Imprisoning Mary Queen of Scots: The Men Who Kept the Stuart Queen

By Mickey Mayhew and Margaret George

Imprisoning Mary Queen of Scots covers the lives and careers of the men and women who ‘kept’ Mary Queen of Scots when she was a political prisoner in England, circa 1568/9-1587. Mary’s troubled claim to the English throne - much to the consternation of her ‘dear cousin’ Elizabeth I - made her a mortal enemy of the aforementioned Virgin Queen and set them on a collision course from which only one would walk away. Mary’s calamitous personal life, encompassing assassinations, kidnaps and abdications, sent her careering into England and right into the lap of Henry VIII’s shrewd but insecure daughter. Having no choice but keep Mary under lock and key, Elizabeth trusted this onerous task to some of the most capable - not to mention the richest - men and women in England; Sir Francis Knollys, Rafe Sadler (of Wolf Hall fame), the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick, and finally, the puritanical nit-picker Sir Amyas Paulet. Until now, these nobles have been mere bit-players in Mary’s story; now, their own lives, loves and fortunes are laid bare for all to see. From Carlisle Castle to Fotheringay, these men and women all but bankrupted themselves in keeping the deposed Scots queen in the style to which she was accustomed, while fending off countless escape plots of which Mary herself was often the author. With the sort of twist that history excels at, it was in fact a honeytrap escape plot set up by Elizabeth’s ministers that finally saw Mary brought to the executioner’s block, but what of the lives of the gaolers who had until then acted as her guardian? This book explains how Shrewsbury and Bess saw their marriage wrecked by Mary’s legendary charms, and how Sir Amyas Paulet ended up making a guest appearance on ‘Most Haunted’, some several hundred years after his death. In that theme, the book also covers the appearances of these men and women on film and TV, in novels and also the various other Mary-related media that help keep simmering the legend of this most misunderstood of monarchs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781399011006

Mickey Mayhew

Lifelong Londoner Mickey Mayhew recently completed his PhD on the cult surrounding 'tragic queens' Anne Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots. In that time, he was also co-author on three books relating to Jack the Ripper, published by The History Press. His first non-fiction work, The Little Book of Mary Queen of Scots, was also published by The History Press in January 2015; I Love the Tudors, by Pitkin Publishing, arrived in 2016. He has a column in the journal of The Whitechapel Society, having previously been a film and theatre reviewer for various London lifestyle magazines. Through 2018/2019, he was an assistant researcher on several projects for London South Bank University.

Book preview

Chapter One

Mary’s Path to Imprisonment

Mary Queen of Scots was a problem from the day she was born.

For starters, she was a girl; any girl born to a reigning monarch amidst a backdrop of intense patriarchy, and particularly a monarch without sons already in good supply was sure to be more of a liability than an asset. From there, her religion was also a particular sticking point; Mary was a Catholic at a time when Protestantism was sweeping across Europe like an uncontrollable wildfire – several years down the line, as ruler of Scotland, she would find herself quite distinctly a fish out of water. Finally, Mary’s pedigree was a particular problem. Her father was James V of Scotland, her mother Mary of Guise, scion of the House of Guise in France; however, her maternal grandmother was Margaret Tudor, elder sister of Henry VIII, which meant that she was of direct descent from the hallowed Tudor fount that had begun with Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York, back in 1485. This meant that Mary had a direct claim to the English throne, one certainly backed up by the majority of Catholics worldwide, who dismissed Henry VIII’s second marriage to the ‘concubine’ Anne Boleyn and the break with the Catholic Church in Rome that followed; as John Cooper puts it, ‘Catholics could not accept the legitimacy of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, nor of the child that had resulted from it’. (Cooper 2012, p. 50). For Mary, it was the pursuit of this claim over the course of her life, both directly and also indirectly, that would lead to her becoming a political prisoner of some nineteen years duration in England, under the auspices of her ‘dear cousin’ Elizabeth I, daughter of the aforementioned Anne Boleyn.

