The Mystery of Mary Stuart

If the rooms were small, the tapestries and velvet were magnificent, and in odd contrast with Mary’s alleged economic plan of taking a door from the hinges and using it as a bath-cover. This last anecdote, by Nelson, appears to be contradicted by Hay of Tala. ‘Paris locked the door that passes up the turnpike to the King’s chamber.’[128 - Laing, ii. 254.] The keys appear to have wandered into a bewildering variety of hands: a superfluous jugglery, if Bothwell, as was said, had duplicate keys.

Mary often visited Darnley, and the Lennox documents give us copious, if untrustworthy, information as to his manner of life. They do not tell us, as Buchanan does, that Mary and the vast unwieldy Lady Reres used to play music and sing in the garden of Kirk o’ Field, in the balmy nights of a Scotch February! But they do contain a copy of a letter, referred to by Buchanan, which Darnley wrote to Lennox three days before his death.

‘My Lord, – I have thought good to write to you by this bearer of my good health, I thank God, which is the sooner come through the good treatment of such as hath this good while concealed their good will; I mean of my love the Queen, which I assure you hath all this while, and yet doth, use herself like a natural and loving wife. I hope yet that God will lighten our hearts with joy that have so long been afflicted with trouble. As I in this letter do write unto your Lordship, so I trust this bearer can satisfy you the like. Thus thanking almighty God of our good hap, I commend your Lordship into his protection.

    ‘From Edinburgh the vii of February,
    ‘Your loving and obedient son,
    ‘Henry Rex.’

The Queen, we are told, came in while Darnley was writing, read the letter, and ‘kissed him as Judas did the Lord his Master.’

‘The day before his death she caused the rich bed to be taken down, and a meaner set up in its place, saying unto him that that rich bed they should both lie in the next night, but her meanings were to save the bed from the blowing up of the fire of powder.’[129 - Lennox MSS.] There has been a good deal of controversy about this odd piece of economy, reported also by Thomas Nelson, Darnley’s surviving servant. Where was the bed to be placed for the marriage couch? Obviously not in Holyrood, and Mary’s own bed in the room below Darnley’s is reported by Buchanan to have been removed.[130 - See Hay Fleming, p. 434.] The lost bed which was blown up was of velvet, ‘violet brown,’ with gold, had belonged to Mary of Guise, and had been given to Darnley, by Mary, in the previous autumn.

Mary’s enemies insist that, apparently on the night of Friday, February 7, she wrote one of the Casket Letters to Bothwell. The Letter is obscure, as we shall see, but is interpreted to mean that her brother, Lord Robert Stuart, had warned Darnley of his danger, that Darnley had confided this to Mary, that Mary now asked Bothwell to bring Lord Robert to Kirk o’ Field, where she would confront him with Darnley. The pair might come to blows, Darnley might fall, and the gunpowder plot would be superfluous. This tale, about which the evidence is inconsistent, is discussed elsewhere. But, in his MSS., Lennox tells the story, and adds, ‘The Lord Regent’ (Moray) ‘can declare it, who was there present.’ Buchanan avers that Mary called in Moray to sever the pair, in hopes that he would be slain or compromised: not a plausible theory, and not put forward in the ‘Book of Articles.’

Mary twice slept in the room under Darnley’s, probably on the 5th and 7th of February. In the Lennox MSS. the description of Darnley’s last night varies from the ordinary versions. ‘The present night of his death she tarried with him till eleven of the clock, which night she gave him a goodly ring,’ the usual token of loyalty. This ring is mentioned in a contemporary English ballad, and by Moray to de Silva (August 3, 1567), also in the ‘Book of Articles.’ Mary is usually said to have urged, as a reason for not sleeping at Kirk o’ Field on the fatal night, her sudden recollection of a promise to be present at Holyrood, at the marriage of her servant, Sebastian. This, indeed, is her own story, or Lethington’s, in a letter written in Scots to her ambassador in France, on February 10, or 11, 1567. But, in the Lennox MSS., it is asserted that Bothwell and others reminded her of her intention to ride to Seton, early next morning. Darnley then ‘commanded that his great horses should have been in a readiness by 5 o’clock in the morning, for that he minded to ride them at the same hour.’ After Mary had gone, he remembered, says Lennox, a word she had dropped to the effect that nearly a year had passed since the murder of Riccio, a theme on which she had long been silent. She was keeping her promise, given over Riccio’s newly dug grave, that ‘a fatter than he should lie anear him ’ere the twelvemonth was out.’ His servant comforted him, and here the narrator regrets that Darnley did not ‘consider and mark such cruel and strange words as she had said unto him,’ for example, at Riccio’s grave. He also gives a précis of ‘her letter written to Bothwell from Glasgow before her departure thence.’ This is the mysterious letter which was never produced or published: it will be considered under ‘External Evidence as to the Casket Letters.’

