Lang Andrew
The Mystery of Mary Stuart
The conspiracy seems to have been political and theological in its beginnings. Mary was certainly making more open show of Catholicism: very possibly to impress the French envoys who had come to congratulate her on her marriage, and to strengthen her claim on the Pope for money. But Lennox and Darnley were also parading Catholic devoutness: they had no quarrel with Mary on this head. The Protestants, however, took alarm. Darnley was, perhaps, induced to believe in Mary’s misconduct with Riccio after ‘the wisest,’ and Lethington, had decided ‘to chop at the very root.’ Ruthven and Morton then won Darnley’s aid: he consented to secure Protestantism, and, by a formal band, to restore Moray and the exiles: who, in turn, recognised him as their sovereign. Randolph, banished by Mary for aiding her rebels, conspired with Bedford at Berwick, and sent copies to Cecil of the ‘bands’ between Darnley and the nobles (March 6).[49]
Darnley himself, said Randolph, was determined to be present at Riccio’s slaying. Moray was to arrive in Edinburgh immediately after the deed. Lethington, Argyll, Morton, Boyd, and Ruthven were privy to the murder, also Moray, Rothes, Kirkcaldy, in England, with Randolph and Bedford. It is probable that others besides Riccio were threatened. There is a ‘Band of Assurance for the Murder.’[50] Darnley says that he has enlisted ‘lords, barons, freeholders, gentlemen, merchants, and craftsmen to assist us in this enterprise, which cannot be finished without great hazard. And because it may chance that there be certain great personages present, who may make them to withstand our enterprise, wherethrough certain of them may be slain,’ Darnley guarantees his allies against the blood feud of the ‘great persons.’ These, doubtless, are Bothwell, Atholl, and Huntly. The deed ‘may chance to be done in presence of the Queen’s Majesty, or within her palace of Holyrood House.’ The band is dated March 1, in other texts, March 5. The indications point to a design of killing Mary’s nobles, while she, in her condition, might die of the shock. She was to be morally disgraced. So unscrupulous were Mary’s foes that Cecil told de Foix, the French Ambassador in London, how Riccio had been slain in Mary’s arms, reginam nefario stupro polluens.[51] Cecil well knew that this was a lie: and it is natural to disbelieve every statement of a convicted liar and traitor like Darnley.
Just before the explosion of the anti-Riccio conspiracy, Bothwell se rangea. Mary herself made a match for him (the contract is of February 9, 1566) with Lady Jane Gordon, a Catholic, a sister of Huntly, and a daughter of that Huntly who fell at Corrichie burn. The lady was only in her twentieth year. The parties being akin, a dispensation was necessary, and was granted by the Pope, and issued by the Archbishop of St. Andrews.[52] The marriage took place in the Protestant Kirk of the Canongate, though the bride was a Catholic, and Mary gave the wedding dress (February 24). The honeymoon was interrupted, on March 9, by the murder of Riccio.
The conspirators made the fatal error of not securing Bothwell and Huntly before they broke into Mary’s room and slew Riccio. While Bothwell, Huntly, and Atholl were at large, the forces of the Queen’s party had powerful friends in the North and on the Border. When the tumult of the murderers was heard, these nobles tried to fight their way to Mary’s assistance, but were overpowered by numbers, and compelled to seek their apartments. An attempt was made to reconcile them to the situation, but they escaped under cloud of night. In her letter to the French Court (May 1567) excusing her marriage with Bothwell, Mary speaks of his ‘dexterity’ in escaping, ‘and how suddenly by his prudence not only were we delivered out of prison,’ after Riccio’s death, ‘but also that whole company of conspirators dissolved…’ ‘We could never forget it,’ Mary adds, and Bothwell’s favour had a natural and legitimate basis in the gratitude of the Queen. Very soon after the outrage she had secretly communicated with Bothwell and Huntly, ‘who, taking no regard to hazard their lives,’ arranged a plan for her flight by means of ropes let down from the windows.[53] Mary preferred the passage through the basement into the royal tombs, and, by aid of Arthur Erskine and Stewart of Traquair, she made her way to Dunbar. Here Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell rallied to her standard: Knox fled from Edinburgh, Morton and Ruthven with their allies found refuge in England: the lately exiled Lords were allowed to remain in Scotland: Darnley betrayed his accomplices, they communicated to Mary their treaties with him, and the Queen was left to reconcile Moray and Argyll to Huntly, Bothwell, and Atholl.
