History Of Scotland Vol. 2 - Part 10

( Originally Published 1909 )

Queen Mary in Prison—Becomes the Object of Interest to all who conspire against Queen Elizabeth—Elizabeth's Anxiety on her Account—Her Removal from Carlisle to Bolton—From Bolton to Tutbury, to Wingfield, to Coventry, to Chatsworth—Her visit to Buxton—Account of her by Nicolas White—Her Amusements—Is more strictly guarded—And the Marks of Respect shown to her diminished—Injustice of her Treatment—Causes of Queen Elizabeth's Exasperation against her—The proposed Match with Norfolk unpleasing to her—The English war against the Queen's Party in Scotland—Attempt at a Treaty with Mary broken off by the Scottish Commissioners—Norfolk sent to the Tower—Mary desirous of an Interview with Elizabeth—Elizabeth incites the Feelings of her Subjects against Mary, and endeavors to disgrace her in the Eyes of the Public —Works against her circulated—Proceedings against her in Parliament—Rigor of her Captivity increased

WHILE James VI. travelled through the slippery and dangerous course of a Scottish minority, his mother, though without any reason assigned other than the will of Queen Elizabeth, remained an unpitied prisoner, sometimes in the house of one nobleman, sometimes in that of another; all sensible that they offended the queen if they treated the royal captive with anything approaching to indulgence; and under the necessity, besides, of incurring considerable personal expense, which their sovereign Elizabeth seldom dreamed of reimbursing in an adequate degree. An active mind, and an early practice of feminine pursuits, a turn toward religion, for which she was, perhaps, indebted to adversity, with the power of studying and writing in various languages, enabled Mary to endure, with more than female constancy, the long succeeding years of her weary imprisonment. Hope, originally her frequent visitor, began to be less frequent in his attendance. As her places of residence were changed, her train was abated, the marks of honor rendered to her former rank were abridged, and her apartments, defended with bolts and filled with armed warders, bore more and more the undisguised air of a prison-house; and the question was not, as at first, how long her confinement should last, but merged in the darker inquiry, how or when she was to be relieved by death.

In the meantime, the fate of the Scottish queen, as it was sometimes the object of censure, and often of regret, among the most attached subjects of Elizabeth, stimulated to hopes and to enterprise the Roman Catholics of England, a numerous party, who could not be insensible to the sufferings of a princess of their own religion, even if she had not, in their opinion, possessed a title to their allegiance better than any which existed in the person of her oppressor. Repeated plots, discovered by the wisdom of Elizabeth's counsellors, had almost always for their object the liberation of Queen Mary, and were usually connected with some scheme for placing her on the British throne. The anxieties and perplexities in which Elizabeth was thus involved were not the more easily endured that they might be considered as the consequences of her own injustice.

In former days Mary, living in freedom and happiness in her own kingdom, might be to Elizabeth an object of inconvenient yet only occasional rivalry ; but, captive and forlorn, she was now perpetually brought before her in every form which could render the contrast painful: to speak fancifully, the queen of England was somewhat in the situation of one who, having murdered his enemy, is ever after haunted by his spectre. The reflections upon her own injustice, and upon the effect which it was likely to produce, made her entertain the most fantastic apprehensions of the extent of Queen Mary's faculty of seducing, and the apprehensions of her rival's powers over her own most chosen favorites. She had seen Norfolk and other nobles of undoubted faith shoot madly from their spheres, as the poet expresses it, attracted by the charms of a suffering queen and a captive beauty. Shrewsbury, on whom she long imposed the unwelcome office of Mary's keeper, at his several castles of Tutbury, Chatsworth, Wingfield, and others, could not, though old and faithful, escape the suspicions of his royal mistress any more than those of his jealous countess: both suspected him of too much favor for the royal prisoner; and reproaches from court and domestic ill-humor was the consequence of the slightest indulgence extended to his captive.

Thus all that was dangerous, distasteful, and prejudicial to Elizabeth, came by degrees to be mixed up with her idea of her prisoner Mary, until dislike increased into hatred, and hatred joined with fear became fierce enough, like the Indian snake-god in Madoc, to demand a victim.

