The Impact of Mary Stewart's Execution on Anglo Scottish Relations

SUSAN DORAN

589

© The Historical Association 2000. Published by
Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Revenge her Foul and Most Unnatural
Murder? The Impact of Mary Stewart’s
Execution on Anglo-Scottish Relations

SUSAN DORAN
St Mary’s, Strawberry Hill

Abstract
No sooner had Mary Stewart been put on trial than James VI tried to persuade Eliza-
beth to pardon or reprieve his mother. His efforts were not half-hearted or insincere,
because of his ambition to secure the English succession, as many historians have sug-
gested. On the contrary, he pursued Mary’s case energetically and forcefully, for he
believed that his own personal honour and that of the Scottish nation were at stake. Simi-
larly, concern about the succession did not prevent James from protesting about Mary’s
execution after February 1587. James refused to communicate with the queen directly,
refused entry to her envoy, encouraged border incursions and appeared to be listen-
ing to the voices in Scotland calling for vengeance. Until the spring of 1588 there were
justifiable fears in England that the Anglo-Scottish defensive league negotiated at
Berwick in July 1586 would not survive the crisis. Mary’s execution, moreover, did not
resolve the English succession question by leaving James as the only viable candidate for
the throne on Elizabeth’s death. Uncertainty about the future existed on both sides of
the border and was an important cause of Anglo-Scottish friction until the closing years
of the reign.

lizabeth I and her ministers initiated the legal moves leading to
the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in August 1586, barely a
month after they had signed the Treaty of Berwick and formed

a defensive league with James VI of Scotland. It was a moment when
Walsingham and Burghley felt confident that they could strike against
Mary without fear of retaliation from her son. Both calculated that he
was far too much of a realist to allow the death of his mother to disturb
the Anglo-Scottish entente, affect his pension adversely or put at risk his
claim to the English succession. Historians have concurred with their
judgement, all claiming that in the months before and after the execution

This article was originally read at the Early Modern History seminar at the Institute of Historical
Research in February 1999. I would like to thank Dr Robin MacPherson for the useful points he
raised there. I would also like to thank Dr Jenny Wormald, Dr Chris Durston and Alan Doran for
reading and commenting on the text. A shorter paper was read to the History Research seminar at
the University of Reading.

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THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

James acted totally out of cynical self-interest.

They have noted the

insincerity of his diplomatic efforts on Mary’s behalf and the emptiness
of his war-cries once she had died. A few, most notably the seventeenth-
century Scottish historian David Calderwood, have even insinuated
that James had had no wish at all to save his mother’s life, since her death
would remove a rival to his throne, and that consequently: ‘When the
King heard of the executioun, he could not conceale his inward joy,
howbeit outwardlie he seemed to be sorrowfull.’

In the twentieth cen-

tury, however, while most historians stepped back from suggesting that
James actually wanted Mary to die, they maintained that he did little
to save her. During the negotiations in the run-up to her execution,
they claim, his sole interest and objective was to obtain recognition
of his future title to the English throne. Once the execution had taken
place, they say, he protested only as long as it took the English to buy
him off. James, wrote J. D. Mackie, ‘allowed himself to be soothed by
soft words and hard cash’.

It was generally agreed that James’s be-

haviour, though hardly heroic, was certainly wise, since it ensured the
survival of the English alliance and strengthened his claim to the succes-
sion; thanks to his hard-headed, as well as hard-hearted, attitude the
execution of Mary Queen of Scots in February 1587 caused barely
a ripple in the smooth flow of Anglo-Scottish relations. Furthermore,
in the view of most historians, it effectively ended the succession ques-
tion which had dogged the English government since the early 1560s;
with the removal of the Catholic Mary, the way was clear for a Scottish
Protestant succession.

It is undoubtedly true that during the winter months following Mary’s

trial Elizabeth and her ministers became convinced that James would not
abandon the Anglo-Scottish league negotiated at Berwick and avenge his
mother’s execution. By the end of January 1587, they were positive that all
his protests about the death sentence were ‘perfunctorie’ and a matter of
form, rather than the product of genuine distress or concern, and that
consequently he would ‘with tyme digest the worst’ [Mary’s execution]
in return for assurances that his claim to the English throne would not be

See, for example, Helen Georgia Stafford, James VI of Scotland and the Throne of England

(New York, 1940), pp. 13–8; David Harris Willson, King James VI and I (1956), pp. 73–8;
Maurice Lee, John Maitland of Thirlestone and the Foundation of the Stewart Despotism in
Scotland (Princeton, 1959) [hereafter Lee, Maitland ], pp. 100–10; Maurice Lee, Great Britain’s
Solomon: James VI and I in his Three Kingdoms (Urbana and Chicago, 1990) [hereafter Lee, Solomon],
pp. 97–8.

