Mary Queen of Scots (25 page)

On 23 March after emerging from seclusion, Mary ordered a requiem mass and a dirge for Henry. She next faced mounting pressure to bring someone, principally Bothwell, to trial for her husband’s assassination and to combat rumors that she colluded in his death. Traditionally, writers, who have doubted that she was innocent of the murder, have claimed either that she aided and abetted it or that she at least knew about it. Those who believe she conspired against him have erroneously pointed to her restoration of Hamilton’s ecclesiastical powers, permitting him to grant Bothwell’s divorce. Next, they have contended that she returned Henry to the lodge to make him vulnerable to the plot, but she preferred Craigmillar for his convalescence. Finally, they have cited contemporary rumors as well as the Casket Letters, which contain her alleged confessions of love for Bothwell. Surely forgeries, the Letters will be briefly discussed in Chapter 7.

Another larger group of writers, believing that she must have at least known a conspiracy was afoot, have cited other evidence. They have referred to the so-called coded language at Craigmillar that should have alerted her to the danger, but she seemed forthright enough when she demanded, while discussing a divorce from her husband not his murder, that her reputation must remain unsullied. They have also pointed to Morton’s claim that after the Whittingham conference, he sent Bothwell and Lethington to obtain from her a warrant for Henry’s death. No transcript of that conversation is available, but Morton denied receiving her written permission to kill the king.

These writers have further argued that because so many people knew about the conspiracy, a hint of it must have reached her or intuitively she must have guessed its existence. The number involved should not be cited as proof that she became aware of the plot. She could have known about it only if someone revealed it to her. To provide a perspective for the allegation that she must have guessed something was brewing, no one has ever claimed that she knew about the Riccio assault, which attracted over 100 conspirators. The royalty, furthermore, did not often welcome the bearer of bad news. In 1562, for example, when Arran alerted Mary that Bothwell planned to abduct her, she agreed to have both earls incarcerated. In his letter to her in 1583, cited above, Archibald Douglas denied scheming to kill the king but admitted failing to warn her that most of her nobility were angrily disposed toward him. Even brave individuals would have hesitated to reveal information to her that might well draw upon them the wrath of so many noblemen.

Determining whether she could have realized that a conspiracy against her husband was afoot must involve a consideration of her state of mind. She seems to have been so fearful that Henry was scheming with his father against her that she did not seem to be aware of, or at least sense, his political vulnerability. In January as she planned to fetch him from Glasgow, she ordered investigations into rumors about his machinations to usurp her throne, and after his death in February she believed that the assailants had also targeted her. As she entered mourning seclusion, she probably viewed Beaton’s message concerning a rumored plot against her as confirmation of her concerns that the villains meant to harm her as well as Henry.

Only twenty-four years old that February, Mary had already under-gone numerous life-threatening experiences: the forcible attempts by Henry VIII and Somerset between 1543 and 1548 to remove her to England, the poisoning conspiracy in France in 1551, the bloody attacks at Amboise in 1560, the Scottish rebellions during her personal reign, 1562 and 1565, several abduction scenarios, the Châtelard incidents in 1563, and the assault on Riccio in 1566. It is no wonder that she viewed the explosion at Kirk o’Field as a foiled attack on herself.

ABDUCTION AND RAPE

While writers have paid little attention to how her fears that the conspirators also meant to kill her might have affected her emotionally, they have sometimes argued that Bothwell planned her husband’s murder as a prelude to abducting her. An assessment of his personality is an important consideration in determining whether this was his motive for plotting against the king. In fact, Bothwell seems to have been more adept as a fierce, opportunistic combatant than as a patient conspirator with long-term schemes. In 1566 Robert Melville described him as courageous but of little help in policy discussions. Since he was more physical than mental in his problem-solving capacity, it seems uncharacteristic for him to have invented this complicated assault on Henry; other reports do indicate that he favored an attack on the king in the open fields. A second trait of Bothwell’s, which partially explains the mermaid–hare cartoon, was his lechery. He had promised, for example, to marry a Norwegian woman named Anna Throndssen, whom he deserted after living with her for a few months in Flanders. The daughter of Christian Throndssen, an admiral at the Danish court, she apparently bore him a son named William. In 1563 Randolph commented on the earl’s lustful reputation while he was in England awaiting permission to go to France. Warning about the dangers Bothwell posed to women, Randolph pleaded that Bothwell not be sent to Dover Castle, which stood near the residence of the ambassador’s still youthful sister and her daughters.

