06 November 2022
Mary, Queen of Scots: two new acquisitions
Following hot on the heels of the exhibition Elizabeth & Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, we are delighted to announce that the British Library has acquired two documents relating to Mary, Queen of Scots’ imprisonment in England. The first, Add MS 89480, is a letter written by the Scottish queen just 5 weeks after she dramatically escaped from Lochleven Castle and fled into England in May 1568. The second, Add Roll 77740/1, is a set of official financial accounts for Mary's upkeep at Wingfield Manor and Tutbury Castle for the period 18 December 1584 to 27 February 1585 (with Add Roll 77740/2 being a duplicate set of the same accounts).
The opening of the official financial accounts for the upkeep of Mary, Queen of Scots: Add Roll 77740/1, membrane 1
On 16 May 1568, Mary and a small group of supporters crossed the Solway Firth in a fishing boat and landed at Workington in Cumberland. The following day, Mary was apprehended by the Deputy Governor of Cumberland and escorted to Carlisle Castle, where she was held under armed guard. Mary wrote immediately to her cousin, Elizabeth I, requesting refuge and military aid to regain her Scottish throne. She described the treasonable actions of her enemies and expressed ‘the confidence I have in you, not only for the safety of my life, but also to aid and assist me in my just quarrel’.
Over the coming days and weeks, Mary persisted in writing long impassioned letters to ‘her nearest kinswoman and perfect friend’, unaware that Elizabeth had already been persuaded by her chief advisor, William Cecil, not to meet with her unwelcome guest. At first, Mary continued to press for an audience with Elizabeth to plead her cause, but as the weeks went by her letters became increasingly reproachful and she complained bitterly about being ‘dishonoured by the refusal of your presence’ and the injustice of her imprisonment.
Letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Jacques Bochetel, Sieur de la Forest, 26 June 1568: Add MS 89480
The newly-acquired letter has remained in a private collection in France since the late 1800s and is therefore unknown to scholars. It was written at the exact point Mary realised her English captivity would not be temporary and that Elizabeth was being disingenuous towards her. It is one of the first pieces of evidence for this change of attitude and marks the moment when Mary turned instead to her French family and supporters.
Mary's signature at the foot of the letter: Add MS 89480
Mary sent the letter from Carlisle on 26 June 1568 to Jacques Bochetel, the French ambassador to England, petitioning him to lend her servant George Douglas 300 écus and to provide safe conduct for him to travel to France for an audience with Charles IX. The first part of the letter is written in a French secretarial hand, but Mary also added a few lines of her own in order to give her request greater force. George Douglas had played an instrumental role in Mary’s escape from Lochleven Castle and was now being entrusted to carry her letters to Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de’ Medici. Other letters by Mary to Charles and Catherine survive in French and Russian archives, in which she petitioned for French aid to her supporters in Scotland and to help her escape imprisonment.
By the time the financial accounts were compiled in 1585, Mary had been held in English captivity for almost 17 years. She had recently been transferred into the custody of Sir Ralph Sadler, and his official correspondence for the same period reveals the pressure he came under to provide for his charge as cheaply as possible. On 18 January 1585, Lord Burghley informed Sadler, ‘hir Majesty … willed me to wryte ernestly unto yow, now at your being at Tutbury, to devise how the chardg may not excede above the rate of mdll (£1500) by yer.’ The accounts may have been drawn up precisely to inform this cost cutting exercise. They offer a fascinating snapshot of Mary’s life as a prisoner as well as the considerable costs and logistics involved in her upkeep and security.
The different types of meats consumed by Mary: Add Roll 77740/1, membrane 2
The accounts reveal that Mary continued to be treated as a queen during her confinement. She was attended upon by a large household, dined under her canopy of state and enjoyed elaborate food. She was served two courses at both dinner and supper, with each course consisting of a choice of 16 individual dishes. The accounts provide a detailed record of monies received and paid out for a wide range of foodstuffs, from bread, butter and eggs to meat (beef, mutton, lamb, veal, boar, pork), poultry (capons, geese, hens, heron, partridge, blackbirds) and fish (cod, salt salmon, eels, herring, plaice, haddock, sole, oysters, pike, roach, carp and trout). Also included are spices (pepper, saffron, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace), exotic items (oranges, olives, capers, dates, almonds, figs), and sweet luxuries (marmalade, caraway biscuits, sucket or fruits preserved in heavy syrup), as well as wine and ale.
Some of the exotic foodstuffs consumed by Mary: Add Roll 77740/1, membrane 3d
Costs for household supplies are also listed. These include lighting, fuel, cooking utensils and brewing equipment, cord for bedsteads, a bucket for the well, ‘mattinge for the Quenes lodginge’, and soap ‘for washing the Queenes lynnen and the naperie of the house’. In addition, the salaries of laundresses, turnspits, purveyors and labourers are recorded alongside specific charges for ‘mendinge the crome and scouring of armour’ and ‘settinge up and making of bedstedes’. Even though Mary was only occasionally permitted to ride, she continued to keep her own horses. The accounts provide a list of stable expenses such as payment for lanterns, rushes, hay, oats and litter, and for the ‘showinge and medicyninge of the horses’.
