OF all the powers behind the Scottish throne down the centuries, perhaps the most maddening has to be James Hepburn, the 4th Earl of Bothwell.

Last week I explained how Mary, Queen of Scots, had created him Duke of Orkney and then married him, with contemporary records showing that she wore a black bridal gown, was mentally distracted during the ceremony and there was no public rejoicing.

Whether this was an enforced marriage following her rape by him has always been disputed by historians. The main reason for doubt is the existence of the Casket Letters which would prove Mary’s undoing many years later in England. So called because they were indeed “found” in a gilt casket, the letters purported to be from Mary to Bothwell and if they were indeed written by her, then the Queen clearly was part and parcel to the murder of her husband Henry Darnley.

In one letter apparently sent shortly after Darnley’s murder she wrote: “I am a Queen but you are not a King; till I accomplish that, the work is not complete, nor can I taste the sweets of royalty.”

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Remember she denied the Crown Matrimonial to Darnley, but here she was now supposedly saying to Bothwell that he would indeed be King and reign alongside her. That was what he wanted, and maybe, just maybe, she wanted that, too – there was plenty of evidence that after years of fighting and dispute, not least with John Knox, Mary was tired of the business of reigning.

Supporters of Mary have long argued that the Casket Letters were clever forgeries designed to make the case against her unbreakable, and given the intrigues of the time between the anti-Mary factions in Scotland and at the court of Elizabeth Gloriana, the Letters’ provenance must be very dubious indeed. They were just too convenient, too damning, for them to have been Mary’s work.

Let’s stick to the known facts, however. No sooner had Mary married Bothwell and gone to his castle at Dunbar than the so-called Confederate Lords led by the Earls of Morton, Mar, Glencairn, and Gowrie and the Lords Home, Lindsay, Sempill and Sanquhar plus the powerful laird Kirkcaldy of Grange rose up in arms against the royal couple. Also turning against Mary was Secretary Maitland of Lethington, but the Earl of Moray stayed away in France, no doubt waiting to see who would win.

They were playing a game of high stakes because failure on their part would see them condemned for treason and most probably executed. They gathered their forces near Edinburgh on June 11, 1567, and four days later – on a Sunday morning – they confronted Mary and Bothwell at Carberry Hill near Musselburgh. The Lords stated their aims – to revenge the killing of Darnley, remove Mary from Bothwell, and preserve the Prince James. They carried a banner showing the dead Darnley.

Mary’s army was smaller and lacked firearms, though it had cannons. Bothwell was in charge, and now we see the Earl at his most infuriating. Instead of preparing his army for a battle that he could win, Bothwell wasted time by insisting he would take on any of the opposing lords in single combat in a winner-takes-all contest.

Several of the Lords, especially Lord Lindsay, were ready to face him, but on a hot day emissaries including the French Ambassador went back and forth between the two sides in a bid to avoid hostilities.

The National: The surrender of Mary, Queen of Scots at the Battle of Carberry HillThe surrender of Mary, Queen of Scots at the Battle of Carberry Hill

When some cavalry scouts came from the Lords, Bothwell fired a cannonade at them. Mary intervened, fearing that there would be copious bloodshed on both sides. Bothwell had been hoping for reinforcements but none came and his own troops began to desert the scene. As evening approached, Bothwell realised their cause was hopeless, and when Mary secured a guarantee of safe conduct for him, it was time for the king consort to depart the scene. Mary felt that an oath sworn by the Lords was sufficient to guarantee her life and Crown. She was wrong.

Bothwell rode off to Dunbar and never saw Mary again. He tried to rally support for Mary but failed and when the new regime declared him outlaw he fled to Norway. Here the relatives of Anna Thorndsen – you will recall she had been Bothwell’s jilted mistress or wife – pounced on the Earl and put him in jail deep inside the Danish fortress Dragsholm. After 11 years in this dreadful place Bothwell developed gangrene, went quite insane and died. All three of Mary’s husbands died unpleasantly young … Now more men emerged to become powers behind her throne, or rather powers that took her throne away from her.

The Earl of Morton as de facto leader of the Confederate Lords accepted Mary’s surrender – no matter how it was dressed up, Mary was giving herself into the care of her enemies – and she was lodged in Edinburgh, where the Mob had turned against her. The Lord Provost of the city, Sir Simon Preston, was the brother-in-law of Maitland of Lethington and he kept Mary under armed guard overnight – there’s a plaque commemorating the Queen’s last night in Edinburgh at the City Chambers.

Mary was then taken to Lochleven Castle where she suffered a miscarriage – twins, from her brief marriage to Bothwell – before two of the Confederate Lords, Lindsay and Ruthven, visited her on July 24, 1567. They told her that the Lords had decided to remove her from the throne, and it would either be by death or abdication – historians have suggested she might have been allowed to take her own life, but that was strictly against Catholic law and so she abdicated under threat from two very nasty men. Her state of mind can only be guessed at – she had just suffered a miscarriage, had lost her husband, and was exhausted.

