Mary Hamilton [Child 173]

DESCRIPTION: Mary Hamilton, servant to the queen, is pregnant (by the queen's husband). She tries to hide her guilt by casting the boy out to sea, but is seen and convicted. She is condemned to die
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1790? (One stanza quoted by Robert Burns, but it never mentions "Mary Hamilton" or the Four Maries or infanticide)
KEYWORDS: pregnancy homicide abandonment punishment execution | infanticide
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 1542 - Birth and Accession of Mary Stewart (probably Dec 8 and Dec 14, respectively)
Dec 7, 1545 (?) - Birth of Henry, Lord Darnley (in England, be it noted)
1548 - Mary Stewart sent to France
Apr 24, 1558 - Mary Stewart married the future King Francis II (succeeded to the throne Sep 18, 1559)
Dec 6, 1560 - Death of Francis II; Mary Stewart becomes Queen Dowager of France
Aug 1561 - Mary Stewart returns to Scotland
Jul 29, 1564 - Mary Stewart marries her cousin Henry, Lord Darnley, who thus becomes King Henry
Jun 19, 1566 - Birth of the future James VI and I
Feb 9/10,1567 - Death of Lord Darnley
May 15, 1567 - Mary marries the Earl of Bothwell
Jun 15, 1567 - Battle of Carberry. Mary Stewart deposed and imprisoned; her son James VI becomes King
1568 - Mary Stewart flees Scotland for England
Feb 8, 1587 - Execution of Mary Stewart
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber,Bord)) US(Ap,MW,NE,SE,So,SW) Canada(Mar) Ireland
REFERENCES (45 citations):
Child 173, "Mary Hamilton" (27 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #5}
Bronson 173, "Mary Hamilton" (12 versions+1 in addenda)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 173, "Mary Hamilton" (4 versions: #3, #5, #6, #11.1)
Lyle/McAlpine/McLucas-SongRepertoireOfAmeliaAndJaneHarris, pp. 86-89, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #5}
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine pp. 258-264, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts plus some variants and a verse of "Peter Amberley" they claim floated in from this song, 1 tune plus some cited extracts) {Bronson's #7; the first short excerpt is from Bronson's #6}
Randolph 26, "The Four Maries" (1 fragment)
Abrahams/Riddle-ASingerAndHerSongs, pp. 133-136, "Four Marys" (1 text, 1 tune, plus some variants)
Gainer-FolkSongsFromTheWestVirginiaHills, pp. 70-71, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 35, "The Four Marys" (1 text, 1 tune)
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-1ed, pp. 63-65, "The Four Marys" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #9}
Owens-TexasFolkSongs-2ed, pp. 27-28, "The Four Marys" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders/Olney-BalladsMigrantInNewEngland, pp. 79-80, "The Four Marys" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #7}
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3, pp. 163-169, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts plus a fragment, with the fragment containing parts of "MacPherson's Lament"; 3 tunes) {B=Bronson's #7}
Davis-TraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 36, "Mary Hamilton" (2 fragments from the same informant, 1 tune) {Bronson's #6}
Davis-MoreTraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 32, pp. 245-252, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text plus 2 fragments, 1 tune) {Bronson's #8}
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 481-483, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
Leach-HeritageBookOfBallads, pp. 86-88, "Mary Hamilton (The Four Maries)" (1 text)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 184, "Mary Hamilton"; p. 219, "Mary Hamilton's Last Goodnight" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #6}
Creighton-MaritimeFolkSongs, pp. 22-23, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Creighton-FolksongsFromSouthernNewBrunswick 3, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text, 1 tune)
Pottie/Ellis-FolksongsOfTheMaritimes, pp. 94-95, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text, 1 tune)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 83, "The Queen's Marie" (1 text)
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 61, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles 51, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 159-161+334-335, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
Combs/Wilgus-FolkSongsOfTheSouthernUnitedStates 32, pp. 124-126, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 160, "Last night there were four Marys" (2 fragments)
Hodgart-FaberBookOfBallads, p. 138, "Marie Hamilton" (1 text)
Buchan-ABookOfScottishBallads 33, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 106-111, "Marie Hamilton" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan2 195, "The Four Maries" (4 texts, 3 tunes) {B=#6, C=#11}
Porter/Gower-Jeannie-Robertson-EmergentSingerTransformativeVoice #74, p. 249-250, "Mary Hamilton (Child 173)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Buchan/Moreira-TheGlenbuchatBallads, pp. 27-29, "The Queen's Mary" (1 text)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 123, "Marie Hamilton" (1 text)
Ord-BothySongsAndBallads, p. 457, "The Queen's Maries" (1 text)
Whiting-TraditionalBritishBallads 23, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
HarvardClassics-EnglishPoetryChaucerToGray, pp. 117-119, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text)
Abrahams/Foss-AngloAmericanFolksongStyle, pp. 49-52, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #6}
Wells-TheBalladTree, pp. 48-49, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text, 1 tune)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 261-263, "The Queen's Marie"; pp. 263-264, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts)
Sedley/Carthy-WhoKilledCockRobin, pp. 184-187, "Mary Hamilton (The Queen's Three Maries)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 211, "The Four Maries" (1 text)
SongsOfAllTime, p. 11, "Mary Hamilton" (1 text, 1 tune, with Mary's crime omitted but the fact of her execution told)
DT 173, MARYHAM1* MARYHAM2 MARYHAM3* MARYHAM4*
ADDITIONAL: Andrew Lang, "The Mystery of 'The Queen's Marie,'" article published 1895 in _Blackwoods Magazine_; republished on pp. 19-28 of Norm Cohen, editor, _All This for a Song_, Southern Folklife Collection, 2009
Roud #79
RECORDINGS:
Texas Gladden, "Mary Hamilton" (AFS 5323 A5; on USTGladden01)
Chris Miles, "Yestreen the Queen had Four Marys" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #544, recorded 03/14/2023)
Jeannie Robertson, "Mary Hamilton (The Four Marys)" (on FSB5 [as "The Four Maries"], FSBBAL2)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "King Henry's Murder" (subject of Henry, Lord Darnley)
cf. "Earl Bothwell" [Child 174] (subject of the third husband of Mary Stewart)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Purple Dress
Mary Mild
The Duke o' York's Dother
NOTES [19791 words]: Also collected and sung by Ellen Mitchell, "Mary Mild" (on Kevin and Ellen Mitchell, "Have a Drop Mair," Musical Tradition Records MTCD315-6 CD (2001)) - BS
That this song is partly based on history seems likely -- but which parts of the song, and what history, remains a very open question. The two basic possibilities are that it's based on the court of Mary Queen of Scots (when there were "Four Maries" but no obvious "Mary Hamilton") or that it's based on the court of Peter the Great of Russian (who had a Mary Hamilton but no Four Maries). If the song is set in the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, the date is the 1560s; if in the court of Peter the Great of Russia, it's in the 1710s. So let's provide some background on each setting. I'm going to do a lot more on Mary Queen of Scots because, if that is the setting, there are many more relevant facts.
THE CAREER AND COURT OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS UNTIL HER MARRIAGE TO LORD DARNLEY
No monarch of Scotland -- not even Robert I Bruce -- has attracted as much modern ink as Mary Queen of Scots, and certainly none has been so controversial. I'm going to touch relatively lightly on the periods before and after her personal reign in Scotland, because it's not relevant to the song. If something you think is important is omitted or treated lightly, understand the (relatively) limited scope of the entry.
First, a note about names: Mary herself, since she wrote her letters primarily in French and the letter w isn't native to French, spelled her name "Stuart," but the name derived from their ancient title of Stewards of Scotland; "Stewart" is the correct family name even though it was not what Mary used (Fraser, p. 5).
Mary Stewart became Queen of Scotland in December 1542 when she was six days old (so Keay/Keay, p. 682, Magnusson, p. 319; I have seen a figure of eight days elsewhere; there is some slight doubt about the date, according to Fraser, p. 12-13, and a possibility that she was born prematurely). This was the result of the early death of her father James V. James, like so many of the Stewart kings, had inherited the throne as a child, and seems to have developed melancholy as a result of his early experiences. By the age of 30, he had already lost his first wife and two infant sons by his second wife Mary of Guise (Morrison, pp. 13-17). Folklore has him spend much time among the people, disguised, learning their feelings, but Fraser, p. 4, accepts instead John Knox's opinion that the reason he moved around so much was that he was "debauched," pursuing many women who were not his wife. (According to Perry, p. 171, his stepfather the Earl of Angus had actively encouraged this, perhaps to make James easier to control.)
By 1542, he was thinking about war with the English. Having become sick late in that year, he turned his army over to incompetent favorites were defeated by the English at Solway Moss (Morrison, p. 18). Already unwell, when word came of the army's defeat, James in effect laid down and died. Not being with his wife when he died, he only learned at the last moment that Mary of Guise had born him a daughter rather than a son. Supposedly his last words were "It came with a lass, and it will pass with a lass" (Morrison, p. 19) -- i.e. the Stewarts gained the throne due to their descent from Robert Bruce's daughter, and the dynasty would end with a woman. He thought it meant his daughter; those who still hold it up as a true prophecy now point to Queen Anne, the last British monarch to be named "Stewart" (and whose reign saw the end of Scottish separation from England).
"Mary was to inherit her father's red-gold hair, his oval face, the heavy Stewart lids and the Stewart blood, with its mixture of charm and passion, the recklessness of those who 'gang their ain gait,' its wayward weakness allied to great nobility, and its undiluted personal courage.... [From her mother] she was to inherit... the Guise height and, from a family that had produced nuns, abbots, abbesses and cardinals, devotion to the Roman Catholic faith" (Morrison, p. 12). From neither side was she to inherit a stable kingdom -- or a stable personality.
In the years after Mary was born, various nobles fought for control of the state. The story takes dozens of pages in most texts, and doesn't really affect the events in this song, so I won't repeat it. Just keep in mind that there were all sorts of Scottish factions, some pro-France, some pro-England, some just out to feather their own nests. Plus there were the religious quarrels of the reformation. To top it all off, Scotland was under attack by Henry VIII of England, who wanted to unite the kingdoms by marrying Mary to his son Edward VI. Since most Scots rejected the idea, Henry tried to bring it about by attacking Scotland until the Scots gave in (the "rough wooing"; Keay/Key, p. 683; Magnuson, pp. 321-329).
In Scotland, though, there was always the memory of the "Auld Alliance" with France. At the time Mary was born, there was no French prince she might marry. But the future Francis II of France was born about a year after Mary. The Scots did not immediately send Mary to France, but after the Scots were heavily defeated again at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547, it seemed like a good idea to send her someplace safe (Hamilton, p. 27). As a result the Queen was sent out of the country. She was only a child when she was sent abroad to be brought up at the court of France (1548). To keep her good company, since her mother Mary of Guise would remain behind to manage Scotland, four well-bred Scots girls were sent with her. The four were Mary Beaton, Mary Fleming, Mary Livingston, and Mary Seton (Magnusson, p. 330; Morrison, p. 24, who explicitly notes that there were no Hamiltons in the lot!). The information about the four is limited but sufficient to prove this. According to Hamilton, p. 216, the four were all about the same age as Mary Stewart, so they were probably between five and seven when sent to France with the young queen in 1548. They were sent to a (Dominican) convent at Poissy to learn French and be educated (cf. Fraser, p. 43). Mary Stewart, who was brought up mostly at court, was married at age fifteen (Morrison, pp. 38-39) to the future King Francis II (April 1558; Stedall-Darnley, p. 44). It was a peculiar liason; Stedall-Darnley thinks that "he was almost certainly impotent" and believes that Mary dominated him; Magnusson, p. 332, also says no one expected them to have children. When Francis's father Henri II died after a jousting accident in 1559, Francis took the throne and Mary became Queen of France (Hamilton, p. 28; Stedall-Darnley, p. 46).
But Francis II truly was delicate; he died in 1560 after suffering an ear abscess and dizzy spells (Hamilton, p. 29; Stedall-Darnley, p. 47). Mary turned eighteen while shut up in mourning (Morrison, p. 54. She was also still mourning her mother, who had died a few months earlier). She could have stayed in France as Queen Dowager, but there was nothing for her to do there, and she was now old enough to rule in Scotland. so Mary went back to Scotland in 1561 (KeayKeay, pp. 682-683), still a desirable marriage prospect although (slightly) more able to care for herself. All of the Four Maries went home with her on the same ship.
(It is perhaps worth noting, in light of what follows and the romantic legends about Mary's beauty, that none of the many paintings of her make her look very attractive, at least to me. Stedall-Darnley, pp. 44-45, says that her portraits are deceptive because none were painted of her in her prime -- but he himself prints one of her at fifteen, and it looks just like all the others. People talked a lot about her looks, but one suspects what looked good was her claim to a throne! Also, she was almost six feet tall, according to Hamilton, p. 43, so she would have towered over most suitors, though Lord Darnley was taller still. She does, at least, seem to have been genuinely charming.)
The Scotland to which Mary Stewart returned was very different from the one she had left -- the Reformation had come, and in a much more dramatic way than in England, including a low-level civil war between Mary of Guise's Catholics and the Reformers; parliament had essentially outlawed Catholicism shortly before the Queen Mother's death. When Mary of Guise died of dropsy at the age of 44 or 45 in mid-1460, it left Scotland without a formal government, and Wormald, p. 103, says that Mary Stewart did nothing to remedy this until she returned to Scotland, giving a great advantage to the Protestant forces. Scotland's version of anti-Catholicism was the Presbyterian church, created on Calvinist principles, and John Knox was a power in the land. The radicals had summoned a parliament (without the Queen's or the dead Queen Mother's approval), which imposed the new religion, made peace with Protestant England, and reduced the ties with Catholic France -- all behind Queen Mary's back (Hamilton, p. 29. When she heard about it -- from a single, minor envoy -- she naturally rejected it all; Morrison, pp. 50-51). There were still plenty of Catholics, among both the nobility and the common people, but just the presence of John Knox -- who, being a typical Calvinist, hated Catholics, hated women, and hated anything that got in his way -- meant that the political situation in Scotland was unstable. (It was Knox who was responsible for the infamous First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, aimed at Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, and anyone else who either had an independent mind or didn't have testicles. Mary Stewart, representing all that Knox hated, found herself the particular subject of his wrath and scorn -- even though, in the early years of her personal reign, she was quite tolerant of the religion that was not her own; Hamilton, p. 31).