The final portion of the accounts sets out the cost of moving Mary, Queen of Scots, from Wingfield Manor to Tutbury Castle in January 1585: Add Roll 77740/1, membrane 5
Despite enjoying a deluxe form of house arrest, the accounts remind us that Mary was very much a prisoner of the English crown. The 1580s were a time of escalating religious crisis in Europe. Elizabeth’s ministers, fearful for the safety of their queen and the survival of Protestant England, ensured that Mary was kept under increasingly tight security. The salaries of 40 soldiers who kept watch over her are listed in the accounts, with a final entry setting out the cost of Mary’s removal from the pleasant Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire to the much more remote and secure location of Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire in January 1585.
We are extremely grateful to Jeri Bapasola for supporting the acquisition of Mary’s letter. Both items are available for consultation by researchers in our Manuscripts Reading Room. They have also been digitised as part of the Medieval and Renaissance Women digitisation project, funded by Joanna and Graham Barker, and can now be viewed online: letter of Mary, Queen of Scots (Add MS 89480); household accounts for Mary's upkeep (Add Roll 77740/1 and Add Roll 77740/2).
Andrea Clarke
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
24 August 2022
Massacre on the streets of Paris
On 2 September 1572, Francis Walsingham, then Ambassador to the French Court, wrote a letter from Paris to Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State, the scrawled, messy draft of which survives as Cotton MS Vespasian F VI, ff. 163v–164r. The letter's crossings-out and insertions bear witness to trauma and anger.
The beginning of the draft of Walsingham's letter: Cotton MS Vespasian F VI, f. 163v
A week before, in the early hours of 24 August (St Bartholomew’s Day), a massacre had begun in the city which left some 3,000 Huguenots (French Protestants) dead. Many more would die as the violence spread to the provinces. This letter reports Walsingham’s audiences on 1 September with King Charles IX and the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici. The massacre had wound down only two days before, and Walsingham had been escorted to the Louvre through the still uneasy streets by the king’s brother, Henri, Duke of Anjou, a mark of the esteem in which the French court held its alliance with England. Anjou had also played an important part in the decision-making which sparked the massacre.
The massacre had two components. Charles IX and his Council had ordered the pre-emptive killing of 70 or so leading Huguenot nobles as threats to (and it was later claimed, conspirators against) King and State. The presence of the King’s death squads in Paris triggered the wider massacre, as the Catholic militants of the city turned against their Huguenot neighbours. Royal orders failed to stop the mass killing.
A painting of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre by François Dubois (1529–1584): public domain image
Walsingham's letter addresses both aspects of the massacre. It reports in fairly neutral tones what the King, and later the Queen Mother, declared, that Huguenot conspiracy had forced them to act. Charles said that he had been ‘constrayned to his great greafe to doe that w[hi]ch he dyd for his savetes sake’. Charles promised to provide the evidence of the Huguenot conspiracy to Queen Elizabeth, with Walsingham replying that she ‘woolde be glad to vnderstande the grow[n]d of the matter’. If the alleged conspirators were guilty, ‘none shoolde be more gladde of the pvnishement’ than the Queen.
Portrait of King Charles IX of France, after François Clouet: public domain image
Yet the draft shows one passage of real anger. Walsingham raised the issue (‘I made him understande’) that three English subjects had been murdered and others plundered during the general massacre. When the King promised to punish the guilty if they could be found, Walsingham replied that this would be hard to do, ‘the dysorder beinge so generall, the swoorde being commytted to the common people’. This in itself was an astonishingly blunt thing to say to a King — that he had let his God-given sword of justice and authority fall into the hands of the mob. It is also a surprisingly blunt thing to put down on paper. In the days immediately after the massacre, Walsingham had cause to be wary of letters falling onto the wrong hands. His next two reports were delivered verbally by the messenger. But in this letter Walsingham the diplomat clearly could not contain himself: the whole exchange is squeezed into the margin, added after the rest had been written.
The second page of the draft letter, with Walsingham's incendiary comments in the left-hand margin: Cotton MS Vespasian F VI, f. 164r
The letter was informed by what Walsingham knew about the events of the previous days. On 26 August, he had sent a note to the Queen Mother, stating that he had heard reports of unrest in Paris, but professing that he was very reluctant to believe them and requesting the truth. The English embassy lay in a suburb where many Huguenots lived, but for much of the massacre it had been protected by a ring of royal troops.
Portrait of Francis Walsingham attributed to John De Critz the Elder (c. 1589): courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery NPG 1807
Yet Walsingham had more direct knowledge of the massacre than he admitted in that note. The embassy was itself attacked and the crowd pacified by a Catholic nobleman who summoned the royal troops. A number of English found refuge in the embassy, carrying news of the violence outside, including the young Lord Wharton, whose tutor had been murdered. Some Huguenots also escaped to the embassy, such as the leading nobleman, François de Beauvais, sieur de Briquemault, whose son had been killed in front of him. Briquemault sneaked past the royal guards into the embassy disguised as a butcher and was hidden in the embassy stables. At the very same time that the King was assuring Walsingham that he had been forced to act for his own safety, the latter was shielding one of the very leaders the King wanted dead.
