Mary Queen of Scots

by Retha Warnicke

  On 7 May the same day Hamilton pronounced the nullification, apparently at Mary’s request to ease her conscience, Bothwell instructed John Craig to publish the banns, a demand the preacher refused until the queen sent a signed order requiring his compliance. Denouncing the marriage in his sermon, Craig published under protest the first of the three obligatory banns on Sunday, the 11th.

  Motivated by a variety of beliefs, individuals had been attaching placards on the Tolbooth door charging Mary with colluding in the abduction. Some of the anonymous authors undoubtedly thought women secretly desired to be ravished. In 1564 speaking more generally of women’s nature and not specifically about rape, Randolph succinctly stated that after many refusals, women were usually willingly drawn to that which they desired. Prevailing attitudes about the remarriage of widows reinforced the collusion theory. Widows who were also mothers were accused of neglecting their children to feed the insatiable sexual appetites aroused by their previous marital experiences. In fact, bereft of a husband’s and sometimes even a brother’s protection, widows were extremely vulnerable to rape. It could be argued that Henry’s murder, followed by the departure of Moray, the relative who was most capable of assisting Mary, made her vulnerable to the ambitions of bold soldiers of fortune like Bothwell.

  Others assumed that she colluded in her abduction because she needed the assistance of a strong husband in governing her realm’s many factions. This was an argument presented in the official notification of their marriage to the French crown, but it was a problematic allegation at best. Factions posed no greater threat to her in 1567 before Bothwell seized her than in 1565 when Moray challenged her marriage to Darnley. Even if Bothwell were of sufficient social status to become her husband, she had no incentive to relinquish her realm to him since she was already relying on his advice and that of Lethington, whom de Foix compared favorably to Cecil.

  Still others viewing Bothwell as an unworthy bridegroom claimed his success depended on evoking the supernatural, referring, for example, to the magical assistance of Janet Beaton, a niece of Cardinal Beaton and the widow of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleaugh. These suspicions took on greater validity when a suitor, like Bothwell, appeared to have no chance to win his bride by ordinary means. Even he conceded his unworthiness in a letter to Archbishop Beaton, admitting that Mary could have wed men of greater birth and estimation although none of them would have been more affectionately inclined to honor and serve her than he.1

  A further complication concerning abductions generally is that upon release, hostages often face accusations that they collaborated with their captors. Even Christians in early modern England’s West Country charged their country folk, whom Barbary pirates seized and kept in captivity, of returning home as Islam’s spies.

  Despite rumors that Mary welcomed the abduction, as late as 12 July the privy council was still accusing Bothwell with violently seizing her and naming him the king’s chief murderer. This official position undoubtedly reflected what had actually occurred. Mary had been well aware that if she consented to remarriage only three months after her husband’s death, many would deny she had affection for him and doubt he was the father of any child she might be carrying. More importantly, as her foremost priority was James’s well-being, she would have shrunk from presenting him with so unworthy a stepfather as Bothwell. The queen also understood that ignoring the long-held tradition of obtaining the consent of relatives and friends to a proposed marriage would not only besmirch her honor but also that of her kinship and lineage. Indeed, in May 1566 when the dowager duchess of Guise sought her advice about the possibility of marrying Jacques de Savoy, duke of Nemours, a nobleman with whom the queen was acquainted, Mary replied positively, noting particularly that the alliance would be of great advantage to her aunt’s children by her previous marriage.

  On 12 May the day after Craig published the banns, Bothwell decided he could safely escort Mary to Holyrood Palace. En route, they stopped at the Tolbooth to permit her to assure Huntly, the lord chancellor, and the lords of session that she was not a captive. While there, she granted a remission to Bothwell and others for her abduction and for all other crimes whatsoever, words that clearly encompassed the king’s murder. To the list of those pardoned, Balfour added his name.