These considerations may account, though they cannot apologize, for the principles on which Elizabeth acted to-ward Mary, and in which the greatest queen that ever sat upon the throne of England, or, perhaps, upon that of any other country, seems to have been actuated at once by the jealousy of power incidental to the most ambitious mind, and by the peevish envy of disposition proper to the lowest female. It was not the least part of the distress and inconvenience inflicted upon Queen Mary that her place of confinement was repeatedly changed, upon the slightest suspicion that the neighborhood was friendly to her; and that some cause of alarm was always arising, and to such Elizabeth was sensibly accessible.

Mary had fled to Carlisle without either money or even a fitting change of clothes. Her attendants then consisted of about thirty, four or five of them being persons of consequence attached to her party, and as many ladies of rank, the rest menials of various degrees attendant upon the royal person. She was first removed from Carlisle, where her person was conceived to be in danger of rescue, especially when she followed, within sight of the hills of her own kingdom, the pastimes of hunting, and others from which it was not thought decent as yet to debar her. Her removal took place on the 16th of July, 1568, when her person was committed to the charge of Lord Scroope and Sir Francis Knollis, the former being the lord of the castle; and Mary remained at Bolton till the 26th of January, 1568-9. During the dead of -winter, in a state of health which was always precarious, owing to an old hurt received in the bosom, through a cold country and during a rigorous season, she was transported to Tutbury. This journey was made with so little precaution that the captive queen suffered all the inconveniences of the most ordinary pauper in the present day. Tutbury was an ancient castle belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury, who now became the guardian of the unfortunate queen. We have already said that this nobleman was married to a jealous and passionate woman, who mistook and misinterpreted the most ordinary marks of attention on the part of her husband to his royal prisoner. It is, perhaps, the strongest instance of despotism exercised by the imperious House of Tudor, that Elizabeth, by her royal authority, should for so many years compel a nobleman of the first rank to continue in a charge, the effect of which converted his house into a prison, his servants into jailers, involved him in a large expenditure, of which the queen hesitated to relieve him, and totally destroyed the peace of his domestic life by sowing discord between him and his lady, the most violent woman in England; and all this notwithstanding that the misery which Lord Shrewsbury suffered was so great as to affect his health and even his understanding. From Tutbury, Mary was sent for a season to Wingfield, another house of Shrewsbury; but the rebellion of the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland threw the north of England into such confusion that Elizabeth became doubly anxious for the security of her unhappy prisoner. Mary was, therefore, removed on short notice from Wingfield to Tutbury, and from Tutbury to Coventry, and back again, and dragged in bad weather through wretched roads from one place of confinement to another, until, on the 4th of August, 1570, she was suffered to repose in the manor of Chatsworth.

From Chatsworth Mary was once more removed to Sheffield, where there was then a strong castle, in which she continued to abide for a considerable time, with the variety of one or two visits to Buxton for her health, leave for which was reluctantly granted as an indulgence, all other patients being excluded from the healing baths during the presence of the suspected queen in their vicinity. In July, 1582, she took leave of Buxton, to which she applied the following Latin distich in bidding its baths adieu, perhaps, forever:

"Buxtona quae calidae celebrabere nomine lymphae, Forté posthac non adeunda vale!"

In the course of these weary years of confinement, varied by nothing save the change of prison, the reader may be tempted to ask in what manner Mary, the queen of two kingdoms, and accustomed to the exercise of her sovereign will both in France and Scotland, contrived to support a severe state of restraint, the more intolerable from the rank and habits of her upon whom it was inflicted? We can hardly give a more striking picture of the patience of the unfortunate queen under her misfortunes than is contained in a letter of Nicolas White, sent on purpose by Cecil as a spy upon Mary's conduct and that of her keeper. The let-ter is dated 26th April, 1568.