Briquemault was discovered a few days later. Despite Walsingham’s pleas for his life, he was duly executed for the conspiracy which he denied to the end on the gallows.
Tim Wales
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
16 February 2022
A man on a commission
Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens tells the story of the complex and evolving relationship of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. Drawing on documents, letters and speeches written in the queens’ own hands, as well as the courtiers closest to them, the exhibition reveals how, from cordial beginnings, their relationship turned to distrust and betrayal.
The exhibition catalogue for the Elizabeth and Mary exhibition
In 1561, when the recently widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, returned to Scotland to take up direct rule, the two queens were both young and infinitely curious about each other — anything but mortal enemies. They exchanged expensive gifts and letters full of sisterly affection and expressed an earnest desire to meet and make a perfect amity. Mary hoped that a personal meeting would result in her being recognised as Elizabeth’s heir presumptive, and she frequently reminded her cousin that they were not only fellow sovereign queens but also ‘of one blood, of one country, and in one island’. When their plans to meet in 1562 were aborted, Mary lost her opportunity to persuade Elizabeth in person to settle the succession, turning her thoughts to marriage as a means to strengthen her claim to the English crown. Elizabeth quickly made it known that a marriage to one of her powerful European rivals would be seen as a hostile act and instead proposed her favourite, Robert Dudley, as a suitable husband. But she would still not name Mary as her heir.
Portrait of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, by Steven van der Meulen, c. 1561: by kind permission of Waddesdon (Rothschild Family)
Elizabeth’s suggestion that Mary marry her ‘horse master’ — to use Mary’s own words — caused great offence and coincided with a deterioration in relations between the two queens. In late September 1564, Mary sent her ambassador, Sir James Melville, on a nine-day visit to the English court to smooth things over. His autograph memoirs (held at the British Library as Add MS 37977) record how ‘hir Maieste plesit to confer with me euery day, and somtymes thrys vpon a day’, and provide a vivid account of their conversations.
During Melville’s first audience with Elizabeth, she requested an update on the Dudley marriage proposal, keen to point out that ‘sche estemed him as hir brother and best frend, whom sche suld have married hir self, had she not been determined to end hir lyf in virginite’. Instead, ‘sche wissit that the quen hir sister suld mary him, as metest of all vther, and with whom sche mycht find in hir hart to declaire the quen second personne’. Elizabeth insisted that Melville witness Dudley being ennobled as Earl of Leicester. He wryly observed that, as Dudley kneeled before the queen, ‘sche culd not refrain from putting hir hand in his nek, to kitle [tickle] him smylingly’. On another occasion, in Elizabeth’s private chambers, the Scottish ambassador was ‘accidentally’ shown a miniature of Dudley, labelled ‘My lordes picture’. Elizabeth declined his request to take it for Mary as ‘sche had bot that ane of his’.
Sir James Melville’s autograph memoirs, c. 1600: Add MS 37977, ff. 33v–34r
Melville’s memoirs provide a fascinating insight into Elizabeth’s preoccupation with her Scottish cousin and the human curiosity and rivalry which lay at the heart of their relationship. Over the course of his visit, Elizabeth bombarded Melville with questions about Mary’s appearance. When quizzed about which of the two queens was fairest, he tactfully replied that both were ‘the fairest ladyes off thar courtes, and that the quen of england whas whytter, bot our quen was very lusome [attractive]’. On hearing that Mary was taller, Elizabeth retorted that Mary ‘was ouer heych, and that hir self was nother ouer hich nor ouer laich’. Further questions about Mary’s accomplishments followed, and Elizabeth was interested to hear that her cousin played the virginals ‘raisonably for a quen’. Later that evening, Elizabeth had a courtier escort Melville to a gallery where she was playing the virginals ‘excellently weill’. When pressed by Elizabeth to declare which queen played the virginals better, Melville ‘gaif hir the prayse’.
Melville’s memoirs are on display in the British Library’s major exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens until 20 February 2022. Tickets can be bought in advance or on the day, subject to availability.
Anna Turnham and Andrea Clarke
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
15 February 2022
‘The Doubt of Future Foes’
Queen Elizabeth I composed her most famous poem, ‘The doubt [fear] of future foes’, during the winter of 1569–70, in the immediate aftermath of the Northern Rebellion against her. In it she expressed defiance towards Mary, Queen of Scots, and the English catholics who supported Mary’s claim to the throne. Mary was ‘the doughter of debate’ and ‘forren banyshed wyght [contemptuous woman]’, sowing ‘dyscorde’ amongst Elizabeth’s subjects.
A gold pendant known as ‘The Phoenix Jewel’, c. 1570–80, British Museum, Sl.Misc.1778, on loan to the British Library’s major exhibition Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. The obverse shows a bust of Elizabeth I in silhouette, the reverse the device of a phoenix in flames under Elizabeth’s monogram and crown.
