Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley

by Alison Weir

  Moray had reached London on 16 April. The next day, according to de Silva,24 he “was with the Queen for a long time, but I have not been able to learn what passed. It is announced that he will go by Germany to Genoa, or else by way of France, where some people think he will remain.” On the 19th, Moray visited de Silva at his house, and it was on this occasion that he told him that he had left Scotland because he feared “something unpleasant might befall him” through the machinations of Bothwell. He referred disparagingly to the delay in punishing Darnley’s murderers, and, “although he did not name any particular person, it was easy to understand by his discourse that he considers Bothwell to be guilty.”

  De Silva asked Moray if the statement about the divorce between Bothwell and his wife was true, and he said it was. As he tells the story, it appears to be a somewhat novel form of divorce, as it is on the petition of the wife. They had been married hardly a year and a half, and she alleges adultery. I asked him whether there had been any ill treatment or quarrel to account for the divorce, to which he replied that there had been none, but that the wife had taken proceedings at the instance of her brother Huntly, who, to curry favour with Bothwell, had persuaded her to do so, and, at Bothwell’s request, the Earl was to be restored to his position in the Parliament.

  This, of course, is at variance with Drury’s earlier report that Huntly misliked the divorce and had had to be persuaded to agree to it.

  Moray told de Silva “he had heard that the divorce would be effected in order that the Queen might marry Bothwell, but he did not believe it, considering the Queen’s position and her great virtue, as well as the events which have taken place. It really seems improbable, she being a Catholic, and the divorce for such a reason as that alleged.” We may infer from this that, despite what was later written about Mary under Moray’s auspices, he still had a good opinion of her.

  De Silva later discussed the matter with the French ambassador, but the latter was “certain that, if the divorce is effected, the Queen will marry [Bothwell].”

  The Scottish Parliament met for its last day of business on 19 April, when the Queen finally ratified the Acts of the Reformation Parliament of 1560; since she had hitherto refused to do so, her capitulation on this issue has been seen as a concession to the Protestant establishment in return for its support for her marriage to Bothwell, but there is no credible evidence that Mary had any intention of marrying Bothwell at this time. Her ratification may well have been the result of Bothwell taking advantage of her weakened state to pressurise her into it, on the basis that—as Buchanan believed—this measure would go some way towards soothing public opinion after the Earl’s acquittal.

  Parliament also confirmed grants of land and restitutions to Huntly, Sir Richard Maitland, David Chalmers and others, as well as Moray’s title to his earldom and Mar’s governorship of Stirling Castle. An Act was passed making it a capital offence to set up or even read seditious placards, and eleven forfeitures, including Morton’s, were reduced; nine benefited members of the Gordon family.25This has been seen as an attempt by Mary to buy support for Bothwell’s divorce, but as it had been her intention since 1565 to formally restore Huntly to his lands, she could hardly exempt the rest of his family from the general reversal of attainders.

  The distribution of favours by Parliament to several persons implicated in Darnley’s murder suggests that Bothwell and the other Protestant Lords were now in control and that the Queen virtually did as she was bidden. Bothwell’s word was more or less law, and according to a letter written by Kirkcaldy of Grange to Bedford on 8 May,26“the most part of the nobility, for fear of their lives, granted sundry things against their honours and consciences.”

  On the day Parliament rose, Drury reported that the man who had cried for vengeance in the night had been arrested and “shut up in a prison which they call, for the loathsomeness of the place, the foul thief’s pit.”27He also reported the secret murder and burial of “a servant of James Balfour (who was at the murder of the King), supposed upon very lively presumptions for utterance of some matter, either by remorse of conscience or other folly, that might tend to the whole discovery of the King’s death.” The implication was, of course, that Balfour had murdered him. Drury added that Balfour, “for some fear he conceives, keeps his house, especially in the night, under great watch and guard.”28In the wake of the placards that continued to link him to Darnley’s murder, Balfour doubtless feared reprisals on the part of a vengeful citizenry.