David Calderwood, The History of the Kirk of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1843) [hereafter Calderwood,

The Kirk], p. 611.

J. D. Mackie, ‘Scotland and the Spanish Armada’, Scottish Historical Review, xii (1914) [hereafter

Mackie, ‘Scotland and the Armada’], 13–14. See also Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and
the Making of Policy 1572–1588 (1981), p. 425.

A dissenting voice on the succession issue comes from Howard Nenner. He points out that in

the 1590s contemporaries ‘were in no way confident that the transition to the next reign would be
effected quite as effortlessly as it proved to be’; The Right to be King: The Succession to the Crown
of England 1603–1714 (1995), pp. 13–25, esp. p. 17.

SUSAN DORAN

591

impeded by her condemnation as a traitor.

This impression was carefully

created by some of James’s servants who were supposed to be pleading for
Mary’s life in England: in particular, Archibald Douglas, Patrick Master
of Gray and Sir Alexander Stewart. Douglas, resident ambassador in Eng-
land since August 1586, was little more than an English agent, and had his
own motives for wanting the elimination of the Scottish queen and the
continuation of the Anglo-Scottish alliance. Consequently, at crucial times
in the negotiations, he indicated to Elizabeth’s councillors that James was
‘troubled’ less by the prospect of his mother’s execution than by his own
insecurities concerning the succession. Provided that the king was satisfied
on that latter point, Douglas assured them, he ‘wald nevir break notwith-
standing onye report’.

Gray, by contrast, was at this time in his career

a more honest servant of his king, but he too was anxious to see the pres-
ervation of the Anglo-Scottish league and as a result tried to reassure
Walsingham that James was intent on avoiding a rupture with England.
Consequently, when the king offended Elizabeth by writing a strongly
worded letter on his mother’s behalf, Gray insisted that his words had been
misconstrued and that their meaning had been ‘modest and not men-
acing’.

In January 1587 Sir Alexander Stewart did the most damage. He

completely undermined the attempts of James’s formal embassy to inter-
cede for Mary’s life by claiming that he knew ‘further of his hienes mind in
all thir materis’ and that the king would cause no trouble once Mary was
executed. According to reports in Scotland, he had told Elizabeth that
‘were she [Mary] once deade, yf the kinge at firste shewed him self not con-
tented therewith, they might easely satisfy him, in sending doges and deare.’

James himself must also take some responsibility for English com-

placency about his mood and intentions, for he sometimes conveyed
mixed messages to the English court. His letter to Leicester on 15 De-
cember 1586 provides a good example. There he wrote: ‘But speciallie
how fonde and inconstant I were if I shulde preferre my mother to the
title.’

Given the context, where he was proclaiming his innocence in

Mary’s conspiracies, James presumably intended to say that he would
hardly have conspired to put her on the throne of England, since it would
have placed her title to the succession before his own.

The statement,

Robert S. Rait and Anne I. Cameron, King James’s Secret: Negotiations between Elizabeth and

James VI Relating to the Execution of Mary Queen of Scots from the Warrender Papers (London,
1927) [hereafter KJS], p. 166.

KJS, p. 80, Douglas to James VI, 8 Dec. 1586; Public Record Office [hereafter PRO] SP 52/2,

no. 6 (printed in Calendar of Scottish Papers [hereafter Cal. Scot. P.], ix. 245), Douglas to William
Davison, 15 Jan. 1587. For background to Douglas, see KJS, pp. 19–21.

PRO SP 52/41, fo. 91 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 201–2), Gray to Walsingham, 25 Dec. 1586. The letter

referred to Henry VIII’s execution of his bedfellows. See n. 12.

KJS, p. 166, George Young to Maitland, 20 Jan. 1587; Extract from the Despatches of M.

