Darnley himself, said Randolph, was determined to be present at Riccio’s slaying. Moray was to arrive in Edinburgh immediately after the deed. Lethington, Argyll, Morton, Boyd, and Ruthven were privy to the murder, also Moray, Rothes, Kirkcaldy, in England, with Randolph and Bedford. It is probable that others besides Riccio were threatened. There is a ‘Band of Assurance for the Murder.’[50]Darnley says that he has enlisted ‘lords, barons, freeholders, gentlemen, merchants, and craftsmen to assist us in this enterprise, which cannot be finished without great hazard. And because it may chance that there be certain great personagespresent, who may make them to withstand our enterprise, wherethrough certain of them may be slain,’ Darnley guarantees his allies against the blood feud of the ‘great persons.’ These, doubtless, are Bothwell, Atholl, and Huntly. The deed ‘may chance to be done in presence of the Queen’s Majesty, or within her palace of Holyrood House.’ The band is dated March 1, in other texts, March 5. The indications point to a design of killing Mary’s nobles, while she, in her condition, might die of the shock. She was to be morally disgraced. So unscrupulous were Mary’s foes that Cecil told de Foix, the French Ambassador in London, how Riccio had been slain in Mary’s arms,reginam nefario stupro polluens.[51]Cecil well knew that this was a lie: and it is natural to disbelieve every statement of a convicted liar and traitor like Darnley.
Just before the explosion of the anti-Riccio conspiracy, Bothwellse rangea. Mary herself made a match for him (the contract is of February 9, 1566) with Lady Jane Gordon, a Catholic, a sister of Huntly, and a daughter of that Huntly who fell at Corrichie burn. The lady was only in her twentieth year. The parties being akin, a dispensation was necessary, and was granted by the Pope, and issued by the Archbishop of St. Andrews.[52]The marriage took place in the Protestant Kirk of the Canongate, thoughthe bride was a Catholic, and Mary gave the wedding dress (February 24). The honeymoon was interrupted, on March 9, by the murder of Riccio.
The conspirators made the fatal error of not securing Bothwell and Huntly before they broke into Mary’s room and slew Riccio. While Bothwell, Huntly, and Atholl were at large, the forces of the Queen’s party had powerful friends in the North and on the Border. When the tumult of the murderers was heard, these nobles tried to fight their way to Mary’s assistance, but were overpowered by numbers, and compelled to seek their apartments. An attempt was made to reconcile them to the situation, but they escaped under cloud of night. In her letter to the French Court (May 1567) excusing her marriage with Bothwell, Mary speaks of his ‘dexterity’ in escaping, ‘and how suddenly by his prudence not only were we delivered out of prison,’ after Riccio’s death, ‘but also that whole company of conspirators dissolved....’ ‘We could never forget it,’ Mary adds, and Bothwell’s favour had a natural and legitimate basis in the gratitude of the Queen. Very soon after the outrage she had secretly communicated with Bothwell and Huntly, ‘who, taking no regard to hazard their lives,’ arranged a plan for her flight by means of ropes let down from the windows.[53]Mary preferred the passage through the basement into the royal tombs, and, by aid of Arthur Erskine and Stewart of Traquair, she made her way to Dunbar.Here Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell rallied to her standard: Knox fled from Edinburgh, Morton and Ruthven with their allies found refuge in England: the lately exiled Lords were allowed to remain in Scotland: Darnley betrayed his accomplices, they communicated to Mary their treaties with him, and the Queen was left to reconcile Moray and Argyll to Huntly, Bothwell, and Atholl.
BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE
Mary’s task was ‘to quieten the country,’ a task perhaps impossible. Her defenders might probably make a better case for her conduct and prudence, at this time, than they have usually presented. Her policy was, if possible, to return to the state of balance which existed before her marriage. She must allay the Protestants’ anxieties, and lean on their trusted Moray and on the wisdom of Lethington. But gratitude for the highest services compelled her to employ Huntly and Bothwell, who equally detested Lethington and Moray. Darnley was an impossible and disturbing factor in the problem. He had, publicly, on March 20, and privately, declared his innocence, which we find him still protesting in the Casket Letters. He had informed against his associates, and insisted on dragging into the tale of conspirators, Lethington, who had retired to Atholl. Moreover Mary must have despised and hated the wretch. Perhaps her hatred had already found expression.
The Lennox MSS. aver that Darnley secured Mary’s escape to Dunbar ‘with great hazard anddanger of his life.’ Claude Nau reports, on the other hand, that he fled at full speed, brutally taunting Mary, who, in her condition, could not keep the pace with him. Nau tells us that, as the pair escaped out of Holyrood, Darnley uttered remorseful words over Riccio’s new-made grave. The Lennox MSS. aver that Mary, seeing the grave, said ‘it should go very hard with her but a fatter than Riccio should lie anear him ere one twelvemonth was at an end.’ In Edinburgh, on the return from Dunbar, Lennox accuses Mary of threatening to take revenge with her own hands. ‘That innocent lamb’ (Darnley) ‘had but an unquiet life’ (Lennox MSS.).
Once more, Mary had to meet, on many sides, the demand for the pardon of the Lords who had just insulted and injured her by the murder of her servant. On April 2, from Berwick, Morton and Ruthven told Throckmorton that they were in trouble ‘for the relief of our brethren and the religion,’ and expected ‘to be relieved by the help of our brethren, which we hope in God shall be shortly.’[54]Moray was eager for their restoration, which must be fatal to their betrayer, Darnley. On the other side, Bothwell and Darnley, we shall see, were presently intriguing for the ruin of Moray, and of Lethington, who, still unpardoned, dared not take to the seas lest Bothwell should intercept him.[55]Bothwell and Darnley had been on ill terms in April,according to Drury.[56]But common hatreds soon drew them together, as is to be shown.
Randolph’s desire was ‘to have my Lord of Moray again in Court’ (April 4), and to Court Moray came.
Out of policy or affection, Mary certainly did protect and befriend Moray, despite her alleged nascent passion for his enemy, Bothwell. By April 25, Moray with Argyll and Glencairn had been received by Mary, who had forbidden Darnley to meet them on their progress.[57]With a prudence which cannot be called unreasonable, Mary tried to keep the nobles apart from her husband. She suspected an intrigue whenever he conversed with them, and she had abundant cause of suspicion. She herself had taken refuge in the Castle, awaiting the birth of her child.
Mary and Moray now wished to pardon Lord Boyd, with whom Darnley had a private quarrel, and whom he accused of being a party to Riccio’s murder.[58]On May 13, Randolph tells Cecil that ‘Moray and Argyll have such misliking of their King (Darnley) as never was more of man.’[59]Moray, at this date, was most anxious for the recall of Morton, who (May 24) reports, as news from Scotland, that Darnley ‘is minded to depart to Flanders,’ or some other place, to complain of Mary’s unkindness.[60]Darnley was an obstacle to Mary’s efforts at generalconciliation, apart from the horror of the man which she probably entertained. In England Morton and his gang had orders, never obeyed, to leave the country: Ruthven had died, beholding a Choir of Angels, on May 16.
