Lang Andrew
The Mystery of Mary Stuart
VIII
MARY’S CONDUCT AFTER THE MURDER
Nothing has damaged Mary’s reputation more than her conduct after the murder of Darnley. Her first apologist, Queen Elizabeth, adopted the line of argument which her defenders have ever since pursued. On March 24, 1567, Elizabeth discussed the matter with de Silva. Her emissary to spy into the problem, Killigrew, had dined in Edinburgh at Moray’s house with Bothwell, Lethington, Huntly, and Argyll. All, except Moray, were concerned in the crime, and this circumstance certainly gave force to Elizabeth’s reasoning. She told de Silva, on Killigrew’s report, that grave suspicions existed ‘against Bothwell, and others who are with the Queen,’ the members, in fact, of Moray’s little dinner party to Killigrew. Mary, said Elizabeth, ‘did not dare to proceed against them, in consequence of the influence and strength of Bothwell,’ who was Admiral, and Captain of the Guard of 500 Musketeers. Elizabeth added that, after Killigrew left Scotland, Mary had attempted to take refuge in the Castle, but had been refused entry by the Keeper, who feared that Bothwell would accompany Mary and take possession. This anecdote is the more improbable as Killigrew was in London by March 24, and the Earl of Mar was deprived of the command of the Castle on March 19.[177] To have retired to the Castle, as on other occasions of danger, and to have remained there, would have been Mary’s natural conduct, had the slaying of Darnley alarmed and distressed her. Those who defend her, however, can always fall back, like Elizabeth, on the theory that Bothwell, Argyll, Huntly, and Lethington overawed her; that she could not urge the finding of the murderers, or even avoid their familiar society, any more than Moray could rescue or avenge Darnley, or abstain from sharing his salt with Bothwell.[178] De Silva inferred from Moray’s talk, that he believed Bothwell to be guilty.[179]
The first efforts of Mary and the Council were to throw dust in the eyes of France and Europe. The Council met on the day of Darnley’s death. There were present Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, Atholl, Caithness, Livingstone, Cassilis, Sutherland, the Bishop of Galloway (Protestant), the Bishop of Ross, the treasurer, Flemyng, Bellenden, Bothwell, Argyll, Huntly, and Lethington. Of these the last four were far the most powerful, and were in the plot. They must have dictated the note sent by express to France with the news. The line of defence was that the authors of the explosion had just failed to destroy ‘the Queen and most of the nobles and lords in her suite, who were with the King till near midnight.’ This was said though confessedly the explosion did not occur till about two in the morning. The Council add that Mary escaped by not staying all night at Kirk o’ Field. God preserved her to take revenge. Yet all the Court knew that Mary had promised to be at Holyrood for the night, and the conspirators must have seen her escort returning thither with torches burning.[180] The Lennox MSS., in a set of memoranda, insist that Mary caused a hagbut to be fired, as she went down the Canongate, for a signal to Bothwell and his gang. They knew that she was safe from any explosion at Kirk o’ Field.
On the same day, February 10 (11?), Mary, or rather Lethington for Mary, wrote, in Scots, the same tale as that of her Council, to Beaton, her ambassador in Paris. She had just received his letter of January 27, containing a vague warning of rumoured dangers to herself. The warning she found ‘over true’ (it probably arose from the rumour that Darnley and Lennox meant to seize the infant Prince). The explosion had been aimed at her destruction; so the letter said. ‘It wes dressit alsweill for us as for the King:’ she only escaped by chance, or rather because ‘God put it in our hede’ to go to the masque. Now all the world concerned knew that Mary was not in Kirk o’ Field at two in the morning, and Mary knew that all the world knew.[181] To be sure she did not actually write this letter. Who had an interest in this supposed plot of general destruction by gunpowder? Not Lennox and Darnley, of course; not the Hamiltons, not Mary and the Lords who were to be exploded. Only the extreme Protestants, whose leader, Moray, left on the morning of the affair, could have benefited by the gunpowder plot. In Paris, on February 21, the deed was commonly regarded as the work of ‘the heretics, who desire to do the same by the Queen.’[182]
This was the inference – namely, that the Protestants were guilty – which the letters of Mary and the Council were meant to suggest. To defend Mary we must suppose that she, and the innocent members of Council, were constrained by the guilty members to approve of what was written, or were wholly without guile. The secret was open enough. According to Nau, Mary’s secretary, she had remarked, as she left Kirk o’ Field at midnight, ‘Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!’ The story was current. Blackwood makes Mary ask ‘why Paris smelled so of gunpowder.’ Had Mary wished to find the guilty, the begrimed Paris would have been put to the torture at once. The sentinels at the palace would have been asked who went in and out after midnight. Conceivably, Mary was unable to act, but, if her secretary tells truth as to the begrimed Paris, she could have no shadow of doubt as to Bothwell’s guilt. A few women were interrogated, as was Nelson, Darnley’s servant, but the inquiry was stopped when Nelson said that Mary’s servants had the keys. Rewards were offered for the discovery of the guilty, but produced only anonymous placards, denouncing some who were guilty, as Bothwell, and others, like ‘Black Mr. James Spens,’ against whom nothing was ever proved.