Written in long-line couplets, employing metaphors of sedition growing like rank weeds in a garden, only to be swept away by changing political weather, the poem apparently reflected Elizabeth’s private thoughts. At first it circulated in manuscript among her courtiers, almost certainly with the queen’s consent, but it was quickly more widely disseminated as demand for copies grew. Whatever Elizabeth’s original intention, the poem’s message was very public. In it she warned that she would ‘brouke [permit] no sedicions’. ‘Let [her enemies] ell[e]swheare Resort/ My Rustye sworde throughe Reste/ Shall fyrst his edge imploye/ To pole [chop off] theyr topp[e]s that seke suche chaunge/ Or gapes for future Ioye [Joy]’.
Poem by Elizabeth I, ‘The dowt [fear] of future foos [foes], exiles my pr[e]sent Ioye [Joy]’, 1569–70: Add MS 82370, f. 45v
In October 1569, Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, was sent to the Tower of London for plotting to marry Mary, who had been a prisoner in England since fleeing her kingdom the previous year. Norfolk had made common cause with the disgruntled northern peers, Thomas Percy, 7th earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, 6th earl of Westmorland, who both felt marginalised by Elizabeth’s protestant government. While on his way to the Tower, Norfolk sent Northumberland and Westmorland a message, urging them not to rebel, ‘for if they did, it shuld cost hym his heade’ (The National Archives, SP 12/81/57, M. f. 140r). Fearing their own arrests for conspiring against the crown, they ignored Norfolk’s plea and early in November raised the standard of rebellion at Brancepeth in County Durham.
John Rudd, map of County Durham, in the Burghley-Saxton Atlas, 1576: Royal MS 18 D III, ff. 69v–70r
On 14 November 1569, Northumberland and Westmorland set up the mass again at Durham Cathedral, and then elsewhere in the North. The rebel aims were to depose Elizabeth in favour of Mary and to restore catholicism throughout the realm. Although quickly crushed, the government regarded the Northern Rebellion as a considerable threat and 600 rebels were executed as a warning to the catholic North. Northumberland and Westmorland fled to Scotland, where Northumberland was captured on Christmas Eve. In June 1572, in return for £2,000, he was delivered by the Scots into English hands. His fate seemed uncertain at first, but he was beheaded for treason at York on 22 August. Westmorland was more fortunate and escaped overseas, where he remained fugitive for the rest of his life. Having been reprieved for his part in the Northern Rebellion, Norfolk was beheaded on 2 June 1572 for further plotting against Elizabeth.
A decade or more after Elizabeth composed ‘The doubt of future foes’, the Yorkshire yeoman farmer John Hanson copied it into his household book (now Add MS 82370), perhaps in the wake of Mary’s execution and the Spanish Armada. By then the poem had taken on a more direct meaning, as the queen had acted on her threat to ‘pole theyr topp[e]s’. Hanson’s copy includes a significant number of errors, a reflection of just how far the poem had circulated since its composition, having been copied and miscopied many times. Rediscovered in 2007, Hanson’s household book — a miscellany of writings for practical, everyday use — offers insights into the lives of some of Elizabeth’s humbler, provincial subjects, who nonetheless still showed a keen interest in the great affairs of state. As well as poetry and prose fiction, Hanson copied down tenurial records, calendars, and advice on hunting and fishing, including recipes for things like ‘stink bait’, to be used when angling.
Our major exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, is on at the British Library in London until 20 February 2022. Tickets can be bought in advance or on the day, subject to availability.
Alan Bryson
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
13 February 2022
Mr Beale and the death warrant
Some writings burn with anger even after more than four centuries. Two such are memoranda by Robert Beale, Clerk to the Privy Council of Queen Elizabeth I. Anger, but also astonishing bluntness from a leading — and loyal — functionary of the state. Beale was furious at Elizabeth’s attempts to foist the blame for the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, on to others: first, by asking her subjects to murder Mary, and then by blaming Secretary of State William Davison and the Privy Council over the delivery of the death warrant that the Queen had signed. Beale was the man who had carried the death warrant to Fotheringhay and had read it at Mary's execution.
Mary, Queen of Scots, loomed large in Beale’s career. Since at least 1572, he had been convinced that Mary’s death would be for the good of the Queen of England and of the Protestant religion. On four occasions he was sent to negotiate with the imprisoned Scottish queen. He noted the personal messages that Elizabeth added to the formal letters that he carried to Mary: ‘Your dearest Sister if it had pleased you so to have kept her El. R’ (27 May 1583); ‘Your Cousin even so is one as by desertes you might have had affectionate unto you El R’ (4 May 1584).
A note in Beale’s hand of one of Elizabeth’s personal messages to Mary, Queen of Scots: Add MS 48049, f. 199r
Beale collected originals or copies of many of the most important papers and polemics about Mary over the years. Much of his collection on Mary is now preserved in one volume (Add MS 48027), from which three items are displayed in Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. The first is a copy of the Bond of Association — the oath of loyal Englishmen in 1584 to unleash lynch law against those who attempted to harm Elizabeth or for whose cause they acted — as signed by Mary herself, with an attempt to mimic her signature: ‘This have I Robert Beale seen under the hand and seale of the Scotish Queen hade remaining with Mr Secretary Walsingham’. The second is his copy of the proclamation pronouncing Mary’s guilt, with his note of its reading in the City of London. The third is Beale’s own drawing of her execution. This blogpost discusses other documents in the same volume.
