An Accidental Tragedy (44 page)

Meanwhile, Moray was carrying out a campaign of punishment and retribution in the south-west of Scotland, hanging ‘thieves’, destroying property and starving the opposition into subservience. Nau called it ‘an act of execrable and unprecedented cruelty’. Mary continued to write to Elizabeth urging that the two queens should settle the matter between themselves, and in a letter of 22 June Mary wrote of Moray’s boasts ‘at his table’. Moray was clearly boasting of the evidence he possessed which would implicate Mary in Darnley’s murder and Mary complained of ‘these letters so falsely invented’; the casket letters were always hovering in the background.

Mary’s appeals to Elizabeth became even more pitiful a few days later: ‘Assuring myself that you would either send for me to come to you or else allow me to depart elsewhere as freely as I came hither . . . I implore you, Queen, sister, and cousin, to have a fellow feeling for your equal.’ Mary’s letters to Elizabeth have a
sad spontaneity and she clearly wrote as her emotions drove her with no thought either of strategy or of cohesive argument. Her first task – an almost impossible one – should have been to convince Cecil of her case and persuade him to unlock the door to Elizabeth, but Mary simply behaved as if Elizabeth were a nursery friend and would respond to childish nagging.

Knollys was now convinced that Mary had to be moved further south and made arrangements for her to go to Scrope’s Castle Bolton in Yorkshire. Mary refused to agree to such a move, but welcomed the return of her servant, Mary Seton, since this meant that now ‘every other day lightly she hath a new device of head dressing, without any cost and yet setteth forth a woman gaily well’.

Mary’s gaiety ceased abruptly on 5 July, when Knollys formally announced to her that she would be moved to Bolton Castle. Mary flatly refused. He told her it was much pleasanter than this ‘noisome and unsavoury place’ but she continued to refuse, unless compelled, to move ‘one whit’ out of Carlisle without the queen’s direct commandment. Knollys countered that if Mary refused a move, putting her only two or three days’ ride nearer to Elizabeth, then he might ‘presume some mystery’. Mary, again in floods of tears, said he need not fear that she would ‘steal away’. She wrote again to Elizabeth, a long and rather tragic letter, agreeing to move to Bolton ‘as a thing forced’, but asking for the return of Lord Herries. Her plea for a personal interview was repeated: ‘If Caesar had not disdained to hear or read the complaint of an advertiser, he had not so died . . . I am not of the nature of the basilisk . . . And though I should be so dangerous and cursed as men say, you are sufficiently armed with constance shows an undertaking shows an undertaking [sic] and with justice.’ Mary realised she was losing the battle, and her gloom deepened when she received three trunks of clothing from Moray in which there was only one complete gown among saddle covers and ‘such like trinkets’. Most of her clothing was still at Lochleven Castle.

As Mary’s ambassador, Herries met with Middlemore in London in mid July and, according to Middlemore’s letter to
Cecil, totally denounced Mary in an amazing volte-face. Middlemore claimed that Herries proposed that Elizabeth should rule Scotland, the French should be cast off, and Mary should never return home. In the light of Herries’s continued support for Mary this letter seems to be pure slander. Middlemore’s lack of subtlety had caused him to fail as an ambassador to Mary, although, as we shall see, he had had more success with Moray, and perhaps he wanted to creep further back into Cecil’s favour by this rather clumsy deceit.

The first stage of Mary’s reluctant journey to Bolton – escorted by Sir George Bowes and forty armed horsemen, ostensibly to protect her from her enemies – was to Lowther’s house at Wharton, some twenty miles from Carlisle. Here, Knollys found Mary much more amenable. She was, after all, faced with a
fait accompli
and had no means of resisting, although Knollys still had no direct instruction from Elizabeth. Mary negotiated the right to send and receive messengers to and from her supporters in Scotland, also telling Knollys that she had given control of the government of Scotland to Châtelherault in her absence.

The royal party finally arrived at Bolton after dark on 15 July. Mary was ‘very quiet, tractable and void of displeasant countenance’, with an entourage which had risen to fifty-one people, of whom twenty-one were ‘of the baser sort’. There were more people than Knollys had expected, and he was ‘driven to hire 4 little cars, 20 carriage horses, and 23 saddle horses for her women and men – all to her satisfaction’. Mary was lodged on the second floor of the north-west tower, in a spacious room with a fireplace and extensive views across the Yorkshire Dales. Her bedchamber adjoined this room and she could now enjoy more comfort than at Carlisle.

