by G Lawrence
Richmond Palace
Autumn 1568
As we waited for the tribunal of Mary’s lords to begin, I was forced to send a great many messages to a vastly concerned Regent Moray in Scotland, assuring him I was not about to restore Mary. I was not entirely sure if I was telling the truth.
Mary’s restoration would solve my immediate problems, but her powers would have to be curtailed if I was ever to rest easy. Regent Moray did not want her back unless it was in chains, but I wanted her gone. She was already causing trouble, with some suggesting I make her my heir and others proposing execution. The trial was the only path out of this stalemate, but if Mary was found innocent I did not think the Scots would accept it, or her.
The trial opened in October in York. I had not wanted it held in London. If a guilty verdict fell upon Mary, I needed time to consider my options. The trial made a slow start, to my utmost annoyance, as I wanted this resolved quickly. Swiftly it became clear that Moray’s prime objective was to keep Mary from Scotland at all costs. He wanted her proved guilty of murder. With a mind to this aim, he produced damning evidence.
This evidence became known as the casket letters; a collection of documents held in a silver-gilt chest which bore an engraved inscription of F, for François, Mary’s first husband. Despite the name, there were poems and contracts as well as letters. The letters, it was assumed, had been exchanged between Mary and Bothwell, both before and after Darnley’s death, but some disputed this. Mary’s councillors claimed that whilst some letters were genuine, passages had been added or altered to make them incriminating. Some, they said, were written by Bothwell, but to another woman. Mary declared that the handwriting on the letters supposedly from her was forged, but Moray declared it was not. He also would not permit Mary to see the documents, which left both claims suspect.
How would you know the handwriting was forged if you have not seen the letters? I asked Mary in my mind. It made me think the letters were, indeed, genuine, and Mary knew they contained evidence which was damaging.
What was for sure was if they were genuine, and had been sent at the dates Moray claimed for them, Mary was indeed implicated in, if not guilty, of murder. This was the way my men took it, but I had cause to wonder.
Cecil accepted many as genuine, but he had every reason to do so. If they were authentic, Mary was guilty and her lords had been justified in deposing her. She would be discredited, and my safety would be assured, as it might be possible to try her for murder, even though such a thing had never been done before to a monarch. If false, Mary was innocent and I would be called upon to release her, something Cecil did not want. If Mary went back to Scotland as Queen, she would surely take revenge on the nobles who had displaced her, sending them reeling into England as exiles. She might take revenge on me, too, for her imprisonment. France and Spain might back her, making invasion a possibility.
Cecil had every reason to uphold the letters, but his motives were political, not moral.
Some items were French sonnets, allegedly written by my cousin to Bothwell. If honest, the sonnets showed a deep and abiding passion between Mary and Bothwell, but they were clumsy. Mary had grown up in France and was fluent in its tongue. That the sonnets were crass called into question whether she had penned them, or if someone else, not fluent in French, had.
The meaning behind the poems was taken as love and sexual desire, but that was because people already knew the context they were supposed to be read in. Poems, like poets, are tricky creatures. They can seem to be about one thing, but who can say what dwells in the mind of a poet? One, in particular, which read…
“In his hands and in his full power,
I put my son, my honour and my life,
My country, my subjects, my soul all subdued
To him, and none other will I have
For my goal, which without deceit
I will follow in spite of all envy
That may ensue. For I have no other desire,
But to make him perceive my faithfulness.”
… Could equally be a poem written to the Almighty, as a sonnet expressing love for Bothwell.
“Even if it is genuine, Cecil,” I said one night. “It is hardly conclusive proof. And the contracts prove nothing.”
Several contracts were amongst the documents, and contracts were a standard part of noble marriages. There were ones stating Mary and Bothwell were to marry, and one, certainly, was a forgery, since it was in entirely different handwriting to other documents.
“There is one in your cousin’s hand saying she will marry Bothwell,” Cecil said.
I rolled my eyes. “Cecil,” I said in a stringent tone, carrying enough acid to pickle walnuts. “We know Mary married Bothwell, there is no mystery in that, nor is it new information. However misguided and forced her union was, it happened. It is fact. The contract is undated, which means we do not know if she agreed to marry him before Darnley died, but a document stating she will marry him is not proof she colluded in murdering her husband.”
“Moray says it was written before Darnley’s death.”
“He would.”
I stared at the letters, a pile of crisp parchment fluttering gently in the wind blowing through the open window. My doctors thought it sheer insanity, but I liked open windows, even at night. It was often said it was good for a man to wear two shirts when he came before his Queen; one to shelter him from the cold air, and another to protect him from her wrath. I smiled to hear such things. I wanted my people to love me, but a little fear did not hurt.
“I will admit the contracts and sonnets are suspect,” said Cecil, rubbing an ink-stained hand over his weary brow. “But the letters are not.”
