THE CRAIGMILIAR CONFERENCE. 171 An unsigned document, to be altered at pleasure by the subscribers, who never had a chance to subscribe, is poor evidence. It avers that Murray and Lethington, at Craigmillar, aroused Argyll from bed. They pointed out that Murray ought in honour to secure the return of Morton. The best plan of winning Mary's assent would be to find a mode of divorce between her and Darnley. Argyll saw no way to it; Lethington promised to discover a means if Murray and Huntly would merely look on "and not be offended thereat." Huntly was brought, he and Argyll were promised full restoration to lands and offices, all four men added Bothwell to their number, and visited the queen. To her they promised "to make divorce" without her intervention. Mary said she would consent to a lawful divorce, if not prejudicial to her son's legitimacy. Bothwell consoled her on that head, but Mary suggested that she should retire to France. Lethington then, in ambiguous terms, said that a way would be found, "and albeit that my Lord of Murray be little less scrupulous for a Protestant than your Grace is for a Papist, I am assured he will look through his fingers thereto, and will behold our doings, saying nothing to the same." Mary answered, "I will that ye do nothing whereby any spot may be laid to my honour and conscience, and therefore I pray you rather let the matter be as it is, abiding till God of his goodness put remedy thereto; lest ye, believing to do me service, may possibly turn to my hurt and displeasure." Lethington answered, "Let us guide the matter amongst us, and your Grace shall see nothing but good, and approved by Parliament." Much criticism has been bestowed, to no purpose, on these statements.97 They are corroborated by a real manifesto of Mary's party, signed by Huntly and Argyll, in September 1568. Mary, some think, consented to let matters pass, or did not refuse. Murray did not deny that some things were debated at Craigmillar he denied that in his presence anything unlawful or dishonourable was mooted, or that he had any knowledge (which is not asserted in the Protestation) of signing any band.98 Murray doubtless referred here, not to the Protestation, but to what later was confessed by Ormiston (not one of the Protestant Ormistoun House in Lothian), that Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and Sir James Balfour did sign a band for slaying Darnley. Hay of Talla said he had seen the band, subscribed also by Bothwell and other lords, and approved by Mary, and Bothwell told him (falsely, it would seem) 172 DARNLEY: PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT. that Morton signed.99 Confessions are not much to be trusted, but nobody accused Murray of signing, nor does it appear why he denied what was nowhere alleged. As to the whole affair, Buchanan avers that Mary urged the nobles to procure a divorce through annulling the papal dispensation (which, as Father Pollen shows, probably arrived after she married Darnley); but when she saw that the thing would not pass, "many of the nobles being present," she meditated murder. By both versions the divorce was discussed the Protestation may contain an unknown element of truth. "Of the truth of the main features there is no room for doubt," says Mr Froude. Mr Froude's statement, from Calderwood, that Mary vowed "she would put hand to it herself," outruns Buchanan even. Calderwood's tale is that she "would put hand into herself," commit suicide.100 It is a pity that the prosecution manages its case so badly. The Craigmillar conference, as heretofore reported, leaves matters as Maitland put them. He would find out a way, not illegal, of getting rid of Darnley. The Lennox MSS. tell us, vaguely, and without naming any authority, what that way was. Darnley was to be arrested, there were plenty of grounds for an arrest, and killed if he resisted. Lennox heard of this, he does not say how, and warned Darnley, who left Stirling, after the baptism of his child, and joined his father at Glasgow. Lennox wavers about the facts, which are differently stated in three different indictments of Mary, composed or corrected by him. Meanwhile two rumours flew about. According to the first, reported by one Walker, Darnley was plotting to seize the infant prince and govern in his name. According to the other, circulated by Hiegait, town clerk of Glasgow, Darnley was to be arrested. Mary called the gossips before the Council: she could find no consistency in their stories, and from a letter by Walker, now at Hatfield, we know that she had him committed to Edinburgh Castle. The reports added to Mary's distresses at Stirling during the feast for the baptism of James. Darnley sulked: Mary and he quarrelled, and Lennox says that, when Darnley flushed, the queen told him that he would benefit by being "a little daggered, and by bleeding as much as my Lord Bothwell had lately done." The French envoy, du Croc, refused to meet Darnley: we do not hear that the English Ambassador made any advances. The child prince was baptised, with Catholic rites, on December 17; a week later THE AFFAIR OF HIEGAIT (1566-1567). 173 Morton and all the exiles for the cause of Riccio's death were pardoned. The English Ambassador, Bedford, interceded for them, as did the French Ambassador, Murray, and Bothwell. The approaching return of Morton and the others whom he had betrayed probably caused Darnley to withdraw, as we have seen he did, to his father's castle at Glasgow. There he fell ill, but Lennox in none of his papers hints that Darnley had been poisoned. That allegation is made by Buchanan. The disease was probably smallpox, as Bedford avers; it had broken out at Glasgow.101 Bedford, from Berwick (January 9, 1567), reports that Mary sent to Darnley her own physicians: Buchanan says that she "would not suffer a physician to come at him." From one point of view, Mary now took a most suspicious step. On December 23 she restored Archbishop Hamilton to his consistorial jurisdiction: this, of course, that he might divorce Bothwell from his bride. But Knox and the General Assembly protested, and in his letter of January 9, just cited, Bedford writes that, at Murray's request, Mary revoked her decree. Mary had been staying at country houses: with Bothwell, and for the worst purposes, say her accusers. About