These basic facts form the backdrop against which Mary’s tragic tale plays out, but her actual path to confinement in England was a little more complicated still… Mary was born in Linlithgow Palace in West Lothian in Scotland, on 8 December 1542, as was her father some thirty years earlier. Mary’s gender has been often cited as one of the main reasons why her father died soon after; the crushing disappointment, when placed against a broadly patriarchal backdrop, was quite enough to finish him off altogether, so we are told. Worse still, James and his wife had been bereaved of two sons and heirs already (James and Arthur), leaving their newborn daughter as the sole living claimant to the Scottish throne. James V also had a veritable plethora of illegitimate issue scattered around Scotland, one or two of whom would cause considerable trouble for his legitimate daughter as she took the reins of power. But this is to jump way ahead of ourselves. Relations with England had all but collapsed in recent years and after the disastrous loss at the Battle of Solway Moss on 24 November 1542, James took to his bed, laid low either with grief, fever, or perhaps a rather potent combination of the two. He spent his last days in Falkland Palace in Fife, and it was there that he received the news that his wife had given birth to a healthy baby girl. Legend has reported his last words – in the wake of the happy news – as being roughly along the lines of ‘it came wi a lass, it’ll gang wi a lass’, which basically means ‘It began with a girl and it will end with a girl’. He was referring in this instance to the fact that the dynasty’s accession to the throne came through Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce, or to a more obscure, medieval myth that detailed the ideas that the Scottish people were descended from the Princess Scota, one of two mythological daughters born to Egyptian pharaohs. Princess Scota was said to be an ancestor of the Gaels, who were descended from Irish invaders called Scotti, who settled back in Scotland centuries ago. Either way, James’ quote sounds rather nice as a meme slogan or a juicy soundbite for a tourist guide, but whether he actually said it or not remains a matter of some conjecture. Who said what – or more pointedly, who did what – will become a familiar routine for the reader, given that legends and hearsay tend to percolate around Mary Queen of Scots in the same way that misinformation and fake news make the internet what it is today.

James V died six days after the birth of his daughter, whereby Mary was then crowned Queen of Scots at Stirling Castle, in September 1543. Rumour spread that Mary was a weak and sickly child and was unlikely to live, but such slanders were countered by Ralph Sadler, the English diplomat who would eventually become one of her gaolers, some forty-odd years later. Scotland was ruled by a regency headed by the Earl of Arran until 1554, when Mary’s mother managed to displace him. Several years earlier, the young Mary had been sent to France for safekeeping; almost from the moment of her birth, Henry VIII had settled on her as the perfect dynastic match for his son Edward (later Edward VI); the Scots, of course, had other ideas.

For several years, Scotland stalled England, signing the Treaty of Greenwich with the utmost reluctance, said treaty promising Mary’s betrothal to Edward and her eventual move to be brought up in England when she was ten years old. The Scots renewed their traditional alliance with France at this time, summarily rejecting the Treaty of Greenwich after Henry VIII had several Scottish merchants who were heading for France arrested, and their respective goods impounded. In response, the English king launched what have become known as ‘The Rough Wooings’, whereby Mary would be taken by force, and the Scots punished for their perceived insolence. Edinburgh was taken by the English forces and much of the land thereabouts – and in the borders – was ravaged, as the savage reprisals spread far and wide. Even the death of Henry VIII in 1547 was not enough to assuage English anger, with the Scots suffering a particularly brutal defeat at the Battle of Pinkie in September 1547, some nine months or so after the death of the mighty monarch. As a result, the young Mary was secreted by the Scots on the little island of Inchmahome, near Aberfoyle. King Henry II of France offered a further strengthening of the union by marrying his son Francis – the Dauphin – to Mary, and therefore plans were made to set the little Scottish queen on her way to France and thus out of the clutches of the marauding, vengeful English armies. Mary left Scotland from Dumbarton Castle in August 1548, even as French soldiers arrived in an attempt to repel the English invaders. The first chapter in Mary’s tumultuous life had at this point drawn to a close.