Mary signed the Abdication form, so that her son immediately became King James VI of Scotland. The Earl of Morton became Regent, but only until the Earl of Moray, the Queen’s own half-brother, returned from France. He looked set for a long regency as James VI was just 13 months old at the time.

On July 29, five days after Mary’s forced abdication, her son was crowned at Stirling. John Knox preached as only he could, using the Old Testament to justify the removal of a monarch. Under house arrest high in Lochleven Castle, Mary found out what was happening only when the Castle’s owner Sir William Douglas lit bonfires and fired a salute to the new king with his cannons.

Mary asked to appear before the Scottish Parliament but cowed by the Confederate Lords, the Parliament instead declared Bothwell to be Darnley’s “chief executioner” and added that Mary had been “privy, act and part” of the murder of her lawful husband.

Now the Earl of Moray began to play a huge role as head of the Government. On May 2, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven Castle with the assistance of Willie Douglas, the illegitimate son of Sir William, and George Douglas, the handsome and dashing younger brother of Sir William. Did she seduce them or, like so many men, did they fall under her charismatic spell?

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Mary’s many supporters rallied to her cause and by May 8 it was clear that she could put an army in the field that would be bigger than that of the Confederate Lords. She rode to Lanarkshire and the home of her redoubtable allies, the Hamiltons. There she announced that she was revoking her abdication, and then decided to make for the impregnable fortress of Dumbarton Castle.

MORAY had guessed her intention, however, and knew that Mary’s force would have to pass via Langside, then a small village south of Glasgow where the ground was firm enough for cavalry to traverse. Reinforced by troops sent by Parliamentary lords, Moray prepared his ground for battle.

On May 13, 1568, the Battle of Langside sealed Mary’s fate. Her army commander, the Earl of Argyll, was no match for Moray and his chief officer, Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, and though Mary’s forces, mostly Hamilton troops, fought bravely, they could not withstand the withering fire directed at them and soon fled.

Mary turned away with a small retinue led by Lord Claud Hamilton and just 14 days after her escape from Lochleven, the Queen of Scots landed in England. She was accompanied by George Douglas, still under her spell.

Queen Elizabeth did not know what to do with her, but eventually decided that there would be an inquiry into the Confederate Lords’ case against Mary and, tellingly, her counter-charges against them.

It was at this inquiry that Regent Moray produced the Casket Letters but they did not convince the Commissioners appointed by Elizabeth. George Buchanan, about whom I will write next week, prepared the case against Mary despite having once been her supporter and mentor.

In a piece of doublethink that Machiavelli would have been proud of, both Moray and Mary were exonerated. Moray went back to Scotland as Regent and leader of the ‘King’s Party’ while Mary was kept under house arrest at various places in England until her ‘trial’ and execution at Fotheringay Castle on February 8, 1587.

Mary’s early treatment in England caused anger in Scotland where Maitland of Lethington and Kirkcaldy of Grange both renounced the Confederate Lords. The latter man held Edinburgh Castle while Dumbarton Castle was still the western base of the Marian Party, as Mary’s supporters came to be called.

The Earl of Moray proved equal to the task of governing a fractious Scotland and he has come down through history as the “Gude Regent”. Yet he was not able to subdue the Marians led by the powerful Hamilton family, and that failure cost him his life.

For on January 23, 1570, Moray was assassinated while riding through the streets of Linlithgow. His murderer was a member of the Hamilton family, James Hamilton, laird of Bothwellhaugh. The house from which he fired the fatal shot had belonged to Archbishop John Hamilton, Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews. Moray and the Archbishop both set unwanted records with the killing – Moray was the first head of government anywhere in the world to be assassinated by a firearm, and after being captured and put through a show trial at Stirling, Archbishop Hamilton became the last member of the clergy to be hanged in public while wearing his episcopal vestments.

In July 1570, the Earl of Lennox became regent for his grandson James VI. By the middle of 1571 he had more or less suppressed the Marian faction, including capturing Dumbarton Castle, but the formidable Kirkcaldy of Grange was still plotting the return of Mary which he knew would require the capture of most of the King’s Party and probably the boy king himself.

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Lennox was determined to keep the young king under his own guard at Stirling, but on the night of September 3/4, 1571, Kirkcaldy of Grange struck. Led by George Gordon, 5th Earl of Huntly and Claud Hamilton, around 400 of Kirkcaldy of Grange’s toughest soldiers mounted an audacious raid on Stirling and captured many of the King’s Party nobility. During the firefight, Regent Lennox was shot in the back and fell mortally wounded. Kirkcaldy of Grange maintained that Lennox had been the victim of a ‘friendly fire’ incident.

As he lay dying, Lennox’s last words were for his wife Lady Margaret and his grandson King James VI.

I have now covered the stories of the woman and six men who were the powers behind the throne of Mary, Queen of Scots. Next week I will deal with the powers behind the throne of her son.