  That evening she ennobled Bothwell as the duke of Orkney and the lord of Shetland. It is noteworthy that she neither advanced him to the kingship nor to the dukedom of Albany, the title formerly held by the king’s younger son and his heirs and the one she had bestowed upon Darnley. Later, James VI granted the Orkney title, reduced to an earldom, to Mary’s illegitimate half brother, Lord Robert. Hereafter, Bothwell will be referred to as Orkney to highlight his unique position in the Scottish aristocracy, since the only other dukedom was a French peerage held by the exiled Châtelherault. On the 14th Mary and Orkney signed their marriage contract, which Archbishop Hamilton, Leslie, Huntly, Fleming, Lindsay, Bellenden, among others, witnessed; on the 15th Adam Bothwell, bishop of Orkney, married them in a Protestant service in Holyrood’s Great Hall. She wore a black gown decorated with gold braid, which she later exchanged for a yellow outfit. The wedding banquet lacked the usual festivities at least partly because of the haste with which the ceremony was arranged. Some protestors placed on the palace gates the words, Mense malas maio nubere vulgus ait (Wantons marry in the month of May).

  Afterward on her wedding day, an extremely depressed Mary met with du Croc, who had refused to attend the ceremony. In reporting their conversation to Catherine de’ Medici on the 18th, he explained that Mary had asked him to excuse the formality between her and her husband, since if she seemed unhappy, it was because she could not rejoice and she wished herself dead. The sympathetic ambassador also repeated rumors he had heard that when closeted with Orkney on the 17th, she was overheard screaming for a knife to stab herself. Du Croc further revealed that he was refusing to recognize the duke as Mary’s husband and advised Catherine against responding to Orkney’s letters that Chisholm would bring to her. In June confirming Mary’s continuing depression, du Croc learned from Lethington that since her marriage she had shed endless tears. Leslie also recalled that after the illegal ceremony, he had a conversation with the depressed queen who wept and showed many signs of repentance.

  One of the most mortifying experiences of Mary’s life must have been the duty of sending out announcements, dictated by her husband, explaining why she wed so soon after the king’s death and without prior communication with her relatives. Hinting at Bothwell’s control over her, Robert Melville had informed Cecil on 7 May that the contents of a recent letter to Elizabeth derived more from the counsel of those about Mary than from herself. She lacked, he remarked, her usual wise advisors. Although absent in Fife while writing this letter some 13 days after Mary’s abduction, Melville, like others knowledgeable about her habits, would have realized that she was Bothwell’s captive. For almost two weeks on the day Melville wrote, the usually accessible queen had been seen in public only once: when Bothwell led her from the castle at Dunbar to the one at Edinburgh.

  Chisholm delivered the official marriage announcement to Charles and Catherine in late May. He was required to inform them of Orkney’s loyal service to the crown, to attribute his earlier disfavor to the jeal-ousy of Mary’s other subjects, to point out her nobility’s support for the alliance, and to claim that she could no longer rule alone because of the realm’s many factions. Chisholm’s instructions also contain the only contemporary assertion that Bothwell courted her before the abduction. After obtaining the Ainslie band, he supposedly began from afar to reveal his intentions to her, but as she was then at Seton and left the next day for Stirling, this claim seems contrived and even preposterous. At the abduction, as James Melville recalled, Bothwell’s vow to wed her whether she would or would not have him, indicates he had probably not yet proposed to her. Finally, Chisholm’s instructions ignored the rape, admitting only that Bothwell’s actions were rude.2 After conveying the above information
to Charles and Catherine, Chisholm explained that the wedding, which he had attended, took place out of necessity rather than by free choice.3 Meanwhile Robert Melville took the official explanation to Elizabeth.

  The response abroad was mostly negative. Michael Bonelli, Cardinal Allesandrino, assured Laureo that Pius V would decline to communicate with her again until he could discern some sign of improvement in her behavior and religious life. Many Catholics condemned the Protestant wedding; if she had converted Bothwell to her faith, she might have mollified some of her critics who could anticipate that he would assist her in re-establishing Catholicism in Scotland. Despite Orkney’s Protestant beliefs, Elizabeth also deplored the union because she viewed him as a French ally who might send James to France for his upbringing.

  Even before the wedding some endorsers of the Ainslie band were conspiring against Bothwell. On 1 May at Stirling, Atholl, Morton, Argyll, Mar and others signed a band to free her and to protect her son, whom they believed Bothwell would attempt to seize to coopt a possible competing center of authority. Some, like Kirkaldy of Grange, even feared he might have the prince murdered. Instead of challenging him immediately, they delayed, seeking to attract greater numbers. Another band subscribed after the wedding carried the names of 12 earls and 14 lords and offered a pardon to Balfour in exchange for his promise to deliver Edinburgh Castle to them.

