An Accidental Tragedy (37 page)

On the day before the divorce was granted, Bothwell was
confident enough of his prize to return with Mary to Edinburgh. Accompanied by Lethington and the still-faithful Huntly, he entered by the West Port, rode through the Grassmarket and then up to the High Street and the castle. It was a shorter route and exposed the couple to less risk of public disapproval. This was a far cry from the
entrées joyeuses
of the past: with Bothwell now on foot leading Mary’s horse by the bridle, she re-entered her capital more as a captive than as a sovereign queen. Bothwell had, however, disarmed his men and the royal escort looked comparatively peaceable. Bothwell immediately asked John Craig, as minister of St Giles, to declare the banns of marriage, which Craig refused to do, declaring in an open sermon that the marriage was adulterous and that Mary had been taken by force. Typically, Bothwell demanded that the town council hang the minister forthwith and the justice-clerk appeared with a letter from Mary declaring that she was ‘neither ravished nor detained in captivity’. Craig, under protest, did reluctantly call the banns and on 12 May Mary declared to the Privy Council, ‘[she] stands content with the said earl and has forgiven him, all hatred conceived by her majesty for the taking and imprisoning of her at the time foresaid’.

Mary created Bothwell Duke of Orkney, reputedly placing the coronet on his head herself, and on 15 May the couple were married in the chapel at Holyrood by the Bishop of Orkney, Adam Bothwell, according to the Protestant rite, at ten o’clock in the evening with ‘neither pleasure nor pastime’. One contemporary said that the marriage was ‘huddled up in an unorderly way’. Lord Herries had begged her not to marry Bothwell, and du Croc warned her that the deed would lose her the friendship of France. Ironically, of Mary’s first two marriages, one had been entirely dynastic and the other impetuous, if necessary for the continuation of the royal line, but both were celebrated with the utmost formal pomp. However, this third marriage at least appeared to be for her a romantic match and was, by contrast, a rather shoddy affair. She had been widowed by her first bridegroom, her second husband had been murdered only three
months previously, and only fifteen months had passed since she herself had given Lady Jean Gordon a cloth-of-silver wedding dress for her marriage to Bothwell. Her careful Guise education had been of no use to her, and now she had isolated herself from even those of the Scots nobility who were still loyal. The popular view was made clear when placards appeared on the gates of Holyrood, now quoting Ovid: ‘Mense malas maio nubere vulgus ait’ (‘As is common said, none but harlots marry in May’). David Hume, in his
History of England
, tells us that ‘the Scots who resided abroad, met with such reproaches that they durst nowhere appear in public’. Mary wrote to Elizabeth, ‘the factions and conspiracies that of long time continued herein, which, occurring so frequently had already in a manner so wearied and broken us that we ourselves were not able of any long continuance to sustain the pain and travail in our own person’. She does not declare Bothwell innocent, only that ‘he was acquitted by our laws’. Elizabeth described her marriage ‘hard to be digested by her or any other monarch’.

Following her abduction the enormity of her situation had started to be felt almost at once. On 1 May in Stirling a confederation of the nobility was formed to ‘pursue the Queen’s liberty, preserve the prince from his enemies in Mar’s keeping, and purge the realm of the detestable murder of our king’. In hard political terms, what this meant was that the upstart Bothwell had become far too big for his boots and had to be cut down to size. This marked a reversal in the attitude of the nobility who had enthusiastically signed the Ainslie Tavern Bond, and demonstrates how quickly Bothwell had achieved his new status, with only one more step remaining between him and the crown.

Since the death of James V, Scotland had been ruled first by governors, then a queen regent, who was followed in turn by a French-educated girl who had imposed no firm government over the country. Now, with Prince James safely in their grasp under the governorship of the Earl of Mar, the nobility prepared themselves again for what had been commonplace over the last
130 years – a royal minority and a regency. Among others, the proposers of this action were Argyll, Atholl, Morton and Mar, three of whom had been signatories of the Craigmillar Bond, and they were to be joined in this new confederation by the earls of Glencairn, Cassilis, Eglinton, the new Earl of Ruthven and eleven others. With Châtelherault and Moray abroad, this confederacy of the nobility almost exactly mirrored those who had opposed Mary’s marriage to Darnley during the Chase-about Raid.

They felt confident enough, while at Stirling, to commission a masque, ‘The Murder of Darnley and the Fate of Bothwell’, at the end of which the boy playing Bothwell was hanged amid uproarious applause. The hanging was slightly over-realistic and some anxious time elapsed before the boy actor recovered. Now the signatories departed to their own lands to raise levies.

