by Linda Porter
The bond was in the form of a petition to Mary, appealing to her to marry as a means of ensuring calm and good government in the realm of Scotland and suggesting that a Scot, not a foreigner, would be an appropriate choice, and who better than the earl of Bothwell himself:
… weighing and considering the time present and how our sovereign the Queen’s Majesty is now destitute of a husband, in the which solitary state the commonwealth of this realm may not permit her highness to continue and endure, but at some time her highness in appearance may be inclined to yield unto a marriage … [it] may move her Majesty so far to humble herself, as preferring one of her native born subjects unto all foreign princes to take to husband the said Earl.18
Eight bishops endorsed the bond, as did the earls of Morton, Huntly, Caithness, Argyll, Cassilis, Sutherland, Crawford, Errol and Rothes and the Lords Boyd, Herries, Ogilvy and Sempill. It is an impressive roll call. Bothwell, for whatever reason, had pretty much got what he wanted. Perhaps realizing that the consensus he had achieved might not last for long, Bothwell wasted no time in taking the petition to the queen. She may have valued his strength and support, though she had already witnessed his capacity for random acts of extreme brutality when, in her presence, he fatally injured an elderly servant of Darnley’s who had requested help from Mary while she walked with Bothwell in the garden of Seton Palace, to the east of Edinburgh, at the beginning of April. But it was not just his violent nature that influenced her decision. He was a subject, and though always loyal to the Scottish Crown and vehemently anti-English (not necessarily an advantage if she was to continue to pursue her claim to the English throne), he was also a Protestant. And there was one other, crucial factor – she was not in love with him. So she refused his suit. If she thought that would be the end of it, she was entirely wrong.
For Mary now played, quite literally, into Bothwell’s hands. Had she stayed in Edinburgh, things might have been different. It would not have been easy to coerce her in the capital, where she could muster men and political allies. Instead, Mary made a crucial, if perfectly comprehensible, mistake. Worn out with political wrangling, still suffering from intermittent bouts of serious ill health and anxious to see her son, Mary left Edinburgh on 21 April to fetch Prince James, who was in the care of the earl of Mar, from Stirling Castle. But Mar refused to give up his charge. Mary was not used to being defied but, although she considered his response treasonable, she could not prevail. She left Stirling on 23 April, kissing her son goodbye for the last time, though she did not, of course, know this then. After spending the night at Linlithgow, where she had been born, she made to return to Edinburgh. But she never reached her capital. At the bridge over the river Almond, outside the city, she and her small party were surrounded by Bothwell and eight hundred armed retainers and forced, against her will, to go to Dunbar Castle. She was now Bothwell’s prisoner and he was determined that she would become his wife, whether she liked it or not. And so he raped her.
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BOTHWELL HAD SPUN her the yarn that it was not safe to return to Edinburgh. Holding the bridle of her horse tightly as they rode, and ensuring that she was separated from her servants, he gave her no other option than to return with him to Dunbar, the heavily fortified coastal castle that he had so recently purloined. Proponents of the idea that this abduction was all staged and pre-arranged have pointed to Mary’s passivity during this journey. She was Bothwell’s monarch. If she was truly being kidnapped against her will, why did she not cry out or demand assistance as they passed through the various small towns and villages on route? There are several answers to this, the most obvious of which is that surrounded by a press of eight hundred horsemen it is unlikely that she could ever have been heard. But more persuasive even is the culture of the time: it would have been improper for a gentlewoman to try to fight her way out of the situation physically and, besides, Mary had no means of so doing even if she had been minded to try and escape. She does appear to have sent her messenger, James Borthwick, to Edinburgh to seek help from the citizens there, but all they could manage was two salvoes of cannon as the riders went past them at speed. Mary was now completely at Bothwell’s mercy. When they arrived at Dunbar he dismissed all her ladies-in-waiting and replaced them with his sister, Jane Hepburn, the widow of Lord John Stewart, Mary’s favourite half-brother. Lord John had died four years earlier and the presence of his wife may have been insufficient to reassure or protect Mary from what happened.