IV
BEFORE THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE
Mary’s task was ‘to quieten the country,’ a task perhaps impossible. Her defenders might probably make a better case for her conduct and prudence, at this time, than they have usually presented. Her policy was, if possible, to return to the state of balance which existed before her marriage. She must allay the Protestants’ anxieties, and lean on their trusted Moray and on the wisdom of Lethington. But gratitude for the highest services compelled her to employ Huntly and Bothwell, who equally detested Lethington and Moray. Darnley was an impossible and disturbing factor in the problem. He had, publicly, on March 20, and privately, declared his innocence, which we find him still protesting in the Casket Letters. He had informed against his associates, and insisted on dragging into the tale of conspirators, Lethington, who had retired to Atholl. Moreover Mary must have despised and hated the wretch. Perhaps her hatred had already found expression.
The Lennox MSS. aver that Darnley secured Mary’s escape to Dunbar ‘with great hazard and danger of his life.’ Claude Nau reports, on the other hand, that he fled at full speed, brutally taunting Mary, who, in her condition, could not keep the pace with him. Nau tells us that, as the pair escaped out of Holyrood, Darnley uttered remorseful words over Riccio’s new-made grave. The Lennox MSS. aver that Mary, seeing the grave, said ‘it should go very hard with her but a fatter than Riccio should lie anear him ere one twelvemonth was at an end.’ In Edinburgh, on the return from Dunbar, Lennox accuses Mary of threatening to take revenge with her own hands. ‘That innocent lamb’ (Darnley) ‘had but an unquiet life’ (Lennox MSS.).
Once more, Mary had to meet, on many sides, the demand for the pardon of the Lords who had just insulted and injured her by the murder of her servant. On April 2, from Berwick, Morton and Ruthven told Throckmorton that they were in trouble ‘for the relief of our brethren and the religion,’ and expected ‘to be relieved by the help of our brethren, which we hope in God shall be shortly.’[54] Moray was eager for their restoration, which must be fatal to their betrayer, Darnley. On the other side, Bothwell and Darnley, we shall see, were presently intriguing for the ruin of Moray, and of Lethington, who, still unpardoned, dared not take to the seas lest Bothwell should intercept him.[55] Bothwell and Darnley had been on ill terms in April, according to Drury.[56] But common hatreds soon drew them together, as is to be shown.
Randolph’s desire was ‘to have my Lord of Moray again in Court’ (April 4), and to Court Moray came.
Out of policy or affection, Mary certainly did protect and befriend Moray, despite her alleged nascent passion for his enemy, Bothwell. By April 25, Moray with Argyll and Glencairn had been received by Mary, who had forbidden Darnley to meet them on their progress.[57] With a prudence which cannot be called unreasonable, Mary tried to keep the nobles apart from her husband. She suspected an intrigue whenever he conversed with them, and she had abundant cause of suspicion. She herself had taken refuge in the Castle, awaiting the birth of her child.
Mary and Moray now wished to pardon Lord Boyd, with whom Darnley had a private quarrel, and whom he accused of being a party to Riccio’s murder.[58] On May 13, Randolph tells Cecil that ‘Moray and Argyll have such misliking of their King (Darnley) as never was more of man.’[59] Moray, at this date, was most anxious for the recall of Morton, who (May 24) reports, as news from Scotland, that Darnley ‘is minded to depart to Flanders,’ or some other place, to complain of Mary’s unkindness.[60] Darnley was an obstacle to Mary’s efforts at general conciliation, apart from the horror of the man which she probably entertained. In England Morton and his gang had orders, never obeyed, to leave the country: Ruthven had died, beholding a Choir of Angels, on May 16.
At this time, when Mary was within three weeks of her confinement, the Lennox Papers tell a curious tale, adopted, with a bewildering confusion of dates, by Buchanan in his ‘Detection.’ Lennox represents Mary as trying to induce Darnley to make love to the wife of Moray, while ‘Bothwell alone was all in all.’ This anecdote is told by Lennox himself, on Darnley’s own authority. The MS. is headed, ‘Some part of the talk between the late King of Scotland and me, the Earl of Lennox, riding between Dundas and Lythkoo (Linlithgow) in a dark night, taking upon him to be the guide that night, the rest of his company being in doubt of the highway.’ Darnley said he had often ridden that road, and Lennox replied that it was no wonder, he riding to meet his wife, ‘a paragon and a Queen.’ Darnley answered that they were not happy. As an instance of Mary’s ways, he reported that, just before their child’s birth, Mary had advised him to take a mistress, and if possible ‘to make my Lord – ’ (Moray) ‘wear horns, and I assure you I shall never love you the worse.’ Lennox liked not the saying, but merely advised Darnley never to be unfaithful to the Queen. Darnley replied, ‘I never offended the Queen, my wife, in meddling with any woman in thought, let be in deed.’ Darnley also told the story of ‘horning’ Moray to a servant of his, which Moray ‘is privy unto.’