Mary, who had never previously needed to raise an army, and whose income from the ‘thirds’ precluded such expenditure, had to face the first serious shortage of money in her reign. She had only raised taxes once before – to pay for her son’s baptism. Now, she sold off plate and jewels and even tried to melt down Elizabeth’s christening present of a gold font to mint coinage to pay her troops. The font was so large that it proved impossible to melt and Mary merely managed to deface the gift.

Mary’s romantic notions were rapidly disappearing as her relationship with Bothwell disintegrated. She seemed unaware that his only previous female relationships had consisted of sexual conquest followed by virtual abandonment, and that he made no secret of his infidelities – ‘there has been no end of Mary’s tears and lamentations’. His divorced wife, Jean Gordon, still lived in Crichton Castle and was regularly visited by him, and du Croc reported that the earl still regarded Jean as his spouse, and the queen as a kind of legal concubine. The normal rules of society did not apply to Bothwell. His jealousy of Mary, his latest possession, was constant and she was allowed no male contact,
being the victim of censure for the comparatively slight gesture of giving a horse to the unstable Earl of Arran. Bothwell also removed her female servants and replaced them with his own trusted retainers to keep her under constant watch. The depth of her unhappiness with the plight she had brought upon herself can be judged by her saying to du Croc on her wedding day that she ‘wanted only death’, and on another occasion, in the presence of Melville, asking for a knife to stab herself, ‘Or else I shall drown myself!’ This remark betrayed no real intention of suicide but was an impulsive cry of desperation which clearly showed the extent of her unhappiness. Extraordinarily, the once-loathed Darnley was now, on a placard, referred to as ‘Gentle Henry’, and when Mary was seen by some Edinburgh housewives they called out, ‘God save your grace’, but added, ‘if you be guiltless of the king’s death.’ A ballad on the death of Darnley circulated beginning with the lines, ‘Adieu, all gladness, sport and play, / Adieu, farewell both night and day.’ Distance was lending enchantment to his memory.

In public, Mary tried to maintain a pretence of normality, riding with Bothwell and running at the ring together with him. Bothwell totally ignored court protocol, appearing in Mary’s presence bareheaded, forcing her to try to make a joke of it by taking his cap and putting it on his head herself. He issued proclamations as if he were already either king or protector. Mary, needless to say, obediently trotted along, issuing yet another proclamation defending the Reformed religion, but courtiers noticed a coarsening in her language, echoing her normally foul-mouthed husband. Mary was rude about the lords: ‘Atholl is but feeble, for Argyll, I know well how to stop his mouth, as for Morton, his boots are but new pulled off and still soiled, he shall be sent back to his old quarters’, that is to say, back to exile.

The court itself was shorn of all gaiety. There were far fewer servants and many more soldiers, with Lethington and Huntly being the only advisers still loyal to Mary. In fact, Huntly was now an extremely reluctant ally of Bothwell’s since the latter’s cynical divorce from Huntly’s sister, and he asked for permission to
leave the court. Mary refused, telling him that she knew he was turning against her, as had his father at the Battle of Corrichie. This was not only petulant but also directly insolent and personally hurtful, and resulted in Huntly promptly defecting with his supporters to the safety of Edinburgh Castle. The castle was under the control of Sir James Balfour, who had secretly changed sides without the knowledge of Bothwell. Lethington felt his life was under threat from Bothwell, eventually quitting the court for the circle of the Confederate Lords and the King’s Party. With these defections there was no longer any effective government in Scotland apart from that of Bothwell, who was seen as a usurper supported by his somnambulant wife.

The Lords made their first move to confront Mary and Bothwell while they were at Borthwick Castle, twelve miles south of Edinburgh. The hostile forces arrived on the night of 10 June and Bothwell, with his usual regard for his own welfare, escaped, leaving Mary to confront the Lords, who were now openly abusive outside the castle walls. On the next night Mary escaped in male disguise, riding astride on a servant’s horse, and joined Bothwell at three in the morning. They then took refuge in Dunbar, while Bothwell hastily assembled an army: defensive action was not his kind of warfare.

On the following day the Privy Council declared that since Mary was a prisoner she could not govern, and therefore, for the sake of the nation, all means must be used to free her. The council went on to accuse Bothwell openly of murder, illegal marriage and ‘ravishing and invading the princess’s body’, and called the burgesses to arms on three hours’ notice. Sir William Drury reported to Cecil that even ‘If there were no other quarrel or cause of choler than the evil speech that passed at Borthwick, it is like enough to cause the shedding of blood.’ He was right.

