The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain (21 page)

Then, in 1565, Mary sent him to France on a secret diplomatic mission. He found much changed. Many of his old humanist friends, formerly Catholic conformists, finding that their criticism of the abuses of the Roman Church were now unwelcome in the new spirit of Rome’s Counter-Reformation, had become Calvinists.

Moreover, if Mary was one patron in Scotland, another was his old pupil, Moray. As long as the Queen and her half-brother remained friendly and worked in harmony, Buchanan experienced no divided loyalties. His position became less comfortable when Moray moved into opposition.

Finally, there was Darnley’s murder. Darnley, despite his English upbringing, was a Lennox Stewart (or Stuart) and Buchanan was a Lennox man. Darnley might have been a Catholic and even perhaps engaged in a plot to restore Catholicism, but for Buchanan, the old tribal loyalties of the Highlands were powerful. His chief’s son had been vilely murdered, and he was easily persuaded that Mary had been at least cognisant of the crime, if not an accomplice. Again there need be no surprise. Darnley’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Lennox, were equally certain of their daughter-in-law’s complicity. (Much later, when Mary was a prisoner in England, the Countess would change her mind, and resume friendly relations with her, if only by letter – one of the surest proofs of Mary’s innocence; but that time had not yet come.)

So Buchanan set to work, or was set to work, preparing the case against Mary in his
Detectio
. It was not a case that might be advanced in a court of law. That wasn’t the intention. It was a work of propaganda, written with zest and with the skill of the most accomplished man of letters of the time. One charitable judge has found in it ‘a feeling of outraged moral fervour’, but such fervour is a characteristic of popular journalism, and moral outrage is better not expressed by one who can treat fact with the cavalier disregard Buchanan displays.

One example will suffice. Eager to demonstrate that Mary’s wicked passion for Bothwell preceded Darnley’s murder by several months, he tells of how Bothwell, wounded in a border scuffle, was confined to bed at Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale. ‘When this was reported to the queen at Borthwick,’ Buchanan wrote, ‘she flew madly, by forced journeys, first to Melrose, then to Jedburgh. Though she learned there on good authority that his life was safe her affection could brook no delay, and she betrayed her infamous lust by setting out at a bad time of the year, heedless of the difficulties of the journey and the danger of highwaymen, with a company such as no decent gentleman would entrust with his life and goods.’
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This is certainly vivid, its meaning clear. The facts, however, were very different.

Mary was already at Jedburgh, presiding over a court of law, when word came that Bothwell was wounded. Far from flying madly to his side, she waited five or six days till the court’s business was done before riding to Hermitage. No doubt she went to express sympathy, but also to discuss the unruly state of the borderland with her Warden of the Marches. She remained there only a few hours and returned to Jedburgh the same day. (It was a round trip of about fifty miles.) Nor was it at a particularly ‘bad time of the year’. The date was 16 October, and October is often one of the most agreeable of months in the Scottish Borders. Finally, the ‘company such as no decent gentleman would entrust with his life and goods’ included her half-brother, Moray, Buchanan’s own patron, the man who had commanded him to compose his narrative. The great poet and scholar had a talent for imaginative journalism.

Nevertheless, his
Detectio
had its desired effect. It further blackened Mary’s name, and convinced many that she was indeed guilty of the crimes of which she was accused. John Cunningham, nineteenth-century historian of the Scottish Church, believed that ‘the casket letters all but prove her guilt’, but he could not have arrived at that conclusion without Buchanan’s supporting narrative.