At this time, when Mary was within three weeks of her confinement, the Lennox Papers tell a curious tale, adopted, with a bewildering confusion of dates, by Buchanan in his ‘Detection.’ Lennox represents Mary as trying to induce Darnley to make love to the wife of Moray, while ‘Bothwell alone was all in all.’ This anecdote is told by Lennox himself, on Darnley’s own authority. The MS. is headed, ‘Some part of the talk between the late King of Scotland and me, the Earl of Lennox, riding between Dundas and Lythkoo (Linlithgow) in a dark night, taking upon him to be the guide that night, the rest of his company being in doubt of the highway.’ Darnley said he had often ridden that road, and Lennox replied that it was no wonder, he riding to meet his wife, ‘a paragon and a Queen.’ Darnley answered that they were not happy. As an instance of Mary’s ways, he reported that, just before their child’s birth, Mary had advised him to take a mistress, and if possible ‘to make my Lord ——’ (Moray) ‘wear horns, and I assure you I shall never love you the worse.’ Lennox liked not the saying, but merely advised Darnley never to be unfaithful to the Queen. Darnley replied, ‘I never offended the Queen, my wife, in meddling with any woman in thought, let bein deed.’ Darnley also told the story of ‘horning’ Moray to a servant of his, which Moray ‘is privy unto.’
The tale of Darnley’s then keeping a mistress arose, says Lennox, from the fact that one of two Englishmen in his service, brothers, each called Anthony Standen, brought a girl into the Castle. The sinner was, when Lennox wrote, in France. Nearly forty years after James VI. imprisoned him in the Tower, and he wrote a romantic memoir of which there is a manuscript copy at Hatfield.
Whatever Mary’s feelings towards Darnley, when making an inventory of her jewels for bequests, in case she and her child both died, she left her husband a number of beautiful objects, including the red enamel ring with which he wedded her.[61]Whatever her feelings towards Moray, she lodged him and Argyll in the Castle during her labour: ‘Huntly and Bothwell would also have lodged there, but were refused.’[62]Sir James Melville (writing in old age) declares that Huntly and Lesley, Bishop of Ross, ‘envied the favour that the Queen showed unto the Earl of Moray,’ and wished her to ‘put him in ward,’ as dangerous. Melville dissuaded Mary from this course, and she admitted Moray to the Castle, while rejecting Huntly and Bothwell.[63]
James VI. and I. was born on June 19. Killigrew carried Elizabeth’s congratulations, and foundthat Argyll, Moray, Mar, and Atholl were ‘linked together’ at Court. Bothwell had tried to prejudice Mary against Moray, as likely to ‘bring in Morton during her child-bed,’ but Bothwell had failed, and gone to the Border. ‘He would not gladly be in the danger of the four that lie in the Castle.’ Yet he was thought to be ‘more in credit’ with Mary than all the rest. If so, Mary certainly ‘dissembled her love,’ to the proverbial extent. Darnley was in the Castle, but little regarded.[64]Moray complained that his own ‘credit was yet but small:’ he was with the Privy Council, Bothwell was not.[65]By July 11, Moray told Cecil that his favour ‘stands now in good case.’[66]
He had good reason to thank God, as he did. According to Nau, Huntly and Bothwell had long been urging Darnley to ruin Moray and Lethington, and Darnley had a high regard for George Douglas, now in exile, his agent with Ruthven for Riccio’s murder.[67]This is confirmed by a letter from Morton in exile to Sir John Forster in July. Morton had heard from Scotland that Bothwell and Darnley were urging Mary to recall the said George Douglas, whom they expected to denounce Moray and Lethington as ‘the devisers of the slaughter of Davy.’ ‘I now find,’ says Morton, ‘that the King and Bothwell are not likely to speed, as was written, for the Queen likes nothing of their desire.’[68]
Thus Mary was protecting Moray from the grotesque combination of Bothwell and Darnley. This is at a time when ‘Bothwell was all in all,’ according to Lennox, and when she had just tried to embroil Moray and her husband by bidding Darnley seduce Lady Moray. By Moray’s and Morton’s own showing, Moray’s favour was ‘in good case,’ and he was guarded from Darnley’s intrigues.
However, Buchanan makes Mary try to drive Darnley and Moray to dagger strokes after her ‘deliverance.’[69]We need not credit his tale of Mary’s informing Darnley that the nobles meant to kill him, and then calling Moray out of bed, half-naked, to hear that he was to be killed by Darnley. All that is known of this affair of the hurried Moray speeding through the corridors in his dressing-gown, comes from certain notes of news sent by Bedford to Cecil on August 15. ‘The Queen declared to Moray that the King had told her he was determined to kill him, finding fault that she bears him so much company. The King confessed that reports were made to him that Moray was not his friend, which made him speak that of which he repented. The Queen said that she could not be content that either he or any else should be unfriend to Moray.’ ‘Any else’ included Bothwell. ‘Moray and Bothwell have been at evil words for Lethington. The King has departed; he cannot bear that the Queen should use familiarity with man or woman.’[70]This maybe the basis of Buchanan’s legend. Moray and Darnley hated each other. On the historical evidence of documents as against the partisan legends of Lennox and Buchanan, Mary, before and after her delivery, was leaning on Moray, whatever may have been her private affection for Bothwell. She even confided to him ‘that money had been sent from the Pope.’ Moray was thus deep in her confidence. That she should distrust Darnley, ever weaving new intrigues, was no more than just. His wicked folly was the chief obstacle to peace.
Peace, while Darnley lived, there could not be. Morton was certain to be pardoned, and of all feuds the deadliest was that between Morton and Darnley, who had betrayed him. Meanwhile Mary’s dislike of Darnley must have increased, after her fear of dying in child-birth had disappeared. When once the nobles’ were knitted into a combination, with Lethington restored to the Secretaryship (for which Moray laboured successfully against Bothwell), with Morton and the Douglases brought home, Darnley was certain to perish. Lennox was disgraced, and his Stewarts were powerless, and Darnley’s own Douglas kinsmen were, of all men, most likely to put their hands in his blood: as they did. Mary was his only possible shelter. Nothing was more to be dreaded by the Lords than the reconciliation of the royal pair; whom Darnley threatened with the vengeance he would take if once his foot was ontheir necks. But of a sincere reconciliation there was no danger.
A difficult problem is to account for the rise of Mary’s passion for Bothwell. In February, she had given him into the arms of a beautiful bride. In March, he had won her sincerest gratitude and confidence. She had, Lennox says, bestowed on him the command of her new Guard of harquebus men, a wild crew of mercenaries under dare-devil captains. But though, according to her accusers, her gratitude and confidence turned to love, and though that love, they say, was shameless and notorious, there are no contemporary hints of it in all the gossip of scandalous diplomatists. We have to fall back on what Buchanan, inspired by Lennox, wrote after Darnley’s murder, and on what Lennox wrote himself in language more becoming a gentleman than that of Buchanan. If Lennox speaks truth, improper relations between Mary and Bothwell began as soon as she recovered from the birth of her child. He avers that Mary wrote a letter to Bothwell shortly after her recovery from child-bed, and just when she was resisting Bothwell’s and Darnley’s plot against Moray and Lethington. Bothwell, reading the letter among his friends, exclaimed, ‘Gyf any faith might be given to a princess, they’ (Darnley and Mary) ‘should never be togidder in bed agane.’ A version in English (the other paper is in Scots) makes Mary promise this to Bothwell when he entered her room, and found her washing her hands. Buchanan’s talesof Mary’s secret flight to Alloa, shortly after James’s birth, and her revels there in company with Bothwell and his crew of pirates, are well known. Lennox, however, represents her as departing to Stirling, ‘before her month,’ when even women of low degree keep the house, and as ‘taking her pleasure in most uncomely manner, arraied in homely sort, dancing about the market cross of the town.’
