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

by Alison Weir

  In November, as the northern rebels marched south towards Tutbury, Mary was moved to Coventry; at this point, the rebellion began to collapse. By 20 December, it had been ruthlessly suppressed by Elizabeth’s forces. But Mary was still cherishing hopes of marrying Norfolk, and in December and January, sent passionate letters to him in the Tower.

  By 1570, many nobles had become disaffected from Moray’s rule, and the Hamiltons were openly voicing suspicions that he was plotting to seize the throne, which they themselves claimed as next heirs after James VI. On 23 January, a nephew of Archbishop Hamilton,17 James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, assassinated the Regent as he rode through the streets of Linlithgow. There can be little doubt that the Archbishop himself was implicated in the murder. Bothwellhaugh escaped to France.

  Moray was buried in St. Giles’s Kirk, Knox having preached his funeral sermon, in which he called upon God to remember the Regent’s foolish pity for Mary and the other murderers of Darnley. “He is at rest, O Lord, and we are left in extreme misery!” he cried. It was true, for the death of “the good Regent,” as the people were now calling him, plunged Scotland into chaos.

  When Mary heard of her half-brother’s death, she wrote to Archbishop Beaton “that she was the more indebted to the assassin,” but “that he had acted without her instigation.” In a letter to Moray’s widow, she declared that the murder had been done against her will. Nevertheless, she awarded Bothwellhaugh a pension.18

  She had much to thank him for, because after the Regent’s death, her party grew in strength, which weakened the position of the Protestant Lords, whose unofficial leader was Morton. This led to civil war in Scotland. The Lords began attacking Grange in Edinburgh Castle, but with little success. It seemed at one point that the Marian party might emerge triumphant, for Huntly was holding the north-east and the Hamiltons the west, Chatelherault and Herries having been released after Moray’s death. The King of France had offered them his support. It would be easy for him to land an army at Dumbarton, which commanded the estuary of the Clyde and was held by Lord Fleming for the Queen.

  As the crisis deepened in Scotland, Pope Pius V, having learned of the ruthless suppression of the Northern Rising, precipitately excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, exhorting her subjects to rise against her and set Mary in her place. The English government feared that, armoured with this papal sanction, Catholics might be encouraged to plot against the Queen, and from this time they were regarded less as heretics than as traitors. Further restrictions were placed upon them, and security around Mary was tightened. Most Catholics in England ignored the Bull of excommunication, but the government could afford to take no chances.

  Elizabeth was determined that the next Regent of Scotland should be someone who was friendly towards England. She chose Lennox, and forced the reluctant Scots to accept him. He was elected Regent on 12 July 1570, although his wife and son Charles were made to stay in England as hostages for his good behaviour. At this time, both Elizabeth and Mary were independently scheming to have James brought to England and placed in the care of his grandmother, Lady Lennox. Mary’s mother-in-law had always condemned her as Darnley’s murderess, but on 10 July, in the interests of her son, Mary swallowed her pride and wrote an aggrieved letter to the Countess, expressing the hope that her innocence would be made manifest to her:

  Madam, if the wrong and false reports of rebels, enemies well known for traitors to you, and alas! too trusted of me by your advice, had not so far stirred you against mine innocency (and, I must say, against all kindness, that you have not only condemned me wrongfully, but so hated me, as some words and open deeds have so testified to all the world, a manifest misliking in you against your own blood), I would not thus long have omitted my duty in writing to you, excusing me of those untrue reports made of me. But hoping, with God’s grace and time, to have my innocency known to you, as I trust it is already to the most part of all indifferent [impartial] persons, I thought it not best to trouble you for a time, till such a matter is moved that touches us both, which is the transporting your little [grand]son and my only child in this country. I would be glad to have your advice therein, as in all other matters touching him. I have borne him, and God knows at what danger to him and me both, and of you he is descended. So I mean not to forget my duty to you in showing herein any unkindness to you, how unkindly soever ye have dealt by me, but will love you as my aunt and respect you as my mother-in-law. Your natural good niece and loving daughter, Marie.19