After singing, with his servants, Psalm V., Darnley drank to them, and went to bed. Fifty men, says the Lennox author, now environed the house, sixteen, under Bothwell, ‘came the secret way by which she herself was wont to come to the King her husband’ (a mere fairy tale), used the duplicate keys, ‘opened the doors of the garden and house,’ and so entered his chamber, and suffocated him ‘with a wet napkin stipt in vinegar.’ They handled Taylor, a servant, in the same way, and laid Darnley in a garden at some distance with ‘his night gown of purple velvet furred with sables.’ None of the captured murderers, in their confessions, knew anything of the strangling, which was universally believed in, but cannot easily be reconciled with the narratives of the assassins. But had they confessed to the strangling, others besides Bothwell would have been implicated, and the confessions are not worthy of entire confidence.[131 - Lennox’s sources must have been Nelson and the younger Standen, to whom Bothwell gave a horse immediately after the murder. Standen returned to England four months later.]

The following curious anecdote is given by the Lennox MSS. After Mary’s visit to Bothwell at Hermitage (October, 1566) her servants were wondering at her energy. She replied: ‘Troth it was she was a woman, but yet was she more than a woman, in that she could find in her heart to see and behold that which any man durst do, and also could find in her heart to do anything that a man durst do, if her strength would serve her thereto. Which appeared to be true, for that some say she was present at the murder of the King, her husband, in man’s apparel, which apparel she loved oftentimes to be in, in dancing secretly with the King her husband, and going in masks by night through the streets.’ These are examples of the sayings and reports of her servants, which, on June 11, 1568, Lennox urged his friends to collect. This romantic tale proved too great for the belief of Buchanan, if he knew it. But Lethington told Throckmorton in July, 1567, that the Lords had proof against Mary not only in her handwriting, but by ‘sufficient witnesses.’ Doubtless they saw her on the scene in male costume! Naturally they were never produced.

If an historical event could be discredited, like a ghost story, by discrepancies in the evidence, we might maintain that Darnley never was murdered at all. The chief varieties of statement are concerned (1) with the nature of his death. Was he (a) taken out of the house and strangled, or (b) strangled in trying to escape from the house, or (c) strangled in the house, and carried outside, or (d) destroyed by the explosion and the fall? Next (2), accepting any of the statements which represent Darnley as being strangled (and they are, so far, unanimous at the time of the event), who were the stranglers? Were they (a) some of Bothwell’s men, (b) men of Balfour’s or Huntly’s, or (c) servants of Archbishop Hamilton, as the Lennox faction aver, or (d) Douglases under Archibald Douglas? Finally (3) was Kirk o’ Field (a) undermined by the murderers, in readiness for the deed, before Darnley’s arrival from Glasgow, or (b) was the powder placed in the Queen’s bedroom, under Darnley’s, on the night of the crime; or (c) was it then placed in the vaults under the room on the first floor which was occupied by the Queen?

The reader will find that each of these theories was in turn adopted by the accusers, and that selections were made, later, by the accusers of Morton, and Archibald Douglas, and Archbishop Hamilton, just as happened to suit the purpose of the several prosecutors at the moment. Moreover it is not certain that the miscreants who blew up the house themselves knew the whole details of the crime.

