An Accidental Tragedy (32 page)

This will demonstrates two things very clearly. Firstly, Mary was a Guise princess and like all well-educated aristocrats put the care of her servants high on her list of priorities. Secondly, we can see from her behaviour at the weddings and christenings of her servants how much she enjoyed the easy informality of family gatherings as well as banqueting and dancing. Among her ladies she could behave as an equal, whether dressing up as a ‘housewife’ or, on
a Twelfth Night feast when Mary Beaton found the ‘bean’ in the Twelfth Night cake, giving up her place as queen to Mary Beaton for the night – from then on Mary Beaton was ‘Queen of the Bean’. With her male courtiers she enjoyed hunting and hawking, while indoors there were games of cards and dice, music and singing, as well as cautious flirting and intrigue. Her royal duties, to form alliances profitable to her country, to maintain peace according to the will of her people, and to increase the prosperity and wellbeing of her nation, never held any interst for her, but she had one unavoidable duty – to marry and produce an heir. Her disastrous choice of a husband had brought her country to the brink of civil war and now she had to perform her most dangerous dynastic duty.

The birthing chamber had been specially decorated, and on 3 June 1566, Mary moved into it and the waiting began. There was a false alarm on 15 June, with bonfires lighted and hastily extinguished, but the queen went into labour in earnest on 19 June. Bizarrely, Mary Fleming’s sister, Margaret, Countess of Atholl, who was rumoured to be a practising witch, cast a protective spell on Margaret Beaton, who was also Lady Reres and an aunt to Mary Beaton, who lay in an adjacent room experiencing all the pains of labour. Lady Reres’s simulated agonies did nothing to alleviate Mary’s pains, which were ‘severe and long lasting’. Mary prayed that if the worst happened she should be sacrificed to save the child. Mary was ‘so handled that she wished she had never been married’, and was not the last mother to voice this wish.

At about ten o’clock on the morning of 19 June 1566, Mary gave birth to a healthy and perfectly formed prince with a fine, thin caul stretched over his face. This was regarded as extremely lucky and prophesied that the child would not die by drowning. Mary Beaton immediately rushed from the apartments to give the news to James Melville, who set off for London. Perhaps to the chagrin of Mary, who would have been desperate for rest and restorative sleep, ‘all the artillery of the castle shot and bonfires were set forth in all parts for joy’.

Melville spent his first night at Berwick – sixty miles in about six hours – and four days later was in London – roughly 100 miles a day – to give the news to Cecil. Elizabeth was at Greenwich Palace ‘in great merriness and dancing after supper’, and when she received the news all dancing stopped as she sat down with her hand on her cheek, saying, ‘The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son while I am of barren stock!’ Even for Elizabeth, one of the great dissemblers, this was an outrageous remark. Her barrenness had never been tested and, as one who vowed ‘to live and die a virgin’, was unlikely to be, but she did manipulate the situation to receive sympathy at someone else’s good news. Elizabeth Tudor was never off-duty.

Melville formally asked Elizabeth to be a godmother, to which she agreed, and he then suggested that Elizabeth might have an occasion to see Mary, ‘whereat she smiled’. Charles IX of France had also agreed to stand as a sponsor, although both monarchs would send proxies to the ceremony. Melville also saw Cecil and delivered Mary’s forgiveness for the Rokesby affair.

Killigrew arrived in Edinburgh on 22 June as ambassador and was told that Mary welcomed him and would see him as ‘soon as she might have ease of the pain in her breasts’. Meanwhile she ordered that a bed of her own of crimson velvet was to be set up in his rooms. The new ambassador then attended a sermon with Moray, Huntly, Argyll, Mar and Crawford. He noticed the split between Argyll, Moray, Atholl and Mar on one side and Bothwell, Huntly and the Master of Maxwell on the other. Bothwell seemed to have most credit with the queen, and with Lethington, still stained with suspicion of involvement in Rizzio’s murder, was about to depart for Flanders. It did not take a diplomatic genius to see the beginnings of yet another split among the now-leaderless nobility.

Five days after the birth, on 24 June, Killigrew saw the prince with his wet-nurse and ‘afterwards did see him as good as naked. His head, feet and hands, all well proportioned.’ He spoke to Mary, who was still weak and replied faintly with a hollow cough. The worst was over for the queen. Scotland now had an heir, Darnley had moved further down the line of succession, and
Elizabeth had to realise that her successor was now alive and crying for milk in Edinburgh Castle. Needless to say, such an indelicate thought, presuming as it did her own death, was never put into words.

