by John Guy
Bothwell was seven years older than Mary. He cut a dashing figure: he was stocky like his father, although his hair was darker and his complexion ruddier. He had a military bearing and sported a mustache in the French manner. His eyes were darting and his gaze restless. The only known portrait of him is a miniature, one of a pair depicting him and his wife, Lady Jean Gordon, and made to celebrate their marriage in 1566. The work is of modest quality, but Throckmorton, who met Bothwell at Orléans in late 1560, caught some of his traits. In a dispatch to Elizabeth, he described him as “a vainglorious, rash and hazardous young man.” His enemies should “have an eye to him and keep him short.”
Bothwell’s military and chivalric ethos is the key to his character. Like his father and grandfather, he saw himself as a “man of honor,” who favored trial by combat and fought at least a dozen duels. He regarded violence as a valid method of settling disputes and an alternative to a judgment in a court of law.
It is not exactly that he held civilian values in contempt. He had a rough and a smooth side. He could discipline soldiers and pirates, but like Mary was educated in France. He had attended the University of Paris, where he learned to write in a stylish italic hand neater than Mary’s own. He had dipped a toe into the world of learning, but always preferred action to words. He regarded honor and nobility as virtues conferred by birth and on the battlefield rather than acquired in libraries or the council chamber. He could swear profusely and profanely. And yet he was far from being a philistine; he knew some classical history. But the books he collected were on mathematics, military strategy and chivalry, not moral philosophy, poetry or literature.
Bothwell, unlike his father, was a Protestant. Or, to be more precise, he was a nonideological Protestant. He was a skilled swordsman but not an advocate of the spiritual weapons of prayer and repentance. That is why men like Throckmorton, whose civilian values caused them to loathe everything for which Bothwell stood, could describe him as “a man of no religion.” He was not, however, a Catholic sympathizer. If he did not take his Protestant beliefs too seriously, he refused to attend Mass even when begged to do so by Mary.
Somewhat unusual for a Protestant, Bothwell was virulently anti-English. More consistently than his father, who had flirted with England when it suited him, he had always been a nationalist and unwaveringly loyal to Mary and her mother. During the revolt of the Lords of the Congregation, he was the regent’s most stalwart supporter. When Cecil sent £3000 to assist the rebels in October 1559, it was Bothwell who intercepted the courier. This man was one of Randolph’s secret agents: Captain Cockburn, Laird of Ormiston. He was smuggling the first instalment of £1000 in untraceable gold coins across the border when Bothwell waylaid him in East Lothian, taking the money to Crichton. Although Moray and Arran promptly went there with a force, Bothwell had posted lookouts, and half an hour before they arrived he fled with the money. The lords occupied the castle and stripped it of its furniture. Bothwell challenged Arran to a duel, but Arran, an inveterate coward, refused to fight. From then on, Bothwell was excoriated by the lords for putting their cause in jeopardy.
Shortly afterward, Mary’s mother had sent Bothwell to command a special force of eight hundred French and Scots troops at Stirling. In April 1560, he and the Catholic Lord Seton ambushed the commander of the English forces attacking Leith. As a border lord used to dealing with the so-called Scottish “riders” whose depredations were at their worst in his own region of Liddesdale, Bothwell was an expert in guerrilla warfare.
A few weeks later, he was sent to France carrying letters to a worried Mary. As he wrote to reassure her mother before he left, “I have made the greater haste to the effect I may return again with the army.” He was planning to travel by way of Denmark, where he hoped to persuade Frederick II to lend Mary of Guise his fleet to transport five thousand German mercenaries to Scotland. Then the regent died and Bothwell’s commission expired. He dallied for several months in Denmark, where he had an affair with a beautiful dark-haired Norwegian girl, Anna Throndsen, the daughter of a retired nobleman and admiral, who later sued him for breach of promise.
Presenting himself to Mary at Paris and Orléans, Bothwell was barely in time to deliver his letters and receive his reward before Francis II died. He was given 600 crowns of the sun, a typically generous amount, the fee of a gentilhomme of the chambre du roi and essentially a pension. Lord Seton received a slightly higher amount, and these rewards were for their loyalty to Mary’s mother, not for services to Francis. In Bothwell’s own words, “Amongst others she [Mary] rewarded me much more liberally and graciously than I had deserved, which angered my enemies to the greatest degree.”