Courcelles, French Ambassador at the Court of Scotland 1586–7, ed. Robert Bell (Edinburgh, 1828)
[hereafter Courcelles], p. 31.

KJS, pp. 101–2.

In the preceding sentence James had written ‘quhomsom evir will affirme that I had ever intelli-

gence with my mother sen [since] the Master of Grayis being in England, or ever thocht to preferre

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THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

however, could easily have been understood otherwise and taken to mean
that James cared more about the succession than about his mother.

Equally problematic was the next sentence: ‘my honour constraynis me
to insist for her lyffe.’ On the one hand, James was intimating that he
was petitioning for Mary’s life only out of a sense of duty; yet, on the
other, the word ‘insist’ implied an intention to take a firm position
on the issue. There were other occasions as well when James seemed to
speak with two voices. On 28 November 1586 he sent Elizabeth a threaten-
ing and insulting message by way of Douglas. In it he referred to the
besmirching of Henry VIII’s reputation through the ‘beheading of his bed-
fellow’, a tragedy, which he claimed ‘was inferior to this’, presumably be-
cause his mother was a monarch while Elizabeth’s was only a commoner.
On hearing of the queen’s ‘choler’ at the letter, however, he immediately
backed down and abjectly apologized, declaring himself to be the queen’s
‘most honest and steadfast freind’.

Historians have explained James’s

equivocation as a clever device for escaping a difficult diplomatic situ-
ation. According to them, it was designed to allow him to fulfil his
formal obligations as a son while at the same time avoiding a quarrel
with Elizabeth and safeguarding his title to the English succession.

A different interpretation is introduced in this article. The argument

here is that James’s motives were less straightforward, that the emphasis
in his announcements shifted in reaction to the developing crisis, and that
the twenty-year-old king was often out of his depth in the negotiations,
floundering amidst the conflicting pressures upon him. In addition, the
claim that the trial and execution of Mary Stewart had little or no im-
pact on Anglo-Scottish relations is challenged. Evidence is presented that
the league was put in jeopardy for some months afterwards, and that the
breach was not mended until at least a year later. Finally, the impact on
the question of the succession to the English throne is reassessed. It is
suggested that Mary’s death did not resolve the succession issue by leav-
ing James as the only viable candidate; but that, on the contrary, during
the last decade of the reign there was considerable uncertainty in both
England and Scotland about the succession and a fear that it would not
be settled peacefully on Elizabeth’s death.

When James was first notified of the Babington plot of 1586, his main
concern was the succession. At that time, he did not believe Mary’s life
was in any real danger, and his first objective was to distance himself from

her to my selff in the title, or ever delt in any uther foreyne course, they lie falselie and unhonestlie
of me.’

According to Robert Rait, ‘this letter convinced Elizabeth and her ministers that they might put

Mary to death without imperilling the Scottish alliance’; KJS, p. vii.

British Library [hereafter BL] Cotton Manuscript [hereafter Cott. MS] Caligula D iv, fo. 104;

KJS, pp. 98–9, James to Elizabeth, 15 Dec. 1596.

SUSAN DORAN

593

her conspiracies so that he would not be disinherited from his title to the
English throne in accordance with the terms of the 1585 act for the
security of the queen’s royal person.

He, therefore, made no attempt to

deny or defend his mother’s role in the plot to assassinate Elizabeth, and
was even prepared to see her brought to trial. In late September 1586,
the master of Gray informed Douglas: ‘he is content the law go fordvart,
hir life being save, and would glaidley vyshe that all forain princess should
know how evil she has usit hirself towardis the Queen’s Majestie thair.’

None the less, even then, James made it clear that he could not counten-
ance his mother’s execution. As Gray explained to Douglas, ‘it cannot
stand with his honour, that he be a consentir to tak his mother’s lyf, bot
he is content how strictly she be keipit.’

James began in earnest his attempts to intercede for Mary’s life once

the news of her trial at Fotheringay (14 October) had reached Scotland.
From the start his diplomatic entreaties were accompanied by a threat
of a rupture with England. On 20 October 1586 he urged Douglas to
‘spaire na painis nor plainness’ to save Mary, and warned him that ‘if
hir lyfe be taikin, for then adeu vith my dealing vith thaime that are
speciall instrumentis thairof.’

