Mary Queen of Scots (15 page)

Probably because this confrontation displeased both Mary and the privy councilors, Bothwell requested Knox, whose father and forbears were Hepburn dependents, to mediate an understanding between him and Arran. The two earls’ subsequent reconciliation fell apart after they dined together on 26 March at Hamilton House in the parish of St Mary-in-the-Field, known as Kirk o’Field. The next day Arran informed an unsympathetic Knox that Bothwell planned to capture Mary, take her to Dumbarton Castle, which was held by Châtelherault, and murder Lord James and her other advisers. He also sent a message to Mary that his father the duke supported the abduction scheme.
Because he was descending into madness, Arran was somewhat incoherent, making it difficult for observers to separate facts from fantasy.

After meeting with the two earls, the privy council ordered the incarceration ultimately at Edinburgh Castle of both Arran and Bothwell, the latter protesting his innocence. In late August Bothwell escaped from the castle and was shipwrecked in England, a flight that led many to credit Arran’s testimony. When in early 1564
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Mary finally agreed to forward permission to Elizabeth for Bothwell’s departure to France, Randolph condemned his character as worthless and complained about Arran’s continued imprisonment. Although never completely regaining his senses, Arran was freed in 1566 but remained under house confinement until his death in 1609. Meanwhile, indicating that she gave some credence to his accusations, Mary took the opportunity this dispute offered to remove Dumbarton from his father’s control. Châtelherault’s possession of that stronghold had long been of some concern to her. The memoirs written later either by Sir John Maxwell of Terrigles, who became fifth Lord Herries in late 1566, or more probably by one of his descendants, claims that Bothwell did concoct this plot. It is interesting that Buchanan, a Lennox ally, believed that both Bothwell and the Hamiltons planned to abduct her but that Randolph, a Hamilton ally, blamed only Bothwell for the scheme.

HUNTLY’S REBELLION

An examination of Châtelard’s writings is helpful to an understanding of yet another assault on the queen’s honor in late 1562. After
accompanying her to Scotland, Châtelard, a maternal grand-nephew of Pierre du Terrail, chevalier de Bayard, and a poet of the Ronsard school, expressed grief at her attentions to three men: Damville, Arran, and Sir John Gordon of Findlater, the third son of Huntly. Rumors spread even before Damville accompanied Mary to Scotland that a friend had offered to poison his wife so that he might wed the queen. In short, Châtelard’s writings indicate that these suitors had something more serious on their minds than mere dalliance. The poet ultimately concluded that Gordon of Findlater had captured Mary’s heart and described him in glowing terms:

the paragon of excellence in man...the youthful Gordon...what majesty was in his port;...Upon his knees he came to greet his queen;...such grace was in his motion, that had Apollo’s self been there, the god had been a Gordon.
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In August 1562 after the meeting with Elizabeth was postponed, Mary traveled northward, reached Old Aberdeen by the 27th, and visited the university. In her train were Lord James, still addressed as the earl of Mar, James Ogilvy of Cardell, master of her household, and Randolph, among others. As she entered Gordon territory, Elizabeth Keith, countess of Huntly, attempted to intercede for her son, Findlater, a fugitive from justice. Two months earlier, he was imprisoned in the Edinburgh Tolbooth for mutilating the right arm of James, fifth Lord Ogilvy of Airlie, but had since escaped and fled to Aberdeen.

The assault on Lord Ogilvy was an episode in an ongoing inheritance dispute between Findlater and Ogilvy of Cardell, master of the queen’s household. Lord Ogilvy was drawn into it as the guardian of Walter, the grandson and heir of Cardell. After Cardell’s deceased father had married as his second wife Elizabeth Gordon, he disinherited Cardell and bequeathed the Ogilvy estates to his wife’s cousin, Findlater. Reportedly, Findlater kept Elizabeth Gordon, who became his mistress, imprisoned so that he could control her jointure lands.

Following a conversation with Findlater’s mother Lady Huntly, Mary ordered him to appear before Aberdeen’s court of justiciary. After it demanded that he repair within seven days to Stirling for confinement, he departed but failed to appear at the castle. Besides this incident, the Gordons nurtured other grievances. As Huntly disliked
both English and French interference in Scotland, he opposed Mary’s efforts to meet with Elizabeth and boycotted the privy council meeting that approved the conference. Moreover, as noted above, Huntly administered both the Mar and Moray estates and could be expected to react with hostility when he learned that Mary had granted the Moray earldom to Lord James, his old enemy.

