by John Guy
Balfour was Darnley’s right-hand man. An unscrupulous lawyer who had attended Castelnau’s second interview in the garden at Holyrood, he had been an accessory to the plot to murder Cardinal Beaton all those years ago. He had been captured by the French at St. Andrews Castle, and rowed in the galleys with John Knox. Now a judge in the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he was notoriously unprincipled. His career was all that mattered to him, and he switched sides with bewildering rapidity.
Rizzio, Mary’s new confidential secretary, was already said to be Darnley’s “only governor” and the man who “works all” in his counsels. As noted earlier, the two men were found in bed together, which in view of Darnley’s swing toward Catholicism led inevitably to the accusation that Rizzio was a papal spy.
Lesley and Chalmers were leading Catholic lawyers. Lesley (later Bishop of Ross) was to become one of Mary’s most active and prolific defenders after her flight to England. His name was linked to Balfour’s soon after the Darnley marriage. Chalmers was connected to Balfour in the Court of Session, and both of them to Bothwell as former advocates in the Admiralty Court, over which he presided as Lord Admiral.
Yaxley was an oddball. He was an Englishman and an ardent Catholic who had served Philip II and Mary Tudor and was a protégé of the Countess of Lennox. He arrived in Scotland shortly after Darnley’s marriage and proclaimed himself a Scot. Regarded by the countess as a bridge between her son and the English Catholics, he quickly won Darnley’s trust. He was employed as a special agent and sent to Philip II to say that Mary lacked confidence in her French relations and so wished to commit herself and her country to Philip’s protection. Naturally it did not occur to Darnley to ask Mary’s permission first.
Yaxley was a menacing character: he had once been Cecil’s servant, knew the identities of his foreign agents and had diplomatic accreditation throughout Europe. He claimed to know many Catholics “of good power” in England who were ready to declare themselves for Spain if Mary displaced Elizabeth as queen.
Darnley also dabbled alarmingly in Ireland, where Spain wanted to extend its influence. A vibrant trade existed between Spain and the south of Ireland. The country was overwhelmingly Catholic. The Gaelic chiefs were in revolt, and many would be willing to consider Mary as queen of Ireland in place of Elizabeth. Philip II was starting to wonder whether his policy toward the English queen had become just a little too cordial. And if so, Ireland was far more likely to be the back door into England than Scotland was. If Darnley stirred up trouble there, it would be of even greater interest to Philip than Mary’s claim to the throne of England, which remained ineffective if not almost entirely useless without the pope’s backing.
Yaxley’s mission to Spain was successful. He obtained letters from Philip to Darnley, but was shipwrecked and drowned in the North Sea on his return journey. His body washed up on Holy Island along with his document case and a vast sum of money in crowns and ducats. The letters he was carrying were addressed to the “King of Scots” alone: no mention was made of Mary, who was invisible in Darnley’s diplomacy. Although Darnley had been Mary’s husband for less than six months, he was flexing his muscles and attempting to make his name as one of Europe’s greatest Catholic kings.
At Christmas 1565, Darnley showed just how Catholic he meant to be. He attended midnight Mass and then matins, followed by High Mass, where he prayed “devotedly upon his knees.” No longer did he attend Knox’s sermons at St. Giles Kirk. He talked of restoring the Mass in Scotland and granting “liberty of conscience” to Catholics at the next Parliament, due to assemble in the spring to attaint Moray and his allies.
Darnley was creating dangerous waves. His actions put in jeopardy the religious compromise that Mary had worked so shrewdly over the past four years to establish. She tried at first to distance herself from his campaign. At Christmas, when he attended Mass so conspicuously, she stayed up all night playing cards and went to bed at dawn, thereby missing the services. But he persisted, almost daring her to prove that she really was a true Catholic.
Darnley believed that as king he was above the law, because unlike Mary, he had no explicit permission to worship privately as a Catholic in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood. It did not occur to him to ask whether his actions would be seen as divisive, and he was so arrogant and insensitive, he gloried in what he took to be a crusade against the Protestants.
