Tudors Versus Stewarts

by Linda Porter

  The queen followed custom and stayed in the lying-in apartments at Edinburgh Castle for nearly six more weeks. Then, having been churched, or cleansed, as was required for all women who had given birth, she departed with Moray and Mar for the latter’s castle at Alloa on the Firth of Forth. Darnley joined her and in August they hunted together. For a time, it appeared that they were, indeed, reconciled and the king left at the beginning of September to join his son at Stirling Castle and to make preparations for the child’s christening. Mary was determined to make this a memorable spectacle and a celebration of the Stewart dynasty. She borrowed £12,000 from Scottish merchants to fund the celebrations and was clearly anticipating the ceremony with excitement. But by late September 1566, there were clear signs that the rapprochement with Henry had run its course. His time at Stirling had brought home to him how marginalized he had become. The festivities would be all about Mary and Prince James and he would be a mere spectator, not even recognized by Elizabeth as king of Scotland. The only course that seemed open to him was to leave Scotland altogether and he formally requested permission of his wife and the Scottish council to go into exile in France. Horrified, his father intervened, pleading with Mary by letter not to let Darnley go.7 The king’s request could not reasonably be met. It was viewed as dishonourable to his wife and to Scotland if he quit the realm altogether. So having been denied the exit his amour propre so desperately craved, Henry set off to join his father in Glasgow. He told Mary she would not see him for a while. Perhaps this was a relief. What neither of them knew was how close she would come to death within a few weeks of his flouncing out of her life at the beginning of October 1566.

  * * *

  MARY DID NOT allow this estrangement to interfere with her duties as queen. A justice ayre was due to take place in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders and Mary, following time-honoured Stewart precedent, intended to be present at a series of trials for disruptors of the peace in this troubled part of her realm. Disputes with England on Border issues remained high in the list of grievances between the two queens and Mary, like her father and grandfather, was heavily reliant on the local nobility to police and manage her affairs there. But Borderers were notoriously difficult and frequently unreliable, as her predecessors had found when dealing with the Humes. It was better to have them on the side of the monarchy than causing trouble and Mary had reason to be grateful to one particular man with Border connections. This was James Hepburn, fourth earl of Bothwell, a man who had risen in the queen’s esteem over the past twelve months. He had supported her mother, been appointed to Mary Queen of Scots’ first Privy Council in 1561, approved the Darnley marriage, stayed loyal when Moray rebelled, helped the queen restore her authority after the Riccio murder and tried to keep the Borders under control. As his star had risen, so that of the earl of Lennox waned. Though a Protestant, he was no supporter of England and Elizabeth. He could represent himself as a Scottish patriot and the queen’s man. Yet in 1561–2 he had been accused by the earl of Arran, Châtelherault’s increasingly deranged son, of suggesting the kidnap of the queen. The state of Arran’s sanity made the charge difficult to prove, but it was certainly believed by Randolph at the time. By the autumn of 1566, Mary seems to have put this out of her mind. If so, she was unwise.

  The man who was now said by Henry Killigrew to have credit with the queen ‘greater than all the rest together’ remains one of Scottish history’s most colourful figures – and also a conundrum. He was short but muscular, a chancer whose natural response to opposition or threats to his honour (which was dubious, to say the least) was to resort to violence. The one authentic portrait of him, a miniature painted in 1566, when he was about thirty-one, makes him look careworn and shifty. It is the face of a man many would instinctively mistrust. Bothwell had amassed enemies (including the earl of Moray and the Hamiltons) but few friends. He was not a man of subtlety or, so far as is known, wit or grace, and though undoubtedly ambitious, he appears to have been more of an opportunist than a strategist with deep-seated plans. Such an approach to political life could serve him well in the fast-changing world of mid-sixteenth century Scotland. It is easy to dismiss him as a foul-mouthed Lothian lout but he was well educated, in France, at the behest of the great-uncle who brought him up when his parents divorced, and had beautiful italic handwriting. One woman, Anna Throndsen, the daughter of a retired Norwegian admiral, had already fallen madly in love with him after meeting him in Denmark and followed him all over Europe before he returned from exile to Scotland in 1564. The earl of Huntly’s sister, Lady Jean Gordon, seems to have been content enough to marry him, clad in a splendid gown of cloth of silver provided by the queen, at the beginning of 1566. Several days of banqueting and jousts followed this match, which linked two prominent Scottish families, the northern Gordons and the Lothian Hepburns. Bothwell’s stock remained high as the dramas of 1566 unfolded. Mary needed someone of vigour to depend on as her marriage fell apart and her trusted confidant was murdered so brutally. Bothwell, for all his crudeness, must have seemed a safe pair of hands. Whether the queen herself had developed a passion for him is quite another matter.