According to Nau, Mary and her ladies really resided at Alloa as guests of Lord Mar, one of the least treacherous and abandoned of her nobles. Bedford, in a letter of August 3, 1566, mentions Mary’s secret departure from Edinburgh, her intended meeting with Lethington (who had been exiled from Court since Riccio’s death), at Alloa, on August 2, and her disdainful words about Darnley. He adds that Bothwell is the most hated man in Scotland: ‘his insolence is such that David [Riccio] was never more abhorred than he is now,’ but Bedford says nothing of a love intrigue between Bothwell and Mary.[71]The visit to Alloa, with occasional returns to Edinburgh, is of July-August.
In August, Mary, Bothwell, Moray, and Darnley hunted in Meggatdale, the moorland region between the stripling Yarrow and the Tweed. They had poor sport: poachers had been busy among the deer. Charles IX., in France, now learned that the royal pair were on the best terms;[72]and Mary’s Inventoriesprove that, in August, she had presented Darnley with a magnificent bed; by no means ‘the second-best bed.’ In September she also gave him a quantity of cloth of gold, to make a caparison for his horse.[73]Claude Nau reports, however, various brutal remarks of Darnley to his wife while they were in Meggatdale. By September 20, Mary, according to Lethington, reconciled Bothwell and himself. This was a very important event. The reconciliation, Lethington says, was quietly managed at the house of a friend of his own, Argyll, Moray, and Bothwell alone being present. Moray says: ‘Lethington is restored to favour, wherein I trust he shall increase.’[74]This step was hostile to Darnley’s interests, for he had attempted to ruin Lethington. It is certain, as we shall see, that all parties were now united in a band to resist Darnley’s authority, and maintain that of the Queen, though, probably, nothing was said about violence.
At this very point Buchanan, supported and probably inspired by Lennox, makes the guilty intimacy of Mary and Bothwell begin in earnest. In September, 1566, Mary certainly was in Edinburgh, reconciling Lethington to Bothwell, and also working at the budget and finance in the Exchequer House. It ‘was large and had pleasant gardens to it, and next to the gardens, all along, a solitary vacant room,’ says Buchanan. But the real charm, he declares, was in the neighbourhood of the house ofDavid Chalmers, a man of learning, and a friend of Bothwell. The back door of Chalmers’s house opened on the garden of the Exchequer House, and according to Buchanan, Bothwell thence passed, through the garden, to Mary’s chamber, where he overcame her virtue by force. She was betrayed into his hands by Lady Reres.[75]
This lady, who has been mentioned already, was the wife of Arthur Forbes of Reres. His castle, on a hill above the north shore of the Firth of Forth, is now but a grassy mound, near Lord Crawford’s house of Balcarres. The lady was a niece of Cardinal Beaton, a sister of the magic lady of Branksome, and aunt of one of the Four Maries, Mary Beaton. Buchanan describes her as an old love of Bothwell, ‘a woman very heavy, both by unwieldy age and massy substance;’ her gay days, then, must long have been over. She was also the mother of a fairly large family. Cecil absurdly avers that Bothwell obtained his divorce by accusing himself of an amour with this fat old lady.[76]Knox’s silly secretary, Bannatyne, tells us that the Reformer, dining at Falsyde, was regaled with a witch story by a Mr. Lundie. He said that when Lady Atholl and Mary were both in labour, in Edinburgh Castle, he came there on business, and found Lady Reres lying abed. ‘He asking her of her disease, she answered that she was never so troubled with no bairn that ever she bare, for the Lady Atholl had cast all the pain of her child-birth uponher.’[77]It was a case of Telepathy. Lady Reres had been married long enough to have a grown-up son, the young Laird of Reres, who was in Mary’s service at Carberry Hill (June, 1567). According to Dr. Joseph Robertson, Lady Reres was wet-nurse to Mary’s baby. But, if we trust Buchanan, she was always wandering about with Mary, while the nurseling was elsewhere. The name of Lady Reres does not occur among those of Mary’s household in herEtatof February 1567. We only hear of her, then, from Buchanan, as a veteran procuress of vast bulk who, at some remote period, had herself been the mistress of Bothwell.
A few days after the treasonable and infamous action of Bothwell in violating his Queen, we are to believe that Mary, still in the Exchequer House, sent Lady Reres for that hero. Though it would have been simple and easy to send a girl like Margaret Carwood, Mary and Margaret must needs let old Lady Reres ‘down by a string, over an old wall, into the next garden.’ Still easier would it have been for Lady Reres to use the key of the back door, as when she first admitted Bothwell. But these methods were not romantic enough: ‘Behold, the string suddenly broke, and down with a great noise fell Lady Reres.’ However, she returned with Bothwell, and so began these tragic loves.
This legend is backed, according to Buchanan, by the confession of Bothwell’s valet, George Dalgleish, ‘which still remaineth upon record,’ but is nowhere to be found. In Dalgleish’s confession, printed in the ‘Detection,’ nothing of the kind occurs. But a passage in the Casket Sonnet IX. is taken as referring to the condoned rape:
Pour luy aussi j’ai jeté mainte larme,Premier, quand il se fist de ce corps possesseur,Duquel alors il n’avoit pas le cœur.
In the Lennox MSS. Lennox himself dates the beginning of the intrigue with Bothwell about September, 1566. But he and Buchanan are practically but one witness. There is no other.
