Two Queens in One Isle by Alison Plowden

Author:Alison Plowden
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752467184
Publisher: History Press (Perseus)
Published: 2013-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

VII

She Is Not Worthy To Live!

The first news of the outrage at Kirk o’Field was passed to London by William Drury, commanding at Berwick, and reached London on 14 February. ‘The case is a strange one’, commented Guzman de Silva cautiously, ‘and has greatly grieved the Catholics.’ On the nineteenth Robert Melville, brother of James, arrived with the official version of the tragedy, which was that the assassins had intended to blow up both the King and Queen of Scotland and it was only by a fortunate chance that the Queen had escaped.

Mary herself, writing to Archbishop Beaton, declared her firm belief that it was not chance but God himself who had preserved her, and expressed her intention of taking rigorous vengeance. The Scottish Council in a letter to the Queen Mother of France followed an identical line. ‘The authors of this crime very nearly destroyed the Queen in the same way, with most of the lords at present in her suite, who had been with the King in his chamber until nearly midnight. Her Majesty might easily have remained there all night, but God has been so gracious to us that these assassins have been despoiled of a part of their prey, and has reserved her Majesty to take the vengeance which such a barbarous and inhuman act deserves. We are making enquiries, and have no doubt that in a short time we shall succeed in discovering those who have perpetrated this deed.’

This sounded plausible enough, yet within a matter of days it was being whispered in London and Paris that Mary and her friends already knew the identity of the criminals and were unlikely to take any very rigorous vengeance on themselves. Guzman de Silva cross-examined Robert Melville in an attempt to ‘get at the bottom of the suspicions as to who had been the author of the crime’, but Melville either could not or would not tell him anything definite. The ambassador found it hard to credit that so virtuous and pious a lady as the Queen of Scotland could have been a party to her husband’s murder; all the same, it is clear that a seed of doubt had been planted and when Moretta, ‘the Duke of Savoy’s man’, reached London on his way home from Scotland on 24 February, he brought little reassurance. ‘His account of the matter is almost the same as that published’, reported de Silva, ‘… although he makes certain additions, which point to suspicion that the Queen knew of, or consented to the plot. When I asked him what he thought, or had been able to gather as to the Queen’s share in it, he did not condemn her in words, but did not exonerate her at all. He thinks, however, that all will soon be known, and even gives signs that he knows more than he likes to say.’

Not everyone was being so discreet. Well before the end of February placards had begun to appear on the streets of Edinburgh accusing the Earl of Bothwell and even the Queen herself of murdering the King.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.