It were tedious and bewildering to examine the gossip as to Mary’s private demeanour. If she had Darnley buried beside Riccio, she fulfilled the prophecy which, Lennox tells us, she made over Riccio’s new-made grave, when she fled from Holyrood after the murder of the Italian: ‘ere a twelvemonth was over, a fatter than he should lie beside him.’ What she did at Seton and when (Lennox says that, at Seton, she called for the tune Well is me Since I am free), whether she prosecuted her amour with Bothwell, played golf, indulged in the unseasonable sport of archery or not, is matter of gossip. Nor need we ask how long she sat under candle-light, in darkened, black-hung chambers.[183] She assuredly made no effort to avenge her husband. Neither the strong and faithful remonstrances of her ambassador in France, nor the menace of Catherine de Medicis, nor the plain speaking of Elizabeth, nor a petition of the godly, who put this claim for justice last in a list of their own demands, and late (April 18), could move Mary. Bothwell ‘ruled all:’ Lethington, according to Sir James Melville, fell into the background of the Court. He had taken nothing by the crime, for which he had signed the band, and it is quite conceivable that Bothwell, who hated him, had bullied him into signing. He may even have had no more direct knowledge of what was intended, or when, than Moray himself. He can never have approved of the Queen’s marriage with Bothwell, which was fatal to his interests. He was newly married, and was still, at least, on terms with Mary which warranted him in urging her to establish Protestantism – or so he told Cecil. But to Bothwell, Mary was making grants in money, in privileges, and in beautiful old ecclesiastical fripperies: chasubles and tunicles all of cloth of gold, figured with white, and red, and yellow.[184] Lennox avers, in the Lennox Papers, that the armour, horses, and other effects of Darnley were presented by Mary to Bothwell. Late in March Drury reported that, in the popular belief, Mary was likely to marry him.
From the first Lennox had pleaded for the arrest and trial of Bothwell and others whom he named, but who never were tried. Writers like Goodall have defended, Laing and Hill Burton have attacked, the manner of Bothwell’s Trial (April 12). Neither for Lennox nor for Elizabeth, would Mary delay the process. As usual in Scotland, as when Bothwell himself, years before, or when John Knox still earlier, or when, later, Lethington, was tried, either the accused or the accuser made an overwhelming show of armed force. It was ‘the custom of the country,’ and Bothwell, looking dejected and wretched, says his friend, Ormistoun, was ‘cleansed’ in the promptest manner, Lennox merely entering a protest. The Parliament on April 19 restored Huntly and others to forfeited lands, ratified the tenures of Moray, and offended Mary’s Catholic friends by practically establishing the Kirk. On the same night, apparently after a supper at Ainslie’s tavern, many nobles and ecclesiastics signed a band (‘Ainslie’s band’). It ran thus: Bothwell is, and has been judicially found, innocent of Darnley’s death. The signers therefore bind themselves, ‘as they will answer to God,’ to defend Bothwell to the uttermost, and to advance his marriage with Mary. If they fail, may they lose every shred of honour, and ‘be accounted unworthy and faithless Traytors.’
A copy of the names of the signatories, as given to Cecil by John Read, George Buchanan’s secretary, ‘so far as John Read might remember,’ exists. The names are Murray (who was not in Scotland), Argyll, Huntly, Cassilis, Morton, Sutherland, Rothes, Glencairn, Caithness, Boyd, Seton, Sinclair, Semple, Oliphant, Ogilvy, Ross-Halkett, Carlyle, Herries, Home, Invermeath. ‘Eglintoun subscribed not, but slipped away.’[185] Names of ecclesiastics, as Lesley, Bishop of Ross, appear in copies where Moray’s name does not.[186] It is argued that Moray may have signed before leaving Scotland, that this may have been a condition of his license to depart. Mary’s confessor told de Silva that Moray did not sign.[187] That the Lords received a warrant for their signatures from Mary, they asserted at York (October, 1568), but was the document mentioned later at Westminster? That they were coerced by armed force, was averred later, but not in Kirkcaldy’s account of the affair, written on the day following. No Hamilton signs, at least if we except the Archbishop; and Lethington, with his friend Atholl, seems not even to have been present at the Parliament.
