The True Life of Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots

by John Guy

  It sounds simple enough, but that would not do for Cecil. He rewrote the minute in his own handwriting:

  And so they produced a small gilt coffer of not fully one foot long, being garnished in many places with the Roman letter “F” set under a king’s crown [the monogram of Francis II), wherein were certain letters and writings which they said and affirmed to have been written with the Queen of Scots’ own hand to the Earl Bothwell.

  These were not just Mary’s letters. They were the letters “affirmed” to be in her “own hand.” And it was not just any old casket. The added detail gave credence to the investigation.

  The irony is that forever after, the casket containing the famous letters has come down in history exactly as Cecil described it. The Scots’ delegation, who had so far thought the object unremarkable and called it just “the box” or “the silver box,” would not even be allowed to describe their own trophy.

  The tribunal was rigged. Moray’s delegation did not submit the originals of the Casket Letters for close examination until Mary’s advocates had withdrawn. And under the highly irregular rules that Cecil had engineered, Mary was to be denied access to them, at least until after they had been judged by the tribunal itself.

  To her credit, Elizabeth now balked. Deep down, she wanted Mary to be found innocent and restored as queen to Scotland. She disliked and distrusted Moray, and did not believe that the Casket Letters were genuine. The whole point of the tribunal in her eyes had been to uncover the extent to which they had been forged. Now the proceedings were getting out of hand. They were far too one-sided. Her reputation was at stake if she acted unfairly or dishonorably.

  She intervened to reassert control over Cecil and her own policy. She suspended the tribunal a second time, then added the Earls of Northumberland, Shrewsbury, Huntingdon, Westmorland and Warwick to the roster of judges, herself supervising the proceedings at Hampton Court on the 14th, when the letters were examined for the last time. She had the minutes of the tribunal’s sessions so far read aloud, then Moray’s accusations, and finally the “evidence,” notably the Casket Letters.

  Cecil took the minutes as usual. “There were produced,” he said, “sundry letters written in French, supposed to be written by the Queen of Scots’ own hand to the Earl Bothwell”:

  Of which letters, the originals* . . . were then also presently produced and perused, and being read, were duly conferred and compared for the manner of writing and fashion of orthography with sundry other letters long since heretofore written and sent by the said Queen of Scots to the Queen’s Majesty. And next after these was produced and read a declaration of the Earl Morton, of the manner of the finding of the said letters, as the same was exhibited on his oath the 9 December. In collation whereof no difference was found.

  Cecil’s minute is too good to be true. It is almost certainly misleading. Read uncritically, it appears that the handwriting test had been passed with flying colors when the original Casket Letters were compared to genuine letters from Mary to Elizabeth that had been filed away over the years in the royal archives.

  This is intrinsically unlikely. At least so far as the crucial long Glasgow letter is concerned, the text itself explained that it had been “scribbled” late at night. “Excuse my evil writing,” it said, “and read it over twice. Excuse also that I scribbled . . .” Moreover, we have already seen that letters 7 and 8 were forgeries on the evidence of their contents.

  It is inconceivable that Mary’s scrawling hand could have been compared and collated to the genuine letters she had sent to Elizabeth without some differences being noticed. Anyone who has looked at the dozens of examples of Mary’s autograph letters to Elizabeth in the archives would immediately spot that when writing to her “sister queen” she used her very best handwriting. These letters are usually immaculate, with only infrequent signs of haste. If they had been compared to Mary’s scribbling hand, it would have been impossible to reach any definitive conclusion one way or the other. At most, a certain resemblance might have been observed.

  And what exactly was it that had been “collated”? Had all eight Casket Letters been scrupulously checked against Mary’s genuine letters to compare the handwriting letter for letter? Or was it merely that the list of casket documents as given in Morton’s declaration to the tribunal, explaining the circumstances in which they were found, had been compared to the items laid on the table to see if they corresponded to the description given under oath? Cecil’s minute is tantalizingly ambiguous, as every one of Mary’s biographers has been obliged to point out.