As she departed Aberdeen, Mary anticipated trouble and declined to visit Huntly’s home, Strathbogie Castle. She continued on to Darnaway Castle, the earl of Moray’s hereditary seat, and at a privy council meeting on 10 September, decided to respond to Gordon of Findlater’s defiance with force and to recognize her half brother as Moray. The councilors also ordered Findlater and his pretended spouse to release the Ogilvy estates to the crown. When Mary reached the royal castle at Inverness, which the Gordons had largely built and controlled for 50
years, its keeper, Alexander Gordon, refused to admit her on Huntly’s orders as sheriff of Inverness. Since she had to spend that night in private lodgings rather than the more secure castle, the earl apparently was planning to make it easier to capture her and forcibly marry her to his son Findlater. Obtaining local support, she ordered Gordon to open the gates and had him hanged when he complied, thus enforcing the statute that declared this illegal behavior a treasonable act. After she left the castle, Findlater harried her forces. Finally on 28 October, eleven days after she ordered Huntly declared a traitor with three blasts of the horn at Aberdeen’s Mercat Cross, Mary’s army of about 2,000 led by Moray defeated the attacking Gordon force of some 700 or so at Corrichie, near Aberdeen. As she approached this showdown, Randolph reported that he had not seen her merrier and never thought she would be able to stomach these violent events. Indeed, her physical endurance must also have impressed him. He described as a miserable experience their more than two-month journey on horseback that covered difficult terrain amidst cold and foul weather.

After the battle Huntly died probably of a stroke; his heir George was imprisoned, but Gordon of Findlater was executed in November at Aberdeen. The axe man was so inept that Mary, probably witnessing her first beheading, fainted while observing the bloody deed. In France Châtelard surmised that her presence was required to prove she lacked passion for Findlater, but others remarked that she needed to witness it to confirm that the execution was not merely Moray’s avenging
himself on the Gordon family. Randolph believed Findlater meant to kill Mary, but Knox more realistically claimed Huntly intended to seize her and murder Moray. The Herries memoirs also state Huntly wanted to match her with his son, Findlater.

A controversial aspect of these events was that Huntly headed the most prominent Catholic family in Scotland, and scholars have charged that Mary destroyed him because of his opposition to her plans for meeting with Elizabeth. That she invited Randolph to join her progress does seem to lend credence to this claim. It remains true, however, that Huntly and his sons defied her, seized the master of her household’s inheritance, refused her admission into Inverness Castle, threatened to abduct her, and rallied their allies, including John Gordon, 11th earl of Sutherland, to attack her forces. Since she delayed ordering Huntly declared a traitor until mid-October, she undoubtedly hoped to obtain his submission and avoid violence. Disregarding traditional practice, the Gordons chose not to retreat and end the conflict after encountering a larger armed force. The family’s ruin created a power vacuum in the northeast that was not filled until 1565 when Mary responded to the challenge of the Chaseabout raiders by releasing Huntly’s heir, who resumed control of his inheritance as the fifth earl and remained thereafter her loyal supporter. Later, as an English prisoner, she recalled that Huntly blamed Moray not her for his father’s and brother’s deaths.

THE CHÂTELARD INCIDENTS

That November while Mary was still on this progress, Châtelard reached Scotland, ending a one-year absence. Although he declared at his departure that he was leaving Scotland forever, he changed his mind and returned via London where he reportedly confided to a friend he was going to see his lady love. Having found Mary at Montrose on the 12th, he delivered to her from Damville a long letter, which according to Randolph, greatly pleased her. Indeed, she longed to receive news from France, and James Melville remembered that she enjoyed conversing with individuals returning from abroad. In late December Randolph reported that only one packet and two letters from France had arrived since Châtelard’s return and that no prince
received fewer messages from there than she. Lethington also complained about not hearing much news in their corner of the world. It is no wonder then that she rewarded Châtelard for bringing Damville’s letter to her with a ride on a gelding presented to her by her half brother Lord Robert. Randolph did not report, as did others, who were not witnesses to their exchanges, that she gave her horse to the poet.
Continuing toward Holyrood, she reached the palace by the 21st and succumbed to the influenza, called the New Acquaintance. There she was to face still another challenge to her honor.

