This, then, was all the length to which Morton and the other Lords, as yet ventured. They had sent Mary to Loch-Leven, merely to keep her at a safe distance from Bothwell; and as soon as they had seized his person, or driven him from the kingdom, it was of course implied that they would restore their sovereign to her throne. They did not hint, in the most distant manner, that she was in the least implicated in the guilt of her husband’s death; and they expressly declared that, for every thing which had taken place since, Bothwell alone was to blame. Judging by their own words, they entertained as much respect for the Queen as ever; and the impression they gave to the country was, that they intended she should remain at Loch-Leven only for a short time, and that so far from meaning to punish one whom they accused of no crime, by forcing from her an abdication of her crown, and condemning her to perpetual imprisonment, they would soon be found rallying round her, and conducting her back to her capital in triumph. These may have been the hopes entertained by some; but they forgot that Morton, who was at the head of the new faction, had assassinated Rizzio, and countenanced the murder of Darnley; – and that Murray, though at present in France, had left the country only till new disturbances should afford new prospects for his inordinate ambition.
CHAPTER VII.
MARY AT LOCHLEVEN, HER ABDICATION, AND MURRAY’S REGENCY
Scotland was now in the most unfortunate condition in which a country could possibly be. Like a ship without a pilot, it was left at the mercy of a hundred contrary opinions; and it was not long before there sprung out of these two opposing currents or distinct parties, known by the name of the Queen’s and the Prince’s. Morton and his friends calling themselves the Prince’s Lords, continued at Edinburgh; whilst the Queen’s nobles assembled at Hamilton Palace in very considerable force, having among them, besides the Hamiltons, Huntly, (who had been allowed by Sir James Balfour to escape from the Castle of Edinburgh, in which he had taken shelter some time before), Argyle, (who, though he had at first joined with Morton and Mar at Stirling, when they announced their determination to keep the Prince out of Bothwell’s hands, never intended taking up arms against the Queen), Rothes, Caithness, Crawfurd, Boyd, Herries, Livingston, Seaton, Ogilvie, and others.111 Morton laboured to effect a coalition with these Lords; but though he employed the mediation of the General Assembly, they would not consent to any proposals he made them. Buchanan himself is forced to allow, that affairs took a very different turn from what was expected. “For popular envy being abated, partly by time, and partly by the consideration of the uncertainty of human affairs, commiseration succeeded; nay, some of the nobility did then no less bewail the Queen’s calamity than they had before execrated her cruelty.”112 The truth is, that Mary’s friends were at this time much more numerous than her enemies; but unfortunately they were not sufficiently unanimous in their councils, to be able to take any decisive steps in her behalf.
Morton earnestly laboured to increase the popularity of his faction by every means in his power. To please the multitude, he apprehended several persons, whom he accused of being implicated in the murder of Darnley; and though he probably knew them to be innocent, they were all condemned and executed, with the exception of Sebastian, the Queen’s servant, who was seized with the view of casting suspicion on Mary herself, but who contrived to escape.113 Thus, they who blamed Mary for being too remiss in seeking out and punishing the murderers, were able to console themselves with the reflection, that, under the new order of things, persons were iniquitously executed for the sake of appearances, by those who had themselves been Bothwell’s accomplices. Against Bothwell himself, Morton, for his own sake, proceeded with more caution. It was not till the 26th of June, that letters were addressed to the keeper of the Castle at Dunbar, ordering him to deliver up his charge, because he had received and protected Bothwell; and, on the same day, a proclamation was issued, offering the moderate reward of a thousand crowns to any one who should apprehend the Earl.114 It is singular that these Lords, who were so fully convinced of his criminality, not only allowed him to depart unmolested from Carberry Hill, but took no steps, for ten days afterwards, towards securing his person.