  Bothwell had decided that the time was now ripe to bring his plans to fruition. On the evening of the day when Parliament rose, he gave a supper for the Lords. The venue is disputed, but most accounts state it took place at Ainslie’s Tavern in Edinburgh, the site of which is now unknown. The Book of Articles asserts that the supper was held in Bothwell’s lodging in Holyrood Palace, in an obvious attempt to imply the Queen’s collusion, but this was probably not big enough to accommodate such a large company.

  The purpose of this supper was not just the celebration of Bothwell’s acquittal. When the guests were suitably replete with food and wine, Bothwell produced a bond and asked them to subscribe to it. This bond was to serve as proof of their support for Bothwell against his enemies, and, more importantly, for his marriage to the Queen. The latter part of it read:

  Weighing and considering the time present, and how our sovereign the Queen’s Majesty is now destitute of an husband, in the which solitary state the commonwealth of this realm may not permit Her Highness to continue and endure, but at some time Her Highness may be inclined to yield unto a marriage; and therefore, in case the former affectionate and hearty service of the said Earl done to Her Majesty from time to time and his other good qualities and behaviour may move Her Majesty so far to humble herself as preferring one of her native-born subjects unto all foreign princes, to take to husband the said Earl, we, and every one of us undersubscribing, upon our honours and fidelity, promise not only to advance and set forward the marriage with our votes, counsel, fortification and assistance in word and deed at such time as it shall please Her Majesty to think it convenient; but in case any would presume directly or indirectly, openly or under whatsoever colour or pretence, to hinder, hold back or disturb the same marriage, we shall in that behalf esteem, hold and repute the hinderers, adversaries or disturbers thereof as our common enemies and evil willers; and, notwithstanding the same, take part and fortify the said Earl to the said marriage, so far as it may please our Sovereign Lady to allow.29

  The last sentence suggests that Bothwell’s plans hinged upon Mary’s consent to the marriage, which had yet to be given. It would have been logical for him to wait until he was cleared of Darnley’s murder before approaching her, and he desired the support of the Lords not only as an insurance for the future, but also as ammunition with which to persuade the Queen to the marriage. If it had the consent of her nobility, she might well give serious consideration to it.

  The surprising thing is that most of the Lords present at the supper, both Protestant and Catholic, signed the bond. The original bond, on which there were supposed to be 28 or 29 signatures, no longer exists, but the lists of signatories on the surviving copies do not agree, so it is not possible to be absolutely certain as to who the signatories were. The copy attested by Balfour lists Archbishop Hamilton and the Bishops of Ross, Aberdeen, Galloway, Dunblane, Brechin, Orkney and the Isles,30the Earls of Argyll, Huntly, Morton, Cassilis, Sutherland, Errol, Crawford, Caithness and Rothes, and Lords Boyd, Glamis, Ruthven, Sempill, Ogilvy, Herries and Fleming. Ruthven, however, is known not to have signed.

  The list made by Buchanan’s clerk, John Reed, for Cecil in 1568,31which was compiled from memory, differs: Moray’s name heads the list of earls, although he was out of the country at the time and Mary’s confessor later confirmed to de Silva that Moray had not signed the original Bond;32Errol, Crawford, Glamis, Ruthven and Fleming do not appear, and Glencairn (who was not in Edinburgh just then), Seton, Sinclair, Oliphant, Home, Ross of Ha
lkhead, Carlyle and Innermeith are added.33Home was Bothwell’s rival and is unlikely to have signed. Maitland’s signature is not included in either list, and Mar’s was not sought. Lord Eglinton, a Catholic supporter of the Queen, “subscribed not but slipped away,”34while Melville rejected “the large offers made by the Earl of Bothwell when he desired me to subscribe with the rest of his flatterers” and “chose rather to lay myself open to his hatred and revenge.”

