Lang Andrew
The Mystery of Mary Stuart
VII
THE CONFESSIONS OF PARIS
Fatal depositions, if trustworthy, are those of the valet lent by Bothwell to Mary, on her road to Glasgow, in January, 1567. The case of Paris is peculiar. He had escaped with Bothwell, in autumn, 1567, to Denmark, and, on October 30, 1568, he was extradited to a Captain Clark, a notorious character. On July 16, 1567, the Captain had killed one Wilson, a seaman ‘much esteemed by the Lords,’ of Moray’s faction. They had quarrelled about a ship that was ordered to pursue Bothwell.[159] Nevertheless, in July, 1568, Clark was Captain of the Scots in Danish service, and was corresponding with Moray.[160] Clark could easily have sent Paris to England in time for the meetings of Commissioners to judge on Mary’s case, in December-January, 1568-1569. But Paris was not wanted: he might have proved an awkward witness. About August 30, 1569, Elizabeth wrote to Moray asking that Paris might be spared till his evidence could be taken. To spare him was now impossible: Paris was no more. He had arrived from Denmark in June, 1569, when Moray was in the North. Why had he not arrived in December, 1568, when Mary’s case was being heard at Westminster? He had been examined on August 9, 10, 1569, and was executed on August 15 at St. Andrews. A copy of his deposition was sent to Cecil, and Moray hoped it would be satisfactory to Elizabeth and to Lennox.[161]
In plain truth, the deposition of Paris was not wanted, when it might have been given, at the end of 1568, while Moray and Lethington and Morton were all working against Mary, before the same Commission. Later, differences among themselves had grown marked. Moray and Lethington had taken opposed lines as to Mary’s marriage with Norfolk in 1569, and the terms of an honourable settlement of her affairs. Lethington desired; Moray, in his own interest as Regent, opposed the marriage. A charge of guilt in Darnley’s murder was now hanging over Lethington, based on Paris’s deposition. The cloud broke in storm, he was accused by the useful Crawford, Lennox’s man, in the first week of September, 1569. Three weeks earlier, Moray had conveniently strengthened himself by taking the so long deferred evidence of Paris. Throughout the whole affair the witnesses were very well managed, so as to produce just what was needed, and no more. While Lethington and other sinners were working with Moray, then only evidence to the guilt of Bothwell and Mary was available. When Lethington became inconvenient, witness against him was produced. When Morton, much later (1581), was ‘put at,’ new evidence of his guilt was not lacking. Captain Cullen’s tale did not fit into the political combinations of September, 1567, when the poor Captain was taken. It therefore was not adduced at Westminster or Hampton Court. It was judiciously burked.
Moray did not send the ‘authentick’ record of Paris’s deposition to Cecil till October, 1569, though it was taken at St. Andrews on August 9 and 10.[162] When Moray at last sent it, he had found that Lethington definitely refused to aid him in betraying Norfolk. The day of reconciliation was ended. So Moray sent the ‘authentick’ deposition of Paris, which he had kept back for two months, in hopes that Lethington (whom it implicated) might join him in denouncing Norfolk after all.
Paris, we said, was examined (there is no record showing that he ever was tried) at St. Andrews. On the day of his death, Moray caused Sir William Stewart, Lyon King at Arms, by his own appointment, to be burned for sorcery. Of his trial no record exists. He had been accused of a conspiracy against Moray, whom he certainly did not admire, no proof had been found, and he was burned as a wizard, or consulter of wizards.[163] The deposition of Paris on August 10 is in the Record Office, and is signed at the end of each page with his mark. We are not told who heard the depositions made. We are only told that when it was read to him before George Buchanan, John Wood (Moray’s man), and Robert Ramsay, he acknowledged its truth: Ramsay being the writer of ‘this declaration,’ that is of the deposition. He wrote French very well, and was a servant of Moray. There is another copy with a docquet asserting its authenticity, witnessed by Alexander Hay, Clerk of the Privy Council, who, according to Nau, wrote the old band against Darnley (October, 1566), and who was a correspondent of Knox.[164] Hay does not seem to mean that the deposition of Paris was taken in his presence, but that II. is a correct copy of Number I. If so, he is not ‘guilty of a double fraud,’ as Mr. Hosack declares. Though he omits the names of the witnesses, Wood, Ramsay, and Buchanan, he does not represent himself as the sole witness to the declaration. He only attests the accuracy of the copy of Number I. Whether Ramsay, Wood, and Buchanan examined Paris, we can only infer: whether they alone did so, we know not: that he was hanged and quartered merely on the strength of his own deposition, we think highly probable. It was a great day for St. Andrews: a herald was burned, a Frenchman was hanged, and a fourth of his mortal remains was fixed on a spike in a public place.