The precise period at which Bothwell left Dunbar, the efforts he made to regain his authority in Scotland, and in general, most of the particulars of his subsequent fate, are not accurately known. He entered, no doubt, into correspondence with the noblemen assembled at Hamilton; but probably received from them little encouragement, as it was the Queen’s cause, not his, in which they were interested. He then retired to the North, where he possessed estates as Duke of Orkney, and some influence with his kinsman, the Bishop of Murray. As soon as his flight thither was known, Grange and Tullibardin were sent in pursuit of him, with several vessels which were fitted out on purpose. Hearing of their approach, Bothwell fled towards the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and, being closely followed, was there very nearly captured. His pursuers were at one time within gun-shot of his ship, and it must have been taken, had not the vessels of Grange and Tullibardin, in the very heat of the chase, both struck upon a sunken rock, which Bothwell, either because his pilot was better acquainted with the seas, or because his ship was lighter, avoided. They were, however, fortunate enough to seize some of his accomplices, who were brought to Edinburgh, and having been tried and condemned, made the confessions which have been already referred to, and by which the particulars of the murder became known. Bothwell himself proceeded to Denmark, imagining that the King of that country, Frederick II., who was distantly related to Mary, through her great-grandmother Margaret of Denmark, the spouse of James III., might be disposed to interest himself in his behalf. But finding that the circumstances under which he had left Scotland, would prevent him from appearing at the Danish Court with so much eclat as he desired, he ventured on enriching his treasury, by making a seizure of one or two merchantmen, trading in the North Seas. These practices were discovered; a superior force was fitted out against him; and he was carried into a Danish port, not as an exiled prince, but as a captive pirate. He was there thrown into prison without ceremony; and though he lost no time in letting his name and rank be known to the government, it does not appear that the discovery operated greatly in his favour. He was retained in durance for many years, the King of Denmark neither choosing to surrender him to Elizabeth or his enemies in Scotland, nor thinking it right to offend them by restoring him to liberty, so long at least as Mary herself remained a prisoner. Broken down by misfortune, and perhaps assailed by remorse, Bothwell is believed to have been in a state of mental derangement for several years before his death. There can be no doubt that he died miserably; and he seems, even in this life, to have paid the penalty of his crimes, if any earthly penalty could atone for the misery he brought on the innocent victim of his lawless ambition and systematic villany. His character may be summed up in the words of our great poet: —
“Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;
Thy schooldays frightful, desp’rate, wild, and furious;
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;
Thy age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody.”115
In the meantime, foreign courts were not inattentive to the state of affairs in Scotland. An ambassador arrived from Mary’s friends in France; but finding, to his astonishment, that she was imprisoned, and that some of the nobility had usurped the government, he refused to acknowledge their authority, and immediately left the country. Elizabeth’s messenger, who came about the same time, was less scrupulous; and, indeed, few things could have given that Queen greater satisfaction, than the turn which Scottish affairs had recently taken. In the letters she sent by her ambassador Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, are discovered all that duplicity, affected sincerity, and real heartlessness, which so constantly distinguish the despatches of Cecil and his mistress. After taking it for granted, in direct opposition to the declarations of the rebel Lords themselves, that Mary had given her consent to the hasty marriage with Bothwell, and that she was consequently implicated in all his guilt, Elizabeth proceeds with no little contradiction, to assure her good sister that she considers her imprisonment entirely unjustifiable. But the insincerity of her desire, that the Queen of Scots should recover her liberty, is evinced by the very idle conditions she suggests should first be imposed upon her. These are, that the murderers of Darnley should be immediately prosecuted and punished, and that the young Prince should be preserved free from all danger; – just as if Mary could punish murderers before they were discovered or taken, unless, indeed, she chose to follow the example of her Lords, and condemn the innocent; and as if she had lost the natural affection of a mother, and would have delivered her only son to be butchered, as his father had been. In short, Morton and his colleagues had no difficulty in perceiving, that though Elizabeth thought it necessary, for the sake of appearances, to pretend to be displeased with them, yet that they had, in truth, never stood higher in her good graces. They well knew, as they had observed in the case of Murray, and experienced in their own, that Elizabeth seldom said what she meant, or meant what she said.