White had asked whether she liked her change of air, in allusion to her removal from Bolton to Tutbury "in the depth of winter" : to which she mildly replied, "that had it consisted with her good sister's pleasure she would not have removed for change of air at this season of the year; but that she was so far contented with her removal from Bolton, that she was so much the nearer her loving sister, into whose presence she hoped soon to be admitted." To this White answered, with the effrontery of an accomplished hypocrite, "that although Queen Mary did not enjoy the actual presence of Elizabeth, yet it appeared to those who, like himself, viewed the matter from a distance; that she had always the virtual presence of the queen's majesty, who did in every respect perform to her the office of a gracious prince, a natural kinswoman, a loving sister, and a most faithful friend." This emissary of Cecil wound up his advice, by recommending to the unfortunate prisoner to "thank God that after so many perils she had arrived in a realm where, through the goodness of Queen Elizabeth's majesty, she had rather cause to regard herself as receiving prince-like entertainment than as suffering the slightest restraint." The poor queen answered meekly, "that indeed she had great cause to be thankful to Heaven and to her sister for such ease as she enjoyed; and that though she would not pretend to ask of God contentment in a state of captivity, she made it her daily petition that he would endow her with patience to endure it." In reporting this singular interview, White proceeds thus : "I asked her grace, since the weather did cutt of all exercises abroad, howe she passed the time within. She sayd, that all the day she wrought with hir needle, and that the diversitie of the colors made the works somewhat lesse tedious, and that she contynued at it till very pain made her to give over : and with that laid hir hand upon hir left syde, and complayned of an old grief newely increased there. Upon this occasion she (the Scottish queen), with the agreeable and lively wit natural to her, entered into a prety disputable comparison betweene carving, painting, and working with the needle, affirming painting, in hir own opinion, for the moste commendable quality. I annswered hir grace I collide skill of neither of them; but that I have redd pictura to be veritas falsa: with this she closed up hir talk, and bydding me farewell, retyred into her privy-chamber."

The fact that Queen Mary solaced the hours of imprisonment by the practice of those elegant arts of female workmanship, in which she excelled, is ascertained by the preservation of a quantity of pieces of embroidery, tapestry, and other labors of the needle and loom, still preserved and exhibited in different scenes of her captivity, where they had soothed the hours of imprisonment. The general effect of Queen Mary's manners and sentiments appear to have had an impression even upon the hypocritical agent of Cecil, at which he is himself surprised. He acknowledges the effect of her presence in the most striking manner, by desiring that if he might advise, few persons should be permitted to have access to the same seduction of which he had himself experienced the fascination. "But if," continues White, "I (whiche in the sight of God beare the queens majestie a naturall love, besyde my bounden dutie), might give advise, there should very few subjects in this land have access to, or conference with, this lady. For besid that she is a goodly personage (and yet, in truth, not comparable to our souverain), she hathe withall an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish speche, and a serching wit, clouded with myldnes. Fame might move some to releve her, and glory joyned to gain might stir others to adventure much for her sake. Sight, they say, is a lively infective sence, and cariethe many perswasions to the hart, which rulethe all the rest : my own affection, by seeing the quenes majestie our souverain is dowbled, and thereby I gesse what the sight might worke in others. Hir hair of it self is black, and yett Mr. Knolls told me, that she weares heare of sundry colors."

While such were the queen's amusements during her melancholy imprisonment, and such the gentleness of deportment, which affected even the cold-blooded agent of Cecil, every other means allowed her for her greater convenience or more respectable accommodation was gradually restrained more and more.

At first, as we have just seen, her abode at Bolton and Tutbury was represented by this man White as being some-thing almost voluntary, and for which she was told she ought to be thankful to Heaven. It is true that when she removed from place to place she was under guard of a stout band of soldiers. No consent of her own was asked when a journey was proposed, nor did her dissent when she desired to remain at Bolton prevent her being transported to Tutbury. It is no less true that she was not permitted to ride out for health or pleasure, although she was so much accustomed to the exercise that her health sunk under the confinement. It is true also that if, at any time, she was permitted to accompany her keepers upon the parties of hawking and hunting, which they practiced for their own amusement and not for hers, bands of armed men were in attendance, provided with swords and firearms, and having orders to put to death the captive princess, in case any attempt at escape or rescue should seem likely to prove successful. But these circumstances, while they convey to modern readers a strong idea of restraint, did not, in the opinion of Mr. White, partake of the character of imprisonment, or form an alloy to the sisterly reception on the part of Elizabeth.

In what, then, it may be said, was the queen of England's goodness manifested toward her prisoner? We can only answer that for a certain time the vain forms of royalty were practiced toward a sovereign who had less command over her own motions than the meanest peasant; and the empty form of a canopy of state was indulged to one whose life depended upon her abstaining from every attempt to assert the meanest and most ordinary privilege of a free person that of going where she would. We shall see in the progress of her sad history that Mary was by degrees deprived even of the delusive tokens of respect, which were only at first conceded to her, to be gradually withdrawn, as she drew nearer to her fatal doom.

