Mary's troubles had only begun. On the 16th January, 1566, Randolph, the English ambassador, wrote from Edinburgh: "I cannot tell what mislikings of late there hath been between her grace and her husband; he presses earnestly for the matrimonial crown, which she is loth hastily to grant". Darnley, in fact, had proved a vicious fool, and was possessed of a fool's ambition. Rizzio, Mary's Italian secretary, who had urged the Darnley marriage, strongly warned Mary against giving her husband any real share in the government, and Darnley determined that Rizzio should be "removed".[73] He therefore entered into a conspiracy with his natural enemies, the Scottish nobles, who professed to be willing to secure the throne for this youth whom they despised and hated. The plot involved the murder of Rizzio, the imprisonment of Mary, the crown-matrimonial for Darnley, and the return of Murray and his accomplices, who were still in exile. The English government was, of course, privy to the scheme.[74] The murder was carried out, in circumstances of great brutality, on the night of the 9th March. Mary's condition of health, "having then passed almost to the end of seven months in our birth", renders the carrying out of the deed in her presence, and while Rizzio was her guest, almost certainly an attempt upon the queen's own life. There were numberless opportunities of slaying Rizzio elsewhere, and the ghastly details—the sudden appearance of Ruthven, hollow, pale, just risen from a sick bed, the pistol of Ker of Faudonside,—are so rich in dramatic effect that one can scarcely doubt what dénouement was intended. The plot failed in its main purpose. Rizzio, indeed, was killed, and Murray made his appearance next morning and obtained forgiveness. The queen "embracit him and kisset him, alleging that in caice he had bene at hame, he wald not have sufferit her to have bene sa uncourterly handlit". But the success ended here. Mary won over her husband, and together they escaped and fled to Dunbar. Darnley deserted his accomplices, proclaimed his innocence, and strongly urged the punishment of the murderers. They, of course, threw themselves on the hospitality of Queen Elizabeth, who sent them money, and lied to Mary,[75] who did not put too much faith in her cousin's assurances. On June 19th, a prince was born in Edinburgh Castle, but the event brought about only a partial reconciliation between his unhappy parents. Mary was shamefully treated by her worthless husband, and in the following November her nobles suggested to her the project of a divorce. Darnley, however, was not doomed to the fate which overtook his descendants, the life of a king without a crown. He had awakened the enmity of men whose feuds were blood-feuds, and the Rizzio conspirators were not likely to forgive the upstart youth whose inconstancy had foiled their plan for Mary's fall, and whose treachery had involved them in exile. Darnley had proved useless even as a tool for the nobles, he had offended Mary and disgusted everybody in Scotland, and there were many who were willing to do without him. At this point a new tool was ready to the hands of the discontented barons. The Earl of Bothwell, whether with Mary's consent or not, aspired to the queen's hand, and devised a plan for the murder of Darnley. On the night of the 10th February, 1566-67, the wretched boy, not yet twenty-one years of age, was strangled,[76] and the house in which he had been living was blown up with gunpowder. Public opinion accused Bothwell of the murder; he was tried and found innocent, and Parliament put its seal upon his acquittal. On the 24th April he seized the person of the queen as she was travelling from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, and Mary married him on the 15th May. Mense malum Maio nubere vulgus ait. The nobles almost immediately raised a rebellion, professedly to deliver the queen from the thraldom of Bothwell. On June 15th she surrendered at Carberry Hill, and the nobles disregarded a pledge of loyalty to the queen given on condition of her abandoning Bothwell, alleging that she was still in correspondence with him. They now accused her of murdering her husband, and imprisoned her in Lochleven Castle. The whole affair is wrapped in mystery, but it is impossible to give the Earl of Morton and the other nobles any credit for honesty of purpose. There can be little doubt that they used Bothwell for their own ends, and, while they represented the murder as the result of a domestic conspiracy between the queen and Bothwell, they afterwards, when quarrelling among themselves, hurled at each other accusations of participation in the plot, and their leader, the Earl of Morton, died on the scaffold as a criminal put to death for the murder of Darnley. This, of course, does not exclude the hypothesis of Mary's guilt, and while the view of Hume or of Mr. Froude could not now be seriously advanced in its entirety, it is only right to say that a majority of historians are of opinion that she, at least, connived at the murder. The question of her implication as a principal in the plot depends upon the authenticity of the documents known as the "Casket Letters", which purported to be written by the queen to Bothwell, and which the insurgent lords afterwards produced as evidence against her.[77]
Moray had left Scotland in the end of April. When he returned in the beginning of August he found that the prisoner of Lochleven, to whom he owed his advancement and his earldom, had been forced to sign a deed of abdication, nominating himself as regent for her infant son. On the 15th August he went to Lochleven and saw his sister, as he had done after the murder of Rizzio, when she was a prisoner in Holyrood. Till an hour past midnight, Elizabeth's pensioner preached to the unfortunate princess on righteousness and judgment, leaving her "that night in hope of nothing but of God's mercy". It was merely a threat; Mary's life was safe, for Elizabeth, roused, for once, to a feeling of generosity, had forbidden Moray to make any attempt on that. Next morning he graciously accepted the regency and left his sister's prison with her kisses on his lips.[78]
On the 2nd May, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven, and her brother at once prepared a hostile force to meet her. Her army, composed largely of Protestants, marched towards Dunbarton Castle, where they desired to place the queen for safe keeping. The regent intercepted her at Langside, and inflicted a complete defeat upon her forces. Mary was again a fugitive, and her followers strongly urged her to take refuge in France. But Elizabeth had given her a promise of protection, and Mary, impelled by some fateful impulse, resolved to throw herself on the mercy of her kinswoman.[79] On the 16th day of May, her little boat crossed the Solway. When the Queen of Scots, the daughter of the House of Guise, the widow of a monarch of the line of Valois, set foot on English soil as a suppliant for the protection which came to her only by death, the last faint hope must have faded out of the hearts of the few who still longed for an independent Scotland, bound by gratitude and by ancient tradition to the ally who, more than once, had proved its salvation.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] Cf. the present writer's "Mary, Queen of Scots" (Scottish History from Contemporary Writers).
[62] The spelling "Stuart", which Queen Mary brought with her from France, now superseded the older "Stewart".
[63] Foreign Calendar: Elizabeth, December 31st, 1560.
[64] Cabala, Sive Scrinia Sacra, pp. 345-349.
[65] Foreign Calendar, May 7th, 1562.