Mary Queen of Scots (24 page)

After hearing the massive explosion about 2:00 a.m. on the morning of the 10th and learning that Henry was dead, Moretta briefly delayed his departure. One and one half days later, he left in the company of Chisholm and Hay, stopping in France
en route
to Savoy to inform Charles and Catherine of the murder. Moretta’s testimony represents what some believed occurred. When Henry became aware of suspicious noises outside his chamber, he escaped through a window overlooking the garden. Assassins then strangled him with his shirt sleeves and destroyed the part of the house where he slept, intending to have it appear that he was killed in the descent. Moretta described Mary as very fearful and repeated rumors that Moray was the instigator of the murder.
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Actually, the explosion destroyed the whole building. According to Lorraine’s client, Clernault de Villemont, an underground mine that sounded like the firing of 25 or 30 cannons in volley caused the blast. Villemont also revealed that the greatly distressed queen had been on good terms with her husband.

In her letter to Archbishop Beaton, written the 10th but dated the 11th, Mary likewise related that the lodge was in ruins. She and some others believed that Henry was still asleep when the gunpowder exploded, but he more likely escaped through a window, as Moretta later asserted. His body and that of his valet, William Taylor, still attired in their night clothes, displayed no visible marks even though they were found some 40 yards away in a garden on the other side of the town wall. Conspirators probably grabbed them as they descended, smothered them, and dumped them there. Also, according to Moretta, some women heard him cry, “O, my brothers, have pity on me for the love of Him who had mercy on all the world,” fueling the speculation he was addressing his Douglas relatives.
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Mary confided to Beaton that she believed the murderers had planned to kill her, recalling that she had only by chance gone to Holyrood that night. She surely spent most of the 10th personally inquiring about Henry’s assassination, instructing her household about disposing of his remains, and preparing messages announcing his demise. She commissioned Villemont, for example, to carry her notification of his death to Archbishop Beaton.

Then on the morning of the 11th, Shrove Tuesday, before beginning the widow’s customary 40-day seclusion, she witnessed the marriage of John Stewart and her attendant, Margaret Carwood, whose wedding dress she purchased for £125. Her attendance at this religious ritual has been characterized as showing her disdain for Henry’s memory, but no gala festivities celebrated the occasion. Not only had she ordered the court into mourning but also, according to Moretta’s testimony to de Silva in London, she donned a widow’s thick black veil. Leslie even claimed that questions were raised about the appropriateness of a queen’s mourning a husband, who was a private man and one of her subjects, but noted that despite these concerns, she decided to follow traditional protocol for honoring a royal spouse.

While departing for Edinburgh Castle, the residence Mary chose for security reasons, she received Archbishop Beaton’s dispatch of 27 January, relating that Don Frances de Alava, the Spanish ambassador in France, informed him of rumors that a dangerous conspiracy was directed at her. By 17 February de Alava and Margaret Farnese, duchess of Parma, regent of the Netherlands, had alerted de Silva about this apparent threat to Mary.

Meanwhile the council sent a magistrate accompanied by surgeons to examine the bodies of the king and his valet. The councilors also questioned servants who slept in adjoining buildings and called other witnesses for information. A paper on the 11th written by Alexander Hay, secretary to the council, contains notes concerning the interrogation of three deponents about the crime: two women and a surgeon who reported on the number of men they saw and other events following the explosion. George Buchanan later claimed that Huntly, Bothwell, and Leslie attended this meeting, which was convened by Argyll in his chamber.

No evidence that the councilors continued these interrogations has survived, but on the 12th they did offer £2,000 and a pension to anyone identifying the murderers. On that same day Mary’s household began arranging Henry’s burial. They had his body embalmed and laid in state at Holyrood for three days before having it interred on the 15th in the royal vault near James V. A night funeral service without Psalms or music was held, following the custom Protestants had introduced into Scotland to avoid all hints of the Catholic tradition of praying for the dead.

For her son’s safety Mary placed him in the custody of Huntly and Bothwell at Holyrood on the 16th before moving from the castle to Seton with her ladies, Archbishop Hamilton, Argyll, and Lethington to receive, according to James Melville, some purgations. In fact, she seems to have suffered a physical and emotional breakdown after her husband’s death. Blaming the environment for her disease, her physicians hoped Seton’s air would restore her fragile health. Leslie claimed that she wanted to continue depending on candlelight but her doctors ordered the windows open to let in the light. Other evidence attests to her persistent illness. Her letters were mostly in Scots, which she was as yet unable to write and were, therefore, dictated. She also failed to correspond with her relatives as usual.