In order to demonstrate to Elizabeth the

seriousness of his petitions, James did not rely solely on Douglas, but
decided to send south William Keith, a favoured member of his house-
hold. Keith had a dual mission: ‘first to procure instantly for his majestei’s
mother’s lyfe’, and second to receive guarantees that ‘at this parliament
his title be not preiudgit’ by Mary’s guilt.

Both Gray and Douglas dis-

agreed with the king’s priorities, since they feared that James’s attempts
to save his mother might alienate supporters at the English court and
thereby endanger his title to the succession. Douglas had already warned
the king that his ‘to[o] earnist request’ for his mother’s life might create a
suspicion that he had been ‘assenting to hir procedingis’, while Gray con-
demned Keith’s mission as potentially ‘ruinous’.

Despite their advice,

James refused to alter his instructions. Douglas, though, on his own in-
itiative decided to keep separate the two sets of negotiations. He chose
to execute the task closer to his own heart, namely talks to secure James’s
title to the succession, while Keith was left to plead for Mary’s life.

At this stage in the negotiations James was fairly confident that Eliza-

beth would listen to his petitions and reprieve his mother. In public, at

On 4 October 1586, M. Courcelles, the French ambassador in Scotland, reported that James had

said that he believed Elizabeth would attempt nothing against Mary’s person. He repeated this
observation at the end of the month; Courcelles, pp. 7, 12.

Burghley State Papers, ed. William Murdin (1759) [hereafter Burghley Papers], p. 569.

Ibid., p. 568.

BL Cott. MS Caligula C ix, fo. 574 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 120–2) and KJS, p. 35.

Gray thought the second petition mattered to James largely because it would test Elizabeth’s good

will towards him and her readiness to grant the first; PRO SP 52/41, fo. 42 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 104),
Gray to Walsingham, 21 Oct. 1586.

KJS, pp. 31–3; PRO SP 52/41, fo. 44 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 106–7). See also Courcelles, pp. 9–10,

31 Oct. 1586.

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THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

least, he appeared to be ‘almoste assured that nothinge shal be done to
her persone’. Only towards the end of November 1586 did he realize that
Mary’s life was in ‘extreame dayngeir’.

With the English parliament’s

confirmation of the conviction and sentence against her and its call
for Mary’s execution in mid-November, he recognized for the first time
the desperation of her plight. It was in this frame of mind that he directed
his presumptuous message of 28 November towards Elizabeth (referred
to above). At about the same time, he instructed Keith to: ‘declair wnto
the Qwein and counsail heir [in England] quhow that his majestie did tak
this matter so heichlie [seriously] that in cais thay wald proceid rigour-
owsly againes his mother, he could nocht think they luifit [loved] him self
or keip kyndnes with him heireftir.’

To step up his pressure on Elizabeth,

James also decided to send a high-profile embassy to England, and there
are hints that he originally planned to instruct it to threaten an end to
the league were Mary to be executed. In the first place, the embassy was
initially to be headed by the earl of Bothwell who was one of the most
outspoken noblemen calling for retaliation against Elizabeth.

Secondly,

on 27 November, James’s secretary, Sir John Maitland of Thirlestone,
wrote of his conviction that the ‘continewance or dissolution of the
amitye’ depended on the result of this new mission to save Mary.

Before the envoys had been formally appointed, however, it had

become evident that James’s letter of 28 November had badly back-
fired and that the king needed to re-think his strategy. The message to
Elizabeth had caused a ‘grit sturre [stir]’ at court, throwing the queen into
‘suche passione as it was ane grit deale of work to ws all [Keith and
Douglas] and to the erle of Leycester to appease her’. In her fury (whether
genuine or simulated), Elizabeth refused a safe-conduct for the new
embassy and announced that she did not see how she could now delay
the proceedings against Mary.

James was admonished from all sides

for his discourtesy and foolhardiness, and advised to approach the queen
with more respect in the future. Thus, Leicester, whom James considered
his closest friend at the English court, cautioned that it was unwise to
let ‘such pikant ways to be used as may gyve hir majeste just cause to
dowbt your sincere love toward hir’; while Burghley issued the rebuke
that ‘such requestes owght to have been followed and sowght with all
curtesie, kindnes, and frendlie argumentes of perswasion.’