He planned to bring his campaign to its climax during the week of the Catholic festival of Candlemas, in early February 1566. He was then to be invested with the Order of Saint Michael, which Castelnau had secured. He eagerly looked forward to the ceremony, which he regarded as a vote of confidence by the Catholic powers.
A grand delegation arrived in Edinburgh for the investiture. Charles IX’s ambassador was accompanied by another from Mary’s uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine, who brought an extraordinary letter from the pope congratulating Mary and Darnley on the official restoration of Catholicism. Of course nothing of the sort had yet been attempted, and we know from a series of documents in the archives at Simancas that the pope’s letter was the result of Yaxley’s visit to Spain, where Darnley had been marketed as the man who would overturn the Scottish Reformation.
The day before his investiture, Darnley summoned as many of the Scottish lords as he could find and invited them to attend Mass. Only the Catholics accepted. The Protestants, in particular Bothwell and Huntly, refused. Darnley lost his temper. He stalked out of the ground-floor room, locking the door and threatening to throw away the key. Mary came downstairs from her apartments to see why her husband had been shouting, anxious to avoid a scene. She did her best to pacify Darnley, who was becoming distressingly abusive. She even took Bothwell and Huntly, her most loyal supporters, by the hand and tried to lead them to Mass. Still they refused. Darnley then said loudly that he intended to restore High Mass at St. Giles Kirk in Edinburgh, an idea that would surely have driven Knox to apoplexy if he had heard it.
Mary had finally become enmeshed. Although Darnley had championed the Catholic cause only because he felt it gave him international prestige, he had pricked her conscience. In effect, he had capitalized on her own devout Catholicism to plant in her mind the idea that she had failed her Church and fellow Catholics by accepting a religious compromise that had denied them the right of public worship, which must have rankled when her husband was flaunting his faux Catholicism in front of so many distinguished foreign diplomats.
Could there have been other reasons why Mary was persuaded to veer toward Catholicism? The influence of her Guise family was surely one. When her uncle’s ambassador, still under a misapprehension about her policy, warmly congratulated her on restoring the Catholic faith to Scotland, she would have known in her heart that she had let down her family as well as her coreligionists.
The second reason is that she was five months pregnant. Whatever Darnley’s personal failings, he had quickly fathered a child. Castelnau had been the first to pick up the rumors. He noticed that Mary was draping herself in a mantle even when indoors. She stopped riding her horse and was seen traveling in a litter. She had been suffering from sickness and abdominal pains, which Randolph called a recurrence of “her old disease,” but was this time the initial stages of pregnancy. She kept to her chamber for five days and stayed in bed. Even Randolph then guessed that the rumors might be true. He quickly began taking an inordinate interest in Mary’s menstrual cycle, bribing his contacts among her female bedchamber staff for up-to-date information.
At the High Mass on Candlemas Day, Mary and Darnley bore candles to the altar in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood, accompanied by Lennox, Atholl and a congregation of some three hundred more. Darnley had gotten his way. Mary even promised that “she will have the Mass free for all men that will hear it.” It was a significant statement, instantly seized on by the Protestants and causing consternation. A week after the investiture, Darnley and his friends swaggered up the High Street in Edinburgh, boasting that they had overturned the Scottish Reformation at
a stroke.
But Mary was not in thrall to Darnley. What Randolph did not yet realize was that her marriage was in trouble. “Jars,” or quarrels, had first arisen between the newlyweds over the rivalry between Lennox and Bothwell to command the royal army against Moray. Lennox afterward claimed that everything had come to a head “about November” 1565, when Mary had “suddenly altered” in her affection for his son. She knew then that she was pregnant. And it must have occurred to her that she would not need to indulge her husband’s every whim for much longer, now that he had served his sexual function.
Things had worsened in December, when Mary pardoned Châtelherault and his family, the ancient enemies of the Lennoxes, for their part in Moray’s revolt. The Lennoxes were furious about the pardon. Darnley told her bluntly that as her husband and superior, he forbade any further remissions. No one had ever talked to Mary like that and got away with it. Her reaction was predictable. She would not be dictated to by a man she had raised up from nothing.
