But Mary’s courageous demeanour on the scaffold obliterated for many—as it still does—the earlier image of her as an adulteress and murderess, and led to perceptions of her as a tragic heroine rather than a fallen woman.
When Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603, James VI of Scotland succeeded her as James I of England, and Mary’s and Maitland’s vision of the union of the crowns was fulfilled. However, this was a Protestant union, and Mary’s hopes of the two kingdoms being returned to the Church of Rome were never to be realised.
Although James had loudly condemned his mother’s execution, he did not allow it to prejudice his friendship with Elizabeth nor his hopes of the English succession. But his conscience remained disquieted, and in 1612, to ease it, he translated Mary’s remains to a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey, in the opposite side chapel of the Henry VII Chapel to that where Elizabeth lay. Mary’s tomb is next to that of Lady Lennox, and bears a beautiful effigy of white marble. She lies among the English monarchs, whose throne she so coveted in life but was destined never to occupy.
It is said that James also ordered the demolition of Fotheringhay Castle, but in fact he sold it off. It was already decaying and was described as ruinous in 1635, ten years after James’s death. It was later dismantled and its stones used for local buildings. The staircase down which Mary walked to her execution is now in the Talbot Hotel at Oundle, which was built in 1626. All that remains of Fotheringhay today is the grassy mound on which it once stood and a single block of masonry.
Most of those who had been involved in one way or another in Darnley’s murder had now died or come to a violent end. Only Archibald Douglas, the actual murderer, survived in prosperity.
Given the nature of the circumstantial evidence against Mary, it is not surprising that so many writers have concluded, with the Dean of Peterborough, that her execution was a just punishment for one who had killed her husband. But it can be demonstrated again and again—and has been in this text—that the bulk of the evidence against Mary is flawed. Apart from the notorious Casket Letters and the highly dubious deposition of Paris, there is no documentary evidence of an adulterous relationship with Bothwell, nor is there any contemporary evidence that Mary plotted Darnley’s death. Leaving aside the later libels and the claims of her enemies, who had powerful motives for constructing a case against her, there is nothing but the often ill-informed opinions of historians to condemn her. The arguments for her innocence are many, and have been well rehearsed in the foregoing chapters. Taken together, they constitute a strong case in her defence.
It is easy to see why Mary’s detractors consider her guilty. Even after extensive research, I believed, as I began to write this book, that Mary was guilty. But when I came to analyse the source material in depth, it became increasingly obvious that such a conclusion was not possible. Mary’s own reluctance to answer the Lords’ charges against her has been seen as suspicious, but it clearly arose from her conviction that she was not answerable to anyone but her equal, Elizabeth, rather than from a wish to evade awkward questions. It has been said that she never directly refuted the charges, but, as we have seen, that is not so.
Mary’s poor judgement repeatedly served her ill. Her imprudent marriage to Darnley, her rash favour shown to Rizzio and her utterly foolish decision to flee to Protestant England rather than Catholic France, and to ask for succour from a queen whose throne she had laid claim to, all contributed to her ruin. Yet she had no control over the events that overtook her, the plotting that led to Darnley’s death, and her own frail health which prevented her from responding to his murder as her contemporaries expected. Nor, as an inexperienced Catholic female sovereign, could she halt the reformist movement in Scotland, of which her removal from power was a natural progression. Instead, in an age that did not understand religious tolerance, she followed a policy of conciliation whilst making the right noises to the Pope about the restoration of Catholicism, and consequently lost credibility with both sides. Her tragedy was that she was in many respects innately unsuited for the role to which she had been born. Compared with her cousin Elizabeth, she was a political innocent, and as such she was thrust into a situation in which a seasoned, hard-headed male ruler might have floundered.