On April 21 (Monday), Mary went to Stirling to see her son, and try to poison him, according to a Lennox memorandum. On the 23rd, she went to Linlithgow; on the 24th, Bothwell, with a large force, seized her, Huntly, and Lethington, at a disputed place not far from Edinburgh. He then carried her to his stronghold of Dunbar. Was Mary playing a collusive part? had she arranged with Bothwell to carry her off? The Casket Letters were adduced by her enemies to prove that she was a party to the plot. As we shall see when examining the Letters if we accept them they leave no doubt on this point. But precisely here the darkness is yet more obscured by the enigmatic nature of Mary’s relations with Lethington, who, as Secretary, was in attendance on her at Stirling and Linlithgow. It will presently be shown that, as to Lethington’s policy at this moment, and for two years later, two contradictory accounts are given, and on the view we take of his actions turns our interpretation of the whole web of intrigue.
Whether Mary did or did not know that she was to be carried off, did Lethington know? If he did, it was his interest to ride from Stirling, by night, through the pass of Killiecrankie, to his usual refuge, the safe and hospitable house of Atholl, before the abduction was consummated. Bothwell’s success in wedding Mary would mean ruin to Lethington’s favourite project of uniting the crowns on the head of Mary or her child. It would also mean Lethington’s own destruction, for Bothwell loathed him. To this point was he brought by his accession to the band for Darnley’s murder. His natural action, then, if he knew of the intended abduction, was to take refuge with Atholl, who, like himself, had not signed Ainslie’s band. If Lethington was ignorant, others were not. Bothwell had chosen his opportunity with skill. He had an excellent excuse for collecting his forces. The Liddesdale reivers had just spoiled the town of Biggar, ‘and got much substance of coin (corn?), silks, and horses,’ so wrote Sir John Forster to Cecil on April 24.[188] On the pretext of punishing this outrage, Bothwell mustered his forces; but politicians less wary than Lethington, and more remote from the capital, were not deceived. They knew what Bothwell intended. Lennox was flying for his life, and was aboard ship on the west coast, but, as early as April 23, he wrote to tell his wife that Bothwell was to seize Mary. A spy in Edinburgh (Kirkcaldy, by the handwriting), and Drury in Berwick, knew of the scheme on April 24, the day of the abduction. If Mary did not suspect what Lennox knew before the event, she was curiously ignorant, but, if Lethington was ignorant, so may she have been.[189]
What were the exact place and circumstances of Mary’s arrest by Bothwell, whether he did or did not offer violence to her at Dunbar, whether she asked succour from Edinburgh, we know not precisely. At all events, she was so far compromised, actually violated, says Melville,[190] that, not being a Clarissa Harlowe, she might represent herself as bound to marry Bothwell. Meanwhile Lethington was at Dunbar with her, a prisoner ‘under guard,’ so Drury reports (May 2). By that date, many of the nobles, including Atholl, had met at Stirling, and, despite their agreement to defend Bothwell, in Ainslie’s band, Argyll and Morton, as well as Atholl and Mar, had confederated against him, Atholl probably acting under advice secretly sent by Lethington. ‘The Earl Bothwell thought to have slain him in the Queen’s chamber, had not her Majesty come between and saved him,’ says Sir James Melville, who had been released on the day after his capture between Linlithgow and Edinburgh.[191] Different rumours prevailed as to Lethington’s own intentions. He was sometimes thought to be no unwilling prisoner, and even to have warned Atholl not to head the confederacy against Bothwell (May 4).[192] Mary wrote to quiet the banded Lords at Stirling (about May 3), and Lethington succeeded in getting a letter delivered in which he expressed his desire to speak with Cecil, declaring that Mary meant to marry Bothwell. He had only been rescued from assassination by Mary, who said that, ‘if a hair of Lethington’s head perished, she would cause Huntly to forfeit lands, goods, and life.’[193] Could the Queen who protected Lethington be in love with Bothwell?
