An Accidental Tragedy (40 page)

The problem of her child’s legitimacy was brutally solved some time before 24 July, when she miscarried twins of an unknown sex. The fact that the two foetuses were large enough to be seen by her chamber-women – there was no midwife present – seems to make it clear that their conception had taken place at Dunbar.

Given her condition after this event – she suffered postnatal haemorrhage – the next move by the Lords was extremely unfeeling. They had finally decided to cut the Gordian knot and she was visited by Lindsay, accompanied by notaries, who was under precise instructions. Lindsay brought letters formally accusing her of being an accessory to Darnley’s murder and of having had relations with Bothwell out of wedlock. There were also three documents which she was required to sign. The first was an instrument of abdication, declaring that she was ‘so vexed, broken and unquiet’ by the efforts of government that she could no longer continue, and of her own free will and ‘out of motherly love’ would place the crown and the power of government in the hands of her son. Since she would be admitting that governing had broken her, it would hardly seem a loving act to lay such a burden on James’s infant shoulders, but the drafters of the document had no time for such niceties. The document would clear the way for James’s coronation. The second
document appointed Moray to the office of regent until James’s seventeenth birthday, while in the third document, Mary was to appoint a council of regents – Châtelherault, Argyll, Morton, Glencairn and Mar – to await Moray’s return to Scotland or to assist him if he so wished. The Lords had been thorough. Lindsay asked Mary to read the documents, but his attitude made it clear that it did not much matter whether she read them or not. Some sources claim that she did not, in fact, read them at all.

Mary, who was still in bed and very weak from loss of blood, quite naturally refused to sign and the atmosphere changed dramatically. It was hinted that if she did not sign she could be taken from the castle and drowned in the lake – echoing her fears when in the Provost’s house in Edinburgh – or taken to ‘some island in the middle of the sea, there to be kept unknown to the world, in close custody for the rest of her life’. Mary demanded ‘very earnestly’ to answer the points in the letters before a parliament. Lindsay said he had no power to negotiate, and the notaries read the instruments to her. They then asked her what her decision would be and she again refused to sign. However, Mary had now moved from her bed to a chair and realised that, in the world of realpolitik, the crown was no longer hers and that either her abdication would take it away legally, or her murder would take it away violently. With nowhere left to turn, she signed the papers, asking the notaries to witness that she had signed under duress. She was remembering Throckmorton’s smuggled letter of advice. The long chain of conspiracies and of smuggled correspondence had started. It would continue until her death.

It was at this point that she was moved from the Douglas apartments into the medieval tower and was deprived of paper, pens and ink. As in the past in times of crisis, Mary fell ill. This appears to have been a form of jaundice or hepatitis, which caused a swelling, and ‘a deep yellow tint spread over her whole body’. The swelling was probably a form of deep vein thrombosis occurring after childbirth. She was allowed a surgeon, who treated her with a heart stimulant and bleeding until she recovered. This
illness and her now-stricter isolation cut her off from knowledge of events in Edinburgh and Stirling.

Throckmorton met first with Lethington, who immediately told him that any attempt by England to gather support for Mary would put her life in danger. Then he met the Lords – booted and spurred, ready to ride for Stirling – to whom he appealed for a delay in the coronation since it was not for the good of the state to put the government in the hands of a child. He was told, ‘The realm could never be worse governed than it was, for either the Queen was advised by the worse counsel or by no counsel’, and the Lords summarily departed. Throckmorton now suggested to Cecil, vainly as it turned out, that he return to London since there was now nothing for him to do. This would save him an embarrassment since the Lords had invited him to attend the coronation and his compliance with this invitation would seem to lend Elizabeth’s endorsement of the event. His dilemma was solved on 26 July when he received a long letter from Elizabeth, bidding him to stay in Edinburgh and to continue insisting on Mary’s freedom. He was to tell Mary how much ‘we mislike their [the Lords’] doing’. In the letter Cecil crossed out ‘their’, and replaced it with ‘her’, thus altering the whole tone of the communication. Throckmorton was to tell the Lords ‘we will take plain part against them, to revenge their sovereign, for example to all posterity . . . You may assure them we detest the murder of our cousin the king, and mislike the marriage of the queen with Bothwell as much as any of them. But think it not tolerable for them . . . to call her . . . to answer to their accusations by way of force; for we do not think it consonant in nature that the head should be subject to the foot.’ Finally, he was expressly forbidden to attend the coronation ‘by any means’.