Darnley, with Sir William Stanley, was shown the infant prince, and Mary, knowing that Stanley would report her actions, acknowledged that he, Darnley, was the true father of the child who would, in time, unite the kingdoms of Scotland and England. Darnley realised that he was being left out of the equation and burst out, ‘Is this your answer to forgive and forget all?’

Mary replied, ‘I have forgiven but I shall never forget. What if Fawdonside’s pistol had shot, what would have become of him and me both?’ Darnley swept out of the room in speechless petulance.

He now felt that he was excluded from any possibility of power in Scotland and was making alternative, and treasonable, arrangements. He had been in correspondence with Philip II, and he was in contact with disaffected Catholics in England. Darnley was investigating the possibility of preparing Scarborough as a landing point for forces invading from Holland and of laying claim to the ordnance in the Scilly Isles. On 5 July he received promises from his allies in the Scilly Isles, and from Scarborough he was assured by Sir Richard Semple that the town and its defences would be delivered to Darnley whenever he wished. At home he was behaving with total selfishness, ‘vagabondising every night’ and insisting that the gates of the castle be kept open to allow his drunken return, breaching security for Mary and the prince.

Mary recovered from her ordeal sufficiently to visit Newhaven, outside Edinburgh, in July, then travelled up the River Forth to Alloa, the seat of the Earl of Mar, where she started again to enjoy the outdoors. Darnley joined the party but stayed only a few hours. With Mary away from Edinburgh, rivalries inevitably broke out in the court. Bothwell’s ascendancy as the royal favourite was beginning, and he quickly became ‘the most hated man among the noblemen in Scotland’.

His power base in the Border country was as troublesome as ever. On 17 June the Abbot of Kelso had been murdered – it is said they smote off his arms and legs – by the Laird of Cessford and the brothers of the Laird of Ferniehurst. Since the Abbot had been under Bothwell’s protection – and presumably had been paying well for it – this could not go unpunished, and on 28 July Bothwell was in Kelso. Here, he heard a rumour that Mary was to be in Jedburgh, nine miles distant, in eight days. By 8 August the journey to Jedburgh seemed to ‘wax doubtful’, yet by 14 August Mary was at Meggetland, south of Peebles, hunting with Bothwell, Moray and Mar and intending to return to Edinburgh via the house of John Stewart of Traquair.

The level of disagreement between Mary and Darnley increased and he petulantly decamped to Dunfermline, then unexpectedly appeared at Traquair House. Claude Nau gives us the following anecdote: ‘While the party was at supper, the king, her husband, asked the queen to attend a stag hunt. Knowing that if she did so, she would be required to gallop her horse at a great pace, she whispered in his ear that she was
enceinte
. The king answered aloud, “Never mind, if we lose this one, we will make another,” whereupon the laird of Traquair rebuked him sharply, and told him that he did not speak like a Christian. He answered, “What! Ought we not to work a mare well when she is with foal?” ’

It is difficult to believe that the event took the course described in such detail, but it is clear that Darnley arrived unbidden and behaved boorishly. For Mary to have had certain knowledge of a pregnancy only two months after the birth of James by a husband she loathed is stretching the imagination, and if she was implying – more or less publicly – that the child was not his, she was behaving with more than her usual irresponsibility.

On her return to Edinburgh she did, however, give orders for the infant James to be sent to the total safety of Stirling Castle, her own nursery, and the traditional nursery for royal children. Thus on 22 August the two-month-old heir was carried in a careful litter with Lady Reres, and the royal party had an escort of 500
arquebusiers. Curiously, Mary’s orders for the furnishings of the nursery were not issued until 5 September, but, when they were, they were lavish indeed: ten hanks of the finest gold thread and the same of silver, fourteen pounds of feathers for the pillow and twenty-eight pounds of wool for the mattress. There were fifteen ells
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of blue plaiding to make a cover for the cradle, twelve ells of blanketing and two tapestries as well as a specially constructed bed. Special beds were to be built for Lady Reres and the ‘mistress nurse’. The list was to be ‘answered incontinently, because the same is requested and very needful to be had’.

