Mary, Queen of Scots (30 page)

Hepburn thought that the Queen had given her consent to the murder, but his confession was extorted by a government whose business it was to demonstrate that Mary was guilty. He may well have spoken in good faith, having been reassured by Bothwell that the Queen had given her approval, but this is not sufficient evidence to prove that she had. Mary must have guessed that the Lords were plotting something criminal, or at least sinister, or she would not have warned them not to compromise her honour or her conscience; yet her concern did not extend to warning Darnley that he might be in danger. She must therefore have been truly desperate to be rid of him, and so bitter towards him that she did not care what befell him.

It has often been alleged that Mary’s chief motive for wishing to be rid of Darnley was her wish to marry her lover, Bothwell. According to Buchanan, after the birth of her son, “her secret criminal intentions began to show themselves. Having by one way or another got rid of the King, she would marry Bothwell. And lest she herself be suspected of the crime, she began gradually to sow the seeds of discord between the King and the Lords, to drive them into a deadly feud.” After the Craigmillar conference, “she never left her intention of destroying the King, as may well be perceived from what followed.” There is no reliable evidence to support this statement, and, since Darnley himself was doing a pretty good job of alienating the Lords, there was little need for Mary to whip up a feud between them. Furthermore, there is no credible testimony that she was involved in an affair with Bothwell at this time, and not one of the Lords, nor any other contemporary observer, saw Mary’s growing distaste for Darnley as a consequence of her supposed passion for Bothwell. However, there can be little doubt that Bothwell now played a very important role in Mary’s life, and that she relied on him heavily. It would not be surprising, given the events that were to take place after Darnley’s death, if there was already some sexual or emotional chemistry between them.

Buchanan also alleges that Mary “was incited to this [murder] by letters from the Pope and the Cardinal of Lorraine.” Certainly these men were inciting her to do murder, yet not to eliminate her husband, whose much-publicised devotion to Catholicism would have precluded their urging such a course, but to do away with most of the Protestant establishment in Scotland.

With the christening approaching, the problem of Darnley had to be shelved for the moment, although the Lords did not cease to work for the return of the exiles.
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On 7 December, Mary left Craigmillar for Edinburgh, where she intended to finalise the arrangements for the baptism,
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which was to be delayed because the Savoyard ambassador, Moretta, had still not arrived in Scotland. After three nights at Holyrood, the Queen travelled on to Stirling. On the way, she bruised her breast whilst riding
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and was in some discomfort when she arrived at the castle on 12 December.

Darnley was already at Stirling when Mary arrived, but she had preempted any refusal of his to become involved in the baptismal preparations by appointing Bothwell to take charge of them and to receive the ambassadors, which was “scarcely liked with the rest of the nobility.”
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It was later alleged, in
The Book of Articles,
that Mary had a secret passage between her chamber and the great hall at Stirling constructed at this time, “thinking to have had access at all times by that mean to Bothwell, whom purposely she caused to be lodged at the north end of the great hall, as the unperfected work this day testifies, for they departed forth of Stirling before it could be perfect.” There are no building accounts to confirm this statement, and it is unlikely that a great noble such as Bothwell would have been lodged at the service end of the hall without some contemporary commenting on the fact; furthermore, it should be noted that the bridge giving access to the royal palace was at the south end of the 38.5-metre-long hall, and that the construction of a secret passage between one end and the other would have been a considerable undertaking that would have attracted much attention.