As regards this critical period, we have abundant contemporary information. The Privy Council, writing to Catherine de’ Medici, from Edinburgh, on October 8, make Mary, ten or twelve days before (say September 26), leave Stirling for Edinburgh, on affairs of the Exchequer. She offered to bring Darnley, but he insisted on remaining at Stirling, where Lennox visited him for two or three days, returning to Glasgow. Thence he wrote to Mary, warning her that Darnley had a vessel in readiness, to fly the country. The letter reached Mary on September 29, and Darnley arrived on the same day. He rode to Mary, but refused to enter the palace, because three or four of the Lords were in attendance. Mary actually went out to see her husband, apparently dismissed the Lords, and brought him to herchamber, where he passed the night. On the following day, the Council, with du Croc, met Darnley. He was invited, by Mary and the rest, to declare his grievances: his attention was directed to the ‘wise and virtuous’ conduct of his wife. Nothing could be extracted from Darnley, who sulkily withdrew, warning Mary, by a letter, that he still thought of leaving the country. His letter hinted that he was deprived of regal authority, and was abandoned by the nobles. To this they reply that he must beaimablebefore he can beaimé, and that they will never consent to his having the disposal of affairs.[78]
A similar account was given by du Croc to Archbishop Beaton, and, on October 17, to Catherine de’ Medici, no friend of Mary, also by Mary to Lennox.[79]
We have not Darnley’s version of what occurred. He knew that all the powerful Lords were now united against him. Du Croc, however, had frequent interviews with Darnley, who stated his grievance. It was not that Bothwell injured his honour. Darnley kept spies on Mary, and had such a noisy and burlesque set of incidents occurred in the garden of Exchequer House as Buchanan reports, Darnley should have had the news. But he merely complained to du Croc that he did not enjoy the same share of power and trust as was his in the early weeks of hiswedding. Du Croc replied that this fortune could never again be his. The ‘Book of Articles’ entirely omits Darnley’s offence in the slaying of Riccio. Du Croc was more explicit. He told Darnley that the Queen had been personally offended, and would never restore him to his authority. ‘He ought to be well content with the honour and good cheer which she gave him, honouring and treating him as the King her husband, and supplying his household with all manner of good things.’ This goes ill with Buchanan’s story about Mary’s stinginess to Darnley. It is admitted by the Lennox MSS. that she did not keep her alleged promise to Bothwell, that she and Darnley should never meet in the marriage bed.
When Mary had gone to Jedburgh, to hold a court (about October 8), du Croc was asked to meet Darnley at some place, apparently Dundas, ‘three leagues from Edinburgh.’ Du Croc thought that Darnley wished Mary to ask him to return. But Darnley, du Croc believed, intended to hang off till after the baptism of James, and did not mean to be present on that occasion (pour ne s’y trouver point). He had, in du Croc’s opinion, but two causes of unhappiness: one, the reconciliation of the Lords with the Queen, and their favour; the other, a fear lest Elizabeth’s envoy to the baptism might decline to recognise him (ne fera compte de luy). The night-ride from Dundas to Linlithgow, in which (according to Lennox) Darnley told the tale of Mary’s advice to him to seduce Lady Moray, must have occurred atthis very time, perhaps after the meeting with du Croc, three leagues from Edinburgh. In his paper about the night-ride, Lennox avers that Mary yielded to Bothwell’s love, before this ride and conversation. But he does not say that he himself was already aware of the amour, and his whole narrative leaves the impression that he was not. We are to suppose that, if Buchanan’s account is true, the adventures of the Exchequer House and of Lady Reres were only known to the world later. Certainly no suspicion of Mary had crossed the mind of du Croc, who says that he never saw her so much loved and respected; and, in short, there is no known contemporary hint of the beginning of the guilty amour, flagrant as were its alleged circumstances. This point has, naturally, been much insisted upon by the defenders of Mary.
It must not escape us that, about this time, almost every Lord, from Moray downwards, was probably united in a signed ‘band’ against Darnley. The precise nature of its stipulations is uncertain, but that a hostile band existed, I think can be demonstrated. The Lords, in their letter of October 8 to Catherine, declare that they will never consent to let Darnley manage affairs. The evidence as to a band comes from four sources: Randolph, Archibald Douglas, a cousin and ally of Morton, Claude Nau, Mary’s secretary, and Moray himself.
First, on October 15, 1570, Randolph, being in Edinburgh after the death of the Regent Moray,writes: ‘Divers, since the Regent’s death, either to cover their own doings or to advance their cause, have sought to make him odious to the world. The universal bruit runs upon three or four persons’ (Bothwell, Lethington, Balfour(?), Huntly, and Argyll) ‘who subscribed upon a bond promising to concur and assist one another in the late King’s death. This bond was kept in the Castle, in a little coffer covered with green, and, after the apprehension of the Scottish Queen at Carberry Hill, was taken out of the place where it lay by the Laird of Lethington, in presence of Mr. James Balfour.... This being a thing so notoriously known, as well by Mr. James Balfour’s own report, as testimony of other who have seen the thing, is utterly denied to be true,and another bond produced which they allege to be it, containing no such matter, at the which, with divers other noblemen’s hands, the Regent’s was also made, a long time before the bond of the King’s murder was made, and now they say that if it can be proved by any bond that they consented to the King’s death, the late Regent is as guilty as they, and for testimony thereof (as Randolph is credibly informed) have sent a bond to be seen in England, which is either some new bond made among themselves, and the late Regent’s hand counterfeited at the same (which in some cases he knows has been done), or the old bond at which his hand is, containing no such matter.’ Randolph adds, as an example of forgery of Moray’s hand, the order for Lethington’s release by Kirkcaldy to whomRobert Melville attributed the forgery.[80]Thus both sides could deal in charges of forging hands.
But what is ‘the old band,’signed by Moray‘a long time before the bond of the King’s murder was made’? To this question we probably find a reply in the long letter written by Archibald Douglas to Mary, in April, 1583, when he (one of Darnley’s murderers) was an exile, and was seeking, and winning, Mary’s favour. Douglas had fled to France after Riccio’s murder, but was allowed to return to Scotland, ‘to deal with Earls Murray, Athol, Bodvel, Arguile, and Secretary Ledington,’ in the interests of a pardon for Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay. This must have been just after September 20, when the return of Lethington to favour occurred. But Murray, Atholl, Bothwell, Argyll, and Lethington told Douglas that they had made a band, with other noblemen, to this effect: that they ‘were resolved to obey your Majesty as their natural sovereign,and have nothing to do with your husband’s command whatsoever.’ So the Lords also told Catherine de’ Medici. They wished to know, before interfering in Morton’s favour, whether he would also sign this anti-Darnley band, which Morton and his accomplices did. Archibald Douglas then returned, with their signatures, to Stirling, at the time of James’s baptism, in mid December, 1566. Morton and his friends were then pardoned on December 24.[81]This anti-Darnley band, which does not allude tomurder, must be thatproduced in 1570, according to Randolph, by ‘divers, since Moray’s death, either to cover their own doings, or to advance their own cause, seeking to make him odious to the world.’ We thus find Moray, and all the most powerful nobles, banded against Darnley, some time between September and December 1566.
Now, Claude Nau, inspired by Mary, attributes Darnley’s murder to a band ‘written by Alexander Hay, at that time one of the clerks of the Council, and signed by the Earls of Moray, Huntly, Bothwell, and Morton, by Lethington, James Balfour, and others.’ Moray certainly did not sign the murderous band kept in the green-covered coffer, nor, as he alleged at his death, did Morton. But Nau seems to be confusingthatband with the band of older date, to which, as Randolph admits, and as Archibald Douglas insists, Moray, Morton, and others put their hands, Morton signing as late as December 1566.