  Bothwell claimed in his memoirs that the Lords “came to me entirely of their own account and did me the honour of offering their support and friendship”; they told him “that they would never agree to [the Queen] marrying a foreigner, [and] said that I was the most worthy of her in the kingdom. They had thought it over and had decided to do all they could to bring about such a marriage.” Yet in 1568, the Lords told Elizabeth’s Commissioners that they had not signed the bond until Bothwell had produced a warrant from the Queen authorising them to do so.35

  However, it is more likely that Bothwell persuaded them to sign either by getting them drunk, or by bribery, promises of patronage to come or intimidation. It was alleged that his 200 arquebusiers had surrounded the tavern and could be seen through the windows, but Grange does not mention them, or the Queen’s warrant, in a letter sent to Bedford the following day, reporting the events of the evening before.36Nau was probably correct when he wrote that “some helped [Bothwell] honestly through friendship, others from fear, being in dread of their lives; others dissembled, meaning through him to carry out their own secret ends and private designs.” More sinisterly, though, he claims that the Queen’s enemies, “having used [Bothwell] to rid themselves of the King, designed to make [him] their instrument to ruin the Queen”; they had therefore signed the bond to induce her to marry Bothwell “so that they might charge her with being in the plot against her late husband and a consenting party to his death.” This later became the accepted Catholic view of the matter, and may not be far from the truth.

  The following day, according to Buchanan, some Lords regretted signing the bond and frankly declared that, if they had not believed that it would please the Queen, they would never have assented. For besides that the business was not very honest, there was always the danger that (as they remembered with her former husband) a quarrel might occur and Bothwell might be thrown aside. Then they themselves might become criminals for having betrayed the Queen and compelled her to enter into an unworthy marriage. Therefore, before the matter was settled, they thought it necessary to ascertain her wishes and obtain a statement signed by her own hand to the effect that what they had done in respect of the marriage was agreeable to her. This was easily obtained, and it was entrusted to the Earl of Argyll.

  This account gives the lie to the allegation made in 1568, by Buchanan and others, that the Queen’s warrant had been produced the previous evening; furthermore, there is no evidence that Argyll ever had in his possession any statement of approval signed by Mary on 20 April.

  On that day, Mary went to Seton for the fourth time since Darnley’s death. As she had gone there on the three previous occasions for the sake of her health, it is reasonable to suppose that that was the reason for this visit. Later that day, she was joined there by Bothwell, Maitland and Patrick Bellenden.37Bothwell had with him the Ainslie’s Tavern Bond, and when he arrived, he wasted no time in showing it to the Queen and proposing marriage to her.38In a letter to the Bishop of Dunblane, she made it clear that this was the first time he had paid suit to her, saying that “he began afar off to discover his intentions to us, and to essay if he might, by humble suit, purchase our good will, to which our answer was in no degree correspondent to his desire.”39

  In rejecting Bothwell out of hand, Mary was taking into consideration the fact that he was married, a heretic and a mere subject, and that their marriage would fatally prejudice future relations with England. More crucially, such a union would, for Mary, be political suicide, for, since Bothwell was still believed by many to be Darnley’s chief assassin, she would risk being deemed guilty by association if she married him. Already tongues were wagging about them, and in the present climate she dared not expose herself to further scandal.

  Bothwell took the Queen’s refusal in good part, and changed the subject, laying forth “his plans to punish the Liddesdale thieves.”40

  Bothwell claims that the Lords “discussed the matter at once with the Queen, to see how our marriage could take place before the solemn assembly of Church and Parliament.”41Maitland and Bellenden were at Seton on behalf of the Lords and the Council. Maitland, who, under cover of giving Bothwell his support, was possibly engineering his ruin by giving the Lords a pretext to move against him, advised Mary that “it had become absolutely necessary that some remedy should be provided for the disorder into which the public affairs of the realm had fallen for want of a head.” This in itself is an admission that Mary herself had lost political control. Maitland informed Mary that the Lords “had unanimously resolved to press her to take Bothwell for her husband. They knew that he was a man of resolution, well adapted to rule, the very character needed to give weight to the decisions and actions of the Council. All of them therefore pleaded in his favour.” Significantly, Leslie claims that those who later found fault with the marriage “were then the principal inventors, practisers, persuaders and compassers of the same.”