Douglas

KJS, p. 50, Douglas to Gray, 22 Nov. 1586; Cal. Scot. P., ix. 165, Robert Stewart to Commendator

of Pittenweem, 17 Nov. 1586. For James’s earlier hopes, Courcelles, p. 12 and Letters and Papers of
Patrick Master of Gray, ed. Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh, 1835) [hereafter Master of Gray], p. 113.

KJS, p. 67, Keith to [Maitland], 8 Dec. 1586.

PRO SP 52/41, fo. 69 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 164), Gray to Walsingham, 27 Nov. 1586; Courcelles,

pp. 8, 23.

KJS, p. 56.

Some observers suggested that the queen believed that the embassy was coming with the inten-

tion of declaring war and that she had therefore been counselled to deny it entrance; KJS, pp. 69,
81–2, Keith to [Maitland] and Douglas to James, 8 Dec. 1586; Cal. Scot. P., ix. 184–5, Douglas
and Keith to Burghley, 6 Dec. 1586.

KJS, pp. 122–6, 83–4.

SUSAN DORAN

595

KJS, pp. 105–6, Douglas to Gray, 15 Dec. 1586.

KJS, pp. 81–4; PRO SP 52/41, fo. 79 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 184–5). Leicester and Walsingham blamed

Gray for the king’s ‘hard lettir’.

Melville had fought for Mary at Langside and in the succeeding civil war. Elizabeth had inter-

vened on his behalf when the king’s party captured him in 1573. On 8 December 1586 Keith wrote
of Melville, ‘he will not be hindered from coming’; KJS, pp. 67, 96, 117. Dr MacPherson thinks
Bothwell was dropped because he had fallen ill.

was particularly dismayed by James’s clumsy message, and spelled out
the dangerous consequences of his ‘hard dealing’: the king, he wrote, had
overestimated his ‘credit’ at the English court, and should remember his
own interests in the succession.

James’s strong line therefore seemed to

have been counter-productive: in the short term he had not helped Mary
at all, as was amply demonstrated on 6 December when her death sen-
tence (which until then had been kept quiet) was published in the city of
London; in the longer term he had offended those whose support he
needed to obtain the succession.

Not surprisingly, James decided to retreat from his aggressive stand

and pursue a more conciliatory approach, calculating that it would be
more fruitful than another direct challenge to the queen. Since Leicester
and his ambassadors had tried to put the blame for his ill-received letter
on ‘some mischief-maker’ or ‘ill affected remaning about the king’, the
way was open for James to try a more moderate appeal to the queen.

In this spirit he dispatched his apology and dropped the idea of Bothwell
leading the new embassy. Instead, the master of Gray, who was thought
(mistakenly) to be the Scotsman with most influence on Elizabeth, was
now to head the mission. The other accredited ambassador was Sir Robert
Melville, a privy councillor and long-time partisan of Mary, who had been
favoured by Elizabeth in the past and was still considered with some
affection at the English court.

This choice of ambassadors was intended

to signal that the king was continuing his public commitment to his
mother’s cause, but was acting the role of a petitioner and not issuing
an ultimatum. Their instructions were designed for the same purpose.
On 17 December, the envoys were told to remind Elizabeth that James
was her ‘well devoted freynd and brother’ who ‘did alwayes exspect and
be [by] gud desert hav[e] meritite the lyke correspondence and reciproc
kyndnes on her p[arte]’. His request was therefore presented as an issue
of honour and friendship, which the queen was expected to find difficult
to reject. He offered her several alternative ways of dealing with Mary
and also asked her to state her own conditions that would be required
for her future safety while the Scottish queen remained alive. Although
the tone of James’s petition was now sober and deferential, the burden
of his message was still bold and uncompromising. His envoys were told
to explain that Mary’s death would be ‘a daingerous precedent for all
princes’ and that Elizabeth’s reputation would suffer from carrying out
‘so uncouth and rare a forme, sa repugnant to [the] immediat supremicie
granted be God to soverayne princes’. These were sentiments which could
be expected to carry some weight with Elizabeth. While James did not

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THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

order his envoys to threaten an end to the league, their instructions on
close reading reveal an implicit warning: if Mary were to die, they were
commanded to say, her faction might be ‘mair egyrly enfla[med] to a
more cruell desyre of revenge wherein thay wald assuir [themselves] of
our ayde and concurrence who have the cheif interest and schame be her
d[eath]’; whereas, if Mary were spared, ‘we may therebye have the better
occasion to continew in our gud devotion towardis our said darrest
sister and reipe that fruict of our deserts’, by which of course was meant
the league and amity.