This was the situation Mary Stewart, found when she arrived in Edinburgh in August 1561, armed not only with a hereditary right in Scotland but a claim that she, rather than Elizabeth I, should be Queen of England: by Catholic law, Elizabeth, being the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whom Henry VIII had married bigamously, was illegitimate and could not inherit the throne. By this line of logic, since Henry VIII had no other legitimate descendants after Edward VI and Mary I died, the throne after Mary I's death should have passed to the descendants of his older sister Margaret Tudor -- meaning Mary Stewart, and after her Margaret Douglas (of whom more below). Mary for the most part tried to keep things peaceful with England even though (or perhaps because) she wanted to succeed Elizabeth I. But then, in 1565, came the marriage to Henry, Lord Darnley, her cousin and, potentially, also potentially her heir.
HENRY, LORD DARNLEY
Some versions of the song refer to "the king." If the song is to be dated to the reign of Mary Stewart, and takes place in Scotland, then the king can only be Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the heir to the earldom of Lennox, and Mary's second husband. (It is true that Mary had two other husbands, Frances II and the Earl of Bothwell, but Frances was never in Britain -- and surely never had an illegitimate child -- and Bothwell never became King.) And he was a Stewart, so "The highest Stewart of all." Although he was king by marriage, in some ways, Darnley was actually more exalted than Mary herself, for he had royal blood from both his parents.
Margaret Tudor, the older daughter of England's King Henry VII and the sister of King Henry VIII, had married three times. The first marriage (arranged by her father when she was still an early teen) was to King James IV of Scotland, by whom she had had James V the father of Mary Stewart. After James IV's death, she quickly married Archibald Douglas of Angus, by she had had a "beautiful but headstrong" daughter, Margaret Douglas. (Stedall-Darnley reproduces what he believes to be her portrait. If the painting is indeed of her, she does appear to have been really, really beautiful. But her later portraits show a much more pointed chin, so I doubt it's her.)
Margaret Douglas -- who was born in England after Margaret Tudor had remarried and been forced to flee Scotland (Cosh, p. 90) had probably been born a few weeks prematurely, very possibly as a result of the wild flight her mother had had to make to escape her enemies in the Scottish government (Perry, pp. 130-131; Ring, p. 17). Her difficult early life certainly didn't affect the younger Margaret's ability to scheme, or to find herself at the heart of controversies; she had had a roller-coaster career in England. Henry VIII alternately promoted her in the succession and attempted to cast her out -- for a while in 1536, before Edward VI was born but after Henry had declared his daughters Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate, it looked as if he might make her his heir; and Ring, p. 40, implies he shopped her on the international marriage market for a while. But he also sought to have her declared illegitimate after she tried to contract marriage with Lord Thomas Howard, Anne Boleyn's uncle (Marshall, p. 109; Perry, pp. 217-218). Henry had both Howard and Margaret tossed in the Tower and was threatening to execute them; Margaret finally relented shortly before Howard died of disease. After that, Henry brought her back to court; she got in trouble with another Howard, a relative of Queen Catherine Howard, but was again rehabilitated. As late as 1543, she was apparently considered second in line to the throne after the future King Edward VI, but in that year, Henry VIII put his daughters Mary and Elizabeth back in the line of succession (Ring, p. 85).
(To give Henry his due, there is something to the argument that Margaret Douglas was illegitimate; Margaret Tudor had married Archibald Douglas, Sixth Earl of Angus, shortly after James IV had died -- a marriage which cost her the Scottish regency and led to her leaving the country. But the marriage quickly failed, and Margaret Tudor managed to get an annulment in 1527; Cosh, pp. 89-91. According to Perry, p. 171, Archibald Douglas had made a marriage to another before marrying Margaret Tudor, which should have rendered Margaret Douglas illegitimate, but the Pope had declared Margaret Douglas legitimate under Catholic law because Margaret Tudor had been ignorant of Archibald Douglas's act. This was typical of what was done when marriages were annulled on the grounds of undiscovered consanguinity, so it was not unprecedented, but it was unusual. It made Margaret Douglas legitimate by Catholic rules, but Henry VIII made his own rules. Even when it was his sister's daughter he was mistreating.)
(An astounding thing in this story is how just about everyone was illegitimate at one time or another, for reasons relating to consanguinity and remarriage and the timing of remarriage. Of Henry VIII's three children, Mary and Elizabeth were both considered illegitimate at one time or another. Of Margaret Tudor's children, James V was unquestionably legitimate, but Margaret Douglas was called illegitimate because of precontracts. The children of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's younger sister, were considered illegitimate because of a prior marriage by her husband -- Perry, pp. 177-178. Mary Stewart's probable heir the (Hamilton) Earl of Arran was of dubious legitimacy because of problems about when his parents did or didn't marry. For that matter, although Henry VIII was personally legitimate, his claim to the throne was not: on his father's side, his claim to the throne came through the Beauforts, who were barred from the succession as semi-legitimate descendants of John of Gaunt; and his mother Elizabeth of York had been declared an illegitimate daughter of Edward IV. And on and on....)
Margaret Douglas was a friend of the poet and future rebel Thomas Wyatt; there is an anthology, the "Devonshire Manuscript," in which both of them wrote items (Ring, p. 41) -- though she surely had no interest in his later rebellion against Mary Tudor, who was a close friend. If Mary had lived long enough to really cement her throne, Margaret might well have been declared her heir.
Margaret's husband Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox (whose grandfather had died at Flodden with James IV) was sort of her Scottish equivalent -- a person with a high but ambivalent situation in the Scottish succession.
The Stewart line was so thin by 1542 that the only legitimate descendant of King James III after the death of James V was Queen Mary Stewart. Which meant that the next in line were the heirs of the (another) Mary Stewart, the daughter of James II and sister of James III. This Mary Stewart had married James, 1st Lord Hamilton, and left a son James and a daughter Elizabeth. The son of James, another James, should have been heir presumptive -- except that some did not consider him legitimate legitimate (Hamilton, pp. 26-27, 173-175. Hamilton implies that the claim he was illegitimate was simply political, but according to Fraser, p. 15, James Hamilton Jr. was the son of his James Sr.'s third wife, and his second wife had not died but he had divorced her -- and there was doubt over whether the divorce was official and had taken place before the third marriage. If the divorce had not come through, then the third marriage was invalid and James Hamilton Jr. was not legitimate. It's nitpicky, but it's a valid objection if true.).
If the line of James Hamilton was barred as illegitimate, the next in line were the offspring of Elizabeth Hamilton, sister of James Hamilton Sr., who had married the earl of Lennox. There was, naturally, conflict between the Hamilton and Lennox branches over who was the rightful heir. The conflict caused much trouble in Scotland, with other nobles ranged around the two factions -- e.g. James V's illegitimate son James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was a Hamilton ally. The two sides hated each other so much that they did not scruple to intrigue with the English (Hamilton, pp. 48-49). It surely didn't help that the Hamiltons had murdered the father of the 4th Earl of Lennox in 1526 or 1527! (McGrigor, p. 29; Stedall-Darney, p. 22).
Thus there was constant conflict between the Hamiltons and the Lennoxes, with each earl claiming to be the senior cadet branch of the Stewart line.
(Note the significance, then, of the name "Hamilton" for the child-murderer in this song. When James V died and the infant Mary Stewart became queen, James Hamilton (c. 1516-1575), who had become Earl of Arran in 1529, became heir apparent, at least in the Hamilton reckoning. He was made guardian over the baby queen, but this was the source of great political controversy, with his legitimacy only one of the reasons he was attacked. (For one thing, his son and heir eventually went insane and spent half a century locked up; Stedall-Darnley, pp. 60-61.) If there was a "Mary Hamilton," was she the queen's companion -- or the queen's rival for the throne? Or perhaps the heir apparent's mistress, called "Hamilton" as an attempt to attack him? Also, the Hamiltons were considered not quite there: "the governor Arran was indecisive but his eldest son actually went mad and had to be confined. During the whole of this period, Hamilton blood was generally considered a convenient scapegoat on which to blame abnormalities of temper"; Fraser, p. 16. Could this be why the name "Hamilton" was chosen?)
According to Stedall-Darnley, p. 10, the Earl of Lennox initially hoped to marry Mary of Guise, the widow of James V. The idea was that if Lennox married Mary of Guise, he would become Regent and would be able to have the Hamiltons declared illegitimate, so that Lennox would become heir to the throne (Bingham, p. 32). But Mary of Guise refused to marry him and blocked his path to power. With that idea blocked, he turned to Henry VIII to sustain him (cf. Marshall, p. 109). Being based in England, Lennox decided that his next-best bet was to marry Douglas, even though she was a bit of an old maid (Douglas was 27 by then) -- and Henry VIII finally agreed, but, surprisingly, required that Margaret give genuine consent (Ring, pp. 87-88).
Surprisingly, Margaret and Lennox they really hit it off (Marshall, p. 109); based on their letters, it sounds as if they truly and deeply loved each other (Marshall, p. 115). Ring, p. 99, says that the evidence is that the marriage was "a partnership of equals" -- a rare thing that may have prejudiced Henry VIII against them. Certainly they can't have married for money; Lennox was an earl, but cut off from his Scottish lands because of his ties with the English (Marshall, p. 110) and while Margaret should have been Countess of Angus, her father, when he died, had left the earldom to his brother rather than his daughter, leaving Margaret with nothing except what Henry VIII gave her. Henry drove a hard bargain with Lennox, basically forcing Lennox to turn Scotland over to him in return for support (Bingham, p. 35 -- but Bingham suspects Lennox expected to outlive Henry, and then all bets would be off).
Henry let Margaret and Lennox marry in 1544 (Ring, p. 88; Bingham, p. 35, says that it was July 6, 1544), but soon after he again put her out of the succession because she was so determinedly Catholic. She was rehabilitated again in the reign of her friend Mary Tudor; by then, she had borne Darnley (Stedall-Darnley, pp. 14-15), but was demoted yet again when Elizabeth took the throne, and spent a lot of time in the Tower.
One might almost call the Douglas/Lennox marriage their revenge for being blocked from the English and Scottish successions, and Lord Darnley was the agent of their revenge.
Margaret and Lennox's first boy, Henry, died before he was a year old (Stedall-Darnley, p. 39; Marshall, p. 110.) But they quickly had another son, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. (Yes, their first two children were both named "Henry." They knew how to butter up their paymaster! Margaret endured eight pregnancies -- Marshall, p. 112 -- but their only other child to survive infancy was a brother, Charles, nine years younger, who eventually became Earl of Lennox and became the mother of Arbella Stuart, yet another possible claimant to the throne who ended up in the Tower because Elizabeth I was such a cruel paranoid.) Darnley was thus the half-first cousin of Mary Stewart -- and next in line after Mary Stewart and Margaret Douglas in the English succession. (The genealogy in the cover of Morrison makes this clearest; see also Hamilton, p. 286. Of course, Margaret would have liked to earn the throne in her own right, but apparently eventually gave that up after all her troubles with Henry VIII; Stedall-Darnley, p. 54.)
The date of Darnley's birth is disputed. Somewhere I found the date November 7, 1546. Fraser, p. 220, says the usual date is December 7, 1545, but offers evidence that he must have been at least a few months younger. How much younger? Probably not more than a year, but all we can really be confident about is that he was between two and four years younger than Mary Stewart.
This distinguished lineage did not guaranteed Darnley (or, for that matter, Mary Stewart) a place in the English succession -- in 1562, when Elizabeth was ill with smallpox, parliament considered four possible heirs (Stedall-Darnley, p. 69; Fraser, p. 164):
1. Mary Stewart (then still childless), the senior descendent of Henry VII's older daughter Margaret Tudor, but Catholic and born in Scotland;
2. Margaret Douglas (and Darnley after her), descended from Margaret Tudor's second child, born in England but still Catholic;
3. Catherine Grey, the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey, descended from Henry VII's younger daughter Mary Tudor, who was both English and Protestant and whose line Henry VIII had approved but who had gotten herself into a marriage the government didn't like
4. Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, one of two possible Plantagenet heirs (the other being the heir of the Pole family, who had been designated as Richard III's heirs; Hastings was descended from Edward IV's brother George of Clarence, which made him senior to the de la Poles, except that George of Clarence had been executed for treason and his descendants thus barred from the succession)
Parliament didn't like any of the choices (Catholics couldn't decide between Stewart and Douglas, and Protestants between Grey and Huntingdon; there was also the fact that, in Henry VIII's will, when he listed possible heirs after Elizabeth, he had explicitly mentioned the descendants of his sister Mary Tudor, i.e. Grey, and clearly passed over the descendants of his older sister Margaret Tudor, i.e. Mary Stewart and Margaret Douglas; Ring, p. 96). In the short term, it all became moot when Elizabeth recovered.
No matter how you sliced it, though, Darnley had a claim to the Scottish throne as well as to the English; if the Hamiltons were permitted to succeed, then he was about fifth in line -- but if the Hamiltons were excluded as illegitimate, then Darnley was third in line to the Scottish throne in line after Queen Mary and his father the Earl of Lennox as well as being unquestionably next in line after Mary and his mother for the English throne.
Her claim to the English throne put Mary Stewart in an interesting position. Elizabeth I had already intervened once in Scotland, as the Reformation took place there (Hamilton, p. 29). If Mary tried to interfere in England, Elizabeth could attack and perhaps overthrow her. If Mary sought a too-strong husband, such as a foreign king, that was also a threat. Since, by the 1560s, Elizabeth's throne seemed reasonably secure, Mary's best hope of succeeding her lay in trying to maintain friendship and choosing an appropriate husband (Hamilton, p. 31). She understandably rejected Elizabeth's favorite Robert Dudley; as a younger son, he wasn't even really part of the nobility, and Elizabeth didn't really want to give him up!
Margaret Douglas instead wanted Mary to marry Darnley, and made made intense efforts to bring this about, even though the two were well within the prohibited decrees; Hamilton, p. 35. It appears they just assumed they would get a dispensation, though the Papacy was none too willing (Hamilton, pp. 39-42. One wonders -- given that she outlived her son by more than a decade -- if Margaret still felt that way after his murder.)