Paris said, when examined in August, 1569, that on Wednesday or Thursday of the week of Darnley’s death, Bothwell told him in Mary’s room at Kirk o’ Field, Mary being in Darnley’s, that ‘we Lords’ mean to blow up the King and this house with powder. But Bowton says, that till the Friday, Bothwell meant to kill Darnley ‘in the fields.’[165] Bothwell took Paris aside for a particular purpose: he was suffering from dysentery, and said, ‘Ne sçais-tu point quelque lieu là où je pouray aller…?’ ‘I never was here in my life before,’ said Paris.
Now as Bothwell, by Paris’s own account (derived from Bothwell himself), had passed an entire night in examining the little house of Kirk o’ Field, how could he fail to know his way about in so tiny a dwelling? Finally, Paris found ung coing ou trou entre deux portes, whither he conducted Bothwell, who revealed his whole design.
Robertson, cited by Laing, remarks that the narrative of Paris ‘abounds with a number of minute facts and particularities which the most dexterous forger could not have easily assembled and connected together with any appearance of probability.’ The most bungling witness who ever perjured himself could not have brought more impossible inconsistencies than Paris brings into a few sentences, and he was just as rich in new details, when, in a second confession, he contradicted his first. In the insanitary, and, as far as listeners were concerned, insecure retreat ‘between two doors,’ Bothwell bluntly told Paris that Darnley was to be blown up, because, if ever he got his feet on the Lords’ necks, he would be tyrannical. The motive was political. Paris pointed out the moral and social inconveniences of Bothwell’s idea. ‘You fool!’ Bothwell answered, ‘do you think I am alone in this affair? I have Lethington, who is reckoned one of our finest wits, and is the chief undertaker in this business; I have Argyll, Huntly, Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay. These three last will never fail me, for I spoke in favour of their pardon, and I have the signatures of all those whom I have mentioned, and we were inclined to do it lately when we were at Craigmillar; but you are a dullard, not fit to hear a matter of weight.’ If Bothwell said that Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay signed the band, he, in all probability, lied. But does any one believe that the untrussed Bothwell, between two doors, held all this talk with a wretched valet, arguing with him seriously, counting his allies, real or not, and so forth? Paris next (obviously enlightened by later events) observed that the Lords would make Bothwell manage the affair, ‘but, when it is once done, they may lay the whole weight of it on you’ (which, when making his deposition, he knew they had done), ‘and will be the first to cry Haro! on you, and pursue you to death.’ Prophetic Paris! He next asked, What about a man dearly beloved by the populace, and the French? ‘No troubles in the country when he governed for two or three years, all was well, money was cheap; look at the difference now,’ and so forth. ‘Who is the man?’ asked Bothwell. ‘Monsieur de Moray; pray what side does he take?’
‘He won’t meddle.’
‘Sir, he is wise.’
‘Monsieur de Moray, Monsieur de Moray! He will neither help nor hinder, but it is all one.’
Bothwell, by a series of arguments, then tried to make Paris steal the key of Mary’s room. He declined, and Bothwell left the appropriate scene of this prolonged political conversation. It occupies more than three closely printed pages of small type.
Paris then devotes a page and a half to an account of a walk, and of his reflections. On Friday, Bothwell met him, asked him for the key, and said that Sunday was the day for the explosion. Now, in fact, Saturday had been fixed upon, as Tala declared.[166] Paris took another walk, thought of looking for a ship to escape in, but compromised matters by saying his prayers. On Saturday, after dinner, Bothwell again asked for the key: adding that Balfour had already given him a complete set of false keys, and that they two had passed a whole night in examining the house. So Paris stole the key, though Bothwell had told him that he need not, if he had not the heart for it. After he gave it to Bothwell, Marguerite (Carwood?) sent him back for a coverlet of fur: Sandy Durham asked him for the key, and he referred Sandy to the huissier, Archibald Beaton. This Sandy is said in the Lennox MSS. to have been warned by Mary to leave the house. He was later arrested, but does not seem to have been punished.
