Did Mary Have Darnley Murdered?

[ilyala]

there are two explanations for mary's marriage to bothwell...

1. she honestly loved him and she had an affair with him
2. she was raped by him

in either case it's known that she was pregnant when she was captured and the pregnancy was older than the marriage... which would explain the rush

[lexi4]

That's what my grandparents would have called a "shotgun" wedding.  

[ilyala]

well um yeah... natural shotgun

[helenazar]

BTW, does anyone have a copy of one or more of these letters? I would like to take a look at the handwriting. Thanks!

[umigon]

I also agree these letters were genuine. As a defendant of Mary Stuart, I can't forget that they were real. However, her involvement in the conspiracy has never been really clarified, but it is sure that she was indeed involved.


I agree entirely with Elisabeth, Mary knew perfectly well what she was doing. I mean, imagine yourself being more than 40 years old and having lived nearly half of your life imprisoned (for whatever the reasons). You no longer expect to have more heirs than your only son, whom hasn't been brought up by you and who has grown up believing your are not a good person. The person who has you imprisoned, your cousin, has promised to go to talk with you a few times but she always refuses in the last moment.

It was worth the risk: she would either become queen of England with the support of Catholic countries, or she would either die, not only to become a martyr and the pretext of a Catholic invasion (a posthumous revenge for Mary), but also her life of prisoner would finish had she won or had she lost.


The rest of the story, we already know...

[ilyala]

about the casket letters... i read a few parts and while i can't speak my mind of all of them, i think the parts i read were genuine. i don't think anyone could fake the feeling behind them...

someone mentioned the jealousy. it was normal. bothwell was married and mary was in love. any woman who was ever in love knows how it feels when the man you love goes to spend some time with another woman, even when that woman has nothing to do with him. it's hard to fake something like that.

[bell_the_cat]

Though they could have been written by another woman who was in this situation. There are plenty of them around!  This would have been difficult to organise, I admit, but Mary's enemies had a lot of resources at their disposal.

The casket letters were copied out weren't they? So they could have got someone elses letters, and copied them out replacing the name "Bill" with Bothwell. Just a thought!

[ilyala]

could another woman be in a situation so simmilar to hers?

[bell_the_cat]

I just meant someone who loved a man married to someone else. This person wouldn't necessarily have to be another Queen of Scotland, whose husband had been murdered!  

[ilyala]

true but the letters weren't just about jealousy... some of them were pretty clear about the whole situation

[bell_the_cat]

true but the letters weren't just about jealousy... some of them were pretty clear about the whole situation

But couldn't the convincing jealousy parts have been interspersed by a clever hand with factual details relevant to the Queen? A cut and paste job in other words?

I haven't read the letters which is why I have to rely on you, Ilyala! . I've only read that the fact that they were not written in Mary's handwriting gave rise to the argument that they were carefully constructed forgeries.

[ilyala]

the letters that weren't written in mary's handwriting were the letters that brought her death. those were copies of her letters because they were interceptions of her letters. walsingham copied the letters and sent them further in order to catch mary deeper in the act.

the letters of the casket, when they were found, were in mary's handwriting. or something very simmilar. unfortunatly, they are not kept to these days, the ones we have now are copies of those. but when they were found they were in her handwriting.

or so i know.

and as i said, what i read was very convincing. and it kinda fits with my opinion that mary was pretty much swept away by her feelings for bothwell and by what was happening. what i read was written by a woman that wasn't thinking clearly, all she knew was that she wanted her man. if her enemies wanted to convict her they (i think) would have made up a few letters that would have showed her a cold blooded murderer.

part of the letters were written when she left darnley at kirk'o'field to die (practically...). they showed remorse. she knew she was leaving him to die, she had tricked him to be still in love with him and he came after her (he even wrote his father that they're getting along better than ever). and in one of those poems it talks about how his eyes were full of love and how it was hard for her to look into them but that she did it all for bothwell. quite touching, i thought...

[bell_the_cat]

Hi Ilyala!

Wasn't it also suspicious though, that the servant of Bothwell who supplied the original casket of letters, which were at some stage lost, was executed before the inquiry took place? I mean the inquiry which took place at York in 1568.

[ilyala]

i didn't know about that...

everything about this case is suspicious and i don't think we'll ever know anything more unless we can figure out a way to bring mary back to life .

however, i am inclined to think that the casket letters were real

[palatine]

I don't think Mary knew about the plot to murder Darnley, but I think that she did what she could to cover up the crime afterwards, which was a terrible mistake.  Even Queen Elizabeth seems to have sent Mary a warning that those people who were responsible needed to be held accountable.  Elizabeth had been through a similar situation herself after the strange death of Amy Dudley, the wife of her beloved friend and advisor, Robert Dudley.

I believe that Mary married Bothwell because she was pregnant, but I think it was a mistake for her to do so.  Her marriage to the man most people held responsible for Darnley's murder blackened her reputation in Scotland, and directly contributed to the loss of her crown, and eventually, her head.

As a Catholic, Mary couldn't get a divorce, but I am surprised that Mary never tried to have her marriage to Darnley annulled.  When they were married, they did not have a dispensation to do so, though they were cousins.  They eventually got a dispensation, but it seems to me that the question of the dispensation could have provided Mary with a convenient pretext to boot Darnley to the curb with the sanction of the Pope, making his murder unnecessary.