Robert Beale’s eye-witness drawing of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1587): Add MS 48027/1, f. 650*r
In the aftermath of Mary's execution on 8 February 1587, Secretary Davison had been imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried before the Star Chamber. Beale wrote a full account of his own part in delivering the commission for the execution, restating its lawfulness and stressing that it was, as far as he knew, the Queen’s will. This account was perhaps written about the time of Davison’s trial, when it was unclear if he would not share Mary's fate. Beale kept a copy of the Queen’s warrant, adding in his own hand ‘Elizabeth R’ and specifying ‘Her Maiesty hand was also in the toppe’.
The first page of Beale’s copy of the commission for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. The Queen’s signature and the note at the top are in his hand: Add MS 48027, f. 645r
One memorandum provides Beale's fiercest criticism of Elizabeth. Written on the back of an account of Davison’s trial, he records how a copy of the proceedings was sent to the Scottish Ambassador to show the English Queen’s innocence. Beale disapproved of the Council’s self-incriminating submission provided for the same purpose: ‘Imprudenter: To take soche a matter uppon them: being of so great a moment. It may serve as an Evidence to condemne.’
Beale’s reflections on Elizabeth I’s responsibility, in his own hand: Add MS 48027, f. 690v
Beale went even further. He compared Elizabeth to the French King, Charles IX, whose plan to murder Admiral Coligny triggered the Massacre of St Bartholomew in Paris, in which thousands of Protestants were murdered: ‘Anno 1572: Immediately uppon the Massacre of the Admirall &c the king wold have layed it uppon the house of Guise: and so were his lettres. But they wold not beare yt: and so he was faine to advowe yt himself.’ Beale’s account here is pretty accurate: Charles had indeed initially tried to lay the blame on the Duke of Guise for what he himself had ordered, but quickly had to admit the truth. It is remarkable to see a loyal subject and committed Protestant comparing Elizabeth I to the king responsible for such a notorious atrocity. Hardly less surprising is Beale's implicit parallel between both the Queen’s dutiful servants and the ultra-Catholic Duke of Guise as being victims of royal duplicity.
Our major exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, is on at the British Library in London until 20 February 2022. Tickets can be bought in advance or on the day, subject to availability.
Tim Wales
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
10 February 2022
The ‘tragedy’ of Lord Darnley
Following a large explosion at Kirk o’ Field outside Edinburgh at two o’clock on the morning of 10 February 1567, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was found dead in a nearby garden. Darnley is one of the most notorious figures in Scottish history. He was king consort of Scots, and his mysterious death caused a sensation both at home and abroad. Within days, painted placards were set up and handbills distributed in Edinburgh, openly accusing his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots, and James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell, of being lovers and of orchestrating Darnley’s murder.
Poem by Robert Sempill, The testament and tragedie of King Henrie Stewart, 1567: Cotton MS Caligula C I, f. 26r
The sensational news was reported even further, when broadside ballads began appearing in print penned by Robert Sempill. Intended to be sung to popular tunes, one of the first of these ballads, The testament and tragedie of vmquhile [the deceased] King Henrie, was printed in Edinburgh by Robert Lekpreuik. This survives in a unique copy currently on display in the British Library's exhibition Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. Taking the form of a a rhetorical device known as a prosopopoeia, by which Darnley’s ghost is represented as recounting his life, Darnley narrated how ‘Scotland I socht, in houpe for to get [Mary]’. Finding him ‘Sa perfyte, plesand, and sa dilectabill’, Mary married him, making Darnley king. Darnley claimed he was popular with the common people, while doing all he could to please and serve his wife: ‘Hir for to pleis I set my haill consait [conceit]:/ Quhilk [Which] now is cause of my rakles [reckless] ruyne’. Blinded by passion, he renounced his protestant faith and began attending catholic mass daily with Mary. Consequently, Darnley was damned, having ‘for hir saik denyit the God deuine [divine]’. His honour was diminished, his word doubted, his supporters deserted him. He became, by turns, depressed, anxious, angry and lethargic.
But all was not as Sempill depicted. While Darnley had charmed and dazzled Mary on his arrival in Scotland from family exile, once married to her in July 1565 he proved an arrogant, jealous and unreliable drunkard who alienated almost everybody, including his new wife. After Mary declined to grant him equal authority with her, Darnley’s resentment focused on her Italian favourite, her secretary David Rizzio, whom he accused of being her lover. On 9 March 1566, he participated in Rizzio’s brutal murder at Holyroodhouse in Mary’s own presence. Then, three days later, he betrayed his co-conspirators by helping her escape captivity shortly after midnight. Mary had won Darnley over by explaining ‘how miserably he would be handled, in case he permitted thir lords to prevail in our contrare [against her]’ (Alexandre Labanoff, Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Marie Stuart, reine d’Écosse, 7 vols. (London, 1844), 1, p. 347). Fearing for his safety, at first Darnley kept in Mary’s favour, hearing mass with her daily. But in the months that followed his behaviour became more difficult and unpredictable, driving them further apart, even after the birth of their son, Prince James, in June. At the end of the year he sought safety in Glasgow with his father, but fell ill on the way, probably as a result of syphilis. Mary visited him while he convalesced, persuading Darnley to return to Edinburgh, where he was lodged at Kirk o’ Field at the beginning of February 1567.