The evidence that Bothwell raped Mary is compelling and what is all the more remarkable, given the many saccharine accounts of their relationship, is that it was widely known at the time. Sir James Melville, who was with the queen when she was abducted, recalled: ‘Then the earl of Bothwell boasted he would marry the queen, who would or who would not; yea, whether she would herself or not.’ He went on to add that when the court returned to Edinburgh, Bothwell again keeping Mary close, ‘a number of noblemen were drawn together in a chamber within the palace, where they all subscribed that the marriage between the queen and the earl of Bothwell was very meet, he having many friends in Lothian and upon the Borders, to cause good order to be kept. And then the queen could not but marry him, seeing he had ravished her and lain with her against her will.’19 Mary herself never, so far as we know, told anyone outright that she had been raped. It would have been too great a shame for her to admit and the horror of it needed to be shaped in her own mind in as positive a way as possible. She came as close as she could when she remarked: ‘Albeit we found his doings rude, yet were his answer and words both gentle.’ Bothwell, the captor of a queen, mingled physical force with soothing words to the conclusion he sought. Exhausted, assaulted and without support, Mary gave in and agreed to the marriage. ‘As it is succeeded,’ she agreed wearily, ‘we must take the best of it.’ This is not the expression of a woman wildly in love.
Bothwell had committed an act that, even by the standards of the times in which he lived, was remarkable for its violation, not just of Mary as a woman, but of Mary as his ruler and God’s anointed representative on earth. Although he claimed to be a good Protestant, there was no religious sentiment in James Hepburn and the fact that Mary was a woman made her extremely vulnerable. Probably Bothwell’s views on female rulers were, like those of some of his fellow nobles, much closer in private to the bigoted public utterances of John Knox. Bothwell’s rape of Mary proved her weakness and her agreement to marry him, as many Scottish and northern English heiresses who had been similarly kidnapped and raped could attest, was inevitable. No sixteenth-century lady, and especially a queen, could fight back against something that polluted them so completely in their society’s eyes. Marriage to the rapist was always the easiest option and Mary’s resignation that she must ‘take the best of it’ was, both psychologically and politically, the only way forward she could see. Her conviction grew even stronger when she realized that she was pregnant, something that she seems to have suspected very early.
Yet there were those who hated Bothwell and, outraged at what they learned of their queen’s suffering, wanted to help. On 27 April a petition from Aberdeen made clear how widespread was the knowledge of what had happened to Mary Queen of Scots:
Please your Majesty, it is bruited and spoken in the country that your Majesty should be ravished by the earl of Bothwell against your will. When we, your Majesty’s nobility and subjects, think ourselves most highly offended if such be, and therefore desire to know your Highness’ pleasure and will, what we shall do towards the reparation of that matter and in what manner we shall use ourselves, which, being known, there shall be nothing left undone that becomes faithful and loving subjects to do it, to the advancement and honour of their prince’s honour and affairs.20
This offer of help, however heartfelt, came too late. Mary could not, in her own mind, deviate from the decision she had made to go ahead and marry Bothwell. On 12 May 1567, she appeared before the lords of the session and declared that she formally forgave Bothwell for the violence
which he had used towards her person and assured them that he had entirely restored her to liberty. Two days later she signed her marriage contract. Yet neither of these actions supports the fanciful and demeaning interpretations of her willing involvement in the kidnap and her infatuation with Bothwell that diehard opponents, notably Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, were already putting about. The day after the signing of Bothwell’s bond, and, incidentally, the same day that Mary first refused to marry her determined suitor, Kirkcaldy claimed that Mary had said ‘she shall go with him [Bothwell] to the world’s end in a white petticoat before she would leave him.’ This statement has so often been taken at face value by Mary’s detractors and romantic writers who use it as proof of Mary’s devotion that they have overlooked the fact that Kirkcaldy had not accompanied the queen to Stirling and could not have known what she had said since leaving Edinburgh earlier in the month.
