The Mystery of Mary Stuart

PREFACE

In revising this book I have corrected a number of misreadings in the Arabic numerals of dates of years. I owe much to Mr. David Bruce-Gardyne and Mr. Hay Fleming. In deference to other criticisms offered privately, I have somewhat modified certain phrases about the hypothetical forged letter, as quoted by Moray and Lennox (pp. 211-236). That such a letter once existed is, of course, an inference on which readers must form their own opinion. The passage as to the site of Darnley’s house, Kirk o’ Field (pp. 124-131), ought to have been banished to an Appendix. On any theory the existence of the town wall, shown in the contemporary chart opposite p. 130, is a difficulty. The puzzle is caused by the chart of 1567, reduced in the design given at p. 130. In all published forms the drawing is given as it is here. But it reverses the points of the compass, east and west. Mr. A. H. Millar has suggested to me that if reflected in a mirror some errors of the chart disappear, whence one infers that it was drawn in reverse for an engraving. I have, therefore, corrected the text in this sense. But difficulties remain: there is a town wall, running south to north, of which we have no other knowledge; and Hamilton House (if the chart is reversed) is placed east instead of west of Kirk o’ Field, where it actually stood. The original design contains only the name of Hamilton House. In our chart the house is copied from the picture of it as part of the University buildings, in the map of 1647.

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Carlyle not unjustly described the tragedy of Mary Stuart as but a personal incident in the true national History of Scotland. He asked for other and more essential things than these revelations of high life. Yet he himself wrote in great detail the story of the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette. The diamonds of the French, the silver Casket of the Scottish Queen, with all that turned on them, are of real historical interest, for these trifles brought to the surface the characters and principles of men living in an age of religious revolution. Wells were sunk, as it were, deep into human personality, and the inner characteristics of the age leaped upwards into the light.

For this reason the Mystery of Mary Stuart must always fascinate: moreover, curiosity has never ceased to be aroused by this problem of Mary’s guilt or innocence. Hume said, a hundred and fifty years ago, that the Scottish Jacobite who believed in the Queen’s innocence was beyond the reach of reason or argument. Yet from America, Russia, France, and Germany we receive works in which the guilt of Mary is denied, and the arguments of Hume, Robertson, Laing, Mignet, and Froude are contested. Every inch of the ground has been inspected as if by detectives on the scene of a recent murder; and one might suppose that the Higher Criticism had uttered its last baseless conjecture and that every syllable of the fatal Casket Letters, the only external and documentary testimony to Mary’s guilt, must have been weighed, tested, and analysed. But this, as we shall see, is hardly the fact. There are ‘points as yet unseized by Germans.’ Mary was never tried by a Court of Justice during her lifetime. Her cause has been in process of trial ever since. Each newly discovered manuscript, like the fragmentary biography by her secretary, Nau, and the Declaration of the Earl of Morton, and the newly translated dispatches of the Spanish ambassadors, edited by Major Martin Hume (1894), has brought fresh light, and has modified the tactics of the attack and defence.

As Herr Cardauns remarks, at the close of his ‘Der Sturz der Maria Stuart,’ we cannot expect finality, and our verdicts or hypotheses may be changed by the emergence of some hitherto unknown piece of evidence. Already we have seen too many ingenious theories overthrown. From the defence of Mary by Goodall (1754) to the triumphant certainties of Chalmers (1818), to the arguments of MM. Philippson and Sepp, of Mr. Hosack, and of Sir John Skelton (1880-1895), increasing knowledge of facts, new emergence of old MSS. have, on the whole, weakened the position of the defence. Mr. Henderson’s book ‘The Casket Letters and Mary Stuart’ (First Edition 1889) is the last word on the matter in this country. Mr. Henderson was the first to publish in full Morton’s sworn Declaration as to the discovery, inspection, and safe keeping of the fatal Casket and its contents. Sir John Skelton’s reply[1] told chiefly against minor points of criticism and palæography.

