A queen at odds with her husband
The queen was miserable with her husband. Darnley was furious that Mary trusted the Earl of Moray again and praised Bothwell more and more. There was talk that Bothwell meant to take the infant prince away and rule in his name. Darnley blamed the nobles for the death of Rizzio and called himself innocent, so they answered by sending the queen proof of his part in the plot. Around this time Argyll, Lethington and Bothwell proposed that Mary divorce her husband. She refused, fearing that it might endanger her child's claim to the throne. Lethington replied that they could find a way to rid her of Darnley without harming her son. Mary would not accept that either. She offered instead to leave Scotland and hand the kingdom to Darnley, and she ended the talk with a careful plea: I hope you will do nothing that puts a stain on my honor or conscience; let the matter rest, and wait for God in his goodness to find a remedy. After that she often spoke of despair and of wishing to die.
In October 1566 or thereabouts, Argyll, Sir James Balfour and perhaps Lethington made a pact to be rid of Darnley. The Earl of Lennox learned of the plot and warned his son, and Darnley, who lived apart from Mary, joined his father in Glasgow in December 1566. There he fell ill, probably with smallpox, though the rumor spread that he had been poisoned. Meanwhile Mary's growing friendship with Bothwell fed gossip about her, and Knox condemned her morals in public in the harshest words. Apparently Mary asked Archbishop Hamilton to arrange the dissolution of Bothwell's marriage. When she proposed to visit her husband he sent back an insulting answer, but she went anyway on 22 January 1567, assured him of her loyalty, and revived his affection. She then asked him to come to Edinburgh and promised to nurse him there and restore his health and fortunes.
The casket letters
Here the question of the so-called casket letters arises, and the rest of the story depends on whether they are genuine, a matter still debated after four hundred years. They are said to have been found in a silver casket that Mary had given to Bothwell. Agents of the nobles who sought to depose her took it from one of Bothwell's servants on 20 June 1567, and on the next day Morton, Lethington and other members of the council opened it.
The contents, as later shown to the Scottish parliament and then to the English commission that examined Mary in 1568, were eight letters and some scattered poems, in French, undated and unsigned, but said to have been written by Mary to Bothwell. The councillors swore before parliament that the letters were genuine and untouched; Mary declared them forgeries. Her son evidently thought them genuine, since he destroyed them, and only copies survive. The kings of Europe who saw the copies behaved as if they were real. Elizabeth at first doubted them, then half accepted them as Mary's.
Our first reaction on reading them is to wonder how a woman plotting her husband's death could set out her intentions so carelessly and at such length in letters entrusted to couriers who might be seized or bribed. It is also unlikely that Bothwell kept such incriminating papers, and it seems doubtful that anyone in Scotland, even the shrewd Lethington, who is especially suspect in this affair, could have forged a large part of them in the single day between the seizure of the casket and its opening before the council or parliament. The second letter, the most damning, is oddly long and fills ten printed pages. If it was forged, it was a strange forgery, for its content suits Mary's feelings and the handwriting resembles hers; and it shows Mary as a pitiable, wavering and shame-stricken accomplice in Darnley's death.
Kirk o' Field
The sick, anxious and hopeful king agreed to be carried in a litter across Scotland and to lodge in an old priests' house called Kirk o' Field, on the edge of Edinburgh. Mary said she could not take him to Holyrood because she feared that her child might catch the disease. Darnley stayed there two weeks, Mary visited him every day and nursed him so carefully that he recovered. On 7 February 1567 he wrote to his father: by the queen's care I have regained my health sooner, and she has behaved throughout like a natural and sorrowing wife; I hope God will make our hearts, long troubled, glad and content. If Mary knew that Darnley was to be killed, why she spent weeks at his bedside remains a riddle. On the evening of 9 February the queen left him to attend the wedding of one of her servants at Holyrood.
That night an explosion destroyed Darnley's lodging, and the next day his body was found in the garden.