But to put her conduct on the present occasion in a still clearer light, the reader will be somewhat surprised to learn, that Throckmorton brought with him into Scotland two distinct sets of “Instructions,” both bearing the same date (June 30th 1567), the one of which was to be shown to Mary, and the other to the rebel Lords. In the former, she expresses the greatest indignation at the Queen’s imprisonment, and threatens vengeance on all her enemies. In the latter, the Lords are spoken of in a much more confidential and friendly manner. They are told, that Elizabeth thought it requisite to send an ambassador; but that he came to solicit nothing that was not for the general weal of the realm; and that, if she were allowed to mediate between their Queen and them, “they should have no just cause to mislike her doings,” because she would consent to nothing that was not “for their security hereafter, and for quietness to the realm.” Nay, she even desired Throckmorton to assure them, that she “meant not to allow of such faults as she hears by report are imputed to the Queen of Scots, but had given him strictly in charge to lay before, and to reprove her, in her name, for the same.” – “And in the end also,” she adds, “we mean not with any such partiality to deal for her, but that her princely state being preserved, she should conform herself to all reasonable devices that may bring a good accord betwixt her and her nobility and people.” Thus she was to take upon herself to reprove Mary for faults which “she heard by report were imputed to her;” and to insist, though she herself was of opinion that she had been unlawfully imprisoned, that she should enter into negotiations with her rebel subjects, which would compromise her dignity, and even impugn her character.116
When Throckmorton came into Scotland, in July 1567, although he was allowed no more access to the Queen than had been granted to the French ambassador, yet, as his instructions authorized him to treat with the Lords of Secret Council, he of course remained. From them he received an explanation of their late proceedings, containing some of the most glaring contradictions ever exhibited in a State paper. They do not throw out the most distant suspicion of the Queen being implicated in Bothwell’s guilt; on the contrary, they continue to express their conviction that she became his wife very unwillingly, and only after force had been used; but they allege, as their reason for imprisoning her, the change which took place in her mind an hour or two after she parted with her husband at Carberry Hill. They state, that, immediately after, Bothwell, “caring little or nothing for her Majesty” left her to save himself, and that after she, caring as little for him, had parted company from him, and voluntarily come with them to Edinburgh, they all at once, and most unexpectedly, “found her passion so prevail in maintenance of him and his cause, that she would not with patience hear speak any thing to his reproof, or suffer his doings to be called in question; but, on the contrary, offered to give over the realm and all, so that she might be suffered to enjoy him, with many threatenings to be revenged on every man who had dealt in the matter.”117 This was surely a very sudden and inexplicable change of mind; for, in the very same letter, with an inconsistency which might almost have startled themselves, these veracious Lords declare, that “the Queen, their Sovereign, had been led captive, and, by fear, force, and other extraordinary and more unlawful means, compelled to become bed-fellow to another wife’s husband;” that even though they had not interfered, “she would not have lived with him half a year to an end;” and that at Carberry Hill, a separation voluntary on both sides took place. Was it, therefore, for a moment to be credited, that during the short interval of a few hours, which elapsed between this separation and Mary’s imprisonment in Loch-Leven, she could either have so entirely altered her sentiments regarding Bothwell, or, if they had in truth never been unfavourable, so foolishly and unnecessarily betrayed them, as to convince her nobility, that to secure their own safety, and force her to live apart from him, no plan would be of any avail, but that of shutting her up in a strong and remote castle? And even if this expedient appeared advisable at the moment, did they think that, if Mary was now restored to liberty, she would set sail for Denmark, and join Bothwell in his prison there? No; they did not go so far; for, in conclusion, they assured Throckmorton, that, “knowing the great wisdom wherewith God hath endowed her,” they anticipated that within a short time her mind would be settled, and that as soon as “by a just trial they had made the truth appear, she would conform herself to their doings.”118