The present volume is not a Defence of Mary’s innocence. My object is to show, how the whole problem is affected by the discovery of the Lennox Papers, which admit us behind the scenes, and enable us to see how Mary’s prosecutors, especially the Earl of Lennox, the father of her murdered husband, got up their case. The result of criticism of these papers is certainly to reinforce Mr. Hosack’s argument, that there once existed a forged version of the long and monstrous letter to Bothwell from Glasgow, generally known as ‘Letter II.’ In this book, as originally written, I had myself concluded that Letter II., as it stands, bears evidence of garbling. The same is the opinion of Dr. Bresslau, who accepts the other Casket Papers as genuine. The internal chronology of Letter II. is certainly quite impossible, and in this I detected unskilled dove-tailing of genuine and forged elements. But I thought it advisable to rewrite the first half of the Letter, in modern English, as if it were my own composition, and while doing this I discovered the simple and ordinary kind of accident which may explain the dislocation of the chronology, and remove the evidence to unskilled dove-tailing and garbling. In the same spirit of rather reluctant conscientiousness, I worked out the scheme of dates which makes the Letter capable of being fitted into the actual series of events. Thus I am led, though with diffidence, to infer that, though a forged version of Letter II. probably once existed, the Letter may be, at least in part, a genuine composition by the Queen. The fact, however, does not absolutely compel belief, and, unless new manuscripts are discovered, may always be doubted by admirers of Mary.

Sir John Skelton, in his ‘Maitland of Lethington,’ regarded the supposed falsification of Letter II. as an argument against all the Casket Letters (‘false in one thing, false in all’). But it is clear that forgery may be employed to strengthen the evidence, even of a valid cause. If Mary’s enemies deemed that the genuine evidence which they had collected was inadequate, and therefore added evidence which was not genuine, that proves their iniquity, but does not prove Mary’s innocence. Portions of the Letter II., and of some of the other Letters, have all the air of authenticity, and suffice to compromise the Queen.

This inquiry, then, if successfully conducted, does not clear Mary, but solves some of the darkest problems connected with her case. I think that a not inadequate theory of the tortuous and unintelligible policy of Maitland of Lethington, and of his real relations with Mary, is here presented. I also hope that new light is thrown on Mary’s own line of defence, and on the actual forgers or contaminators of her Letters, if the existence of such forgery or contamination is held to be possible.

By study of dates it is made clear, I think, that the Lords opposing Mary took action, as regards the Letters, on the very day of their discovery. This destroys the argument which had been based on the tardy appearance of the papers in the dispatches of the period, an argument already shaken by the revelations of the Spanish Calendar.

Mary’s cause has, hitherto, been best served by her accusers, most injured by her defenders. For political and personal reasons her enemies, her accomplices, or the conscious allies of her accomplices, perpetually stultified themselves and gave themselves the lie. Their case was otherwise very badly managed. Their dates were so carelessly compiled as to make their case chronologically impossible. Their position, as stated, probably by George Buchanan and Makgill, in ‘The Book of Articles,’ and the ‘Detection,’ is marred by exaggerations and inconsistencies. Buchanan was by no means a critical historian, and he was here writing as an advocate, mainly from briefs furnished by Lennox, his feudal chief, the father of the murdered Darnley. These briefs we now possess, and the generosity of Father Pollen, S.J., has allowed me to use these hitherto virgin materials.

The Lennox Papers also enable us to add new and dramatically appropriate anecdotes of Mary and Darnley, while, by giving us some hitherto unknown myths current at the moment, they enable us to explain certain difficulties which have puzzled historians. The whole subject throws a lurid light on the ethics and the persons of the age which followed the Reformation in Scotland. Other novelties may be found to emerge from new combinations of facts and texts which have long been familiar, and particular attention has been paid to the subordinate persons in the play, while a hitherto disregarded theory of the character of Bothwell is offered; a view already, in part, suggested by Mignet.

The arrangement adopted is as follows:

First, in two preliminary chapters, the characters and the scenes of the events are rapidly and broadly sketched. We try to make the men and women live and move in palaces and castles now ruinous or untenanted.

Next the relations of the characters to each other are described, from Mary’s arrival in Scotland to her marriage with Darnley; the murder of Riccio, the interval of the eleven predicted months that passed ere beside Riccio lay ‘a fatter than he,’ Darnley: the slaying of Darnley, the marriage with Bothwell, the discovery of the Casket, the imprisonment at Loch Leven, the escape thence, and the flight into England.

Next the External History of the Casket Letters, the first hints of their existence, their production before Elizabeth’s Commission at Westminster, and Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, with the obscure intrigues of the Commission at York, and the hasty and scuffling examinations at Westminster and Hampton Court, are described and explained.