We have already mentioned. the issue of the commission, the members of which, without any legal authority that can be imagined, took upon themselves the task of entering into and examining the accusations brought against the queen of Scotland by her insurgent subjects. Queen Elizabeth bad declined to decide between the parties : "she had not seen ground enough," she said, "to declare the queen guilty of the horrid charges brought against her; nor, on the contrary, to find the regent and the rest of the Scottish lords of the king's party guilty of rebellion against the royal authority of Mary"--and such was the declaration of her sovereign pleasure. But while Elizabeth nominally abstained from judging in a cause which, indeed, she had no title to take under her consideration, her conduct was effectually the same as if she had found Queen Mary guilty and Murray and the king's lords totally innocent of the respective charges brought against them. The queen of Scotland was detained prisoner as a guilty person, while the regent was dismissed with a subsidy of five thousand pounds, enabling him to continue those military measures by which he had placed himself at the head of the Scottish government.

Queen Mary remonstrated strongly against a course of proceeding which, while it apparently acquitted her of all guilt, left her the inmate of a jail, and subjected her at the same time to the worst consequences of punishment. But the prejudices of Queen Elizabeth against her rival were so deeply rooted that no sense of justice could induce her to forego the advantages which she had received from Queen Mary's imprudent surrender of herself into her unfriendly hands.

It must be owned that circumstances occurred during the investigation at York which tended still further to increase her excessive jealousy of her sister-queen.

It was Mary's misfortune upon this occasion to give way to the suggestions of Maitland of Lethington, whose plots, though they indicated the extreme subtlety of his own genius, were often too much refined in their texture, and too complicated in their ramifications, for a period of violence, where the knot of every intrigue was liable to be severed by the sword of the soldier or by the axe of the executioner. The intrigue by which he involved Norfolk in a project of marriage with Mary was probably of the most fatal consequences to both. If he had, in fact, the welfare of his unhappy mistress in his view, Maitland ought to have seen that in her present condition she was entirely dependent upon Queen Elizabeth, and that any offensive course toward the latter sovereign must necessarily end in the ruin of the former. In this respect the proposed marriage of Mary with the Duke of Norfolk was sure to gall the English queen upon almost every point where she was most sensitive. Matrimony of any kind, where she was not herself the object, was never found a matter more agree-able to her than it usually is to the votaresses of celibacy; and that of-Mary involved a prospect peculiarly disagreeable to her. The marriage of Mary promised to extend those claims of succession of which Elizabeth was sufficiently jealous even when they were now limited to a single youth; and she who could oppose by the most violent measures the union of Darnley and the Scottish queen was not likely to be scrupulous when this proposed alliance with one of the most powerful nobles of England seemed to renew all the fears which another marriage was sure to awaken. It was well known, also,' that the duke in strengthening his party had cultivated the favor of the Catholic Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who, from motives of religion as well as policy, were sufficiently disposed to prefer the title of Queen Mary to that of Elizabeth.

However prudent, therefore, a match between Norfolk and the Scottish queen might have been considered in the abstract, supposing Mary at liberty and in a capacity to make a free choice, the very surmise of such a connection was fraught with danger while she was in the power of Elizabeth; and that it should have been suggested by Maitland is only an additional instance how men of great parts can overreach themselves in matters of State policy, their very ingenuity and extreme subtlety becoming the means of blinding them to consequences which are obvious to those of duller capacity. It appears equally difficult to justify the conduct of Maitland, if we suppose that he believed it possible to carry on an intrigue of such importance without its coming to the knowledge of Elizabeth herself, a jealous and sagacious princess, and served by Cecil, Burleigh, and Walsingham, the most subtle ministers known in Europe at the period. He might also have well foreseen the inevitable defection of Murray from the project, when-ever it should become known to Queen Elizabeth, upon cultivating whose favor the regent's power absolutely depended.