Mary spent a relatively idyllic childhood at the French court, one documented in detail in the countless books about her and also in many of the movies, as well as being almost the sole subject of The CW’s Reign TV series, which ran from 2013 to 2017 over some seventy-eight episodes, and which took more historical liberties with her time there than can possibly ever be listed here. She married the Dauphin in 1558 at Notre Dame in Paris, having beforehand secretly signed away her native land of Scotland to the French crown if she were to die without issue; likewise for her claim to the English crown. This morally questionable transaction was to be one of a series of dubious decisions taken by Mary throughout the course of her life, be they political, moral or simply romantic, and the question – certainly in this first instance – of how much she was influenced by her elders remains open to question. Another rather tactless step on Mary’s part was to start allowing her arms to be quartered with those of England at the point when Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth Tudor had just ascended the English throne, in 1558. This was a brazen attempt at asserting Mary’s claim to the English throne against that of the concubine’s daughter, given that the validity of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was still sneered at across most of Europe, even though it was given formal credence, at least. Again, the question of how much Mary was pushed into such a coaxing move by her ambitious Guise uncles remains unclear; certainly, at this age, she was likely extremely politically naïve, and had been brought up to consider herself the rightful claimant to the English throne.

At the age of just sixteen, Mary became queen of France, when King Henry II died in the aftermath of a jousting accident; a little over a year later she then found herself a widow when her husband Francis, always in poor health, succumbed to an ear infection. The fact that Mary’s mother-in-law was the notorious Catherine de’ Medici was a key point in propelling the young widow back to her homeland; Catherine had no intention of relinquishing power to the girl who had apparently once referred to her rather dismissively as ‘a banker’s daughter’. Mary lingered in France for several months, during which time she sat for one of her most famous portraits, the ‘en deuil blanc’, showing her in mourning for both her husband, her father-inlaw and also her mother; Mary of Guise died in Edinburgh Castle in June 1560.

Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland in August 1561.

By the time she was safely ensconced in Holyrood Palace, it was quite obvious to all concerned that she was a fish out of water; Scotland was a newly Protestant country, and Mary was a Catholic queen. However, in a move several hundred years ahead of its time, Mary professed tolerance for the new regime, although stipulating that she be free to practice her own religion in the manner she saw fit. For the next four or five years, relative peace reigned throughout the realm, and throughout England too. The two queens – Mary and Elizabeth – were perhaps the most eligible women in the world, although the latter was also fast cementing her reputation as the most notorious virgin in the world too. This didn’t stop rumours persistently linking her to Robert Dudley, her master of the horse; the death of Dudley’s wife, Amy Robsart, in relatively mysterious circumstances, did nothing to allay the gossip. Mary is reported to have said, ‘The Queen of England is going to marry her groom and he has killed his wife to make way for her’. Needless to say, such comments – whatever their veracity – were never likely to endear Mary to Elizabeth, alongside the fact that Mary was younger, more beautiful and apparently also possessed of buckets of charm. In fact, it was this ability to seduce that led Mary to begin pressing her claim to the English throne once she and Elizabeth began their correspondence. Ambassadors were sent back and forth between the two women, conveying ‘honeyed’ words and expensive gifts, and along the way, several possible meetings were mooted; when the cancellations came, they came from Elizabeth, leaving Mary, by all accounts, quite devastated. However, Elizabeth was apparently more than willing to make it up to Mary, by allowing her the privilege of marrying her ‘groom’, i.e. Robert Dudley. Mary took almost immediate offence at the prospect of being paired up with such a lowly match, even after Dudley was ennobled Earl of Leicester (for preferences of accessible informality, we’ll continue to call him Dudley); quite what Elizabeth had in mind has left many historians scratching their heads for centuries, although the idea of Dudley as a spy seems to be among the favourite conclusions drawn. Meanwhile, Mary had her sights set on far bigger fish than Dudley, and in 1565 she settled her dynastic ambitions – and a lathering of libido – on Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Darnley came with a quite excellent pedigree, being the son of the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Tudor, sister to Henry VIII; Margaret Tudor was also Mary’s grandmother, but neither Mary nor Darnley himself was about to let the problem of consanguinity scupper the process of uniting such a blatant bid for the English throne. Darnley was also apparently something of a catch physically, being tall and slim and possessed of rather boyish good looks; he was just short of twenty years of age when he and Mary married, in July 1565. Elizabeth was by all accounts quite beside herself with fury; certainly, the marriage strengthened Mary’s claim to the English throne far more than an alliance with the monarch’s master of the horse. Having said that, there are those who believe that Elizabeth and her council were privately quite delighted with the outcome, for Darnley was known to be dissolute, often drunk, and quite possibly rampantly bisexual to boot. Darnley also seesawed between Catholicism and Protestantism apparently as he saw fit, but this too was apparently overlooked in favour of the great dynastic potential that the match opened up for the parties involved.

