This Margaret tried desperately to find. Somehow she got in touch with a man who had been Matthew’s servant in Scotland and who had been present at the Battle of Langside where Mary Queen of Scots had been defeated prior to her flight into England. Her informant told her that although the Laird of Riccarton had been suspected of involvement in her son’s assassination, he had been cleared by an assizes. The rumour in Scotland was that he had in fact been carrying letters from Mary to Bothwell after her escape from Lochleven, ‘… but how true it is I can not tell’, she wrote to Cecil in a letter from Cold Harbour dated 3 October (1568).4
Notes
1 Queen Elizabeth to Mary Queen of Scots, 24 February 1567, Calendar of State Papers (Scottish), Vol.2, p.316
2 State Paper Office MS, domestic, Letter from Lennox to Cecil, July 1 1557
3 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses, p.374
4 Ibid., p.376
40
MEMORIAL FOR A SON
Queen Elizabeth personally ordered the investigation into Henry Darnley’s death, which began at York in October 1568. Queen Mary, although the main suspect, was not allowed to appear in person but was represented by John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross, and Lord Herries.
The evidence against her rested largely on the letters in a small silver casket belonging to Bothwell, which had been taken from his servant George Dalgleish after he had been sent to fetch them from Bothwell’s room in Edinburgh Castle. Within the casket were eight letters, known thereafter as the ‘Casket Letters’, together with a sequence of sonnets, addressed to Bothwell, and two contracts of marriage between Mary and himself. The letters were later destroyed by Mary’s son, King James VI of Scotland and I of England, therefore only copies remain. Their veracity has long been doubted, but if the ‘Long Glasgow Letter’, supposedly written by Mary to Bothwell just before she took Darnley from his father’s care back to Edinburgh, is genuine, it does prove her complicity in planning his death.
Queen Elizabeth, asked by the Duke of Norfolk if the letters were enough to convict the Queen of Scots as a murderess, prevaricated and then ordered the court to be reconvened at Westminster. When it opened in the Painted Court, on 25 November, both Cecil and Leicester attended. Moray made his accusations before Matthew Lennox began a tirade against his former daughter-in-law, demanding vengeance for the death of his son.
The trial dragged on inconclusively. On 6 December Moray was asked to give more proof of his allegations against his half-sister. He produced the Act of Council of December 1567, which declared that the reason for Mary’s imprisonment was her involvement in her husband’s death. In addition he referred to The Book of Articles, compiled by George Buchanan, adherent of John Knox, as a brief.
The trial eventually ended at Hampton Court on 11 January 1569 without any conclusion being reached. Leaving London, Margaret and Matthew returned to Settrington, as is evident from the letter written on 21 November by Mabel Fortescue, one of the young ladies sent as wards, to Francis Yaxley. ‘My Good Governor, After my most hearty recommendations, through your help, I have returned in my lady’s most honourable service whom, as yet, I find my very gentle and gracious lady …’1
It must have been at this time that the Lennoxes commissioned the Darnley Memorial Picture, designed as a public announcement to justify revenge on the murderers of their eldest son. The artist remains unknown, but the best engraving by George Vertue hangs in the Goodwood Collection at Goodwood House. The picture depicts the interior of a Roman Catholic chapel, thought to be that at Settrington, wherein, on a catafalque, lies an effigy of Henry in full plate armour, his helmet lying at his feet. Below him, his parents, robed in mourning, pray to the image of Christ for divine punishment on his murderers. Behind them kneels their remaining son Charles and before them a small child wears a crown to intimate that he is Henry’s son, James VI. Streamers issue from the mouths of Henry’s family, calling for vengeance for his death.
Banners with the royal arms of Scotland and those of both the Lennox and Angus families hang over the cenotaph. Scutcheons surround it bordered with scallop shells, insignia of St James and the order of St Michael. One medallion, on the side of the tomb, shows two assassins carrying the strangled corpse of Henry towards a door below a raised portcullis, while another depicts his body and that of the faithful Taylor in the garden of Kirk-o-Field, lying before the ruined house. Strangely, in the right-hand corner of the picture, is shown the battle at Carberry Hill, in which Henry, already dead, plainly was not involved.