Elizabeth didn't particularly like this idea, and for a long time kept Margaret and Darnley safely in England. Eventually, Elizabeth let Darnley go north, but kept his mother at home. Did she think this would prevent the marriage? It didn't work. Mary met Darnley, who promptly got usefully sick, and Mary nursed him and fell in love with him as she did so. The marriage that Elizabeth had so wanted to prevent quickly went forward.
(Interestingly, although Margaret Douglas was defiantly Catholic, Darnley's own convictions were less clear; he had frequently attended Protestant services; Stedall-Maitland, p. 66. Indeed, Morrison, p. 99, regularly listened to John Knox's sermons, which strikes me as a high level of masochism even for an actual Protestant! One suspects he was doing his best to be all things to all people.)
It is likely that Mary thought Elizabeth would approve of her marriage to Darnley -- after all, the English queen had let Darnley go to Scotland -- but when Elizabeth heard that Mary and Darnley were hitting it off, she ordered him to come back, and when they didn't, she put Margaret Douglas in the Tower (Marshall, p. 116); she stayed there until Darnley was killed (Marshall, p. 117).
Darnley may have had a good bloodline on paper, and been handsome, but as an individual he was not impressive: "Darnley... was of little use [during the rebellions against Mary's rule]. Indolent and dissolute, he was rarely to be found when there was business to be done or advice to be offered. Hunting and carousing took up most of his time. Affairs of state were very low on his list of priorities. He remained sensitive to his privileges and neglectful of his responsibilities" (Hamilton, p. 51). He had good training, in English, Scots, French, and perhaps Latin (Stedall-Darnley, p. 30), and had some classical learning, but this gave him merely "superficial polish and moral vacuity" (Stedall-Darnley, p. 31. I can't help but wonder if some of this came from his tutor John Elder, who was knowledgeable but also a very much a kiss-up out to feather his own nest, as shown by Bingham, pp. 57-58, who compares Elder to the Vicar of Bray). He was excellent at the sorts of sports an earl was expected to play. He danced well, and sang and played the lute with skill -- he reportedly had inherited the lutes of Edward VI (Stedall-Darnley, p. 31). And, from the standpoint of the English succession, he had been born on English soil, whereas Mary Stewart was born in Scotland.
"Beneath his outward gloss, Darnley was growing into an objectionable and self-opinionated dolt. Despite his careful education, he lacked common sense. Unable to hold his tongue, he revealed everything he was told to his friends and servants.... He was arrogant, idle and, when thwarted, could be petulant and uncouth with a violent temper. He was tactless and failed to keep his word" (Stedall-Darnley, p. 30). "The character of Darnley was like a tinderbox, on which it was all too easy for the disaffected nobles to strike a flame" (Fraser, p. 246).
He also was said to have been an extremely heavy drinker (Hamilton, p. 58). Just the sort of guy, e.g., to have an affair with a pretty girl of lower status....
To be sure, Stedall-Darnley, p. 32, calls him "openly homosexual." But no one else says that; Marshall, p. 115, mentions a rumor that eventually arose that he was bisexual, bit that's not the same thing at all! Hamilton, p. 75, calls him "promiscuous." It is likely that one of the various diseases he suffered was syphilis (there is supporting evidence from some marks on what is believe to be his skull; Hamilton, p. 75. Plus we know he was treated with mercury salts; Stedall-Maitland, p. 123. Stedall-Maitland, p. 79, sees signs of syphillis in a bout of illness Darnley suffered before he married Mary, though Morrison, p. 100, suggests measles; the latter was apparently the diagnosis at the time. Bingham, p. 101, thinks Darnley perhaps contracted the disease while in France, and p. 168 suggests that it was what he was suffering just before he was murdered).
Stedall-Darnley's claim of homosexuality is probably based on the fact that Darnley once slept in David Riccio's bed (Stedall-Maitland, p. 77) -- but that's hardly proof. He had to have gotten syphillis somewhere.... Stedall-Maitland, p. 97, also claims he visited "male brothels in Edinburgh" -- but offers no footnotes, and just how many male brothels did he think a town with a population of perhaps 12,000 could support?
Morrison, p. 101, declares, "Her betrothal to Darnley was the first irrevocable mistake Mary made, but the tragedy for her was it would not have been a mistake had Darnley been anything of a man."
THE MARRIAGE OF MARY STEWART AND LORD DARNLEY -- AND AFTER
It was a whirlwind relationship between the 22-year-old queen and her cousin, who was about three years younger. Darnley was born in England, but came to Scotland and met Mary in February 1565, and Mary quickly became infatuated -- she even cared for him during his sickness, and it seemed to cause her to become even more fond of him (Stedall-Darnley, p. 95; Fraser, pp. 224-225) -- even though Queen Elizabeth's disapproval meant that the marriage would threaten Mary's hopes of becoming Queen of England (Stedall-Maitland, pp. 80-81). On May 15, 1565, Darnley was made Earl of Ross, clearly showing that something was in the wind (Hamilton, p. 35) -- though some think he resented not being given an even higher title. In July, he was made Duke of Albany (a title usually held within the royal family) and on July 29 the two were married (Hamilton, pp. 35-37), well before the required dispensation actually arrived (Stedall-Darnley, p. 102).
For the wedding, George Buchanan (one of Scotland's most learned men, though he later became Mary's enemy) wrote a masque "in which the maiden goddess Diana complained... that one of her bright band of Maries had been stolen from her by the powers of love and marriage" (Bingham, p. 109); obviously the reference is to the Four Maries plus the Queen.
Darnley stood high on the English succession, but his place in the Scottish succession was, at least arguably, lower. There was no inherent reason to grant him the title of King Consort. But Mary did so anyway -- and did so without confirming it with parliament, which perhaps caused some anger (Hamilton, p. 37). Certainly it didn't make Elizabeth happy. But after more than twenty years, Scotland had a King again.
"The day before the ceremony, three heralds... proclaimed the bridegroom Henry Stewart, Earl of Ross and Duke of Albany, King of Scots.... [N]o one stirred in the waiting throng assembled round the Market Cross. Then one man, his hand upraised, called out loudly, 'God save his Grace!' It was the Earl of Lennox" (Morrison, p. 101; compare Stedall-Darnley, p. 104. Recall that Lennox was Darnley's father).
Interestingly, Mary did not grant Darnley the full Crown Matrimonial, meaning that he would lose the title of King should Mary die before him (Hamilton, p. 55 -- though, given the state of Scottish politics, that was probably just smart, since it would keep people from murdering her to make Darnley king. Some of the conspiracies around her had that very end in mind. Mary would later insist that only parliament could grant the Crown Matrimonial).
It quickly became a very unhappy match, so Darnley would almost certainly have engaged in extracurricular activities. (He had to get syphilis somewhere!) There is a report that he got a lady of the court pregnant (Stedall-Darnley, p. 116).
Ring, p. 206, wonders why no one realized how worthless he was before he married Mary. She makes the interesting point that syphillis can cause personality changes, and of course he can't have had it long. Also, his father Lennox was said to suffer from melancholia (Ring, p. 230), i.e. depression (and Bingham, p. 78, mentions "rages," which are often a sign of depression -- though he was being held in solitary confinement at the time, which can lead to all sorts of things). Could Darnley (or Lennox) perhaps have had something like bipolar II disorder, and his ill behavior have been the result of hypomania? Finally, his mother was still in England, imprisoned by Elizabeth; perhaps he didn't know how to behave in her absence. Ring also suggests that Lennox, Darnley's father, was regarded as henpecked because he thought his wife was worth listening to; perhaps Darnley didn't want that reputation. Whatever the explanation, he wanted to exercise power without being willing to do the work that came with the job.
In any case, it is clear that Darnley and the Queen stopped sleeping together -- something alluded to in "Earl Bothwell" [Child 174].
Darnley's refusal to take responsibility for governing forced Mary to rely on other men -- often lowborn men, since they were less likely to work against her. One of these was the infamous David Riccio/Rizzio who entered her household as a singer but ended up a secretary and confidant (Hamilton, pp. 53-55). Rumors that he was Mary's lover seem most unlikely, given that he was apparently a hunchback (Hamilton, p. 53, though Bingham, p. 123, thinks this may just have been propaganda about him). Mary was about six months pregnant when Darnley and others murdered him (Hamilton, pp. 58-59: Stedall-Maitland, p. 100, says that Mary Fleming's wooer Maitland put the plan in motion, but admits (pp. 100, 104) that Maitland was not present, that he did not sign the "bond" among the conspirators, and that the only evidence against him came from Darnley (who was about as unreliable as a witness could be). Fraser, p. 254, claims that Earls Huntley and Bothwell, and Lords Fleming and Livingston, were also supposed to be killed, and it seems unlikely that Maitland would have dared go after his wife's family. Most sources seem to agree that the final decision to murder Riccio in Mary's presence was made by Darnley himself. Stedall-Maitland, p. 101, suggests that Darnley wanted Mary to miscarry and die so he could seize the throne; Bingham, pp. 132-133, seems to be of the opinion that Darnley wanted the Crown Matrimonial so that he could be rid of Mary and reign on his own and have his children by other spouses succeed him.
What followed Riccio's murder was, perhaps, the most effective Mary Stewart ever was in her life. The conspirators were trying to seize power, but she manipulated Darnley, without doubt one of the weakest points in the scheme, into coming over to her side, thus allowing her to escape the trap and turn on the conspirators. Mary remained in power, and bore the future James VI about three months later (Hamilton, pp. 63-68), on June 19, 1566, after a very difficult labor (Stedall-Darnley, p. 150). She asked Elizabeth of England to be a godmother (Stedall-Darnley, p. 151).
Darnley had become "a nuisance and an embarrassment," however (Hamilton, p. 70). The King and Queen started avoiding each other. Even Mary Stewart was open to a divorce or annulment if it wouldn't affect the legitimacy of her son (Magnusson, p. 356; Stedall-Maitland, p. 117). As Bingham, p. 163, Darnley's "life was in ruins, for which he had only himself to blame, a fact which apparently he would not face." He left Edinburgh for his father's lands in the west.
In 1566, Mary suffered an illness so severe that there was fear she would die (Hamilton, p. 71). (Mary had many illnesses in her life; by the time she died, her joints were so stiff that she could not walk unaided and could barely write, even though she was only in her forties. But the symptom that recurred most often was a pain in her side, which some suspect was a duodenal ulcer, according to Marshall, p. 177. After her confinement in England, however, she had so many different symptoms, according to Fraser, p. 443, that I think there must have been more than that. The suggestion of kidney disease seems not unlikely, though that probably wouldn't explain the pains in her arm. I wonder, too, about environmental contamination at one or another of her prisons. Macalpine/Hunter, pp. 201-214, suggested porphyria, which passed through Mary all the way down to George III and beyond, but recent studies have cast extraordinary doubts on the idea that George III had porphyria, and that probably means Mary didn't either. All these physical symptoms are apart from the wild emotional swings she clearly suffered as well. Might she have contracted Darnley's syphilis? The severity and symptoms of syphilis vary greatly.)
Mary survived, but then it was Darnley's turn to get sick, probably with syphilis (Bingham, p. 171), though other diseases were suggested at the time. (The Earl of Bothwell used the French name for syphilis, roniole, of the condition; Bingham, p. 172 -- but he was surely a biased witness!). As Darnley was recovering, Mary relented a bit and started negotiating his return to Edinburgh. He still wasn't well, so the idea was to take him somewhere where he could finish his recovery. He eventually agreed to go to Kirk o' Field, a modest residence not far from Holyrood (Hamilton, p. 76). It was the last house he would ever occupy.
What happened next is peculiar. Darnley ended up dead, but who murdered him and how? What is certain is that, on the night of February 9/10, 1867, Kirk o' Field blew up. The explosion was definitely deliberate. Darnley's body, and the body of his valet, were found at some distance from the exploded building, showing no signs of having been in the explosion (Hamilton, pp. 78-79). So either they were blown there by the explosion (despite the fact that it left no traces on their bodies), or they were killed (probably by suffocation) before the explosion and their bodies left outside, or they fled the explosion and were killed as they fled.
The third possibility seems by far the most likely. It is almost universally accepted that they were strangled. Bingham, p. 183, and most others think they escaped the building just before it blew up, and no one was willing to risk going inside the building to deposit the bodies, given that the explosion was expected at any moment, so the conspirators strangled them and fled.
Who was responsible? We don't know. Hamilton, pp. 77-80, thinks that James Hepburn, fourth Earl Bothwell, was the one who set the mine, but that James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton also had assassins on the spot (Morton, who had spent time in English exile, became regent for most of the period 1572-1580 but arrested in the latter year and executed 1581 -- a curious candidate to murder Darnley, since Darnley's mother Margaret Douglas was his first cousin and had released her claim to the Earldom of Morton to let him take the title; Hamilton, pp. 145-147). Willson, p. 18, declares, "That Bothwell was the murderer no one can doubt; and that Mary was his accomplice seems equally certain." Fraser, p. 295, says that Mary almost certainly didn't know though she wished to be free of Darnley. Stedall-Maitland, p. 136, declares that the idea was Secretary of State Maitland's, with Earl Bothwell, Morton; Sir James Balfour (a sort of government lawyer, active in promulgating laws but also considered corrupt; died 1583), and Archibald Douglas (of Whittinghame) responsible for details -- but the only evidence I can see for this is his own fixed ideas. The cleric responsible for Mary's funeral oration implicated her (Bingham, p. 197), but he was responsible for justifying her execution, so I don't think that means much.
Drummond, whose rate of inaccuracies makes the average politician seem like a paragon of truth, thinks there was a vast conspiracy to murder Darnley, Mary, her half-brother Moray, her later husband Bothwell, and the Earl of Morton -- which doesn't leave much of anyone to actually do the murders! Wormald thinks Mary beneath contempt, but although she is convinced Mary knew, she admits on p. 10 that she doesn't have proof. Bingham, p. 163, considers Mary's behavior to be analogous to Henry II asking who would rid him of this pestilent priest: She didn't know what would happen, but wouldn't mind a convenient death.