  Jedburgh is a handsome border town, its great abbey long in ruins, but its connections with Mary part of its continuing attraction. In October 1566, after administering justice there, the queen decided to visit Bothwell at his fortress home, Hermitage Castle, where he was recovering from serious wounds inflicted in an ambush by one of the Border ruffians he was trying to control, John Elliott, a thief and murderer. Bothwell’s physical bravery was considerable, and he had been injured in hand-to-hand combat, eventually killing his adversary. By the middle of the month he had recovered sufficiently to be able to receive a visit from the queen and Moray and other councillors, who wished to discuss Border problems with him.

  For historical novelists and even some historians of a romantic disposition, this visit has been seen as proof that Mary was already conducting an illicit affair with Bothwell. Yet it was hardly a private assignation, with her half-brother and several leading councillors accompanying her on the journey, and it took her to what is still one of the remotest parts of the Borders, over difficult terrain and to a castle that is more the stuff of nightmares than fairy tales.8 Hermitage Castle sits at the heart of Liddesdale, alongside a small river, Hermitage Water, and even today the drive from Jedburgh, along twisting roads, is slow. In Mary’s day, the twenty-five miles on horseback presented a considerable challenge. Neither was the building itself the sort one would choose for a romantic tryst. It is a formidable edifice and it had an evil reputation as a prison and place of torture. No doubt Bothwell had made it as comfortable as possible but there is nothing welcoming about the Hermitage or its isolation, though on sunny days there is a grim sort of beauty in the surroundings.

  Mary and her entourage did not stay long. Perhaps the castle was simply not able to accommodate all of them appropriately for an overnight stay or maybe they did not want to stay long in this spot. For whatever reason, the decision was made to return the same day to Jedburgh. Within twenty-four hours, Mary fell seriously ill. The story goes that her horse stumbled on the difficult return journey and she was thrown into a bog. She then contracted a fever that nearly killed her. It is more likely, however, that she suffered an attack of the illness that had intermittently plagued her for years, perhaps brought on by the hardships of travelling fifty miles in difficult circumstances in one day. There certainly was fever, but even more alarming were the frequent bouts of vomiting, the loss of sight and consciousness on several occasions and the queen’s own conviction that she was not going to survive.

  For a week she lay near death in Jedburgh. At one point she summoned her brother and other councillors (Bothwell, hearing of her plight, had arrived on a horse litter from Hermitage Castle, being still too weak himself to ride) and she begged them to work together, protect her son and execute her will. On 25 October there were fears that she had actually died, as she lay for some hours with rigid limbs an
d closed eyes. Her doctor, Arnault Colommius, refused to give up hope, massaged her limbs, made her imbibe a little wine and administered an enema. Whether despite or because of his efforts, Mary did rally. Darnley arrived on 28 October to visit her but stayed only one day before rejoining his son at Stirling. This may seem heartless but we do not know what passed between him and Mary at Jedburgh and she may have wanted him to stay with her son while her own health was in doubt. Over the weeks that followed, Mary made a slow recovery. By mid-November she was well enough to tour the Borders, again in the company of the earls of Huntly, Moray, Bothwell, Lord Hume and Maitland of Lethington, the latter now restored to royal favour. At the end of the month she went back to Edinburgh and stayed at Craigmillar Castle, just outside the city proper, where she put the finishing touches on arrangements for her son’s christening, now two months delayed by family friction and then her own brush with death.

  The christening of Prince James, on 17 December 1566, at the Chapel Royal in Stirling Castle, was the last great public occasion of state in Mary Stewart’s personal rule. In the Catholic service (from which the Protestant lords Moray and Bothwell and the English ambassador, the earl of Bedford, absented themselves) the baby was christened Charles James, after his French godfather and his Scottish forebears, though his first name was not subsequently used. Mary’s sense of theatre and the importance of her Renaissance court was fully realized in the ceremony and accompanying festivities. The baby was carried into the chapel by the count of Brienne, acting for Charles IX of France, at vespers in the early evening, between rows of candles held by the Catholic lords and gentlemen of Scotland. The countess of Argyll, Elizabeth’s proxy, held the baby at the font while he was christened by the archbishop of St Andrews, John Hamilton, and a trumpet fanfare then proclaimed the prince’s names and titles. A sumptuous banquet, with the seating carefully arranged by status, followed and the evening closed with dancing and music.