On Sunday morning, Paris heard that Moray had left Edinburgh, and said within himself, ‘O Monsieur de Moray, you are indeed a worthy man!’ The wretch wished, of course, to ingratiate himself with Moray, but his want of tact must have made that worthy man wince. Indeed Paris’s tactless disclosures about Moray, who ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and did sneak off, may be one of the excellent reasons which prevented Cecil from adding Paris’s deposition, when he was asked for it, to the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection.’[167] When the Queen was at supper, on the night of the crime, with Argyll (it really was with the Bishop of Argyll) and was washing her hands after supper, Paris came in. She asked Paris whether he had brought the fur coverlet from Kirk o’ Field. Bothwell then took Paris out, and they acted as in the depositions of Powrie and the rest, introducing the powder. Bothwell rebuked Tala and Bowton for making so much noise, which was heard above, as they stored the powder in Mary’s room. Paris next accompanied Bothwell to Darnley’s room, and Argyll, silently, gave him a caressing dig in the ribs. After some loose babble, Paris ends, ‘And that is all I know about the matter.’
This deposition was made ‘without constraint or interrogation.’ But it was necessary that he should know more about the matter. Next day he was interrogué, doubtless in the boot or the pilniewinks, or under threat of these. He must incriminate the Queen. He gave evidence now as to carrying a letter (probably Letter II. is intended) to Bothwell, from Mary at Glasgow, in January, 1567. His story may be true, as we shall see, if the dates put in by the accusers are incorrect: and if another set of dates, which we shall suggest, are correct.
Asked as to familiarities between Bothwell and Mary, he said, on Bothwell’s information, that Lady Reres used to bring him, late at night, to Mary’s room; and that Bothwell bade him never let Mary know that Lady Bothwell was with him in Holyrood! Paris now remembered that, in the long conversation in the hole between two doors, Bothwell had told him not to put Mary’s bed beneath Darnley’s, ‘for that is where I mean to put the powder.’ He disobeyed. Mary made him move her bed, and he saw that she was in the plot. Thereon he said to her, ‘Madame, Monsieur de Boiduel told me to bring him the keys of your door, and that he has an inclination to do something, namely to blow the King into the air with powder, which he will place here.’
This piece of evidence has, by some, been received with scepticism, which is hardly surprising. Paris places the carrying of a letter (about the plot to make Lord Robert kill Darnley?) on Thursday night. It ought to be Friday, if it is to agree with Cecil’s Journal: ‘Fryday. She ludged and lay all nycht agane in the foresaid chalmer, and frome thence wrayt, that same nycht, the letter concerning the purpose of the abbott of Halyrudhouse.’ On the same night, Bothwell told Paris to inform Mary that he would not sleep till he achieved his purpose, ‘were I to trail a pike all my life for love of her.’ This means that the murder was to be on Friday, which is absurd, unless Bothwell means to wake for several nights. Let us examine the stories told by Paris about the key, or keys, of Mary’s room. In the first statement, Paris was asked by Bothwell at the Conference between Two Doors, for the key of Mary’s room. This was on Wednesday or Thursday. On Friday, Bothwell asked again for the key, and said the murder was fixed for Sunday, which it was not, but for Saturday. On Saturday, Bothwell again demands that key, after dinner. He says that he has duplicates, from James Balfour, of all the keys. Paris takes the key, remaining last in Mary’s room at Kirk o’ Field, as she leaves it to go to Holyrood. Paris keeps the key, and returns to Kirk o’ Field. Sandy Durham, Darnley’s servant, asks for the key. Paris replies that keys are the affair of the Usher. ‘Well,’ says Durham, ‘since you don’t want to give it to me!’ So, clearly, Paris kept it. On Sunday night, Bothwell bade Paris go to the Queen’s room in Kirk o’ Field, ‘and when Bowton, Tala, and Ormistoun shall have entered, and done what they want to do, you are to leave the room, and come to the King’s room and thence go where you like… The rest can do without you’ (in answer to a remonstrance), ‘for they have keys enough.’ Paris then went into the kitchen of Kirk o’ Field, and borrowed and lit a candle: meanwhile Bowton and Tala entered the Queen’s room, and deposited the powder. Paris does not say that he let them in with the key, which he had kept all the time; at least he never mentions making any use of it, though of course he did.