James’s attempt at persuasion, however, did not

satisfy the more belligerent of the Scottish nobility who wanted him to
offer no concessions whatsoever but rather to declare an intent to seek
revenge. When the instructions were read out to an assembly of state
at Edinburgh for their approval, Lords Bothwell, Atholl and Claude
Hamilton criticized them as too accommodating to the English queen.
James’s answer to them, however, was determinedly pragmatic: ‘that it
was nowe noe time to threaten the Queene of Englande, whose greate
strength was well knowne.’

The embassy made no headway with the queen. The ambassadors ‘wer

no wayis freindly receavit . . . never man send to weilcom or convey us.’
Their first audience with Elizabeth on 6 January 1587, a week after their
arrival, was hardly encouraging. Three days later at a second interview,
‘we had refusall of all our offers.’ On 15 January, however, Elizabeth
relented somewhat and asked Gray and Melville to remain a few more
days while she considered their proposal, though her council remained
‘verie extreme’ on the question of Mary’s fate. What happened next is
something of a mystery. According to Melville, Elizabeth suddenly hard-
ened towards Mary ‘apone wykked inventyouns mayd of [about] hys
majeste heyr and be intelligens resavit from Scotland, far contrarye to
hys majestie’s meanyng that hys majeste takis not this proseding to hart’.

The content and the source of the intelligences from Scotland are
unknown.

But the ‘inventyouns’ from England were the revelations

by Sir Alexander Stewart that he alone had the ear of the king and
knew James would soon ‘digest’ Mary’s execution. Some historians have
believed that Stewart was acting on secret instructions from James, if only
because on his return to Scotland he received no punishment for his
interference. This is hardly convincing, as James frequently left disobedi-
ence unpunished and it was by no means out of character in this case.
In any event it was Gray who bore the brunt of James’s anger for the
failure of the mission. It is just as easy to believe that Stewart had been

KJS, pp. 107–15, James’s instructions to Gray and Melville, 17 Dec. 1587, and Master of Gray,

pp. 120–5.

Courcelles, pp. 23–4, 31 Dec. 1586.

KJS, pp. 137, 145, 160–4.

Courcelles reported on 31 December 1586 that Elizabeth had been told by her ‘faction’ in Scot-

land ‘not to doubte to proceed against his Mother’, for although her death might be ‘greevose’ to
him, he would ‘excuse the execution’. It is possible that Courcelles’s dispatch fell into Walsingham’s
hands at about this time; Courcelles, p. 25.

SUSAN DORAN

597

reporting rumours from Scotland or had even been paid for his services
by someone who wanted to see Mary dead. Whatever the truth about
Stewart, the effect was that the Scottish ambassadors returned home in
the belief that Elizabeth would await further information about James’s
attitude from Scotland before committing herself to a decision about
Mary’s execution.

On reading his envoys’ dispatches from the English court, James was

left in no doubt that Mary was doomed. On 26 January 1587 he decided
on a last-ditch personal plea to Elizabeth. In a letter, addressed to his
‘dearest sister’, he made a final appeal to her honour and reputation.
Again, he uttered no threat of a breach or reprisals, and historians have
consequently claimed that this demonstrates the insincerity of his plea.
Only a clear-cut ultimatum, they argue, would have stayed Elizabeth’s
hand. James, however, did not see the situation in this light. An ulti-
matum, he believed, would only anger the queen and might well fortify
her resolve to execute Mary rather than encourage her to reverse her
decision. After all, he had no reason to suppose that Elizabeth would take
a threat of invasion seriously, as England was militarily stronger than her
northern neighbour and had defeated the Scots in pitched battle three
times between 1513 and 1547. Furthermore, he had also had recent
experience that forceful words tended to antagonize rather than appease
the queen:

I doubt greatlie in quhat facon to vritt in this purpois for ye have allreaddie
takin sa evill with my playnness as I feare if I shall persist in that course
ye shall be exasperattit to passions in reading the vordis then by the plain-
ness thairof be persuadit to consider richtlie the simpill treuth.