  On 28 May Orkney summoned lieges to convene at Melrose in the Borders on 15 June ostensibly to deal with criminals there but more likely to raise forces for combating the growing threat of the confederate lords. When he learned they were planning to surprise him at Holyrood, he took the queen on 6 June to Borthwick Castle, about 12 miles south of the capital. Four days later with 1,200 troops, the confederates, including Atholl, Morton, and Mar, threatened Mary and Orkney at Borthwick.

  Learning of their advance, Orkney quickly slipped away, and about midnight on the 11th dressed in men’s clothing, Mary joined him at a prearranged rendezvous and returned with him to Dunbar. The disguise offered her not only a means of protection but also an opportunity to travel more easily than usual, since it permitted her to ride astride on a man’s saddle. Surely, she kept the appointment because she already suspected that she was pregnant. She also probably did not wish to surrender to the rebel leaders, particularly Morton who was implicated in Riccio’s death.

  Balfour had meanwhile been permitting the confederates peaceful access to the capital. On the 11th they proclaimed at its Mercat Cross their intention of rescuing the queen, securing the prince’s person, and avenging the king’s murder. The next day they issued a proclamation that charged Orkney with forcing the queen to marry him and summoned allies to help them bring him to justice for ravishing her and for killing the king.

  Because Balfour promised, but ultimately failed, to support Orkney and Mary with the castle guns, they left the safety of Dunbar prematurely, still raising troops as they marched northward. On the 15th their army confronted the confederates at Carberry Hill about seven miles from Edinburgh. Hoping to avoid bloodshed, du Croc attempted to end the dispute by promising Mary if she abandoned her husband, he would arrange for her restoration to power, an offer she turned down. About evenly matched, neither army was eager for battle but as the day wore on, her soldiers began wandering off. When Orkney characteristically called for single combat to settle the dispute, several men accepted his challenge, but he declined to meet them, claiming their status was inferior to his. Although Lord Lindsay then volunteered to fight him, the duke eventually gave up the attempt, fled southward to the Borders, tried futilely to recruit another army, and then moved northward to his duchy. Short of funds he resorted to piracy and managed to collect and equip six ships. Upon learning that a Scottish fleet was pursuing him, Orkney set sail in September for Scandinavia, where he was captured and then released to Frederick II, king of Denmark and Norway, who placed him in prison.

  IMPRISONMENT AT LOCHLEVEN

  Following Orkney’s departure, Mary surrendered to Grange, who led her by her horse’s bridle into the confederate camp amidst shouts that she was a whore and the murderess of her husband and should be burned. Labeling her a whore was doubly significant. Protestants also denounced Catholic Rome as a harlot, the whore of Babylon. Displaying banners depicting Henry’s corpse lying under a tree with his son kneeling and praying to the Lord for vengeance, they lodged her, still dressed in tattered clothes, in the provost’s house in Edinburgh. Then after briefly stopping at Holyrood, Lindsay and William, fourth Lord Ruthven, the future first earl of Gowrie, obeyed an order from the confederate lords and moved her late on the 16th to Lochleven, a lake-moated castle. Its castellan, William Douglas, the uterine half brother of Moray, lived at Lochleven with their mother, Margaret Erskine, who still begrudged Paul III’s refusal to grant the dispensation that would have permitted her to wed James V. Initially, Mary’s jailers confined her in the small Glassin Tower in the courtyard, but in August they transferred her to the main tower or keep’s third (solar) floor, which was divided into two rooms.

  Keeping her secluded, her captors refused to permit either Nicholas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy, or Throckmorton access to her when they reached Scotland on special assignment. Throckmorton remained in Edinburgh from 12 July to 30 August, communicating with her through Robert Melville. Like du Croc who departed for home in June, Throckmorton noted that Balfour met daily with Morton, Atholl, Home, and even Lethington, who had joined the confederates on 6 June and then accompanied them to Carberry Hill. According to Richard Bannatyne, Lethington later claimed he decided to support Mary’s rebels because he wanted to bring the king’s principal murderer, Orkney, to justice and to remove the queen from her unhappy marriage with him.