Our plan must be, first, to compare the contemporary descriptions of the incident. Taking, first, the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ we find that the explosion took place at ‘two hours before none;’ which at that time meant 2 A.M. The murderers opened the door with false keys, and strangled Darnley, and his servant, Taylor, ‘in their naked beds,’ then threw the bodies into a garden, ‘beyond the Thief Row’ (see the sketch, p. 131 (#Page_131)), returned, and blew up the house, ‘so that there remained not one stone upon another undestroyed.’ The names of the miscreants are given, ‘as alleged,’ Bothwell, Ormistoun of that ilk; Hob Ormistoun his uncle; Hepburn of Bowton, and young Hay of Tala. All these underlings were later taken, confessed, and were executed. The part of the entry in the ‘Diurnal’ which deals with them, at least, is probably not contemporary. The men named professed to know nothing of the strangling. For what it is worth the entry corroborates the entire destruction of the house, which would imply a mine, or powder in the vaulted cellars. The contemporary drawing shows the whole house utterly levelled with the ground.[132 - Diurnal, 105, 106.]

Birrel, in his Diary, says, ‘The house was raised from the ground with powder, and the King, if he had not been cruelly strangled, after he fell out of the air, with his garters, he had lived.’ An official account says, ‘Of the whole lodging, walls and other, there is nothing remaining, no, not one stone above another, but all either carried far away, or dung in dross to the very groundstone.’[133 - Keith, i. cii.] This could only be done by a mine, but the escape of Nelson proves exaggeration. This version is also in Mary’s letter to Archbishop Beaton (February 10, or 11), written in Scots, probably by Lethington, and he, of course, may have exaggerated, as may the Privy Council in their report to the same effect.[134 - Register Privy Council, i. 498.] Clernault, a Frenchman who carried the news, averred that a mine was employed. Sir James Melville says that Bothwell ‘made a train of powder, or had one made before, which came under the house,’ but Darnley was first strangled ‘in a low stable,’ by a napkin thrust into his mouth.[135 - Melville, p. 174, Bannatyne Club.] The Lennox MSS. say that Darnley was suffocated ‘with a wet napkin steeped in vinegar.’ The Savoyard Ambassador, Moretta, on returning to France, expressed the opinion that Darnley fled from the house, when he heard the key of the murderers grate in the keyhole, that he was in his shirt, carrying his dressing gown, that he was followed, dragged into a little garden outside his own garden wall (the garden across the Thieves’ Row), and there strangled. Some women heard him exclaim, ‘Pity me, kinsmen, for the love of him who pitied all the world.’[136 - Labanoff, vii. 108, 109, Paris. March 16, 1567.] His kinsmen were Archibald and other Douglases. Buchanan, in his ‘Detection,’ speaks of ‘the King’s lodging, even from the very foundation, blown up.’ In the ‘Actio,’ or Oration, printed with the ‘Detection,’ the writer, whoever he was, says, ‘they had undermined the wall,’ and that Mary slept under Darnley’s room, lest the servants should hear ‘the noise of the underminers working.’

The ‘Detection’ and ‘Actio’ were published to discredit Mary, long after the murderers had confessed that there was no mine at all, that the powder was laid in Mary’s room. In the ‘Book of Articles,’ the powder is placed ‘in the laich house,’ whether that means the arched ground floor, or Mary’s chamber; apparently the latter, as we read, ‘she lay in the house under the King, where also thereafter the powder was placed.’[137 - Hosack, i. 536, 537.] This is made into conformity with the confessions of Bothwell’s men, according to whom but nine or ten were concerned in the deed. But Moray himself, two months after the murder, told de Silva that ‘it is undoubted that over thirty or forty persons were concerned’ (the fifty of the Lennox Paper) ‘and the house … was entirely undermined.’[138 - Spanish Calendar, i. 635, April 23.] When Morton, long afterwards, was accused of and executed for the deed, the dittay ran that the powder was under the ‘angular stones and within the vaults.’ In the mysterious letter, attributed to Mary, and cited by Moray and the Lennox Papers, the ‘preparation’ of the Kirk o’ Field is at least hinted at. The ‘Book of Articles’ avers that, ‘from Glasgow, by her letters and otherwise,’ Mary ‘held him’ (Bothwell) ‘continually in remembrance of the said house,’ which she did, in the letter never produced, but not in any of the Casket Letters, unless it be in a note, among other suspicious notes, ‘Of the ludgeing in Edinburgh.’[139 - Hosack, i. 534. The ‘Book of Articles,’ of 1568, was obviously written under the impression left by a forged letter of Mary’s, or by the reports of such a letter, as we shall show later. Yet the author cites a Casket Letter as we possess it.] The Lennox MSS., as we saw, say ‘the place was already prepared with “undermining and” trains of powder therein.’ The whole of the narratives, confirmed by Moray, and by the descriptions of the ruin of the house, prove that the theory of a prepared mine was entertained, till Powrie, Tala, and Bowton made their depositions, and, in the ‘Actio,’ an appendix to Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’ and the indictment of Morton, even after that. But when the accusers, of whom some were guilty themselves, came to plead against Mary, they naturally wished to restrict the conspiracy to Bothwell and Mary. The strangling disappears. The murderers are no longer thirty, or forty, or fifty. The powder is placed in Mary’s own room, not in a mine. All this altered theory rests on examinations of prisoners.