The beautifully situated Bolton Castle had been completed in 1399 and was now a superb example of the mixture of stately home and fortress. Knollys reported, ‘This house appears very strong, very fair and stately, after the old manner of building and is the highest walled house I have seen with but one entrance. Half the number of soldiers may better watch than the whole
could do at Carlisle . . . The queen’s chamber there [Carlisle] had a window looking to Scotland, the bars whereof being filed out of it she might have been let down, with plain ground before her to Scotland.’

Scotland was, in fact, some 150 miles distant and Mary was now well out of range of the sort of Border raiding party which had been feared at Carlisle. Moreover, alterations had been put in hand to improve the fortifications at Bolton. Five days after Mary’s arrival, ‘5 light cart loads and 4 horse loads of apparel’ arrived from Loch Leven. Sir George Bowes sent Mary carpets and tapestries, while a steady supply of venison came from the Earl of Northumberland. Finally, a consignment arrived bringing her cloths of state. So now Mary’s court was established, but also established was her status in England. Although she did not accept the fact, Mary was a virtual prisoner.

Herries returned to Mary a few days later, on 24 July, with a proposal from Elizabeth. There was to be no question of Elizabeth sitting in judgment over Mary, nor could Mary, as a sovereign queen, be put to trial. Rather, Elizabeth would summon Moray to explain himself and his actions. If his explanation was satisfactory, which Elizabeth doubted, then Mary would be returned to Scotland in some yet-to-be-decided capacity and the nobles would retain their privileges. However, if their explanations were unsatisfactory, then Elizabeth would reestablish Mary by force, but on certain conditions: that she renounce her claim to the English throne and any league with France, and that she abandon the Mass and embrace the Book of Common Prayer. This proposal was an invitation for Mary to approve being tried, in fact if not in appearance, and in absentia. Further, she would be required to deny her religion and turn apostate. There was no possibility whatsoever of Mary accepting, but instead of being furious at the suggestions, Knollys reported, ‘the Queen is merry and hunteth and passeth the time daily in pleasant manner’.

Elizabeth was able to make such an offer since a week earlier Middlemore had returned from his visit to Moray with the news
that the lords of the Scottish council had in their possession ‘such letters . . . that sufficiently in our opinion prove her consenting to the murder of the king her lawful husband’. The machinery for a trial was already under way, and Cecil and Elizabeth were becoming more and more confident of proving Mary’s guilt. Mary was unaware that Moray had already assured Elizabeth that ‘the noblemen of Scotland had not entered on it [the accusations against Mary] without good ground and occasion’.

Somewhat to Knollys’s astonishment, Mary actually agreed to all of Elizabeth’s suggestions, including the endorsement of the Book of Common Prayer. Mary had even received a Church of England chaplain and attended his services, though Knollys doubted if this was bona fide. He ended his despatch to Cecil with a further plea for money – but Cecil habitually ignored such pleas.

A mere three weeks later, on 16 August, Moray summoned a parliament during which he sold some of Mary’s jewellery to pay his army. Parliament also formally forfeited the entire Hamilton family, in spite of which Mary commanded no retribution, to the fury of Herries, whose lands were also forfeited along with all those who supported the queen. He blamed Elizabeth for delaying Mary’s restoration and so causing confusion in Scotland.

While Cecil, with the enthusiastic help of Moray, set about preparing the case against Mary, life was calm at Bolton. Mary convinced herself that the admonitory letters from Elizabeth were not, in fact, written by her but by ‘one of her highness subjects’ – undoubtedly she had Cecil in mind – and expressed her wish that her case be heard in Westminster Hall. Her plea for a one-to-one interview with Elizabeth now disappeared from her correspondence and she moved more towards appeasing her English hosts in Yorkshire, even attending Church of England services. It must be remembered that Elizabeth herself had asked her own Catholic sister, Queen Mary, if she could be given instruction in the Catholic faith and she even attended Mass – but this was for her own survival. It is unlikely that Mary was so
skilled at dissimulation, but, like so many prisoners, she sought after novelty. Mary never, for a moment, wavered in her faith. Knollys’s only complaint was that Mary’s household continued to grow, even her pages and grooms now having servants. He was falling under the spell of Mary’s charm and, when he was advised of a possible rescue bid by one George Herron, Knollys simply refused to believe that Mary would undertake ‘such an uncertain adventure’.