Mary, then, was, in one respect at least, no passive victim, at Dunbar, and Lethington owed his life to her. He explained that his letters, apparently in Bothwell’s interest, were extorted from him, ‘but immediately by a trusty messenger he advertised not to give credit to them.’[194] Meantime he had arranged to escape, as he did, later. ‘He will come out to shoot with others, and between the marks he will ride upon a good nag to a place where both a fresh horse and company tarries for him.’[195] Lethington made his escape, but not till weeks later, when he fled first to Callendar, then to the protection of Atholl; he joined the Lords, and from this moment the question is, was he, under a pretext of secret friendship, Mary’s most deadly foe (as she herself, Morton, and Randolph declared) or her loyal servant, working cautiously in her interests, as he persuaded Throckmorton and Sir James Melville to believe?
My own impression is that Mary, Morton, and Randolph were right in their opinion. Lethington, under a mask of gratitude and loyalty, was urging, after his escape, the strongest measures against Mary, till circumstances led him to advise ‘a dulce manner,’ because (as he later confessed to Morton)[196] Mary was likely to be restored, and to avenge herself on him. Mary, he knew, could ruin him by proving his accession to Darnley’s murder. His hold over her would be gone, as soon as the Casket Letters were produced before the English nobles: he had then no more that he could do, but she kept her reserve of strength, her proof against him. His bolt was shot, hers was in her quiver. This view of the relations (later to be proved) between Lethington and the woman whose courage saved his life, explains the later mysteries of Mary’s career, and part of the problem of the Casket Letters.
Meanwhile, in the first days of May, the Queen rushed on her doom. Despite the protestations of her confessor, who urged that a marriage with Bothwell was illegal: despite the remonstrances of du Croc, who had been sent from France to advise and threaten, despite the courageous denunciation of Craig, the Protestant preacher, Mary hurried through a collusive double process of divorce, proclaimed herself a free agent, created Bothwell Duke of Orkney, and, on May 15, 1567, wedded him by Protestant rites, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, later one of her official prosecutors, performing the ceremony.[197] To her or to Lethington’s own letter of excuse to the French Court, we return later.
Mary, even on the wedding-day, was miserable. Du Croc, James Melville, and Lethington, who had not yet escaped, were witnesses of her wretchedness. She called out for a knife to slay herself.[198] Mary was ‘the most changed woman of face that in so little time without extremity of sickness they have seen.’ A Highland second-sighted woman prophesied that she should have five husbands. ‘In the fifth husband’s time she shall be burned, which death divers speak of to happen to her, and it is said she fears the same.’ This dreadful death was the legal punishment of women who killed their husbands. The fires of the stake shone through Mary’s dreams when a prisoner in Loch Leven. Even Lady Reres, now supplanted by a sister of Bothwell’s, and the Lady of Branxholme, ‘both in their speech and writing marvellously rail, both of the Queen and Bothwell.’[199]
A merry bridal!
Mary’s defenders have attributed her sorrow to the gloom of a captive, forced into a hated wedlock. De Silva assigned her misery to a galling conscience. We see the real reasons of her wretchedness, and to these we must add the most poignant, Bothwell’s continued relations with his wife, who remained in his Castle of Crichton. He, too, was ‘beastly suspicious and jealous.’ No wonder that she called for a knife to end her days, and told du Croc that she never could be happy again.
Meanwhile the Lords, from the first urged on by Kirkcaldy, who said (April 26) that he must avenge Darnley or leave the country, were banded, and were appealing to Elizabeth for help, which she, a Queen, hesitated to lend to subjects confederated against a sister Queen. Kirkcaldy was the dealer with Bedford, who encouraged him, but desired that the Prince should be brought to England. Robert Melville dealt with Killigrew (May 27). Bothwell, to soothe the preachers, attended sermons, Mary invited herself to dinner with her reluctant subjects; the golden font, the christening gift of Elizabeth, was melted down and coined for pay to the guard of musketeers (May 31). Huntly asked for leave to go to the north. Mary replied bitterly that he meant to turn traitor, like his father. This distrust of Huntly is clearly expressed in the Casket Letters.[200] On May 30, Mary summoned an armed muster of her subjects. On June 6, Lethington carried out his deferred scheme, and fled to the Lords. On the 7th, Mary and Bothwell retired to Borthwick Castle. On June 11, the Lords advanced to Borthwick. Bothwell fled to Dunbar.[201] The Lords then retired to Dalkeith, and thence, on the same night, to Edinburgh. Thither Mary had sent a proclamation, which is still extant, bidding the citizens to arm and free her, not from Bothwell, but from the Lords. An unwilling captive would have hurried to their protection. The burgesses permitted the Lords to enter the town. Mary at once, on hearing of this, sent the son of Lady Reres to the commander of Edinburgh Castle, bidding him fire his guns on the Lords. He disobeyed. She then fled in male apparel to Dunbar, Bothwell meeting her a mile from Borthwick (June 11). On June 12, the Lords seized the remains of the golden font, and the coin already struck. On the 13th, James Beaton joined Mary and Bothwell at Dunbar, and found them mustering their forces. He returned, with orders to encourage the Captain of the Castle, but was stopped.
