An Accidental Tragedy (49 page)

Yet in the middle of November Mary became, unwittingly, a more potent danger to Elizabeth. The northern earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland were determined to restore the Catholic faith and, with a disorganised army of around 1,000 infantrymen and 1,500 cavalry, they marched south. In Durham Cathedral they heard Mass, re-established the altars and holy water stoups and burned all the Protestant prayer books. Sussex, as guardian of the Northern Marches, did not dare to engage the numerically superior rebels and they quickly seized Barnard Castle while aiming for York. By 23 November the rebels were at Tadcaster, just over fifty miles from Tutbury, and the possibility that they could, in the course of a very few days, free Mary
and proclaim her Queen of England was becoming very real. The Bishop of Ross wrote to them urging them to capture Hartlepool as a port of entry for forces from Alva in the Netherlands. This, needless to say, provoked panic at Tutbury, with Mary herself fearing that Huntingdon might have secret orders to murder her, should her rescue seem likely. On Elizabeth’s direct orders, Mary was hastily moved to Coventry.

Since, to Elizabeth’s council in London, Coventry was no more than a conveniently placed dot on their map, they had no idea that there was no convenient castle or aristocratic house in which Mary could stay. In desperation, Shrewsbury lodged her first in the Bull Inn, where she arrived after dark and was confined to her room to avoid ‘fond gazing and confluence of the people’. Elizabeth was apoplectic that the presumed focus of the Northern Rising was lodged in a common inn and demanded that Mary be sent to ‘some convenient house’.

The rebel forces melted away on the continued journey south and, by 20 December, the remnants had turned back and were seeking refuge in Scotland. Six hundred were hanged, Northumberland was captured by Moray who, after ironically imprisoning him in the castle of Lochleven, sent him south for beheading. The few remaining survivors fled to the Spanish Netherlands as permanent exiles. Not for the last time, a misplaced love for an exiled Stewart was to end in death or exile.

Both earls, Northumberland and Westmoreland, had attempted to implicate Norfolk in their abortive rising, which he flatly denied in a long letter to Elizabeth. In it he also denied asking Mary to marry him. By the start of 1570 Mary was back in Tutbury and the panic started to subside.

However, one of the Earl of Arundel’s men – Arundel was one of Norfolk’s many relatives – planned that ‘if she could be gotten away out of Tutbury, she might be conveyed to Arundel in Sussex, and then there take ship and go into France’. When they signified this to the Scots queen, she made answer, ‘if the Duke or the Earl of Arundel or Pembroke would appoint a knight to take
it in hand, she would adventure, otherwise she durst not’. In late December 1569 Mary had written to Norfolk accepting a diamond he had sent, swearing to wear it ‘unseen about her neck’. She pledged her love to him ‘faithfully until death’ and warned him against Huntingdon, now returned to London. On 15 January 1570 she begged him to ‘trust none that shall say I ever mind to leave you’. In spite of writing in codes, Mary must have known that her correspondence was being read by Cecil and that by encouraging Norfolk, still in the Tower, she was winding a noose around the poor besotted man’s neck. The fact that they had never met makes her girlish behaviour even more reprehensible, but to Mary Stewart, the Earl of Norfolk represented a possibility of release, and when that was combined with the romantic notion of being rescued by a noble lord, what little sense of realpolitik she possessed flew out of the window.

During this time of turmoil Mary did find an opportunity to send some clothing to her son, the three-year-old James, along with ‘two little ambling nags’, or ponies, and John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross, duly begged for passports for the accompanying servants. As in the past, her Guise training ensured that Mary was always meticulous in her social and familial obligations, although this maternal duty had more than a touch of tragedy for the imprisoned mother. The passports were granted but delayed until 29 December 1569. Almost a month later, on 22 January, Mary wrote to James reminding him that he had ‘a loving mother that wishes you to learn in time to love know and fear God’, but whether or not he ever received the gifts is doubtful since his education was in the hands of George Buchanan, author of the most violent anti-Marian vitriol. Mary also sent clothing and an ABC – an ‘example how to form his letters’ – to her son via the Countess of Mar, begging her not to let James forget that he still had a loving mother.

With Moray in seemingly firm control of Scotland, a terrified Norfolk eager to do Elizabeth’s bidding, the Northern Rising crushed and Mary being closely watched – the locks were removed from her servants’ doors so that they could be subject
to random checks, even when asleep – there appeared to be a period of calm at the beginning of 1570.

