The Cradle King (6 page)

Bothwell, shaken by the unanimity of public opinion that laid the murder at his door, urged Moray and Morton to procure Mary’s consent to marry him. Moray and Morton, according to Herries, saw how this might redound to their favour: ‘three strokes shall be given with one stone!’ – attention would be deflected from their involvement, Mary would be defamed, and Bothwell (who had the power to reveal their complicity) ruined. In the meantime, however, Henry’s father Lennox was waging an insistent campaign of ‘continual cries, expostulations and petitions’ to bring Bothwell to justice. Moray and Morton advised Bothwell to submit, to clear his name before proposing marriage. Bothwell and Lennox were summoned to appear in Edinburgh on 12 April, giving only ten days’ notice (the usual was forty); moreover, Lennox was commanded to come with only his domestic servants. Lennox could not demean himself to respond so quickly and so meanly, and he sent instead Robert Cuningham as his procurator, who complained that the procedure was contrary to proper practice, especially since Bothwell had brought with him a substantial force that would intimidate and silence hostile witnesses. A panel comprised mainly of ‘Bothwell’s particular friends’ forwarded the verdict that there was no cause to condemn Bothwell, but if anyone later accused him they would have indemnity. Bothwell, absolved by law, still wanted to clear his name, and ‘sets up a challenge upon the cross, that if any man (his equal) will say that he is guilty of the King’s murder, he was ready to clear himself by his sword’. This challenge was soon answered. An anonymous gentlemen replied that he would take up the challenge, ‘if a convenient place were appointed, where he might show himself with security’; of course, no such place existed.
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A short poem proclaimed

It is nocht aneuch the pure king is deid

Bot the mischand murthararis occupand his steid

And doubell addulltrie hes all this land schamit …

[It is not enough the poor king is dead, but the wicked

murderers occupying his place and double adultery has

shamed all the land … ]

An anonymous libel asserted that ‘There is none that professes Christ and his Evangel, that can with upright conscience part Bothwell and his wife, albeit she prove him an abominable adulterer and worse: as he has murdered the husband of her he intends to marry, whose promise he had long before the murder.’
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Although popular opinion thought Bothwell guilty, he was now technically cleared, and Morton and Moray urged Mary to consider marriage. She could not govern without a husband, they claimed (a ‘fact’ often urged on cousin Elizabeth south of the border, now nine years a queen without a husband), and her husband should be a powerful man, and her own subject. Bothwell, they concluded, was ‘fittest both for courage and friends’. Mary thanked them for their counsel, and said that she would consider. But events would take the decision out of her hands.

Feeling her popularity slipping, Mary decided to regain control of her most powerful weapon: her son. It was reported on 20 April by a source hostile to Mary that ‘The Queen intends to take the Prince out of the Earl of Mar’s hands and put him into Bothwell’s keeping, who murdered his father.’
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Observers avidly followed the movements of baby James. On 24 April, Sir William Drury, the Marshal of Berwick, reported to Sir William Cecil in England that ‘On Monday the Queen took her journey to Stirling to see the Prince, and this day minds to return to Edinburgh or Dunbar’, implying that she would be taking James with her.
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The following day, Drury confirmed that ‘Yesternight the Queen of Scots came to Dunbar well and strongly accompanied, and brought the Prince with her from Stirling.’ But in a postscript, he changed his information: ‘The Earl Bothwell met her three miles from Stirling. She passed by Edinburgh, sending the Prince into the Castle.’
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Two days later, he was forced to change his story again, and admit that ‘The arrival of the Prince into Edinburgh is untrue. The Queen and Bothwell intended to compass it,’ he said in his defence, ‘howbeit the Earl of Mar would not suffer it to have effect.’
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It transpired that Mary had indeed ridden to Stirling on 21 April to see her son, with the intention of taking him back to Edinburgh. Mar ‘admitted her to the sight of her son; but suspecting her intention, had so provided that he was master and commander’ – simply by following Mary’s own orders and allowing her only two ladies-in-waiting in attendance when she was allowed in to see her son.
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She was therefore unable to seize him by force.

The meeting at Stirling between mother and son gave rise to one story that belongs more to fairy tale than history. The following comes from a serious intelligence report of 20 May:

At the Queen last being at Stirling, the Prince being brought unto her, she offered to kiss him, but he would not, but put her away, and did to his strength scratch her. She offered him an apple, but it would not be received of him, and to a greyhound bitch having whelps was thrown, who eat it, and she and her whelps died presently. A sugar-loaf also for the Prince was brought at the same time; it is judged to be very ill-compounded.
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Already Mary was being demonised as the evil, poisoning mother. The Kirk historian David Calderwood tells of how Mary set out from the castle, but ‘[a] grievous pain seized upon her within four mile to Stirling. Whether it proceeded of her travel, or grief because she was disappointed, it is uncertain.’
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Whatever the truth of Mary’s encounter with James at Stirling, this was the last time she saw her child.