Bothwell’s mortal enemy was Moray, who never forgave him for thwarting the lords in 1559–60. While the council of twenty-four nobles ruled in Scotland, Bothwell avoided them by crisscrossing to and from France. He was in Scotland in February 1561, but was at Calais in the summer to assist in bringing Mary home. As he was Lord Admiral, it has been assumed that his role was to escort Mary. This is mistaken, because her official escorts on the voyage were French. Her galleys were commissioned by her uncles, and Bothwell’s role as Admiral was to organize the flotilla of chartered transport ships that carried the queen’s baggage and animals.
After Mary had returned home, Bothwell’s feud with Moray intensified. As a leading lord, he was appointed to the Privy Council but rarely took up his seat, as Moray gave him no respite. In a series of incidents, he was attacked or set up by Moray. Then, in December 1561, Bothwell gave his rival a golden opportunity. He went out on what amounted to a stag night with Lord John of Coldingham. Lord John was about to marry Bothwell’s sister, Jane Hepburn,* and they decided to pay a late-night visit to Arran’s mistress in Edinburgh, a woman named Alison Craik. On a previous occasion, they had been admitted and enjoyed themselves, but this time they were refused entry. They broke down the door, leading next day to a confrontation with Arran and his friends that sparked a riot. Just when things were hotting up, Moray appeared on the scene to restore order.
Bothwell was expelled from Edinburgh, but fresh conflicts arose with Arran, whose delusion had then been to marry Mary. Bothwell, the swashbuckling military officer who had loyally defended her mother, ridiculed Arran and insulted him for his presumption. The result was another round of feuding, because even if Mary regarded Arran with the utmost suspicion, he was still an ally of Moray.
At Mary’s insistence, the two men were cursorily reconciled, but Arran behaved like a man possessed. He was mentally disturbed, once calling for a saw to cut off his legs and for a knife to slash his wrists. Now he accused Bothwell of treason. In a series of increasingly incoherent depositions he claimed that Bothwell had advised him to abduct Mary as a prelude to marrying her. These were serious charges even if they sprang from a delusion. An investigation had to be conducted into this alleged conspiracy.
Bothwell had nothing to hide. He willingly surrendered and, when Arran accused him of treason, challenged him to a duel. In the end, every one of Arran’s charges was dismissed. But Moray would not free Bothwell. Instead, he used his power in the Privy Council to imprison him in the dungeons of Edinburgh Castle. After three months, Bothwell decided to escape. Legend says that he broke the bars of his cell and scaled down the Castle Rock without a rope, but the more likely if less romantic explanation is that he bribed someone to let him out by the gate.
Bothwell fled to his mother’s house in Haddington and then took refuge at the Hermitage. He wrote to Mary offering to submit, but she was furious with him for breaking out of prison. Despite her own wicked sense of humor, any amusement or gratification she might have felt over his clumsy pranks at Arran’s expense was wiped out by his cavalier approach to justice. Banishment and exile were the penalties for aristocratic lawlessness, and this is what she had in mind for Bothwell. “Anything that he can do or say can little prevail,” wrote Randolph to Cecil, because “her purpose is at the least to put him out of the country.”
/> This was shortly before the Gordons were destroyed by Moray at the battle of Corrichie. Mary’s brother was at the height of his power. In Bothwell’s view, he was deceiving his sister by pursuing his personal and political vendettas under the cloak of enforcing law and order. Even Châtelherault had lost out, his stronghold at Dumbarton seized by Mary on her manipulative brother’s advice. Worried that he could be next, Bothwell decided to leave of his own accord, and in late December 1562 took ship for the Continent. When this was reported to Mary, she lost her temper and insisted that Bothwell would be punished.
It looked like the end for Bothwell. Moray appeared to have won hands down. But within a month, Mary had begun her marriage suit for Don Carlos. Moray was allowed to drift, then Maitland was sent on his mission to the Spanish embassy in London. Mary was taking a tougher line against English attempts to intimidate her. In that context, she started to view the nationalist and Anglophobe Bothwell more favorably.