Next the Internal Evidence of the Letters themselves is criticised.

Finally, the later history of the Letters, with the disappearance of the original alleged autograph texts, closes the subject.

Very minute examination of details and dates has been deemed necessary. The case is really a police case, and investigation cannot be too anxious, but certain points of complex detail are relegated to Appendices.

In writing the book I have followed, as Socrates advises, where the Logos led me. Several conclusions or theories which at first beguiled me, and seemed convincing, have been ruined by the occurrence of fresher evidence, and have been withdrawn. I have endeavoured to search for, and have stated, as fully as possible, the objections which may be urged to conclusions which are provisional, and at the mercy of criticism, and of fresh or neglected evidence.

The character of Mary, son naturel, as she says, or is made to say in the most incriminating Letter, is full of fascination, excellence and charm. Her terrible expiation has won the pity of gentle hearts, and sentiment has too often clouded reason, while reaction against sentiment has been no less mischievous. But History, the search for truth, should be as impersonal as the judge on the bench. I am not unaccustomed to be blamed for ‘destroying our illusions,’ but to cultivate and protect illusion has never been deemed the duty of the historian. Mary, at worst, and even admitting her guilt (guilt monstrous and horrible to contemplate) seems to have been a nobler nature than any of the persons most closely associated with her fortunes. She fell, if fall she did, like the Clytæmnestra to whom a contemporary poet compares her, under the almost demoniacal possession of passion; a possession so sudden, strange and overpowering that even her enemies attributed it to ‘unlawful arts.’

I have again to acknowledge the almost, or quite, unparalleled kindness of Father Pollen in allowing me to use his materials. He found transcripts of what I style the ‘Lennox MSS.’ among the papers of the late learned Father Stevenson, S.J. These he collated with the originals in the University Library at Cambridge. It is his intention, I understand, to publish the whole collection, which was probably put together for the use of Dr. Wilson, when writing, or editing, the ‘Actio,’ published with Buchanan’s ‘Detection.’ Father Pollen has also read most of my proof-sheets, but he is not responsible for any of my provisional conclusions. I have also consulted, on various points, Mr. George Neilson, Dr. Hay Fleming, Mr. A. H. Millar, and others.

Miss Dorothy Alston made reduced drawings, omitting the figures, of the contemporary charts of Edinburgh, and of Kirk o’ Field. Mr. F. Compton Price supplied the imitations of Mary’s handwriting, and the facsimiles in Plates A B, B A, &c.

For leave to photograph and publish the portrait of Darnley and his brother I have to acknowledge the gracious permission of his Majesty, the King.

The Duke of Hamilton has kindly given permission to publish photographs of the Casket at Hamilton Palace (see Chapter XVIII.).

The Earl of Morton has been good enough to allow his admirable portraits of Mary (perhaps of 1575) and of the Regent Morton to be reproduced.

Mr. Oliphant, of Rossie, has placed at my service his portrait of Mary as a girl, a copy, probably by Sir John Medina, of a contemporary French likeness.

To the kindness of the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour and Miss Balfour we owe the photographs of the famous tree at Whittingham, Mr. Balfour’s seat, where Morton, Lethington, and Bothwell conspired to murder Darnley.

The Lennox Papers are in the Cambridge University Library.

Too late for notice in the body of this book, the following curious piece of evidence was observed by Father Ryan, S.J., in the Cambridge MS. of the deposition of Hepburn of Bowton. This kinsman and accomplice of Bothwell was examined on December 8, 1567, before Moray, Atholl, Kirkcaldy, Lindsay, and Bellenden, Lord Justice Clerk. The version of his confession put in at the Westminster Conference, December 1568, will be found in Anderson, ii. 183-188, and in Laing, ii. 256-259. The MS. is in Cotton Caligula, C.I. fol. 325. It is attested as a ‘true copy’ by Bellenden. But if we follow the Cambridge MS. it is not a true copy. A long passage, following ‘and lay down with him,’ at the end, is omitted. That passage I now cite:

‘Farther this deponar sayis that he inquirit at my lord quhat securitie he had for it quhilk wes done, because their wes sic ane brute and murmor in the toun And my lord ansuerit that diuerse noblemen had subscrivit the deid with him And schew the same band[2] to the deponar, quhairat wes the subscriptionis of the erles of huntlie, ergile, boithuile altogether, and the secretares subscriptioun far beneth the rest. And insafar as the deponar remembers this was the effect of it, it contenit sum friuose [frivolous?] and licht caussis aganis the king sic as hys behavior contrar the quene, quhilk band wes in ane of twa silver cofferis and wes in dunbar, and the deponar saw the same there the tyme that they wer thare after the quenis revissing And understandis that the band wes with the remanent letters, and putt in the castell be george dalgleis. Inquirit quha deuisit that the king suld ludge at the kirk of feild?