Continuing on her journey, her small train was intercepted by Bothwell; faced with his customary large, armed escort, she had no choice but to go with him to Dunbar. There, it was alleged, he raped her; Melville records that he had heard the Earl boast that ‘he would marry the Queen, who would or would not; yea, whether she would herself or not’.
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But by this point, the people did not trust Mary, and it was assumed that the ‘abduction’ was another piece of royal theatre. Within days, Bothwell had obtained a divorce from his wife, Lady Jean Gordon, who was forced to petition citing his adultery with a maid named Bessie Crawford. A decree of nullity was pronounced by Archbishop Hamilton on the grounds that the couple were related and had been married without dispensation, neatly forgetting the fact that the Archbishop himself had provided such a dispensation.
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This new turn of events was not liked by all Bothwell’s erstwhile supporters, who felt themselves to have been shut out of his latest moves. Now Argyll and Morton joined Atholl and Mar at Stirling, to sign a bond on 1 May resolving to rescue their ‘ravished and detained’ Queen, to preserve the life of the Prince, and to pursue the murderers of the King – and specifically Bothwell. Their resolve was strengthened by the report of du Croc that, despite his pleas to Mary not to marry Bothwell, ‘she will give no ear’.
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On 15 May 1567, three months after the murder of her second husband, Mary Queen of Scots married the Earl of Bothwell at Holyrood, and created him Duke of Orkney. This time it was a Protestant ceremony. After the marriage, it was reported, the new bride wept inconsolably, and talked of killing herself. There was no honeymoon period for this unhappy marriage. Only a month later, Mary and Bothwell were on a battlefield at Carberry Hill, near Musselburgh. Argyll, Morton, Atholl and Mar, known as the Confederate Lords, had taken over Edinburgh, where they issued a proclamation urging the townspeople to follow their three-article manifesto. Prince James played a major part in their propaganda. As their forces were massed at Carberry Hill, they prominently carried a large banner with a painting of King Henry’s half-naked corpse lying under a tree, as it had been found at Kirk o’ Field. In one corner, a small child prayed to God for divine vengeance, a cartoon scroll from his lips pleading, ‘Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord.’ While the eleven-month-old child slept at Stirling, the image of Prince James was at war.
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There was to be no fighting. After a day-long standoff, Mary surrendered to the Confederate Lords on the condition that Bothwell be allowed to flee. Although the Queen was well treated by the lords to whom she surrendered, she had to endure an angry, jeering mob as she was led back to Edinburgh. The Confederate Lords imprisoned Mary in Lochleven Castle, on an island in Kinross-shire, under the supervision of Moray’s half-brother, Sir William Douglas of Lochleven, and their mother, the Lady of Lochleven. There, in July, apparently five months into a pregnancy, she miscarried twins.
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Shortly after, on 24 July, she was forced to sign a ‘voluntary demission’ – in effect an abdication – although she maintained for the rest of her life that such a document, signed under extreme duress, had no legal standing.
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Five days later, on 29 July 1567, King James VI was crowned in the parish church of Stirling, processing in Mar’s arms from the church back to his chamber. The child who had baptised into the Roman Church only seven months earlier, was now given a Protestant coronation. The oath was taken on his behalf by Morton, who swore to ‘rule in the faith, fear, and love of God, and maintain the religion then professed in Scotland’.
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John Knox preached a sermon on 2 Chronicles, 23: 20–21, in which the child Joash was crowned King of Judah, and his mother Athaliah was slain with the sword. The significance was not lost on any of the congregation. On 11 August, Moray returned to Scotland, visiting his half-sister at Lochleven. On the 22nd of that month, he was proclaimed Regent of Scotland.
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Under Moray’s government, the Acts of Parliament which had established the Scottish Reformation were finally ratified.
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But Mary had not given up hope. Gradually she won round Moray’s half-brother, George Douglas, and another kinsman, Willie Douglas. With their help, she escaped from her island prison on 2 May 1568 and was quickly joined by an impressive array of supporters – perhaps six thousand men led by nine earls, nine bishops, eighteen lords, twelve commendators, and the might of the Hamiltons.
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Mary, Melville alleges, ‘was not minded to fight, nor hazard battle’, but wanted to capture Dumbarton Castle, where she might draw back ‘by little and little’, the support of her subjects.
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But Mary’s forces were met at Langside, near Glasgow, on 13 May by Regent Moray’s men. The battle was short and decisive. Determined to avoid the kind of humiliation that met her after Carberry Hill, Mary rode ninety miles south to the Solway Firth, spending the night of the 15th at Dundrennan Abbey. The following day, sailing on a fishing boat from Abbeyburnfoot to England, she left Scottish soil for the last time.
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CHAPTER THREE

A Cradle King

T
HE FIRST DECADE
of James’s life was one of the most bitter and bloody periods in Scottish history. Ancient dynastic rivalries were played out in the Council chamber and on battlefields; the King would live under no fewer than three Regents before he reached the age of five.
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But James himself was sheltered from the realities of Scottish politics, by his age, naturally, but also by a series of strategic moves that ensured his insulation from the very real danger of attack. Stirling Castle was chosen as the young King’s home for good reason. A good distance from Edinburgh, it perched above its town, rendered inaccessible from one side by a sheer rockface. Compared with other potential royal residences, Stirling was easily defensible, and the Privy Council made sure that those defences were shored up by a limited and closeknit royal household.

The list of members of that royal household, dated 10 March 1568, provide us with a glimpse into James’s daily life as an infant.
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It was headed by ‘Imprimis [first], My Lady Mar’, Annabella Murray, Countess of Mar, and it was she who had primary responsibility for James in his early years. Writing in February 1572, Queen Elizabeth praised the Countess for ‘the universal good report that we hear of your carefulness and circumspection in the bringing up and nourriture of the young King’, which echoed the Countess’s own progress reports written to Elizabeth. Elizabeth urged her ‘not for any respect to forbear your good usage of him in these his young years, both for the increase and conservation of his health, and for the instruction of him in good manners and virtues agreeable to his years and capacity whereby hereafter he shall be thankful … to you for his education’.
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