In the next few weeks Randolph revealed no more information about Châtelard, although he noted that an illness kept Mary in bed for several days in January 1563. He later discovered that on 12 February before she left Holyrood on another progress, two chamberlains found Châtelard under her bed armed with his sword and dagger. After learning about this intrusion the next morning, Mary banished him from court. Undeterred he followed her to Dunfermline and apparently became persuaded that her anger had abated. On the 14th
en route
to St Andrews, she stopped at Rossend Castle, Burntisland, where, having hidden in a corner of her bedchamber, according to Randolph who was not present, Châtelard set upon her with such force and impudence that she and her two attendants cried for help. When Moray came to her rescue, she allegedly demanded that he stab Châtelard but her half brother arrested him instead, and on the 22nd the poet was executed at St Andrews. Meanwhile, Mary Fleming began sleeping in her mistress’s bedchamber.

When Châtelard returned to France in 1561, he fought in the religious wars on behalf of the Huguenots, but his Protestantism did not prevent him from obsessing about his feelings for Mary. Knox and others charged her with somehow leading the poet on, accusations that highlighted the ambivalence about women at court, who were expected to please men but somehow to demonstrate a modesty that kept them at bay. It is noteworthy that although Randolph, unlike Knox, observed some of Mary’s interactions with Châtelard, he did not accuse her of over-familiarity with the poet until after learning about the bedchamber confrontations.

In his writings Châtelard revealed that he played the lute for her, that she gave him a book by Petrarch, and that he read to her some of Ronsard’s and Petrarch’s poetry, the latter bringing tears to her eyes.
He never referred to any beguilement on her part but confessed only to suffering an unrequited passion for her. His obsession seems to have led him to follow or tail her; today we would say that he stalked her. Such individuals do not require encouragement; they inhabit a deluded world, focusing on their inner feelings and harassing their victims even after courts issue restraining orders. If he had ulterior motives for following her, the belief of Mary’s Catholic friends that he meant to assassinate her seems implausible. He did admit, however, to attempting to sully her reputation in hopes of preventing her from remarrying.
Perhaps he even thought that the bedchamber intrusions might make her feel compelled to wed him. Randolph regretted these attempts to dishonor Mary on whom he predicted a scar would ever remain.

Indeed, females often believe lewd attacks pollute them. Earlier in August 1562 when Mary was walking in Holyrood’s garden with Sir Henry Sidney, who was sent by Elizabeth to explain why she was postponing their conference, a Captain Hepburn delivered a document to her. She handed it to Lord James, who opened it to discover four ribald verses and crude sketches of women’s and men’s genitalia. To provide a context for her offended reaction, candid treatments of sexual matters in medical books even horrified some members of the medical profession. The outraged Mary ordered the captain’s arrest because she feared his lewd gift would in some sense cast doubts upon her honor, prompting individuals to wonder if she deserved to be so insulted.

Confirming Mary’s concern for her honor, Lethington reported to Cecil in December 1564 that her reputation was dearer to her than her life. In May 1565 when outraged by her plans to wed Darnley, Randolph even claimed he previously had deemed her to be prudent, wise, and honorable in all matters and James Melville recalled in his memoirs that she detested all lewd and vicious people. In the future, she would have to deal with even more damaging attacks on her honor and reputation that would result in her flight to England and life imprisonment.

In early 1563 Randolph reported that from the beginning of her sorrows, Mary had ridden restlessly from place to place hawking and hunting. During the previous six months, she had faced troubling times: Huntly’s defeat at Corrichie, Châtelard’s execution for secretly entering her bedchamber twice, and the duke of Guise’s death on 24
February during the first of the French religious wars. After accompanying her to Falkland on 19 March, Randolph departed for St Andrews. Six days later Mary journeyed to Petlethie, Moray’s residence some four miles from St Andrews. As Randolph dined with her there on the 29th, a packet arrived from France notifying her of the death on 6 March of her uncle, Francis, the Grand Prior, which her concerned attendants had been concealing from her. She shed tears during the reading of his testament, displaying grief that was undoubtedly sincere although his high rank also deserved this emotional reaction. When Catherine de’ Medici learned of Guise’s death, for example, she wept and fainted.