Melville says that, at this time, Mary was “still sad and pensive” and brooding on Rizzio’s murder, which was quite understandable, since she was being urged to pardon those who had committed it. “So many sighs would she give that it was pity to hear her, and few there were to endeavour to comfort her.” At length, after a supper at which she had sat sighing and refusing to eat, despite the pleas of Moray and Mar, she walked with Melville in the park at Stirling and unburdened herself of her grief. Melville comforted her by saying that her friends in England would soon help her to forget her enemies in Scotland, who were “unworthy of her wrath” anyway. He praised her “excellent qualities in clemency, temperance and fortitude,” and told her she “should not suffer her mind to be possessed with the remembrance of offences, but should rather bend her spirit by a princely and womanly behaviour, whereby she might best gain the hearts of the whole people, both here and in England.” He warned her to desist from the pursuit of further revenge, “whereupon may ensue more desperate enterprises,” and reminded her that she had repented of not heeding his warnings before the murder of Rizzio. “I pray God the like repentance fall not out again too late,” he concluded.
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Mary was also fearful of another conspiracy against her, and her Privy Council issued an edict forbidding anyone to bring firearms into the court.
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The Queen could not forget how Ker of Fawdonside had pressed his pistol against her belly on the night of Rizzio’s murder. Now, it seems, her fears were centred upon Darnley. Both Lennox and Buchanan refer to her dismissing the majority of his servants, but if this is true, she may have deemed it necessary to do so, in case they were plotting with him.

Lennox says that, in the absence of those servants, he appointed a number of his own dependants and followers to wait on Darnley at the baptism. Their arrival disconcerted and worried Mary, who expressed her disapproval and told Darnley that “there were too many Lennox men there, and if they were without the castle, they should not come in again. He answered they should go where he went, and if they were without the castle, and he with them, they should either enter with him, or he would make an entry for them.”
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Melville also mentions this quarrel. Afterwards, Mary spoke sharply to Robert Cunningham, leader of the Lennox men,
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presumably to warn him of what would happen to him and his followers if there was any trouble, but she did not go as far as to send them away, probably for fear of provoking further trouble.

According to
The Book of Articles,
Bothwell was so afraid of the Lennox men that he caused a dozen of his armed servants to watch in his bedchamber while he slept, and Mary, responding to his terror, summoned fifteen arquebusiers to the castle to act as Bothwell’s bodyguard; Mar, however, refused to let them in. However, this account presupposes that Bothwell was Mary’s lover at this time and that his fear arose from guilt.

Given Darnley’s defiance, it is hardly surprising that Mary should thereafter have tried to isolate him from the rest of the court. Both Lennox and Buchanan claim she did her best to prevent the nobles from having anything to do with him, but, according to Lennox, this only “inflamed their hearts the more against her,” so that the King’s “lamentable” case “won thereby the whole hearts of the nobility,” which is patently untrue, since several of them were plotting his removal. Lennox also alleges that Mary would have laid murderous hands on Darnley but for the imminent arrival of the foreign ambassadors, which obliged her to dissemble and defer the matter. On one occasion, though, she allegedly dropped her husband a hint of her intentions: during one of their quarrels, when Darnley grew red in the face at her “sharp words,” she told him that, “if he were a little daggered and had bled as much as my Lord Bothwell had lately done, it would make him look the fairer.”
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Buchanan says that Mary deprived Darnley of “any kind of expenses” and ordered him to be confined to “an obscure, narrow room,” but, although there is some evidence in de Silva’s dispatches that Darnley was short of money at this time,
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it is clear that he came and went as he pleased, and it is unthinkable that Mary would have so shabbily treated the father of her child at a time when she was worried that he would not attend the baptism and would thereby disgrace her before the foreign ambassadors. Buchanan also claims that, much to Darnley’s distress, Mary had his silver plate taken away and replaced with pewter vessels, but elsewhere he contradicts himself, saying that the plate was removed after Darnley left Stirling.

More credibly, Buchanan states that the Queen forbade her husband to communicate with the ambassadors, “under pretext that his garments were not prepared.” Lennox says that he was not permitted to speak to them unless Mary was present, and claims that this was to prevent him from informing them of “her unnatural proceedings towards him,” but in fact it suggests that Mary was apprehensive that Darnley might either attempt to spread word of his grievances abroad, to her great embarrassment, or, worse still, would try to intrigue with foreign powers. Altogether, it appears that Mary was very afraid of Darnley and what he might do.