Between 19 February when she returned to Edinburgh and 23 March when this mourning period ended, she moved back and forth between the castle and the hall. In late February the gossipy Drury at Berwick reported that Argyll, Huntley, and Bothwell dined with her at Tranent and that she competed with Bothwell in an archery match. Since she was observing Lent as well as mourning her husband’s death, Drury’s claim, based on spies’ reports, is absurd. George Buchanan later repeated these rumors, substituting golf for archery.

On 8 March when Killigrew condoled with her in a dark chamber at the castle, he reported that he could not see her face, which must have still been hidden by her thick black veil, but that she exhibited profound grief in her voice and manner. The limited visibility he described has fueled the speculation that an attendant disguised as Mary met with the ambassador presumably because she was too ill to see him. This deceit seems unlikely: Mary had visited with Killigrew the previous June when she was also unwell, and he would have been somewhat familiar with her subdued voice. Locating a six-foot female attendant who could speak with her accent would surely have constituted a great challenge for Mary’s staff. If Mary had instructed a servant to substitute for her at this audience, she would have breached diplomatic protocol, taking a chance on gravely offending her royal cousin, whom Killigrew represented. Apparently, noting no irregularity in Mary’s behavior or appearance, the ambassador handed over some official documents to her.

Shortly after Henry’s assassination, rumors began to spread about his killers’ identities. On 16 February an anonymous writer placed a placard on the Tolbooth door blaming Bothwell, Balfour, David Chalmers, and Black John Spens. Others accused Mary’s servants, Pagez, John Francisco de Busso, Francis Sebastien, John de Bordeaux, and Riccio. Steeped in hierarchical notions and convinced that a nobleman must have been involved in a prince’s murder, many named Bothwell. In early March an offensive placard displayed her as a mermaid–siren with a crown on her head and Bothwell as a hare with the Hepburn crest, crouching in a circle of swords. On the 14th the council charged with slander in absentia James Murray, her comptroller’s brother.

It is impossible given the flawed evidence to identify definitively the ringleader of the murder and the tasks his co-conspirators completed. Conflicting information is scattered in chronicles, memoirs, and the statements of those later convicted, many of whom were threatened with torture and placed on bread-and-water diets. Certainly, Morton, Balfour, Bothwell, and his followers were involved but so were others. The assailants seem to have been so disorganized that the disparate groups moving around the lodge were unaware of each other’s presence. That the explosion failed to kill Henry also indicates inadequate, hurried planning. The knowledge that Mary was reconciling with the king may have prompted the haste, since they would soon be sleeping together in the same residence.

Even so, it seems reasonable to assert that Balfour organized the plot: he composed the band for Henry’s death, offered his brother’s lodge for the king’s convalescence, and stored the gunpowder in his Canongate and Kirk o’Field houses. Bothwell and his followers delivered and fired the gunpowder while Morton dispatched his allies, including Archibald Douglas and Ker of Fawdonside, to ensure Henry’s death.

In depositions taken in 1575 before an official of Paris at the instigation of Leslie to obtain evidence supporting Mary’s petition to Gregory XIII for a divorce from her third husband, an interesting story about his involvement in the king’s murder was revealed. A deponent, Cuthbert Ramsay, who was a brother of Lord Dalhousie, recalled having spoken with John Hepburn, a servant of Bothwell and one of the king’s murderers, both in prison and at his execution. Hepburn had confided to Ramsay that he had saved Bothwell’s life at Kirk o’Field. Apparently, the earl had decided to investigate the reason for the delay in the explosion of the train of gunpowder. When he neared the gunpowder, it suddenly caught fire, and reacting quickly, Hepburn had pushed him away from the danger.
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Citing contemporary rumors as well as the Casket Letters, writers have often linked Henry’s murder to Bothwell’s later abduction of Mary as though the two events formed steps in a long-term conspiracy. Since this theory depends on the knowledge of hindsight, it is useful to separate the two crimes, first identifying the assassins’ motives and then the abductor’s goals. Henry’s murder was partly the result of his victims’ reaction to the bloodfeud he initiated when he led Riccio’s armed killers into Mary’s chamber, frightening her attendants and others present at the palace. Relying on a kin-based justice system and a customary code of honor, the injured party or their relatives either retaliated with violence or demanded compensation. When the king denied participating in Riccio’s murder, he left the victims with only the option of force to redeem their honor. His later public denial of involvement, furthermore, antagonized the perpetrators, his former allies, making it possible for them to unite with the victims against him.