  Mary may have hoped, by bringing Lady Lennox over to her side, to have some future contact with the son she had not seen for over three years. She had sent gifts and later wrote letters to him, but it is doubtful he was allowed to receive any of them. Nor would the Scots consent to him being taken out of the country, so Mary’s scheming came to nothing. Her letter to Lady Lennox was doubly in vain, for that lady refused to revise her implacable opinion of her daughter-in-law, and when, the following September, Elizabeth was toying with the idea of restoring Mary to her throne, Lady Lennox begged her to reconsider:

  The knowledge thereof is to me of no small discomfort, considering that, notwithstanding the grievous murder which, by her means only, was upon my son, her husband, executed, divers persons in this realm doth yet doubt, and a great many doth credit that, since her coming hither, she is found clear and not to be culpable of that fact.20

  Lady Lennox also sent Mary’s letter on to Lennox, who responded:

  What can I say but that I do not marvel to see her write the best [she] can for herself. It will be long time that is able to put a matter so notorious in oblivion, to make black white, or innocency to appear where the contrary is so well known. The most indifferent, I trust, doubts not of the equity of your and my cause, and of the just occasion of our misliking. Her right duty to you and me were her true confession and unfeigned repentance of that lamentable fact. God is just and will not in the end be abused.21

  As Regent, Lennox espoused the Protestant cause with fervour, but met constant opposition from his old rivals, the Hamiltons, and the rest of the Marian party, who refused to recognise his Regency. Never popular in Scotland, he made himself even more hated by his grim determination to avenge Darnley’s murder. On 16 July, he wrote to his wife that he was still assured of Mary’s guilt, having been convinced by the Casket Letters, “the confessions of men gone to the death, and other infallible experience.”22

  Maitland, who had felt it safe to leave Edinburgh Castle after Moray’s death, had gone to Atholl, and was now acknowledged the leader of the Queen’s party, despite having been struck down of late with a wasting disease: he could no longer walk and was so weak that even to sneeze was painful.23 Grange had remained at his post, determined to hold Edinburgh Castle for Mary. Balfour had also stayed loyal to Mary, if only out of self-interest, for Lennox was out for his blood. In August, Lennox defeated Huntly at Brechin, and Elizabeth brought about a truce between the two parties, which was, however, broken early in 1571 by the Hamiltons.

  Under Lennox’s auspices, George Buchanan was appointed tutor to the four-year-old King, a post he would hold for eight years. Buchanan saw to it that James was well educated, but he brought the child up to believe in his mother’s guilt, and accordingly subjected him to a severe Calvinist regime. Years later, James would reject and suppress Buchanan’s views, and would also condemn Moray as an unnatural rebel, but by then he had been so indoctrinated that, not remembering Mary, he could never love her, but saw her chiefly as a threat to his throne.

  Lennox made renewed efforts to secure Bothwell’s extradition, and sent one Thomas Buchanan to Denmark to demand it. This envoy became aware that Bothwell and Mary were still corresponding freely, and protested that this should be stopped and that the couriers concerned—an English spy called Horsey and Bothwell’s Danish page, Herman—should be imprisoned. Mary was also in contact with Hepburn of Riccarton, Bothwell’s cousin, who doubtless provided another channel of communication. After reading Thomas Buchanan’s report, Cecil
expressed concern that Bothwell could so easily make contact with Mary. None of the letters between the couple has survived.

  In the summer of 1570, Elizabeth demanded that Frederick have Bothwell executed, reminding him that it did him no honour “that a regicide should wander free to live unpunished.”24Again, in March 1571, she urged that the Earl be released for trial in Scotland or England, which was the last thing the Scottish Lords wanted: they were pressing for Bothwell’s summary execution. But Frederick demurred; he still regarded Bothwell as a useful political pawn, and it was by no means uncertain that Mary would regain her kingdom. Furthermore, Bothwell had consistently denied any involvement in Darnley’s murder.25

  There is little doubt that the English establishment knew very well who Darnley’s true killers were. In a letter to Cecil dated 15 October 1570, Thomas Randolph wrote from Scotland that he minded not “to name such as are yet here living,” who were “most notoriously known to have been chief consenters to the King’s death; only I will say that the universal bruit cometh upon three or four persons which subscribed a bond promising to concur and assist each other in doing the same.”26These persons were almost certainly Maitland, Huntly, Argyll and Bothwell (Moray being dead), and Cecil must have already known or guessed who they were.