Two people who were initially convinced that Mary was at least partly responsible were Margaret Douglas and her husband the Earl of Lennox ; they commissioned a painting to remind James VI of the murder of his father -- but Elizabeth kept a tight leash on the Lennoxes, not letting them do much else (Marshall, pp. 118-119). Interestingly, Margaret Douglas came around and even became friends with Mary.
There is no last word on the subject. Magnusson, p. 357, declares the murder still unsolved, and given that almost everyone hated Darnley, I have to agree -- there are too many suspects. The one thing that seems pretty clear is that Bothwell had been involved. (This is the subject, more or less, of "Earl Bothwell" [Child 174], but that song is very inaccurate.) Mary's guilt or innocence is less clear, but I incline to think she did not know.
It is interesting to note that, when Mary and Bothwell were overthrown, the lords who had taken charge initially blamed Bothwell alone for the murder, but later accused Mary as well -- not because the evidence changed by because their political needs changed (Fraser, pp. 351-352).
"The life of Darnley was brief and tempestuous, and he died unloved and unlamented by anyone except his parents.... He passed so rapidly from promising boyhood to dissolute youth and thence to criminal manhood that it was easy to forget the attractive and accomplished impression he had fleetingly given" (Bingham, p. 199). Darnley was (roughly) 21 years old when he died, and had been King for a year and seven months (Hamilton, pp. 80-81).
AFTER DARNLEY'S DEATH
Mary seems to have been profoundly shocked by the catastrophe (evidence, probably, that she wasn't personally involved); it drove her into a fit of depression, or something like it. She did very little to investigate the crime, which fueled the speculation that she was involved (Stedall-Maitland, p. 150; Fraser, p. 310). Stedall thinks that she felt she would be in danger if she investigated -- but she apparently already felt the conspirators were after her, so this makes little sense. The Privy Council was also passive about investigating -- after all, many of them had been responsible (Stedall-Darnley, p. 220).
The result of this was heavy anti-Mary propaganda (for an example, see the entry for "King Henry's Murder," which calls her "Delilah" and "Clytemnestra").
As a result, she made what Hamilton, p. 83, and most other writers, considers the worst mistake of her entire career. ("Mary allowed a temporary embarrassment to become an intolerable reproach"; Wormald, p. 177.) Although there was significant evidence that the Earl of Bothwell had been involved in the murder of Darnley, and public sentiment was against him, she showed him steady favor (Hamilton, p. 84; Fraser, pp. 310-311), perhaps because he was a loyal man who was always decisive.
Lennox, Darnley's father, tried to have Bothwell prosecuted (Hamilton, pp. 84-85). He was met by Bothwell's army, so that he could not be present to prosecute the case. (Drummond, pp. 127-129, thinks that Moray and Morton put Lennox up to it, but this is absurd; if Lennox had had their support, he would have been able to go to trial!) There being no accuser present, the Privy Council, which included Bothwell, declared Bothwell innocent after a kangaroo trial on April 12 (Hamilton, p. 85; Magnusson, p. 358). A week later, Bothwell was able to get a number of lords to support his attempt to become King (Magnusson, p. 359).
Exactly what happened next is hard to understand. By all accounts, Bothwell brought a strong force and intercepted Mary as she was traveling to visit her baby, and demanded that she go with him (Fraser, pp. 314-315). It looked like an abduction, but many thought Mary went voluntarily. And, having abducted her, it appears Bothwell slept with her -- but whether it was by force or by her choice is again an open question; it was disputed even at the time (Fraser, pp. 316-317. Sir James Melville said it was rape -- Marshall, p. 131 -- but he was a known liar and a prejudiced witness). What seems certain is that he quickly got her pregnant. (Based on Fraser, p. 343, it appears Mary claimed the conception date was around June 1, but Fraser thinks it might have been on April 24, when Bothwell had abducted her.)
Soon after, on May 15, Mary married Bothwell (Magnuson, p. 359) -- this even though Darnley's body was barely cold and Bothwell, who was Protestant, was already married. But he managed to get an annulment from a Catholic (Hamilton, p. 86), so the marriage could go ahead. Some have thought Mary was forced to wed him (some of Mary's later comments gave this impression; Magnusson, p. 360), but most historians think she showed him too many signs of affection for this to be likely. (I do wonder, given her passivity at the time, if perhaps she was depressed and simply going along with outside suggestions rather than thinking on her own. Fraser, p. 343, thinks she suspected she was pregnant -- but she patently could not have been sure if the rape took place April 24 and the marriage announced on May 8 and conducted on May 15!) She made Bothwell Duke of Orkney, and married him in a Protestant-style ceremony (Hamilton, pp. 86-87). There was almost no celebration, and the audience was small, though the Four Maries were among them (Stedall-Darnley, p. 252).
(Note the ironic implication here: only one of the five Maries got pregnant out of wedlock, and it was Mary Stewart herself. And the baby ended up dead, although it was a miscarriage rather than infanticide. And the father was "the king himself" -- or, at least, the man who would have been King Consort if the rest of Scotland had gone along with the marriage.)
The hasty marriage to the man most obviously linked to Darnley's murder turned all of Scotland against Mary. "Suspicion of complicity in the murder of the appalling Darnley was something that she could have lived down. Had she acted with resolution and independence after the event, all might have been well. But she married Bothwell. From that moment, everyone firmly believed that she and her lover had murdered her husband. With that, her cause was lost" (Hamilton, p. 88).
Most of the lords gathered an army and marched against Mary and Bothwell (this even though quite a few had earlier encouraged her to marry him; Hamilton, p. 97). After Bothwell and Mary had various escapedes, including Mary escaping a castle disguised as a man, the two armies met at Carberry Hill, about six miles east of Edinburgh (Hamilton, p. 89). Mary's army was ill-equipped and hungry, and had no senior leaders except Bothwell. The lords basically said, "It's him or us," and Mary would not initially abandon Bothwell. But her army started to slip away, and expected reinforcements from the Hamiltons and Gordons were too far away to reach the field in time (Hamilton, p. 90). After some negotiations, Bothwell fled and Mary was taken into custody by her own lords (Fraser, pp. 330-331; Morrison, pp. 184-186),
The original idea may have been to separate her from Bothwell and then let her resume her reign -- that, at least, was what was promised in the negotiations at Carberry. Some of her opponents seem to have tried to carry out those terms, but the majority broke the agreement and put her in confinement (Morrison, pp. 193-195; Hamilton, pp. 91-93). When she was taken to Edinburgh, many jeered her (Morrison, p. 194). For a time, she was reunited with Mary Seton and Mary Livingston Sempill (Stedall-Maitland, p. 182), but was watched very closely. Soon, to make sure she didn't escape, she was kept closely confined in the island of Lochleven (Hamilton, p. 93), where her half-brother Moray, back from England, took charge of her (and the whole country, as regent) and threatened her with overthrow and death (Hamilton, p. 97). Yet she still refused to divorce Bothwell (Morrison, pp. 196-197).
It was in this captivity, around the third week of July, that she miscarried twins (Hamilton, p. 94). This raises the question of when they were conceived and who was the father. Almost everyone thinks she was pregnant by Bothwell, not Darnley (Fraser, p. 330), and some even think she had gotten pregnant by Bothwell while Darnley was still alive (Hamilton, p. 86; Stedall-Maitland, p. 187, thinks the children were conceived around the beginning of June, but the evidence for that is not convincing). The pregnancy probably explains why she couldn't drop Bothwell; it would affect the child's legitimacy (Stedall-Maitland, p. 171; Fraser, p. 330).
There seem to have been a lot of attempts to blacken Bothwell's reputation, e.g. a claim that he was homosexual (Fraser, p. 318; recall that this was a very grave charge at the time), but it was hardly necessary; he'd done plenty all on his own to make enemies.
Since everyone agreed that Mary could not be allowed to reign with Bothwell, she was deposed (Morrison, p. 197). Formally, she signed the documents to abdicate in favor of her son (July 24), but Hamilton, p. 95, thinks that, first, she did it while still weak and depressed from her miscarriage, and second, that she had been advised that a forced abdication was not valid; Hamilton also suggests that she never read the articles.
She was not yet 25.
That wasn't the end. Helped by two of her captors, George Douglas (who seems to have been enamored of her) and his orphaned cousin Willie Douglas, she escaped from Lochleven on May 2, 1568 (Morrison, pp. 202-203; Hamilton, pp. 98-99; Stedall-Maitland, pp. 194-196).
There seem to have been several songs about Mary's time in Lochleven ("Mary Queen of Scots' Lament in the Castle of Lochleven," Roud #V36876, and "Queen Mary's Escape From Lochleven Castle," Roud #V14110, DT ARRANBOT), but I see no sign that either was ever traditional.
Had Mary been more patient, she might have had a chance to regain her throne. But Scotland's politics were still complicated: since the Lennox/Darnley faction was anti-Mary, that made the Hamilton faction pro-Mary -- and they wanted to fight as soon as possible and on their own land. They weren't ready. Just as at Carberry Hill, the two sides gathered their armies, but the fighting, at Langside, was almost a fizzle; the anti-Mary forces (led by none other than her half-brother Moray) had almost no casualties (Morrison, pp. 209-210). The Hamiltons collapsed (Hamilton, p. 99), and Mary again had a choice: Leave the field, find a safe stronghold, and wait for more forces to assemble (and perhaps get help from France) -- or flee?
For once, Mary's nerve failed her, and she fled -- not to a friendly stronghold in Scotland, and not to France where she could at least live as Queen Dowager, but south to England (Magnusson, pp. 348-363; Stedall-Maitland, p. 197, thinks she was still obsessed with the English throne and was unwilling to seek French help lest it alienate the English; according to Marshall, p. 176, everyone with her advised her against it). As Fraser, p. 367, says, "As decisions go, it was a brave one, a romantic one even, but under the circumstances it was certainly not a wise one." A year and a day after her marriage to Bothwell, she crossed the Solway Firth near Dundrennan, never again to be allowed to leave England (Morrison, pp. 214-215) -- never even to see the English queen on whom she had pinned all her hopes!
It was Elizabeth who settled this; she organized a sort of a summit at York where the various Scottish parties presented their case for what should be done about Mary. This was very unfair to Mary, who was not even allowed to be present, and couldn't even be in close contact with her representatives after the trial was moved to Westminster (Fraser, pp. 386-389). But of course the object of Tudor justice was not justice but rather making the monarchy stronger by stomping down everything that might develop into a threat. Elizabeth not only settled on the status quo (i.e. the infant James VI as king of Scotland with his half-uncle Moray as regent) but she gave financial aid to Moray while keeping Mary confined (Hamilton, pp. 100-101). When Moray was assassinated in 1570 (shot from ambush by a Hamilton supporter; Magnusson, p. 372), there was brief talk of restoring Mary (Hamilton, p. 102), but the Scots would not agree with Elizabeth's conditions -- for one thing, Lennox (after an anarchic six months when no one ran the country) was made regent, and why should Lennox want his daughter-in-law as Queen when he could rule for himself in the name of his grandson? But in 1571, Lennox had John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, executed for his part in Darnley's murder; the Hamiltons responded by assassinating Lennox (Hamilton, p. 104, though Magnusson, pp. 373-274, seems to blame a different group of Marian partisans. The five-year-old James VI was there as his grandfather was dying, and said he remembered the sight all his life; Stewart, p. 16. It was probably the only memory he had of any member of his family; both his maternal grandparents were dead before he was born; his father was dead before he was a year old; his mother was imprisoned by then and never met him again; and his paternal grandmother was under guard in England. Lennox was the only one of his ancestors he saw after his first birthday). The Earl of Morton, who eventually became regent after that, was in turn executed in 1580 (Hamilton, p. 105). One could imagine several times when Mary might have made a comeback -- but Elizabeth never turned her loose.
It was a very successful trick, for Elizabeth: she had Moray over a barrel. He had the power he craved, but she could cause his overthrow at any time -- so although she had to pay him a subsidy, she didn't have to worry about Scotland. When Moray was assassinated, Lennox got the job, but Lennox couldn't cross Elizabeth either, because Elizabeth was holding Margaret Douglas (Stedall-Maitland, pp. 270-271).
Mary at first had a large circle of more than 130 people around her, but after Elizabeth and Cecil decided to keep her under their fist, they kept cutting her entourage, until it was down to a mere 16 in the early 1570s (Marshall, pp. 181-182). She shouldn't have been a burden on the English crown -- as dowager queen of France, she should have had income from her estates there -- but the French paid less than what she was due, and that slowly (Fraser, pp. 470-471), so her finances were always a problem.
For years, plots swirled around Mary (usually involving her replacing Elizabeth rather than returning to Scotland), and they inspired other ballads, or at least pieces that ended up in the Percy Folio (e.g. "The Rising in the North" [Child 175] and "Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas" [Child 176]). Some plotters managed to contact her; some went ahead on their own. Mary for years was not deeply involved, but the plots were constant, and the English government didn't like it. They put her in ever-tighter confinement, and warned her that any attempts to free her would be held against her even if she was not personally involved. The Duke of Norfolk was executed in 1572 for maneuvering a revolt (Magnusson, p. 375); apparently he had wanted to marry Mary, and Secretary Maitland had also pushed the idea (Stedall-Maitland, p. 224).
Eventually the English set out to trap Mary, and she put her trust in a not-very-secure cipher, expressing a desire to replace Elizabeth, or at least escape, and it cost her her head. Mary had not been part of some of the anti-Elizabeth plots, but she gave her assent to this one, or at least did not reject it (Fraser, pp. 490-491, thinks that after almost two decades of imprisonment, she would have done almost anything just to be free, whether as queen or not) -- and it was a set-up by Elizabeth's spies. Mary was charged with conspiring against Elizabeth I, tried by a kangaroo court, convicted, and after a long delay during which Elizabeth hesitated to sign the death warrant, was executed on February 8, 1587 (Hamilton, pp. 106-107). She had been given only one night's notice of her execution, and was subjected to many petty brutalities as she went to the block (Fraser, pp. 530-540), including being denied Catholic rites. Anyone who thinks Elizabethan England was civilized would be well advised to read the accounts.