Next day (14th) the Lords made a reconnaissance towards Haddington, and Atholl, with Lethington, rode into Edinburgh, at the head of 200 horse. Lethington then for three hours dealt with the Keeper of the Castle, Sir James Balfour, his associate in the band for Darnley’s murder. Later, according to Randolph, they opened a little coffer of Bothwell’s which had a covering of green cloth, and was deposited in the Castle, and took out the band. Was this coffer the Casket? Such coffers had usually velvet covers, embroidered. Lethington won over Balfour, who surrendered the Castle presently. This was the deadliest stroke at Mary, and it was dealt by him whose life she had just preserved.
Next day the Lords marched to encounter Bothwell, met him posted on Carberry Hill, and, after many hours of manœuvres and negotiations, very variously reported, the Lords allowed Bothwell to slip away to Dunbar (he was a compromising captive), and took Mary, clad unqueenly in a ‘red petticoat, sleeves tied with points, a velvet hat and muffler.’ She surrendered to Kirkcaldy of Grange: on what terms, if on any, is not to be ascertained. She herself in Nau’s MS. maintains that she promised to join in pursuing Darnley’s murderers, and ‘claimed that justice should be done upon certain persons of their party now present, who were guilty of the said murder, and were much astonished to find themselves discovered.’ But, by Nau’s own arrangement of his matter, Mary can only have thus accused the Lords (there is other evidence that she did so) after Bothwell, at parting from her, denounced to her Morton, Balfour, and Lethington, giving her a copy of the murder band, signed by them, and bidding her ‘take good care of that paper.’ She did ‘take good care’ of some paper, as we shall see, though almost certainly not the band, and not obtained at Carberry Hill.[202] She asked for an interview with Lethington and Atholl, both of whom, though present, denied that they were of the Lords’ party. Finally, after parting from Bothwell, assuring him that, if found innocent in the coming Parliament, she would remain his loyal wife, she surrendered to Kirkcaldy, ‘relying upon his word and assurance, which the Lords, in full Council, as he said, had solemnly warranted him to make.’ So writes Nau. James Beaton (whose narrative we have followed) merely says that she made terms, which were granted, that none of her party should be ‘invaded or pursued.’[203] Sir James Melville makes the Lords’ promise depend on her abandonment of Bothwell.[204]
Whatever be the truth as to Mary’s surrender, the Lords later excused their treatment of her not on the ground that they had given no pledge, but on that of her adhesion to the man they had asked her to marry. According to Nau, Lethington persuaded the Lords to place her in the house then occupied by Preston, the Laird of Craigmillar, Provost of Edinburgh. She asked, at night, for an interview with Lethington, but she received no answer. Next morning she called piteously to Lethington, as he passed the window of her room: he crushed his hat over his face, and did not even look up. The mob were angry with Lethington, and Mary’s guards dragged her from the window. On the other hand, du Croc says that Lethington, on hearing her cries, entered her room, and spoke with her, while the mob was made to move on.[205] Lethington told du Croc that, when Mary called to him, and he went to her, she complained of being parted from Bothwell. He, with little tact, told her that Bothwell much preferred his wife. She clamoured to be placed in a ship with Bothwell, and allowed to drift at the wind’s will.[206] Du Croc said to Lethington that he hoped the pair would drift to France, ‘where the king would judge righteously, for the unhappy facts are only too well proved.’ This is a very strong opinion against Mary. Years later, when Lethington was holding Edinburgh Castle for Mary, he told Craig that, after Carberry ‘I myself made the offer to her that, if she would abandon my Lord Bothwell, she should have as thankful obedience as ever she had since she came to Scotland. But no ways would she consent to leave my Lord Bothwell.’[207] Lethington’s word is of slight value.