Melville wrote to Elizabeth on 29 July 1567 and reported that Mary had said ‘she would rather herself and the prince were in your realm than elsewhere in Christendom’. More importantly, on the same day in the parish church of Stirling the 13-month-old boy was crowned as James VI, and the Scottish nobility touched the crown as a sign of their fealty. The rebels were firmly in
control: Morton and Erskine of Dun took the oath for the boy, Ruthven and Lindsay affirmed Mary’s abdication and Knox delivered a sermon on a text from 2 Kings verses 1 and 2, in which the eight-year-old Josiah was crowned and ‘did what was right in the sight of the Lord’. The one point of dispute was that James was anointed by a priest, at which ‘Knox and the other preachers repined’, but the coronation party made a solemn procession to the castle with Atholl carrying the crown, Morton the sceptre, Glencairn the sword and Mar, as the royal governor, the new king. Knox, along with the justice clerk and Campbell of Kinzencleuch, were recorded as witnesses to the ceremony. In Edinburgh, James was proclaimed King of Scotland ‘with joy, dancing and acclamations’, and ‘throughout Scotland there were widespread bonfires, shooting off of cannon and ringing of church bells’. Douglas of Loch Leven, with a vicious lack of tact, fired off cannon, lit bonfires and his whole household danced in the gardens. Mary, in her tower prison, fearfully asked the cause of the celebrations and some of the household unfeelingly told her that ‘in her bravadoes her authority was abolished and she no longer had the power to avenge herself on them’. In turn Mary told them that they now had a king who would avenge her and, this time with considerable justification, fell on her knees and ‘wept long and bitterly’. It could be said that she was no longer Queen of Scots, but when she wrote to Throckmorton in mid August from her ‘prison en la tour de Locklivin’ she signed herself ‘Marie R’. Previously her signature had been simply ‘MARIE’ but from now on she asserted her position as queen.

She was, however, not without friends. In the west the Hamilton faction was rumoured to be gathering forces, hopefully without provoking the Lords to act against Mary. The Queen’s Party did, however, prevent the heralds from declaring the abdication and the coronation of James. On the day of that coronation a formal bond was made at Dumbarton by Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, Argyll, Huntly, Arbroath, Galloway, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, Herries and others, demanding Mary’s freedom. In England, Elizabeth’s wrath was growing and
Cecil feared that she might take recourse to open war, although he confided to Throckmorton that her reasons were, firstly, that she wanted public opinion to realise that she could not condone the imprisonment of a monarch, and, secondly, that she did not want this to be a precedent which could be used against her.

As soon as Moray arrived in Edinburgh on 12 August, Throckmorton met him and Moray told him that he would accept the regency, albeit with diplomatic reluctance. With Moray came de Lignerolles as ambassador from France, who openly admitted that he was going through the motions of seeking Mary’s liberty for the sake of diplomatic nicety. Mary was a sovereign queen, his king’s sister-in-law, and there was a long tradition of amity between the two countries. He had no intention of seeking access to Mary, and as soon as he had delivered his message to the Lords he would immediately return to France.

Three days later, on 15 August, Moray, accompanied by Atholl, Morton and Lindsay, visited Mary. After supper Moray talked alone with his half-sister for two hours in a bizarre reversal of their meeting at Reims in March 1561, only six years previously. At that time Moray, still merely Lord James, had been sent out to ‘grope the Queen’s mind’, and together they established the conditions under which Mary might return to rule as queen in Scotland. Now he was to demonstrate the reasons why she could not continue as queen and why he would replace her as regent. There are two widely differing accounts of the meeting.

The first version was given by Moray to Throckmorton: ‘He [Moray] behaved himself rather like a ghostly father unto her than as a counsellor.’ Mary was forced to confront the fact that she had taken charge of a reasonably prosperous country with good relations with France and England which had established a Reformed religion and was slowly accepting this Reformation; in which past divisions among the nobility were reluctantly closing as they became ready to accept a central rule from a strong monarch; and in which trade with England and Continental Europe was prospering. Instead of a strong monarch, Scotland
got a beautiful girl who preferred her own courtly pleasures, who antagonised England by a wilful marriage and who was now being ignored by the French queen – appalled at Mary’s possible involvement in a royal murder – and who, by negligence, had brought her country to the brink of civil war. Moray left her that night ‘in the hope of nothing but God’s mercy’. Unsurprisingly, Mary wept bitterly.