Diplomatic manoeuvres continued unabated as Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, was assured that, given support from Alva and Philip, the Catholics in England would ‘rise in a day and persevere until this country is again Catholic and the accession is assured to the Queen of Scotland’. Somewhat confusingly, Philip was solemnly told that it had always been Mary’s wish ‘to take refuge in [his] dominions’. The English Catholics would be encouraged by support from Rome in the form of a Bull, excommunicating Elizabeth. Philip, who was short of money, had no intention of doing more than giving letters of reassurance and playing the waiting game. Montluc, the French ambassador, formally added his voice to the pleas for Mary’s freedom.

It is difficult to believe that these machinations were more than polite responses to Mary’s pleas through the Bishop of Ross. Neither France nor Spain had the slightest intention of provoking a certain war with England over the restoration of the Scottish queen. They made suitably devout noises towards Rome – itself now almost powerless – and kept the pot from boiling over by giving bland promises which nobody believed.

This calm was broken, however, on 23 January, when, despite numerous warnings as to his safety, Regent Moray was riding slowly through the streets of Linlithgow. A shot rang out from the direction of the house belonging to the Archbishop of St Andrews, where James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was concealed behind some drying laundry. A fresh horse hidden within a mile carried the assassin to safety. The bullet had struck the regent ‘a little below the navel’ and he was able to dismount and walk back to his lodging. However, his condition declined throughout the day and, at eleven o’clock that night, he died.

Moray was Mary’s half-brother and had, of course, been one of Mary’s most trusted advisers on her return from France. He had, with Lethington, stood at her elbow during her short reign; he was close to the throne itself by blood and had been given the
power of the regency by the nobility. But he had never used political pathways to appease the Hamilton claim to the throne and had, instead, plunged Scotland into an intermittent civil war. Hamilton himself, with the vacillation that was typical of his family, did not seize the opportunity presented by Moray’s death, and disputes that verged on another civil war raged throughout the spring. It was not until the summer of 1570 that Lennox was appointed as the new regent, with the Hamilton faction breathing down his neck. As Darnley’s father, Lennox was a sworn enemy of Mary, and he was also hostile towards the Hamilton faction, but Elizabeth felt his regency could be useful to England. Once her support became known, Elizabeth received a long begging letter from Margaret, Countess of Lennox: ‘I cannot see how his purse can be able to take that chargeable journey in hand . . . I have been forced to lay my jewels in gage.’

Although the Northern Rising had been crushed, there was still a lingering threat in the person of Leonard Dacres, Northumberland’s cousin, ‘one of the wildest of men’ and one who had plotted Mary’s rescue. On 19 February, Henry, Lord Scrope, as Warden of the West Marches, issued a warning to the populace against the continued threat of Dacres. Back in January, Cecil had been warned against him: ‘if the Queen’s majesty understood truly Mr Leonard Dacres part from the beginning of this woeful enterprise [the Northern Rising] to the end she would hang him above all the rest’. The difference between Dacres and the rebellious earls lay in the fact that the Northern Rising was a political movement which planned to restore the Catholic faith and use Mary to replace Elizabeth, while Dacres’ plan was simply to free Mary from her cruel imprisonment. In his own mind, he was a knight errant riding to free a beautiful captive princess from her ‘durance vile’ at the hands of a cruel tyrant. Mary, who already had a somewhat lumbering knight errant in the person of Norfolk, dissuaded him, as did Norfolk himself, who feared that Dacres’ intervention would ruin his own suit. The Bishop of Ross claimed that Dacres had met Mary ‘on the leads at Wingfield and had put his plan of escape to her, but, on Norfolk’s advice, she
decided to ignore it’. Mary’s encouragement of Norfolk was simply part of the same game, and once her mind had been fed with the fantasy of escaping into the arms of her loyal champion knight, her sense of reality was quickly abandoned and she readily accepted her new role as the embattled princess imprisoned in a dark tower. Dacres, with such men as he had gathered, met with Hunsdon’s forces near Carlisle on 20 February and was soundly defeated, although he escaped and managed to send an apology to Elizabeth via Shrewsbury. The apology was not accepted.

In March, Mary wrote to the Countess of Mar, complaining, justly, that all her presents – ponies, books and clothing – to the infant James had been stopped. They were never delivered, and, thanks to the careful education of George Buchanan, James grew up with a distorted picture of his mother as neglectful and uncaring.