‘Answeris Sr James balfor can better tell nor he And knew better and befoir the deponer yof. And quhen the Quene wes in glasgow my lord Boithuile send the deponar to Sr James balfor desiring that he wald cum and meit my lord at the kirk of feild To quhome Schir James ansuerit, “will my lord cum thair? gif he cum it wer gude he war quiet.” And yit they met not at that place than nor at natyme thairefter to the deponers knawledge.

‘Thair wes xiiii keyis quhilkis this deponer efter the murthor keist in the grevvell hoill [? quarrel-hoill, i. e. quarry hole] betuix the abbay and leith. And towardes the makers of the keyis they were maid betuix Leuestoun and Sr James balfor and thai twa can tell. Item deponis that Ilk ane that wer of the band and siclike the erle of Morton and Syr James balfor suld haif send twa men to the committing of the murther. And the erle boithuile declarit to the deponar are nyt or twa afore the murthor falland in talking of thame that wer in the kingis chalmer My lord said that Sandy Durham wes ane gude fallowe and he wald wische that he weir out of the same.

‘This is the trew copy, etc.’

Perhaps few will argue that this passage has been fraudulently inserted in the Cambridge MS. If not, Bellenden lied when he attested the mutilated deposition to be a true copy. His own autograph signature attests the Cambridge copy. Moray, who heard Bowton make his deposition, was a partner to the fraud. The portion of the evidence burked by Moray is corroborated, as regards the signatures of the band for Darnley’s murder, by Ormistoun, much later (Dec. 13, 1573) in Laing, ii. 293. Ormistoun, however, probably by an error of memory, says that he saw what Bothwell affirmed to be the signature of Sir James Balfour, in addition to those spoken of by Bowton, namely Argyll, Bothwell, Huntly, and Lethington. This statement as to Balfour Bowton withdrew in his dying confession as published. Bowton’s remark that Lethington’s signature came ‘far beneath the rest’ sounds true. Space would be left above for the signatures of men of higher rank than the secretary.

Bowton saw the band at Dunbar (April-May, 1567, during Mary’s detention there), ‘in one of two silver coffers.’ He only ‘understands’ that the band was ‘with the remanent letters, and put in the Castle by George Dalgleish.’ If ‘the remanent letters’ are the Casket Letters, and if Bowton, at Dunbar, had seen them with the band, and read them, his evidence would have been valuable as to the Letters. But as things are, we have merely his opinion, or ‘understanding,’ that certain letters were kept with the band, as Drury, we know, asserted that it was in the Casket with the other papers, and was destroyed, while the Letters attributed to Mary ‘were kept to be shown.’ Of course, if this be true, Morton lied when he said that the contents of the Casket had neither been added to nor diminished.

Next, Bowton denied that, to his knowledge, Bothwell and Balfour met at the Kirk o’ Field, while Mary was at Glasgow, or at any other time. If Bowton is right, and he was their go-between, Paris lied in his Deposition where he says that Bothwell and Sir James had passed a whole night in Kirk o’ Field, while Mary was at Glasgow.[3]

Bowton’s confession that Morton ‘should have sent two men to the committing of the murder,’ explains the presence of Archibald Douglas, Morton’s cousin, with Binning, his man. These two represented Morton. Finally, Bowton’s confession in the Cambridge MS. joins the copy of his confession put in at Westminster, on the point of the fourteen false keys of Kirk o’ Field, thrown by Bowton into a gravel hole. Unless then the Cambridge MS. is rejected, the Lord Justice Clerk and Moray deliberately suppressed evidence which proved that Moray was allied with two of Darnley’s murderers in prosecuting his sister for that crime. Such evidence, though extant, Moray, of course, dared not produce, but must burke at Westminster.