Nau says: ‘They protested that they were acting for the public good of the realm, pretending that they were freeing the Queen from the bondage and misery into which she had been reduced by the King’s behaviour. They promised to support each other, and to avouch that the act was done justly, licitly, and lawfully by the leading men of the Council. They had done it in defence of their lives, which would be in danger, they said, if the King should get the upper hand and secure the government of the realm, at which he was aiming.’[82]Randolph denies that there was any hint of murder in the band signed by Moray. Archibald Douglas makes the gist of it ‘that they would have nothing to do with your husband’s command whatsoever.’ Nau speaks of ‘the act,’ but does not name murder explicitly as part of the band. Almost certainly, then, there did exist, in autumn 1566, a band hostile to Darnley, and signed by Moray and Morton. It seems highly probable that the old band, made long before the King’s murder, and of a character hostile to Darnley’s influence, and menacing to him, is that which Moray himself declares that he did sign, ‘at the beginning of October,’ 1566. When Moray, in London, on January 19, 1569, was replying to an account (the so-called ‘Protestation of Argyll and Huntly’) of the conference at Craigmillar, in November 1566, he denied (what was not alleged) that he signed any bandthere: at Craigmillar. ‘This far the subscriptioun of bandes be me is trew, that indeed I subscrivit ane band with the Erlis of Huntlie, Ergile, and Boithvile in Edinburgh, at the begynning of October the same yeir, 1566: quhilk was devisit in signe of our reconciliatioun, in respect of the former grudgis and displesouris that had been amang us. Whereunto I wes constreinit to mak promis, before I culd be admittit to the Quenis presence or haif ony shew of hir faveur....’[83]
Now Moray had been admitted to Mary’s presence two days after the death of Riccio, before her flightto Dunbar. On April 25, 1566, Randolph writes from Berwick to Cecil: ‘Murray, Argyll, and Glencairn are come to Court. I hear his (Moray’s) credit shall be good. The Queen wills that all controversies shall be taken up, in especial that between Murray and Bothwell.’[84]On April 21, 1566, Moray, Argyll, Glencairn, and others were received by Mary in the Castle, and a Proclamation was made to soothe ‘the enmity that was betwixt the Earls of Huntly, Bothwell, and Murray.’[85]Thenceforward, as we have proved in detail, Moray was ostensibly in Mary’s favour. Moray would have us believe that he only obtained this grace by virtue of his promise to sign a band with Huntly, Bothwell, and Argyll: the last had been on his own side in his rebellion. But the band, he alleges, was not signed till October, 1566, though the promise must have been given, at least his ‘favour’ with Mary was obtained, in April. And Moray signed the band precisely at the moment when Darnley was giving most notorious trouble, and had just been approached and implored by Mary, the Council, and the French ambassador. That was the moment when the Privy Council assured Catherine that they ‘would never consent’ to Darnley’s sovereignty. Why was that moment selected by Moray to fulfil a promise more than four months old? Was the band not that mentioned by Randolph, Archibald Douglas, and Nau, and therefore, in some sense, an anti-Darnley band, not a mere ‘sign ofreconciliation’? The inference appears legitimate, and this old band signed by Moray seems to have been confused, by his enemies, with a later band for Darnley’s murder, which we may be sure that he never signed. He only ‘looked through his fingers.’
On October 7, or 8, or 9, Mary left Edinburgh to hold a Border session at Jedburgh. She appears to have been in Jedburgh by the 9th.[86]On October 7, Bothwell was severely wounded, in Liddesdale, by a Border thief. On October 15, Mary rode to visit him at Hermitage.[87]Moray, says Sir John Forster to Cecil (October 15), was with her, and other nobles. Yet Buchanan says that she rode ‘with such a company as no man of any honest degree would have adventured his life and his goods among them.’ Life, indeed, was not safe with the nobles, but how Buchanan errs! Du Croc, writing from Jedburgh on October 17, reports that Bothwell is out of danger: ‘the Queen is well pleased, his loss to her would have been great.’[88]Buchanan’s account of this affair is, that Mary heard at Borthwick of Bothwell’s wound, whereon ‘she flingeth away like a mad woman, by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of winter’ (early October!), ‘first to Melrose, then to Jedburgh. There, though she heard sure news of his life, yet her affection, impatient of delay, could not temper itself; but needs she must bewray her outrageous lust, and in an inconvenient time of theyear, despising all incommodities of the way and weather, and all dangers of thieves, she betook herself headlong to her journey.’ The ‘Book of Articles’ merely says that, after hearing of Bothwell’s wound, she ‘took na kindly rest’ till she saw him—a prolongedinsomnia. On returning to Jedburgh, she prepared for Bothwell’s arrival, and, when he was once brought thither, then perhaps by their excessive indulgence in their passion, Buchanan avers, Mary nearly died.
All this is false. Mary stayed at least five days in Jedburgh before she rode to Hermitage, whither, says Nau, corroborated by Forster, Moray accompanied her. She fell ill on October 17, a week before Bothwell’s arrival at Jedburgh. On October 25, she was despaired of, and some thought she had passed away. Bothwell arrived, in a litter, about October 25. Forster says October 15, wrongly. These were no fit circumstances for ‘their old pastime,’ which they took ‘so openly, as they seemed to fear nothing more than lest their wickedness should be unknown.’ ‘I never saw her Majesty so much beloved, esteemed, and honoured,’ du Croc had written on October 17.
G. W. Wilson & Co. Aberdeen photoWalker & Cockerell. ph. sc.
House occupied by Queen Mary at Jedburgh.
Buchanan’s tale is here so manifestly false, that it throws doubt on his scandal about the Exchequer House. That Mary abhorred Darnley, and was wretched, is certain. ‘How to be free of him she sees no outgait,’ writes Lethington on October 24. He saw no chance of reconciliation.[89]That she andBothwell acted profligately together while he was ill at Hermitage, and she almost dead at Jedburgh, is a grotesquely malevolent falsehood. Darnley now visited Jedburgh: it is uncertain whether or not he delayed his visit long after he knew of Mary’s illness. Buchanan says that he was received with cruel contempt.[90]In some pious remarks of hers when she expected death, she only asks Heaven to ‘mend’ Darnley, whose misconduct is the cause of her malady.[91]On November 20, Mary arrived at Craigmillar Castle, hard by Edinburgh. Du Croc mentions her frequent exclamation, ‘I could wish to be dead,’ and, from Darnley, and his own observation, gathered that Darnley would never humble himself, while Mary was full of suspicions when she saw him converse with any noble. For disbelieving that reconciliation was possible du Croc had several reasons, he says; he may have detected the passion for Bothwell, but makes no allusion to that subject; and, when Darnley in December behaved sullenly, his sympathy was with the Queen. In the ‘Book of Articles’ exhibited against Mary in 1568, it is alleged that, at Kelso, on her return from Jedburgh, she received a letter from Darnley, wept, told Lethington and Moray that she could never have a happy day while united to her husband, and spoke of suicide. Possibly Darnley wrote about his letter against her to the Pope, and the Catholic Powers. But theanecdote is dubious. She proceeded to Craigmillar Castle.