On 13 December, perhaps—it has been argued—with a view to enlisting the support of the Protestant establishment for the dissolution of her marriage to Darnley and the means by which she was to secure this, Mary approved further measures to aid the Kirk. A week later, she granted lavish gifts to the reformed Church.
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It was by a stroke of irony that Father Hay and the Bishop of Dunblane arrived in Edinburgh on 13 December. Learning that the Queen was at Stirling, they proceeded there immediately, but she was too busy with preparations for the christening to see them. Nor is it likely that she would have wanted to, for she must have known that they would do their utmost to persuade her to agree to Mondovi’s proposals. There is, indeed, no reliable evidence that Mary did speak with either Hay or the Bishop during their stay in Scotland; they, in turn, were under orders to report back to the Nuncio within a few days. On 23 December, Father Hay wrote to Mondovi, promising that he would soon be with him.
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On 14 December, the ambassadors gathered for the christening. Moretta had still not arrived, and the Queen had decided that the ceremony should go ahead without him.

Darnley had threatened to leave Stirling two days before the baptism, but showed no sign of departing. However, he kept to his own apartments,
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sulking because he had not been consulted over the choice of godparents. He was not present when, on 16 December, Mary received the Earl of Bedford in audience and was presented with Queen Elizabeth’s christening gift of a richly enamelled, gem-encrusted gold font weighing 28 pounds.
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During this audience, Bedford, to Mary’s great joy, informed her that his mistress wished to arrange a conference to discuss Mary’s claim to the English succession. At last, it seemed that her title was to be acknowledged, and she agreed to send some of her Councillors to “treat, confer and accord” with her royal cousin. Elizabeth’s friendship was also apparent in a letter she wrote to Darnley at this time, exhorting him to obey the Queen of Scots in all things.

The Prince was christened, with full Catholic rites and appropriate splendour, on 17 December in the chapel royal at Stirling, and given the names Charles James, the former in honour of the King of France.
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The Catholic ceremony, conducted by Archbishop Hamilton, drew adverse comment from alarmed Protestants, and several Lords, including Bedford, Moray, Argyll, Huntly and Bothwell, waited at the door of the chapel until it was over. Mary had provided new suits of clothing for her chief nobles: Moray’s was green, Argyll’s red and Bothwell’s blue.
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The King of France’s ambassador carried the baby, attended by Atholl, Seton and other Scottish Catholic nobles, as well as by du Croc, who was standing in for the ambassador of Savoy.
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The only part of the traditional rite that was omitted was that in which the priest customarily spat saliva into the infant’s mouth: Mary had expressly forbidden the syphilitic Archbishop Hamilton, whom she referred to as “a pocky priest,” to do this. At the end of the ceremony, the Countess of Argyll, acting as proxy for Bedford and Queen Elizabeth, took the baby, earning herself the severe censure of the Kirk.
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“The Queen behaved herself admirably well all the time of the baptism, and showed so much earnestness to entertain all the goodly company in the best manner that this made her forget in a good measure all her former ailments.”
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For three days, Mary presided over the lavish festivities that had been devised to enhance Scotland’s prestige in the eyes of the world: there were banquets, masques, pageants, dancing, a bull hunt and a spectacular firework display. George Buchanan wrote a Latin masque, in which he extolled Mary’s virtues, while many of the other entertainments were devised or mounted by Mary’s favoured, able and witty valet, Sebastien Pagez, a native of Auvergne and an accomplished musician, singer and cook.
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A ballet of his contriving gave great offence to some of the English visitors, for it depicted them as satyrs with tails, and Mary and Bedford had to employ all their diplomatic skills to defuse the situation.

Darnley was conspicuous by his absence. He kept to his apartments throughout the celebrations.
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Buchanan claims he had been forbidden to attend, and Lennox that Mary asked him not to, but du Croc’s evidence makes it clear that this was Darnley’s own decision. On the day of the baptism, the King sent several times to du Croc, desiring me to come and see him, or to appoint him an hour that he might come to me in my lodgings; so that I found myself at last obliged to signify to him that, seeing he was in no good correspondence with the Queen, I had it in charge from the Most Christian King [Charles IX] to have no conference with him, and I caused tell him likewise that, as it would not be very proper for him to come to my lodgings, because there was such a crowd of company there, so he might know that there were two passages to it, and if he should enter by the one, I should be constrained to go out by the other. His bad deportment is incurable, nor can there ever be any good expected of him, for several reasons which I might tell you, were I present with you.