No court of law would today convict Mary of the charges laid against her by the Lords. The integrity of her character is well attested by the opinions of those who faithfully served her over a period of many years. That she was the object of an extended campaign of character assassination is beyond doubt. Furthermore, since so much of the evidence of her enemies has been discredited, doubt must be cast on the rest. Mary paid a high price for the ambitions of others: she paid for it in the loss of her throne, the long years of captivity, separation and alienation from her only living child, and her own violent death. In the circumstances, she must, with justice, be regarded as one of the most wronged women in history.
POSTSCRIPT
Six years ago, when I wrote my biography of Elizabeth I, I did a great deal of background research on her rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. Until that time, my knowledge of Mary had been superficial at best, and I was unaware of the depth of controversy that surrounded her role in the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley. Nor did I realise that the conclusions that I finally, and in good faith, reached would be so contentious. Unsurprisingly, and quite rightly, they were edited out of Elizabeth I.
Yet I remained intrigued by the mystery surrounding Darnley’s murder, and when I suggested to my publishers that I write a book investigating Mary’s possible involvement in it, they readily agreed. I had little idea then of what I was letting myself in for. Firstly, reams had been written on the subject since the sixteenth century; secondly, most of the evidence was contradictory or hopelessly prejudiced—indeed, at least three-quarters of the original source material had been written by Mary’s enemies; and thirdly, to judge by the modern literature on the subject, many people still hold strong opinions as to whether or not Mary was guilty. Yet the last full-scale investigation was printed as long ago as 1967, so a reappraisal of the matter was long overdue.
It therefore became my mission to amass as much evidence as possible. In order to do so, I consulted numerous works, and in the process gathered more information than has ever appeared in any other work. Having transcribed tens of thousands of pieces of research, I numbered each one and entered it in sequence on a vast chronological plan that ran to 103 pages. I had thought that the book plan for my previous book, Henry VIII: The King and His Court, was complicated, but that ran to only 40 pages.
Using a strictly chronological plan had worked well for a book that I wrote twelve years ago on another royal murder mystery, The Princess in the Tower, and produced astonishing results—but that was a picnic compared to solving the puzzle of Darnley’s murder.
My objective was to assess the evidence objectively, and to strip away centuries of political, religious, and romantic bias. But even so, with my research completed and my plan drawn up, I had little idea of what conclusion I was going to draw: was Mary guilty, or was she innocent? On the face of it, it would have been possible to write two books with different outcomes, each supported by contemporary evidence. In the event, considering what I had read so far, and after much deliberation, I decided to base my theory on what appeared to be compelling circumstantial evidence. It was not until I had actually written a substantial part of the book, and come to analyse the evidence for the plot against Darnley, that I realised that my original conclusion was flawed; and it was at this point that I came round full circle to the opposite opinion.
Mary, Queen of Scots, is one of the most intriguing and controversial figures in history. Born in 1542, she was the daughter of James V, King of Scots, by his French wife, Marie de Guise. Mary succeeded to the throne when she was only a week old, and immediately became the focus of Henry VIII’s ambition to marry her to his son, the future Edward VI, and thus unite England and Scotland under Tudor rule. But the Scots had no wish to give up thei
r independence, so Mary was sent, at the age of five, to be brought up at the French court, where she received a good education and learned every feminine accomplishment. In 1558, the fifteen-year-old Mary, now an acknowledged beauty, was married to the Dauphin Francis, son and heir of Henry II, King of France.
Later that year, the Catholic Queen Mary I of England died, and was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I. In the eyes of Catholic Europe, Elizabeth was a heretic, a bastard, and a usurper, and the rightful Queen of England was her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Immediately, Henry II had Mary proclaimed Queen of England, much to Elizabeth’s fury and the consternation of the English government. But Henry II had too many other preoccupations to invade England on his daughter-in-law’s behalf. Mary later dropped the title Queen of England, but continued to press for her right to be designated Elizabeth’s successor, a demand that Elizabeth was to frustrate at every turn. The acquisition of the English throne would remain the driving ambition of Mary’s life, dominating her policies as Queen of Scots and permanently souring her relations with Elizabeth I.