In the second statement, Paris avers that he took the keys (the number becomes plural, or dual) on Friday, not on Saturday, as in the first statement, and not after the Queen had left the room (as in the first statement), but while she was dressing. He carried them to Bothwell, who compared them with other, new, false keys, examined them, and said ‘They are all right! take back these others.’ During the absence of Paris, the keys were missed by the Usher, Archibald Beaton, who wanted to let Mary out into the garden, and Mary questioned Paris aloud, on his return. This is not probable, as, by his own second statement, he had already told her, on Wednesday or Thursday, that Bothwell had asked him for the keys, as he wanted to blow Darnley sky high. She would, therefore, know why Paris had the keys of her room, and would ask no questions.[168] On Saturday, after dinner, Bothwell bade him take the key of Mary’s room, and Mary also told him to do so. He took it. Thus, in statement II., he has his usual De Foe-like details, different from those equally minute in statement I. He takes the keys, or key, at a different time, goes back with them in different circumstances, is asked for them by different persons, and takes a key twice, once on Friday, once on Saturday, though Bothwell, having duplicates that were ‘all right’ (elles sont bien), did not need the originals. As to these duplicates, Bowton declared that, after the murder, he threw them all into a quarry hole between Holyrood and Leith.[169] Tala declared that Paris had a key of the back door.[170] Nelson says that Beaton, Mary’s usher, kept the keys: he and Paris.[171]
Paris, of course under torture or fear of torture, said whatever might implicate Mary. On Friday night, in the second statement, Paris again carried letters to Bothwell; if he carried them both on Thursday and Friday, are both notes in the Casket Letters? The Letter of Friday was supposed to be that about the affair of Lord Robert and Darnley. On Saturday Mary told Paris to bid Bothwell send Lord Robert and William Blackadder to Darnley’s chamber ‘to do what Bothwell knows, and to speak to Lord Robert about it, for it is better thus than otherwise, and he will only have a few days’ prison in the Castle for the same.’ Bothwell replied to Paris that he would speak to Lord Robert, and visit the Queen. This was on Saturday evening (au soyr), after the scene, whatever it was or was not, between Darnley and Lord Robert on Saturday morning.[172] As to that, Mary ‘told her people in her chamber that Lord Robert had enjoyed a good chance to kill the King, because there was only herself to part them.’ Lennox in his MSS. avers that Moray was present, and ‘can declare it.’ Buchanan says that Mary called in Moray to separate her wrangling husband and brother, hoping that Moray too would be slain! Though the explosion was for Sunday night, Mary, according to Paris, was still urging the plan of murder by Lord Robert on Saturday night, and Bothwell was acquiescing.
The absurd contradictions which pervade the statements of Paris are conspicuous. Hume says: ‘It is in vain at present to seek improbabilities in Nicholas Hubert’s dying confession, and to magnify the smallest difficulty into a contradiction. It was certainly a regular judicial paper, given in regularly and judicially, and ought to have been canvassed at the time, if the persons whom it concerned had been assured of their own innocence.’ They never saw it: it was authenticated by no judicial authority: it was not ‘given in regularly and judicially,’ but was first held back, and then sent by Moray, when it suited his policy, out of revenge on Lethington. Finally, it was not ‘a dying confession.’ Dying confessions are made in prison, or on the scaffold, on the day of death. That of Paris ‘took God to record, at the time of his death’ (August 15), ‘that this murder was by your’ (the Lords’) ‘counsel, invention, and drift committed,’ and also declared that he ‘never knew the Queen to be participant or ware thereof.’ So says Lesley, but we have slight faith in him.[173] He speaks in the same sentence of similar dying confessions by Tala, Powrie, and Dalgleish.