Not every writer mentions the cryptographic evidence against her -- e.g. Morrison, pp. 238-247, points out that she was given an unfair trial without anyone to defend her and without a proper jury, but fails to point out that they had her dead to rights. Given how strong the evidence was against her, they could have afforded a fair trial! -- but Tudor England was a police state, and the rule of law had (temporarily) died with Richard III at Bosworth.
Mary's desire to be buried in France was not granted; her body remained in England, and was eventually given a fine tomb by James VI and I. Keeping her body in a Protestant nation was probably smart; given the accounts that leaked out of her piety and dignity at her martyrdom (Fraser, pp. 536-545), I suspect that miracles would have been reported at her grave had her tomb been in a Catholic country. But, despite her piety, she was certainly no saint, even though she was far more sinned against than sinning.
Tragic as were her captive years, they are irrelevant for our purposes; after 1568, Mary was not a queen, or, at best, a queen without a court (and her Four Maries were scattered, never to reunite, though all seem to have outlived her). By 1585 or so, it was irrelevant anyway; her son James, who was gradually taking up the reigns of personal rule, was Protestant, and not interested in converting; had his mother been freed -- even had she replaced Elizabeth -- England would have returned to the Protestant fold when James succeeded.
Bothwell kept his freedom a bit longer than his wife, but not much; he fled to the Orkneys, then to Europe. There he found himself in the hands of a mistress he had betrayed (Drummond, p. 43, thinks he might actually have married her for her dowry) and ended up in prison in Denmark (Fraser, p. 351); "He died, broken and insane in Dragsholm Castle in 1578, still the lawful husband of Mary" (Hamilton, p. 100), despite quixotic attempts (with Mary's approval) to get the marriage annulled. Drummond, pp. 163-164, speculates that the insanity resulted from brain damage suffered in all the fighting he did, but I wonder if the descriptions of Bothwell's condition are detailed enough for us even to be able to guess.
Mary was, obviously, dealt a dreadful hand in life. Possibly she would have been overthrown even had she played it better. But I can't help but think that she played it very badly. One can perhaps forgive her for refusing to become a Protestant (especially when the key example of Protestantism was the appalling John Knox). But her abrupt marriage to Darnley, and her even more abrupt marriage to Bothwell, and her refusal to simply rest quietly and hope to succeed Elizabeth when her turn came, were all severe mistakes. Everything she did was based on the desire to gain the English throne rather than a willingness to be content with Scotland and see what came in the future. And all seem to have arisen from a deep emotional neediness. Perhaps losing her father so early, and being separated from her mother when she was so young, and then seeing her beloved Princess Elizabeth (the French one, not the English one) married away hurt her more than any of us realize. Fraser, p. 125, also thinks she had a "gambling streak" and a desire for unfamiliar things -- almost a wanderlust. I have to think that, were she alive today, she would have been diagnosed with a psychological disorder, though we can only speculate as to which one. (Wormald, p. 9, declares her simply "hysteric" -- which is no diagnosis, by modern standards, though it suggests testing for Borderline and Histrionic Personality Disorders [the latter also likely to be scrapped]. These were my own thoughts in thinking about Mary's troubles -- but I would not go so far as to state any diagnosis confidently. All we know is that Mary had executive function difficulties. Those occur in many conditions. It's perhaps worth noting that her son James VI walked with a very unsteady gate and had trouble holding himself steady if he was not moving -- Stewart, p. 75 -- hinting at a neurological problem with his balance system. This might stem from early environmental factors, but there is a significant chance it was genetic.)
All of which says that if this song is truly set in the reign of Mary, it must be in the period 1542-1568, and if it is during Mary's time in Scotland it is 1560-1568, and if Darnley was in fact the father of Mary Hamilton's baby it must be between 1565, when Mary married Darnley (Keay/Keay, p. 683) and his murder in 1567. Furthermore, if Darnley was involved in the Mary Hamilton story, he would have had to get her pregnant no later than 1566 if he was to see her on the scaffold. Indeed, given his illness, odds are that he would have had to get her pregnant in late 1565.
THE LIVES OF THE FOUR MARIES
"Mary's departure to France also marks the first appearance in her story of those romantic concomitants of her adventures, the four Maries. A train of noblemen's sons and daughters, about Mary's age, were taken with her to France, it having been long traditional for young men of good family to be sent to France for a sort of chivalrous education. The four Maries, in Leslie's words, were considered 'special,' not only because they all bore the queen's christian name, but because they came from four notably honorable houses. Thus Mary Fleming, Mary Seton, Mary Beaton and Mary Livingstone are introduced into Mary Stuart's history" (Fraser, p. 32).
"Athough their public lives all began at the same point on a galley sailing to France in 1548, they ended at points far from each other, and in all but one case, far from the queen they were appointed to serve" (Fraser, p. 33).
The "Four Maries" were chosen to be companions to Mary Stewart when she went to France, and they were to stay there the entire time, and iafter the return to Scotland they were probably her closest friends -- although Morrison, p. 30, says that Queen Mary's "boon companion" in France was Elisabeth/Ysabel, the sister of the Dauphin of France whom Mary was destined to marry. The two were raised together, as if sisters, in the royal household, while the Four Maries were more separate. All of them, though, "learnt to make poetry, to play the harp, the lute, zithern and virginals, to knit in wools and silks, and what she [i.e. Mary Stewart] loved most, to embroider. Instead of the old-fashioned Gothic handwriting, she was taught the new Italian mode -- the handwriting that was to be so easy to forge" (Morrison, p. 32; the forging of Italian handwriting was significant because, in later years, Mary would exchange correspondence against Elizabeth with an English spy who forged the documents).
It is ironic to note that, in a certain sense, there were six "Maries"; according to Marshall, p. 50, Mary Stewart actually had eight maids of honor in total during her French years -- six Scottish, two French, and the two French maids were both named Marie. So the young Queen had six Scottish maids, and six maids named Mary/Marie. It's just that only four met both conditions -- and, as it turned out, those four came to be the closest to her anyway. (The other two Scottish girls were a Hamilton, probably Lady Barbara Hamilton, and Anne or Agnes Fleming, one of Mary Fleming's sisters; Marshall, p. 66. Thus there actually was a Hamilton among the Queen's ladies of the household; it's just that she wasn't one of the Maries. Although, as Marshall, p. 141, reminds us, serving girls were sometimes called "Marie" as a generic title, as later they were called "Mary Ann" in England. Thus, in fact, Mary Stewart had a Marie named Hamilton, just not a Marie named Mary Hamilton! Also, while in England, Mary Stewart had a servant "Marie Hanet" -- Marshall, p. 184 -- which a Scot might well hear as "Mary Hamilton," though Marie Hanet's name was without stain that I know of.)
The Maries' religious indoctrination seems to have been intense -- Mary of Guise had ordered that her daughter hear Mass every day (Morrison, p. 33).
Considering how much they did together after their return to Scotland, it is clear that the five Maries were genuine friends, not just five girls shoved together. And, when Mary Stewart had trouble, most of them showed conspicuous loyalty to the Queen. Indeed, Stedall-Maitland, p. 223, lists their four families closest to her after her overthrow; Lord Seton in fact had to abandon everything and flee from Scotland.
By 1563, Mary Stewart had lost so many friends and relatives since her return to Scotland that she "was destitute of confidantes except for her four Maries... who knew Scotland no better than she did" (Stedall-Maitland, p. 64), which may explain some of her mis-steps in this period. They remained close to her into the 1560s; supposedly they all said they would not marry until the Queen herself took a second husband (Morrison, p. 98), though in fact Mary Livingston married first (Fraser, p. 189). And they often did things as a group, sometimes in rather "naughty" ways, e.g. dressing as men at a dinner for the French ambassador, or going shopping while dressed as common people, or even pretending to be beggars (Stedall-Darnley, p. 59). The four offered oblations at Mary Stewart's wedding to Darnley (Stedall-Darnley, p. 103, although Fraser, p. 229, claims "Even the Maries were said to be against the match"), and were among the handful of witnesses when the Queen married Bothwell (Stedall-Maitland, p. 165).
All of them received gifts from Queen Mary in the will she made before the birth of her son James; several members of their families were also mentioned (Stedall-Darnley, p. 150).
All of them were from families who helped Mary govern -- e.g., according to Stedall-Darnley, p. 146, after the murder of Riccio, her Privy Council "consisted of Bothwell, Huntley, Atholl, Seton Livingston, and Fleming." The first three were dukes and earls; the later three were (1) George Seton, the fifth Baron Seton, Mary Seton's brother, who helped Queen Mary escape to England at the end of her reign (Hamilton, pp. 217, 233-235); (2) William Livingston, the sixth Baron Livingston, brother of Mary Livingston (Hamilton, pp. 211-212); and (3) John Fleming, the fifth Baron Fleming, Mary Fleming's brother, who was also with Mary as she fled after Lochlevel and was sent to London to represent her to Elizabeth; he was fatally wounded in 1572 during the last-ditch attempt to hold Edinburgh Castle for Mary (Hamilton, pp. 159-161). There were no Beatons on the Privy Council, but one of Mary Beaton's cousins, James Beaton, was archbishop of Glasgow at this time.
** Mary Beaton was the daughter of Robert Beaton of Creich, and a relative of the Cardinal David Beaton who was one of the great leaders of Scotland at this time but who would end up being murdered in 1546 during Scotland's religious strife (Hamilton, p. 216). Marshall, p. 144, calls her the "studious one," noting on p. 146 that the Queen in one of her wills left Beaton half of her Greek and Latin books. Her father had been one of the men who went to France with the five Maries and was Master of the Household for Mary Stewart at the time of Riccio's murder (Stedall-Darnley, p. 130). Morrison, p. 63, says she was "the prettiest" of the Maries, although the painting, said to be of her, which follows p. 64 looks very unattractive to me. She certainly had a long list of men interested in her. Supposedly Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador to Scotland, was "enamoured" of her (Stedall-Maitland, p. 74; Morrison, p. 98), even though he was about seventeen years older than she (Stedall-Darnley, p. 94). Nothing came of that; eventually, with the encouragement of the Queen, Mary Beaton married Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne (Stedall-Maitland, p. 92), who fought for Queen Mary in 1568 and 1571, being taken prisoner on the first occasion but obviously surviving. Mary Beaton must have been dead by 1599, because Alexander re-married in that year (Hamilton, p. 216; Marshall, p. 147, says that she died in 1597 but that she "disappears from the records after 1568"). According to Stedall-Maitland, pp. 92, 247; Fraser. p. 248, Ogilvy's earlier marriage was to Jean Gordon, who had earlier been married briefly to Bothwell and then to Alexander, the 12th Earl of Sunderland. It must have been quite a reunion; Ogilvy and Gordonhad been sweethearts all the way back in 1567 before Mary Stewart pushed the marriage of Jean Gordon and Bothwell.
That has to be one of the most complicated love hexagrams of all time: Mary Beaton was a servant of Mary Stewart; Jean Gordon loved Alexander Ogilvy; Bothwell loved mostly himself. To cement the crown's relationship with the Earl of Huntley, who was Jean Gordon's brother, Mary Stewart had Bothwell marry Gordon, which left Ogilvy at loose ends, so two months after Gordon married Bothwell, Ogilvy married Mary Beaton. Then Mary Stewart, having decided she wanted Bothwell herself (or whatever it was that happened), had Bothwell's marriage broken, so the Queen married Bothwell and Jean Gordon married Sunderland (who, according to Marshall, was still just 18, while Jean Gordon was 28). Finally, after Bothwell, Beaton, Stewart, and Sunderland were dead, Gordon and Ogilvy managed to marry. The only demonstrable love match in all that was the one between Gordon and Ogilvie, and while there may have been some happiness in the other pairings, we know that between Gordon and Bothwell was purely political.
As yet another strange note on this story, Janet Beaton, the aunt of Mary Beaton, was famous for having worked her way through five husbands in a long life -- and was reputed to have been sexually involved with the Earl of Bothwell for a time (Fraser, p. 263).
Another member of the family, Elizabeth Beaton, daughter of John Beaton of Creech, had an illegitimate daughter by James V, Lady Jean Stewart, who was born around 1533 but still became a friend of Mary Stewart's and briefly married the Earl of Argyll, though the marriage failed (Hamilton, p. 216; Marshall, pp. 90-93, 143).
Despite all these casual links to Queen Mary, it seems to me as if Mary Beaton was the one of the Four Maries who had the weakest connection to the Queen -- at least, she was the only one who seems never to have been active for the queen during or after the crises of 1566-1568. Indeed, she had some sort of dispute with the Queen over jewels after Mary was overthrown (Fraser, pp. 407-408). Which makes it somewhat ironic that she was still on Mary's payroll when the Queen was in English captivity, even though Beaton was in Scotland (Marshall, p. 183).
In a strange footnote, Fraser, p. 407, says that her handwriting was more similar to the Queen's than any of the other Maries, making her best equipped to produce forgeries of the Queen's handwriting.
** Mary Fleming was the daughter of the third Lord Fleming by Johanna Stewart, an illegitimate daughter of James IV. Her brother the fourth Lord was in Paris when he died in 1558; a younger brother became Fifth Lord and held Dumbarton Castle for Queen Mary 1569-1571; he ultimately was killed while fighting on her behalf (Stedall-Maitland, p. 237).
"All four little Maries were of noble birth, but Mary Fleming was considered the chief of them by reason of the royal blood which flowed in her veins, through her mother Lady Fleming" (Fraser, p. 32). "Mary Fleming always heads the list of Maries, for she was the cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots, being the fifth daughter of Lady Fleming, the queen's aunt and governess" (Marshall, p. 142).
Mary Fleming had other noteworthy relatives besides the various Lords Fleming; her sister Margaret became countess of Atholl (Hamilton, p. 216) as well as serving in Queen Mary's household for a time (Marshall, p.166). Her sister Agnes, as we saw above, was another of Mary Stewart's companions in France, who later became Lady Livingstone, and would also spend time with Queen Mary during her English captivity (Fraser, p. 181). Lord Fleming would have his property forfeited in 1570 by the regent Moray for Fleming's support of the Queen (Fraser, p. 380).
Morrison, p. 63, calls her "the brilliant Mary Fleming," without explanation. Fraser, p. 189, calls her "the belle of the quartet." Stedall-Maitland, p. 130, calls her "Mary [Stewart]'s closest confidant."