What are they worth? They were taken in the following order: Powrie, June 23, Dalgleish, June 26, before the Privy Council. Powrie was again examined in July before the Privy Council, and Hay of Tala on September 13. A note of news says that Tala was taken in Fife on September 6, 1567 (annotated) ‘7th (Nicolas and Bond).’[140 - Bain, ii. 393.] Tala ‘can bleke [blacken] some great men with it’ – the murder. But as Mr. Hosack cites Bedford to Cecil, September 5, 1567, Hay of Tala ‘opened the whole device of the murder, … and went so far as to touch a great many not of the smallest,’ such as Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and others, no doubt.[141 - This is not, I think, a letter of September 5, but of September 16, but in Foreign Calendar Elizabeth, viii. p. 342, most of the passage quoted by Mr. Hosack is omitted.] Even Laing, however, admits that ‘the evidence against Huntly was suppressed carefully in Hay’s deposition.’[142 - Laing, ii. 28.] In Dec. – Jan. 1567-68, anonymous writings say that, if the Lords keep Tala and Bowton alive, they could tell them who subscribed the murder bond, and pray the Lords not to seem to lay all the weight on Mary’s back. A paper of Questions to the Lords of the Articles asks why Tala and Bowton ‘are not compelled openly to declare the manner of the King’s slaughter, and who consented thereunto.’[143 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. p. 392.]

The authors of these Questions had absolute right on their side. Moray no more prosecuted the quest for all murderers of Darnley than Mary had done. To prove this we need no anonymous pamphlets or placards, no contradictory tattle about secret examinations and dying confessions. When Mary’s case was inquired into at Westminster (December, 1568), Moray put in as evidence the deposition of Bowton, made in December, 1567. Bothwell, said Bowton, had assured him that the crime was devised ‘by some of the noblemen,’ ‘other noblemen had entrance as far as he in that matter.’[144 - Laing, ii. 256.] This was declared by Bowton in Moray’s own presence. The noble and stainless Moray is not said to ask ‘What noblemen do you mean?’ No torture would have been needed to extract their names from Bowton, and Moray should at once have arrested the sinners. But some were his own allies, united with him in accusing his sister. So no questions were asked. The papers which, between Dec. – Jan. 1567-68, did ask disagreeable questions must have been prior to January 3, 1568, when Tala, Bowton, Dalgleish, and Powrie, after being ‘put to the knowledge of an assize,’ were executed; their legs and arms were carried about the country by boys in baskets! According to the ‘Diurnal,’ Tala incriminated, before the whole people round the scaffold, Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and Balfour, with divers other nobles, and the Queen. On January 7, Drury gave the same news to Cecil, making Bowton the confessor, and omitting the charge against Mary. The incriminated noblemen at once left Edinburgh, ‘which,’ says the ‘Diurnal,’ ‘makes the matter … the more probable.’[145 - Diurnal, 127, 128. Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 393.] Meanwhile Moray ‘looked through his fingers,’ and carried the incriminated Lethington with him, later, as one of Mary’s accusers, while he purchased Sir James Balfour!

