The Mystery of Mary Stuart. Lang Andrew
at Langside, he received the forfeited lands of the Laird of Corstorphine, near Edinburgh. In 1568 he became an Ordinary, or regular Judge of the Court of Session, and, later obtained the parish of Glasgow. The messenger of the Kirk, who came to bid him prepare his first sermon, found him playing cards with the Laird of Bargany. He had previously been plucked in the examination for the ministry: this was his second chance. Being examined he declined to attempt the Greek Testament; and requested another minister to pray for him, ‘for I am not used to pray.’ His sermon was not thought savoury. After Morton became Regent, Archibald, for money, took the Queen’s side, and is accused of an ungrateful and unclerical scheme to murder his cousin, Morton. Just for the devilry of it, and a little money, he was intriguing, a traitor to Morton, his benefactor, with Mary’s party, and also acting as a spy for Drury and the English. He was, later, restored to his place on the Bench of Scottish Themis, crowded as it was with assassins, but he fled to England when Morton was accused and dragged down by Stewart of Ochiltree (1581). Morton, in his dying declaration, remembered his grudge against Archibald or for some other reason freely confessed his iniquities. Archibald had distinguished himself as a forger of letters intended to aid Morton, but was denounced by his own brother, also a judge, Douglas of Whittingham. The later career of this accomplished gentleman was a series of treacherous betrayals of Mary. In England his charm and accomplishments recommended him to the friendship of Fulke Greville, who did not penetrate his character. His letters reveal a polished irony. He was for some time ambassador of James VI. to Elizabeth, was again accused of forgery, and, probably, ended his active career in rural retirement. History sees Archibald in the pulpit, a Stickit Minister: on the Bench administering justice: hobbling hurriedly from Kirk o’ Field in one shoe; watching the bursting open of the silver Casket; playing cards, spying, dancing, and winning hearts, and forging letters: a versatile man of considerable charm and knowledge of the world. His life, after 1581, is a varied but always sordid chapter of romance.
A grimmer and a godlier man is Mr. John Wood, secretary of Moray, with whom he had been in France, an austere person, a rebuker of Mary’s dances and frivolity. He, too, was a Lord of Session, and was wont to spur Moray on against Idolaters. We shall find him very busy in managing the Casket Letters. He was slain by young Forbes of Reres, the son of the corpulent Lady Reres, rumoured to have been the complacent confidant of Mary’s amour with Bothwell. Reres had certainly no reason to love Mr. John Wood. George Buchanan, too, is on the scene, the Latin poet, the Latin historian, who sang of and libelled his Queen, his pupil. Old now, and a devoted partisan of the Lennoxes, no man contributed more to the cause of Mary’s innocence than Buchanan, so grossly inaccurate and amusingly inconsistent are his various indictments of her behaviour. ‘He spak and wret as they that wer about him for the tym infourmed him,’ says Sir James Melville, ‘for he was becom sleprie and cairles.’ Melville speaks of a later date, but George’s invectives against Mary are ‘careless’ in all conscience.
Besides these there is a pell-mell of men and women; crafty courteous diplomatists like the two Melvilles; burly Kirkcaldy of Grange, a murderer of the Cardinal, a spy of England when he was in French service, a secret agent of Cecil, a brave man and good captain, but accused of forgery, and by no means ‘the second Wallace of Scotland,’ the frank, manly, open-hearted Greysteil of historical tradition. Huntly and Argyll make little mark on the imagination: both astute, both full of promise, both barren of accomplishment. The Hamiltons have a lofty position, but are destitute of brains as of scruples; even the Archbishop, most unscrupulous of all, is no substitute for Cardinal Beaton.