Bird’s-eye view of the murder scene of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, by an unknown artist, February 1567: The National Archives, MPF 1/366/1.
On 10 February 1567, in the early hours before Darnley’s intended return to court, Kirk o’ Field was destroyed by gunpowder. The discovery of Darnley’s body alongside that of one of his servants, William Taylor, without a mark on either of them, only deepened the mystery. A shocked Mary ordered an immediate investigation, offering a reward to anyone coming forward with information about the murderers.
Surviving accounts, depictions and depositions make it possible to reconstruct how Darnley was murdered. On realising that the house was surrounded by conspirators, Darnley and Taylor appear to have lowered themselves out of a first-floor window onto a gallery below using a rope and chair. They then made their way through a door in the town wall on to Thieves Row, only to find themselves surrounded. Eyewitnesses overheard Darnley plead for his life. Taylor and he were almost certainly suffocated, then Kirk o’ Field was blown up.
Drawing of a placard depicting Mary, Queen of Scots, as a mermaid ensnaring James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell, represented as a hare, February 1567: The National Archives, SP 52/13/60
Despite ordering the investigation into Darnley’s murder and passing an act of parliament against placards and handbills, anonymous public attacks on Mary and Bothwell continued. One placard even portrayed Mary as a mermaid (prostitute) ensnaring Bothwell, depicted as his heraldic beast the hare, within her net. Mary wrote to Darnley’s father, Matthew Stewart, 4th earl of Lennox, promising ‘a perfite triall to be had of the king our husbandis cruel slauchtir’.
Letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Matthew Stewart, 4th earl of Lennox, 21 February 1567: Cotton MS Caligula B X/2, f. 408r
After Bothwell, the principal suspect in Darnley's murder, was acquitted in a rigged trial on 12 April, Lennox pursued a blood feud against him that culminated in Mary’s deposition from the throne three months later. Popular print would prove critical in turning public opinion against the queen, with Lennox recruiting Robert Sempill, Scotland’s foremost satirist, to write a series of widely read and sung broadside ballads in support of his cause. Darnley was a deeply divisive figure during his lifetime, but in death he became, in Sempill’s words, ‘the Sacrifice’ that sparked rebellion. Although cheap print, to be thrown away or recycled once read, Sempill’s Testament and tragedie is now as rare and precious as many a manuscript, not least for the impact it had on its first audience.
Group portrait of James VI, Matthew Stewart and Margaret Douglas, earl and countess of Lennox, and Lord Charles Stewart (‘The Memorial to Lord Darnley’) by Livinus de Vogelaare, 1567: Royal Collection Trust 401230 / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2022
Our major exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, is on at the British Library in London until 20 February 2022. Tickets can be bought in advance or on the day, subject to availability.
Alan Bryson
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
08 February 2022
Murder most foul: how Mary, Queen of Scots, almost avoided the chop
The circumstances of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, on 8 February 1587, are well known. There is a detailed eye-witness drawing of Mary entering the hall at Fotheringhay Castle (Northamptonshire), disrobing, and placing her head on the block — you can see it in person in the British Library's major exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, which is on in London until 20 February.
But were you aware that, on the same day that Queen Elizabeth I signed her cousin's death warrant, she instructed Mary's keepers to assassinate her?
A contemporary drawing by Robert Beale of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots: Add MS 48027/1 (f. 650a recto)
On 1 February 1587, after weeks of prevarication, Elizabeth finally signed Mary’s death warrant and handed it to Secretary Davison. She commanded him to have the warrant passed immediately under the Great Seal and despatched. Within a day Elizabeth was developing cold feet, making ambiguous noises about the warrant, complaining about haste and keeping her distance from the business at hand. It was at this point that Lord Burghley, acting with a group of Privy Councillors, pressed ahead with despatching the warrant. They entrusted it to Robert Beale, Clerk to the Privy Council, swearing a mutual oath that they would tell no-one, including the queen, of their proceedings. Beale and the two noblemen to preside at the execution — the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent — arrived at Fotheringhay on 7 February. Mary was executed the following day.
In his notes and memoranda (Add MS 48027), Beale tells another story of how Mary might have died. At the same time as Queen Elizabeth gave the death warrant to Secretary Davison, she ordered him and his fellow Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, to write to Mary’s keepers, Sir Amias Paulet and Sir Dru Drury, asking them as good subjects to assassinate Mary.
The Blairs Reliquary, containing a portrait miniature of Mary, Queen of Scots (1586, framed 1610–22): © The Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Trust (Blairs Museum)
Davison and Walsingham wrote to the keepers that Elizabeth found a ‘lack of care and zeal’ in them for not yet finding ‘some way to shorten the life of that Queen’. She took it ‘most unkindly towards her, that men professing that love towards her that you do, should in any kind of sort, for lack of the discharge of your duties, cast the burthen upon her, knowing as you do her indisposition to shed blood, especially of one of that sex and quality, and so near to her in blood as the said Queen is’.