There is more about her that is potentially relevant to this song. Janet (or Jane, or Johanna) Stewart, Lady Fleming (died c. 1562), the mother of Mary Fleming, lost her husband at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547. Lady Fleming was part of the entourage of Mary Stewart when the young queen went to France; she was the queen's first governess while there. She was still attractive enough to gain the attention of none other than the French king Henry II, to whom she bore a son Henry, who came to be called the Bastard of Angôuleme (Fraser, p. 53; Marshall, pp. 42-43. That did cost her her job; Mary of Guise sent her back to Scotland in 1551 to bear the child; Marshall, p. 44). Queen Mary apparently became friends with Lady Fleming's son Henry, who was given various church offices and died in 1586 after a fight (Marshall, p. 45).
Mary Fleming, like her mother, was said to be very beautiful, and to have been quite close to the Queen. Fleming had, for a time, even slept in the Queen's bedroom, as a sort of guardian and chaperon, after a crazed French poet by the name of Pierre de Châtelard had broken into Mary Stewart's bedroom (Fraser, pp. 203-207. Châtelard was executed for his folly).
On January 6, 1567, she married William Maitland of Lethington (so Stedall-Maitland, p. 124, Fraser, p. 285; Hamilton, p. 217, gives the unlikely date of January 1568, though this is probably a typo since p. 214 says January 6, 1567; Magnusson, pp. 359-360 seems to imply a date around March 1567), a widower many years her senior. They had two children, James and Margaret (Marshall, p. 148).
It was an interesting marriage for one of the Maries, given that Maitland had been a Protestant for many years -- indeed, he had been a sort of a Protestant spy on Mary of Guise's privy council (Stedall-Maitland, pp. 10-11). Even contemporaries considered them an odd couple; Kircaldy of Grange, who in 1567 fought against Mary but would later fight for Mary at Maitland's side, said that Fleming was as suitable for Maitland "as I am to be Pope" (Marshall, p. 148). Yet the relationship seems to have worked, somehow.
After Maitland's death in 1573, Fleming married George Meldrum of Fyvie (Hamilton, p. 217). It is not known when this happened. Queen Mary in her captivity asked that Fleming join her in England in 1581, when Mary Seton retired from the entourage, but Fleming did not go, perhaps because of her re-marriage. Her date of death is not known but was probably around 1600 (Marshall, p. 149).
She had the most active career of any of the Maries -- e.g. in the 1560s she wrote a letter to Elizabeth I of England requesting the release of Earl Bothwell (Stedall-Maitland, p. 74). After the death of Darnley, she was the only one of the Maries that Bothwell allowed near Mary -- or, perhaps, Fleming was the only one willing to accompany her (Stedall-Maitland, p. 162), at least until Maitland and Bothwell quarreled.
We should probably give a biography of Maitland, since he was by far the most important of the Maries' husbands. Hamilton, p. 218, says he was 18 years older than Mary Fleming, and Marshall, p. 147, says "about eighteen years older"; Stedall-Maitland, p. 5, says Maitland was born around 1528, which would make the gap closer to 15 years. Wagner, p. 192, gives his birth date as c. 1528; Britannica says 1528; Hamilton, p. 212, 1525; Wikipedia 1525; clearly the exact date is unknown.) His father was a literary figure, Richard Maitland, who had arranged for William to be educated at St. Andrews and outside Scotland (Hamilton, p. 212); he had previously married Janet Menteith, by whom he had a daughter Marion (Hamilton, pp. 215-216; Marshall, p. 147).
Maitland was a fascinating character -- perhaps Mary Fleming liked intelligence. Morrison, p. 75, thinks his personality "nearer to us than many a man born centuries later." He was "Accomplished, with the subtlety of the courtier and the brilliance of the scholar" and "was cosmopolitan. He loved his native country of Scotland, but his patriotism had nothing provincial about it." At the time, though, "The dexterity with which he changed side won his the nickname of Chameleon, and his realistic politics rouse mistrust in the common people who called him Mitchell [Muckle? - RBW] Wylie, their corruption of Machiavelli." According to Fraser, p. 161, the name "Chameleon" came from George Buchanan, one of the great scholars of the age, who went through a few changes of heart of his own and ended up doing everything he could to insult the Marian regime. "Maitland was regarded by his contemporaries as having a finesse lacking in others, and an ability which made him 'subtle to draw out the secrets of every man's minds' as Buchanan put it. He was excellently educated and his correspondence is garnished with classical allusions and wit" (Fraser, p. 161).
Maitland had been part of the Scottish government for many years (including being made State Secretary in 1559; Hamilton, p. 212), and part of Mary Stewart's government, off and on, from the time of her return from France. He made serious attempts to reach accommodations with England (Hamilton, p. 213). in the wake of the Bothwell marriage, he had a row with Bothwell, and he and Mary Fleming left the court on June 6, 1567 -- a terrible blow to the Queen, since she lost both a close friend (Mary Fleming) and the smartest man in her government (Maitland).
Historically, Maitland had not always been a supporter of Queen Mary -- indeed, Stedall thinks he was at the heart of the conspiracy against Lord Darnley. (Though I find Stedall very unconvincing. Fraser, p. 226, calls him "The faithful Maitland," and Hamilton's capsule biography also seems to imply that, although he opposed some of Mary's policies, he never opposed her being queen. Hamilton, p. 215, says that he was accused of a part in Darnley's murder but seems to imply that the charge was false.) One thing he had done that Mary would have disliked: he had been Speaker of the parliament that had set aside the Catholic church, and one of the most important contributors to the Presbyterian confession of faith (Stedall-Maitland, p. 28).
"Regarded by both Protestants and Catholics as a traitor, Maitland was in fact a patriot, the well-being of Scotland being the most important matter in his life" (Hamilton, p. 215)
Whatever Maitland's real feelings about the Queen (my guess is that he was mostly loyal but had goals he wanted to achieve and found her stubborn plus a little foolish), Mary Fleming "had him twisted around her little finger" (Stedall-Maitland, p. xiii); even though Mary Stewart had planned to attaint him after the death of Riccio, he supported the Queen in the 1570s, after almost all others had abandoned her; not giving in until 1573, just days before his death. At that time, Kircaldy of Grange -- who had been against the Queen at Langside but then returned to the fold when he saw how she was treated -- was holding Edinburgh Castle for Mary. In 1571, Maitland, "his legs paralyzed, his body weak, and his head in need of support," joined the garrison (Stedall-Maitland, p. 233. No one seems to know what his condition was -- polio, perhaps?). They held out until the government prepared to batter the castle down, when they surrendered. Kircaldy was executed, as was his brother; Maitland, half-paralyzed and in great pain, died before they got to him (Morrison, p. 227; Magnusson, p. 375, wonders about poison or suicide; Stedall-Maitland, p. 238 says that it was assumed that he had poisoned himself). His body was left to rot, being attacked by vermin before Mary Fleming was able to have it cared for (Stedall-Maitland, p. 238). (The rest of the family also suffered, but only temporarily; William Maitland's younger brother John Maitland of Thirlstane in the reign of James I was made Secretary in 1584, and Chancellor in 1587; Stewart, p. 95.)
Mary Fleming them married George Meldrum of Fyvie, by whom she had two more children. Apparently her death date is unknown (Hamilton, pp. 216-217). In 1483, she had managed to get the forfeiture of Maitland's possessions reversed (Fraser, p. 433), and one of her sons by Maitland, James, was fairly influential politically and in time would write a defense of the father he can have only barely remembered.
In addition to Stedall-Maitland, which I find I deeply distrust, there is a modern biography of Maitland, William Blake, William Maitland of Lethington, E. Mellon Press, 1990. I have not seen it; it is rare and expensive. Older but still relatively recent is E. Russell, Maitland of Lethington, James Nisbet & Co, Ltd., 1912 (available on Google Books as well as in a bunch of low-quality reprints). Still earlier is Sir John Shelton, Maitland of Lethington And the Scotland of Mary Stuart, two volumes, W. Blackwood, 1887, which is regarded as not very reliable. The second volume (which contains most of the material that interests us) is available on Google Books.
** Mary Livingston was the daughter of Alexander, fifth Baron Livingston (who had been Queen Mary's guardian; Frasier, p. 32), and Agnes Douglas, daughter of John Earl of Morton (Hamilton, p. 217; she was their sixth child, according to Marshall, p. 143). Her brother William, the sixth Baron Livingston (died 1592) was a firm supporter of Queen Mary; he had been on her side when Riccio was murdered (Hamilton, p. 211) and was one of her agents in England 1568-1573 but was allowed to return to Scotland when Marian resistance ended in the latter year (Hamilton, p. 212). His wife Agnes was Mary Fleming's sister, based on Hamilton, p. 212.
Mary Livingston's younger sister Magdalen also became a member of Queen Mary's household, and was apparently a favorite (Marshall, p. 160); in 1562 Magdalen married Arthur Erskine of Backgrange, who became the queen's favorite equerry (Hamilton, pp. 156, 217); when the Queen fled her captivity after the murder of Riccio, it was Erskine who controlled her horse (Stedall-Darnley, p. 138).
Mary Livingston, said to be a good dancer, married a man who also enjoyed dancing, John Sempill of Beltries, in 1565. (According to Morrison, pp. 32-33, Queen Mary and two of the Maries once danced a classical ballet composed by Catherine de Medici, Queen of France and the mother-in-law of Mary Stewart. Presumably Mary Livingstone played a leading part.)
Since Sempill was a younger son of Lord Sempill, his fortune was limited; Queen Mary paid for the wedding (which took place at Forfar on March 6, 1565, making Livongston the first of the Maries to marry) and granted the couple lands (Stedall-Darnley, p. 92; Hamilton, p. 217). Sempill stayed close to the queen; he was attending the queen when David Riccio was murdered, and later helped one of her escape attempts. Mary Livingston helped to compile the inventory of her jewels that was part of the will the Queen made before her son James was born (Stedall-Darnley, p. 149).
Marshall, p. 146, says that Mary LIvingston was at Carberry Hill (though this seems to be disputed) and helped watch over the Queen as she went into custody, though they were separated after that. Her husband John Sempill was engaged in the conspiracies against the regent Moray, and was imprisoned but reprieved.
Sempill died in 1579; Livingston outlived him by at least a few years (Hamilton, p. 217; Marshall, p. 146, says she died in 1585).
Morrison, p. 63, says she "was vigorous and called the Lusty."
Livingston was a typical subject of John Knox's carping: "When Mary Livingston became engaged to the Catholic John Sempill, with whom she particularly enjoyed dancing, Knox implied that her marriage to 'The Dancer' was hastened by 'shame.' Yet they married to universal approval at a long-planned ceremony, and their first child was not born until at least a year later" (Stedall-Darnley, p. 58; cf. Fraser, pp. 188-189). Moreover, the wedding took at least two months to prepare (Fraser, p. 224); it clearly was not a shotgun wedding!
Mary Livingston Sempill is said to have joined Mary Stewart after she was imprisoned, even though her father-in-law Lord Sempill was one of those who signed the warrant for the queen's imprisonment (Morrison, p. 194).
** Mary Seton was the only daughter of the fourth Lord Seton; she, like Mary Beaton, had a French mother (Seton's second wife; Marshall, pp. 142-143), so one wonders a little why she needed education in French. Marshall, p. 144, says she "had inherited her family's tall stature and, like her relatives, placed loyalty to the queen above all other concerns." George, the fifth Lord Seton, returned to Scotland in 1561 with the Five Maries (Hamilton, p. 217) and became Mary Stewart's Master of the Household (Stedall-Darnley, p. 57); he would be one of the lords who was with her during her brief time of freedom after escaping Lochleven (Magnusson, p. 366).
Mary Seton was apparently rather quiet and introverted, not taking much pleasure in court life (Hamilton, p. 217), though she served Queen Mary devotedly. She was with the Queen at the Battle of Carberry (Morrison, p. 186). They were separated after that, but Seton was eventually allowed to join her Queen in captivity at Lochleven, along with two maids, though only after the abdication (Morrison, p. 198; Fraser, p. 349; Stedall-Maitland, p. 194, says that this was in September, after the queen had been captive there for months and after her miscarriage). She even impersonated her mistress in 1568 at Lochleven to delay the pursuers when Mary escaped captivity (Hamilton, p. 218; Marshall, p. 149; although according to Fraser, p. 356, the impersonation failed). When the Queen fled after Langside, Seton cut, or at least re-styled, Mary's hair to make her harder to recognize (Morrison, p. 210). The two were separated for a time after that, because the Queen traveled with such a small group, but Seton rejoined her while the queen was in Carlisle (Morrison, p. 219). She stayed with the queen until about 1583 (just four years before Mary Stewart's execution), making her the most faithful of the Maries. According to Morrison, p. 233, Seton remained at the queen's side for seventeen years, until she was too old to handle a needle -- i.e., presumably, was arthritic. She retired to a convent in Rheims, remaining there for 32 years until her death (Hamilton, p. 218).
She had at least two suitors, Christopher Norton and Andrew Beaton (yes, a member of the same family as Mary Beaton), in the late 1560s and 1570s while in England, but Norton got himself killed in the Northern Rising, and Seton "viewed [Beaton's] advances with more dismay than enthusiasm" (Marshall, p. 150). She claimed to have taken a vow of chastity, and while Beaton tried to get the vow lifted, he died before this was accomplished. Fraser, pp. 440-441, seems to think Seton regretted this "last chance of married happiness," but I suspect she wasn't interested in men. Clearly Seton was no candidate to have an illegitimate child!
Even after her retirement to a convent, she clearly cared about the Queen; during an illness in 1602, she made a will which included provisions for prayers for the queen -- though nothing came of it, since, by the time Seton died, she was a pauper with no property whatsoever. Interestingly, James Maitland, the son of Mary Fleming and William Maitland, visited her in 1613 (Marshall, p. 152).
In light of the song's comment that Mary Hamilton "washed the Queen's feet, and put the gold in her hair," it is noteworthy that it is Mary Seton who "had been described as the finest dresser of women's hair in the country" (Hamilton, p. 218; Marshall, p. 149). Morrison, p. 63, says that she was "the Queen's favorite."