There is a crowd of squires; loyal, gallant Arthur Erskine, Willie Douglas, who drew Mary forth of prison, the two Standens, English equerries of Darnley, whose lives are unwritten romances (what one of them did write is picturesque but untrustworthy), Lennox Lairds, busy Minto, Provost of Glasgow, and Houstoun, and valiant dubious Thomas Crawford, called ‘Gauntlets,’ and shifty Drumquhassel; spies like Rokeby, assassins if need or opportunity arise; copper captains like Captain Cullen; and most truculent of all, Bothwell’s Lambs, young Tala, who ceased reading the Bible when he came to Court; and the Black Laird of Ormistoun, he who, on the day of his hanging, said ‘With God I hope this night to sup.’ Said he, ‘Of all men on the earth I have been one of the proudest and (sic) high-minded, and most filthy of my body. But specially I have shed innocent blood of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas therefore, because the said Michael, having me lying on my back, having a pitchfork in his hand, might have slain me if he pleased, but did it not, which of all things grieves me most in conscience… Within these seven years I never saw two good men, nor one good deed, but all kind of wickedness; and yet my God would not suffer me to be lost, and has drawn me from them as out of Hell … for the which I thank him, and I am assured that I am one of his Elect.’ This devotee used to hang about Mary in Carlisle, when she had fled into England. ‘Not two good men, nor one good deed,’ saw Ormistoun, in seven long years of riding the Border, and following Bothwell to Court or Warden’s Raid. Few are the good men, rare are the good deeds, that meet us in this tragic History. ‘There is none that doeth good, no, not one.’
But behind the men and the time are the Preachers of Righteousness, grim, indeed, as their Geneva gowns, not gentle and easily entreated, crying out on the Murderess, Adulteress, Idolatress, to be led to block or stake, but yet bold to rebuke Bothwell when he had cowed all the nobles of the land. The future was with these men, with the smaller barons or lairds, and with sober burgesses, like the discreet author of the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ and with honest hinds, like Michael Hunter, whom Ormistoun slew in cold blood. The social and religious cataclysm withdrew its waves: a new Creed grew into the hearts of the people: intercourse with England slowly abated the ruffianism of the Lords: slowly the Law extended to the Border: swiftly the bonds of feudal duty were broken: but not in Mary’s time.
One strange feature of the age we must not forget: the universal belief in sorcery. Mary and Moray (she declares) both believed that Ruthven had given her a ring of baneful magical properties. Foes and friends alike alleged that Bothwell had bewitched Mary ‘by unleasom means,’ philtres, ‘sweet waters,’ magic. The preachers, when Mary fled, urged Moray to burn witches, and the cliffs of St. Andrews flared with the flames wherein they perished. The Lyon King at Arms, as has been said, died by fire, apparently for confessed dealings with a wizard, who foretold the events of the year, and for treasure hunting with the divining rod. A Napier of Merchistoun did foretell Mary’s escape (according to Nau); this man, ayant réputation de grand magicien, may have been the soothsayer: his son sought for hidden treasure by divination. Buchanan tells how a dying gentleman beheld Darnley’s fate in a clairvoyant vision: and how a dim shapeless thing smote and awoke, successively, four Atholl men in Edinburgh, on the night of the crime of Kirk o’ Field. Old rhyming prophecies were circulated and believed. Knox himself was credited with winning his sixteen-year-old bride by witchcraft, as Bothwell won Mary. Men listened to his reports of his own ‘premonitions.’
When Huntly, one of the band for Darnley’s murder, died, his death was strange. He had hunted, and taken three hares and a fox, after dinner he played football, fell into a fit, and expired, crying ‘never a word save one, looking up broad with his eyes, and that word was this, “Look, Look, Look!”’ Unlike the dying murderer of Riccio, Ruthven, he perhaps did not behold the Angel Choir. His coffers were locked up in a chamber, with candles burning. Next day a rough fellow, banished by Lochinvar, and received by Huntly, fell into unconsciousness for twenty-four hours, and on waking, cried ‘Cauld, cauld, cauld!’ John Hamilton, opening one of the dead Earl’s coffers, fell down with the same exclamation. Men carried him away, and, returning, found a third man fallen senseless on the coffer. ‘All wrought as the Earl of Huntly wrought in the death thraw.’ The chamber was haunted by strange sounds: the word went about that the Earl was rising again. Says Knox’s secretary, Bannatyne, who tells this tale, ‘I maun praise the Lord my God, and bless his holy name for ever, when I behold the five that was in the conspiracy, not only of the King’s [Darnley’s] and the second Regent’s murder, but also of the first Regent’s murder. Four is past with small provision, to wit, Lethington, Argyll, Bothwell, and last of all Huntly. I hope in God the fifth [Morton] shall die more perfectly, and declare his life’s deeds with his own mouth, making his repentance at the gallows foot.’ Part of his life’s deeds Morton did declare on his dying day.
In such a mist of dark beliefs and dreads was the world