“By the above answer,” says Keith, “I make no doubt but my readers will be ready enough to prognosticate what shall be the upshot of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton’s negotiations with the rebels in favour of our Queen.” There can be no doubt that the same motives (whatever these might be) which led to Mary’s imprisonment, would have equal force in keeping her there. The whole history of this conspiracy may be explained in a few words. When Morton and the other Lords took up arms at Stirling, they were, to a certain extent, sincere; they believed (especially those of them who had been his accomplices) that Bothwell was the murderer of Darnley, and that he was anxiously endeavouring to get the young Prince into his power. This they determined to prevent, and having won over Sir James Balfour, the governor of the Castle, they advanced to Edinburgh. Bothwell retired to Dunbar, taking the Queen along with him. But the Lords knew that Mary entertained no affection for her husband, and they therefore hoped to create a division between them. They accomplished this object at Carberry Hill, and reconducted the Queen to Edinburgh. There, though not sorry that she had parted from her husband, Mary did not express any high approbation of the conduct of Lords who, when she was first seized by Bothwell, did not draw a sword in her defence, and now that she had become his wife, according to their own express recommendation recorded in the bond they had given him, openly rebelled against the authority with which they had induced her to intrust him. Morton recollected at the same time his share in Rizzio’s assassination, and the disastrous consequences which ensued, as soon as Mary made her escape from the thraldom in which he had then kept her for several days. He determined not to expose himself to a similar risk now, especially as he had an army at his command; if he disbanded it, he might be executed as a traitor, – if he remained at the head of it, he might become Regent of Scotland. These were the secret motives by which his conduct was regulated; – having taken one step he thought he might venture to go on with another; he commenced with defending the son, and ended by dethroning the mother.
Four different plans were now in agitation, by adopting any of which it was thought the troubles of the kingdom might be brought to a conclusion. The first was suggested by the Queen’s friends assembled at Hamilton; their proposal was, to restore the Queen to her liberty and throne, having previously bound her, by an express agreement, to pardon the rebel Lords, to watch over the safety of the Prince, to consent to a divorce from Bothwell, and to punish all persons implicated in the murder of Darnley. The other three schemes came from Morton and his party, and were worthy of the source from which they came. The first was, to make the Queen resign all government and regal authority in favour of her son, under whom a Council of the nobility should govern the realm, whilst she herself should retire to France or England, and never again return to her own country. The second was, to have the Queen tried, to condemn her, to keep her in prison for life, and to crown the Prince. The third was, to have her tried, condemned, and executed, – a measure which would have disgraced Scotland in even its most barbarous times, and which nothing but the violence of party feeling could now have suggested.119 The English ambassador, knowing the wishes of his mistress, did not hesitate to assure her that there was no probability of any of the more lenient proposals being adopted; and he took care to remind the Lords, that “it would be convenient for them so to proceed, as that by their doings they should not wipe away the Queen’s infamy, and the Lord Bothwell’s detestable murder, and by their outrageous dealings bring all the slander upon themselves.” At Morton’s request, he likewise suggested to Elizabeth, that it would be proper to send a supply of ten or twelve thousand crowns to aid the Lords in their present increased expenditure; and this he said was the more necessary, because Lethington and others had reminded him that, notwithstanding all her Majesty’s fair words, Murray, Morton, and the rest, “had in their troubles found cold relief and small favour at her Majesty’s hands.”120 No wonder that, in moments when his better nature prevailed, Throckmorton felt disgusted with the double part he was obliged to act, and spoke “honestly and plainly” of it to Melville. “Yea,” says Sir James, “he detested the whole counsel of England for the time, and told us friendly what reasoning they held among themselves to that end; namely, how that one of their finest counsellors (Cecil) proposed openly to the rest, that it was needful for the welfare of England, to foster and nourish the civil wars, as well in France and in Flanders, as in Scotland; whereby England might reap many advantages, and be sought after by all parties, and in the meantime live in rest, and gather great riches. This advice and proposition was well liked by most part of the Council; yet an honest counsellor stood up and said, it was a very worldly advice, and had little or nothing to do with a Christian commonweal.”121
