From the first Lennox had pleaded for the arrest and trial of Bothwell and others whom he named, but who never were tried. Writers like Goodall have defended, Laing and Hill Burton have attacked, the manner of Bothwell’s Trial (April 12). Neither for Lennox nor for Elizabeth, would Mary delay the process. As usual in Scotland, as when Bothwell himself, years before, or when John Knox still earlier, or when, later, Lethington, was tried, either the accused or the accuser made an overwhelming show of armed force. It was ‘the custom of the country,’ and Bothwell, looking dejected and wretched, says his friend, Ormistoun, was ‘cleansed’ in the promptest manner, Lennox merely entering a protest. The Parliament on April 19 restored Huntly and others to forfeited lands, ratified the tenures of Moray, and offended Mary’s Catholic friends by practically establishing the Kirk. On the same night, apparently after a supper at Ainslie’s tavern, many nobles and ecclesiastics signed a band (‘Ainslie’s band’). It ran thus: Bothwell is, and has been judicially found, innocent of Darnley’s death. The signers therefore bind themselves, ‘as they will answer to God,’ to defend Bothwell to the uttermost, and to advance his marriage with Mary. If they fail, may they lose every shred of honour, and ‘be accounted unworthy and faithless Traytors.’
A copy of the names of the signatories, as given to Cecil by John Read, George Buchanan’s secretary, ‘so far as John Read might remember,’ exists. The names are Murray (who was not in Scotland), Argyll, Huntly, Cassilis, Morton, Sutherland, Rothes, Glencairn, Caithness, Boyd, Seton, Sinclair, Semple, Oliphant, Ogilvy, Ross-Halkett, Carlyle, Herries, Home, Invermeath. ‘Eglintoun subscribed not, but slipped away.’[185] Names of ecclesiastics, as Lesley, Bishop of Ross, appear in copies where Moray’s name does not.[186] It is argued that Moray may have signed before leaving Scotland, that this may have been a condition of his license to depart. Mary’s confessor told de Silva that Moray did not sign.[187] That the Lords received a warrant for their signatures from Mary, they asserted at York (October, 1568), but was the document mentioned later at Westminster? That they were coerced by armed force, was averred later, but not in Kirkcaldy’s account of the affair, written on the day following. No Hamilton signs, at least if we except the Archbishop; and Lethington, with his friend Atholl, seems not even to have been present at the Parliament.
On April 21 (Monday), Mary went to Stirling to see her son, and try to poison him, according to a Lennox memorandum. On the 23rd, she went to Linlithgow; on the 24th, Bothwell, with a large force, seized her, Huntly, and Lethington, at a disputed place not far from Edinburgh. He then carried her to his stronghold of Dunbar. Was Mary playing a collusive part? had she arranged with Bothwell to carry her off? The Casket Letters were adduced by her enemies to prove that she was a party to the plot. As we shall see when examining the Letters if we accept them they leave no doubt on this point. But precisely here the darkness is yet more obscured by the enigmatic nature of Mary’s relations with Lethington, who, as Secretary, was in attendance on her at Stirling and Linlithgow. It will presently be shown that, as to Lethington’s policy at this moment, and for two years later, two contradictory accounts are given, and on the view we take of his actions turns our interpretation of the whole web of intrigue.