  Throckmorton’s instructions directed him to inform Mary that Elizabeth desired her freedom but required she divorce Orkney. Both he and Melville tried unsuccessfully to convince her to repudiate him to gain her release. On 17 July Throckmorton revealed that she declined the divorce because she was seven weeks’ pregnant and did not wish to forfeit her honor by bearing an illegitimate child. Concerned for her well-being partly because he was denied access to her, he responded that this dishonored status was deplorable, but it was a better option than dying. He continued to fear for her safety, especially after learning that the privy council had been discussing the political advantages of her death. He later claimed that her captors had spared her life only because he conveyed his monarch’s strong warning not to harm her, an assessment validated by Robert Melville. Indeed, on 23 June as Elizabeth was planning to send Throckmorton to Scotland, she had reassured Mary in writing of her support, promising to accomplish whatever she could for Mary’s “safety and honor” and pledging to be a “good neighbor” and “dear sister” to her. She also said she would omit nothing in furthering the “tranquility” of Scotland.4

  It was unlikely that Mary knew the precise duration of the pregnancy that prevented her from agreeing to a divorce. In fixing on seven weeks, she was claiming that conception occurred subsequent to the wedding, thereby implicitly denying the pre-marital rape. About a week after revealing her condition to Throckmorton, she suffered a miscarriage, which her secretary, Nau, later reported was of twins. In July Robert Melville noted that she had gained weight; twin fetuses would have caused her condition to become noticeable sooner than was the normal case. If she were bearing twins, her pregnancy must have been more advanced than seven weeks, since her midwife could have detected them only if she were about three months along. In that case conception must have occurred by late April about the time of the abduction. That her discharge was examined carefully enough to discern twins was not unusual, as midwives routinely inspected the afterbirth for abnormalities.

  It is possible that her miscarriage prompted a visit from Lady Moray. On July 26 Throckmorton noted that recently Mary, recovering from two fits of ague, sorrowfully met with her and sadly parted from her. In June 1564 when Lady Moray’s nearly two-month old son died, Mary, who ha
d been present at his birth, condoled with her. At the end of July rumors claimed that Mary was still bedridden.

  Threatened by Lindsay and her other captors, the ailing queen had already agreed to abdicate. On 24 July she signed a statement claiming that her illness made it impossible for her to reign, designating the absent Moray as her son’s regent, and until his return, appointing Morton as his deputy. In the unlikelihood her half brother would refuse this office, she named a council, including Châtelherault and Lennox. Five days later, Bishop Hepburn officiated at James’s coronation. In August as Mary’s health was improving, Moray reached Lochleven, lectured her for her mistakes over a two-day period, and assumed the regency.

  Earlier on 29 June Mary’s allies, a mixture of Catholics and Protestants, including Archbishop Hamilton, Argyll, Huntly, Lethington, Fleming, Herries, and Boyd, had signed a band at Dumbarton to free her. But discouraged because Moray maintained control of her, most of them had by mid-September acquiesced in his regency. They surely remained somewhat concerned, however, about the restricted access to her at Lochleven. Instead of moving her to Stirling where she could interact with her child under Mar’s supervision, Moray instructed his relatives to keep her closely confined at Lochleven, permitting, for her only exercise, walks around the island’s limited grounds. For someone of royal status she possessed inadequate clothing and attendants, the latter never numbering more than 12. On 17 July a month after her capture when she was still pregnant, she lacked a cleric, an apothecary, a valet, and an embroiderer to draw designs for her sewing, one of her few leisure employments.

  During her almost eleven-month captivity, she dispatched secret messages pleading for assistance and searched for a means of escape, despite her reported chronic side ache, a swelling in her arm, and a serious fall in February 1568. Three months later on 1 May, the day before her liberation, she sent Elizabeth a reminder of her promise of assistance when the ring she gave Mary was returned. Since her enemies had confiscated her possessions, Mary continued, she hoped that Elizabeth would agree to help her without recovering the gem.