At the end of August Mary paid Knollys a singular compliment and wrote to him in English promising a token for his wife – it was a pomander laced with gold wire. It was Mary’s first attempt at writing in English and Scotticisms still occur: ‘nicht’ for ‘night’ and ‘nocht bien’ for ‘not well’. She normally spoke French and, when necessity demanded it, used a version of Scots with a heavy French accent. One modern scholar, Dr Charles McKean, has called her speech ‘Frécossais’, and there is no doubt that Mary was only entirely at ease when speaking French. Elizabeth’s letters to Mary – written in English – were translated into Scots for her.

During Mary’s time in England, Moray had been busy with Anglo-Scottish affairs and his first and most important task was to make certain that Elizabeth knew that she was harbouring a regicide. Only five days after Langside, Moray sent John Wood to London with copies of what became known as the Casket Letters. Strangely these copies were a translation of the original French into Scots. Since Elizabeth only understood Scots with difficulty but spoke fluent French, why Moray made this translation is only the first puzzle in the bizarre and tangled story of the Casket Letters. Moray was, however, well aware that Elizabeth needed ‘such evident reasons as her majesty may with conscience satisfy herself’ and to this end on 27 May he had sent ‘closed writings’ to George Buchanan in St Andrews – where Moray had appointed him principal of St Leonard’s College. These were presumably further copies, to be used by Buchanan in the preparation of an indictment. Buchanan was a 62-year-old scholar who had befriended Mary during her happier days at
Holyrood, writing masques and court entertainments for her, gently tutoring her in Latin, and behaving as scholar-in-residence to her court. From this position of profitable friendship, he would now to become her principal accuser, preparing his
Detectio Mariae Reginae
, a vituperative pamphlet directly accusing Mary of adultery with Bothwell. One episode Buchanan describes involved Lady Reres being lowered by a sash to Bothwell’s apartments. The sash apparently broke but the good lady none the less plucked Bothwell out of his bed – where he was sleeping with his wife – and into Mary’s lustful arms. This piece of nonsense was attested to by George Dalgleish immediately before his execution, at a time when memory of his recent torture would have inspired him to swear to anything. In any case, Lady Reres had been a mistress of Bothwell’s and would hardly have acted as a bawd on the queen’s behalf.

Before the publication of the grossly libellous
Detectio
, Buchanan prepared a formal ‘Indictment’, which he oxymoronically described as ‘an information of probable and infallible conjectures and presumptions’. The manuscript of the first version of the
Detectio
was ready by 22 June. It was written in Latin but translated into Scots and sent to Lennox who, as Darnley’s father, had been demanding a trial for some time. Moray was now proposing to Elizabeth that she should hold a trial ‘with great ceremony and solemnity’ to examine the situation. With diplomatic skill he suggested that what should be examined were his own actions as regent ‘in hostility against . . . my own countrymen’, thus allowing him to cite as justification the removal of an unjust queen – a murderess and adulteress. Thus all parties could claim that Mary would technically not be on trial herself.

This was important for Elizabeth, who was well aware that watchful eyes were being trained on her from the Louvre, the Escorial and the Vatican to see if she would dare to try a sovereign queen in public. Thus great care was taken to avoid the word ‘trial’ and to appear even-handed while a structure was put in place which would decide for Elizabeth what action to take. This structure consisted of the two sides pleading their
respective cases before an unbiased commission appointed by Elizabeth. On 27 August Mary heard that the Duke of Norfolk was to lead Elizabeth’s commission, which would then make its report; Cecil and Elizabeth could then reflect on their findings. Since Mary was not being tried, she would not be subjected to the indignity of appearing. At first it seemed that the examination would take place in Newcastle, but the venue was switched to York, and in mid September passports were applied for by Mary on behalf of the Earl of Cassilis, the bishops of Ross and of Galloway, lords Herries and Boyd, Sir John Gordon and Sir James Cockburn. Mary was so sure that she would be cleared of all blame by the commission that on 15 September she assured her brother-in-law, Charles IX of France, that Elizabeth had promised to restore her to her ‘honour and grandeur in her country’. Moray, on the other hand, had passports for 100 persons in his train, plus the earls of Morton and Glencairn, Lord Lindsay, the Bishop of Orkney and the Commendator of Dunfermline, each with 100 persons in their trains.