What, we ask once more, in these circumstances, are the examinations of the murderers worth, after passing through the hands of the accomplices? On December 8, 1568, Moray gave in the written records of the examinations to the English Commissioners. We have, first, Bothwell’s servant, Powrie, examined before the Lords of the Secret Council (June 23, July 3, 1567). He helped to carry the powder to Kirk o’ Field on February 9, but did not see what was done with it. Dalgleish, examined at Edinburgh on June 26, 1567, before Morton, Atholl, the Provost of Dundee, and Kirkcaldy, said nothing about the powder. Tala was examined, on September 13, at Edinburgh, before Moray, Morton, Atholl, the Lairds of Loch Leven and Pitarro, James Makgill, and the Justice Clerk, Bellenden. No man implicated, except Morton, was present. Tala said that Bothwell arranged to lay the powder in Mary’s room, under Darnley’s. This was done; the powder was placed in ‘the nether house, under the King’s chamber,’ the plotters entering by the back door, from the garden, of which Paris had the key. Thus there would be no show at the front door, in the quadrangle, of men coming and going: they were in Mary’s room, but did not enter by the front door. Next, on December 8, Bowton was examined at Edinburgh before Moray, Atholl, Lindsay, Kirkcaldy of Grange, and Bellenden. He implicated Morton, Lethington, and Balfour, but, at Westminster, Moray suppressed the evidence utterly. (See Introduction, pp. xiii-xviii (#Page_xiii), for the suppressions). Next we have the trial of Bowton, Tala, Powrie, and Dalgleish, on January 3, 1568, before Sir Thomas Craig and a jury of burgesses and gentlemen. The accused confessed to their previous depositions. The jury found them guilty on the depositions alone, found that ‘the whole lodging was raised and blown in the air, and his Grace [Darnley] was murdered treasonably, and most cruelly slain and destroyed by them therein.’ When Mr. Hosack asserts that these depositions ‘were taken before the Lords of the Secret Council, namely Morton, Huntly, Argyll, Maitland, and Balfour,’ he errs, according to the documents cited. Only Powrie is described as having been examined ‘before the Lords of the Secret Council.’ Mr. Hosack must have known that Huntly and Argyll were not in Edinburgh on June 23, when Powrie was examined.[146 - Hosack, ii. 245.] We can only say that Powrie’s depositions, made before the Lords of the Secret Council, struck the keynote, to which all later confessions, including that of Bothwell’s valet, Paris, correspond.[147 - This was obvious to Laing. Replying to Goodall’s criticism of verbal coincidences in the confessions, Laing says, ‘as if in any subsequent evidence concerning the same fact, the same words were not often dictated by the same Commissioner, or recorded by the Clerk, from the first deposition which they hold in their hands.’ It does not seem quite a scientific way of taking evidence.] Thus vanish, for the moment, the mine and the strangling, while the deed is done by powder in Mary’s own chamber. Nobody is now left in the actual crime save Bothwell, Bowton, Tala, Powrie, Dalgleish, Wilson, Paris, Ormistoun, and Hob Ormistoun. They knew of no strangling.[148 - See the Confessions, Laing, ii. 264.]

But on February 11, 1567, two women, examined by a number of persons, including Huntly, stated thus: Barbara Mertine heard thirteen men, and saw eleven, pass up the Cowgate, and saw eleven pass down the Black Friars wynd, after the explosion. She called them traitors. May Crokat (by marriage Mrs. Stirling), in the service of the Archbishop of St. Andrews (whose house was adjacent to Kirk o’ Field), heard the explosion, thought it was in ‘the house above,’ ran out, saw eleven men, caught one by his silk coat, and ‘asked where the crack was.’ They fled.[149 - Bain, ii. 312, 313.] The avenging ghost of Darnley pursued his murderers for twenty years, and, in their cases, we have later depositions, and letters. Thus, as to the men employed, Archibald Douglas, that reverend parson and learned Lord of Session, informed Morton that he himself ‘was at the deed doing, and came to the Kirk o’ Field yard with the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly.’ Douglas, at this time (June, 1581), had fled from justice to England: Morton was underlying the law. Morton’s confession was made, in 1581, on the day of his execution, to the Rev. John Durie and the Rev. Walter Balcanquell, who wrote down and made known the declaration. On June 3, 1581, Archibald Douglas’s servant, Binning, was also executed. He confessed that Archibald lost one of his velvet mules (dress shoes) on the scene, or on the way from the murder. Powrie had ‘deponed’ that three of Bothwell’s company wore ‘mulis,’ whether for quiet in walking, or because they were in evening dress, having been at Bastian’s wedding masque and dance. Douglas, in a collusive trial before a jury of his kinsmen, in 1586, was acquitted, and showed a great deal of forensic ability.[150 - Arnott and Pitcairn, Criminal Trials.]