  If, on the other hand, the handwriting test had been cursorily conducted or was based only on a few sample pages, it is conceivable that it could have been passed. We have already seen that apart from letters 7 and 8, Moray is likely to have submitted genuine if artfully chosen pages, some of which were culled from earlier letters to Darnley and others from later letters to Bothwell, and that the most damning interpolations in Letter 2 were most likely fitted into blank spaces on the paper. Since it would have taken many hours to scrutinize every folio of every one of the Casket Letters, and since we know that by the time the tribunal had reached Hampton Court there were too many judges for everyone to sit around a small table and look closely at every single document, it is possible that just enough was done to make it appear that the handwriting test had been passed.

  When Mary heard of the proceedings at Hampton Court, she demanded to address the tribunal in person, which was refused. But Elizabeth told Moray’s delegation that she would allow the judges to continue with their hearings only if her cousin was allowed to depute someone to answer the charges on her behalf, or else speak to a deputation sent to her by Elizabeth.

  Mary finally issued a statement. She would decline to answer until she was allowed to appear before Elizabeth in person. Otherwise, she would not recognize the tribunal. She had made too many concessions. “I am not an equal to my rebels,” she said, “neither will I submit myself to be weighted in equal balance with them.”

  Mary stood on her dignity. She refused to be treated so disrespectfully. Moray and his delegation had lied, she protested. They had maliciously charged her with Darnley’s murder, “whereof they themselves are authors.” The only further thing she would instruct her advocates to say was: “I never wrote anything concerning that matter to any creature. And if any such writings be, they are false and feigned, forged and invented by themselves, only to my dishonor and slander.”

  If only Mary had known it, Elizabeth largely agreed with her. She had watched the first day of the proceedings at Hampton Court, but saw herself as no more than an “observer.” She did not think it right for one queen to sit in judgment of a fellow sovereign. In her own words, the purpose of these hearings had been “to understand truly and plainly the state of the cause of the Queen of Scots,” but “without prejudicing one side or the other.”

  When this had manifestly not occurred and Cecil had written minutes that upheld Mary’s guilt, Elizabeth brought the proceedings to an abrupt end. She refused to allow Mary to come into her presence, but said that if Mary was unwilling to answer to the charges as they were explained to her by a deputation, she would adjourn the trial indefinitely. This is exactly what happened. By Christmas 1568, Mary had not been found innocent, but neither had she been convicted. The matter lay in abeyance. No conclusion about the truth of the Casket Letters could be drawn one way or the other. Elizabeth was guided by the principles of natural justice. Cecil’s tribunal had been grossly unfair, and it was Mary’s right to put her side of the story to the judges. The one thing Elizabeth could not bring herself to do was meet Mary and listen to her argue her case in person.

  Mary found this insulting. It implied that she was Elizabeth’s inferior. She was convinced she had been wronged by her cousin. “Alas, madam,” she demanded, “when did you ever hear a prince censured for listening in person to the grievances of those who complain that they have been falsely accused?”

  Mary spiritedl
y advised Elizabeth to put out of her mind the notion that she had fled to England to save her life. She went only to recover her honor and obtain support to be revenged on her rebels. She would not “answer them as their equal.” She would never abase herself in that way. She had always regarded the English queen as her “nearest kinswoman and perfect friend.” She had supposed that Elizabeth would be honored to be called “the queen restorer,” and had hoped to receive that kindness from her.

  Mary saw now that she was mistaken. And Cecil was behind it all. “You say,” she berated Elizabeth, “that you are counseled by persons of the highest rank to be guarded in this affair. God forbid that I should be cause of dishonor to you when it was my intention to seek the contrary.”

  Following events as best she could from her imprisonment by correspondence, Mary reacted in the only way she knew: the way the Cardinal of Lorraine would have behaved. She wrote to Philip II, the leader of the Catholic cause in Europe, to protest her innocence and seek his aid. “I am deprived of my liberty and closely guarded,” she said. In consequence, she wanted all the Catholic princes in the world to know that she was “an obedient, submissive and devoted daughter of the holy Catholic and Roman Church, in the faith of which I will live and die, without ever entertaining any other intention than this.”