The Lennoxes had not been long at Settrington before word came from Scotland that the Regent Moray had been murdered, shot in the back by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh as he rode in a cavalcade through the main street of Linlithgow. The assassination, by a rabid supporter of Queen Mary, was made more dreadful in that the house from the window of which the fatal bullet was fired belonged to John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, whose connivance in the crime was thus made plain.
Immediately, on receiving this news, the Lennoxes set off once more for London, where they were now so popular with the queen that they stayed at Somerset House, the palace built by Jane Seymour’s brother Edward Somerset at the height of the family’s fortune. Matthew put forward the idea that he and Margaret, as the child’s grandparents, would be the ideal people to bring up the little Scottish king. Queen Elizabeth, delighted with the idea, commissioned him to go to Scotland to fetch him. The Lennoxes travelled back as far as Yorkshire together. At Settringham they parted, and Margaret said farewell to the husband who, unbeknown to her at the time, she was never to see again.
Note
1 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses, p.376
41
REGENT OF SCOTLAND
Five months had passed since the murder of Moray. Scotland was still without a regent. The country, divided between two parties, one supporting the king and the other his mother, the imprisoned queen, was virtually in a state of civil war.
As intermittent fighting continued in the absence of any real authority, the Scottish nobles, in charge of the boy king, on the verge of despair, eventually asked Queen Elizabeth to appoint a new regent. Her choice fell on Matthew Lennox, who thus achieved the ambition which had brought him from France to Scotland thirty-seven years before.
Matthew travelled north with Sir William Drury, the Marshal of Berwick. Reaching the town, he found that the Earl of Sussex, in command of the English army, had just invaded the Merse on the Scottish side of the Border and had taken the castles of Hume and Fastcastle. In retaliation, Lord Hume had joined with the Hamiltons and Queen Mary’s party, much to the satisfaction of the English ambassador Randolph, who was intent on prolonging the fighting in Scotland on instruction from the English Council.
Sir James Melville, who met Matthew in Berwick, told him of the state of the country. He made it plain to him that many people, in particular the men of the queen’s party, as her adherents were termed, hated him as a traitor, the sworn adherent of Queen Elizabeth, who had sent him to subdue the Scots. Melville advised him specifically not to attempt to take control of the government, as it was likely to cost him his life. In particular, he warned him against the malevolence of Sir William Kirkaldy of the Grange, the Fife laird who, as the late Regent Moray’s man, had become governor of Edinburgh Castle.
Nonetheless, ignoring the warning, Matthew pursued his way to Edinburgh, where the town was in the hands of the king’s supporters. Here, the castle was held by Kirkcaldy, who – together with Queen Mary’s former secretary, Maitland of Lethington, and Hume, amongst others – had declared for the now imprisoned queen.
Initially made lieutenant of the kingdom, Matthew was formally declared regent in the following month of July.
Shortly after her husband’s arrival in Edinburgh, Margaret, to her astonishment, received a letter from Mary Queen of Scots. Now held prisoner at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, Mary had heard that Margaret believed her guilty of
Henry Darnley’s murder. Desperate to deny any involvement she wrote:
Madam
If the wrong and false reports of rebels, enemies well known for traitors to you, and alas! too much trusted of me by your advice, had not so far stirred you against my innocency, and I must say against all kindness, that you have not only, as it were, condemned me wrongfully, but so hated me, as some words and open deeds has testified to all the world, a manifest misliking in you against your own blood, I would not have omitted thus long my duty in writing to you, excusing me of these untrue reports made of me. But hoping, with God’s grace and time, to have my innocency known to you, as I trust it is already to most indifferent persons, I thought it best not to trouble you for a time, till such a matter is moved that toucheth us both, which is transporting your little son [grandson] and my only child into this country, to the which, albeit I be never so willing, I would be glad to have your advice therein, as in all other things tending him. I have borne him, and God knows with what danger to him and me both, and of you he is descended. So I mean not to forget my duty to you in showing herein any unkindness to you, how unkindly that ye have ever dealt with me, but will love you as my aunt, and respect you as my moder-in-law. And if ye please to know farther of my mind, in that and all other things betwixt us, my ambassador, the Bishop of Ross shall be ready to confer with you. And so, after my hearty commendations remitting me to my said ambassador, and your better consideration, I commit you to the protection of Almighty God, whom I pray to preserve you and my brother, [Charles] and cause you to know my part better than ye now do.