Whether Mary did or did not know that she was to be carried off, did Lethington know? If he did, it was his interest to ride from Stirling, by night, through the pass of Killiecrankie, to his usual refuge, the safe and hospitable house of Atholl, before the abduction was consummated. Bothwell’s success in wedding Mary would mean ruin to Lethington’s favourite project of uniting the crowns on the head of Mary or her child. It would also mean Lethington’s own destruction, for Bothwell loathed him. To this point was he brought by his accession to the band for Darnley’s murder. His natural action, then, if he knew of the intended abduction, was to take refuge with Atholl, who, like himself, had not signed Ainslie’s band. If Lethington was ignorant, others were not. Bothwell had chosen his opportunity with skill. He had an excellent excuse for collecting his forces. The Liddesdale reivers had just spoiled the town of Biggar, ‘and got much substance of coin (corn?), silks, and horses,’ so wrote Sir John Forster to Cecil on April 24.[188] On the pretext of punishing this outrage, Bothwell mustered his forces; but politicians less wary than Lethington, and more remote from the capital, were not deceived. They knew what Bothwell intended. Lennox was flying for his life, and was aboard ship on the west coast, but, as early as April 23, he wrote to tell his wife that Bothwell was to seize Mary. A spy in Edinburgh (Kirkcaldy, by the handwriting), and Drury in Berwick, knew of the scheme on April 24, the day of the abduction. If Mary did not suspect what Lennox knew before the event, she was curiously ignorant, but, if Lethington was ignorant, so may she have been.[189]
What were the exact place and circumstances of Mary’s arrest by Bothwell, whether he did or did not offer violence to her at Dunbar, whether she asked succour from Edinburgh, we know not precisely. At all events, she was so far compromised, actually violated, says Melville,[190] that, not being a Clarissa Harlowe, she might represent herself as bound to marry Bothwell. Meanwhile Lethington was at Dunbar with her, a prisoner ‘under guard,’ so Drury reports (May 2). By that date, many of the nobles, including Atholl, had met at Stirling, and, despite their agreement to defend Bothwell, in Ainslie’s band, Argyll and Morton, as well as Atholl and Mar, had confederated against him, Atholl probably acting under advice secretly sent by Lethington. ‘The Earl Bothwell thought to have slain him in the Queen’s chamber, had not her Majesty come between and saved him,’ says Sir James Melville, who had been released on the day after his capture between Linlithgow and Edinburgh.[191] Different rumours prevailed as to Lethington’s own intentions. He was sometimes thought to be no unwilling prisoner, and even to have warned Atholl not to head the confederacy against Bothwell (May 4).[192] Mary wrote to quiet the banded Lords at Stirling (about May 3), and Lethington succeeded in getting a letter delivered in which he expressed his desire to speak with Cecil, declaring that Mary meant to marry Bothwell. He had only been rescued from assassination by Mary, who said that, ‘if a hair of Lethington’s head perished, she would cause Huntly to forfeit lands, goods, and life.’[193] Could the Queen who protected Lethington be in love with Bothwell?
Mary, then, was, in one respect at least, no passive victim, at Dunbar, and Lethington owed his life to her. He explained that his letters, apparently in Bothwell’s interest, were extorted from him, ‘but immediately by a trusty messenger he advertised not to give credit to them.’[194] Meantime he had arranged to escape, as he did, later. ‘He will come out to shoot with others, and between the marks he will ride upon a good nag to a place where both a fresh horse and company tarries for him.’[195] Lethington made his escape, but not till weeks later, when he fled first to Callendar, then to the protection of Atholl; he joined the Lords, and from this moment the question is, was he, under a pretext of secret friendship, Mary’s most deadly foe (as she herself, Morton, and Randolph declared) or her loyal servant, working cautiously in her interests, as he persuaded Throckmorton and Sir James Melville to believe?
My own impression is that Mary, Morton, and Randolph were right in their opinion. Lethington, under a mask of gratitude and loyalty, was urging, after his escape, the strongest measures against Mary, till circumstances led him to advise ‘a dulce manner,’ because (as he later confessed to Morton)[196] Mary was likely to be restored, and to avenge herself on him. Mary, he knew, could ruin him by proving his accession to Darnley’s murder. His hold over her would be gone, as soon as the Casket Letters were produced before the English nobles: he had then no more that he could do, but she kept her reserve of strength, her proof against him. His bolt was shot, hers was in her quiver. This view of the relations (later to be proved) between Lethington and the woman whose courage saved his life, explains the later mysteries of Mary’s career, and part of the problem of the Casket Letters.
Meanwhile, in the first days of May, the Queen rushed on her doom. Despite the protestations of her confessor, who urged that a marriage with Bothwell was illegal: despite the remonstrances of du Croc, who had been sent from France to advise and threaten, despite the courageous denunciation of Craig, the Protestant preacher, Mary hurried through a collusive double process of divorce, proclaimed herself a free agent, created Bothwell Duke of Orkney, and, on May 15, 1567, wedded him by Protestant rites, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, later one of her official prosecutors, performing the ceremony.[197] To her or to Lethington’s own letter of excuse to the French Court, we return later.
Mary, even on the wedding-day, was miserable. Du Croc, James Melville, and Lethington, who had not yet escaped, were witnesses of her wretchedness. She called out for a knife to slay herself.[198] Mary was ‘the most changed woman of face that in so little time without extremity of sickness they have seen.’ A Highland second-sighted woman prophesied that she should have five husbands. ‘In the fifth husband’s time she shall be burned, which death divers speak of to happen to her, and it is said she fears the same.’ This dreadful death was the legal punishment of women who killed their husbands. The fires of the stake shone through Mary’s dreams when a prisoner in Loch Leven. Even Lady Reres, now supplanted by a sister of Bothwell’s, and the Lady of Branxholme, ‘both in their speech and writing marvellously rail, both of the Queen and Bothwell.’[199]
A merry bridal!