The tale of Darnley’s then keeping a mistress arose, says Lennox, from the fact that one of two Englishmen in his service, brothers, each called Anthony Standen, brought a girl into the Castle. The sinner was, when Lennox wrote, in France. Nearly forty years after James VI. imprisoned him in the Tower, and he wrote a romantic memoir of which there is a manuscript copy at Hatfield.
Whatever Mary’s feelings towards Darnley, when making an inventory of her jewels for bequests, in case she and her child both died, she left her husband a number of beautiful objects, including the red enamel ring with which he wedded her.[61] Whatever her feelings towards Moray, she lodged him and Argyll in the Castle during her labour: ‘Huntly and Bothwell would also have lodged there, but were refused.’[62] Sir James Melville (writing in old age) declares that Huntly and Lesley, Bishop of Ross, ‘envied the favour that the Queen showed unto the Earl of Moray,’ and wished her to ‘put him in ward,’ as dangerous. Melville dissuaded Mary from this course, and she admitted Moray to the Castle, while rejecting Huntly and Bothwell.[63]
James VI. and I. was born on June 19. Killigrew carried Elizabeth’s congratulations, and found that Argyll, Moray, Mar, and Atholl were ‘linked together’ at Court. Bothwell had tried to prejudice Mary against Moray, as likely to ‘bring in Morton during her child-bed,’ but Bothwell had failed, and gone to the Border. ‘He would not gladly be in the danger of the four that lie in the Castle.’ Yet he was thought to be ‘more in credit’ with Mary than all the rest. If so, Mary certainly ‘dissembled her love,’ to the proverbial extent. Darnley was in the Castle, but little regarded.[64] Moray complained that his own ‘credit was yet but small:’ he was with the Privy Council, Bothwell was not.[65] By July 11, Moray told Cecil that his favour ‘stands now in good case.’[66]
He had good reason to thank God, as he did. According to Nau, Huntly and Bothwell had long been urging Darnley to ruin Moray and Lethington, and Darnley had a high regard for George Douglas, now in exile, his agent with Ruthven for Riccio’s murder.[67] This is confirmed by a letter from Morton in exile to Sir John Forster in July. Morton had heard from Scotland that Bothwell and Darnley were urging Mary to recall the said George Douglas, whom they expected to denounce Moray and Lethington as ‘the devisers of the slaughter of Davy.’ ‘I now find,’ says Morton, ‘that the King and Bothwell are not likely to speed, as was written, for the Queen likes nothing of their desire.’[68]
Thus Mary was protecting Moray from the grotesque combination of Bothwell and Darnley. This is at a time when ‘Bothwell was all in all,’ according to Lennox, and when she had just tried to embroil Moray and her husband by bidding Darnley seduce Lady Moray. By Moray’s and Morton’s own showing, Moray’s favour was ‘in good case,’ and he was guarded from Darnley’s intrigues.
However, Buchanan makes Mary try to drive Darnley and Moray to dagger strokes after her ‘deliverance.’[69] We need not credit his tale of Mary’s informing Darnley that the nobles meant to kill him, and then calling Moray out of bed, half-naked, to hear that he was to be killed by Darnley. All that is known of this affair of the hurried Moray speeding through the corridors in his dressing-gown, comes from certain notes of news sent by Bedford to Cecil on August 15. ‘The Queen declared to Moray that the King had told her he was determined to kill him, finding fault that she bears him so much company. The King confessed that reports were made to him that Moray was not his friend, which made him speak that of which he repented. The Queen said that she could not be content that either he or any else should be unfriend to Moray.’ ‘Any else’ included Bothwell. ‘Moray and Bothwell have been at evil words for Lethington. The King has departed; he cannot bear that the Queen should use familiarity with man or woman.’[70] This may be the basis of Buchanan’s legend. Moray and Darnley hated each other. On the historical evidence of documents as against the partisan legends of Lennox and Buchanan, Mary, before and after her delivery, was leaning on Moray, whatever may have been her private affection for Bothwell. She even confided to him ‘that money had been sent from the Pope.’ Moray was thus deep in her confidence. That she should distrust Darnley, ever weaving new intrigues, was no more than just. His wicked folly was the chief obstacle to peace.