Although the cartoonist’s motives can never be fully known, three additional reasons besides Bothwell’s lechery can be offered to explain why he and others validated the rumors linking the queen to the earl. First, Mary increasingly turned to him for advice especially about the Borders; without negative criticism, du Croc noted her reliance on him at Jedburgh. Second, it was common knowledge that she imprisoned him in 1562 for plotting to abduct her. Finally, the easiest way to besmirch a female ruler, especially a widow, since women with marital experience were viewed as sexually insatiable, was to charge her with illicit relations with a male advisor. Had Bothwell not been available, the cartoonist would have named some other councilor, perhaps, as odd as it may seem, even Bishop Leslie. Clerics were a favorite target of sexual rumors; gossip earlier linked Mary of Guise to Cardinal Beaton and Mary, herself, to her uncle, Lorraine.

Before emerging from seclusion, Mary made a decision that helped to perpetuate her dynasty but ultimately enabled the usurpation of her crown. She transferred her son from Bothwell’s and Huntly’s care at Holyrood to Mar’s custody at Stirling. On 19 March she discharged Mar, whose father had served as one of her guardians, from the captaincy of Edinburgh Castle, and on the 29th provided instructions for his governance of James at Stirling. To safeguard her son she ordered Mar to prevent anyone from entering the castle with more than two or three attendants.

Rumors claimed she transferred Edinburgh Castle to Bothwell, already the keeper of Dunbar Castle, but instead she assigned Edinburgh to James Cockburn of Skirling, her comptroller who later assisted her in England. Those who believe incorrectly that Mary granted Edinburgh to Bothwell to permit his abduction of her have overlooked the significance of her removing James from his custody. That Bothwell readily relinquished control of the prince supports the conclusion that he had not yet settled on an abduction plan although seizing her may have crossed his mind.
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While still in seclusion Mary also agreed to Lennox’s request of 20 February for parliament to try his son’s murderers. On 26 February, five days after she informed him that she had summoned parliament to meet, he requested a change in procedures for two reasons. He wanted an earlier trial than could be held in parliament, which required a 40-day notice, and had concluded that punishing murderers was not a parliamentary matter. He requested instead that the crown imprison the men listed on the placards and try them for murder. Since parliament’s original jurisdiction in judicial matters usually involved treason accusations, Lennox probably realized that some members might question whether the death of his son, who lacked the crown matrimonial, was a treasonable act. On 1 March Mary asked Lennox for greater specificity, pointing out that many names appeared on the often contradictory placards. Although he had asked her to arrange an early trial, he did not respond to her request until the 17th, over two weeks later, when he repeated eight names from the placards with Bothwell and Balfour heading the list.

Over a month had elapsed from the beginning of Lennox’s correspondence with Mary, all of which was in Scots, until her re-entry into public life on the 23rd. Five days later she met with her privy council. Noting that Lennox had responded to their request for information about the king’s killers, the queen and her council, with Huntly, Argyll, Bothwell, Lethington, but not Balfour in attendance, decided that the accused earl and the other suspects, who were not named, should be tried for murder. Since he knew that the anonymous placards could not be introduced into a criminal trial and that Lennox had obtained no other evidence against him, Bothwell welcomed the opportunity to clear his name. As the law stipulated a 15-day notice, the council set the trial for 12 April as a private rather than a crown process in the justiciary court where an assize would determine Bothwell’s fate. Ironically, the parliament Mary had originally summoned to try Henry’s killers met two days later.