Avenging Riccio, as some observers assumed, were Riccio’s brother Joseph and various Catholic members of the queen’s household. Besides Riccio, the next most aggrieved individual was Balfour, whom Mary believed the armed intruders intended to hang. The king’s killing place belonged to Balfour’s brother, Robert, who was present during the explosion to restore the family honor. Rumors also named Bothwell, who fled the palace in the belief that Henry planned to surrender him to Moray. Although he was declared innocent at his murder trial, the accusations against Bothwell and his adherents are surely accurate.

In their depositions and confessions, furthermore, some of Bothwell’s accomplices who were executed for the murder, for example, John Hay the younger of Tallo, James Ormiston, and French Paris, claimed both Huntly and Argyll were also endorsers of a band to kill Henry. In his
History of Scotland
George Buchanan identified Huntly as one of the principal perpetrators. Writing after Huntly died in 1576, John Knox’s secretary, Richard Bannatyne, asserted that both Huntly and Argyll were the king’s assassins. At his trial for Henry’s murder in 1581, Morton claimed Archibald Douglas admitted to being present at Kirk o’Field with Bothwell and Huntly. Finally, a statement drawn up in 1582, listing the offences committed by Esmé Stuart, duke of Lennox, James VI’s former principal minister, included a claim that the duke had restored to their honor and heritage those forfeited for the king’s murder; among the names on its margin was Huntly’s (obviously for his heirs).

The reason for Huntly’s endorsing the band was that he had escaped Holyrood after Riccio’s death in the belief that Henry meant to turn him over to Moray. If Argyll, who, of course, was not at Holyrood, also signed the band to kill Henry, as is likely, he would have done so to defend his personal reputation and his family’s honor. Although estranged from his countess, he was surely offended that armed murderers had charged into the small chamber, threatening the well-being of his wife and its other occupants. For anyone to assault the earl’s kin-folk or affinity was to insult him as the head of his kindred. An armed attack like the one his countess was forced to witness would have been viewed as a much greater blow to his honor than any physical or emotional damage actually inflicted on her.

The names of Lethington and Morton also frequently appeared alongside Huntly’s and Argyll’s in the above documents. Henry’s betrayal alienated Lethington, as it did the other Riccio conspirators, but the king’s treatment of Mary further angered the secretary. Executed for Henry’s murder in 1581, Morton and his allies either signed the band or became assassins because Henry publicly denied involvement in Riccio’s death. They may also have felt disdain for his manhood. He had stood by while they restored his honor by completing the murder with his dagger.

In April 1566 William Henrisson, a secretary of Archbishop Beaton, delivered a letter from Mary to de Silva in London. During their conversation, Henrisson reported his recent audience with Elizabeth during which she asked if Henry drew his dagger during the attack on Riccio. When she learned he had not, she said she was not surprised, recalling he failed to put his hand to his knife when he was in England. Perhaps she was belittling his courage, as one proof of noble honor was the visible readiness to defend it with violence even for trivial matters.

Immediately after the king’s assassination, rumors accused the absent Moray of the crime, but he was probably not one of the conspirators. Like Henry, Moray was a Stewart and may have been disinclined to participate personally in another Stewart’s death. It is true he was a Chaseabout raider but he had been reacting to concerns that Mary’s new husband would damage his political and economic standing and jeopardize the Protestant religion. At least by Riccio’s death most individuals understood that Henry had little influence with Mary. The king did, moreover, keep his word to Moray and the other raiders when he dissolved the parliament summoned to forfeit their estates. Without blemishing his honor, Moray could, therefore, refuse to sign the band for the king’s murder. In this context, the comment in French Paris’s confession that Moray would neither help nor hinder the conspiracy seems to ring true. If Moray did know about the plan to kill the king, as he surely must have, he obviously did not feel honor bound to warn Henry of the danger. In April as Moray was planning to go abroad, he drew up a will, naming Mary as his daughter’s guardian, apparently not yet committed to charging his half-sister with her husband’s death. George Buchanan was later to claim that the underlying motive for Moray’s decision to attack her honor was his own exculpation.