them had been for years in her pay. Since the murder of Rizzio, they had known well enough what they might expect should Mary regain power. Neither their threats nor their cajoleries had induced her to forsake Bothwell, and they still had a lively memory of the invectives and menaces of vengeance which she had shrieked at them during the ride from Carberry Hill to Edinburgh. They had not got rid, first of Rizzio, then of Darnley, and then of Bothwell, in order to become once more the powerless subjects of so incalculable a woman. It would suit them enormously better to have as monarch Mary Stuart’s little son James, for a child could not order them about, and during the long period of his minority they would remain undisputed rulers of the country.

Nevertheless, the Scottish lords would not have found courage to defy Elizabeth had not chance put into their hands an unexpected and deadly weapon against Mary. Six days after the affair at Carberry Hill, an act of despicable treachery to Bothwell on the part of his confederate Sir James Balfour gave them what they wanted. Balfour, rendered uneasy by the change in the political weather, saw a chance of saving his skin by fresh rascality. He informed the Scottish lords that Bothwell, now a fugitive, had sent a valet, George Dalgleish, to Edinburgh, in search of a casket containing important documents, which Dalgleish was to smuggle out of the capital. The valet was promptly arrested, was put to the torture and revealed the hiding place of the documents. Under a bed was thereupon found a silver casket which had been given to Mary by her first husband Francis, and which subsequently, with all her other treasures, she had made over to her lover Bothwell. In this coffer or casket, protected by cunningly devised locks, Bothwell had been accustomed to keep his private documents, Mary’s promise to marry him, her letters to him, and presumably certain papers which were compromising to the Scottish lords. One may suppose that he had thought it would be too dangerous to take this casket with him upon the flight to Borthwick. He had hidden it away in Edinburgh before leaving, intending to have it brought to him in due course by a trustworthy servant. His bond with the Scottish lords, the Queen’s promise to marry him and her private letters might serve him, some day, for blackmailing purposes or for self-exculpation. With the documents in his possession he could, on the one hand, bring pressure to bear on the Queen should she prove fickle and, on the other hand, guard himself against the Scottish lords should they wish to accuse him of the murder of Darnley. His first thought when he found himself in temporary security after his flight from Carberry Hill was to get these important pieces of evidence once more into his own keeping. It was an almost incredible piece of luck for the Scottish lords to be able to seize them, since they were then in a position to destroy whatever might compromise themselves, while ruthlessly using against the Queen whatever was to her detriment.

For one night the Earl of Morton had charge of this precious find. Next day the other lords were summoned (it is important for the reader to note that among them were Catholics and friends of Mary Stuart), and in their presence the locked coffer was broken open. It contained the famous Casket Letters as well as the sonnets written or alleged to be written by Mary. Without troubling here to reopen the question whether the translations which have come down to us faithfully represent the original text, as far as the letters are concerned, or whether the sonnets were genuine—this much is certain, that the documents found or alleged to have been found in the casket had a disastrous influence upon the fate of Queen Mary. Thenceforward the Scottish lords became far bolder, more self-assured. In their jubilation they hastened to spread the news far and wide. The very same day, before there could have been time to copy the documents, and still less to falsify them, they sent a message to Moray in France giving him an oral summary of the most incriminating. They made the French ambassador acquainted with their discovery; they arrested and examined all of Bothwell’s servants they could lay hands upon, and took minutes of their evidence. Their general line of conduct after the opening of the casket would be incomprehensible had not its contents provided damnatory confirmation of Mary Stuart’s complicity. At one stroke the Queen’s situation had grown far worse.

For the discovery of the letters at this critical juncture could not but enormously strengthen the position of the rebels. It gave them, at last, the moral ground they needed to support them in their rebellion. Hitherto they had been content to talk of Bothwell as guilty of the late King’s murder, but had carefully avoided pressing him too hard lest the refugee should proclaim them to the world as confederates. The only grievance they had been able to allege against the Queen, so far, had been that she had married her husband’s murderer. Now, however, thanks to the opportune “discovery” of the letters and sonnets, they were able to convince the most unsuspicious that Queen Mary had been privy to the crime. Her (to say the least of it) extremely indiscreet written avowals gave the practised and cynical blackmailers the very lever they wanted for putting pressure upon the Queen and breaking her obduracy. Now they could compel her “of her own free will” to make over the crown to her son; or, if she refused, could publicly accuse her of adultery and of being accessory to her husband’s murder.