The Earl of Murray was in the meantime anxiously watching the progress of affairs in Scotland, and, though still in France, had so contrived, that he possessed as much influence in the counsels of the nation as Morton himself. The Lords indeed had long been in close correspondence with him. Letters from them were forwarded to him by Cecil, who exchanged frequent communications with Murray; and, on the 26th of June, four days before Throckmorton left London for Scotland, Cecil wrote to the English ambassador at Paris, that “Murray’s return into Scotland was much desired, for the weal both of England and Scotland.”122 But as Murray had attempted to ingratiate himself at the French Court, by exaggerating his fidelity to Mary, he found it impossible to disengage himself immediately from the connexions he had there made, not anticipating so sudden a revolution in the state of affairs at home. He sent, however, an agent into Scotland, of the name of Elphinston, whom he commissioned to attend to his interests, and whom the Lords allowed to visit the Queen at Loch-Leven, though they refused every body else. It is not likely that Morton, who had thus a second time been engaged in setting up a ladder for Murray to ascend by, was altogether pleased to find that he could not obtain the first place for himself. As soon as he determined to force Mary to abdicate the Crown, he saw that he would be obliged to yield the Regency to Murray, supported as that nobleman was, both by his numerous friends in England and Scotland, and the earnest recommendations of Knox and the other preachers, who, in their anxiety to see their old patron once more Lord of the ascendant, “took pieces of Scripture, and inveighed vehemently against the Queen, and persuaded extremities against her, by application of the text.”123 Morton, however, consoled himself with the reflection, that he was in great favour with Murray, and that, by acting in concert with him, he would enjoy a scarcely inferior degree of power and honour.
Preparatory to extorting from her an abdication, the Lords anxiously circulated a report, that the Queen was devotedly and almost insanely attached to Bothwell. They did not venture, it is true, to put this attachment to the test, by publicly offering her reasonable terms of accommodation, which, if she had refused, all men would have acknowledged her infatuation, and deserted her cause; – they brought her to no trial, – they proved her guilty of no crime; all they did was to endeavour to impose upon the vulgar. They asserted that Mary would not agree to prosecute the perpetrators of the murder, after she had already prosecuted them, – and that she would not consent to abandon a husband whom she had already abandoned, and with whom, they themselves had declared, only a few weeks before, she could not, under any circumstances, have lived for many months. Throckmorton, who was willing enough to propagate all the absurd falsehoods they told him, wrote to Elizabeth, – “she avoweth constantly that she will live and die with him; and saith, that if it were put to her choice to relinquish her Crown and kingdom, or the Lord Bothwell, she would leave her kingdom and dignity, to go as a simple damsel with him; and that she will never consent that he shall fare worse, or have more harm than herself.”124 But the numerous party in favour of the Queen openly avowed their disbelief of these reports; and Elizabeth herself, who began to fear that, in sending Throckmorton to the rebel Lords, she had countenanced the weaker side, wrote to her ambassador on the 29th of August in the following terms, which, as they are used by an enemy so determined as Elizabeth, speak volumes in favour of Mary: – “We cannot perceive, that they, with whom they have dealt, can answer the doubts moved by the Hamiltons, who, howsoever they may be carried for their private respects, yet those things which they move will be allowed by all reasonable persons. For if they may not, being noblemen of the realm, be suffered to hear the Queen, their Sovereign, declare her mind concerning the reports which are made of her by such as keep her in captivity, how should they believe the reports, or obey them which do report it?”125
That Mary refused to return to her throne, unless Bothwell was placed upon it beside her, is an assertion so ridiculous, that no time need be lost in refuting it. That she may not have chosen to submit to an immediate divorce from one whom all her nobility had recommended to her as a husband, and by whom she might possibly have a child, is within the verge of probability. She would naturally be anxious to avoid doing any thing which would be equivalent with acknowledging her belief of his guilt, and might have appeared to implicate her in the suspicion attached to him. She had not married Bothwell till he had been judicially acquitted; and were she to consent to be divorced from him before he was again tried, she would seem to confess, that she had previously sanctioned a procedure possessing the show of justice, without the substance.126 There can be no doubt, however, that if Bothwell’s guilt had been distinctly proved to her, and if she could have disunited herself from him without injury to her reputation or her prospects, she would have been the very last person to have objected either to see Darnley’s death revenged, or herself freed from an alliance into which she had been forced against her will.