From Chatsworth, this x of July, 1570.
Your natural good niece and loving daughter.
To my Lady Lennox, my Moder-in-law.1
Confused by this affirmation by Queen Mary of any involvement in Henry’s death, and uncertain as to how and if she should reply, Margaret sent the letter on to Matthew, asking for his advice. Matthew replied to his ‘sweet Madge’ telling her not to believe a word of it. He had, so he assured her, absolute proof of Mary’s complicity in their son’s death, written by her own hand. Also, two men, since executed, had confessed to her involvement with Bothwell in the murder, statements which later proved to be untrue.
Matthew certainly had no doubt whatsoever about Mary’s guilt. He wrote to the King of Denmark asking for the whereabouts of Bothwell, who, after spending some time in Orkney, was known to have taken refuge there. Subsequently, he sent Thomas Buchanan, a brother of the author of the Articles produced at Queen Mary’s trial, to Denmark as his special envoy. Matthew asked that Bothwell be sent back to Scotland for examination. Buchanan’s reply from the Danish king was commandeered by the Earl of Morton, then at Elizabeth’s court. Having read it himself, and shown it to the English cabinet, he sent an edited copy of the letter ‘omitting sic things as we thought not meet to be shown’ on to Matthew dated 24 March 1570-1.2 Matthew then continued to correspond with the Danish king and in some of the replies, which he did receive unopened, there was information which caused animosity between him and Morton.
Margaret, who had many letters from her husband, was probably still in Yorkshire when summoned by Queen Elizabeth to attend her as first lady at Windsor Castle.
From there, on 10 October 1570, she wrote to Cecil, just after one of her husband’s couriers had arrived from Scotland with news. Civil war was continuing in the north-east between the king’s party, led by Lennox, and the queen’s party, headed by Huntly, Argyll in the west, and the Lennoxes’ perpetual enemies, the Hamiltons, in the central belt and south-west. A truce had been reached in September but the situation was still volatile. Most of all Margaret worried over what was happening to her grandson, the 4-year-old James VI.
I beseech you to remember, next to our Sovereign Lady, that innocent King, that he and her may not be the worse of any treaty,’ she wrote to Cecil, ‘I assure you I find her Majesty well minded for the preservation of him and those that belongs to him. I travail as I am. God spet [speed] me well and inspire her Majesty’s heart to do for her own surety, and then I know who will rest the better. I will not trouble you with longer letter, but sends you my hearty commendations.
From the court at Windsor this x of October.
Your assured friend,
Margaret Lennox.3
Plainly Matthew had asked her to send him something, presumably by return with the messenger, for she adds this postscript: ‘I pray you, good Master Sekretory, certify my Lord of his request declared to you by this bearer.’