  In November 1570, Sir Henry Norris, the English ambassador in Paris, incorrectly reported that the Pope had annulled Mary’s marriage to Bothwell on the grounds of rape.27 No documentation of this exists in the Vatican archives, and the report is proved false by the fact that Mary again raised the question of nullity in 1575. In January 1571, Mary sent Master Horsey with a message to King Frederick, urging “that Lord Bothwell be not delivered up to punishment,”28and in June that year, the French government echoed her request, fearing that, if Bothwell were put on trial, his revelations might be damaging to her. The next month, Lennox informed Frederick that he was content to postpone Bothwell’s case until another day.

  Norfolk’s release from the Tower in August 1570 signalled the inception of what became known as the Ridolfi Plot, the aim of which was to place Mary and Norfolk on the English throne with Spanish help. The Florentine Ridolfi was to act as agent and financier, and Bishop Leslie was one of the brains behind the plot.

  In January 1571, Ridolfi offered to act as Mary’s representative in the courts of Europe, where he would be well placed to enlist support for her cause. He later claimed that she agreed to this, but none of her written credentials survives, nor do any of the incriminating letters he alleged she had written. In one of these, dated 8 February, she outlined the plot to Norfolk and invited him to join the conspiracy, much to his alarm; but he had been won over by 10 March.

  At the end of March, Thomas Crawford, crying “A Darnley! A Darnley!,” captured the seemingly impregnable Dumbarton Castle from the Queen’s supporters, depriving them of a strategically valuable fortress, and bringing the West under the control of the Regent. Fleming escaped to France (he died in September 1572), but one of those taken was Archbishop Hamilton, who was to feel the full force of Lennox’s vengeance. The Regent was convinced that the Archbishop had helped to murder Darnley, and also knew him to be the man who had masterminded Moray’s assassination. On 7 April, without bothering with the formality of a trial, he had him hanged in his ecclesiastical vestments, and then quartered, at Stirling.29To the last, the Archbishop protested his innocence. Afterwards, Buchanan wrote the account of Darnley’s murder that imputed it to Hamilton, which, as has already been noted, was at variance with his earlier allegations; but it was now necessary to provide justification for Lennox’s tyrannical and unprecedented execution of the Primate of Scotland.

  The Archbishop’s death provoked Grange into publishing an act of defiance against Lennox, and led to an intensification of the civil war. Grange was now holding Edinburgh Castle against what would become known as the “Lang Siege,” and was joined there by Maitland and Rothes. In June 1571, Captain Cullen, who had been in Edinburgh Castle with Balfour, was captured by Morton and promptly executed, “to the end that [Morton] might the more freely enjoy the favour of his fair wife.”30 Thereafter, Morton lived in open adultery with Mrs. Cullen.

  Herries, believing that Mary’s cause was hopeless, sought a reconciliation with Morton in August 1571. But the Hamiltons were not giving up without a fight. On 4 September, in revenge for the murder of Archbishop Hamilton, they and their allies attempted a coup, and Lennox was assassinated in the process, being shot during an attack on Stirling Castle. His title was inherited by his sixteen-year-old son, Charles, and the moderate but ailing Mar, Elizabeth’s candidate and Morton’s puppet, replaced him as Regent the following month.