Then came the famous conference at Craigmillar. Buchanan says (in the ‘Detection’) that, in presence of Moray, Huntly, Argyll, and Lethington, she spoke of a divorce, on grounds of consanguinity, the Dispensation ‘being conveyed away.’ One of the party said that her son’s legitimacy would be imperilled. So far the ‘Book of Articles’ agrees with the ‘Detection.’ Not daring to ‘disclose her purpose to make away her son’ (the ‘Book of Articles’ omits this), she determined to murder her husband, and her son. A very different story is told in a document sent by Mary to Huntly and Argyll, for their signatures, on January 5, 1569. This purports to be a statement of what Huntly had told Bishop Lesley. He and Argyll were asked to revise, omit, or add, as their recollection served, sign, and return, the paper which was to be part of Mary’s counter-accusations against her accusers.[92]The document was intercepted, and was never seen nor signed by Huntly and Argyll. The statement, whatever its value (it is merely Lesley’s recollection of remarks by Huntly), declares that Moray and Lethington roused Argyll from bed, and suggested that, to induce Mary to recall Morton (banished for Riccio’s murder), it would be advisable to oblige Mary by ridding her of Darnley. Huntly was next brought in, and, last, Bothwell. They went to Mary’s rooms, and proposeda divorce. She objected that this would, or might, invalidate her son’s legitimacy, and proposed to retire to France. Lethington said that a way would be found, and that Moray would ‘look through his fingers.’ Mary replied that nothing must be done which would stain her honour and conscience. Lethington answered that, if they were allowed to guide the matter, ‘Your Grace shall see nothing but good, and approved by Parliament.’
Though Huntly and Argyll never saw this piece, they signed, in September, 1568, another, to like purpose. Starting from the same point, the desire to win Morton’s pardon, they say that they promised to secure a divorce, either because the dispensation for Mary’s marriage was not published (conceivably the marriage occurred before the dispensation was granted) or for adultery: or to bring a charge of treason against Darnley, ‘or quhat other wayis to dispeche him; quhilk altogidder hir Grace refusit, as is manifestlie knawin.’[93]It is plain, therefore, that Huntly and Argyll would have made no difficulty about signing the Protestation which never reached them.
While Buchanan’s tale yields no reason for Mary’s consent to pardon the Riccio murderers (whom of all men she loathed), Huntly and Argyll supply a partial explanation. In Buchanan’s History, it is casually mentioned, later, that Mary wished to involve Moray and Morton in the guilt of Darnley’smurder. But how had Morton returned to Scotland? Ofthat, not a word.[94]In truth, both French and English influence had been used; Bothwell, acting ‘like a very friend,’ says Bedford, and others had openly added their intercessions. James’s baptism was an occasion for an amnesty, and this was granted on Christmas Eve. The pardon might well have been given, even had no divorce or murder of Darnley been intended, but the step was most threatening to Darnley’s safety, as the exiles hated him with a deadly hatred. On the whole, taking the unsigned ‘Protestation’ of Huntly and Argyll with the document which they did sign, it seems probable, or certain, that a conference as to getting rid of Darnley, in some way, was held at Craigmillar, where Moray certainly was.
Moray, in London, was shown the intercepted ‘Protestation,’ and denied that anything was said, at Craigmillar, in his hearing ‘tending to ony unlawfull or dishonourable end.’[95]But, if the Protestation can be trusted, nothing positively unlawful was proposed. Lethington promised ‘nothing but good, and approved by Parliament.’ Moray also denied having signed a ‘band,’ except that of October 1566, but about a ‘band’ the Protestation says nothing. Moraymayhave referred to what (according to the ‘Diurnal,’ pp. 127, 128) Hay of Talla said at his execution (January 3, 1568). He had seen a ‘band’ signed by Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, andSir James Balfour. The first four, at least, were at Craigmillar. Buchanan, in the ‘Detection,’ gives Hay’s confession, but not this part of it. Much later, on December 13, 1573, Ormistoun confessed that, about Easter, after the murder, Bothwell tried to reassure him by showing him a ‘contract subscryvit be four or fyve handwrittes, quhilk he affirmit to me was the subscription of the erle of Huntlie, Argyll, the Secretar Maitland, and Sir James Balfour.’ The contract or band stated that Darnley must be got rid off ‘by ane way or uther,’ and that all who signed should defend any who did the deed. It was subscribed a quarter of a year before the murder, that is, taking the phrase widely, after the Craigmillar conference.[96]
What did Lethington mean, at Craigmillar, by speaking of a method of dealing with Darnley which Parliament would approve? He may have meant to arrest him, for treason, and kill him if he resisted. That this was contemplated, at Craigmillar, we proceed to adduce the evidence of Lennox.
This hitherto unknown testimony exists, in inconsistent forms, among the several indictments which Lennox, between July and December, 1568, drew up to show to the English Commissioners who, at York and Westminster, examined the charges against Mary. In the evidence which we have hitherto seen, the plans of Mary’s Council at Craigmillar are left vague, and Mary’s objections, as described byHuntly and Argyll, are spoken of as final. Mention is made of only one conference, without any sequel. But Lennox asserts that there was at least one other meeting, at Craigmillar, between Mary and her advisers. His information is obviously vague, but he first makes the following assertions.
‘In this mean time’ (namely in December 1566, when the Court was at Stirling for James’s baptism), ‘his father, being advertised [‘credibly informed’][97]that at Craigmillar the Queen and certain of her Councilhad concludedupon an enterprise to the great peril and danger of his [‘Majesty’s’] person, which was that he should have beenapprehended and put in ward, which rested’ (was postponed) ‘but only on the finishing of the christening and the departure of the said ambassadors, which thing being not a little grievous unto his father’s heart, did give him warning thereof; whereupon he, by the advice of sundry that loved him, departed from her shortly after the christening, and came to his father to Glasgow, being fully resolved with himself to have taken ship shortly after, and to have passed beyond the seas, but that sickness prevented him, which was the cause of his stay.’
In this version, Lennox is warned, by whom he does not say, of a plan, formed at Craigmillar, to arrest Darnley. The plan is not refused by the Queen, but is ‘concluded upon,’ yet postponed tillthe christening festivities are over.Nothing is said about the design to kill Darnley if he resists.The scheme is communicated to Darnley by Lennox himself.
Next comes what seems to be the second of Lennox’s attempts at producing a ‘discourse.’ This can be dated. It ends with the remark that, after Langside fight, Mary spoke with Ormistoun and Hob Ormistoun, ‘who were of the chiefest murderers of the King, her husband.’ These men now live with the Laird of Whithaugh, in Liddesdale, ‘who keepeth in his house a prisoner, one Andrew Carre, of Fawdonside, by her commandment.’ This was Andrew Ker of Faldonside, the most brutal of the murderers of Riccio. Now on October 4, 1568, in a list of ‘offences committed by the Queen’s party,’ a list perhaps in John Wood’s hand, we read that Whithaugh, and other Elliots, ‘took ane honest and trew gentleman, Ker of Faldonside, and keep him prisoner by Mary’s command;’ while Whithaugh cherishes the two Ormistouns.[98]This discourse of Lennox, then, is of, or about, October 4, 1568, and was prepared for the York Conference to inquire into Mary’s case, where it was not delivered.
