JAMES HEPBURN
EARL OF BOTHWELL

Foremost among those who rallied to her cause was the Earl of Bothwell - the same man who had escorted Mary back from France. Bothwell's was a turbulent, active nature. He was possessed of enormous lust and ambition, though he was also a patriot. With him at her side, on 18 March Mary reentered Edinburgh with a force of 8000 men. The conspirators fled. There, on 19 June 1566 she gave birth to a son, James, who was destined to be King of Scotland and eventually of England


James aged 8

In the short term this did little to strengthen her position. James would be likely to be brought up a Catholic and so Protestant nobles would have everything to lose by letting events take their course. Her position was still very fragile. Outwardly she was reconciled with Darnley, but if he was a poor husband, he was a worthless statesman, with a talent for incurring resentments he could not handle. While Darnley was no support, Mary was hardly a pillar of strength herself. Under immediate threat, she'd shown spirit and presence of mind. The danger passed, but the underlying problems of her position unsolved, she fell prey to illness and deep depression. By the end of the year the French Ambassador was recording that she was ill, and reporting: "I do believe the principal part of her disease to consist in a deep grief and sorrow..... Still she repeats these words, "I could wish to be dead."

However, her intense interest in life was soon to be revived = though by questionable means. Bothwell had been instrumental in keeping Mary on her throne. The comparison between Darnley and Bothwell, had Mary cared to make it, must have been in Bothwell's favor. Where Darnley was weak and fickle, Bothwell was strong and patriotic - though in other respects, especially as regards women, utterly unscrupulous. He had a huge sexual appetite that he saw no reason not to gratify. To some extent this was a family trait. He had been brought up in the household of his great-uncle, the Bishop of Moray, a notorious womanizer. Nor did the family confine itself to exercising droit de seigneur: it was virtually a tradition that a Hepburn offer widowed Queens such consolation as the flesh affords. Bothwell's own father had divorced in order to marry Mary's mother, though the wedding never took place. Bothwell personally was a compelling figure: the best surviving likeness of him is a miniature which shows a face framed by dark hair, set off by a small dark beard, turning away into the shadow from which hooded, troubled eyes gaze out at us (though he had lost one eye by the time he met Mary). It's a far stronger face than Darnley's, but it also hints at the inner turbulence that would finally cost him his sanity. Mary may well have found this difficult, powerful man interesting. For his part, a closer liaison with the Queen held obvious attractions, and clearly Darnley was no longer much of a rival for her affections.


Mary and Bothwell

He was, however, an obstacle. That he himself had recently married Jean Gordon, sister to the powerful Earl of Huntly, would not have troubled Bothwell overmuch. But while Mary remained married to Darnley, his ambitions were stymied. Darnley had to leave the picture, either by divorce or by death.

By the time the plot hatched which, however clumsy, would deprive him of his life, Darnley was in a sorry state. He had contracted syphilis, which made him stink, and obliged him to wear a gauze mask, so unsightly had this once handsome youth become. He had been taken ill in Glasgow at the end of 1566. But in January Mary brought him back to Edinburgh and lodged him in a house in a quadrangle known as Kirk o'Field. Twice during the ten days Darnley was to spend there, Mary slept in the room below his. On the night of 9 February she was to have done so again, but was detained at Holyrood. By about 2.00 a.m. the house was shattered by a huge explosion. Two of Darnley's servants were found dead in the rubble. The bodies of Darnley and his valet were found in the garden, scantily clad - Darnley's especially - but quite unscathed.

The exact nature of Mary's part in all this is impossible to determine - not least because it is impossible to know exactly what happened anyway. Theories abound, and the waters are muddied still further by the alleged evidence of the Casket Letters, later produced by her enemies and purporting to demonstrate that she had colluded with Bothwell in her husband's murder. The crucial passages of the letters are likely to have been doctored to incriminate her. It's equally difficult to know the exact nature of her relationship with Bothwell at this stage. Even if they were lovers, that doesn't necessarily make Mary guilty of Darnley's murder. If she were pregnant by Bothwell, she might have decided to stage a reconciliation with Darnley to make it seem that the child was legitimate. She did indeed miscarry twins on 24 July 1567, though it's impossible to know by how many months she was pregnant at the time. If there's anything in this theory, then Mary would have wanted Darnley alive. Bothwell, however, might well have wanted Darnley out of the way. But the crime is still fraught with mystery. There is, for example, the problem of the sheer size of the explosion. If the conspirators, whoever they were, merely wanted to kill Darnley, blowing up a robustly built stone house to do it was taking a heavy sledgehammer to crack a small nut. Why not just poison him, and claim that he had succumbed to his illness? Besides, the explosion seems unlikely to have been the cause of death, given that his body was found unmarked, albeit quiet dead. Possibly the plan went wrong, Darnley got wind of it, ran from the house as he was, and was stifled outside. No one from that day to this has been able to solve the crime of Kirk o'Field.