Mary’s estrangement from Darnley was apparent at Christmas 1565, when there had been several spectacular rows. Although the quarrels took place in their private apartments, the news soon leaked. Whereas, said Randolph, “a while [ago] there was nothing but ‘King and Queen, His Majesty and Hers,’ now ‘the Queen’s husband’ is the most common word.” Quite simply, Mary had decided to demote him. In her proclamation after her marriage, she had conceded a dual monarchy in which power was exercised “conjointly.” In state papers and on recently minted coins, Darnley’s name had taken precedence.
Now this arrangement was canceled. Where in official documents Darnley’s name had previously appeared first, it was placed second. And where the legend on the coins had read (in Latin) “Henry and Marie, by the grace of God, king and queen of Scotland,” it was altered to say “Marie and Henry . . . queen and king . . .” By a profound irony, a motto on the coins had read: “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” This, too, was expunged, replaced by a text from Psalms, “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered,” to celebrate Mary’s victory over Moray.
At Darnley’s investiture ceremony at Candlemas, Mary even denied him the right to bear the royal arms. Three days later, Randolph advised Dudley, “I know now for certain that this queen repenteth her marriage: that she hateth him and all his kin.”
Darnley’s drunkenness had become a flashpoint. Sir William Drury, who was marshal of Berwick and the Earl of Bedford’s deputy there, told how when Mary had asked her husband to moderate his drinking at a private dinner party in Edinburgh, he had snarled back at her and she had left the table in tears.
As quickly as Mary had granted Darnley a royal title, she decided to strip him of it. She could not prevent him from signing his letters “Henry R” (i.e., Henry Rex) if he chose to do so, but she could deny him the “crown matrimonial.” Fortunately for her, that could be granted only in Parliament. And if the crown matrimonial was withheld, then Darnley could never be crowned. He would enjoy no legal status as king, and could make no claim to the succession should Mary die childless.
Mary meant business, because when she refused Darnley the right to bear the royal arms, she made it clear to him that the crown matrimonial would be denied too. So the Lennoxes decided to wrest it from her without her consent. When Randolph excitedly described the “mislikings” between the royal couple in his reports to Cecil, he knew that the chief cause was Darnley’s ambition for the crown, “which she is loath hastily to grant, but willing to keep somewhat in store, until she know how well he is worthy to enjoy such a sovereignty.”
Mary’s mood lightened in the week of Darnley’s investiture. Suddenly she was happy again. It could not have been Charles IX’s ambassador who was the cause of her delight. He had strongly advised her to pardon Moray and the exiled lords on the condition that they promise to live “like good subjects”—the last thing she wanted to hear. She had already said, with an uncharacteristic degree of vitriol for her, that she hoped Moray would die in exile.
The clue is provided by two dispatches from Randolph to Throckmorton, newly discovered in the archives in Edinburgh, describing the background to the ceremony. One was written on February 7 and the other on the 10th, the same day as the investiture.
Mary, as Randolph sensationally reported, was preparing to renew her immediate Catholic claim to the English throne. The third and final reason for her shift toward Catholicism was her conviction that her supporters in England were “never so great.” Perhaps Yaxley had told her this. Or perhaps her uncle’s ambassador had recycled some information that Yaxley had spread while in Spain. Or again, maybe Cecil had all along been correct in his prediction that the “people of England”—whether Protestants or Catholics—would flock to Mary’s cause if she married and produced an heir.
Mary’s pregnancy must have greatly reinforced her self-esteem. With Elizabeth still unmarried, it would have made her think that she could vindicate her claim one way or the other. Despite the fragile state of her relationship with Darnley, their union had been a triumphant success in a dynastic sense, which was all that royal marriages were then intended to be, and she could begin planning a new campaign to assert her rights in England.
A few days before the investiture ceremony, a sumptuous banquet was held in the great hall at Holyrood in honor of the visiting ambassadors. Catching sight of a portrait of Elizabeth that had no doubt been deliberately set in position for the purpose, Mary rose and declared in the full glare of publicity that there was “no other queen of England but herself.”