‘God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant’, was Paulet’s prompt response. Walsingham acknowledged Paulet’s reply ‘wrytten effectuallie & to good purpose’ in a letter about expediting the process of Mary’s execution with as much secrecy as possible (Add MS 48027, f. 644v). It transpired that the men whom Elizabeth approached had no problems with arranging Mary’s death — far from it — indeed, there was a case to be made that killing her was justified under the Bond of Association against those who sought Elizabeth’s death. But in their mind Mary's death should be by due form following the sentence at her trial, not common murder. For Elizabeth's part, assassination would have allowed her a rather desperate degree of (not very convincing) deniability.
Portrait of Sir Amias Paulet (c. 1533–1588), 1576–78, attributed to Nicholas Hilliard: Rothschild Family collection
Beale takes up the story. Paulet and Drury ‘dislyked that course as dishonorable and dangerous: And so did R[obert] B[eale] and therfore thought it convenient to have it don according to lawe in suche sorte as they might justifie their doinges by lawe’ (f. 639v). Beale reports elsewhere (ff. 640r-641r) how, when he came to Fotheringhay, Paulet and Drury told him ‘that they had been dealt with by a lettre if they could have been induced her to have been violently murdered by some that should have been appointed for that purpose’. Beale named a potential assassin, ‘one Wingfeld (as it was thought)’ – presumably Robert Wingfield, a Nothamptonshire gentleman who would write an eye-witness account of the execution. Beale reported that the Queen ‘wold have had it done so rather then otherwise’ and ‘would fayne have had it so’: she claimed that it was a course advised by the Scottish Ambassador.
It was thought that the Earl of Leicester most supported assassination, but that both Walsingham and Davison ‘misliked’ it. The matter was talked over whilst Beale was at Fotheringhay, but ‘by the example of Edward the 2d. or Rychard the 2d.: it was not thought convenient or safe to proceed covertly: but openly, according to the statute of 27’ — that is, the Act of 1585 by which Mary had been tried and condemned. Edward II and Richard II were powerful and damning precedents to conjure with, stories of the hole-in-the-wall murder of kings, whose resonances are captured in the plays of Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare just a few years later. The keepers were also understandably doubtful about carrying out this action even with the promise of a pardon from Elizabeth.
Robert Beale’s account of the circumstances of the warrant for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, written after August 1588: Add MS 48207, f. 640r
Beale’s notes expand on the illegitimacy of assassination. First, he described the formal and lawful processes of the execution itself. He then gave examples of those who had since said that it would have been better to have had Mary assassinated. In August 1588, he was told by an English diplomat that the Count of Arenberg had said ‘that it had bin better don to have poisond her or choked her with a pillowe, but not to have putt her to so open a death’ (f. 640v). Another diplomat, William Waad, who had been sent to explain the execution to the French court, reported that the King, Henri III, and others were of the same mind.
Finally, Beale’s notes circled back to Fotheringhay on the night before the execution. As Paulet and Drury plucked down her cloth of state, and having been told to prepare to die, Mary ‘mentioned the murder of King Rychard the second. But Sir Dru answered that she needed not to feare yt, for that she was in the charge of a Christian gentleman’ (f. 641r). The honour of a Christian gentleman, but not, as Beale’s notes leave hanging in the air, such an honourable queen.
Detail showing Robert Beale’s concluding note: Add MS 48027, f. 641r
The fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, is featured in our exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, is on at the British Library in London until 20 February 2022. Tickets can be purchased either in advance or on the day, subject to availability.
Tim Wales
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
05 February 2022
The Gallows Letter
On 17 July 1586, Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote from captivity at Chartley Hall (Staffordshire) to the English catholic gentleman Anthony Babington. Beginning innocuously enough, ‘Trustie and welbeloved. According to the zeale and entier affection which I haue knowen in you towardes the common cause of relligion and mine’, her letter to Babington is one of the most famous written in the 16th century. Now known as the ‘Gallows Letter’, it is the key document in the 1586 Babington Plot, which is explored in the British Library’s current major exhibition, Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens.
A contemporary copy of the ‘Gallows Letter’, the closest version to the original letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots, to Anthony Babington on 17 July 1586: The National Archives, SP 53/18/53, on display in the exhibition
As she dictated her letter, Mary was unaware that her words would entrap her. But Elizabeth I’s principal secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, knew of the plot from the outset, even before Mary did. His spies intercepted Mary’s letter, passing it on to his cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, who had been waiting patiently for his opportunity to strike. Upon deciphering it, Phelippes drew a gallows on the address leaf, indicating that its content would condemn Mary to death for plotting against her cousin Elizabeth.
The Blairs Reliquary, containing a portrait miniature of Mary, Queen of Scots (1586, framed 1610–22): © The Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Trust (Blairs Museum)
Back in autumn 1581, Mary had proposed a scheme whereby she would be freed to return to Scotland in order to reign jointly with her son James VI. By then she had been imprisoned in England for 13 years, ever since fleeing her homeland. James, who had just overthrown his last regent and begun exerting his independent authority as king, had no desire to share power with his mother or with anybody else. Nonetheless, Mary periodically renewed the scheme. In September 1584, she told Elizabeth that, if granted her freedom, she would openly support Elizabeth’s right to rule, while opposing papal interference in both England and Scotland. ‘Then none … will dare tooche thone Realme for religion without offending both’ (Add MS 33594, ff. 52v–53r). Elizabeth ‘shall never fynd [me] false to her’, Mary reassured her. Mary even offered to relinquish her claims to the English and Irish successions, if Elizabeth would let her either live freely in England or return to Scotland. The Queen of England proved open to this idea, but in spring 1585, James, who was then almost 19, finally rejected his mother’s scheme outright. Mary was devastated.