In 1560, the young King Francis died, and the following year a grieving Mary reluctantly left the luxurious French court and returned to her more spartan native land to take up the reins of government. She was eighteen years old and received a generally warm welcome from her subjects.
But Mary’s position as a Catholic Queen in a land that had recently undergone a hardline Protestant revolution was never going to be easy, and the problems she faced would have been daunting even for a strong, experienced male ruler. Her conciliatory policy with regard to religion was neither understood nor approved of in that dogmatic age, and she was only tolerated by the Protestant establishment as long as she remained in tutelage to the ruling clique, the so-called Lords of the Congregation, who were headed by her bastard half-brother, the Earl of Moray. All went relatively well until Mary tried to shake off that tutelage and act independently, as she did over her second marriage.
Mary was a highly desirable bride and did not lack for suitors, but she was initially determined to make a grand marriage with Don Carlos, the heir to Phillip II of Spain. When Don Carlos was found to be insane and Phillip terminated the negotiations, Mary’s thoughts turned to her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was regarded by many as having a stronger claim to the English throne than she did herself. The uniting of two such claims posed a serious threat to Queen Elizabeth; nor did the Scottish Lords want their Queen to marry the reputedly Catholic Darnley. Nevertheless, in 1565, the eighteen-year-old Darnley traveled north to Scotland to woo the Queen, and Mary rapidly became infatuated with him.
Ignoring the vociferous opposition, Mary married Darnley with almost indecent haste. The honeymoon was spent quelling a rebellion on the part of the Scottish Lords.
Mary was soon to regret her hastiness. Despite his good looks, Darnley was weak, vicious and promiscuous, certainly with women and possibly with men also. Within weeks, the royal marriage was on the rocks.
The situation only grew worse during the ensuing months, as Mary turned to her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, for companionship, giving rise to scandalous rumors—which Darnley believed—that she was betraying her marriage vows. Indeed, if she was not having an affair with Rizzio, her behavior certainly gave the impression that she was.
Despite the growing rift between the royal couple, Mary became pregnant. Darnley continually pressed her to grant him the Crown Matrimonial, which would give him the right of succession in the event of her death, but she adamantly refused. Early in 1566, Darnley, his jealousy at the boiling point, entered into an unlikely alliance with the Protestant Lords to remove the hated Rizzio, their mutual enemy. But even those hardened nobles were shocked when Darnley insisted that the hated Italian be slain in Mary’s presence, in the apparent hope of inducing a miscarriage and possibly the Queen’s death; the Lords had cunningly promised him the Crown Matrimonial, so that he could rule in her stead, but of course they had no intention of keeping their promise to the young fool. Without Mary, Darnley would be nothing in Scotland.
After Rizzio’s murder, Mary was shut up in her apartments by the Lords. Yet despite her shock and horror, she was able to persuade Darnley that he had been used by the treacherous nobles, who would soon certainly turn on him. Together, Mary and Darnley managed to escape from the Lords, and with the help of the loyal Earl of Bothwell, Mary was able to reestablish her authority as Queen.
Those Lords who had taken part in Rizzio’s death were exiled, but in order to wreak revenge upon Darnley, who had deserted and betrayed them, they wrote to the Queen revealing the true part he had played in the conspiracy. This was something Mary could not forgive, and for a long time afterwards, she and Darnley were virtually estranged. However, in view of the scurrilous rumors about the paternity of her unborn child, the Queen dared not risk alienating her husband too greatly, in case he denied that he was its father; when her son James was born in June 1566, she made Darnley publicly acknowledge the infant as his own. “He is so much your son,” she said, “that I fear it will be the worse for him.”
Relations between the royal couple now went from bad to worse; Darnley continued to plot against Mary and to defame her reputation in the eyes of Catholic Europe. When Mary became seriously ill in the autumn of 1566, her advisors blamed her broken health on the emotional strain she was suffering because of Darnley. At this time, she told those about her that she wanted to die, for she saw no way out of her miserable marriage.
