The Mystery of Mary Stuart. Lang Andrew

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СКАЧАТЬ a sister of the magic lady of Branksome, and aunt of one of the Four Maries, Mary Beaton. Buchanan describes her as an old love of Bothwell, ‘a woman very heavy, both by unwieldy age and massy substance;’ her gay days, then, must long have been over. She was also the mother of a fairly large family. Cecil absurdly avers that Bothwell obtained his divorce by accusing himself of an amour with this fat old lady.[76] Knox’s silly secretary, Bannatyne, tells us that the Reformer, dining at Falsyde, was regaled with a witch story by a Mr. Lundie. He said that when Lady Atholl and Mary were both in labour, in Edinburgh Castle, he came there on business, and found Lady Reres lying abed. ‘He asking her of her disease, she answered that she was never so troubled with no bairn that ever she bare, for the Lady Atholl had cast all the pain of her child-birth upon her.’[77] It was a case of Telepathy. Lady Reres had been married long enough to have a grown-up son, the young Laird of Reres, who was in Mary’s service at Carberry Hill (June, 1567). According to Dr. Joseph Robertson, Lady Reres was wet-nurse to Mary’s baby. But, if we trust Buchanan, she was always wandering about with Mary, while the nurseling was elsewhere. The name of Lady Reres does not occur among those of Mary’s household in her Etat of February 1567. We only hear of her, then, from Buchanan, as a veteran procuress of vast bulk who, at some remote period, had herself been the mistress of Bothwell.

      A few days after the treasonable and infamous action of Bothwell in violating his Queen, we are to believe that Mary, still in the Exchequer House, sent Lady Reres for that hero. Though it would have been simple and easy to send a girl like Margaret Carwood, Mary and Margaret must needs let old Lady Reres ‘down by a string, over an old wall, into the next garden.’ Still easier would it have been for Lady Reres to use the key of the back door, as when she first admitted Bothwell. But these methods were not romantic enough: ‘Behold, the string suddenly broke, and down with a great noise fell Lady Reres.’ However, she returned with Bothwell, and so began these tragic loves.

      This legend is backed, according to Buchanan, by the confession of Bothwell’s valet, George Dalgleish, ‘which still remaineth upon record,’ but is nowhere to be found. In Dalgleish’s confession, printed in the ‘Detection,’ nothing of the kind occurs. But a passage in the Casket Sonnet IX. is taken as referring to the condoned rape:

      Pour luy aussi j’ai jeté mainte larme,

      Premier, quand il se fist de ce corps possesseur,

      Duquel alors il n’avoit pas le cœur.

      In the Lennox MSS. Lennox himself dates the beginning of the intrigue with Bothwell about September, 1566. But he and Buchanan are practically but one witness. There is no other.

      As regards this critical period, we have abundant contemporary information. The Privy Council, writing to Catherine de’ Medici, from Edinburgh, on October 8, make Mary, ten or twelve days before (say September 26), leave Stirling for Edinburgh, on affairs of the Exchequer. She offered to bring Darnley, but he insisted on remaining at Stirling, where Lennox visited him for two or three days, returning to Glasgow. Thence he wrote to Mary, warning her that Darnley had a vessel in readiness, to fly the country. The letter reached Mary on September 29, and Darnley arrived on the same day. He rode to Mary, but refused to enter the palace, because three or four of the Lords were in attendance. Mary actually went out to see her husband, apparently dismissed the Lords, and brought him to her chamber, where he passed the night. On the following day, the Council, with du Croc, met Darnley. He was invited, by Mary and the rest, to declare his grievances: his attention was directed to the ‘wise and virtuous’ conduct of his wife. Nothing could be extracted from Darnley, who sulkily withdrew, warning Mary, by a letter, that he still thought of leaving the country. His letter hinted that he was deprived of regal authority, and was abandoned by the nobles. To this they reply that he must be aimable before he can be aimé, and that they will never consent to his having the disposal of affairs.[78]