It was after this bitter disappointment that Mary turned in earnest to plotting against Elizabeth as her only hope of escaping. In spring 1585, her keeper, Sir Ralph Sadler, was replaced by Sir Amias Paulet. Whereas Sadler had treated her honourably, Paulet took a harder line, keeping her more closely guarded and restricting her correspondence severely. Mary began fearing for her life, which made her seek out desperate courses. Therefore, when Anthony Babington proposed ‘the dispatch of the vsurper [Elizabeth] by six noble gentlemen, who for the zeale they beare to the Catholick cause and your Maiesties service will vndertake that tragicall execution’, Mary was ready to listen (The National Archives, SP 53/19/12).
In spring 1586, Babington had been recruited to a catholic plot against Elizabeth. With Spanish support, a rebellion would break out simultaneously with the queen’s assassination, and Mary would be crowned in her place. Walsingham had long regarded Mary as Elizabeth’s greatest threat. Learning of the conspiracy from one of his double agents, he saw an opportunity and opened a channel of communication between Mary and Babington, using ciphered letters hidden in beer barrels. These letters were intercepted, unsealed, and deciphered by Phelippes, before being resealed and carried to their intended addressee. In this way Walsingham read all Mary’s correspondence.
Portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham, by an unknown artist after John de Critz the elder, 1589: private collection, on loan to the exhibition
Mary wrote the ‘Gallows Letter’ on 17 July 1586, authorising the plot and making recommendations. Fatefully, she agreed to Elizabeth’s assassination: ‘sett the six gentlemen to woork’. Mary also desired the overthrow of her son James VI and ‘some sturring in Ireland’. She warned Babington that, if he failed, Elizabeth would, ‘catching mee againe, enclose mee for ever in some hole, forth of the which I should never escape, yf shee did vse mee no worse’. He burned the ‘Gallows Letter’ after reading it.
Seeking to draw Babington out, before it was sent Walsingham had several passages to the ‘Gallows Letter’ amended and a postscript added, asking Babington to name the six assassins and to say ‘how you proceed and as soon as you may’. Hearing nothing further, on 3 August he ordered Babington’s arrest, but feared that this postscript had tipped him off. He wrote to Phelippes the same day, confessing ‘you wyll not beleve howe mych I am greved with the event of this cavse and feare the addytyon of the postscrypt hathe bread the iealousie [suspicion]’.
Letter from Sir Francis Walsingham to Thomas Phelippes, 3 August 1586: Cotton MS Appendix L, f. 143v
Evading arrest for some days by hiding in St John’s Wood (Middlesex), Babington was eventually caught. Mary’s secretaries were also arrested and interrogated. They confessed to writing the ‘Gallows Letter’ at her command, while Babington confessed to the plot.
Cipher bearing Anthony Babington’s signed confession that ‘this last is the alphabet by which only I have written vnto the Queene of Scotes or receaved letteres from her’, July 1586: The National Archives, SP 12/193/54, on loan to the exhibition
Evidence of Mary’s complicity could not be suppressed, as it was needed to convict Babington and his co-conspirators, who were found guilty of treason. Babington himself was hanged, drawn and quartered on 20 September 1586. After that everyone watched and waited to see what the queen would do next: would she commit regicide by bringing Mary to justice?
Alan Bryson
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
Medieval manuscripts blog recent posts
- Mary, Queen of Scots: two new acquisitions
- Massacre on the streets of Paris
- A man on a commission
- ‘The Doubt of Future Foes’
- Mr Beale and the death warrant
- The ‘tragedy’ of Lord Darnley
- Murder most foul: how Mary, Queen of Scots, almost avoided the chop
- The Gallows Letter
- How to be an effective ruler: the Basilikon Doron of King James VI and I
- ‘As goodly a child as I have seen’
Archives
Tags
- Africa
- Alexander exhibition
- Ancient
- Anglo-Saxons
- Animals
- Black & Asian Britain
- British Library Treasures
- Calendars
- Classics
- Decoration
- Digital scholarship
- Early modern
- Elizabeth and Mary exhibition
- English
- Events
- Exhibitions
- Fashion
- Featured manuscripts
- French
- Gold exhibition
- Greek
- Harry Potter
- Humanities
- Illuminated manuscripts
- International
- Ireland
- Latin
- Law
- Leonardo
- LGBTQ+
- Literature
- Magna Carta
- Manuscripts
- Maps
- Medieval
- Medieval history
- Middle East
- Middle east
- Modern history
- Music
- Olympics
- Palaeography
- Polonsky
- Printed books
- Rare books
- Research collaboration
- Romance languages
- Royal
- sacred texts
- Sacred texts
- Science
- Scotland
- Slavonic
- South East Asia
- Visual arts
- Women's histories
- Writing