Mary’s council was becoming more united, if only in their hatred of Darnley, with Lethington now fully pardoned and partly reconciled to Bothwell. In fact, the only cloud on the horizon was the increasingly erratic behaviour of Darnley. He had refused to enter Holyroodhouse while Mary’s council was in residence and dropped heavy hints about leaving the country, but she persuaded him to enter and gave him ‘access to her bed’. Since they seem to have spent the night arguing over his intention to run into a self-imposed exile, neither party had much sleep. Next day he was summoned to appear before the Privy Council and was challenged by Mary and the members, in the presence of Philibert du Croc, the French ambassador, to declare his grievances in full. John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross asked him to confirm or deny that he had a ship fully manned and ready to leave. The result was a surprise. He confirmed the existence of the ship, announcing that he could no longer stay in Scotland and that he intended to leave the country and live abroad. The lords were appalled at the thought of such a loose cannon plotting unimagined intrigue abroad, and Mary took him by the hand again, asking him why. He muttered about not having been made king, and then, to everyone’s horror, without asking for permission to withdraw, addressed Mary directly saying, ‘Adieu, Madame, you shall not see my face in a long time.’ Then, after turning to the astonished lords, he said, ‘Gentlemen, adieu!’ and strode out of the room.

This behaviour would have been unforgivable anywhere, but to snub the queen in the presence of a foreign ambassador and before the assembled nobility – a nobility that already felt a deep-seated loathing for him – was to write his own death warrant. Mary was reassured immediately, ‘It is vain to imagine that he shall be able to raise any disturbance, for there is not one person in this kingdom, from the highest to the lowest, that regards him.’ Meanwhile the council contented itself with writing to Catherine de Medici to warn her that Lord Darnley was now thought to be mad.

Mary realised that it had been her petulant defiance of Elizabeth that had brought her to marry Darnley and that it was his arrogant behaviour which was tearing the country apart. She was incapable of firm action, and her council remained united – only just – out of self-interest and without any royal leadership to give it a common purpose. To deal with the problem of Darnley, their superior in the strict order of nobility, the council needed guidance and instruction from the queen, but none was forthcoming. Mary had no idea what to do and confided in du Croc that she was so miserable that she was seriously considering returning again to France, leaving Scotland in the control of a five-man regency consisting of Moray, Huntly, Mar, Atholl and Bothwell. This would have meant Mary abandoning her infant son and admitting that her decision to return to Scotland had been disastrous. The suggestion was emotional and irrational and no more than the desperate cry of someone who knows that she is personally to blame for the existing chaos and cannot find a way to impose order and good government.

As always, when surrounded by misfortunes, Mary found solace on horseback in the open air. A ‘justice ayre’ was due to be held in Jedburgh and Mary, with Moray, Lethington, Argyll and Huntly, rode south to attend. These ‘ayres’ were circuit courts held sporadically in royal boroughs, much like the English assize courts of comparatively recent times, and it would not have been uncommon for the monarch to attend. It was also an opportunity for the Privy Council to meet away from the
capital. The court lasted for a week and adjourned on 15 October, when Mary, accompanied by Moray and a retinue of courtiers, rode to visit Bothwell, who was injured and in his castle of Hermitage.

Bothwell had led a punitive raid against the Elliots, under the outlaw John Elliot of Park. He had captured Elliot, who managed to escape on foot, but Bothwell stumbled after him in pursuit and was stabbed in the head, body and hand before he managed to shoot Elliot. He then passed out from loss of blood. His servants found him and dragged him back to Hermitage where he was now convalescing, having sent Elliot’s head to Edinburgh.

Bothwell was now taking centre stage in Mary’s affairs, having previously been told that he would never receive any favour from her. A totally self-serving opportunist, he was now one of her most senior courtiers, a bitter opponent of Darnley’s and, since it was greatly to his advantage, fiercely loyal to Mary. He was one of the more interesting men in Mary’s life and his portrait miniature gives us many clues. He was sturdily built, although of below-average height, and described as being ‘of great bodily strength and beauty although vicious and dissolute in his habits’. His direct gaze in the portrait makes it quite clear that not only had he no fear of anything, he was also very easily roused. In short, not someone one should stand too close to if one wanted a peaceful life. The earl had not had a peaceful life, nor had his ancestors. His father, Patrick Hepburn, had vied with Darnley’s father for the hand of Marie de Guise and other Hepburns had made ‘suspicious connections’ with the widow of James I as well as Mary of Gueldres, wife of James II. With the castles of Hermitage, which he held in trust as a royal castle, Crichton, and now Dunbar, the latter two both in the Lothians, he could control swathes of southern Scotland while harrying English advances, as well as exercising vigorous control over the Debatable Lands. Hermitage alone could hold a garrison of up to 1,000 men. The family’s recourse was always to the sword first and to the negotiating table last.