January 14, Mary, returning from her country-house visits, took her child to Holyrood. Thence, as she had done earlier, she wrote, offering to visit Darnley. According to Lennox, in his MS. Indictments of Mary, he sent an insulting verbal reply, "I wish Stirling to be Jedburgh, and Glasgow to be the Hermitage, and I the Earl Bothwell as I lie here, and then I doubt not but that she would be quickly with me undesired." From the mention of Stirling, where Mary was on January 2-13, her offer of a visit must have been made thence soon after the beginning of Darnley's illness; and he must have later repented of his rudeness and asked for a visit from the queen. On January 20, 1567, Mary wrote to Archbishop Beaton about the affair of Walker and Hiegait. She had heard, as we saw, from Walker, a servant of the Archbishop's, that Hiegait, another of the Archbishop's retainers, was telling about a plot of Darnley's to seize and crown little James, and exercise government. This was probably the plot about which the Spanish Ambassador in London warned Beaton, and he the queen. Hiegait denied all this what he had heard was that Darnley should be laid in prison. His authority was the Laird of Minto, who told Lennox, who told Darnley. As for Darnley, Mary declared that her subjects con 174 MARY BRINGS DARNLEY TO KIRK-O'-FIELD (1567). demned his behaviour; and she would leave nothing evil for his spies to observe in her conduct.102 Thus nothing, up to January 20, indicated that Mary had forgiven Darnley, who had anew been rude about her proposed visit from Stirling. On the 20th of January, according to two contemporary Diaries,103 Mary left Edinburgh for Glasgow. She stayed, in Bothwell's company, at Lord Livingstone's house, and, according to Drury, reached Glasgow on January 22. The paper called "Cecil's Journal,” put in by her accusers, makes her arrive on the 23rd. Neither date is consistent with the possible authenticity of the second of the guilty Casket letters, alleged to have been written by Mary, and establishing her crime. But she may have reached Glasgow on January 21. What occurred at Glasgow? The evidence rests (1) on the disputed Casket letters; (2) on dying confessions, and depositions under torture; (3) on a disputed deposition of Crawford, a retainer of Darnley. None of these is very good evidence, and Crawford's deposition agrees with the Casket letter No. 2 only too suspiciously well. (See Appendix A., "Casket Letters.") On the other hand, if we discredit all these sources, Mary's conduct after Darnley's death remains an insoluble enigma. If she had a passion, or a passionate caprice, for Bothwell (as the debated evidence declares), all is clear and consistent in her behaviour. If these sources of evidence are absolutely baseless, we can only suggest that she had an interval of extreme feebleness of purpose. Briefly, the letters which she is alleged to have written to Bothwell, the Casket letters, represent her as cajoling Darnley, discussing with him such matters as Hiegait's story, already spoken of, and bringing him with her, as she did, to a small and decaying religious dwelling hard by Edinburgh wall, the Kirk-o'-Field. The place was well known to Bothwell-it belonged to an adherent of his; and in the adjacent house of the Hamiltons he had met Knox, and been reconciled to Arran. This unsafe and unwholesome dwelling, with doors absent or insecure, would not have been chosen for a king's residence except for one purpose. There must have been better sanatoria for a smallpox patient. Mary was often with Darnley in the following days; sometimes she passed the night in the room beneath his, and she is said to have played music and sung in the warm precincts of the garden in the genial darkness of a Scottish February. Darnley at this time wrote a happy and reassuring letter to Lennox, inserted in the Lennox MSS. MURRAY SECURES HIS ALIBI. 175 But he had grounds of anxiety; for Lennox, at least, declares that he received a warning from Mary's brother, Lord Robert, that he imparted this to Mary, and that Mary tried to bring on a quarrel between her brother and her husband. As Murray was present, she cannot have intended them to fight, as is averred. Early on the morning of Sunday, February 9, Murray received news that his wife was ill in Fifeshire: he went to comfort her, and, as usual, secured his alibi. Mary supped with the Bishop of Argyll, going on to Darnley's. Bothwell, with two Ormistons; Powrie, his porter; George Dalgleish, his valet; young Hay of Talla; and Hepburn of Bowton, carried powder in two travelling - trunks, on a horse's back, within the grounds of Darnley's house. While Mary was with Darnley on the first floor, they moved the powder into her room on the groundfloor, by way of a door giving on the garden (as the confessions of the accomplices indicate), or stored it in a mine under the house, according to another theory of the accusers. Bothwell and his servant Paris, now in Mary's employment, then went up to Darnley's room, when the queen rose, was reminded that she had promised to grace the wedding - masque of her servant, Bastian, at Holyrood, and returned thither on horseback, men with torches walking before her. The conspirators saw the lights, and Bothwell went back to the palace. They had left Talla and Bowton, they say, locked up with the powder in Mary's room. Bothwell changed his rich evening dress, and returned to his accomplices at Kirk-o'-Field. Darnley, who was not without apprehensions, had sung the fifth psalm and gone to bed a page named Taylor slept in his room. : What followed is wrapt in mystery. Long afterwards the dying evidence of Morton averred that Archibald Douglas was on the scene. Binning, a servant of Archibald, added that two brothers of Lethington, and representatives of Sir James Balfour, were there. That this was arranged between the conspirators is corroborated by evidence of Hepburn of Bowton, which exists in MS., but was suppressed by the accusers of Mary, among whom were Lethington and Morton, 104 (The discovery of this fact is due to Father Ryan, S.J.) It is certain that about 2 A.M. of February 10 Darnley's house was blown up. His body and that of Taylor were found, almost uninjured and not touched by fire, Darnley's fur-lined velvet dressing-gown unscathed, in an ad |