The Mystery of Mary Stuart

by Andrew Lang

Now compare Mary’s excuses for her marriage, and for Bothwell’s conduct, as written in Scots by Lethington, her secretary, in May, 1567, for the Bishop of Dunblane to present to the Court of France.[366] First she tells at much length the tale of Bothwell’s ‘services, and the lang amitie,’ as briefly stated in Letter VI. Later she mentions his ambition, and ‘practising with ye nobillmen secretly to make yame his friendis.’ This answers to ‘having ye gude will of ye Lordis,’ in the Letter. In the document for the French Court, Mary suggests, as one of Bothwell’s motives for her abduction, ‘incidentis quhilk mycht occur to frustrat him of his expectatioun.’ In the Letter he is ‘constrainit for his suretie, to carry her off.’ Finally, in the Memorial for the French Court, it is said that Bothwell ‘ceased never till be persuasionis and importune sute accumpaneit not the less with force,’ he won Mary’s assent. In Letter VI. she advises him to allege that he is obliged ‘to use ane humble requeist joynit to ane importune action.’ Letter VI., in fact, is almost a succinct précis, before the abduction, of the pleas and excuses which Mary made to the French Court after her marriage. Could a forger have accidentally produced this coincidence? One could: according to Sir John Skelton the letter to her ambassador ‘is understood to have been drawn by Maitland.’[367] The letter of excuses to France is a mere expansion of the excuses that, in the Casket Letter which we are considering, Mary advises Bothwell to make to the Lords. Either, then, this Letter is genuine, or the hypothetical forger had seen, and borrowed from, the Memorial addressed in May to the Court of France. This alternative is not really difficult; for Lethington, as secretary, must have seen, and may even (as Skelton suggests) have composed, the Scots letter of excuses carried to France by the Bishop of Dunblane, and Lethington had joined Mary’s enemies before they got possession of the Casket and Letters. Oddly enough, the letter to the ambassador contains a phrase in Scots which Lethington had used in writing to Beaton earlier, Mary ‘could not find ane outgait.’[368] No transcript of the original French, and no English translation, have been found.

Letter VII

This Letter purports to follow on another, ‘sen my letter writtin,’ and may be of Tuesday, April 22, as Mary reports that Huntly is anxious about what he is to do ‘after to-morrow.’ She speaks of Huntly as ‘your brother-in-law that was,’ whereas Huntly, Bothwell not being divorced, was still his brother-in-law. Huntly is afraid that Mary’s people, and especially the Earl of Sutherland, will die rather than let her be carried off. We do not know, from other sources, that Sutherland was present. Mary implores Bothwell to bring an overpowering force. No transcript of the original French, nor any English translation, is known. Mary must have written two of these letters (and apparently eleven sonnets also) while ill, anxious, and busy, on the 22nd, at Stirling, with the third on the 23rd, either at Stirling or Linlithgow. She could hardly get answers to anything written as late as the 22nd, before Bothwell arrived at Haltoun, near Linlithgow, on the night of April 23.

Letter VIII (III in Henderson)

There are differences of opinion as to the date of this curious Letter, and as to its place in the series. The contemporary transcript, made probably for the Commissioners on December 9, 1568, is in the Record Office. I translate the Letter afresh, since it must be read before any inference as to its date and importance can be drawn.

‘Sir,—If regret for your absence, the pain caused by your forgetfulness, and by fear of the danger which every one predicts to your beloved person, can console me, I leave it to you to judge; considering the ill fortune which my cruel fate and constant trouble have promised me, in the sequel of sorrows and terrors recent and long passed; all which you well know. But, in spite of all, I will not accuse you either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, or of the coldness of your letters, I being so much your own that what pleases you pleases me. And my thoughts are so eagerly subject to yours that I am fain to suppose that whatsoever comes from you arises not from any of the aforesaid causes, but from such as are just and reasonable, and desired by myself. Which is the final order that you have promised me to take for the safety[369] and honourable service of the sole support of my life, for whom alone I wish to preserve it, and without which I desire only instant death. And to show you how humbly I submit me to your commands, I send you, by Paris, in sign of homage, the ornament’ (her hair) ‘of the head, the guide of the other members, thereby signifying that, in investing you with the spoil of what is principal, the rest must be subject to you with the heart’s consent. In place of which heart, since I have already abandoned it to you, I send you a sepulchre, of hard stone, painted black, semé with tears and bones.[370] I compare it to my heart, which, like it, is graven into a secure tomb or receptacle of your commands, and specially of your name and memory, which are therein enclosed, like my hair in the ring. Never shall they issue forth till death lets you make a trophy of my bones, even as the ring is full of them’ (i.e. in enamel), ‘in proof that you have made entire conquest of me, and of my heart, to such a point that I leave you my bones in memory of your victory, and of my happy and willing defeat, to be better employed than I deserve. The enamel round the ring is black, to symbolise the constancy of her who sends it. The tears are numberless as are my fears of your displeasure, my tears for your absence, and for my regret not to be yours, to outward view, as I am, without weakness of heart or soul.

‘And reasonably so, were my merits greater than those of the most perfect of women, and such as I desire to be. And I shall take pains to imitate such merits, to be worthily employed under your dominion. Receive this then, my only good, in as kind part as with extreme joy I have received your marriage’ (apparently, from what follows, a contract of marriage or a ring of betrothal), ‘which never shall leave my bosom till our bodies are publicly wedded, as a token of all that I hope or desire of happiness in this world. Now fearing, my heart, to weary you as much in the reading as I take pleasure in the writing, I shall end, after kissing your hands, with as great love as I pray God (O thou, the only prop of my life!) to make your life long and happy, and to give me your good grace, the only good thing which I desire, and to which I tend. I have shown what I have learned to this bearer, to whom I remit myself, knowing the credit that you give him, as does she who wishes to be ever your humble and obedient loyal wife, and only lover, who for ever vows wholly to you her heart and body changelessly, as to him whom I make possessor of my heart which, you may be assured, will never change till death, for never shall weal or woe estrange it.’

The absurd affectation of style in this Letter, so different from the plain manner of Letters I. and II., may be a poetical effort by Mary, or may be a forger’s idea of how a queen in love ought to write. In the latter case, to vary the manner so much from that of the earlier Letters, was a bold experiment and a needless.

Mary, to be brief, sends to Bothwell a symbolic mourning ring, enclosing her hair. It is enamelled in black, with tears and bones. Such a ring is given by a girl to her lover, as a parting token, in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (xxvi.), a ring d’or, esmailée de larmes noires.[371] She promises always to keep the ‘marriage’ (that is the contract of marriage, or can it be a ring typical of marriage?) in her bosom, till the actual wedding in public. Now she had a sentimental habit of wearing love tokens ‘in her bosom.’ She writes to Norfolk from Coventry (December, 1569), ‘I took the diamant from my Lord Boyd, which I shall keep unseene about my neck till I give it agayn to the owner of it and of me both.’[372]