In December 1566, at a conference held in Craigmillar Castle near Edinburgh, Mary’s Lords discussed the problem of Darnley with her. An annulment was ruled out because it would impugn the legitimacy of Prince James, and Darnley could not be arraigned for treason because he was King of Scots and in Scotland a king could not technically be guilty of treason. The Lords told Mary to leave the problem with them, and then “Your Grace shall see nothing but good and approved by Parliament.” Mary had insisted, however, that Darnley must not be got rid of by any means that touched her honor or the legitimacy of her child. In return for their support, the Lords pressured her into agreeing, much against her will, to the return of the Lords who had been exiled for Rizzio’s murder; but they were pardoned only on condition that they did not approach within seven miles of the court for two years. This suggests that Mary must have guessed that they would be out for Darnley’s blood. What she may not have known was that, at Craigmillar, the Lords she had consulted with had privately drawn up a bond for Darnley’s murder.
On the day the exiled Lords returned to Scotland, Darnley fled to Glasgow, his father’s power base. On the way, he fell seriously ill. It was given out that he had smallpox, but all the evidence suggests something rather worse.
Meanwhile, Mary had received the disturbing intelligence that Darnley had been plotting to seize her throne. She dared not leave him where he was, and reluctantly rode to Glasgow with the intention of bringing him back to Edinburgh. After some straight talking, there followed a reconciliation that many have viewed as suspicious. Was Mary luring Darnley to his death? Or did she genuinely intend to be reconciled to him, having realised that there was no honorable way out of their marriage?
Mary’s intention was that Darnley should complete his convalescence within the securely fortified Craigmillar Castle, but Darnley himself chose to lodge in the collegiate quadrangle at Kirk o’Field, south of Edinburgh. Here, the Queen and her courtiers visited him daily, and Darnley wrote to his father that “my love the Queen” could not do enough for him. He made rapid progress and it was decided that he should return to Holyrood, and resume married life with Mary, on Monday, 10 February 1567. Mary spent the evening of the 9th with him, then—all too conveniently, some believe— she left with her courtiers to attend a wedding masque at the palace. At two o’clock the following morning, Darnley’s lodging was completely destroyed in an explosion that shook the city of Edinburgh; three hours later, his unmarked body was found in a garden some w
ay from the house. There was no doubt that he had been murdered.
Soon, with very good reasons, the finger of public suspicion pointed at the ambitious Bothwell as Darnley’s murderer, and when it became apparent that the Queen was doing very little to track down the killers, that finger pointed at her also. Yet few of her subjects were aware that she had suffered a mental and physical breakdown after Darnley’s death.
It was the government that should have initiated proceedings against Bothwell, yet it was left to Darnley’s father, the Earl of Lennox, to bring a private prosecution against the Earl. But the law permitted Lennox to bring only six followers into Edinburgh with him; it did not, however, prevent Bothwell from packing the city with four thousand of his armed followers. Not surprisingly, Lennox deemed it prudent to stay away, and without the only witness for the prosecution, Bothwell was acquitted.
With his name cleared, Bothwell coerced the nobles into supporting his suit to the Queen, but when he proposed marriage to Mary, she turned him down. When, less than three months after the murder, Bothwell abducted and almost certainly raped Mary, some said that it had been done with her collusion. Their necessary marriage followed soon afterwards, but it was a union that the Scottish Lords and people were not prepared to tolerate. Many now believed that Mary and Bothwell had been involved in an adulterous affair and had conspired to kill Darnley so that they could marry. A month after the marriage, at a bloodless confrontation at Carberry Hill near Edinburgh, Mary was taken prisoner by the Scottish Lords, then placed in the island fortress of Lochleven and forced, by threats of violence, to abdicate in favor of her thirteen-month-old son, whom she was never to see again.