It is thus abundantly evident that the depositions of the murderers put in by Mary’s accusers did not tell the whole truth, whatever amount of truth they may have told. We cannot, therefore, perhaps accept their story of placing the powder in Mary’s room, where it could hardly have caused the amount of damage described: but that point may be left open. We know that Bothwell’s men were not alone in the affair, and the strangling of Darnley, and the removal of his body, with his purple velvet sable-lined dressing gown (attested by the Lennox MSS.), may have been done by the men of Douglas and Huntly.

The treatment of the whole topic by George Buchanan is remarkable. In the ‘Book of Articles,’ levelled at Mary, in 1568, Darnley is blown up by powder placed in Mary’s room. In the ‘Detection,’ of which the first draft (in the Lennox MSS.) is of 1568, reference for the method of the deed is made to the depositions of Powrie and the others. In the ‘History,’ there are three gangs, those with Bothwell, and two others, advancing by separate routes. They strangle Darnley and Taylor, and carry their bodies into an adjacent garden; the house is then blown up ‘from the very foundations.’ Buchanan thus returns to the strangling, omitted, for reasons, in the ‘Detection.’ Darnley’s body is unbruised, and his dressing-gown, lying near him, is neither scorched nor smirched with dust. A light burned, Buchanan says, in the Hamilton House till the explosion, and was then extinguished; the Archbishop, contrary to custom, was lodging there, with ‘Gloade,’ says a Lennox MS. ‘Gloade’ is – Lord Claude Hamilton![151 - Buchanan, History (1582), fol. 215.] While Buchanan was helping to prosecute Mary, he had not a word to say about the strangling of Darnley, and about the dressing-gown and slippers laid beside the corpse, though all this was in the papers of Lennox, his chief. Not a word had he to say about the three bands of men who moved on Kirk o’ Field, or the fifty men of the Lennox MS. The crime was to be limited to Bothwell, his gang, and the Queen, as was convenient to the accusers. Later Buchanan brought into his ‘History’ what he kept out of the ‘Detection’ and ‘Book of Articles,’ adding a slur on Archbishop Hamilton.

Finally, when telling, in his ‘History,’ how the Archbishop was caught at Dumbarton, and hanged by Lennox, without trial, Buchanan has quite a fresh version. The Archbishop sent six or eight of his bravoes, with false keys of the doors (what becomes of Bothwell’s false keys?) to Kirk o’ Field. They strangle Darnley, and lay him in a garden, and then, on a given signal, other conspirators blow up the house. Where is Bothwell? The leader of the Archbishop’s gang told this, under seal of confession, to a priest, a very respectable man (viro minime malo). This respectable priest first blabbed in conversation, and then, when the Archbishop was arrested, gave evidence derived from the disclosure of a Hamilton under seal of confession. The Archbishop mildly remarked that such conduct was condemned by the Church. Later, the priest was executed for celebrating the Mass (this being his third conviction), and he repeated the story openly and fully. The tale of the priest was of rather old standing. When collecting his evidence for the York Commission of October, 1568, Lennox wrote to his retainers to ask, among other things, for the deposition of the priest of Paisley, ‘that heard and testified the last exclamation of one Hamilton, which the Laird of Minto showed to Mr. John Wood,’ who was then helping Lennox to get up his case (June 11, 1568).[152 - Maitland Miscellany, iv. p. 119.] Buchanan has yet another version, in his ‘Admonition to the Trew Lordis:’ here the Archbishop sends only four of his rogues to the murder.

Buchanan’s plan clearly was to accuse the persons whom it was convenient to accuse, at any given time; and to alter his account of the method of the murder so as to suit each new accusation. Probably he was not dishonest. The facts ‘were to him ministered,’ by the Lords, in 1568, and also by Lennox. Later, different sets of facts were ‘ministered’ to him, as occasion served, and he published them without heeding his inconsistencies. He was old, was a Lennox man, and an advanced Liberal.

