Union of Crowns by Crawford Little

Author:Crawford Little
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906000134
Publisher: Neil Wilson Publishing
Published: 2012-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R S I X T E E N

QUEEN MARY’S DOWNFALL

The Scottish envoy Robert Melville, in reporting to Queen Elizabeth of England on the marriage of Mary and Bothwell, highlighted the quarrelsome nature of the Scots as an explanation. He argued that Mary had been exhausted by their plotting against her, and needed the support of a strong husband. However, Elizabeth was not impressed. After all, she ruled ‘unruly England’ alone, and was constantly beset with intrigue and plotting. Her main objection was that Mary had married a man suspected of her former husband’s murder. The argument that Bothwell had been acquitted of that charge would not have impressed Elizabeth, who knew the circumstances of those farcical court proceedings.

Realising the difficulty of his position, Bothwell wrote to Elizabeth. ‘I will thus boldly affirm that, albeit men of greater birth and estimation might well have been preferred to this room, yet none more careful to see your two Majesties’ amity and intelligence continued by all good offices.’ Even his attempts at insinuation verge on self-aggrandisement. His letter may have done nothing more than steel Elizabeth’s resolve against him.

The English queen had another concern. Bothwell had made himself stepfather to her godson – heir to the English throne as well as the Scottish, as long as Elizabeth remained childless. Before doing that, he should have sought her approval. In forging ahead, Bothwell had made himself England’s affair and risked incurring her wrath, and Elizabeth was not of a forgiving nature in such matters. To those who knew the full circumstances of the case – and Elizabeth’s agents within Scotland were certainly efficient – it might have been feared that Bothwell could persuade or force Mary into granting the ‘crown matrimonial’ to her new husband, as she had done previously for Dauphin Francis. After that, who could say? Mary and her son, the infant prince, could meet with ‘accidents’, leaving Bothwell to rule in his own right. Bothwell may have been maintaining a sexual relationship with his former wife after his marriage to the queen. There had been accusations of collusion between Bothwell and Lady Jean. With Mary out of the way, there would have been nothing to hinder them from remarrying. They were certainly a formidable pair.

Since the marriage, Bothwell had become obsessively suspicious of the queen. She wasn’t allowed to close doors, and was shadowed by an armed guard. He insisted on being present at any meetings. Those nobles who managed to gain an audience reported back that the queen was certainly distressed, and almost deranged. It is known that Bothwell was involved with sorcery, and some suggested that he was ‘managing’ Mary with some sort of drug. All this would have been reported to Elizabeth. Certainly, Bothwell would later admit that he had used ‘magic’ to seduce the queen into marriage.

Scottish nobles opposed to the hasty royal marriage and fearful of what it might lead to raised an armed force, declaring their intent ‘to deliver

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