He says: ‘How she used him (Darnley) at Craigmillar, my said Lord Regent (Moray), who was there present, can witness. One thing I am constrainit to declare, which came to my knowledge by credible persons, which was that certain of her familiar andprivy counsellors, of her faction and Bothwell’s, should present her a letter at that house, subscribed with their hands, the effect of which letter was to apprehend the King my son’s person, and to put him in ward, and,if he happened to resist them, to kill him: she answered that the ambassadors were come,[99]and the christening drew near, so that the time would not then serve well for that purpose, till the triumph was done, and the ambassadors departed to their country.... Also I, being at Glasgow about the same time, and having intelligence of the foresaid device for his apprehension at Craigmillar, did give him warning thereof;’ consequently, as he was also ill-treated at Stirling, Darnley went to Glasgow, ‘where he was not long till he fell sick.’ Lennox here adds the plot to kill Darnley if he resisted arrest. His reference to certain of Mary’s Privy Council, who laid the plot, cannot have been grateful to Lethington, who was at York, where Lennox meant to deliver his speech.
The final form taken by Lennox’s account of what occurred at Craigmillar looks as if it were a Scots draft for the ‘Brief Discourse’ which he actually put in, in English, at Westminster, on November 29, 1568. He addresses Norfolk and the rest in his opening sentences. The Privy Council who made the plot are they ‘of thay dayis,’ which included Moray, Argyll, Huntly, Lethington, and Bothwell. These Lords, or some of them, eithersubscribe ‘a lettre’ of warrant for Darnley’s capture alive or dead, or ask Mary to sign one; Lennox is not certain which view is correct. She answered that they must delay till the ambassadors departed. ‘But seeing in the mean time this purpose divulgate,’ she arrested the ‘reportaris,’ namely Hiegait, Walker, the Laird of Minto (we do not elsewhere learn that he was examined), and Alexander Cauldwell. Perceiving ‘that the truth was like to come to light, she left off further inquisition.’
This version does not state that Lennox, or any one else, revealed the Craigmillar plot for his arrest to Darnley. It later describes a quarrel of his with Mary at Stirling, and adds, ‘Being thus handled, at the end of the christening he came to me to Glasgow.’ This tale of a plot to arrest, and, if he resisted, to kill Darnley, corresponds with Paris’s statement that Bothwell told him, ‘We were much inclined to do it lately, when we were at Craigmillar.’
This evidence of Lennox, then, avers that, after the known conference at Craigmillar, which Lethington ended by saying that ‘you shall see nothing but good, and approved of by Parliament,’ there was another conference. On this second occasion some of the Privy Council suggested the arrest of Darnley, who, perhaps, was to be slain if he resisted. Parliament might approve of this measure, for there were reasons for charging Darnley with high treason. Mary, says Lennox, accepted the scheme, butpostponed it till after the Baptism. Within two or three weeks Lennox heard of the plan, and gave Darnley warning. But Lennox’s three versions are hesitating and inconsistent: nor does he cite his authority for the conspiracy to kill Darnley.
BETWEEN THE BAPTISM AND THE MURDER
Mary passed from Craigmillar and Edinburgh to the baptism of her son James at Stirling. The 17th December, 1566, was the crowning triumph of her life, and the last. To the cradle came the Ambassadors of France and England bearing gifts: Elizabeth, the child’s godmother, sent a font of enamelled gold. There were pageants and triumphs, fireworks, festivals, and the chanting of George Buchanan’s Latin elegiacs on Mary, theNympha Caledoniæ, with her crowns of Virtue and of Royalty. Above all, Mary had won, or taken, permission to baptize the child by the Catholic rite, and Scotland saw, for the last time, the ecclesiastics in their splendid vestments. Mary busied herself with hospitable kindnesses, a charming hostess in that dark hold where her remote ancestor had dirked his guest between the table and the hearth. But there was a strange gap in the throng of nobles. The child’s father, though in the Castle, did not attend the baptism, was not among the guests, while the grandfather, Lennox, remained apart at his castle in Glasgow.
According to du Croc, who was at Stirling, Darnley announced his intention to depart, two days before the christening, but remained and sulked.
A month before the ceremony, du Croc had expected Darnley to sulk and stay away. At Stirling he declined to meet Darnley, so bad had his conduct been, and said that, if Darnley entered by one door of his house, he would go out by the other. It has been averred by Camden, writing in the reign and under the influence of James I., when King of England, that the English ambassador, Bedford, warned his suite not to acknowledge Darnley as King, and punished one of them, who, having known him in England, saluted him. Nau says that Darnley refused to associate with the English, unless they would acknowledge his title of King, and to do this they had been forbidden by the Queen of England, their mistress,[100]who knew that Darnley kept up a more or less treasonable set of intrigues with the English Catholics.[101]Bedford, a sturdy Protestant, could not be apersona gratato Darnley: and, as to Darnley’s kingship, his own father, in 1568, rather represented him as an English subject. On the other side we have only the evidence of Sir James Melville, gossiping long after the event, to the effect that Bedford, when leaving Stirling, charged him with a message to Mary. He bade her ‘entertain Darnley as she had done at the beginning, for her own honour and advancement of her affairs,’ whichwarning Melville repeated to her.[102]But there was an awkwardness as between ‘the King’ and the English, nor do we hear that Bedford made any advance to Darnley, whose natural sulkiness is vouched for by all witnesses.
As to what occurred at Stirling in regard to Darnley’s ill-treatment, the Lennox MSS. are copious. Mary, ‘after an amiable and gentle manner,’ induced him to go to Stirling before her, without seeing the ambassadors. At Stirling, ‘she feigned to be in a great choler against the King’s tailors, that had not made such apparel as she had devised for him against the triumph.’ Darnley, to please her, kept out of the way of the ambassadors. She dismissed his guards, Lennox sent men of his own, and this caused a quarrel.[103]Darnley flushed with anger, and Mary said, ‘If he were a little daggered, and had bled as much as my Lord Bothwell had lately done, it would make him look the fairer.’ This anecdote (about which, in June 1568, while getting up his case, Lennox made inquiries in Scotland) is given both in English and Scots, in different versions. The ‘Book of Articles’ avers that Bothwell himself was in fear, and was strongly guarded.
While all at Stirling seemed gay, while Mary played the hostess admirably, du Croc found her once weeping and in pain, and warned his Governmentthat ‘she would give them trouble yet’ (December 23).[104]Mary had causes for anxiety of which du Croc was not aware. Strange rumours filled Court and town. A man named Walker, a retainer of her ambassador at Paris, Archbishop Beaton, reported that the Town Clerk of Glasgow, William Hiegait, was circulating a tale to the effect that Darnley meant to seize the child prince, crown him, and rule in his name. Now for months Darnley had been full of mad projects; to seize Scarborough, to seize the Scilly Islands, and the scheme for kidnapping James had precedents enough.