European monarchs continued to watch events in Britain with interest as Mary wrote, unavailingly, to Catherine de Medici and Charles IX. Equally ineffectual was the action of Pope Pius V on 15 May, when he issued the Bull so desired by the English Catholics. Entitled ‘Regnans in Excelsis’, it excommunicated Elizabeth but it did not trigger the rising ‘in a day’ promised earlier. De Spes thought that ‘his Holiness allowed himself to be carried away by his zeal [the Bull] [and] will drive the Queen and her friends the more to oppress and persecute the few good Catholics still remaining in England’. Legend has it that one John Felton nailed a copy of the Bull to the door of the Bishop of London as a challenge to his authority, and on 9 August the ambassador watched Felton being executed ‘with great cruelty’ for his effrontery. The Bull had been issued in February against the advice of Philip and Alva, and also in the teeth of Catherine de Medici’s opposition; she flatly refused to have it published in France. It marked a harking back to the days when the papacy possessed some temporal power, but now it simply signified papal acknowledgement of Elizabeth’s presumed illegitimacy. It did, however, lend spiritual authority to any campaign to
see Mary sitting on the English throne, thus sharpening Catholic opposition to her continued existence. It also meant that Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects were no longer bound to her by oath and opposition to her reign was no longer treasonable. If its immediate effect was minimal, its long-term effect would be enormous.

Elizabeth took the opportunity of pursuing the remnants of the Northern Rising, sending Hunsdon into Scotland with a punitive force. He was eminently successful in pillage and destruction, ending the campaign with a confrontation with Dacres. Reputedly Elizabeth herself burst into verse:

No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port.

Our realm it brooks no strangers’ force; let them elsewhere resort.

Our rusty sword with rest, shall first his edge employ

To poll their tops that seek such change, and gape for joy.

The quality of this verse is well below what she was capable of achieving. Hunsdon’s campaign did, however, let Scotland know that it would be wise to give whole-hearted support to a Regent acceptable to Elizabeth. Unfortunately, by June, Scotland was once again on the brink of civil war between supporters of Lennox – the King’s Party – and those of Mary – the Queen’s Party.

Leslie was released from the Bishop of London’s care to visit Mary in the hope that he might travel on to Rome to start proceedings to annul Mary’s marriage to Bothwell. He was instructed to meet with the Spanish ambassador and tell him that ‘if his master will help me I shall be Queen of England in three months and Mass shall be said all over the country’. She also recommended Leslie to Norfolk as a useful servant. Mary herself was moved to the more comfortable Chatsworth at the end of May, where she hunted in good weather and embroidered in bad. In July the first physical effects of Mary’s enforced lack of exercise were starting to appear: she complained that the pain in
her side had reappeared as a result of a new gown being ‘over straight’. In other words, Mary Stewart was putting on weight again.

Mary was still not free of the plots made by mad romantics and next in line as knight errant was John Hall. Hall was a Warwickshire man, educated at the Inns of Court, who served as a clerk in Shrewsbury’s household. Totally without the knowledge of Shrewsbury or even Mary – whom he never met – Hall travelled to the Isle of Man and even as far as Whithorn and Dumbarton to sound out the possibility of a rescue. In every place he was met with cautious support in principle if not in practice. When he met with Francis Rolleston and his son George they were enthusiastic about his enterprise, and on 28 July Sir Thomas Gerard, a local Catholic landowner, joined the plot, in spite of warnings that Gerard might be ‘over liberal in his speech’. The plot now involved taking Mary to the Isle of Man via Liverpool and then to an unspecified location. Gerard, in his turn, recruited Sir Thomas and Sir Edward Stanley. It should now have been clear to anyone that too many people, some of them of doubtful reliability, were involved, but Rolleston and Hall were too romantic in spirit to let such practical details bother them, and on 3 August at five o’clock in the morning they met with John Beaton, master of Mary’s household, on the high moor near Chatsworth. Sir Thomas Stanley had a plot to take Mary out of Chatsworth through the windows and off into the surrounding woods. Mary was very properly cautious about the entire lunatic affair and through Beaton she asked for the names of the plotters and details of their plans, what ciphers were to be used and where she would be taken. Above all, she wanted an assurance of her own safety, which clearly could not be given, but all the details were duly enciphered and given to Beaton at another moorland meeting some two weeks later.