Peace, while Darnley lived, there could not be. Morton was certain to be pardoned, and of all feuds the deadliest was that between Morton and Darnley, who had betrayed him. Meanwhile Mary’s dislike of Darnley must have increased, after her fear of dying in child-birth had disappeared. When once the nobles’ were knitted into a combination, with Lethington restored to the Secretaryship (for which Moray laboured successfully against Bothwell), with Morton and the Douglases brought home, Darnley was certain to perish. Lennox was disgraced, and his Stewarts were powerless, and Darnley’s own Douglas kinsmen were, of all men, most likely to put their hands in his blood: as they did. Mary was his only possible shelter. Nothing was more to be dreaded by the Lords than the reconciliation of the royal pair; whom Darnley threatened with the vengeance he would take if once his foot was on their necks. But of a sincere reconciliation there was no danger.
A difficult problem is to account for the rise of Mary’s passion for Bothwell. In February, she had given him into the arms of a beautiful bride. In March, he had won her sincerest gratitude and confidence. She had, Lennox says, bestowed on him the command of her new Guard of harquebus men, a wild crew of mercenaries under dare-devil captains. But though, according to her accusers, her gratitude and confidence turned to love, and though that love, they say, was shameless and notorious, there are no contemporary hints of it in all the gossip of scandalous diplomatists. We have to fall back on what Buchanan, inspired by Lennox, wrote after Darnley’s murder, and on what Lennox wrote himself in language more becoming a gentleman than that of Buchanan. If Lennox speaks truth, improper relations between Mary and Bothwell began as soon as she recovered from the birth of her child. He avers that Mary wrote a letter to Bothwell shortly after her recovery from child-bed, and just when she was resisting Bothwell’s and Darnley’s plot against Moray and Lethington. Bothwell, reading the letter among his friends, exclaimed, ‘Gyf any faith might be given to a princess, they’ (Darnley and Mary) ‘should never be togidder in bed agane.’ A version in English (the other paper is in Scots) makes Mary promise this to Bothwell when he entered her room, and found her washing her hands. Buchanan’s tales of Mary’s secret flight to Alloa, shortly after James’s birth, and her revels there in company with Bothwell and his crew of pirates, are well known. Lennox, however, represents her as departing to Stirling, ‘before her month,’ when even women of low degree keep the house, and as ‘taking her pleasure in most uncomely manner, arraied in homely sort, dancing about the market cross of the town.’
According to Nau, Mary and her ladies really resided at Alloa as guests of Lord Mar, one of the least treacherous and abandoned of her nobles. Bedford, in a letter of August 3, 1566, mentions Mary’s secret departure from Edinburgh, her intended meeting with Lethington (who had been exiled from Court since Riccio’s death), at Alloa, on August 2, and her disdainful words about Darnley. He adds that Bothwell is the most hated man in Scotland: ‘his insolence is such that David [Riccio] was never more abhorred than he is now,’ but Bedford says nothing of a love intrigue between Bothwell and Mary.[71] The visit to Alloa, with occasional returns to Edinburgh, is of July-August.
In August, Mary, Bothwell, Moray, and Darnley hunted in Meggatdale, the moorland region between the stripling Yarrow and the Tweed. They had poor sport: poachers had been busy among the deer. Charles IX., in France, now learned that the royal pair were on the best terms;[72] and Mary’s Inventories prove that, in August, she had presented Darnley with a magnificent bed; by no means ‘the second-best bed.’ In September she also gave him a quantity of cloth of gold, to make a caparison for his horse.[73] Claude Nau reports, however, various brutal remarks of Darnley to his wife while they were in Meggatdale. By September 20, Mary, according to Lethington, reconciled Bothwell and himself. This was a very important event. The reconciliation, Lethington says, was quietly managed at the house of a friend of his own, Argyll, Moray, and Bothwell alone being present. Moray says: ‘Lethington is restored to favour, wherein I trust he shall increase.’[74] This step was hostile to Darnley’s interests, for he had attempted to ruin Lethington. It is certain, as we shall see, that all parties were now united in a band to resist Darnley’s authority, and maintain that of the Queen, though, probably, nothing was said about violence.