I omit the many discrepant accounts of dying confessions accusing or absolving the Queen. Buchanan says that Dalgleish, in the Tolbooth, confessed the Exchequer House fabliau, and that this is duly recorded, but it does not appear in his Dying Confession printed in the ‘Detection.’ In his, Bowton says that ‘the Queen’s mind was acknowledged thereto.’ The Jesuits, in 1568, were informed that Bowton, at his trial, impeached Morton and Balfour, and told Moray that he spared to accuse him, ‘because of your dignity.’[174] These statements about dying confessions were bandied, in contradictory sort, by both sides. The confession of Morton, attested, and certainly not exaggerated, by two sympathetic Protestant ministers, is of another species, and, as far as it goes, is evidence, though Morton obviously does not tell all he knew. The part of Paris’s statement about the crime ends by saying that Huntly came to Bothwell at Holyrood, late on the fatal night, and whispered with him, as Bothwell changed his evening dress, after the dance at Holyrood, for a cavalry cloak and other clothes. Bothwell told Paris that Huntly had offered to accompany him, but that he would not take him. Morton, in his dying confession, declared that Archibald Douglas confessed that he and Huntly were both present: contradicting Paris as to Huntly.
The declarations of Paris were never published at the time. On November 8, 1571, Dr. Wilson, who was apparently translating something – the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan, or the accompanying Oration (‘Actio’), into sham Scots – wrote to Cecil, ‘desiring you to send unto me “Paris” closely sealed, and it shall not be known from whence it cometh.’ Cecil was secretly circulating libels on Mary, but ‘Paris’ was not used. His declarations would have clashed with the ‘Detection’ as written when only Bothwell and Mary were to be implicated. The truth, that there was a great political conspiracy, including some of Mary’s accusers, and perhaps Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven (for so Paris makes Bothwell say), would have come out. The fact that Moray ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and sneaked off, would have been uttered to the world. The glaring discrepancies would have been patent to criticism. So Cecil withheld documents unsuited to his purpose of discrediting Mary.[175]
The one valuable part of Paris’s declarations concerns the carrying of a Glasgow letter. And that is only valuable if we supply the accusers with possible dates, in place of their own impossible chronology, and if we treat as false their tale[176] that Bothwell ‘lodged in the town’ when he returned from Calendar to Edinburgh. The earlier confessions, especially those of Tala, were certainly mutilated, as we have seen, and only what suited the Lords came out. That of Paris was a tool to use against Lethington, but, as it also implicated Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven, with Argyll and Huntly, who might become friends of Morton and Moray, Paris’s declaration was a two-edged sword, and, probably, was little known in Scotland. In England it was judiciously withheld from the public eye. Goodall writes (1754): ‘I well remember that one of our late criminal judges, of high character for knowledge and integrity, was, by reading it [Paris’s statement], induced to believe every scandal that had been thrown out against the Queen.’ A criminal judge ought to be a good judge of evidence, yet the statements of Paris rather fail, when closely inspected, to carry conviction.
Darnley, in fact, was probably strangled by murderers of the Douglas and Lethington branches of the conspiracy. On the whole, it seems more probable that the powder was placed in Mary’s room than not, though all contemporary accounts of its effects make against this theory. As touching Mary, the confessions are of the very slightest value. The published statements, under examination, of Powrie, Dalgleish, Tala, and Bowton do not implicate her. That of Bowton rather clears her than otherwise. Thus: the theory of the accusers, supported by the declaration of Paris, was that, when the powder was ‘fair in field,’ properly lodged in Mary’s room, under that of Darnley, Paris was to enter Darnley’s room as a signal that all was prepared. Mary then left the room, in the time required ‘to say a paternoster.’ But Bowton affirmed that, as he and his fellows stored the powder, Bothwell ‘bade them make haste, before the Queen came forth of the King’s house, for if she came forth before they were ready, they would not find such commodity.’ This, for what it is worth, implies that no signal, such as the entrance of Paris, had been arranged for the Queen’s departure. The self-contradictory statements of Paris can be torn to shreds in cross-examination, whatever element of truth they may contain. The ‘dying confessions’ are contradictorily reported, and all the reports are worthless. The guilt of some Lords, and their alliance with the other accusers, made it impossible for the Prosecution to produce a sound case. As their case stands, as it is presented by them, a jury, however convinced, on other grounds, of Mary’s guilt, would feel constrained to acquit the Queen of Scots.
