THE BAND FOR DARNLEY’S MURDER

This Band, which is constantly cited in all the troubles from 1567 to 1586, is a most mysterious document. We have seen that Mary’s secretary, Nau, wilfully or accidentally confuses it with an anti-Darnley band signed by Morton, Moray, and many others, early in October, 1566. We have also seen that Randolph, in 1570, distinguishes between this ‘old band’ and the band for the murder, which, he says, Lethington and Balfour abstracted from a little coffer in the Castle, covered with green cloth or velvet, immediately after Mary surrendered at Carberry. I have ventured the theory that this carefully covered little coffer may have been the Casket itself.[415] Drury, again, in November, 1567, reports that the band has been burned, while the papers as to Mary are ‘kept to be shewn.’ But, in Scotland, till Morton’s execution in June, 1581, the murder band was believed to be extant: at least Sir James Balfour, if he chose, could give evidence about it. What Mary wished to be believed as to this matter, we have seen in Nau, who wrote under her inspiration between 1575 and 1587. He asserts that Bothwell, ‘to ease his conscience’ gave Mary a copy of the band, when he rode away from Carberry (June 15, 1567). He showed Mary the signatures of Morton, Balfour, Lethington, and others. She kept the document, and, when she met Morton on Carberry Hill, told him that he was one of the chief murderers, as she had learned. He slunk away.[416] Probably Mary did accuse Morton, at Carberry. When he was executed (June 3, 1581) Sir John Foster, from Alnwick, sent an account of the trial to Walsingham. In the evidence against Morton was ‘the Queen’s confession when she was taken at Carberry Hill. She said he was the principal man that was the deed-doer, and the drawer of that purpose.’ Morton certainly was not present, and it is as good as certain that he did not sign the band. Still, Mary, at Carberry, charged him with complicity.[417]

We have seen that Mary, ever after Carberry, also inculpated Lethington, and vowed that she had something in black and white which would hang him. Something she probably did possess, but not a band signed also by Morton. Concerning the murder-band, Hay of Tala, before execution (January 3, 1568), ‘in presence of the whole people,’ named as subscribers ‘Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, Balfour, with divers other nobles.’[418] Hay saw their signatures, but not that of Morton. ‘He said my Lord Bothwell said to him that he subscribed the same.’ The Black Laird (December 13, 1573), when in a devout and penitent condition, said that Bothwell had shown him the contract, ‘subscribed by four or five handwrites, which, he affirmed to me, was the subscription of the Earl of Huntly, Argyll, the secretary Maitland, and Sir James Balfour.’ Ormistoun repeated part of the contents: the paper was drawn up by Balfour, a Lord of Session.[419] (See Introduction, pp. xiii-xviii.)

Morton, we know, was accused of Darnley’s death, and arrested, at the end of December, 1580. Archibald Douglas was sought for, but escaped into England. Elizabeth sent Randolph down to save Morton: Hunsdon was to lead an army over the Border. Every kind of violence was designed, and forgery was attempted, but Randolph had to fly to Berwick, at the end of March. Meanwhile the arch traitor, Balfour, had been summoned from France, as an evidence against Morton. But he was not of much use. On January 30, 1581, he wrote from Edinburgh to Mary. He had arrived in Scotland on December 17, 1580, when he found Morton in the height of power. Balfour secretly approached James’s new favourite, Stewart d’Aubigny, recently created Earl of Lennox. By giving them information ‘had from your Majesty’s self, and partly by other intelligence which I knew and learned from others,’ he gave them grounds for Morton’s arrest. But Morton, he says, trusting to the lack of testimony from the absence of Archibald Douglas, boldly ‘denies all things promised by him to Bothwell in that matter,’ ‘except his signature to the band whereof I did send the copy to your Majesty.’ Now that was only ‘Ainslie’s band,’ made after the murder, on April 19, 1567, to defend Bothwell’s quarrel. On an extant copy Randolph has written, ‘upon this was grounded thacusation of therle Morton.’[420] This was no hanging matter, and Balfour either had not or would not produce the murder band. He therefore asks Mary for further information: ‘all that your Majesty has heard or known thereinto.’[421]

Balfour and Mary corresponded in cypher through Archbishop Beaton, her ambassador in France. On March 18, 1580, she had written to Beaton, ‘if possible make Balfour write to me fully about the band which he has seen, with the signatures, for the murder of my late husband, the King, or let him give you a copy in his own hand.’ If she really possessed the band which Nau says Bothwell gave her at Carberry, she needed no copy from Balfour. She does not seem to have believed in him and his band. On May 20, 1580, she writes to Beaton: ‘I put no faith in what Balfour has sent me, so far, and cannot trust him much having been so wretchedly betrayed by him,’ for Balfour had put Morton on the trail of the Casket, had sold the Castle, and later, had betrayed Kirkcaldy and Lethington when they held the Castle against Morton. However, she sent to Balfour a civil message, and bade him go on undermining Morton, in which he succeeded, in the following year. But the murder-band was never produced. On March 16, 1581, Randolph described a conference which had passed between him and James VI. ‘I spoke again of the band in the green box, containing the names of all the chief persons consenting to the King’s murder, which Sir James Balfour either hath or can tell of.’ Randolph, who was working for Morton, obviously knew that he did not sign that band: otherwise he would have avoided the subject.[422]

We have no account of Morton’s trial, save what Foster tells Walsingham. ‘The murder of the King was laid to him by four or five witnesses. The first is the Lord Bothwell’s Testament’ (usually thought to be forged), ‘the second, Mr. Archibald Douglas, when he was his man.’ But Douglas, surely, dared not appear in Court, or in Scotland. Foster clearly means that Archibald’s servant, Binning, proved his guilt, and that it reflected on Morton, whose ‘man’ Archibald was, in 1567, and later. Next came the charge that Morton ‘spoke with’ Bothwell, as he confessed that he did, at Whittingam, about January 20, 1567, when he says that he declined to join the plot without Mary’s written warrant. How could this be known, except through Mary or Archibald Douglas? Possibly his brother, at whose house the conference was held, may have declared the matter, as he ‘split,’ in 1581, on Archibald, and all concerned. ‘And then’ Morton was condemned on ‘the consenting to the murder of the King’ (how was that proved?), on Ainslie’s band to support Bothwell’s quarrel, ‘no person being excepted,’ and finally, ‘the Queen’s confession at Carberry Hill,’ when she confessed nothing, but accused Morton.

Mary’s conduct, as far as it can be construed, looks as if she knew very little either about Morton or the murder-band. If Bothwell told her anything, what he told her was probably more or less untrue.