At this very point Buchanan, supported and probably inspired by Lennox, makes the guilty intimacy of Mary and Bothwell begin in earnest. In September, 1566, Mary certainly was in Edinburgh, reconciling Lethington to Bothwell, and also working at the budget and finance in the Exchequer House. It ‘was large and had pleasant gardens to it, and next to the gardens, all along, a solitary vacant room,’ says Buchanan. But the real charm, he declares, was in the neighbourhood of the house of David Chalmers, a man of learning, and a friend of Bothwell. The back door of Chalmers’s house opened on the garden of the Exchequer House, and according to Buchanan, Bothwell thence passed, through the garden, to Mary’s chamber, where he overcame her virtue by force. She was betrayed into his hands by Lady Reres.[75]
This lady, who has been mentioned already, was the wife of Arthur Forbes of Reres. His castle, on a hill above the north shore of the Firth of Forth, is now but a grassy mound, near Lord Crawford’s house of Balcarres. The lady was a niece of Cardinal Beaton, a sister of the magic lady of Branksome, and aunt of one of the Four Maries, Mary Beaton. Buchanan describes her as an old love of Bothwell, ‘a woman very heavy, both by unwieldy age and massy substance;’ her gay days, then, must long have been over. She was also the mother of a fairly large family. Cecil absurdly avers that Bothwell obtained his divorce by accusing himself of an amour with this fat old lady.[76] Knox’s silly secretary, Bannatyne, tells us that the Reformer, dining at Falsyde, was regaled with a witch story by a Mr. Lundie. He said that when Lady Atholl and Mary were both in labour, in Edinburgh Castle, he came there on business, and found Lady Reres lying abed. ‘He asking her of her disease, she answered that she was never so troubled with no bairn that ever she bare, for the Lady Atholl had cast all the pain of her child-birth upon her.’[77] It was a case of Telepathy. Lady Reres had been married long enough to have a grown-up son, the young Laird of Reres, who was in Mary’s service at Carberry Hill (June, 1567). According to Dr. Joseph Robertson, Lady Reres was wet-nurse to Mary’s baby. But, if we trust Buchanan, she was always wandering about with Mary, while the nurseling was elsewhere. The name of Lady Reres does not occur among those of Mary’s household in her Etat of February 1567. We only hear of her, then, from Buchanan, as a veteran procuress of vast bulk who, at some remote period, had herself been the mistress of Bothwell.
A few days after the treasonable and infamous action of Bothwell in violating his Queen, we are to believe that Mary, still in the Exchequer House, sent Lady Reres for that hero. Though it would have been simple and easy to send a girl like Margaret Carwood, Mary and Margaret must needs let old Lady Reres ‘down by a string, over an old wall, into the next garden.’ Still easier would it have been for Lady Reres to use the key of the back door, as when she first admitted Bothwell. But these methods were not romantic enough: ‘Behold, the string suddenly broke, and down with a great noise fell Lady Reres.’ However, she returned with Bothwell, and so began these tragic loves.
This legend is backed, according to Buchanan, by the confession of Bothwell’s valet, George Dalgleish, ‘which still remaineth upon record,’ but is nowhere to be found. In Dalgleish’s confession, printed in the ‘Detection,’ nothing of the kind occurs. But a passage in the Casket Sonnet IX. is taken as referring to the condoned rape:
Pour luy aussi j’ai jeté mainte larme,
Premier, quand il se fist de ce corps possesseur,
Duquel alors il n’avoit pas le cœur.
In the Lennox MSS. Lennox himself dates the beginning of the intrigue with Bothwell about September, 1566. But he and Buchanan are practically but one witness. There is no other.
As regards this critical period, we have abundant contemporary information. The Privy Council, writing to Catherine de’ Medici, from Edinburgh, on October 8, make Mary, ten or twelve days before (say September 26), leave Stirling for Edinburgh, on affairs of the Exchequer. She offered to bring Darnley, but he insisted on remaining at Stirling, where Lennox visited him for two or three days, returning to Glasgow. Thence he wrote to Mary, warning her that Darnley had a vessel in readiness, to fly the country. The letter reached 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.