Mary was still fearful for her son’s future just five days before her marriage. Walking in the gardens of Holyrood, she was reported as saying ‘she doth greatly fear, less that Bothwell having the upper hand that he will reign again with the French and either make away with the Prince or send him into France, which deliberation her Majesty would gladly should be stayed, but it is very uncertain how it may be brought to pass.’ The queen spoke ‘vehemently’ against Kirkcaldy of Grange and his blackening of her reputation and warned against him.21 But whatever her underlying misgivings, Mary was set on following what she saw as an unavoidable course. Bothwell had hurriedly divorced Jean Gordon – she had entered adultery as the grounds and he had argued consanguinity in a separate proceeding, meaning that they were too closely related. His marriage to Mary took place according to Protestant rites in a muted and brief ceremony in Holyrood House, conducted by the bishop of Orkney on 15 May. Mary wore mourning, as was appropriate for a widow, but she was not a joyful bride. Visiting her later the same day, the French ambassador, du Croc, noted her deep depression.
The couple had barely a month of married life together and, by various accounts, it was not a happy one. Mary’s depression did not lift; there were reports that she and her husband quarrelled frequently. He had been given the title of duke of Orkney before their wedding but the queen made no attempt to name him king, so his status was below that of Darnley. It was reported that as one quarrel reached fever pitch, Mary threatened to stab herself. Her misery was compounded, as the weeks passed, by the knowledge that she was, indeed, pregnant. But by then, time was running out for James Hepburn and, with it, for Mary’s rule in Scotland.
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BOTHWELL WAS NOT the sort of politician who held on to allies for long and already his fellow conspirators in Darnley’s death were tired of his naked ambition. They may have expected that, by supporting him, they would be part of the new regime but this was wishful thinking. It should have been apparent to gentlemen who so directly followed their own interest that James Hepburn was not the type to share power. But the need to bring him down brought with it a wider opportunity for men like Morton, who had seen their fortunes veer wildly under Mary Queen of Scots and were still not convinced of her goodwill, or her capacity to rule. They felt she had lost her hold on Scotland and began to plan for a future which included neither the upstart Bothwell nor his browbeaten, physically assaulted wife. Removing him opened up the possibility of being rid of her as well. Scotland had survived long minorities before, under the direction of male regents, and could well do so again.
At the beginning of May a growing group of confederate lords gathered at Stirling, where Prince James was still being cared for by the earl of Mar. Chief among them were Morton, Argyll, Mar himself and Atholl. Yet another bond was signed, this time vowing to free Mary and protect her son. Thus battle lines were effectively drawn between Bothwell and his opponents even before his marriage to Mary. As we know, he persisted in his plan but by the end of the month he was sufficiently alarmed by the numbers and influence of those ranged against him, and by very negative reaction to his marriage from England and France, to summon his own liegemen from East Lothian, where most of his lands lay, and prepare for a fight. On 6 June he moved Mary out of Edinburgh to Borthwick Castle, some twelve miles to the south. Hearing that Morton and his allies were advancing on the capital, where another Darnley plotter, Sir James Balfour, made ready to hand over Edinburgh Castle to them, Bothwell slipped away to Dunbar. His wife, disguised in men’s clothing, joined him there and they prepared to face the confederate lords.
Why did Mary not use this opportunity to escape from her new husband’s clutches? If she hated him enough to consider suicide, surely the protestations of Morton, Atholl and Mar offered her a way out. Yet Mary had good reason to distrust both Morton and Mar, even after they issued a proclamation on 12 June which accused Bothwell of ravishing the queen and forcing her to marry him. They promised freedom for their monarch and justice for the late king. Mary was not convinced. It must have seemed rich to her that Morton, one of the men most closely implicated in Darnley’s murder should now be publicly proclaiming his zeal for bringing Bothwell to justice. But such were the twists and turns of family loyalty, personal honour and the basic desire for survival in Scotland during this period that there cannot have been much that surprised her. Her primary consideration, as she later told Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Elizabeth’s envoy, was to ensure the legitimate birth of the child she was carrying. It exercised her mind above all. She may also have weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of deserting Bothwell and reverting to the mercies of the confederate lords. They were offering her fair words but their past actions suggested these were not worth the paper of the bond they had signed. Either way, her future looked dark and dangerous.