Of one examination, which ought to have been important, we have found no record. There was a certain Captain James Cullen, who wrote letters in July 13 to July 18, 1560, from Edinburgh Castle, to the Cardinal of Lorraine. He was then an officer of Mary of Guise, during the siege of Leith.[153 - French Foreign Office, Registre de Depesches d’Ecosse, 1560-1562, fol. 112.] In the end of 1565, and the beginning of 1566, Captain Cullen was in the service of Frederic II. of Denmark, and was trying to enlist English sailors for him.[154 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. p. 7, No. 31.] Elizabeth refused to permit this, and Captain Cullen appears to have returned to his native Scotland, where he became, under Bothwell, an officer of the Guard put about Mary’s person, after Riccio’s murder. On February 28, 1567, eighteen days after Darnley’s murder, Scrope writes that ‘Captain Cullen with his company have the credit nearest her’ (Mary’s) ‘person.’ On May 13, Drury remarks, ‘It was Captain Cullen’s persuasion, for more surety, to have the King strangled, and not only to trust to the powder,’ the Captain having observed, in his military experience, that the effects of explosions were not always satisfactory. ‘The King was long of dying, and to his strength made debate for his life.’[155 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 229. Drury would not here add to our confidence by saying that ‘Sir Andrew Ker’ (if of Faldonside) ‘with others were on horseback near to the place for aid to the cruel enterprize if need had been.’ Ker, a pitiless wretch, was conspicuous in the Riccio murder, threatened Mary, and had but lately been pardoned. After Langside, he was kept prisoner, in accordance with Mary’s orders, by Whythaugh. But the Sir Andrew of Drury is another Ker.]

To return to honest Captain Cullen: after Bothwell was acquitted, and had issued a cartel offering Trial by Combat to any impugner of his honour, some anonymous champion promised, under certain conditions, to fight. This hero placarded the names of three Balfours, black John Spens, and others, as conspirators; as ‘doers’ he mentioned, with some companions, Tala, Bowton, Pat Wilson, and James Cullen. On April 25, the Captain was named as a murderer in Elizabeth’s Instructions to Lord Grey.[156 - Bain ii. 321, 325.] On May 8, Kirkcaldy told Bedford that Tullibardine had offered, with five others, to fight Ormistoun, ‘Beynston,’ Bowton, Tala, Captain Cullen, and James Edmonstone, who, says Tullibardine, were at the murder. On June 16, 1567, the day after Mary’s capture at Carberry, Scrope writes, ‘The Lords have taken Captain Cullen, who, after some strict dealing [torture], has revealed the King’s murder with the whole matter thereof.’[157 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 252.] Scrope was mistaken. He had probably heard of the capture of Blackader, who was hanged on June 24, denying his guilt. He had no more chance than had James Stewart of the Glens with a Campbell jury. His jury was composed of Lennox men, Darnley’s clansmen. Our Captain had not been taken, but on September 15 Moray told Throckmorton that Kirkcaldy, in Shetland, had captured Cullen, ‘one of the very executors, he may clear the whole action.’[158 - Bain, ii. 394. Cullen is spelled ‘Callan,’ and is described as Bothwell’s ‘chalmer-chiel.’]

Did Captain Cullen clear the whole action? We hear no more of his embarrassing revelations. But we do know that he was released and returned to the crimping trade: he fought for the Castle in 1571, was taken in a cupboard and executed. He had a pretty wife, the poor Captain, coveted and secured by Morton.

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 - Bain, ii. 355.] Nevertheless, in July, 1568, Clark was Captain of the Scots in Danish service, and was corresponding with Moray.[160 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 500. Hosack, i. 350, note 2, and Schiern’s Bothwell.] 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 - Laing, ii. 269.]

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 - Bain, ii. 698.] 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 - See Appendix B (#pgepubid00025), ‘The Burning of the Lyon King at Arms.’] 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 - Bain, ii. 667, 668.] 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 - Laing, i. 256, 257.] 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 - Laing, ii. 253.] 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 - Murdin, i. 57.] 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 - Laing, ii. 286, 287.] 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 - Laing, ii. 259.] Tala declared that Paris had a key of the back door.[170 - Laing, ii. 254.] Nelson says that Beaton, Mary’s usher, kept the keys: he and Paris.[171 - Laing, ii. 267, 268.]

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 - Laing, ii. 287.] 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 - Anderson, 1, part II., 76, 77.] 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 - Nau, Appendix ii. 151, 152. The Jesuits’ evidence was from letters to Archbishop Beaton.] 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 - Murdin, p. 57.]