THE COURT OF PETER THE GREAT OF RUSSIA
In one of life's curiosities, there is historical evidence that there actually was a Mary Hamilton who was executed for infanticide in Tsarist Russia. How that story could have managed to make it to Scotland has never been satisfactorily explained that I know of.
Obviously this Mary Hamilton was not one of the "Four Maries." She was, according to Massie, p. 804, a member of the court of Peter the Great's second wife Catherine, who after Peter's death was briefly the Empress Catherine I (1625-1627). The Russian "Marie Hamilton" was "a relation of the Scottish wife of Andrei Matveev [a well-known painter]." This Mary was rather an odd woman out, since most of the other members of Catherine's court were members of the nobility.
This Mary Hamilton's story has an odd similarity to Catherine's own, because Catherine wasn't a Russian aristocrat but probably a peasant from Livland, part of what is now Latvia but was then part of the Swedish kingdom. Peter the Great's marriage with his first wife Evdokia, which had been arranged for him, had been disastrous; they had children, but he eventually tried to put her in a convent, she rebelled, and ended up in harsh restrictions in a monastery (Anisimov, pp. 13-14). Peter started taking mistresses. Catherine was not the first, such but she rose highest.
Catherine's birth name was Martha, last name probably Skavronskaya (Massie, p. 371), and she was of no importance at all. Anisimov, p. 34, quotes the two lovers to the effect that she was fifteen years younger than Peter (which if true would make her birth date c. 1687), but Massie, p. 371, makes her 19 in 1703, so born c. 1684, and Sumner, p. 64, agrees that she was about eleven years younger. Born in Latvia (Anisiov) or Lithuania (Massie), she apparently was supposed to marry a Swedish military musician in 1702. In the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden, which began in 1700, her home town of Marienburg was taken by the Russians and the inhabitants enslaved (Anisimov, pp. 8-10). She ended up in the hands of one of Peter the Great's favorites, Aleksandr Menshikov, and Anisimov, p. 11, thinks she was his concubine. (Hard to believe, given how unattractive her portrait is, but that was painted later.) She took the name "Catherine" upon being received into the Orthodox church; she learned Russian at the same time (Anisimov, p. 18). Peter the Great saw her in Menshikov's establishment and was apparently smitten -- she seemed to have to ability to detect the seizures which troubled him all his life and reduce their effects (Massie, p. 376). So, like Mary Hamilton in some versions of the song, Catherine herself had been the mistress of a king. It's just that Catherine managed to convert concubinage into a marriage. Eventually. She had a three children by Peter by 1707, though two of them died young (Anisimov, pp. 17-18); more came later. Massie, p. 375, and Sumner, p. 64, say they secretly married in that year, though Anisimov thinks they did not become engaged until 1711, when they were going off to war against the Ottoman Empire. The marriage date matters, because it affected the legitimacy, and the marriageability, of the two daughters born in the interim! (The claim is that she helped him win the agreement that rescued his trapped army -- possibly by sending her jewels to the enemy as a bribe, though Sumner, p. 74, doubts this.) They were publicly married in 1712 in a relatively quiet ceremony in which the Tsar played the role of "Rear Admiral Peter Mikhailov" (Anisimov, pp. 20-21). It was quite the shock to society: the Tsar marrying a commoner! (Maybe it was because she didn't object when he took mistresses -- indeed, she supposedly helped him pick them out; Anisimov, p. 25.)
He did more than marry a commoner. He had his only surviving son by Evdokia, Aleksei, tortured and killed in 1718, thus making Catherine's son Peter his heir -- except that Peter Petrovich died in 1719 at the age of three and a half (Anisimov, p. 29; Sumner, p. 99). Soon after, Catherine arguably convinced Peter to make her his heir (Anismov, pp. 34-35, although Sumner, p. 100, regards this as merely crowning her as Empress). Certainly he changed the Russian law so that, instead of the succession following a fixed rule of primogeniture for male heirs of the previous Tsar, the old Tsar could designate a successor, who need not be male nor a member of the Romanov dynasty (Massie, p. 835).
In late 1724, the year before Peter's death, something odd happened. William Mons, the brother of an old mistress of Peter's, became close to Catherine, and started selling influence (Massie, p. 838). According to rumor, accepted by Anisimov, p. 35, Peter learned that Mons was Catherine's lover. Neither Massie nor Sumner, p. 161, believe this; they think the two were merely friends and that Mons was merely criminally corrupt.
It is certain that, at his trial, Mons was not asked about improper relations with the queen (the corruption charges were enough to cost him his head; Massie, p. 839). And Catherine was allowed to live (Anisimov, pp. 36-37), and Peter's declaration that she was his heir was not definitively retracted. Mons was sentenced to death. Catherine begged for his life and was rebuffed. As in the alleged case of Mary Hamilton, Peter visited Mons the night before his execution -- but there was no reprieve; "Peter went to his cell to say he was sorry to lose such a talented man, but that the crime demanded punishment" (Massie, p. 840).
Shortly after, in 1725, it seems Peter wanted to make a declaration about the succession on his deathbed, but he was too far gone to finish his statement (Sumner, p. 100); no one knows who he wanted to succeed him. After some confusion, Catherine took the throne (Anisimov, pp. 1-3; Sumner, p. 164), though she passed no substantial new policies (Anisimov, pp. 45-50; Sumner, p. 172 lists as the only major result of her reign a reduction in burdens on land- and serf-owners), and herself sickened and died in 1727 (Anisimov, pp. 52-53).
Thus, Catherine's first two children by the Tsar died, and while she did not murder the Tsar's son with her own hands, she was at least complicit and very well might have encouraged it. And this was the situation at the moment the Russian Mary Hamilton was brought to trial.
It's worth noting that, in Russia, "Mary Hamilton" would not have been called "Hamilton," because Russian does not have the "H" sound. Russians would have called her "Maria Khamilton." Would this affect the way her story was reported? Probably not, but we should remember it. It is also worth noting that Massie's earliest reference for the story of Mary Hamilton is Staehlin, who did not arrive in St. Petersburg until a decade and a half after the events (Staehlin, p. 5), and whose account was not published for decades after that. Anisimov never mentions Hamilton. But here is what Staehlin wrote beginning on p. 278.
"Miss Hamilton, maid of honour to the Empress, was much addicted to gallantry, and delivered herself of two children, with so much secrecy, as to escape suspicion of any one at court. But the same thing happening a third time, brought her to the scaffold.
"The dead child was found, and all the circumstances bore witness against her. She was taken into custody by order of the Czar, and confessed in prison, that this was the third child she had murdered. Sentence of death was pronounced on her, and confirmed by the Emperor, contrary to her expectation, for the great number of solicitations in her favour, and the friendship with which he had always honoured her, so far even as to raise suspicions of amorous motives, made her hope for pardon. All, however, was ineffectual; Peter, determined to keep up in his dominions the respect due to laws both human and divine.
"On the day of execution, the offender appeared dressed in a white silk gown, trimmed with black ribbons, and was conducted to the scaffold. The Emperor came thither, took leave of her, and gave her a kiss: -- 'I cannot,' said he, 'violate the laws to save your life. Support your punishment with courage, and, in the hope that God may forgive your sins, address your prayers to him with a hearth full of faith and contrition.' Miss Hamilton kneeled down, and prayed, and the Czar having turned aside, she was beheaded."
This was apparently the report of "Vœtius, cabinet maker at court, present at the execution."
It should be noted that infanticide had been a normal practice in Russia until just a few years before: "Peter forbade the killing of newborn infants who were deformed -- the custom in Moscow had been to quietly smother such children immediately after delivery" (Massie, p. 391). Mary Hamilton broke the law -- but she didn't really break custom.
SOME CURIOUS SIDE NOTES
We usually say that there was no infanticide at the court of Mary Stewart. Certainly we have no record of one. But, in 1830, workmen found bones bricked up inside a wall in Edinburgh Castle (Fraser, p. 267 note; Magnusson, p. 355 note; Bingham, p. 151, says that the body was said to have been wrapped in cloth of gold, and rejects the story). Whose? We don't know. When were the bones interred? We don't know. We apparently don't even know they were an infant's, or that the infant died by violence. But something must have happened to put them there.
It is interesting to note that Elizabeth Beaton, a not-epecially-close relative of Mary Beaton, had born a child to James V, and this child, Jean, had married then become estranged from the fifth Duke of Argyll and was said to have become close to Queen Mary (Hamilton, p. 216).
The addition of "Mary Carmichael" to the other three Maries is curious. The real Four Maries were all of good families. Which explains three of the four Maries in the song: Mary Beaton and Mary Seton were real. Mary Hamilton was not, but the Hamiltons were the heirs to the throne after Mary Stewart; they were a distinguished line. But the Carmichaels were a minor clan. However, one of the illegitimate half-brothers of Mary Stewart was Lord John Stewart, the son of one Elizabeth Carmichael, daughter of John, Lord Carmichael (Hamilton, p. 243). So here again we have an illegitimate child of James V in a setting with some similarity to the song.
If this song went back to the time of Mary Stewart, the author might not wish to name either the allegedly guilty woman (since, contrary to the song, she was very much alive and could strike back) or Mary Fleming (since she was the Chief Marie and a member of the royal family, even if on the wrong side of the bed).
It also occurs to me that there is the case of the son of George III, who in due time would become George IV. According to Sinclair-Stevenson, p. 118, Prince George at one time "had fallen in love with Mary Hamilton, one of his sisters' governesses." Whether this is relevant depends of course on the earliest date of the song. There are a number of mentions in the early nineteenth century. If we can push it before about 1780, then of course this Mary Hamilton is out of the question. Furthermore, George IV's Mary Hamilton didn't kill her baby. In fact, she never even had an affair with the prince -- he was 16, she was six years older, and he wrote her a bunch of pathetic love letters, but she was not willing to get involved (Smith, p. 17). But the talk of an affair with the Prince of Wales might have influenced the name of the character in this song.
SO WHAT IS THIS SONG REALLY ABOUT?
Having rehearsed both histories -- that of Mary Queen of Scots and of Tsar Peter -- we return to our question of which one, if either one, was the inspiration for this song. To try to find the answer we will need to look at all the various aspects of the song, not just a few words such as the name "Mary Hamilton." For extensive discussion of the matter (which is, however, rather more theoretical than practical) see Davis-MoreTraditionalBalladsOfVirginia, pp. 246-248. I think, however, that we need to dig deeper.
Unfortunately, there are versions of the song from more than seventy different informants, plus anonymous versions. Probably there are, in all, between eighty and ninety distinct versions known -- and I don't have access to all of them. So I've started by just taking the versions in Child. I've looked at all of Child's versions and done my best to catalog every motif that is, or has the potential to be, based on actual history. In many cases, I've quoted particular versions to establish the element that I mean, but the reference is to the motifs, not the exact words. I've numbered the items for easy reference:
-- #1: The heroine is called...
----1A: MARY HAMILTON -- A B G H I (D once called her Molly, but else Mary Hamilton).
----1B: MARY MILD or similar BUT DO NOT USE THE NAME "HAMILTON": (C "Mary Myle") (M "Marie Mild") (N "Mary Mild")
----1C: WHICH HAVE NO NAME OR AT LEAST DO NOT USE THE NAME "HAMILTON" -- C E F K L M (E "Lady Maisry") (F "Lady Mary")
-- #2: My FATHER was the DUKE OF YORK (!) -- E F L Q / DUKE OF ARGYLL -- P
-- #3: How she arrived at court: Ladies lived in a bower... THE YOUNGEST IS TO THE KING'S COURT -- B (C specifically three ladies) (D also has three, one a barber's wife) O
-- #4: The YOUNGEST (of the three ladies/daughters of... someone) is to Scotland gane [implying she wasn't from Scotland!] -- D
-- #5: Mary's mother hires her to the queen WHEN SCARCE ELEVEN YEARS AULD -- H J
-- #6: [The prince takes her to bed] WHILE SHE WAS SCARCE FIFTEEN -- D
-- #7: THE KING THOCHT MAIR O MARIE THAN ONIE THAT WERE THERE and loved her more than the queen -- G / THE KING FELL IN LOVE WITH Mary -- L
-- #8: They could get of her nae work/could not work FOR WANTONNESS AND PLAY -- B C
-- #9: Mary Hamilton's (BORN A/GANGS WI) BAIRN -- (A gangs wi) (B born a) (E grew big wi bairn)
-- #10: Identity of the seducer:
---- #10A: the HIGHEST STEWART of a' -- A / THE KING H
---- #10B: "A YOUNG MAN" -- (E, which later calls him "Warenston") J N
---- #10C: "SWEET WILLIE" -- F
---- #10D: NA BODY KEND TO WHA -- H
-- #11: She's PULL[ED] THE LEAF OFF THE TREE [to try to abort the child] -- C D (In I it is the King who pulls the tree) N
-- #12: The Means of Execution:
---- #12A: She's (TIED IT In (something)/PUT IT IN A TINY BOAT) and CAST IT OOT TO SEA -- (A tied in her apron) (B in a piner-pig) (C D in a handkerchief) (K calls it both a handkerchief and a napkin) (L in her "apron green") (O "a wee wee clout")
---- #12B: (Instead of casting it to sea, the body is in the bed, e.g.) BETWEEN THE BOLSTER AND THE BED -- E / the baby WAS BLABBERING IN ITS BLEED -- F (L) / they seek it FROM THE PILLOW TO THE STRAW -- J / UNDERNEATH... THE BLANKETS FINE -- M
-- #13: When the queen investigates, she called the AULD Queen -- A G
-- #14: QUEEN asks WHERE'S THE BONNY WEE BABE -- A B C D E F G H I J (in K, a "bonnie wee burd" asks) L M
-- #15: Mary denies it: THERE NEVER WAS A BABE intill my room -- A C D E F G H I J L M
-- #16: The queen is named Mary, but the king, who condemns the murderous girl, is "King Henrie" -- K
-- #17: THE KING says she should have SAVED THE BRAW CHILD'S LIFE -- L
-- #18. The queen says Rise... THERE IS A WEDDING IN GLASGOW TOWN/TO SEE EDINBOROUGH/HOLYROOD -- B C D E G H I
-- #19: Queen says PUT ON YOUR ROBES OF BLACK/BROWN -- A
-- #20: She put not on her robes of black... But she put on her ROBES OF (WHITE/GOLD), usually to "shine" through the town -- (A white) (B C K O gold) (D has the queen tell her to wear yellow gold) (E white silk and red scarlet) (H J have the queen tell her to wear red) (N red)
-- #21, when Mary arrives, she goes up the (CANNOGATE/PARLIAMENT STAIR/TOLBOOTH) -- (A Cannogate and Parliament Stair) (B C E H Tolbooth) (D Parliament Close) (F Cannogate) (G [H} M Netherbow Port) (I Tolbooth and Netherbow) (L Cannogate and Cowgate Head)
-- #22. After being condemned, Mary called on the "jolly sailors" not to report to her family: Let them never say to my father and mother THAT I CAME HERE TO DEE -- A B (E) (F) (G)
-- #23: She specifies something about where she is or is dying: Little did my mother ken... THE LANDS I WAS TO TRAVEL THROUGH, THE DEATH I WAS TO DEE -- A B C I J (N the ROAD I'd hae to travel in) R (others mention only the death she was to dee)
-- #24: Her parents come to see her but will not give her gold (as in "The Maid Freed from the Gallows") -- E F
-- #25: LAST NIGHT I WASHED THE QUEEN'S FEET AND (GENTLY LAID HER DOWN/PUT THE GOWD IN/COMBED HER HAIR) -- (A B laid her down) (C kembed doun her yellow hair) E G I (N combed her hair)
-- #26: When she is at the place of execution: BY THERE COME THE KING HIMSELF... COME DOWN, COME DOWN, MARY HAMILTON -- B
-- #27 Mary answers the king, HOLD YOUR TONGUE... IF YOU'D A MIND TO SAVE MY LIFE, YOU'D NOT HAVE SHAMED ME -- B
-- #28: LAST NIGHT THERE WERE FOUR MARIES, THIS NICHT THERE'LL BE BUT THREE -- A B D G H I J M N. The names of the other three Maries are:
Mary Beaton -- A B D F G H I K M N (J "Mary Bethune," which is an alternate, rarer name for the Beaton family -- Steadall, for instance, uses it consistently)
Mary Carmichael -- A B D G H I J K M
Mary Heaton -- N
Mary Livingston -- F
Mary Michel -- N
Mary Seton -- A B D F G H I J K M
The versions are a very mixed bag, completely inconsistent. "E" in particular has a lot of "The Maid Freed from the Gallows," and "F" seems to mix a more normal version with E and its changes. But, as Child noted, the versions simply cannot be reconciled: Although most versions are individually coherent, all of them contain elements which directly contradict elements of others.