The match with Norfolk naturally connected itself with the dangerous insurrection of Westmoreland and Northumberland; and Elizabeth, not without good reason, entertained suspicion of Mary as the hidden cause of both, and of all the danger which they implied. Then there is little doubt that they greatly prejudiced the queen of Scots in her opinion, and furnished her with a specious reason, founded upon State necessity, for detaining her a prisoner. The English sovereign was indeed about to have taken a more desperate step, by delivering up the royal fugitive to the custody of the Regent Murray, had not the sudden death of that nobleman prevented the scheme from taking place.

After the death of Murray, the queen of England engaged personally in the war, and, as we have seen, sent an English army into Scotland. Out of this arose new arguments of State for refusing the Scottish queen her liberty, however unlawfully she had been deprived of it. It was not to be supposed, said the English counsellors, that while Elizabeth was making war against a faction in Scotland, she either would or ought to set at liberty the captive who was at the head of that faction. Yet it appears that the English queen had some intention of freeing herself of the queen of Scots, although she never took any effectual step to that measure.

In the meantime, the alleged attempts of the northern rebels to effect Mary's escape, together with that queen's supposed interest with these insurgents, formed an excuse for confining her more closely than formerly. Her minis-ter, the bishop of Ross, complained that his mistress was not permitted to take exercise on horseback, by which her health was much prejudiced; and it was granted, obviously as a considerable boon, that the Scottish queen might ride forth to take the air, so that it were in company with the Earl of Shrewsbury. In the meantime, as if to realize the thoughts which the English queen entertained of parting with her Scottish hostage, two of her ministers, Cecil and Mildmay, were sent, November, 1570, to endeavor to settle some terms on which Mary might be liberated.

The principal proposals were that Mary should renounce any pretensions to the English crown; that she should ad-here to the alliance between the kingdoms; grant pardon to the subjects who had been in arms against her during the civil war, and put into the queen of England's hands hostages of high rank, and some castles in Scotland, by way of guarantee.

It is plain that Elizabeth's only pretensions to obtain such articles arose from her having in possession the person of the queen of Scots, committed to her in a moment of unwary confidence; yet hard as these conditions were, Mary was in such a state as might have compelled her to subscribe to them or to worse. But no security could possibly have been granted adequate to soothe the real apprehensions of Elizabeth, and the affected scruples of her counsellors. The treaty was therefore disturbed, and finally broken off, by the introduction of commissioners in the name of the youthful king of Scotland, whose interests Elizabeth pretended she was bound to consult: these were the Earl of Morton and two other persons of his party, who interrupted the whole proceedings by maintaining the high Calvinistic principle of lawful resistance, on the part of the subject, even to sovereign authority. In such principles it was impossible that those acting for Elizabeth should dare to acquiesce; and though there can be no doubt that Elizabeth, upon this as well as upon former occasions, might have dictated to the Scottish commissioners how they were to limit their pleadings, yet she rather chose to consider the mode in which they had been entered as a total bar to further proceedings in the treaty, which was thus broken off.

In the meantime Norfolk, having been liberated after his first arrest, was again thrown into the Tower, and his intrigues and ambitious views finally closed by his public trial and execution. Mary appears to have taken the misfortunes of this nobleman severely to heart : she was confined to her chamber for ten days; and probably employed her leisure hours in deploring the fate of one who had adventured and lost rank, fortune, and life in her service. She expresses herself on the subject to her faithful counsellor, the bishop of Ross, then imprisoned in the Tower, as having had some accession to the intrigues of Norfolk; and her letter, expressing a singular mixture of despondency and firmness, has been published by Mr. Chalmers.