  The English government had now received secret intelligence of the Ridolfi Plot. On 7 September, Norfolk was arrested on a charge of high treason, and sent to the Tower of London. When questioned, Mary admitted having dealings with Ridolfi, but denied being involved in any conspiracy. Bishop Leslie was also sent to the Tower, on 24 October, and that same week, an outraged Elizabeth, convinced that Mary had connived at her assassination, finally authorised the publication in London of Buchanan’s Detectio, which included transcripts of three of the Casket Letters in an appendix and Thomas Wilson’s Actio contra Mariam (known in English as The Oration), a venomous attack on Mary modelled on the Detectio, but with even more errors. A Scots edition of the Detectio was also published in London (and again in Scotland in 1572), which included all eight of the Casket Letters. Now, for the first time, the people of England and Scotland could read the evidence for Mary Stuart’s complicity in the murder of her husband, and, unsurprisingly, these works became bestsellers. In January 1572, Elizabeth at last recognised James VI as King of Scots, and thereby made the Scottish government aware that she had no further intention of restoring Mary.

  On 3 November, under interrogation by Thomas Wilson, Master of the Court of Requests, and in fear of the rack, Leslie broke, and made the first of several statements that were highly damaging to Mary, attributing the Northern Rising to a plot between her, Norfolk and the northern Earls. Three days later, he said that “the Queen his mistress was not fit for any husband,” for she had “poisoned the French King, as he credibly understood,” consented to the murder of Darnley, then “matched with the murderer,” Bothwell, and brought him to Carberry Hill in the hope that he too would be killed. Now she was planning to marry Norfolk, who Leslie believed would not survive long. In the circumstances, little credence can be given to this statement, although some writers have relied on it as evidence that Leslie believed in Mary’s guilt. Dr. Wilson himself was shocked by it, and observed, “Lord, what a people are these! What a Queen, and what an ambassador!”31

  Two days later, Leslie was made to write to Mary to tell her that he had been forced to confess all he knew about the plot, since her letters had been produced before the Council.32 Mary also received a copy of Buchanan’s book, which Elizabeth had pointedly sent her; she promptly denounced it as “the lewd work of an atheist.” Her detractors have pointed out that she did not specifically comment on the Casket Letters or disclaim authorship of them, but as they were part of the book, and she had denounced it in its entirety, there was no need for her to do so.

  Norfolk was condemned to death for high treason on 16 January 1572. For some months, Elizabeth could not bring herself to sign the death warrant. She also resisted the insistent pleas and demands of her government to put Mary to death also, despite having been warned that, until the Scottish Queen was dead, neither her crown nor her life would be secure. It was probably at this time that Elizabeth wrote her famous poem about Mary:

  The daughter of debate, that aye discord doth sow,

  Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know.

  On 26 May, aware that public feeling against Mary was intensifying, the English Parliament drew up a Bill of Attainder listing the Scottish Queen’s offences and depriving her of her claim to the English throne, but it never became law because Elizabeth
vetoed it. Instead, she threw Norfolk to the wolves. On 2 June, he was beheaded.

  The following August, the St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre took place in France, and hundreds of French Protestants were mercilessly slaughtered. Any remaining sympathy that the English may have felt for Mary was extinguished in the ensuing anti-Catholic backlash, and again there were demands for her execution. The English ambassador in Paris did his utmost to persuade the French government that Mary was guilty of multiple adultery, the murder of two husbands, and bigamy. Yet even now, Mary was continuing with her secret intrigues, which moved Charles IX to comment with acute foresight that “the poor fool” would never cease until she lost her head.

  In September 1572, in an attempt to shift the problem of what to do with Mary on to the Scots, the English government asked Mar to demand that she be returned to Scotland to face trial for the murder of Darnley, a trial that would almost certainly lead to demands for the extreme penalty. Although Mar personally felt that Mary’s death was “the only salve for the cures of this commonwealth,” the Scottish Lords in general were not in favour of the idea, not wishing to take responsibility for the execution of a queen. Morton said they would agree to the proposal if Elizabeth was prepared to send English troops to stand around the scaffold. Naturally, Elizabeth would not agree to this: she could not be seen to be sanctioning the beheading of a fellow sovereign, so the plan was abandoned.