The marriage soon began to sour, perhaps as the English had hoped, and Mary refused to grant Darnley the crown matrimonial, which would have made him effective king of Scotland; as he took out his frustrations in the various taverns and whorehouses around Edinburgh, Mary turned to her Italian – and Catholic – secretary David Rizzio for emotional as well as clerical support. Mary was pregnant by this time, and quite heavy with child when a pact was made between Darnley and various disaffected Scottish nobles to do away with the upstart Rizzio. For Darnley, the coup would give him the leverage to insist upon the crown matrimonial from Mary, whilst her Scottish nobles would see themselves rid of an influential Catholic serpent in their bosom. Rizzio’s murder took place in Holyrood Palace on 9 March 1566, with the unfortunate secretary being dragged from Mary’s skirts – he was clinging to them for protection at the time – and stabbed some fifty-six times. Mary might have miscarried at the sight of such a brutal murder, but beneath her veneer of sugary charm lurked a constitution of steel, and it wasn’t long before she had convinced her errant husband to side with her, and together they fled from Holyrood Palace and took refuge with one of the nobles remaining loyal to Mary, the Earl of Bothwell. Bothwell was everything that Darnley wasn’t; fearless, masculine and intensely loyal to the country’s monarch, even though he too was a Protestant. By the time Mary’s son James – the future James VI/I – was born in Edinburgh Castle, Darnley was in utter disgrace. He was also quite possibly suffering from the effects of syphilis, which eventually caused him to beat a hasty retreat to one of his father’s strongholds in Glasgow; beforehand, he had kept to his rooms at Stirling Castle during his son’s christening ceremony. Mary herself went to Glasgow to reason with her husband, to nurse him, and finally to bring him back to Edinburgh to convalesce under the royal eye; certainly, she could keep an eye on him – and his more wayward pronouncements concerning her son’s paternity – in Edinburgh, where she had Bothwell and others supporting her. In fact, Mary had pardoned several of the Rizzio plotters and allowed them to return to Edinburgh, which was as good as signing Darnley’s death warrant, given that he had denounced them some weeks previously, despite Mary being made quite aware of his part in the proceedings.