Next morning she sent for Moray, who told her that he would do all in his power to preserve her and begged her to keep the lowest of profiles and with the utmost modesty – not a virtue of which she had great stock – to assure the Lords that ‘she harboured no thoughts of revenge towards those who had sought her reformation and preservation’. Her response was typically emotional, and she embraced and kissed Moray, begging him to accept the regency. Moray said somewhat hypocritically that this meeting had ‘cut the thread of love betwixt the Queen and him for ever’.

An alternative account of the meeting was given to Nau by Mary some ten years later. Moray arrived on the shore of the loch arrogantly mounted on one of Mary’s own horses, and to her delight fell off it into Loch Leven. How she saw this tumble from her close prison is a mystery. Moray behaved with less than the courtesy expected of one dining with his sovereign, and afterwards she had to remind him of the duty he owed to his queen. He asked her advice as to whether he should accept the regency, since other candidates might not treat Mary with such kindness. She reminded him that she held the only just authority under God and that those who were intent on usurping it would have no qualms over replacing him. She reminded Moray, ‘He who does not keep faith where it is due, will hardly keep it where it is not due.’ All his talk of protection for Mary she took to be dissimulation. Mary asked for the return of the rings she herself had purchased or had been given her by Henri II. Moray refused, saying that the Lords would need to keep the jewels in case she used them to finance a rescue. Nau commented: ‘Here you may notice the impudence of this miserable creature, who did not hesitate to turn the queen’s private property against herself.’

As always, the truth must lie between the two versions, with both people remembering only what they believed to have been said, and with what intent. Moray was understandably angry with his irresponsible half-sister and regretted ever going to France to fetch her, while Mary, with her fingers in her ears metaphorically, heard nothing but unjustified criticism of a monarch who was, by right of God, above criticism.

Six days later, on 22 August 1567, Moray was declared Regent of Scotland at the High Cross in Edinburgh ‘by heralds and trumpets’. He swore, under the king, to maintain the true religion, to hold a parliament and not to have any contact with Mary without the advice of the Privy Council. De Lignerolles left for France with the usual collection of silverware, and Throckmorton duly reported the events to Elizabeth, who replied giving him permission to tell the Hamilton faction of her support. The Queen’s Party once again refused to allow the heralds to make the declaration in the west of the country.

When Mary heard that Moray had summoned a parliament for 15 December she saw an opportunity to plead her case in public and wrote to Moray at length. She reminded him that she had treated him as a true brother, not as a bastard, and that she had entrusted him with the entire government of the realm since it had come under her authority. She demanded permission for a hearing before the parliament, promising that if that parliament required it she would ‘resign the authority which God had given her over them’.

Moray refused the permission and the Privy Council of 4 December confirmed the existence of papers ‘in her own hand’ implicating Mary in Darnley’s murder and even accusing her of plotting the death of the infant James. News of the Craigmillar Bond started to leak out and Lethington is reputed by Drury to have burnt all existing copies, except for the one which ‘concerns the Queen’s part, kept to be shown’. To tie up the now-rapidly unravelling ends of Mary’s imprisonment and Moray’s regency, the parliament of 15 December set about legitimising the actions of the rebel Lords. Darnley’s murder, Bothwell’s revolt at
Carberry and Mary’s detention at Loch Leven were ‘in the said queen’s own default’. Bothwell was described as ‘the chief executor of the said horrible murder’, but this accusation was ‘in no way prejudicial to the issue of our sovereign lord’s mother, lawfully come from her body to the crown of the realm, nor their heirs’. A request was made to hear of the letters that had passed between Bothwell and Mary, but they were not produced, although parliament was assured that the letters proved ‘she was privy art and part of the actual devise and deed of the forenamed murder of the king, her lawful husband’. Parliament also noted ‘the demission and over giving of the crown and regiment of this realm made by the queen’s grace, our sovereign lord’s dearest mother, by virtue of her letters of commission and procuration signed with her hand, and under her Privy Seal of the date of 24 July’. The parliament wisely also ratified all the gifts of land made by Mary, thus avoiding the possibility that she might revoke them on her birthday. Mary was no longer Queen of Scots and she herself declared, ‘we are so vexed and wearied that our body, spirit and fancies are altogether become unable to travail in that rowme [situation]. And therefore we have demitted and renounced the office of government of this our realm.’