The Mystery of Mary Stuart. Lang Andrew
Mary on September 29, and Darnley arrived on the same day. He rode to Mary, but refused to enter the palace, because three or four of the Lords were in attendance. Mary actually went out to see her husband, apparently dismissed the Lords, and brought him to her chamber, where he passed the night. On the following day, the Council, with du Croc, met Darnley. He was invited, by Mary and the rest, to declare his grievances: his attention was directed to the ‘wise and virtuous’ conduct of his wife. Nothing could be extracted from Darnley, who sulkily withdrew, warning Mary, by a letter, that he still thought of leaving the country. His letter hinted that he was deprived of regal authority, and was abandoned by the nobles. To this they reply that he must be aimable before he can be aimé, and that they will never consent to his having the disposal of affairs.[78]
A similar account was given by du Croc to Archbishop Beaton, and, on October 17, to Catherine de’ Medici, no friend of Mary, also by Mary to Lennox.[79]
We have not Darnley’s version of what occurred. He knew that all the powerful Lords were now united against him. Du Croc, however, had frequent interviews with Darnley, who stated his grievance. It was not that Bothwell injured his honour. Darnley kept spies on Mary, and had such a noisy and burlesque set of incidents occurred in the garden of Exchequer House as Buchanan reports, Darnley should have had the news. But he merely complained to du Croc that he did not enjoy the same share of power and trust as was his in the early weeks of his wedding. Du Croc replied that this fortune could never again be his. The ‘Book of Articles’ entirely omits Darnley’s offence in the slaying of Riccio. Du Croc was more explicit. He told Darnley that the Queen had been personally offended, and would never restore him to his authority. ‘He ought to be well content with the honour and good cheer which she gave him, honouring and treating him as the King her husband, and supplying his household with all manner of good things.’ This goes ill with Buchanan’s story about Mary’s stinginess to Darnley. It is admitted by the Lennox MSS. that she did not keep her alleged promise to Bothwell, that she and Darnley should never meet in the marriage bed.
When Mary had gone to Jedburgh, to hold a court (about October 8), du Croc was asked to meet Darnley at some place, apparently Dundas, ‘three leagues from Edinburgh.’ Du Croc thought that Darnley wished Mary to ask him to return. But Darnley, du Croc believed, intended to hang off till after the baptism of James, and did not mean to be present on that occasion (pour ne s’y trouver point). He had, in du Croc’s opinion, but two causes of unhappiness: one, the reconciliation of the Lords with the Queen, and their favour; the other, a fear lest Elizabeth’s envoy to the baptism might decline to recognise him (ne fera compte de luy). The night-ride from Dundas to Linlithgow, in which (according to Lennox) Darnley told the tale of Mary’s advice to him to seduce Lady Moray, must have occurred at this very time, perhaps after the meeting with du Croc, three leagues from Edinburgh. In his paper about the night-ride, Lennox avers that Mary yielded to Bothwell’s love, before this ride and conversation. But he does not say that he himself was already aware of the amour, and his whole narrative leaves the impression that he was not. We are to suppose that, if Buchanan’s account is true, the adventures of the Exchequer House and of Lady Reres were only known to the world later. Certainly no suspicion of Mary had crossed the mind of du Croc, who says that he never saw her so much loved and respected; and, in short, there is no known contemporary hint of the beginning of the guilty amour, flagrant as were its alleged circumstances. This point has, naturally, been much insisted upon by the defenders of Mary.
It must not escape us that, about this time, almost every Lord, from Moray downwards, was probably united in a signed ‘band’ against Darnley. The precise nature of its stipulations is uncertain, but that a hostile band existed, I think can be demonstrated. The Lords, in their letter of October 8 to Catherine, declare that they will never consent to let Darnley manage affairs. The evidence as to a band comes from four sources: Randolph, Archibald Douglas, a cousin and ally of Morton, Claude Nau, Mary’s secretary, and Moray himself.
