Mary Queen of Scots (28 page)

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 had 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.

ESCAPE, DEFEAT, AND FLIGHT TO ENGLAND

The next day aided by William Douglas’s brother, George, and his cousin, Willie Douglas, she escaped from Lochleven. Disguised in shabby clothes, she traveled with Willie in a stolen boat to the shore where George awaited her with horses. They met Lord Seton, accompanied him to his Castle of Niddry near Winchburgh, and then journeyed to Hamilton House, a few miles from Glasgow. On the 4th she notified Moray that she had repudiated her abdication. In the next few days she attracted a large number of warriors to support her restitution: 9 earls, 9 bishops, 17 lords, 12 abbots, 14 commendators, numerous lairds and their followers, totaling in all about 6,000 men. Many must have joined her army because they were appalled at Moray’s treatment of her. Her supporters continued to be a broad mixture of Catholics and Protestants. Indeed, following her captivity in England, the Scottish civil war and Marianism more generally were never synonymous with Catholicism. She continued to have many Protestant adherents.

With Argyll serving as her lieutenant general, the army began escorting Mary toward Dumbarton Castle, which Fleming had controlled since 1565, but unfortunately for her and her allies, Moray was nearby at Glasgow holding a justice ayre. On 13 May with Grange’s brilliant tactical assistance, Moray’s smaller force of 4,000 defeated her army at the village of Langside. Her overconfident supporters misjudged Moray’s intentions, assuming that since his army was smaller than theirs, he would permit them to pass on to Dumbarton. Because of their superior numbers, Mary’s allies had also anticipated victory if Moray unexpectedly chose to engage them in battle. James Melville recalled that having just gained her freedom after almost a year in close confinement, Mary was more interested in reaching the safety of Dumbarton than in challenging Moray in battle. Cecil also remarked that her forces were stopped in flight past Glasgow.

Her behavior following the defeat lends credence to their opinions. Having witnessed the conflict from the hillside and seen scores of soldiers killed or captured after Argyll fell ill possibly from a mild stroke or heart attack, the frightened queen fled in disguise southward, reaching Dundrennan Abbey in Galloway by the 15th. Later, she explained to Elizabeth that Moray’s soldiers had stopped pursuing her straggling troops and had turned to prevent her from reaching Dumbarton. She also criticized the misguided method of her allies who defended themselves in a disorderly fashion and marched in a confusing manner. This experience made her realize how warfare diminishes the authority of queens regnant. Having relinquished the command of her army to her warriors, she was forced to rely on their strategies for her defense. Unable to reach Dumbarton, Mary decided to seek refuge in England over the protests of her adherents, who surely reminded her of the 18-year English captivity of her ancestor, James I. To Richard Lowther, deputy governor of Carlisle, she wrote, explaining that she was being forced into exile and requesting permission to enter England. Enclosed with the message was the ring from Elizabeth, which Robert Melville retrieved for her. On the 16th without waiting for a reply, Mary boarded a fishing boat at a small bay called Abbey Burnfoot and disembarked on the Cumberland side four hours later at a place then called Ellensport. Fleming, Herries, Lords Livingston and Boyd, George and Willie Douglas, and nine or so others moved with her to Workington Hall, where Lowther with 400 horsemen greeted her and then escorted her to Carlisle in the absence of Henry, ninth Lord Scrope, the warden of the west marches. Having reached Carlisle by 18 May without funds or a change of clothing, Mary requested assistance from both Elizabeth, who was surprised to learn of her arrival, and Catherine, who soon would be unable to aid her since France was on the brink of another religious conflict: Condé declared war on the crown in August.

With hindsight it is clear that the flight to England was a blunder, but Mary had few options. Even a France on the brink of another civil war was a better destination, but traveling there on the fishing boat was impossible: she had no French fleet to defend her against pirates or other enemies and the uncertain weather made sea voyages perilous at any time. Recalling Elizabeth’s sympathetic messages when she was at Lochleven, relying on their kinship, an important impulse in this society, and recognizing the significance of the ring, an assurance of aid sent to her by her good sister, Mary seems to have thought, incorrectly as it turned out, that her cousin would assist her in recovering her throne. It is also true that the losing faction in Scottish struggles usually sought refuge in England.

After reaching Carlisle with Scrope on the 28th to become Mary’s guardian, Sir Francis Knollys, vice-chamberlain of the royal household, reported that she fled to England because she lacked a secure refuge in Scotland or safe passage to France. Indeed, eight days before he arrived, she wrote to Cassilis, explaining that “for the safety of my body finding no sure access nor place within my realm to retire,” she was constrained to depart for England. She further informed him that within a few days she planned to leave for France to obtain aid against her rebels.
⁵

Her flight left her allies with certain psychological and strategic disadvantages in the ensuing civil war, but she could not have anticipated that Lethington and Grange, who replaced Balfour as captain of Edinburgh Castle in September 1567, would join her forces in 1569 or that the struggle on her behalf would survive without significant foreign aid until 1573. She did know in 1568 that her supporters were somewhat unreliable. The Hamiltons, led by the archbishop during Châtelherault’s exile, had challenged her authority in 1559–60 and again in 1565; Argyll, the losing general at Langside and probably an endorser of her husband’s murder band, had been a Chaseabout raider. Huntly, one of her most trusted supporters, had not only conspired against Henry but had also joined Archbishop Hamilton and Argyll in signing the Ainslie band. From her perspective, their present loyalty must have been gratifying, but as they were all descendants of her Stewart ancestors and related to the Hamiltons through the female line, they possessed reversionary interests to the regency that her half brother controlled and, indeed, also to the royal succession.