Randolph had been the first to spot the change. Mary was asking where Bothwell was. She wanted him back, to be “reserved, though it were in prison, in store to be employed in any kind of mischief that any occasion may move.” It is an illuminating insight that holds the key to Mary’s relationship with Bothwell over the next two years. As an irritant, both to England and to Moray, he could prove invaluable. His lawlessness in this respect was likely to be a positive advantage.
Matters are complicated by confusion over Bothwell’s movements. The usual story is that he stayed in exile until March 1565, when he briefly returned, only to be forced back to France. He was actually in and out of Scotland, especially in 1564, when he met Mary secretly at Dunbar. It would be tempting for the historian to try and mold this evidence to prove a romantic liaison between Mary and Bothwell even before Mary married Darnley, but this would be to fall into a trap.
Bothwell never reached France at the beginning of 1563, because he was shipwrecked. He was driven by a violent storm onto Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland, and captured. Held first at Tynemouth Castle, he was taken to London and imprisoned in the Tower. He was in a confident, brash mood, informing his captors (somewhat contradictorily) that he was sufficiently in favor with Mary to be on his way to visit her relations, but was on no account to be sent back to Scotland to face the wrath of his enemies. This was typical Bothwell, always bluffing his way out of trouble.
Mary asked for news of him just as Maitland was headed for London. “Whatsoever they say against him,” she said, “it is rather from hate of his person and love that they bear otherwise than that he hath deserved.” She asked Randolph to write to Elizabeth to demand Bothwell’s return. “I do desire,” she said, “that he may be sent hither again into Scotland. So shall the pleasure be great and I will gladly requite the same.” But if Bothwell had returned, she would have put him back in prison for breaking out of Edinburgh Castle. A summons had already been issued against him for this offense, which simply awaited his reappearance.
Bothwell had risen in Mary’s opinion because he was the perfect foil to Moray and his English friends. Randolph was well aware of this. “One thing I thought not to omit,” he told Cecil, is “that I know him as mortal an enemy to our whole nation as any man alive, despiteful out of measure, false and untrue as a devil.”
By April, Mary was again demanding to know why Bothwell was in the Tower. “If he were here,” said Randolph from the vantage point of Edinburgh, “he would be reserved for an evil instrument.” A reply came that Bothwell was in custody for a legal dispute and that a trial was imminent. This seemed to satisfy Mary. By the end of June, Bothwell was released on parole. “Lock up your wives and daughters!” was Randolph’s advice to Cecil.
As soon as Bothwell was freed, Mary forgot about him again. She was too busy negotiating for a match to Don Carlos and against one to Archduke Charles of Austria to worry about him. Just as before, Bothwell was in limbo. In desperation, he decided to petition Mary, because he had no money and under the terms of his parole could not leave England. In December, he met Randolph near the border and suggested a deal. If Randolph would use his influence with Mary (proving of course that Bothwell as yet had none) to persuade Elizabeth to allow him to leave England, then in return he would go voluntarily into exile in France.
Randolph agreed. But it was at precisely this moment that Mary’s duel with Elizabeth over her marriage was nearing its climax. She had just received Elizabeth’s advice to marry an English nobleman and Cecil’s even more insulting demand that her dynastic rights be tried in an English court of law. She did not intend to allow Elizabeth to keep any Scottish nobles in England against their wills, and therefore wrote to her, not once but twice, for Bothwell. So too did Mary Fleming, the chief of the Maries, who persuaded the lovesick Maitland to write as well. Even Randolph was induced to write, possibly at the intercession of his own lover, Mary Beaton.
By February 1564, Randolph knew he had been tricked. “Such as have written, and I amongst the rest, in favor of my Lord Bothwell,” he advised Cecil, “saving the queen and Mary Fleming, repent their haste. It is found out that this way it is purposed to bring him home.” And sure enough, a week later Bothwell slipped across the border and saw Mary at Dunbar. When the news got out, everyone thought Moray was in danger. “Bothwell,” said Randolph, “was come secretly to speak with the queen with many horses,” and Moray, who would normally have accompanied her, was ordered to stay at home.