The crown had jurisdiction over murder, arson, rape, and theft, as noted in the above discussion of the Jedburgh justice ayre. Because public and private justice overlapped in Scotland, however, it was actually the victim’s paternal relatives, the agnatic group, who usually initiated proceedings against the accused. In fact, the normal procedure until the seventeenth century was for the injured party or his kin to advance the prosecution by means of criminal letters passed under the signet of the court of session.
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Lennox had gone directly, however, to Mary and through her to the privy councilors, whose advice she solicited for the appropriate measures to adopt when a nobleman made a criminal charge against another nobleman. Although he initially named eight men, the council had, in fact, by leaving seven of the accused nameless, reduced Lennox’s challenge to one person, another earl, Bothwell. The council’s usual method was to mediate noble disputes, promoting measures for keeping the peace rather than ordering a trial for one of the aggrieved parties. Even in 1589 during her son’s reign, for example, the council issued an order to suppress the quarrel between Francis Stewart, fifth earl of Bothwell, a nephew of the Bothwell the queen married, and Alexander, sixth Lord Home, even though in the course of their on-going bloodfeud Bothwell had by then killed three members of the Home family. Usually, to prosecute a powerful earl, royal officials had either to obtain his permission for the trial or to build a military and political alliance against him that could successfully bring him to justice. Only in the late sixteenth century was the crown’s advocate transformed from an official acting mainly in civil cases on behalf of the monarch into a public prosecutor.

In preparing for the trial, Lennox started toward the capital with 3,000 armed retainers, following the usual noble practice of surrounding the courts of justice with armed allies. On the 11th realizing he could not collect a force larger than or even comparable to Bothwell’s, he unsuccessfully pleaded for the postponement of the trial that on 26 February he had pressured Mary to expedite. He then abruptly left the realm. Various writers have claimed she instructed him to bring only six attendants, but the council order does not confirm this charge. The confusion probably arose from a law that prohibited the accused from having more than four attendants and the accuser more than six at the trial, a restriction that did not apply to the troops milling outside the courtroom. In obtaining retainers for the trial, Bothwell, the hereditary sheriff of Edinburgh, possessed a distinct advantage over Lennox, who had only recently returned to Scotland after a 20-year absence to resume control of his estates that lay near Glasgow. For legal proceedings as well as for military confrontations, the nobleman with the lesser force normally retired from the conflict.

At 6:00 a.m. a few hours before the trial was scheduled to begin, Drury’s messenger, John Selby the younger, provost-martial of Berwick, arrived to petition Mary on behalf of Lennox to delay the proceedings. At first Bothwell denied Selby permission to see the still sleeping queen. When Selby returned about 9:00 a.m., Bothwell and Lethington took his message inside Holyrood and about one-half hour later, replied, surely mendaciously, that she had not yet arisen and advised him to return after the trial.

Bothwell was clearly interested in expediting the legal process. At 12:00 p.m. only he was tried in the justiciary court. As the other suspects, left unidentified by the privy council, were commoners, their status would have prevented them from being included in a nobleman’s trial in any case. Argyll, the justice general, chose to preside despite usually relinquishing this duty to his justice depute. Although the trial lasted until 7:00 p.m., the assize’s verdict was a foregone conclusion mainly because the accuser Lennox failed to appear with any evidence. The assize could only find the defendant guilty if the accused confessed to the crime or if eyewitness testimony was introduced. Unlike English law, Scottish law did not permit the admission of circumstantial evidence on the major charge. While the assize may have felt some concern about the number of Bothwell’s retainers in Edinburgh, it unanimously acquitted him for lack of proof and not because of threats or because of special friendship. His armed troops could have, however, frightened away witnesses who might otherwise have volunteered information against him. Following the verdict, Bothwell posted his arms on the doors of the Tolbooth, St Giles’ Church, and other places, offering personal combat to anyone challenging the decision.

After learning of Henry’s death, Elizabeth and her councilors advised Mary to see that justice was done, but they lacked an appreciation of crown limitations. Scottish monarchs routinely took advice from their privy councilors on matters such as this, attempting to govern by consensus. Untrained in the law, they lacked expertise in the minutiae of legal issues.
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Although, according to Thomas Craig, Mary commented wisely on questions of equity and justice, she was not conversant on the intricacies of criminal procedures as were her councilors, particularly Bellenden, the justice clerk.