  Mary had produced a son and heir and seen him christened amidst the full magnificence of her court. It was an occasion to impress ambassadors, encourage conciliation among her competitive and divided nobility and send a message to the world. Mary also pardoned Morton and his friends, who were allowed to return from England. The Scottish queen may have hoped that this gesture towards the murderers of Riccio, who were being sheltered by Elizabeth, might improve relations with England. She had never lost sight of the goal of being granted official recognition as Elizabeth’s successor. But there was one very sour note. Her husband refused to attend the christening and his father was also absent. Just a few days before Christmas, Mary was said to be weeping and depressed. Probably she had not fully recovered her health from the severe illness of the autumn. Yet her sadness was compounded by the petulance of her husband and the growing desperation that some way must be found to be rid of him. This eventuality had already been raised with her by several of her advisers while she was at Craigmillar. It did not bode well for Henry Stewart.

  * * *

  THE CATALYST for drastic action was the return of Morton, who harboured a great hatred for the callow youth, whom he felt had betrayed him over the assassination of David Riccio. This, in Morton’s eyes, was more than just a slight; it went to the heart of the accepted forms of behaviour in Scotland at the time. Darnley had tried to wriggle out of the responsibilities that went with the bond he had signed. Morton was a Douglas and the family had a long history of opposition to the Crown of Scotland. Like many Scottish nobles, his primary loyalty was to his family and himself and he could not forget the dishonour that he believed Darnley had done him when, as Mary herself reported to Archbishop James Beaton, her ambassador to France, he had assured the lords of the Privy Council of his innocence ‘in this last conspiracy, how he never counselled, commanded, consented, assisted nor approved the same.’9 Morton was now languishing in exile as the result of these barefaced lies but not everyone had deserted him. He had friends in Scotland who could plead his cause.

  In a deposition made two years after the event, Huntly and Argyll recalled the discussions at Craigmillar in December 1566 and the connection then made between ensuring Morton’s return and ending Mary’s marriage. Maitland of Lethington, they claimed, had suggested that ‘the nearest and best way to obtain the said earl of Morton’s pardon was to promise to the Queen’s Majesty to find a way to make divorcement betwixt her Grace and the King her husband, who had offended her Highness so highly in many ways.’ Argyll had responded that he did not know how this could be done, to which Lethington responded: ‘My lord, care you not thereof, we shall find the means well enough to make her quit of him, so that you and my lord Huntly will only behold the matter and not be offended thereat.’ When the same point was put to Huntly, he did not disagree. The earl of Moray was also party to this conversation and the four men then went to discuss with Bothwell to seek his view. He gave no opposition to their arguments.

  It was thus with a united front that the earls and Maitland of Lethington went to present their arguments to the queen herself. Maitland rehearsed the various wrongs and insults offered by the king, ‘a great number of grievous and intolerable offences … continuing every day from evil unto worse’, and proposed that if she would pardon Morton and his companions, ‘they should find the means with the rest of the nobility to make divorcement betwixt her Highness and the King her husband’ but without the direct involvement of the queen herself. It is interesting that Maitland, who had fallen in and out of favour over the past year, was the spokesman for the group of earls, who all exceeded him in rank. Perhaps none of them wished to be so directly associated with originating the idea. Mary, however, was not offended. She was concerned above all with safeguarding that the divorce be lawful and not prejudice her son’s right to the Crown of Scotland. Her doubts about the validity of all divorce would never leave her and surfaced again, in an even more desperate context, the following year. So it is ironic that the person who reassured her on this matter was Bothwell, citing his own experience that the break-up of his parents’ marriage had not prejudiced his own rights of inheritance. The discussion closed with the consideration of ideas of where Darnley could reside after the divorce, with the possibilities of his living in a different part of Scotland or even overseas (Mary herself suggested France) being mooted.10