But the Lords of Secret Council, conscious as they were of the injustice of their proceedings, had gone too far to recede, and were determined not to rest satisfied with any half-measures. On the 24th of July 1567, Lord Lindsay and Sir Robert Melville (brother to Sir James), were commissioned to pass to Loch-Leven, and to carry with them deeds or instruments of abdication.127 These instruments were three in number. By the first, Mary was made to resign the Crown in favour of her son, – by the second, to constitute the Earl of Murray Regent during his nonage, – and, by the third, to appoint a Council to administer the Government until Murray’s return home, and, if he should refuse to accept of the regency, until her son’s majority. It was of course well known to the rebels, that the Queen would not willingly affix her signature to deeds by which she was to surrender all power, and to reduce herself at once to the station of a subject, without receiving in return any promise of liberty, or the enjoyment of a single worldly good. Yet they had the effrontery to aver, that rather than submit to a separation from one with whom “she could not have lived half-a-year to an end,” she preferred becoming a landless and crownless pensioner, on the bounty of such men as Morton and his accomplices.
Were we to single out the day in Mary’s whole life in which it might be fairly concluded that she suffered the most intense mental anguish, we should fix on the 25th of July 1567, the day on which the Commissioners had their audience. Shut up in a gloomy edifice, which, though dignified with the name of a castle, was little else than a square tower of three stories; and instead of a numerous assemblage of obsequious nobles, attended by only three or four female servants; – it must have required a more than common spirit of queenly fortitude to support so great a reverse of fortune.128 But the misery of her situation was now to be increased a hundred fold, by a blow the severest she had yet experienced. When the report first reached her, that it was in contemplation to force her to abdicate her crown, she indignantly refused to believe so lawless an attempt possible. Mary had been all her life fond of power, and proud of her illustrious birth and rank; and there were few subjects on which she dwelt with greater pleasure, than her unsullied descent from a “centenary line of kings.” Was she now, without a struggle, to surrender the crown of the Stuarts into the hands of the bastard Murray, or the blood-stained Morton? Was she to submit to the bitter mockery, introduced in the very preamble to the instrument of demission, which stated, that, ever since her arrival in her realm, she had “employed her body, spirit, whole senses and forces, to govern in such sort, that her royal and honourable estate might stand and continue with her and her posterity, and that her loving and kind lieges might enjoy the quietness of true subjects;” but that, being now wearied with the fatigues of administration, she wished to lay down her sceptre?129 Even though prepared to lay it down, was she also to countenance falsehood, and practise dissimulation?
When the commissioners arrived at Lochleven, Sir Robert Melville, knowing that Lindsay was personally disagreeable to his Sovereign, came to her at first alone. Opening to her his errand, and, addressing her with respect, and professions of attachment (for she had often employed him before about her person, or as her ambassador to foreign courts), he urged every argument he could think of to persuade her to affix her signature to the deeds. She listened to him with calm dignity and unshaken resolution. She heard him describe the distracted state of Scotland – the impossibility of ever prevailing on all parties to submit again to her sway – the virulence of her enemies, and the apparent lukewarmness of her friends. She allowed him to proceed from these more general topics, to others more intimately connected with her own person. She listened to his assurance, that, if she continued obstinate, it was determined to bring her to trial, – to blacken her character, by accusing her of incontinency, not only with Bothwell, but with others, and of the murder of her late husband, and, upon whatever evidence, to condemn and execute her.130 But she remained unmoved, and preserved the same composure of manner, though not without many a secret throb of pain, at the discovery of the utter ingratitude and perfidy of those whom she had so often befriended and advanced. As a last expedient, Melville produced a letter from Throckmorton, in which the ambassador advised her to consult her personal safety, by consenting to an abdication – a somewhat singular advice to be given by one who affected to have come into Scotland for the express purpose of securing her restoration to the throne.131 But she only remarked on this letter, that it convinced her of the insincerity of Elizabeth’s promises of assistance.