      A similar account was given by du Croc to Archbishop Beaton, and, on October 17, to Catherine de’ Medici, no friend of Mary, also by Mary to Lennox.[79]

      We have not Darnley’s version of what occurred. He knew that all the powerful Lords were now united against him. Du Croc, however, had frequent interviews with Darnley, who stated his grievance. It was not that Bothwell injured his honour. Darnley kept spies on Mary, and had such a noisy and burlesque set of incidents occurred in the garden of Exchequer House as Buchanan reports, Darnley should have had the news. But he merely complained to du Croc that he did not enjoy the same share of power and trust as was his in the early weeks of his wedding. Du Croc replied that this fortune could never again be his. The ‘Book of Articles’ entirely omits Darnley’s offence in the slaying of Riccio. Du Croc was more explicit. He told Darnley that the Queen had been personally offended, and would never restore him to his authority. ‘He ought to be well content with the honour and good cheer which she gave him, honouring and treating him as the King her husband, and supplying his household with all manner of good things.’ This goes ill with Buchanan’s story about Mary’s stinginess to Darnley. It is admitted by the Lennox MSS. that she did not keep her alleged promise to Bothwell, that she and Darnley should never meet in the marriage bed.

      When Mary had gone to Jedburgh, to hold a court (about October 8), du Croc was asked to meet Darnley at some place, apparently Dundas, ‘three leagues from Edinburgh.’ Du Croc thought that Darnley wished Mary to ask him to return. But Darnley, du Croc believed, intended to hang off till after the baptism of James, and did not mean to be present on that occasion (pour ne s’y trouver point). He had, in du Croc’s opinion, but two causes of unhappiness: one, the reconciliation of the Lords with the Queen, and their favour; the other, a fear lest Elizabeth’s envoy to the baptism might decline to recognise him (ne fera compte de luy). The night-ride from Dundas to Linlithgow, in which (according to Lennox) Darnley told the tale of Mary’s advice to him to seduce Lady Moray, must have occurred at this very time, perhaps after the meeting with du Croc, three leagues from Edinburgh. In his paper about the night-ride, Lennox avers that Mary yielded to Bothwell’s love, before this ride and conversation. But he does not say that he himself was already aware of the amour, and his whole narrative leaves the impression that he was not. We are to suppose that, if Buchanan’s account is true, the adventures of the Exchequer House and of Lady Reres were only known to the world later. Certainly no suspicion of Mary had crossed the mind of du Croc, who says that he never saw her so much loved and respected; and, in short, there is no known contemporary hint of the beginning of the guilty amour, flagrant as were its alleged circumstances. This point has, naturally, been much insisted upon by the defenders of Mary.

      It must not escape us that, about this time, almost every Lord, from Moray downwards, was probably united in a signed ‘band’ against Darnley. The precise nature of its stipulations is uncertain, but that a hostile band existed, I think can be demonstrated. The Lords, in their letter of October 8 to Catherine, declare that they will never consent to let Darnley manage affairs. The evidence as to a band comes from four sources: Randolph, Archibald Douglas, a cousin and ally of Morton, Claude Nau, Mary’s secretary, and Moray himself.

      First, on October 15, 1570, Randolph, being in Edinburgh after the death of the Regent Moray, writes: ‘Divers, since the Regent’s death, either to cover their own doings or to advance their cause, have sought to make him odious to the world. The universal bruit runs upon three or four persons’ (Bothwell, Lethington, Balfour(?), Huntly, and Argyll) ‘who subscribed upon a bond promising to concur and assist one another in the late King’s death. This bond was kept in the Castle, in a little coffer covered with green, and, after the apprehension of the Scottish Queen at Carberry Hill, was taken out of the place where it lay by the Laird of Lethington, in presence of Mr. James Balfour… This being a thing so notoriously known, as well by Mr. James Balfour’s own report, as testimony of other who have seen the thing, is utterly denied to be true, and another bond produced which they allege to be it, containing no such matter, at the which, with divers other noblemen’s hands, the СКАЧАТЬ