The forces of Mary and Bothwell confronted those of the confederate lords at Carberry Hill in Midlothian on 15 June 1567. Bothwell was his normal blustering self, offering to settle matters in single combat, but when his bluff was called by Lord Lindsay, he slipped away from the field, leaving his wife to face their enemies alone, his men drifting away, unwilling to engage their fellow Scots. Bothwell was no James IV. He did not intend to fight to the death. Queen Mary, meanwhile, was compelled to surrender to Kirkcaldy of Grange, a sufficient humiliation in itself, but worse was to come. Still brave in the face of defeat and the desertion of the husband who had ruined her hopes and ravaged her body, Mary believed that she had negotiated honourable terms for her surrender and a promise that she would be treated as befitted her rank. But there was little honour left in Scotland at the time and much to be gained by further blackening of her reputation. The soldiers in the confederate lords’ camp shouted that she was a whore and murderess who should be burned. This vile outcry was the last straw for a woman in poor health and the early stages of pregnancy, overwhelmed by the enormity of what had happened to her in the past two months. Mary was led back into Edinburgh, to further public humiliation, and lodged at the Provost’s house, in a state of collapse. She was now a carefully guarded prisoner of the very men who had justified taking up arms as a means of freeing her from Bothwell. Later the next day she was moved to Lochleven Castle, a fortress on an island in the middle of a lake, near Kinross. William Douglas, the castle’s keeper, was a half-brother of the earl of Moray. Their mother was Lady Margaret Erskine, the lady James V, Mary’s father, had hoped to marry but ultimately given up when the necessary papal dispensation for her divorce was not forthcoming. The passing years seem to have increased Margaret Erskine’s sense of bitterness that she could not become queen of Scotland herself, and her son James its heir. She was not a welcoming hostess to the shattered woman now a prisoner in her home.
The confederate lords needed to move swiftly to ensure Mary’s incarceration. Isolated she may have been, but she was not without supporters. The Hamiltons, her nearest blood relatives in the Stewart line, were already moving to liberate her and Huntly and Argyll now took up her cause. Huntly wrote to the archbishop of Glasgow, in France, the day after Mary was taken to Lochleven: ‘As thi
s taking of our sovereign is against all law and order, we will with the rest of her true and faithful subjects assemble for her relief. And desire you to advertise the king of France hereof, for the same is not only our sovereign’s cause, but concerns as well his highness and all other princes.’22 Mary’s husband looked, as he always did, to himself. Having made a half-hearted attempt to raise another army, he took ship for Orkney, his recently acquired dukedom, and from there, reverting to the piracy that was an essential part of his nature, he departed for Scandinavia. But he was stopped off the Norwegian coast and taken to Bergen. Here his past came back to haunt him, for Anna Throndsen was very much alive and determined on financial restitution, believing that Bothwell had broken his promise to marry her. He bought her off and sailed on to Denmark, still claiming that he was supreme ruler of Scotland despite the discovery of documents accusing him of treason. His welcome in Copenhagen was not, however, what he expected and Frederick II decided to imprison him. Bothwell’s opportunistic ambition had resulted in disaster for both himself and the woman he had forced to marry him. In Denmark, he was largely forgotten but his wife, in her island confinement, was not. Imprisonment in an apparently impregnable fortress gave further opportunity for Mary’s opponents to blacken the queen’s name and they worked on this assiduously during her time at Lochleven.
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IN ENGLAND, meanwhile, there had been consternation at events in Scotland. Elizabeth would have taken Huntly’s comments very much to heart. She was personally affronted by what had befallen Mary; an anointed monarch and near relative basely imprisoned by rebels (even ones Elizabeth had helped) caused her great discomfort. This was not how the established order of things, in which she implicitly believed, should be. Nor was it a happy precedent to have another queen subjected to such treatment almost on one’s doorstep.23 She immediately sent Throckmorton north to argue for Mary’s release. Cecil was probably less concerned about Mary’s personal difficulties than he was about the implications of a destabilized government in Scotland. The threat of further lawlessness in the Borders was troubling and the one Scot who had made any headway in keeping the peace was the now disgraced Bothwell himself.