If Mary had remained in Scotland, she would have had to respond to the belief of many of her subjects that she needed the aid of a husband to rule the realm. At Lochleven when she was still pregnant, Throckmorton learned that plans were underway to marry her to a Campbell or a Hamilton to consolidate her political position. Entering either of these unions would have diminished her authority; with English or French aid, however, she might avoid another Scottish alliance and retain governmental flexibility. Her noblemen’s views seemed to have accorded with Sir Anthony Weldon’s later remark in his chronicle of the English kings that he had omitted Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth because he would have nothing to do with women. Indeed, in September 1567, de Silva reported to Philip that the Scots hate the rule of kings but despise even more the governance of a woman.

The wives of Scrope and Knollys, Mary’s first guardians, were Elizabeth’s maternal relatives. Margaret Howard, Lady Scrope, was one of Norfolk’s sisters and the cousin of the English queen, whose maternal grandmother was a Howard. One of Elizabeth’s favorite ladies was Catherine Carey, Lady Knollys, who was the daughter of Mary Boleyn Carey, the queen’s maternal aunt. When Lady Knollys became seriously ill while her husband served as Mary’s guardian, a post he reluctantly accepted, Elizabeth refused either to send his wife to him or to release him from his duties so that he could attend her. She died on 15 January as he was transferring Mary to the control of George Talbot, sixth earl of Shrewsbury.
⁶

Even before Knollys reached Carlisle, his duty to secure the Scottish queen had begun. Having learned that Thomas Percy, seventh earl of Northumberland, was attempting to gain access to her, Knollys wrote to him, but before sending the letter, encountered the earl
en route
to Carlisle and complained to him about his actions. Northumberland, who, of course, would be one of the important rebel leaders in the Northern Rising of 1569, responded that he sought only to protect Mary from enemies who might follow her into England and then retired from the scene. In fact, Mary, herself, expressed concerns that Moray might cross the border and attempt to capture her.
⁷

Knollys and Scrope offered interesting observations about the Scottish queen. Noting that she was a pleasant woman with an eloquent tongue, discreet head, stout courage, and a liberal heart, she was, they also believed, impervious to flattery and undaunted by the plain speech of persons she deemed honest. They judged her to have a high opinion of her worth, citing her claim that no one but God could judge her and her prediction that she would revenge her wrongs with her enemies’ blood. Her ready wit impressed them: they discovered that she understood her allies’ motivations, some joining her for her sake, some for the French cause, and others for the Hamilton claim. Then, there were the opportunists.

Mary sent Herries and Fleming to Elizabeth on 28 May with three requests. She asked for a private meeting with her good sister and her aid in restoring her regal authority, but if her cousin could not help her, she required a passport for Fleming so that he could seek assistance for her in France. She also reminded Elizabeth that it was the rebels she asked Mary to pardon who forced her into exile. In the next few days Elizabeth and her councilors came to an agreement on three issues concerning Mary and her requests. First, responding to Knollys’s warning that she might escape on horseback if she remained housed so close to the frontier, Elizabeth decided to transfer her to a residence farther away from the border. Second, she decided she would not meet with Mary until after a hearing was held in England to settle the Scottish disputes. Third, she declined to provide Fleming with a passport to seek aid from Catherine and Charles because a major English priority was preventing renewed French involvement in Scotland.

In June Elizabeth dispatched Henry Middlemore, Throckmorton’s cousin who had served as his secretary in France, on a dual mission. He carried with him her correspondence for Mary at Carlisle and for Moray in Scotland, as well as Cecil’s instructions with additional explanations. On the 14th Middlemore delivered Elizabeth’s letter to Mary, which promised that she would be as careful of her cousin’s life and honor as any parent would be. The English queen also explained that it would damage her honor if she invited Mary to court before her acquittal of the crimes charged against her. Responding emotionally to Middlemore, Mary protested that she had expected a better welcome than this from Elizabeth to whom she wished personally to reveal matters that she had never told anyone else. He tried to assuage her concerns by pointing out that once she was declared innocent, Elizabeth would see that she was restored to her regal dignity. If, furthermore, his queen were to meet with Mary before the hearing, he explained, her Scottish adversaries would not view Elizabeth as a neutral judge. It was also Middlemore’s duty to convey the news that his queen wanted her to be located closer to her court. Expressing a strong disinterest in moving farther from Scotland, Mary asked him if she would have a choice in the matter or if she would be forcibly taken like a captive to another residence. Also concerned about the delays in hearing from Herries, she asked Middlemore if Elizabeth were holding him as a prisoner. Middlemore denied, of course, that either of them was his government’s captive.