This was a dramatic change. Ever since Pope Paul IV had failed to endorse her dynastic claim at the time of Elizabeth’s accession in November 1558, Mary had reluctantly accepted that her only viable option was to secure recognition as the English queen’s successor. But then Paul IV had died, as had his immediate successor. A new pope, Pius V, had recently been elected. One of his first public acts had been to write the letter to Mary that was delivered by her uncle’s ambassador at the request of Philip II, after Yaxley’s mission to Spain.
Mary’s claim at the banquet that she was the rightful queen of England must have caused a furor. Randolph predicted disaster, saying, “This court is so divided that we look daily when things will grow to a new mischief.”
Whereas three years before Randolph had assured Cecil that Mary was “not so affectioned to her Mass that she will leave a kingdom for it,” now he found her “bent to the overthrow of religion.” She would stop at nothing in her desire to restore Catholicism. All her efforts were aimed at this, and linked directly to her dynastic claim. Since her victory over Moray, she had never been more powerful. She would now, as Randolph feared, seek to further her success through “her most idolatrous Mass.” He concluded, “I pray you burn this letter.”
All this made for a confusing situation. When Mary denied Darnley the use of the royal insignia at his investiture and at the same time tried to lead Bothwell and Huntly by the hand to Mass, a huge contradiction arose in her policy. She was unwilling to be bullied by her dissolute and conspiratorial husband, yet she had become embroiled in his “enterprise” to restore Catholicism, not (as he wished) to impress a putative Catholic League, but because after Pius V’s election, she believed she could use Catholicism to achieve a final recognition of her dynastic claim.
Meanwhile, Darnley was furiously plotting against his wife. Randolph knew that there were “practices in hand,” contrived between Lennox and Darnley, “to come to the crown against her will.” The new session of Parliament was imminent. It had been set to begin on March 12, 1566, when the leaders of Moray’s revolt (other than the pardoned Châtelherault) would be punished and their properties forfeited to the crown.
The Scottish lords had an overwhelming motive for wishing to disrupt, or preferably to cancel, the new session. If Parliament met as planned, Moray and his allies would be stripped of their lands and titles. They also feared that as the next stage of Mary’s agenda, the Mass w
ould be restored.
A plot was inevitable, not least because opposition to Mary’s aims extended more widely. The Catholic lords intended to join with the Protestants to resist the forfeiture of the rebels on the grounds that such action might become a precedent for noble forfeitures generally. They were not affected at the moment, but might well be in the future.
All this rebounded on Mary. When she had struck out on her own, marrying Darnley as a fait accompli and abandoning her policy of conciliation, she had triumphed. But with the exiled lords, their allies and the Lennoxes all scheming against her, the balance of the factions tilted back against her. Mary’s position reverted from almost indomitable strength to dangerous isolation. Warned of a plot by her ever-loyal servant Sir James Melville, she dismissed his fears. “She had,” she said, “also some advertisements of the like bruits, but that our countrymen were well worthy.” If this was indeed Mary’s response, her confidence was ill-advised.
The plot was shaped, according to one of its leading participants, “about the 10th day of February,” the very same day as the investiture. Darnley lay at its heart. But he was pointed in the right direction by Maitland, whom Mary had marginalized in favor of David Rizzio, and who was determined to get Moray and his allies pardoned and recalled from their dishonorable exile as the prelude to his own rehabilitation.
To forward the plot, Lennox went deep into Argyllshire for a secret rendezvous with the Earl of Argyll. He made Argyll what he hoped would be an irresistible offer. He was to contact Moray and the exiled lords in England, and if they would agree to grant Darnley the “crown matrimonial” in the next Parliament and so make him lawfully King of Scots, then Darnley would switch sides, recall the exiles home, pardon them and forbid the confiscation of their estates. Finally, he would perform the ultimate U-turn and reestablish the religious status quo as it had existed at the time of Mary’s return from France. By this route, everyone would get what they wanted at Mary’s expense. Darnley would become king with full parliamentary sanction, Moray and his allies would be reinstated as if they had never rebelled, and the Protestant Reformation settlement would be restored.