Despite the production of the Casket Letters and Buchanan’s ingenious and indignant narrative, Mary’s guilt could not be proved to the satisfaction of the English commissioners. On the other hand, Elizabeth was not inclined to restore her to her Scottish throne. She might disapprove of the rough treatment Mary had suffered. She deplored rebellion and the deposition of a fellow monarch. She was surely unconvinced by Buchanan’s argument that the ancient constitution of Scotland, which was actually an imaginative myth, provided precedents for such action. But the government of Scotland was now in the hands of the regent Moray, a Protestant and a man who had shown himself to be a good friend of England. So Mary must remain where she was, whether her situation was to be described as a guest under restraint or a prisoner. Elizabeth continued to refuse all her cousin’s pleas for a meeting, something Mary was sure would lead to a true understanding. It may be that Elizabeth was afraid this would prove to be the case. Or perhaps she merely wished to save herself embarrassment. Nevertheless, she protected Mary for years from the hostility of the more extreme Protestants who sought her death for fear that, if Elizabeth herself should die, Mary’s claim to the throne would be supported by English Catholics and foreign powers. If the English Parliament had had its way, Mary would have been put on trial and sentenced to death in 1572, after the discovery of the Ridolfi plot against Elizabeth.
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For much of the 1570s and even into the next decade, Mary’s confinement was irksome rather than rigorous. She was treated as a queen and served by her own household, at one time as large as thirty people. She was permitted to ride out, hunting and hawking. She was officially denied the comforts of her religion, but at various times disguised Catholic priests held posts within her household. Certainly she was under constant supervision, but some of her jailers, notably the Earl of Shrewsbury, were even friendly. She had her little dogs and cage-birds, and she spent hours doing embroidery, sending samples of her work as presents to Elizabeth with friendly messages. Her servants were mostly devoted to her, and for a while she delighted in the company of her niece Arbella Stuart, the daughter of Darnley’s younger brother Charles and Elizabeth Cavendish, whose mother Bess of Hardwick was now married to Shrewsbury. Yet much of her life was a torment of boredom and frustration. She was often in poor health, especially in winter, and by the time she was forty she already moved, and often looked, like a much older woman.

Hope is the prisoner’s stay, often illusory. Mary trusted that when her son assumed management of his own affairs he would press hard for her release. Schemes to associate her with him in the government of Scotland were propounded, considered, abandoned, with regret on her part, indifference on his. As the years passed, her contact with the outer world was restricted, her understanding of it clouded. As recompense, her attachment to the Catholic faith, light and even perfunctory in her youth, deepened. She spent hours in prayer, wrote devotional poetry and in 1580 an ‘Essay on Adversity’. Though she could not know it, she was preparing herself for martyrdom.

Events beyond her prison conspired against her. Protestant England was engaged in a cold war with Catholic Spain. Religious civil wars agitated France. Protestants everywhere had been horrified by the St Bartholomew’s Night massacre of French Huguenots in 1572; one man who had witnessed it was Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, who had been in Paris on a diplomatic mission at the time. Meanwhile in the Netherlands a Protestant rebellion against their lord Philip of Spain was assuming the character of a war of liberation; in 1584 the Dutch leader William of Orange (known as ‘the Silent’, because, though normally loquacious, he had on one important occasion held his tongue) was assassinated. In 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved English Catholics from allegiance to her. In response Parliament had passed an act declaring the presence of Catholic priests in England to be illegal. Those who dared to defy the law were, if arrested, tortured and executed – as traitors rather than heretics.

Elizabeth, who disliked bloodshed, except when alarmed, might be, despite everything, well disposed towards her ‘cousin and sister’, but the men around her were Mary’s enemies. They had good reason to be so. Elizabeth was nine years older than the Scots queen. Suppose she died? Suppose she was assassinated? What then? As Protestant patriots, men like Cecil and Walsingham feared the worst for England and for themselves; their own necks might be in danger if Mary survived Elizabeth and became queen. So ingrained is the myth of the sturdy Protestantism of Elizabethan England that their fears may seem fanciful. But they were real enough. Catholics were still numerous, their loyalty doubtful. Mary had supporters and sympathisers, at home and abroad. All the chief men in government had lived through one Catholic reaction – Mary Tudor’s. They were determined there should not be another, and to ensure against it they were equally determined to be rid of the Queen of Scots. But they knew that Elizabeth would consent to her death only if she had irrefutable proof that Mary had given her approval to a plot against her life.