I nodded grimly. The first two presented were damning. Written apparently from Mary when she was at Darnley’s side during the time he had been ill, the first chided the recipient for forgetting her and delaying his return from a journey. There was mention of a pain in her side, an ailment I remembered Mary had suffered from. The writer said they would “bring the man” to Craigmillar, and “I go to Edinburgh to be let blood,” which sounded like a threat of murder, but it was hardly solid proof. A common expression was to call a male child “the man”, so this letter could be about Mary’s son. “To be let blood,” could also be about a medical procedure. There was mention of Mary’s servant, Paris, which Moray had jumped on, declaring this was a link between Bothwell and Mary. Paris had once been Bothwell’s man and was suspected of taking messages between the two. This letter was dated but not signed, and there was no indication of whom the recipient was.
Moray claimed this omission had been made by Mary, to conceal her affair with Bothwell, begun before Darnley’s death. To Scottish minds, Mary had been complicit in Darnley’s murder, if not actively involved, to remove him so she might wed Bothwell. To Moray, guilty of adultery was guilty of murder… a common strain of thought and an illogical one. People often step upon a criminal path, then progress in the same direction, but it is not always so. Sometimes a person may right themselves. But to many men, a woman guilty of adultery was capable of anything.
Whilst I loathed this thought, I understood its power. It had been used to destroy my mother. At the time of her fall, adultery was not a capital crime, even for the Queen. My father made it so later in his reign, when he found himself unable to execute Catherine Howard. My mother was convicted of high treason, and the main evidence for this came from the accusation she had betrayed him with her body. Guilty of one crime, guilty of another.
The second letter was highly incriminating, but that again depended on how it was read and who sent it. It was the longest of all the letters, and was filled with passionate longing. There was a great deal about Darnley in it which seemed to indicate Mary was the author. Conversations about pardons, reconciliation between the two, Darnley’s admission of guilt, and his fear of Scottish lords filled pages. The sender wrote that they were ill at ease, and longed to be with the receiver again, and also slandered Darn
ley, saying he was cursed with pox and riddled with disease.
But there were unusual aspects. One was a ‘memorial’, a list of topics the sender wished to discuss, but without true form or order. Another was a double-space between sections of the letter. Looking upon this, I was reminded of the letter I had written to my sister when I was her prisoner. I had finished my pleas near the top of one page, and, fearing my enemies might insert something to incriminate me, or anger her, I had scratched through the rest of the parchment with my quill. I could not help but wonder if this had been the true end of this letter, and the rest, perhaps written by someone else, had been inserted later.
The section after this curious double-space talked of the sender making a bracelet for her lover, but she asked him to keep it concealed in case any guessed their relationship. This was odd, as only pages before the writer had jested that their relationship was well known. This made me highly suspicious. What if this letter was written in part by one woman, in part by another, and the two had been looped together? I suspected the good Regent of Scotland had become a gardener; grafting together two trees, to bear the fruit he desired.
What was possible was that these were Mary’s letters, or drafts of them, written for entirely innocent purposes, but had been carefully selected, and doctored by Moray to demonstrate complicity.
At the end of the second letter, a line gave me pause to ponder. “And send me word what I shall do, and whatsoever happens to me, I will obey you… Think also if you will not find some invention more secret by physick, for he is to take physick at Craigmillar and the baths also.” If Mary had written this, was it a sign she and Bothwell had been thinking of poisoning Darnley?
Aside from this, there was nothing to truly suggest murder was in the writer’s mind, and the mention of physick could simply mean medicine. Besides which, Darnley’s house had been blown up and he had been smothered to death, which did not comply with talk of poison. Moray claimed Mary and Bothwell had plotted at first to poison Darnley, but later resorted to other means. Why they would have done so, when poison was far more subtle than an explosion, I could not say… unless the Regent was lying, and had been forced to alter his story at the last minute, based on the ‘evidence’ he was able to scramble together.
There were plenty of discrepancies in the dates and the order events were supposed to have occurred in. Mary’s journal from the time conflicted with some of the letters, and some of the passages about yearning to be reunited could have been written after Mary and Bothwell’s marriage, when they were battling the Scottish lords.
The letters bore few names or dates and on those that did, names had been added, supposedly by Mary. When I read, “Of the Earl Bothwell,” at the end of one, I wondered why Mary would have added it. If Mary knew whom she was writing to, and indeed, in some of the letters had told Bothwell to burn them for fear of discovery, why add his name? I believed Moray had added names for the express purpose of incriminating my cousin, and if he had inserted names, what else had he altered?
Another point for Mary was that many of the letters, marked ‘Glasgow’ or ‘Edinburgh’ which were dated, did not fit with her movements. One of Moray’s claims was highly dubious. He said Mary’s man, Paris, had delivered one which spoke of the place and time of murder to Mary on the 25th of January and then took a response to Bothwell on the same day. Paris would have needed to sprout wings and fly to get to Mary on the 25th of January in Glasgow, then reach Edinburgh, fifty miles away, on water-logged, and potentially snow-bound winter roads, on the same day, and Bothwell was not in Edinburgh that day, he was in Jedburgh.