  Her letter was no more than a feeler. But it was a dramatic turnabout for a queen who, apart from a brief interlude before the Rizzio plot, had made religious compromise the cornerstone of her policy. A seismic shift was about to occur, one that discounted her kinship bonds to Elizabeth and linked her cause to that of Philip II and the papacy, and therefore posed a greater threat to Elizabeth’s “safety” and the Protestant cause than anything since Mary had returned home to Scotland.

  Mary had been bloodied by Cecil, but she was unbowed. A new phase was about to open in her life.

  27

  Captive Queen

  WHEN ELIZABETH rejected Mary’s request for a personal audience and Mary refused to discuss the Casket Letters through intermediaries, a stalemate was reached. The tribunal did not reconvene. No decision was ever given. Mary had not won, but neither had she lost, except that Elizabeth yielded to Cecil’s insistent demands and grudgingly recognized Moray as regent of Scotland. Otherwise, there would have been a power vacuum in the country.

  But Elizabeth still mistrusted Moray. He was fobbed off with a loan of £5000, which from his point of view was woefully inadequate. Even if his sister had been marginalized for the moment, she was alive and well and living as a queen in exile with nothing proved against her. Elizabeth had such a high respect for the ideal of monarchy, she had sworn all the judges at the tribunal to strict secrecy. As far as English public opinion was concerned, the Casket Letters did not exist.

  Mary would be held in captivity by Elizabeth for the next eighteen years, a prisoner in the sense that she was under house arrest and forbidden free access to visitors, and yet for much of this time she was allowed many if not all of the courtesies and luxuries due to an exiled ruler and guest. Despite the length of her imprisonment, it was never actually decided that this would be a permanent arrangement. Almost until the end, her privileges included the right to diplomatic representation, the use of ceremonies and protocol appropriate to a royal court (on a strictly reduced scale), as well as the right to exercise and occasionally to ride, but only within a mile or two of her lodgings. In some respects, Mary could behave as she pleased, in others she was severely restricted, her movements watched, her letters intercepted, her person guarded—sometimes rigorously, sometimes in ways that were unbelievably lax—and yet despite her many entitlements, she saw herself as wronged from the very first day to the last.

  What rankled was less the nature of her imprisonment than the reason for it. Mary felt that Elizabeth did not have the nerve to do her duty and restore her to her throne. Her deep sense of grievance remained through all the tedium and trauma of confinement. Beyond that, her spirits were often high. Her first custodian, Sir Francis Knollys, said of her, “She is a rare woman; for, as no flattery can abuse her, so no plain speech seems to offend her, if she thinks the speaker an honest man.” She was never distant or reserved as long as her “royal estate” was recognized. She talked a lot, but was bold, pleasant and “familiar.” “She sheweth a great desire to be avenged of her enemies.” She abhorred cowardice, whether in friend or foe. “She sheweth a readiness to expose herself to all perils, in hope of victory.” To all other concerns, she was “indifferent.”

  Mary had arrived in England without money or a change of clothes. She had at first only sixteen attendants, but soon more than a hundred of her old domestic staff congregated around her. Among those returning were Mary Seton, Bastian Pages and his wife, and George Douglas (“Pretty Geordie”) and “Little Willie” Douglas, the heroes of her escape from Lochleven. Alone of the four Maries, Seton was happy to share her mistress’s dark days for fifteen long years, until her own health gave way, when she retired to the convent of St.-Pierre-des-Dames at Rheims, over which Mary’s aunt Renée presided.