First, on October 15, 1570, Randolph, being in Edinburgh after the death of the Regent Moray, writes: ‘Divers, since the Regent’s death, either to cover their own doings or to advance their cause, have sought to make him odious to the world. The universal bruit runs upon three or four persons’ (Bothwell, Lethington, Balfour(?), Huntly, and Argyll) ‘who subscribed upon a bond promising to concur and assist one another in the late King’s death. This bond was kept in the Castle, in a little coffer covered with green, and, after the apprehension of the Scottish Queen at Carberry Hill, was taken out of the place where it lay by the Laird of Lethington, in presence of Mr. James Balfour… This being a thing so notoriously known, as well by Mr. James Balfour’s own report, as testimony of other who have seen the thing, is utterly denied to be true, and another bond produced which they allege to be it, containing no such matter, at the which, with divers other noblemen’s hands, the Regent’s was also made, a long time before the bond of the King’s murder was made, and now they say that if it can be proved by any bond that they consented to the King’s death, the late Regent is as guilty as they, and for testimony thereof (as Randolph is credibly informed) have sent a bond to be seen in England, which is either some new bond made among themselves, and the late Regent’s hand counterfeited at the same (which in some cases he knows has been done), or the old bond at which his hand is, containing no such matter.’ Randolph adds, as an example of forgery of Moray’s hand, the order for Lethington’s release by Kirkcaldy to whom Robert Melville attributed the forgery.[80] Thus both sides could deal in charges of forging hands.
But what is ‘the old band,’ signed by Moray ‘a long time before the bond of the King’s murder was made’? To this question we probably find a reply in the long letter written by Archibald Douglas to Mary, in April, 1583, when he (one of Darnley’s murderers) was an exile, and was seeking, and winning, Mary’s favour. Douglas had fled to France after Riccio’s murder, but was allowed to return to Scotland, ‘to deal with Earls Murray, Athol, Bodvel, Arguile, and Secretary Ledington,’ in the interests of a pardon for Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay. This must have been just after September 20, when the return of Lethington to favour occurred. But Murray, Atholl, Bothwell, Argyll, and Lethington told Douglas that they had made a band, with other noblemen, to this effect: that they ‘were resolved to obey your Majesty as their natural sovereign, and have nothing to do with your husband’s command whatsoever.’ So the Lords also told Catherine de’ Medici. They wished to know, before interfering in Morton’s favour, whether he would also sign this anti-Darnley band, which Morton and his accomplices did. Archibald Douglas then returned, with their signatures, to Stirling, at the time of James’s baptism, in mid December, 1566. Morton and his friends were then pardoned on December 24.[81] This anti-Darnley band, which does not allude to murder, must be that produced in 1570, according to Randolph, by ‘divers, since Moray’s death, either to cover their own doings, or to advance their own cause, seeking to make him odious to the world.’ We thus find Moray, and all the most powerful nobles, banded against Darnley, some time between September and December 1566.
Now, Claude Nau, inspired by Mary, attributes Darnley’s murder to a band ‘written by Alexander Hay, at that time one of the clerks of the Council, and signed by the Earls of Moray, Huntly, Bothwell, and Morton, by Lethington, James Balfour, and others.’ Moray certainly did not sign the murderous band kept in the green-covered coffer, nor, as he alleged at his death, did Morton. But Nau seems to be confusing that band with the band of older date, to which, as Randolph admits, and as Archibald Douglas insists, Moray, Morton, and others put their hands, Morton signing as late as December 1566.
Nau says: ‘They protested that they were acting for the public good of the realm, pretending that they were freeing the Queen from the bondage and misery into which she had been reduced by the King’s behaviour. They promised to support each other, and to avouch that the act was done justly, licitly, and lawfully by the leading men of the Council. They had done it in defence of their lives, which would be in danger, they said, if the King should get the upper hand and secure the government of the realm, at which he was aiming.’[82] Randolph denies that there was any hint of murder in the band signed by
Teulet,
Frazer,
Cal. For. Eliz. ix. 354, 355.
Laing, ii. 331, 334.
Nau, p. 35.