Mary’s servant, Paris, had vanished, so he could not be called upon to give evidence for his Queen. There was also mention in one letter of an uncle of the receiver who had bad breath. Bothwell had no uncles, so who this was about was unknown. It was entirely likely parts of this letter were genuine, but had been grafted together with much that was not. Mary might have been writing to Moray himself, for he had uncles.
But there was much that was damaging, and I was sure some of the letters, or parts of them, were indeed from Mary to Bothwell, although when they were written was another question. Some talked of passion for the recipient, saying that she longed to be in his bed again, and held impassioned pleas such as, “God forgive me, and God knit us together for ever for the most faithful couple ever He did knit together. This is my faith. I will die in it”, which suggested Mary to me, for her romantic nature was well known.
But some love letters sounded different to others, making me suspect they were written by different people. There is a tone, even in letters, which ascribes itself to a voice. The love letters fluctuated.
Some, too, might have been written by Mary, but to Darnley.
Cecil certainly found much that was confusing in them, since they contained criticisms of the receiver for being sullen and unfaithful, and no one had any evidence that Bothwell had committed adultery. In one part, the writer compared herself to Medea, Jason’s first wife. Mary had been Darnley’s first wife, but not Bothwell’s. In another, the hand which had written it was clearly the same as one of Moray’s clerks, indicating it had been doctored, if not entirely composed by him. Even Cecil did not deny this letter was a forgery.
One of the last love letters, which Moray claimed was evidence Mary had colluded in her own kidnap, was, I suspected, written long after the event. Moray said it had been written before, but it contained references to events which happened after the kidnap, and unless my cousin was blessed with foresight, she could not have known they would occur. Another, which read “I wish I were dead, for I see everything is going badly. You promised something very different in your prediction,” made me think that this was from Mary to Bothwell, but far from being proof she had expected and plotted her own kidnap, showed she had been betrayed by him, and was surprised by his vile attack.
A great deal of this evidence was based on innuendo and supposition, if not all of it. The sheer complication of Moray’s case was also suspect. He suggested plot upon plot… such a dense spider web. Lies often become elaborate when a liar becomes desperate. To be truly convincing lies need to be simple. This was anything but.
What all this said to me was that there was no evidence that Mary had plotted to kill Darnley, or had colluded with Bothwell in her own kidnap and rape. I believed Moray and his men had fabricated this evidence, pulling together genuine letters and splicing them with forgeries.
But just because they had no evidence she was guilty that did not mean she was innocent. We were in the same position. It was simply one word against another.
Yet whatever this evidence was, or meant, it was dangerous.
“These letters cannot be allowed to get out, Cecil,” I said. “I want the judges, Norfolk, Sussex and Sadler sworn to secrecy, and the Scots lords too. If these letters were seen by the public it would demean the authority of the Crown, not only in Scotland but in England, too.”
“I will make sure nothing escapes.”
“If you do not, Cecil, make no mistake, I will punish you. I know you think defaming Mary is to England’s advantage, but this would be perilous for me.”
Cecil glanced up, his eyes grave. “I understand the seriousness of the situation, Your Majesty. Upon my honour, I will not allow the sanctity of your crown to be stained by your cousin.”
“If she is indeed guilty,” I muttered. “This is all hearsay, Cecil. All of it. There is no firm proof.”
“There is enough to suggest she took a lover before her husband was dead, and thought of killing Darnley to wed Bothwell.”
“Only if read with a suspicious eye, eager to convict.”
Cecil was watching me close. “What?” I asked.
“Even if this is not true, Majesty, the Scots will never take her back as Queen. They believe her guilty. If she goes to Scotland, they will try her and she will lose her head.”
“I cannot allow that.”
He sighed. “Your only other option,
madam, is to keep her, and that path is not without peril.”
“I know, Cecil, but perhaps it is the lesser evil.”
“You would be sheltering a viper.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But it is not for me to rid the garden of this snake. Mary’s fate is up to God. I cannot judge her.”
“You are the judge, madam, in this tribunal.”
“And yet I will not judge her,” I replied. “I want you with me on this, Cecil. I cannot allow her to be found guilty.”
“Yet you cannot prove her innocent.”
“I am aware of that.”
Cecil stared at me. “You mean to pass no sentence?”
“I do, and leave it floating. It is all I can do. I thought by calling this trial we would demonstrate her innocence and restore her, but Moray will not allow that. She put herself under my protection, and she will have it, but she will never know liberty in England. Hopefully, in time, perhaps we can procure an annulment from Bothwell and marry her to an English lord so he can keep her under control. The only other option is to wait until James comes to his throne, so she can go home. For now, all I can do is shelter her from this storm.”