At last in 1586 the opportunity presented itself. Anthony Babington was a young idealistic Catholic gentleman from Derbyshire. As a boy he had served as a page in Shrewsbury’s household, seen the Queen of Scots, if only from a distance, and conceived a devotion to her. He gathered like-minded young men about him, fervent in the Catholic faith and hostile to the established order. Some of them, like Babington himself, saw Mary as an oppressed and ill-used queen, a figure of romance, a beacon of hope for their fellow Catholics. They fell in love with the idea of her,
³³
and so they devised a plot: Elizabeth would be killed, Mary rescued and Catholicism restored. It was wild and fanciful and it never had any chance of success.

In the heightened tension of the 1580s, Mary’s confinement had become narrower. For some time her communication with the world beyond her prison had been cut off. Now – miraculously, it must have seemed – a new secret channel of communication was opened, and she received Babington’s letters. It was no miracle. Walsingham had arranged it, having already infiltrated one of his spies as an agent provocateur into Babington’s little group of conspirators. The bait was laid. It only remained for Mary to take it, and the trap would be sprung. At last, in one letter, she assented, or seemed to assent, to all Babington’s plans, stipulating only that he must move quickly enough and with sufficient strength to set her free. When this letter – like all her correspondence – was sent to Walsingham, opened, copied and scrutinised, before being passed on to Babington – the spymaster drew a gallows on the paper.

Though it is probable that Mary did approve Babington’s plans, it is not absolutely certain. The fatal letter may have been doctored. Mary still wrote by preference in French, her first language – her written English was very poor. Her letters were then translated and put into a cipher by her secretary, and it is just possible that he, believing the correspondence secure, may have thought it wise to make his mistress’s approval of the assassination plot explicit in order to fortify Babington’s resolution. Alternatively, Walsingham or one of his agents may have done this. Certainly Walsingham added one damaging footnote.

Babington and his friends were arrested, tortured till they confessed, and then executed in the horrible manner of the age.
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They were certainly guilty of their plot, but it had never had any chance of success, for ultimately it was as much Walsingham’s conspiracy as theirs, and Elizabeth had been in no danger.

Nevertheless, she was at last convinced. The Queen of Scots must be put on trial. Mary defended herself with spirit, while denying that an English court could have any jurisdiction over her. She offered to state her case, before Parliament, and was refused. She told Walsingham she knew he was her enemy. He denied it, saying he was an enemy only to the enemies of England and his queen. This was casuistry, for he had no doubt that Mary was the enemy of England, as he understood England, and therefore he was indeed her enemy, as she alleged.

The verdict was never in doubt; this was a show trial, in which there was no possibility of an acquittal. Mary was sentenced to death.

Only two questions remained. Could Elizabeth be brought to sign the death warrant, and would Mary consent to submit to the sentence? The answer to the first was in doubt for weeks. Elizabeth hated the idea. She was not cruel and it may be that the idea of sending her cousin to the block, of condemning her to suffer the death inflicted so long ago on her own mother Anne Boleyn, revolted her. Moreover, she was reluctant to take the responsibility of carrying out a judicial sentence on an anointed queen, and she was afraid of the response from Spain and France. Her scruples deserve respect but her next move invites only contempt: she urged Mary’s latest jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to relieve her of responsibility by arranging the murder of the Queen of Scots himself. To his credit he refused. ‘I am so unhappy to have lived to see this unhappy day,’ he wrote to Elizabeth, ‘in which I am required by direction from my most gracious sovereign to do an act which God and the law forbid…God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot on my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.’
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Elizabeth was infuriated by his ‘daintinesess’, but at last she signed the warrant and her ministers whipped it away before she could change her mind.

Any fear that Mary would offer resistance – a fear that remained even on the morning of her execution – was unfounded. She accepted death as a martyr to the Catholic faith, as she wrote to her brother-in-law Henry III of France on 8 February 1587, in her last letter a few hours before she was due to die, and she played her part in the macabre and horrible drama at Fotheringay as a piece of noble and self-conscious theatre. When the executioner lifted her severed head, it fell away from his hand and he was left holding the auburn wig she had chosen to wear. It was then seen that her hair was grey and the face was that of an old woman, though she was not yet forty-five. A little pet dog, a terrier, had accompanied her into the hall, hidden under the folds of her dress. It now ran out and stood beside her bleeding neck and would not be coaxed away.