While her health was declining, and her comforts diminished, Mary still clung to one hope, which she nourished with uncommon tenacity, although it is difficult to conceive what she could have expected from it. From the moment she set foot on English ground the queen of Scots had reckoned a great deal upon the effect to be wrought on Elizabeth's mind in the personal interview which she never failed to demand. Yet what could it have availed the unfortunate queen to have had the means of convincing Elizabeth by ocular demonstration that she, so long hated as a rival, did in fact possess more beauty, equal sense, as much accomplishment, and wit and grace superior to her own? The suspicion that such was the case was what had originally excited Elizabeth's hatred to Mary; and everything which led to convince her of the truth of what she suspected could only enhance that evil feeling. It would also have been very difficult to have chosen and supported in such an interview a character which would have left her at liberty to act against Queen Mary the severe conduct correspondent to the part by which she might have already meditated closing the scene. Elizabeth might think there was less difficulty in executing a defamed and neglected prisoner than in taking the life of one whom she had admitted to her presence as a sister sovereign. She might hold with her father, Henry VIII., the truth of the popular adage, that a king's face Should give grace, and therefore determine not to admit to her presence the victim whom she was resolved not to pardon. At any rate, she was determined in postponing and declining all Mary's pleadings for an interview, and at length hardly deigned to return any answer to her solicitations upon that subject. This period of their intercourse was strangely contrasted with that in which Sir James Melville, then the Scottish ambassador at the court of London, proposed, in a tone of jocose raillery, that Elizabeth should disguise herself as his page, and ride down to Scotland merely to see his mistress; to which, willingly accepting the compliment, she replied with a sigh, "Would to Heaven she might do so!" It is curious to compare the behavior of individuals to each other in sunshine and shower, in good fortune and adversity.

Meantime Queen Elizabeth called in to the aid of her policy the passions and feelings of those subjects who had so much reason to look up to her with gratitude as the mother of her people. Two points she, in particular, struggled to attain, if possible. The first was that of establishing to the public conviction the proposition that the safety of Queen Elizabeth was inconsistent with the life of Mary; of which, she herself being the judge, no doubt could be entertained. If we can believe a copy of doggerel verses, which we are surprised that Elizabeth's taste could permit her to be guilty of, the Scottish queen was the foundation of all the dissatisfaction and danger which threatened her government.' The editor of these verses has acquainted us that those sweet and sententious rhymes, those sugared samples, as he calls this trash, were written to express the queen's conviction of the extreme danger in which she was placed through the influence of a party among the nobility and Catholic gentry devoted to the interests of the queen of Scots; and Elizabeth seems to have deemed it necessary to impress the same terror, which she herself entertained to-ward Mary and her party, upon the people of England, to whose regard she had so many just claims that she might well call upon them to protect her against the alleged plots of a foreigner and papist.

This was not all, however: the queen of Scotland was not only to be represented as a person formidable to Queen Elizabeth, but also as one worthless and base in herself, and unworthy of claiming the ordinary compassion due to strangers and exiles. Sir Francis Knollis, in a letter from Bolton, of January 1, 1568, seems very early desirous to warn Queen Elizabeth against her own gentleness of temper, which might withhold her from openly disgracing Queen Mary, and maintaining the insurgents in Scotland against her, even although the queen of Scotland should refuse to be conformable in the matters required of her by the English sovereign. This intimates an intention of permitting such accusations to be circulated against Queen Mary as might best counteract the prepossessions excited in her favor by her grace and beauty, as well as by the generous sympathy of the English nation for the condition of a forlorn princess, who had thrown her-self upon their compassion and that of their queen.

This design was prosecuted by suffering the works of Buchanan and others, directed against Queen Mary's reputation, to be introduced and distributed through the realm, while those composed in her defence were treated as contraband and prohibited publications. The accusations against Queen Mary were thus left to make their way without answer or reply; and connected with the undeniable fact of her having united herself with Bothwell so shortly after the murder of Darnley, of which all recognized him as the author, seemed to take from the unfortunate queen not only the right to demand justice, but even that of requesting compassion. Her name was publicly soiled with the foul charges of murder and adultery: the proofs which had been rejected as informal and incomplete, even by Elizabeth herself, were found far more than sufficient to gratify the vulgar appetite for scandal accustomed to little nicety in selecting its grounds of belief. Thus it remained no question with by far the greater part of the English people that the safety of Elizabeth could only be insured by Mary's death, or in what measure justice or injustice should be dealt toward one whom they accounted so infamous as this dethroned queen.

Acting under these impressions, the English house of commons meditated a resolution, the effect of which must have been to palsy the exertions of the queen of Scotland and all who might be disposed to take her part. They sent a bill to the house of lords, by which it was declared that the very act of claiming any right to the crown was in itself high treason; that it was equally so to affirm that the right of any other was better than that of Elizabeth, or that the parliament had not power to settle and limit the order of succession. These enactments greatly abridged Queen Mary's influence upon the public mind in England, and afforded such an assurance of safety to the existing sovereign that Queen Elizabeth, deeming further procedure for the time unnecessary, ventured to adjourn the parliament.