  According to Nau, who seems to be exaggerating somewhat, “this poor Princess, inexperienced in such devices, was circumvented on all sides by persuasions, requests and importunities, both in general memorials signed by [the Lords’] hands and presented to her in full Council, and by private letters.” Yet Mary remained adamant, even in the face of a second petition by Maitland and Bellenden. “She reminded them of the reports which were current about the death of the late King, her husband,” but Maitland replied that Lord Bothwell had been legally acquitted by the Council. They who made this request to her did so for the public good of the realm, and as they were the highest of the nobility, it would be for them to vindicate a marriage brought about by their advice and authority. In the end, Her Majesty asked them to assemble the Estates in order that the question might be considered. Thus vehemently urged in this matter, and perceiving that Bothwell was entirely cleared from the crime laid to his charge, [and] suspecting, moreover, nothing more than what appeared on the surface, she began to give ear to their overtures, without letting it be openly seen. She remained in this state of hesitation partly because of the conflicting reports which were current at the time, partly because she had no force sufficiently strong to punish the rebels by whom (if the truth must be told) she was rather commanded than consulted, and ruled rather than obeyed.42

  Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange was hailed as the greatest soldier of his day: Nau calls him “a very brave gentleman,” while Melville says “he was meek like a lamb in the house, but like a lion in the fields”; yet his heroic reputation belies the fact that he had been a spy in the pay of the English since 1546, and was also dishonest, treacherous and a born intriguer. Grange had been at university in Paris with Thomas Randolph, who had become a long-standing friend, and he had years ago embraced the reformed faith. As a committed Anglophile, he loathed Bothwell—he had been conspicuous by his absence from Ainslie’s Tavern—and was hostile towards Mary, although she was unaware of this, and seems to have regarded him as a latter-day knight errant. Grange, for his part, was convinced that Mary had been an accessory to Darnley’s murder. Nau later asserted that Moray had “chiefly trusted the Laird of Grange with the execution of [his] designs, and Grange was the tool of Moray and [Maitland].”

  Anything written by Grange therefore has to be treated with caution. On 20 April, almost certainly mindful of the instructions left him by Moray, he wrote to Bedford:

  It may please you to let me understand what will be your sovereign’s part concerning the late murder among us. Albeit Her Majesty was slow in our last troubles, and lost favour, we bore to her yet; if she will pursue revenge for the mu
rder, she will win the hearts of all honest Scotsmen again. And, if we understand she would favour us, we shall not be long in revenging it.

  The next section in the letter relates the business of Parliament, and Grange alleges, incorrectly, that the Queen caused ratify in Parliament the cleansing of Bothwell. She intends to take the Prince out of Mar’s hands and put him in Bothwell’s keeping, who murdered his father. The night Parliament was dissolved, Bothwell called most of the noblemen to supper, to desire their promise in writing and consent to the Queen’s marriage, which he will obtain; for she has said she cares not to lose France, England and her own country for him, and shall go with him to the world’s end in a white petticoat before she leaves him. Yea, she is so far past all shame that she has caused make an Act of Parliament against all that set up any writing that speaks anything of him. Whatever is unhonest reigns presently in our court.

  Grange ended by asking Bedford to have copies of the placards answering Bothwell’s challenge printed for distribution on the Continent.43Clearly, he and his English paymasters had been actively involved in the smear campaign against Bothwell, and it may well have been Grange who had sent Drury copies of the placards. In August, Bedford was to petition Queen Elizabeth to send Grange “a token of remembrance” for the intelligence he had furnished to the English government.44

  Grange’s letter, with its request for English support, is proof that some design was intended against Bothwell and Mary by the Lords. It is peppered with lies and distortions, and the famous “white petticoat” quote attributed to Mary, of which so much has been made by so many historians, is probably no more than a malicious invention, designed to inflame public opinion in England against a queen whom Grange and his masters wanted overthrown. No one else reported these remarks, and it is highly unlikely that Mary uttered them for Grange’s ear alone. The fact that Grange later changed sides and became one of the Queen’s stoutest adherents shows that he came in time to understand how badly she had been calumniated by men like himself.