Waiting on the queen in Windsor Castle, Margaret became the confidante of the French Envoy to Scotland, Monsieur de Mothe Fénelon, who inveigled her into trying to persuade Elizabeth to marry Francis, Duke de Alençon. Craftily, he used her anxiety over her grandson as a bribe to further his cause. ‘I have entered into some intelligence with the Countess of Lennox’, he wrote to Charles IX, continuing thus:
… by pretending to promise her much on the part of your Majesty for her infant grandson, James of Scotland, if she and the Earl, her husband, would agree with the Queen of Scots; and I have demonstrated to her that the marriage with Monsieur can not be otherwise than advantageous to her: for if the Queen of England shall ever have children, the said Lady Lennox ought to wish them to be French, because of the perfect union there would always be between them and her grandson; if her Majesty should have no issue, still Monsieur would always be found ready to advance the right of her grandson to this crown, against all the others who are now pretending to it. On this the Countess sent to me, that she entreated your Majesty to take her grandson under your protection, and to believe that her husband was as devoted and affectionate a servant to the Crown as any of his predecessors had been; that she, on her part, desired the marriage of Monsieur with her mistress more than anything in the world; and that, holding the place nearest to her (as first lady of the blood royal) of any one in this realm, she had already counselled and persuaded her to it with all affection. She has given me all the information on this head that she could, but up to the present hour she could only tell me this. That, by all the appearances she could observe in the Queen, she seemed to be not only well-disposed, but very affectionately inclined to the marriage; and that she generally talked of nothing but Monsieur’s virtues and perfections; that she dressed herself better, rejoicing herself, and assuming more of the belle, and more sprightliness on his account; but that she did not communicate much on the subject with her ladies, and seemed as if she reserved it entirely between herself and the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burghley. 4
Notes
1 Robertson’s Dissertation, History of Scotland, Vol.2
2 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses, p.382
3 Ibid., p.379
4 William Cecil was created Lord Burghley by Queen Elizabeth on 25 February 1571. Dépêche de la Motte Fénélon, Vol.IV, p.84
42
THE SNIPER’S BULLET
As expected, the truce in Scotland, lasting a bare six months, ended in April 1571. The year had begun well for Matthew Lennox with the capture of the castle of Doune from the garrison holding it for Queen Mary. Then he set his eyes on Dumbarton Castle, ‘the fetters of Scotland’, guardian of the mouth of the River Clyde and main stronghold of the Lennox, the great area stretching up the west coast from Glasgow to the borders of Argyll. Matthew, who had been born there before it had been handed over to the English during the infancy of Queen Mary, envisaged a revival of the influence of his family once the castle was once more his own.
He may have remembered from playing on the battlements as a child, that certain parts of the curtain wall were left unguarded because it was thought that the steepness of the rock made them impregnable to attack; it is certain that in view of his secret knowledge, he enlisted the aid of a Captain Thomas Crawford who, with a party of picked men, volunteered to try to take the castle by surprise. Waiting for the right moment, as thick mist drifted in from the sea, they scrambled up the near vertical rock,
finding toe holds in the masonry and clinging to a sapling rooted in a crack, which proved strong enough to hold their weight. Once over the ramparts, the leaders threw down ropes to their companions, pulling them up to join them until, as the mist lifted, a terrified sentry, yelled out the alarm. Too late to stop them, he saw men reach one of the batteries and swivel the guns round to fire into the building. Terrified as cannon balls rained death upon them, the garrison surrendered in hope of saving their lives.
Their conquerors could hardly believe their good fortune on discovering that amongst the prisoners taken was no less a person than John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews. John was the half-brother of Arran, who now, through joining the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, had been deprived of his French dukedom of Châterherault. A devoted Catholic and strong supporter of Queen Mary, Hamilton had christened the baby King James in Stirling Castle. Subsequently, however, he had arranged the murder of Moray. Afraid that the English might pardon him, his Scottish captors saw to it, that charged in addition with the slaughter of Darnley, he was promptly hanged at the Mercat Cross in Stirling, an atrocity for which his relations at once started planning to revenge.
With the Hamiltons entrenched in Lanarkshire, Kirkaldy of Grange continued to hold Edinburgh Castle for the queen. In May, warned of the approach of an English army, the town council granted him £200 to strengthen the defences. However, it was now realised that Mary’s freedom from detention was not imminent, as had been formerly supposed. Some of the lords of the queen’s party deserted him. Most importantly, Argyll, having switched sides, was amongst those who attended the King’s Parliament, which assembled in Stirling in August 1571.
Margaret Douglas Page 18