Then Bothwell was off again to London on his way to France, carrying a packet of letters. It sounds conspiratorial until one realizes that this was one of Mary’s theatrical ploys to irritate Elizabeth. The rendezvous at Dunbar was so “secret” that Randolph knew all about it. And the letters Bothwell carried were innocent. We know to whom they were addressed: Elizabeth, Cecil and Dudley! When Bothwell had delivered them, he was finally allowed to board his ship for France. He had been a convenient go-between on his way south to the channel ports.
One purpose of the rendezvous was to prove to Elizabeth that Mary had lords who would champion her refusal to have the terms of her marriage dictated to her by England. Mary, said Knox’s friend Kirkcaldy of Grange, wanted to be sure that Bothwell was “at all times ready to shake out of her pocket.”
There was also a less melodramatic explanation. Mary placed a high premium on family ties, and one little-known fact about Bothwell is that when his sister, Jane Hepburn, married Lord John of Coldingham, she became Mary’s sister-in-law. Lord John, another of James V’s illegitimate sons, was one of Mary’s most spirited and sophisticated courtiers, noted for his love of dancing. He was a great favorite of hers, and she granted him Dunbar Castle, on the edge of the cliffs of East Lothian. When Bothwell went to Dunbar, he had merely visited his sister, with whom Mary happened to be staying.
The main purpose of his visit was probably even more straightforward. Lord John had unexpectedly died a few weeks before. Bothwell’s sister was a grieving widow, and Mary had gone to comfort her. What could be more natural than that Bothwell, waiting close by on the other side of the border for his passport to travel to France, should want to see his sister before he embarked?
And there was a final connection. Bothwell’s grandmother had been James IV’s mistress. The rumor, almost certainly unfounded, that his father, Patrick, was the king’s son persisted. If it was true, then Mary and Bothwell were cousins. This explains something that perplexed Randolph after Mary’s return to Scotland. “The Earl Bothwell,” he wrote, “hath given unto him old lands of his father’s in Teviotdale and the abbey of Melrose. Some say that he is near sib unto Her Grace.” Randolph could not understand why people were hinting that Mary and Bothwell were near siblings, but the old rumor about Bothwell’s grandmother was the reason.
After almost a year in France, Bothwell was restless again. In late February 1565, he addressed a petition to Mary asking her to allow him home. He was suitably humble in his request, offering to accept conditions as long as they were appropriate to “his callin
g and birth.” Mary’s reaction was mixed. “Of herself,” said Randolph, “she is not evil affected toward him, but there are many causes why he is not so looked upon as some others are.”
Bothwell, however, rarely stood on ceremony. He returned to Scotland without waiting for a reply. Moray called for him to be outlawed. “It is said the queen hath granted it,” wrote the Earl of Bedford from Berwick, “but whether she will suffer it to be performed, some doubt.”
Bothwell went first to see his mother at Haddington, then quickly moved on. He feared for his safety and was right to do so: Moray was out to get him. Bothwell, in Moray’s mind, was forever a running sore. Moray would never forgive him for stealing that all-important first installment of English gold from Captain Cockburn. “He followeth the matter so earnestly,” continued Bedford in his next report, that “Scotland shall not hold them both.”
Soon Bothwell was back at the Hermitage. He was in yet more trouble, because his servants had reported “divers words” he was said to have spoken in France. These included threatening to kill Moray, Maitland and Cecil. He had also (allegedly) joked that Mary and Elizabeth between them “could not make one honest woman.” More dubiously (since Bothwell’s servants hoped to receive rewards for their information), he was said to have slandered Mary, calling her the “whore” of her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine. Not deigning to reply to such charges, Bothwell counterattacked by accusing Maitland of attempting to suborn his barber to poison him.
Mary was weary of this squabbling. The allegations and counterallegations were leveled within days of Elizabeth’s bombshell that she would do nothing further on the subject of Mary’s dynastic claim until she herself had married or resolved to remain single. Darnley was now within Mary’s sights; Bothwell was a tiresome distraction. “She hath sworn,” said Randolph, “upon her honor that he shall never receive favor at her hands.” His return was “altogether misliked,” and he was ordered to appear in court to answer the charge of breaking out of prison. Despite this, Mary set light terms. Moray wanted Bothwell arrested under pain of treason, but Mary intervened to make sure that he was given a modest bail of £200.
