Meanwhile, after Mary’s surrender at Carberry, the counsel of Lethington prevailed. She was hurried to Loch Leven, after two dreadful days of tears and frenzied threats and entreaties, and was locked up in the Castle on the little isle, the Castle of her ancestral enemies, the Douglases. There she awaited her doom, ‘the fiery death.’
IX
THE EMERGENCE OF THE CASKET LETTERS
I. First hints of the existence of the letters
The Lords, as we have seen, nominally rose in arms to punish Bothwell (whom they had acquitted), to protect their infant Prince, and to rescue Mary, whom they represented as Bothwell’s reluctant captive. Yet their first success, at Carberry Hill, induced them, not to make Bothwell prisoner, but to give him facilities of escape. Their second proceeding was, not to release Mary, but to expose her to the insults of the populace, and then to immure her, destitute and desperate, in the island fortress of the Douglases.
These contradictions between their conduct and their avowed intentions needed excuse. They could not say, ‘We let Bothwell escape because he knew too much about ourselves: we imprisoned the Queen for the same good reason.’ They had to protect themselves, first against Elizabeth, who bitterly resented the idea that subjects might judge princes: next, against the possible anger of the rulers of France and Spain; next, against the pity of the mobile populace. There was also a chance that Moray, who was hastening home from France, might espouse his sister’s cause, as, indeed, at this moment he professed to do. Finally, in the changes of things, Mary, or her son, might recover power, and exact vengeance for the treasonable imprisonment of a Queen.
The Lords, therefore, first excused themselves (as in Lethington’s discourses with du Croc) by alleging that Mary refused to abandon Bothwell. This was, no doubt, true, though we cannot accept Lethington’s word for the details of her passionate behaviour. Her defenders can fall back on the report of Drury, that she was at this time with child, as she herself informed Throckmorton, while Nau declares that, in Loch Leven, she prematurely gave birth to twins. Mary always had a plausible and possible excuse: in this case she could not dissolve her marriage with Bothwell without destroying the legitimacy of her expected offspring. Later, in 1569, when she wished her marriage with Bothwell to be annulled, the Lords refused assent. In the present juncture, of June, 1567, with their Queen a captive in their hands, the Lords needed some better excuse than her obstinate adherence to the husband whom they had selected for her. They needed a reason for their conduct that would have a retro-active effect: namely, positive proof of her guilt of murder.
No sooner was the proof wanted than it was found. Mary was imprisoned on June 16: her guilty letters to Bothwell, the Casket Letters, with their instigations to Darnley’s murder and her own abduction, were secured on June 20, and were inspected, and entrusted to Morton’s keeping, on June 21. To Morton’s declaration about the discovery and inspection of the Casket and Letters, we return in chronological order: it was made in December, 1568, before the English Commissioners who examined Mary’s case.