  This account of the so-called Craigmillar Conference was written well after the event and is undoubtedly partial, though that does not mean that it is entirely inaccurate. Moray subsequently sought to exonerate himself of all involvement in any bond to murder Darnley. It was, he said, ‘the custom of my old adversaries rather to calumniate and backbite me in my absence than before my face; and it may happen then, when I am departed forth of this realm slanderously and untruly to report untruths of me.’11 Moray had a way with words when it came to defending himself and his absence from Scotland in the first half of 1567 meant that he took no part in the chain of events that culminated in his sister’s downfall. But he was almost certainly protesting too much. If there was ultimately no love lost between him and the other three earls (and he had become progressively more uneasy about Bothwell), it is hard to believe that he was not, at least, aware of plans to remove Darnley by violence.

  At the beginning of 1567 the indefatigable Maitland sought, yet again, to re-establish amity with England. Mary’s confidence was returning after the Christmas period and she believed that she was in a stronger position than ever now she had an heir. Prince James’s birth seemed, to Mary and her supporters, to confirm and safeguard the future of the British Isles. They would be united under one crown and the Stewarts, not the Tudors, would be the family that ruled. What other eventuality could there be, unless the English parliament (in only the second session of Elizabeth’s reign) could persuade their queen to opt for a public acceptance of Katherine Grey and her sons as her successors? There is a strong argument that it was the desire to improve relations with England, but on her own terms, not Elizabeth’s, that drove Mary Stewart in January 1567.12
>
  Despite these wider political aims, personal problems remained. The question of when and how to remove Darnley could not be ignored. Mary’s marital difficulties caused her a great deal of personal stress and threatened her effectiveness in Scotland. They needed to be resolved. Rumours of plots against the king were already circulating early in the New Year. Ambassador Guzman wrote to Philip II:

  The displeasure of the Queen of Scotland is carried so far, that she was approached by some who wanted to induce her to allow a plot to be formed against him, which she refused, but she nevertheless shows him no affection. They tell me even that she has tried to take away some of his servitors, and for some time past finds him no money for his ordinary expenditure. This is very unfortunate for both of them, although it cannot be denied that the King has given grounds for it by what he has done. They ought to come to terms, as if they do not look out for themselves, they are in a bad way.13

  As, indeed, they were. The conclusion of this crisis came quickly. While Darnley may have signed his own death warrant when he double-crossed Morton, Lindsay and Ruthven, it was eventually his ill-health that provided the occasion for which his enemies had been looking. He had fallen ill around Christmas 1566 with what was probably an attack of syphilis. Sores had broken out all over his body and though this was politely ascribed to smallpox (in itself a disease that could be deadly), the greater likelihood is that it was something even more serious, though not an affliction that could be publicly acknowledged in the husband of the Queen of Scots. The treatment that Darnley received, of large doses of mercury and sulphur baths, was the standard one given for secondary syphilis, not smallpox. Darnley’s constitution was also weakened by heavy drinking.

  Henry was at Glasgow when Mary arrived on 20 January (just two days after Guzman’s letter to Spain) and announced that she would take him back with her to Edinburgh in the horse-litter that she had brought with her. He would be housed, until his recovery was complete, at the old Provost’s lodging in the grounds of the collegiate church of St Mary in the Fields, or Kirk o’ Field, as it is better known. This two-storey house, close to the old city walls of Edinburgh, near Cowgate, was not the remote and run-down dwelling that has often been supposed, but a comfortable place thought to have better air than the city centre. It was also not far from Holyrood House, where the queen and her son were in residence. Leaving aside the delicate question of how much Mary knew, or suspected, of the real cause of her husband’s illness, Kirk o’ Field was not an inappropriate dwelling for a convalescent and Darnley does not seem to have objected to it, whereas he had opposed the idea of going to Craigmillar, her first choice for him. The queen had installed a fine new bed with black velvet hangings for her husband and he himself credited his fast-improving health to his wife’s restored affection for him. In fact, he was greatly cheered by her attentions, writing to his father: ‘I assure you [she] hath all this while and yet doth use herself like a natural and loving wife.’ But in this he was deceived. Mary wanted him back in Edinburgh to keep a close watch on him. She feared his ill intentions sufficiently to believe that he planned to kidnap their son and depose her, aiming to rule in the baby prince’s name. It is not clear how she proposed to deal with him in the long run, since she was still not comfortable with the idea of divorce. But one thing is certain. He would not leave Kirk o’ Field alive.