To return to Nau, or to Mary speaking through Nau, on June 16 Lethington did go to see her: ‘but in such shame and fear that he never dared to lift his eyes to her face while he spoke with her.’ He showed great hatred of Bothwell, and said that she could not be allowed to return to him: Mary, marvelling at his ‘impudence,’ replied that she was ready to join in the pursuit of Darnley’s murderers: who had acted chiefly on Lethington’s advice. She then told him plainly that he, Morton, and Balfour had chiefly prevented inquiry into the murder. They were the culprits, as Bothwell had told her, showing her the signatures to the murder band, when parting from her at Carberry. She reminded Lethington that she had saved his life. If Lethington persecuted her, she would tell what she knew of him. He replied, angrily, that she would drive him to extremities to save his own life, whereas, if matters were allowed to grow quiet, he might one day be of service to her. If he were kept talking, and so incurred the suspicion of the Lords, her life would be in peril. To ‘hedge,’ Lethington used to encourage Mary, when she was in Loch Leven. But he had, then, no ‘assurance’ from her, and, on a false alarm of her escape, mounted his horse to fly from Edinburgh.[208] Thus greatly do the stories of Mary and of Lethington differ, concerning their interview after Carberry. Perhaps Mary is the more trustworthy.
On June 17, 1567, John Beaton wrote to his brother, Mary’s ambassador in Paris. He says that no man was allowed to speak to Mary on June 16, but that, in the evening, she asked a girl to speak to Lethington, and pray him to have compassion on her, ‘and not to show himself so extremely opposed to her as he does.’[209] Beaton’s evidence, being written the day after the occurrences, is excellent, and leaves us to believe that, in the darkest of her dark hours in Scotland, insulted by the populace, with guards placed in her chamber, destitute of all earthly aid, Mary found in extreme opposition to her the man who owed to her his lands and his life.
And why was Lethington thus ‘extremely opposed’? First, Mary, if free, would join Bothwell, his deadly foe. Secondly, he knew from her own lips that Mary knew his share in Darnley’s murder, and had proof. While she lived, the sword hung over Lethington. He, therefore, insisted on her imprisonment in a place whence escape should have been impossible. He is even said to have advised that she should be secretly strangled. Years later, when time had brought in his revenges, and Lethington and Kirkcaldy were holding the Castle for Mary, her last hope, Lethington explained his change of sides in a letter to his opponent, Morton. Does Morton hate him because he has returned to the party of the Queen? He had advised Morton to take the same course, ‘being assured that, with time, she would recover her liberty (as yet I have no doubt but she will). I deemed it neither wisdom for him nor me to deserve particular ill will at her hands.’ This was a frank enough explanation of his own change of factions. If ever Mary came to her own, Lethington dreaded her feud. We shall see that as soon as she was imprisoned, Lethington affected to be her secret ally. Morton replied that ‘it was vain in Lethington to think that he could deserve more particular evil will at Mary’s hands than he had deserved already.’[210]
Lethington could not be deeper in guilt towards Mary than he was, despite his appearance of friendship. The ‘evil will’ which he had incurred was ‘particular,’ and could not be made worse. In the same revolution of factions (1570-73) Randolph also wrote to Lethington and Kirkcaldy asking them why they had deserted their old allies, Morton and the rest, for the Queen’s party. ‘You yourselves wrote against her, and were the chiefest causes of her apprehension, and imprisonment’ (at Loch Leven), ‘and dimission of her crown… So that you two were her chiefest occasion of all the calamities, as she hath said, that she is fallen into. You, Lord of Lethington, by your persuasion and counsel to apprehend her, to imprison her, yea, to have taken presently the life from her.’[211] To this we shall return.
When we add to this testimony Mary’s hatred of Lethington, revealed in Nau’s MS., a hatred which his death could not abate, though he died in her service, we begin to understand. Sir James Melville and Throckmorton were (as we shall see) deluded by the ‘dulce manner’ of Lethington. But, in truth, he was Mary’s worst enemy, till his bolt was shot, while hers remained in her hands. Then Lethington, in 1569, went over to her party, as a charge of Darnley’s murder, urged by his old partisans, was hanging over his head.
Meanwhile, after Mary’s surrender at Carberry, the counsel of Lethington prevailed. She was hurried to Loch Leven, after two dreadful days of tears and frenzied threats and entreaties, and was locked up in the Castle on the little isle, the Castle of her ancestral enemies, the Douglases. There she awaited her doom, ‘the fiery death.’