Personally, I rather suspect there are two originals which have partly overlapped.
The obvious explanation for this song is that it refers to events in the time of Mary Queen of Scots. But nowhere in Mary's troubled reign do we find an actual record to a serving girl committing infanticide. We can say with even higher confidence is that this did not happen to any of the actual Four Maries. Of the motifs listed above, the only ones which fit actual events at Mary's court are 1B, 16, (18), 28. The ballad thus cannot be about actual historical events in the court of Mary Stewart.
The hypothesis that it's based on the Russian Mary Hamilton goes back to Sharpe. This hypothesis sounds good, since it is the only one with a "Mary Hamilton" and an infanticide. On the other hand, it's not a great fit for Peter the Great, either. The only elements of the actual story found in the ballad are 1A, (8?), (9, but note that the Russian Mary Hamilton murdered three children, not just one) (10B), 12B, 17, 20, (26). Notably, King Peter was not the father of Mary's child. And although Peter talked with Mary Hamilton on the scaffold (#17), he didn't show a whiff of sympathy; the incidents are not in fact parallel. If it were actually about that event, you'd think it would have more of the details straight! Plus there is the incontrovertible fact of Motif #28, the statement that the Queen had four Maries. That really can only refer to the court of Mary Queen of Scots, and this is substantiated by the fact that the song has two of the four surnames right. This is among the best-attested of all the motifs. This is simply incompatible with the Russian hypothesis.
And yet, there was no Mary Hamilton and no infanticide in the Stewart court that we know of.
The Peter the Great version of the story also suffers from the fact that the first report of it that would have been heard in Scotland is almost certainly Staehlin's, which didn't come out until 1788 -- and Burns quoted one stanza of this song (the one "Little did my mither ken"; #23 above) in 1790. Maybe that verse floated in, but on the face of it, the song was in existence *before anyone in Britain knew the story of the Russian Mary Hamilton*. (The name "Mary Hamilton," we might add, doesn't seem to have been attested before Scott in 1802. A small gap from 1790, but not entirely trivial.)
So what is left?
John Knox, that's what is left. Sir Walter Scott seems to have been the first to make the connection between this song and events that did not happen but that were nonetheless reported about Queen Mary's court. He connects it with members of Mary Stuart's court *other than* the four Maries and Lord Darnley. He had evidence for this in the writings of Knox, who told a tale chillingly like this ballad: "he repeated one actual case which had come to public knowledge at the beginning of Mary's rule; of a 'heinous murder' committed in the court -- 'yea, not far from the Queen's own lap.' A French woman who had served in the queen's chamber was said to have 'played the whore' with the queen's apothecary and in the course of the liaison unwisely conceived a child. Father and mother then conspired to murder the infant: 'Yet,' to continue Knox's account of it all, 'were the cries of the newborn bairn heard; search was made, the child and mother both deprehended, and so were both the man and the woman damned to be hanged upon the public street of Edinburgh'" (Fraser, p. 188; cf. Marshall, p. 142). Thus here we have a case where the court looked for a babe they "saw and heard greet by thee."
Knox also cast shade on Mary Livingston, declaring that "shame" hastened her marriage to John Semple, and noting that she was called "the Lusty." But "lusty" in this period often meant "lively," not "sexually active," and in actual fact there was no shame over their wedding and Livingston's first child was born more than a year after the wedding (Fraser, pp. 188-189; Stedall-Darnley, p. 58). But facts didn't matter to Knox.
In this connection it is worth looking again at the four Maries listed in the song. Mary Beaton and Mary Seton are correctly included among the four Maries. Mary Livingston and Mary Fleming usually are not. One can imagine Fleming being omitted because of her higher personal status -- and the name "Hamilton" being substituted for "Livingston" because the author wanted to pin the crime on her but did not dare to use her name.
Furthermore, bolstering this hypothesis, we have a reference to Darnley getting a lady of the court pregnant: the only case of a girl getting pregnant by "the highest Stewart of all" (Stedall-Darnley, p. 116).
Thus although there was no Mary Hamilton who got pregnant by Darnley, murdered the baby, and was executed, we have John Knox telling of a woman who got pregnant, murdered the baby, and was executed, and Knox calling one of the Four Maries lusty, and all in a court where Lord Darnley got a serving girl pregnant. It's easy to see how someone stupid enough to believe Knox could have combined three tales, at least one of them false, into one.
We may emphasize: This narrative is false, but it assembles three actual pieces of court gossip (or lies by John Knox, if we're frank), and it meets motifs 1B, 9, 10A, 12, 25, 28. This is as good a fit as the Russian hypothesis, and it doesn't require us to explain how the story made it from Russia to Great Britain.
Some possible variations on this theme: Perhaps, as Scott suggested, the crime involved someone in Mary's court other than the Four Maries. An obvious thought would be that it might refer to Janet Fleming, the mother of Mary Fleming, who became pregnant by Henry II of France. The two Ladies Fleming were then confused, and in the Great Rewrite that converted Mary Fleming and Mary Livingston into Mary Carmichael and Mary Hamilton, she got renamed. This hypothesis fits in every way except that there was no infanticide.
Another possibility is that the story got attached to the Hamilton family as a political move, perhaps by Lennox or by Bothwell or by James Stewart the Queen's brother.
Also, it should be noted that the verse "Yestreen there were four Maries" does not absolutely require that one of the four be executed; it merely requires that one leave their number. It might be, e.g., that one of the four married and left the group -- so, theoretically, this verse might refer to the marriage of Mary Livingston, the first of the four to marry. If Mary Livingstone were the singer, the verse might have begun in a form such as "Yestreen the Queen had four Maries, This e'en she'll hae but three, There were Mary Beaton and Mary Seton, And fair Mary Fleming and me." Note that this requires just one actual name change to get the verse as it now exists.
I have one other really odd thought, which I don't really endorse but will mention: That this is a sort of an answer to the "calumniated queen" tale type (Thompson K2121.2), exemplified in English literature by the story of Constance in Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" and among the ballads by "Sir Aldingar" [Child 59] (see that entry for background on the type). Here we have the roles and the parts reversed: Instead of a queen or noblewoman falsely accused of adultery, we have a king genuinely accused of adultery, with Mary Hamilton as the woman who suffers as a result. Looked at that way, there is a faint feminist hint in here. But I have no support for this idea except a belief that someone would have a different response to this type.
In light of theme #2, that the pregnant woman's father was the Duke of York... it's worth noting that, although there were adult Dukes of York from the reign of Edward III until 1461, they all but disappeared after that. There was no adult Duke of York from 1483 until after the Stuarts succeeded in England in 1603, and only one after that until the Hannoverian Succession in 1714. So unless the song is post-1714 (and probably post-Peter the Great), then the only possible Duke of York was James, son of Charles I and brother of Charles II, the future James II -- who, it should be added, had many mistresses, though I find no record of one named Hamilton.
To sum up: If you want my personal guess, I think that the song originated in the scandal and infanticide in Mary's court that John Knox referred to, or perhaps the woman that Darnley got pregnant. It probably did not originally involve "Mary Hamilton" but "Mary Mild," or perhaps "Mary Livingston" or some such. Consider: At the court of Mary Stewart, all at the same time, we have
-- The King (Darnley) getting one of Mary's servants pregnant
-- One of Mary's servants getting pregnant and committing infanticide
-- John Knox implying that one of the queen's four Maries was committing fornication
In fact these three things all involved different women, and the third at least was false. But they all involve a servant of the Queen, and they all involve sex. Is it any wonder if someone assumed they involved the same woman, maybe Mary Livingston?
For that matter, it's not far from there to replace "Livingston" with "Hamilton" -- they scan the same. Possibly, if the original mentioned the name Hamilton at all, it was because of the Hamilton claim to be Queen Mary's heir.
Perhaps, indeed, the original didn't even involve the infanticide -- we could envision a pure "Mary Livingston" ballad. "Word is to the kitchen gone... that Mary Livingston's born a bairn to the highest Stewart of all" (motifs #1C, #9, #10A). "My father was Lord Livingston" (#2). "My mother sent me to the queen When I was scarce five (?) years auld" (#5). Because of fornication, she is forced from the queen's house: "Yestreen the queen had four Maries...." (#28). No execution necessarily implied. And it's all in John Knox.
Very possibly the Russian story cemented the name of "Mary Hamilton" in later versions. Maybe it brought in the infanticide. Conceivably Mary Hamilton even had her own broadside version which mixed with the song set in Mary Stewart's court. But the ballad did not originate with the Russian woman and is not at its heart about her. John Knox's vitriol contained all the elements required to put together the core of the ballad, and the rest could be imagination and coincidence. - RBW
Bibliography

Anisimov: Evgenii V. Anisimov, Five Empresses: Court Life in Eighteenth-Century Russia Praeger Publishers, 2004
Bingham: Caroline Bingham, Darnley: A Life of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Consort of Mary Queen of Scots, 1995; I use the 1997 Phoenix paperback
Cosh: Jackie Cosh, The King with the Iron Belt: The Life of King James IV of Scotland, JC Publications, 2018
Drummond: Humphrey Drummond, The Queen's Man: Mary Queen of Scots and the Fourth Earl of Bothwell -- Lovers or Villians?, Leslie Frewin of London, 1975 (note: This is an extremely un-scholarly book)
Fraser: Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots, Delacorte Press, 1969
Hamilton: The Duke of Hamilton, Mary R: Mary Queen of Scots: The Crucial Years, Manstream Publishing, 1991
Keay/Keay: John Keay and Julia Keay, editors, Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland, HarperCollins, 1994
Macalpine/Hunter: Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, George III and the Mad Business, Pantheon, 1969
Magnusson: Magnus Magnusson, Scotland: The Story of a Nation, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000
Marshall: Rosalind K. Marshall, Queen Mary's Women: Female relatives, servants, friends and enemies of Mary, Queen of Scots, John Donald, 2006
Massie: Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great, 1980 (I use the 1981 Alfred A. Knopf edition)
McGrigor: Mary McGrigor, The Other Tudor Princess: Margaret Douglas, Henry VII's Neice, 2015 (I use the 2016 History Press edition)
Morrison: N. Brysson Morrison, Mary, Queen of Scots, The Vanguard Press, 1960
Perry: Maria Perry, The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France, 1998; I use the 1999 St. Martin's Press edition
Ring: Morgan Ring, So High a Blood: The Life of Margaret, Countess of Lennos. 2017 (I use the 2018 Bloomsbury paperback)
Sinclair-Stevenson: Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, Blood Royal: The Illustrious House of Hannover, Doubleday, 1979, 1980
Smith: E. A. Smith, George IV (one of the Yale English Monarchs series), Yale University Press, 1999
Stedall-Darnley: Robert Stedall, Mary Queen of Scots' Downfall: The Life and Murder of Henry, Lord Darnley, Pen and Sword, 2017
Stedall-Maitland: Robert Stedall, Mary Queen of Scots' Secretary: William Maitland, Politician, Reformer and Conspirator, Pen and Sword, 2021
Staehlin: Jacob Stählin von Storksburg, Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great Collected from the Conversation of Several Persons of Distinction at Petersburg and Moscow, J. Murray, 1788 (available on Google Books)
Stewart: Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: The Life of James VI & I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain, St. Martin's Press, 2003
Sumner: B. H. Sumner, Peter the Treat and the Emergence of Russia, Collier Books, 1962
Wagner: John A. Wagner, Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World, Britain, Ireland, Europe, and America, Onyx Press, 1999
Willson: D[avid] Harris Willson, King James VI and I, Holt, 1956?
Wormald: Jenny Wormald, Mary Queen of Scots, 1988; revised edition 2001 (I use the 2018 Birlinn Ltd. paperback with a new foreword and afterword by Anna Groundwater)

Last updated in version 6.7
File: C173

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography