An Accidental Tragedy (42 page)

Langside was a ‘T’-shaped village with a long narrow street – Long Loan – only forty feet wide and running north to south. It was composed of cottages with gardens – kailyards – on either side in which Kirkcaldy of Grange placed arquebusiers to act as sharpshooters. He reserved his pikemen and cavalry on the western side of the village.

Mary’s vanguard was led by Herries and his Border horsemen, who rode bravely into the village, but as he advanced up the confines of Long Loan – the worst tactic imaginable for mounted soldiers – he came under withering fire from Kirkcaldy’s men. Cavalry are not meant for close-quarters house-to-house action, and Kirkcaldy’s forces could now pick them off with ease. Even in spite of this, Herries was gaining ground, although at a terrible cost, and he desperately needed support from the main army at his rear, which was under the command of Argyll. At this crucial point in the battle the earl failed to order the advance. Charitable
chroniclers say that he was suddenly attacked with the ‘stone’, either kidney or bladder, and fainted from the pain, while the more sceptical point out that as Moray’s brother-in-law, he might have hoped for personal advancement if Mary should lose the battle. One anonymous commentator claimed that he ‘swooned as they were joining for want of courage’. In any case no orders were given to support Herries and Kirkcaldy now ordered his pikemen to attack the leaderless Highlanders of Argyll in a disciplined charge. Mary, on a nearby hill, saw the Highlanders drop their arms and run from the field. The pikemen met the main force in a savage encounter and, ‘when spears were broken, they cast whingers [daggers], broken pieces of spears, stones or whatever came to hand in the faces of their enemies’. It was all over in under an hour with Moray losing only one man, while Mary’s side had 100 killed and 300 taken prisoner.

Needless to say, Brantôme – who wasn’t there – tells of Mary advancing personally to rally her troops, but the truth is more sombre, as it seemed as though the only route to freedom was to ride south into Galloway. For a moment Mary considered continuing northwards towards Dumbarton but soon turned south. Moray had no need to pursue her urgently since he believed she would now be a fugitive, her supporters scattered, and her appearance known to all – in spite of her having cut short her long auburn hair – with no effective hiding place.

The truth was different. Moray’s support had been leaking away since April, when he had held a justice ayre in Glasgow and handed down excessively severe penalties. In spite of his moves in parliament his legitimacy as regent was being questioned and Mary’s support was growing. De la Fôret, the French ambassador in London, believed that two thirds of the people of Scotland were for Mary rather than Moray. Even Moray’s own supporters had advised him not to go south to Langside but to retire to Stirling, where Mar held the castle and the king. If Mary had continued with her plan to occupy Dumbarton she would have easily established a power base around which she could have gathered sufficient support for an effective restoration.

However, in the first of several disastrous decisions, accompanied by Lord Herries and with few personal servants, the royal party turned themselves unnecessarily into fugitives and rode down the valley of Loch Ken to cross the River Dee above the village of Tongland, where they burnt the bridge to delay their non-existent pursuers. All Mary had as sustenance was some bread moistened with spring water, and for rest she had some shelter in a nearby cottage while the bridge was being destroyed. Finally, they reached Lord Maxwell’s castle at Terregles, a mile from Dumfries. Mary had travelled this country during the Chase-about Raid, but this journey had been no such chivalric progress and she gave an account of the journey to the Cardinal of Lorraine in a letter written three days later:

I have endured injuries, calumnies, imprisonment, famine, cold, heat, flight, not knowing whither, 92 miles across the country without stopping or alighting, and then I have had to sleep on the ground, and drink sour milk and eat oatmeal without bread, and have been three nights like the owls, without a female in this country, where to crown it all I am little else than a prisoner . . . it is all one for myself, but let not my subjects be deceived and ruined; for I have a son, whom it would be a pity to leave in the hands of these traitors.

It was six years since Randolph reported, ‘She repenteth nothing that she was not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and knapskall, a Glasgow buckler and a broad sword.’ Mary Stewart’s contacts with the reality of her romantic imagination were always unpleasant. Now her very existence seemed at stake and a decision as to her future had to be made.

The choices facing Mary at Terregles were varied. Her first option, and the one favoured by her supporters, was to rally her support in Dumfries and Galloway for a repeated journey north. Moray had left Glasgow and was earning himself greater
unpopularity by seizing the property of those who had supported Mary, thus causing royal support to grow. Remaining in Scotland and fighting the regent was more than just a viable option – it was the most sensible course of action.

The next possibility was of a flight to France, where Mary was not only Duchesse de Touraine but also Queen Dowager. In France, Catherine de Medici would ensure that Mary would have no political power – that was, in any case, the last thing Mary wanted – but Mary would have easily tolerated a rustic exile of considerable luxury. Mary, at twenty-six years old, was still marriageable and could, under Catherine’s control, become a marriage pawn again, although now unable to indulge any headstrong ideas of her own. Also in France, an indefinite period in the lavish style of a rich convent was readily available.

The last option, and the least attractive, was flight into England and an appeal for help from her cousin Elizabeth. But Elizabeth would never support the expense of a war to restore Mary without some guarantee of advantage. The infant king’s presence in London might be acceptable – but he was in the hands of Regent Moray. Perhaps Mary could simply live as a royal guest with her own court? Cecil would be quick to point out that as a focus for all Catholic interests, Mary would have to be closely watched and her irresponsible nature would make embracing mischief her first preference. Elizabeth would be delighted to see her cousin happily ensconced in a fairy château on the Loire with Cecil’s spies somewhere in her retinue. Flight to England was the worst possible choice.

Herries, along with Mary’s other noble supporters, was strong in his advocacy of remaining in Scotland. If she won back her throne – and there was a strong likelihood that she would – they could be sure of lavish gratitude, otherwise they would be left to the vengeance of Moray and his allies. The French option depended on Mary eating some humble pie at the table of her former mother-in-law, and humble pie was never a dish to the taste of a Guise princess. Elizabeth could hardly refuse the pleas of her cousin, another anointed queen. She had made her
views known as to the horrifying impropriety of dethroning Mary, and Mary chose to ignore Elizabeth’s guarded comments on her marriage to Bothwell. She would go to England. As when she chose to marry Darnley, she made the worst possible choice and, having made it, she petulantly closed the door to all contrary advice.

It is possible that Mary was now completely disillusioned with her native country. Since her arrival nearly seven years previously she had faced the enmity of Knox and the suspicion of the Protestant nobles, obligingly married a bisexual syphilitic, causing a minor revolt, seen her favourite counsellor stabbed to death at her feet and, having been given little option, been privy to the murder of her husband. Thereafter she had been abducted, remarried and delivered of still-born twins in prison, and had watched her forces flee in the face of her half-brother’s rebels. Mary could be excused for wanting nothing more to do with Scotland. Thus Lord Herries reluctantly wrote to Richard Lowther, the deputy captain of Carlisle Castle, warning him of Mary’s imminent arrival.

The decision was made to travel first to the abbey of Dundrennan, where Mary rested long enough to write a short letter to Elizabeth in which she hoped to meet the English queen soon in order to explain her plight. Then on Sunday, 16 May 1568 at three o’clock in the afternoon, with Herries, Maxwell, Fleming and Lord Claude Hamilton reluctantly attending, as well as some sixteen personal servants, Mary Stewart climbed aboard a small fishing smack and sailed for England. She would never see the country of her birth again.

PART IV

England, 1568–87

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Whistling in the dark

Claude Nau did the best he could to mythologise Mary’s arrival in England: ‘When the queen had crossed the sea and was getting out of the boat she fell to the ground, which many persons accepted as an augury of good success, interpreting it according to the common form, to mean that she had claim to England, to which she laid claim as of right.’ An identical tale is told of William the Conqueror, so there is a solid precedent for the arrival of tumbling monarchs.

Mary landed near the small seaport of Workington – a village now called Maryport – at about seven o’clock in the evening of 16 May 1568. While she was being given supper, a messenger was sent by Lord Herries to Sir Henry Curwen of Workington Hall. In what turned out to be a completely vain attempt to conceal Mary’s identity, Herries told Curwen that he was accompanying a young heiress, whom he had brought from Scotland, and who was keen to marry Curwen’s son. Unfortunately, Curwen was not at home, but his house and servants were immediately put at Mary’s disposal, whose identity had already been guessed by the local inhabitants, and confirmed by one of Curwen’s servants, who had known Mary ‘in better plight than now’. Mary’s presence in England was now public knowledge.

The news of her flight from her kingdom astonished all who received it. Mary’s fantasy was that she would shortly meet Elizabeth, then tell her of how she, a sovereign queen, had been defied by her nobility, threatened with death and forced to abdicate. Also, if she thought so far ahead, she would tell her cousin that she now wished to return to her kingdom and that
Elizabeth would promptly provide her with an army. The reality was very different. Mary had come to England against all advice and on a single impulse. It is doubtful if she had any cogent plan of action except to put her plight into someone else’s care. To this end, while at Workington, she sent a second, longer, letter to Elizabeth setting out her case and delineating the various indignities her nobility had visited on her. It begins with the Chase-about Raid – her only mention of Darnley, ‘le feu roy mon mari’ – pointing out that her own forgiveness of the Chase-about rebels was at Elizabeth’s advice, even though these men had murdered Rizzio in her presence. Mary pleaded not as a queen but as a destitute woman deprived of everything, who had just ridden sixty miles in a day and then not dared to travel except by night. She signed herself a ‘good sister and cousin and escaped prisoner’. Elizabeth would have regarded such a letter as a formal opening of negotiations as to how she might help her Scots cousin, while gaining an advantage for England.

Both Cecil and Elizabeth would have closely examined the now totally changed situation. Scotland, under Moray’s regency, could easily be dealt with and would willingly pay a high price for England’s legitimisation of the new regime. But the return of Mary would jeopardise this. However, if Elizabeth refused help to Mary, then she might very well turn elsewhere and France would be her obvious first choice. France was still torn with the Wars of Religion, there was no united nobility to embrace a Catholic cause and the king, Charles IX, was desperately short of money. Charles had seized 1.8 million livres’ worth of church property the previous year and it was still not enough for domestic purposes, so a military intervention by France in Scotland was unlikely. Mary was, however, still marriageable. Once set free on mainland Europe, the twice-widowed queen could turn into a sort of nubile loose cannon. So she should not be allowed to leave the country, although in England she would now provide a focus for Catholic elements, their ranks swollen by agitators from Europe. Elizabeth could not simply imprison Mary – the idea of taking such action against a sovereign queen
made her blood run cold – but if Mary could be shown to have been an active participant in Darnley’s murder, then further options opened up. Returning her to Scotland to be dealt with as a regicide was the most severe, while a gentle imprisonment in England was the kindest option. Elizabeth managed to achieve the best of both worlds by agreeing to nothing more than meeting Mary, but only after her innocence was proved. This was active procrastination at its best.

Immediate details had to be dealt with, since Mary, whose party had now increased to twenty people, clearly could not remain at Workington. Richard Lowther, the deputy governor of Carlisle, rode to greet her with an escort of 400 horsemen. He also wrote a puzzled note to Cecil, announcing that he would take Mary to Carlisle ‘until I know by your honour the Queen’s majesty’s pleasure’. He desperately wanted to know if she was an honoured royal guest or a prisoner of the state. Elizabeth sent Thomas Leighton to Moray, instructing him to call on Mary first, setting out Elizabeth’s conditions for Mary’s as yet undefined stay in England.