  Curtailing the size of Mary’s household was the most visible way in which the wings of the royal eagle could be clipped. Within a few months, her attendants had been reduced to sixty, a number that was halved within a year. After three years, the number crept back up to forty, then was reduced to thirty when one of the men was denounced as a Catholic priest in disguise. In time the number was halved again, to sixteen, although this excludes the ten or so kitchen and pantry help, laundry staff and stable grooms needed for menial services. Mary’s food was cooked in her own kitchens. Her sheets were washed by her own laundresses, and she kept her own horses, even if she was not allowed to ride as often as she wished. In the final and most straitened years of her captivity, when almost every courtesy was denied her, the total number of her staff was still as high as fifty-one.

  But Mary was several times forced to say goodbye to servants she very much wanted to keep. When she refused to choose those who were to be retained and those dismissed, it would be done for her without further consultation. “She was exceedingly troubled, weeping and sorrowing,” but no notice was taken. “Little Willie” Douglas was one of those let go. With typical generosity, Mary cushioned the blow, sending the laid-off servants to her ambassador in Paris, who was ordered to give them pensions. Sometimes she could find them other positions. When one of her favorite servants, her perfumer, known affectionately as Angel Mary, was dismissed, Mary managed to get her a new job at the French embassy in London.

  Within a few weeks of her arrival, Mary began to eat normally and was allowed to venture outdoors from her apartments in the tower of the southeast corner of Carlisle Castle, overlooking the River Eden. She was twice permitted to cheer on her male domestic staff as they played football, ten men on each team, on a nearby village green. Later she went hare-coursing, galloping off so fast that her guards thought she was trying to escape across the border into Scotland.

  Despite her initial lack of funds, and until fresh installments of her private income as dowager queen of France were paid, Mary kept up appearances. She was short of cosmetics for the first six months, but took as much trouble as ever over her clothes. When she refused to wear any clothes except her own, a resigned Knollys dispatched a messenger to fetch her wardrobe from Lochleven Castle and also asked Moray to send her coach and a supply of dresses from Edinburgh. Since the royal apartments at Holyrood had been looted by Morton’s men, there was little to be had from there beyond a selection of chemises, some perfumed gloves and a clock, but five cartloads and four horseloads of clothes and personal effects arrived from Lochleven, which was a start. Mary was soon commissioning replacement items, and some thirty carts would be needed a year later for her belongings when she moved from place to place.

  When Seton reappeared, Mary could begin to look like a queen again. Her hair needed attention, because to avoid recognition in her headlong escape after the battle of Langside, she had cut much of it off. In Kn
ollys’s hearing, she praised the most devoted of her Maries as “the finest ‘busker,’ that is to say, the finest dresser of a woman’s head and hair, that is to be seen in any country.” There was nothing she could not do. “Among other pretty devices . . . she did set such a curled hair upon the queen that was said to be a periwig* that showed very delicately.” Every day she gave Mary a different style “without any cost, and yet setteth forth a woman gaily well.”

  Mary spent her twenty-sixth birthday at Lord Scrope’s house at Bolton Castle, an isolated spot on the rugged high ground overlooking the picturesque valley of Wensleydale in north Yorkshire. She was taken there from Carlisle in July 1568, a fortnight or so after Cecil began his careful reading of Buchanan’s dossier. Her birthday, on December 8, was the day after Moray exhibited the originals of the short and long Glasgow letters at Westminster.

  Bolton Castle may have seemed less a place of captivity than one of refuge. Lord Scrope was the senior English official on the western side of the Scottish border. As he was stationed at Carlisle, he was regularly away from home. Mary was entertained by Lady Scrope, the Duke of Norfolk’s sister. Her sympathies were with Mary, her religious opinions Catholic. Like her brother, she had a low opinion of Moray, and it must have been reassuring for Mary to have her shoulder to cry on when the Casket Letters were produced.

  Moreover, her home was warm and comfortable. Not just a cold and damp fortress, its living quarters had one of the earliest central heating systems of any house in Britain. Mary would not be allowed to stay there long. Within a few months, she would be moved again to a more secure and forbidding location. Cecil not only feared Lady Scrope’s influence, he was also greatly exercised about how close the castle was to the border and the sea. Already he was on his guard in case Mary should try to escape.