I have shown in the text (p. 144) that, even on Bowton’s evidence as produced at Westminster, Moray was aware that Bothwell had allies among the nobles, but that, as far as the evidence declares, he asked no questions. But the Cambridge MS. proves his full knowledge, which he deliberately suppressed. The Cambridge MS. must either have been furnished to Lennox, before the sittings at Westminster; or must have been the original, or a copy of the original, later supplied to Dr. Wilson while preparing Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’ the ‘Actio,’ and other documents for the press in November 1571.[4] It will be observed that when Lethington was accused of Darnley’s murder, in September 1569, Moray could not well have prosecuted him to a conviction, as his friends, Atholl and Kirkcaldy, having been present at Bowton’s examination, knew that Moray knew of Lethington’s guilt, yet continued to be his ally. The Cambridge copy of the deposition of Hay of Tala contains no reference to the guilt of Morton or Lethington; naturally, for Morton was present at Hay’s examination. Finally, the evidence of Binning, in 1581, shows that representatives of Lethington and Balfour, as well as of Morton, were present at the murder, as Bowton, in his suppressed testimony, says had been arranged.

It is therefore clear that Moray, in arraigning his sister with the aid of her husband’s assassins, could suppress authentic evidence. Mary’s apologists will argue that he was also capable of introducing evidence less than authentic.

I

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

History is apt to be, and some think that it should be, a mere series of dry uncoloured statements. Such an event occurred, such a word was uttered, such a deed was done, at this date or the other. We give references to our authorities, to men who heard of the events, or even saw them when they happened. But we, the writer and the readers, see nothing: we only offer or accept bald and imperfect information. If we try to write history on another method, we become ‘picturesque:’ we are composing a novel, not striving painfully to attain the truth. Yet, when we know not the details; – the aspect of dwellings now ruinous; the hue and cut of garments long wasted into dust; the passing frown, or smile, or tone of the actors and the speakers in these dramas of life long ago; the clutch of Bothwell at his dagger’s hilt, when men spoke to him in the street; the flush of Darnley’s fair face as Mary and he quarrelled at Stirling before his murder – then we know not the real history, the real truth. Now and then such a detail of gesture or of change of countenance is recorded by an eyewitness, and brings us, for a moment, into more vivid contact with the past. But we could only know it, and judge the actors and their conduct, if we could see the personages in their costume as they lived, passing by in some magic mirror from scene to scene. The stage, as in Schiller’s ‘Marie Stuart,’ comes nearest to reality, if only the facts given by the poet were real; and next in vividness comes the novel, such as Scott’s ‘Abbot,’ with its picture of Mary at Loch Leven, when she falls into an hysterical fit at the mention of Bastian’s marriage on the night of Darnley’s death. Far less intimate than these imaginary pictures of genius are the statements of History, dull when they are not ‘picturesque,’ and when they are ‘picturesque,’ sometimes prejudiced, inaccurate, and misleading.

We are to betake ourselves to the uninviting series of contradictory statements and of contested dates, and of disputable assertions, which are the dry bones of a tragedy like that of the ‘Agamemnon’ of Æschylus. Let us try first to make mental pictures of the historic people who play their parts on what is now a dimly lighted stage, but once was shone upon by the sun in heaven; by the stars of darkling nights on ways dimly discerned; by the candles of Holyrood, or of that crowded sick-room in Kirk o’ Field, where Bothwell and the Lords played dice round the fated Darnley’s couch; or by the flare of torches under which Mary rode down the Blackfriars Wynd and on to Holyrood.

The foremost person is the Queen, a tall girl of twenty-four, with brown hair, and sidelong eyes of red brown. Such are her sidelong eyes in the Morton portrait; such she bequeathed to her great-great-grandson, James, ‘the King over the Water.’ She was half French in temper, one of the proud bold Guises, by her mother’s side; and if not beautiful, she was so beguiling that Elizabeth recognised her magic even in the reports of her enemies.[5]

‘This lady and Princess is a notable woman,’ said Knollys; ‘she showeth a disposition to speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, and to be very familiar. She showeth a great desire to be avenged of her enemies, she showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory, she delighteth much to hear of hardiness and valiance, commending by name all approved hardy men of her country, although they be her enemies, and concealeth no cowardice even in her friends.’