Darnley was in frequent communication with the discontented Catholics of the North and West of England, and his retainers, the Standens, were young men yearning for adventures. ‘Knowing I am an offender of the laws, they professed great friendship,’ wrote William Rogers to Cecil, with some humour.[105]
A rumour of some attempt against Mary reached Archbishop Beaton, in Paris, at the end of 1566, through the Spanish Ambassador there, who mayhave heard of it from the Spanish Ambassador in London, with whom the English Catholics were perpetually intriguing. There is a good deal of evidence that Darnley had been complaining of Mary to the Pope and the Catholic Powers, as insufficiently zealous for the Church. Darnley, not Mary, was the Scottish royal person on whom the Church ought to rely,[106]and Mary, says Knox’s continuator, saw his letters, by treachery. Consumed with anger at his degraded position, so unlike the royalty for which he hungered, and addicted to day dreams about descents on Western England, and similar wild projects, Darnley may possibly, at this time, have communicated to the English Catholics a project for restoring himself to power by carrying off and crowning his child. This fantasy would drift through the secret channels of Catholic diplomacy to the Spanish Ambassador in Paris, who gave Beaton a hint, but declined to be explicit. Mary thanked Beaton for his warning, from Seton, on February 18, nine days after Darnley’s death.[107]‘But alas! it came too late.’ Mary added that the Spanish ambassador in London had also given her warning.
There may, then, have been this amount of foundation for the report which, according to Walker, at Stirling, Hiegait was circulating about mid-December 1566. Stirling was then full of ‘honest men of the Lennox,’ sent thither by Lennox himself (as he says in one of his manuscript discourses), becauseDarnley’s usual guard had been withdrawn. Mary objected to the presence of so many of Lennox’s retainers, and there arose that furious quarrel between her and her husband. Possibly Mary, having heard Walker’s story of Darnley’s project, thought that his Lennox men were intended to bear a hand in it.
In any case Walker filled Mary’s ears, at Stirling—as she wrote to Archbishop Beaton, her ambassador in France, on January 20, 1567—with rumours of ‘utheris attemptatis and purposis tending to this fyne.’ He named Hiegait ‘for his chief author,’ ‘quha,’ he said, ‘had communicat the mater to hym, as apperyt, of mynd to gratify us; sayand to Walcar, “gif I had the moyen and crydet with the Quenis Majestie that ze have, I wald not omitt to mak hir previe of sic purpossis and bruitis that passes in the cuntrie.”’ Hiegait also said that Darnley could not endure some of the Lords, but that he or they must leave the country. Mary then sent for Hiegait, before the Council, and questionedhim. He (probably in fear of Lennox) denied that he had told Walker the story of Darnley’s project, but he had heard, from Cauldwell, a retainer of Eglintoun’s, that Darnley himself was to be ‘put in ward.’ Eglintoun, ‘a rank Papist,’ was described by Randolph as never a trustworthy Lennoxite, ‘never good Levenax.’ His retainer, Cauldwell, being summoned, expressly denied that he ever told the rumour about the idea of imprisoning Darnley, to Hiegait. But Hiegait informed the Laird of Minto(a Stewart and a Lennoxite), who again told Lennox, who told Darnley, by whose desire Cauldwell again spoke to Hiegait. The trail of the gossip runs from Cauldwell (the estate of that name is in Eglintoun’s country, Ayrshire) to Hiegait, from him to Stewart of Minto, from him to Lennox, and from Lennox to Darnley. Possibly Eglintoun (the cautious Lord who slipped away when Ainslie’s band was being signed, and hid under straw, after the battle of Langside) was the original source of the rumour of Darnley’s intended arrest. This is a mere guess. If there was a very secret plot, at Craigmillar, to arrest Darnley, we cannot tell how it reached Hiegait. Mary ‘found no manner of concordance’ in their answers, and she rebuked Walker and Hiegait in her own name, and that of their master, Beaton himself.[108]These men, with Minto, were allied with Lennox, and one of them may have been his authority for the story of the second Craigmillar conference.
We now see why it was that, in the height of her final triumph, the christening festival at Stirling Mary wept and was ill at ease. Her husband’s conduct was intolerable: now he threatened to leave before the ceremony, next he stayed on, a dismal figure behind the scenes. His guard of Lennox men might aim at slaying Bothwell, or Mary might think, on Walker’s evidence, that they intended to kidnap her child. Worse followed, when she and her Council examined Walker. Out came the tale of Hiegait, andQueen and Council, if they had really plotted to arrest Darnley, knew that their scheme was discovered and was abortive. Finally, on December 24, either in consequence of Lennox’s warning, or because Morton, Lindsay, and the other Riccio conspirators whom he betrayed were pardoned, Darnley rode off to his father at Glasgow. There he fell ill, soon after his arrival, but Lennox’s MSS. never hint that he was poisoned at Stirling (as Buchanan declares), or that he fell sick when he had ridden but a mile from the town. That they deny.
After Darnley’s departure, Moray, with Bedford, the English Ambassador, went to St. Andrews, and other places in Fife. Till January 2, 1567, when she returned to Stirling, Mary was at Drummond Castle, and at Tullibardine, where, says Buchanan, she and Bothwell made love in corners ‘so that all were highly offended.’ After January 13, she visited Calendar House, and then went to Holyrood.
It is said that she never wrote to Darnley till after January 14, when she took her child to Edinburgh, with the worst purposes, Buchanan declares. Then she wrote to Darnley, the Lennox Papers inform us, excusing herself, and offering to visit him in his sickness at Glasgow. Darnley told her messenger verbally, say the Lennox MSS., that the Queen must judge herself as to the visit to him. ‘But this much ye shall declare unto her, that I wish Stirling to be Jedburgh, and Glasgow to be the Hermitage, and I the Earl of Bothwell as I lie here, and then I doubtnot but she would be quickly with me undesired.’ This was a tactless verbal message, and, if given, must have proved to Mary that Darnley suspected her amour. Moreover, this Lennoxian story, that Mary offered the visit, and that Darnley replied with reserve, and with an insult to be verbally delivered, agrees ill with what is said in the deposition (December, 1568) of Lennox’s retainer, Thomas Crawford. According to Crawford, ‘after theire metinge and shorte spekinge together she asked hym of hys lettres, wherein he complained of the crueletye of som.’ ‘He answered that he complained not without cause....’ ‘Ye asked me what I ment bye the crueltye specified in my lettres, yt procedeth of you onelye that wille not accept myeoffresand repentance.’ Now, in the Lennox Papers this ‘innocent lamb’ has nothing to repent of, and has made no offers. These came from Mary’s side.[109]
The Lennox account goes on to say that later Mary sent ‘very loving messages and letters unto him to drive all suspicions out of his mind,’ a passage copied by Buchanan in his History. Darnley, therefore, after Mary’s visit to Glasgow, returned with her to Edinburgh, ‘contrary to his father’s will and consent.’ Lennox, however, here emphatically denies that either he or Darnley suspected any murderous design on the part of the Queen. Yet, in Letter II., she is made to say that he ‘fearit his liff,’ as thepassage is quoted in the ‘Book of Articles.’[110]As to the story that Darnley’s illness at Glasgow was caused by poison; poison, of course, was suspected, but, if the Casket Letters are genuine, Mary therein calls him ‘this pocky man,’ and Bedford says that he had small-pox: a disease from which Mary had suffered in early life.[111]He also reports that Mary sent to Darnley her own physician, though Buchanan says ‘All this while the Queen would not suffer so much as a physician to come at him.’ In the ‘Book of Articles’ she refuses to send her apothecary. Bedford never hints at scandalous doings of Mary and Bothwell at Stirling.