At first Mary behaved as an innocent woman would. She wept and mourned, promised vengeance on the guilty, hung her room with black cloth, shut out the light and withdrew into darkness and solitude. Then she ordered an inquiry and announced that anyone with information leading to the arrest of the criminals would receive money and land. When placards appeared on the walls of the city accusing Bothwell of the killing and naming the queen as well, she issued a proclamation calling on the accusers to come forward, with promises of protection and reward. The authors would not give their names, but the Earl of Lennox urged the queen to bring Bothwell to trial at once. Bothwell declared himself ready and appeared in court on 12 April, but Lennox, either for lack of proof or from fear of Bothwell's soldiers, stayed in Glasgow. Bothwell was acquitted, and parliament formally declared him innocent. On 19 April he persuaded Argyll, Huntly, Morton and several other nobles to sign the Ainslie bond, which testified to his innocence, pledged them to defend him, and approved his marriage to Mary. The queen now openly showed him favor and added precious gifts to what she had given him before.
Bothwell and the fall
On 23 April the queen went to see her child at Stirling, but she was never to see him again. On the way back to Edinburgh she was seized by Bothwell's men, who lay in wait for her, and was taken by force to Dunbar (24 April). Lethington protested, and Bothwell threatened him with death; Mary saved him and arranged his release, but he joined the queen's enemies. At Dunbar talks began on divorcing Bothwell's wife. On 3 August (the book says August, but the events of June that follow show that May is meant), Mary returned to Edinburgh with Bothwell, regarding herself as free of every restraint. On 7 August Bothwell was divorced, and on 15 August, since a Catholic priest refused to marry them, the two were wed by Protestant rites, with the agreement of the Bishop of Orkney, formerly a Catholic.
The Catholic countries of Europe, once friendly to Mary, now turned from her in disgust and despair. The Catholic clergy of Scotland drew away, Protestant ministers demanded her deposition, and the people showed their hatred. Only a few who pitied her explained her reckless infatuation as the result of a love potion that Bothwell was rumored to have given her.
On 10 June an armed force surrounded Borthwick Castle, where Mary and Bothwell were staying. Mary escaped with him, disguised in men's clothes. At Dunbar Bothwell gathered a thousand soldiers and tried with Mary to force the road to Edinburgh, but an equal force, carrying a banner painted with the corpse of Darnley and the infant James VI, blocked the way. Bothwell offered to settle the matter by single combat, but Mary would not allow it and agreed to surrender on condition that Bothwell be allowed to escape; she claimed afterward that the rebel leaders had promised to obey her if she joined them. Bothwell fled to the coast and then to Denmark, where he spent ten years in prison at the king's command and died at the age of forty-two (1578).
Mary was brought back to Edinburgh by her captors amid the jeers of soldiers and common people who shouted insults and called for her death. On 17 June, over her loud protests, she was moved to a safer prison on an island in Loch Leven, thirty miles north of the capital. According to Claude Nau, her secretary, she suffered a miscarriage there before her time (we pass over the details). She appealed to France, but the French government would not act; Elizabeth, however, told her envoy to protect Mary and to warn the nobles that they would be punished if they harmed the queen. John Knox demanded Mary's execution and predicted that if her life were spared, God would visit Scotland with a dreadful plague. On 20 July the nobles placed the casket letters in a safe place. The queen asked parliament for a hearing, but the members refused, claiming that the letters had settled her case. On 24 July Mary signed her abdication, and the Earl of Moray was named regent for her son.
Loch Leven and flight
Mary was a prisoner at Loch Leven for almost eleven months, but little by little the watch on her was eased, and she was allowed to dine with the family of William Douglas, the castellan. His young brother fell in love with her and arranged her escape (25 March 1568). He was caught, but on 2 May she managed to escape again.
She landed under the protection of young Douglas and was greeted by a number of Catholics. Riding all night to the Firth of Forth, a small arm of the sea, they crossed it and took refuge in the house of the Hamilton family. Within five days six thousand men, who had sworn to put her on the throne again, gathered there. But the Earl of Moray called the Scottish Protestants to arms. The two sides met at Langside, near Glasgow, and Mary's inexperienced army was beaten. She fled again, riding madly for three days and nights to the abbey of Dundrennan on the Solway Firth, another small arm of the sea. There she sent back to Elizabeth a diamond the English queen had given her, together with the message: I return this jewel, the token of the queen's friendship and help. On 16 May 1568 Mary crossed the Solway in an open fishing boat and put her fate in the hands of her rival.