Lord Darnley was murdered in Edinburgh on the night of 9/10 February 1567. His body was found in the orchard of Kirk O’Field, a house not far from Holyrood Palace itself, directly in the middle of Edinburgh. The cellars had been packed with gunpowder, but Darnley and his valet somehow got wind of what was happening and managed to escape the ensuing explosion through one of the windows. The evidence seems to suggest that they were then ambushed in the aforementioned orchard by the conspirators, where they were strangled or smothered. The murder was the royal sensation/scandal of the year, and it wasn’t long before the fallout from the crime began to shake the very foundations of Mary’s throne. The chief suspect was Bothwell, although given how hated Darnley had become, it was more of a question of who wasn’t in on the plot amongst the various Scottish lords and nobles. The fact that Mary was relying increasingly on Bothwell for support, when it was all but public knowledge that he was amongst the main suspects, began to drag her name through the mud as well. As Lacey Baldwin Smith puts it, ‘the Queen’s role as a murderess, if not as an adulteress, is open to debate, and her innocence has been passionately argued for the last four hundred years’. (Baldwin Smith 1969, p. 189). The passage of a further fifty years or so has done nothing to dull this argument. In an effort to force her sister queen to take control of the situation, Elizabeth sent her a series of letters urging her to take prompt action and bring the chief conspirator to justice. Even novelists, with their penchant for lathering on the drama, were able to highlight the divide between the two women, to compare Mary’s situation with Bothwell with Elizabeth and Dudley: ‘Elizabeth could not help but remember how near to disaster she had come in circumstances so similar; but she had been wise; she had known when to draw back’. (Plaidy 2007, p. 476). But Mary did just the opposite and married her man instead.

On 24 April 1567, the Earl of Bothwell kidnapped Mary Queen of Scots; or did he?

The queen and a small entourage were waylaid by Bothwell and some eight hundred men on their way back to Edinburgh, with a warning from Bothwell of danger in the capital; he had therefore taken it upon himself to ferry her to safety at his coastal citadel of Dunbar Castle. It was there that Mary was either raped by Bothwell and then forced to consent to marriage, or else the whole thing was the culmination of a plot between the couple whereby Mary could be seen to wed Bothwell without losing her honour; historians have agonised over the intricacies of this particular part of Mary’s life almost as much as they have the fact of whether she had any foreknowledge in Darnley’s murder. They were married on 15 May in Holyrood Palace in a Protestant ceremony, which caused Mary considerable distress; reports afterwards allege that she was all but threatening suicide. Support for the marriage soon dissolved amongst the various Scottish nobles, and Mary and Bothwell were forced to make a stand at Carberry Hill, just outside of Edinburgh, on 15 June 1567. The whole thing was one massive impasse, but in the end, it was Bothwell who was given permission to flee, whilst Mary rather foolishly entrusted herself into the hands of the men who had previously given him their support. She was taken back to Edinburgh and locked up in a building located on what is now known as the Royal Mile, before being taken down to Holyrood Palace. From there, and with barely enough time given to pack an overnight bag, she was taken to the island stronghold of Lochleven Castle in Kinross. Besides a few days holed up in Holyrood Palace in the wake of Rizzio’s murder, this was to be Mary’s first real taste of captivity, the start of a fairly vicious cycle that would last until the moment she was executed. She was pregnant with Bothwell’s child – or children – at the time and miscarried several weeks after being rowed across the waters and imprisoned in this rather stark and unforgiving miniature fortress, being kept mostly in the round turret on the southeast corner of the castle. Her host – and the first of her jailers, really – was Sir William Douglas, the Laird of Lochleven.

Sir William Douglas

William Douglas was born sometime around 1540, to Robert Douglas of Lochleven and Margaret Erskine, a former mistress of Mary’s father James V. His half-brother – and indeed Mary’s too – was James Stewart, Earl of Moray. Although initially a supporter of his sister, Moray had eventually turned against her, to the point where he became Regent for Scotland when Mary was forced to abdicate, this particular episode occurring several months into her imprisonment in Lochleven Castle. William’s father was killed during the Battle of Pinkie, in September 1547. In 1554, William married Agnes Leslie, who came with a rather impressive pedigree all her own; she was the daughter of the 4th Earl of Rothes and was also a great-granddaughter of James II. Together, William and Agnes had an impressive tally of eleven children; indeed, it was during one of her many confinements for childbirth – the poor woman sounds as though she were almost perpetually pregnant – that Mary was able to make her escape from the castle. Of these eleven children, the seven girls were said to be so beautiful that they were referred to as ‘The pearls of Lochleven’. As for William’s appearance, well, there are no reliable portraits of him left to posterity for us to peruse.

His wife Agnes would become one of Mary’s main companions during her confinement. On 24