The Privy Council on the same day accused Bothwell of having ‘put violent hands on [Mary], and that he had seduced [her] into an unhonest marriage and murdered Darnley’, whereupon the Lords occupied Edinburgh and summoned whatever
levies they could to protect the prince. They also demanded that Bothwell be tried. The facts that the prince was safely in their power and that Bothwell had already been tried and acquitted were ignored in their legitimising of a call to civil war. In Edinburgh, Sir James Balfour, the probable author of the Craigmillar Bond, the purchaser of the gunpowder and a principal accessory to Darnley’s murder, had been granted the governorship of Edinburgh Castle by Bothwell. He now asked the Confederates if he could remain in his post provided he put the castle at their disposal. This was an egregious act of treachery. John Knox had known Balfour when they had been fellow galley slaves and said of him, ‘He has neither fear of God nor love of virtue, further than the present commodity persuadeth.’ The Lords agreed at once, thus gaining the chief stronghold in Scotland and imprisoning Huntly without firing a shot. They also now controlled the mint and had possession of the gold christening font, Mary’s last asset. Balfour proved his new loyalty by sending a message to Mary at Dunbar proposing that she and Bothwell return to Edinburgh, where they would find safety under the guns of the castle. Being unaware of his volte-face, they agreed and Mary called on her subjects to come to her aid at Musselburgh. She reached Haddington with 600 men, the country having largely ignored her call, and met Bothwell, who had summoned 2,000 more, as well as three pieces of artillery. The couple spent what would be their last night together in nearby Seton Castle.

The Lords rested at Musselburgh under the command of Morton and Argyll, having created a banner showing a drawing of Darnley dead below a tree, a child kneeling beside him with the motto ‘Judge and revenge my cause, O lord!’ This purported to justify their actions as not being against their lawful queen but only against Bothwell as murderer of Darnley.

By five o’clock on the morning of 15 June the royal forces were marching towards Edinburgh with Mary at their head, but not now sporting her one-time armour of the Chase-about Raid, a silver breastplate and a steel cap with a jaunty feather. Now, most
of her clothes were in Holyrood, in the hands of the Lords, or abandoned in Dunbar, and she wore a simple red skirt, reaching only to mid-calf, over a red petticoat, her sleeves tied into points, a kerchief and muffler, and a velvet hat. Her choice of red, the traditional colour of Catholic martyrdom, is interesting. The legitimacy of her forces was simply established by the carrying of a flag with the national saltire of Scotland and a banner with the royal emblem of a lion rampant.

Two miles south of Musselburgh the two sides came face to face at Carberry Hill, near the village of Inveresk. Neither side wanted to fight a pitched battle since the Lords had only very dubious legality – in fact they were making war on their sovereign queen – and Bothwell knew that if he won a victory here he would still have to enter Edinburgh. By now he may have heard of Balfour’s treachery and he knew he would be vulnerable under the guns of the castle. He had hopes that Huntly and the Hamiltons might appear to support him, but Huntly was a prisoner and the Hamiltons, wisely, remained in Edinburgh. Morton and Home took up a position with their mounted troops at the forefront, although Bothwell was well encamped on the crest of the hill with his artillery threatening any cavalry charge. Both sides waited nervously for the other to make a move.

Du Croc had followed the Lords from Edinburgh and, after an amount of bickering, he persuaded Morton to accept the surrender of Bothwell as enough to allow an honourable withdrawal. When he put this to Mary she responded furiously that the Lords were treasonably repudiating the Bond of Ainslie’s Tavern, and that it was thanks to Bothwell that they were now confirmed in possession of their lands. Mary asked du Croc to tell the Lords that she would pardon any who begged for it, but she flatly rejected Morton’s offer. Du Croc noted later that Bothwell’s side was in greater order, ‘One man in command, but the other side had too many counsellors, there was great disagreement amongst them. I took my leave of the Queen and left with tears in my eyes.’ He also noticed that the queen was ‘great’ and was
carrying Bothwell’s child, the heir to the throne if anything were to happen to Prince James. The Earl of Glencairn received Mary’s offer with scorn and repeated the demand for the surrender of Bothwell. Realising that he could broker no peace, du Croc returned to Edinburgh and the two sides continued to glare at each other in the summer heat.