Perhaps, too, James refrained from threatening to end the peace because
he was not convinced he could deliver a war. A military confrontation
against England would be impracticable unless he could count on for-
eign aid, especially from France or Spain. Yet their assistance could by
no means be taken for granted, despite Elizabeth’s increasing diplomatic
isolation in Europe. James’s Guise cousins might be willing to send
aid, but they were preparing for war against Henry of Navarre and had
only limited resources. Philip II, on the other hand, had the resources to
mount an invasion, but might not have the will to help a heretic and rival
claimant to the English throne. Finally, even if war proved practicable,
there was also the succession to consider. James had little doubt in his
mind that open war against England would very likely lose him any
chance of a peaceful accession to the English throne. Not only would
Elizabeth be totally unwilling to designate him her legal heir, but also
she might well turn her favour towards another candidate, while support
in England would drain away during or shortly after an Anglo-Scottish
war.

The advice of Leicester could not be easily ignored:

BL Cott. MS Caligula C ix, fo. 192 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 247–8).

Courcelles, p. 29.

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THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

for no cause except a just cause . . . gyve hir majeste any cause to conceave
lak of love and frendshipp toward hir. She ys the person and prince in the
world that may doe the most good or most harme . . . so must I styll wish
you to deall more moderatly in this matter of your mother’s. Hir cause ys
not worth the loosing of such a frend as . . . the Quene my sofferayn ys.

All these considerations explain James’s mode of protest in January
1587. Rejecting attempts at intimidation, he preferred to implore the
queen to grant ‘this my first so long contineuid and so earnest request’.
Avoiding any direct ultimatum, he hinted instead that Mary’s death
might have dire consequences, ‘quhat eventis micht follou thairupon,
quhat number of straitis I volde be drevin unto and amongst the rest
hou it micht perrell my reputation amongst my subjectis’. He did not
hold back from calling Mary’s execution by a fellow-sovereign a ‘mon-
struouse thinge’, but he also did not threaten to be an instrument of
revenge.

Why did James object to Mary’s execution? The lack of an obvious

reason helps explain why so many historians have questioned the sincer-
ity of his protests. As they have pointed out, it is highly unlikely that he
had any sentimental attachment for a mother whom he had not seen since
he was a baby and who stood accused of murdering his father. On
political grounds, too, James had no cause to want her alive. He was
reported as saying that ‘she bare him noe more good will than she did
the Queene of England’, and the rumours that Mary had bequeathed her
crown and titles to Philip II of Spain in her will probably confirmed
him in that view.

Unquestionably, James had nothing to gain from Eliza-

beth issuing a pardon or reprieve; on the contrary, Mary’s death would
remove a potential rival and strengthen his own hold on the Scottish
throne.

Nevertheless, there did indeed exist an important motive behind James’s

objections to the trial, sentence and later execution of his mother. The
king firmly believed that Elizabeth’s behaviour was impugning his
own honour. According to Maitland of Thirlestone, ‘His majestie takis
this rigorous proceading against his mother deiplye in hairt as a mater
greatlye concerning him bayth in honour and utherwayes.’

In James’s

own words: ‘the lait preposterous and strainge proceadeur agains the
Quene our darrest mother, who being a soveraine princes, and in all
degrees of the best bloode in Europe, hes bene . . . so contrarye to our
honour as hardlye could onye thing have fallin out so prejudiciall
therunto.’

James’s honour was touched in several ways. First, dynastic

honour demanded that he protect his mother’s life and avenge her death,

KJS, pp. 124–5.

Cal. Scot. P., ix. 247–8.

Master of Gray, pp. 110–1, Walsingham to Gray, 17 Sep. 1586; Courcelles, pp. 6–7.

KJS, p. 56, Maitland to Keith, 27 Nov. 1586.

KJS, p. 108, James to Gray, 17 Dec. 1586.

SUSAN DORAN

599

hence the constant references to his obligations and duties as a son.
Secondly, Elizabeth’s claim to have jurisdiction over Mary undermined
his own rights and status as king of Scotland. James had already demon-
strated his dislike of English interference in Scottish affairs; thus, when
Elizabeth had protested to him about a marriage arranged between the
duke of Lennox and the heiress of Lord Hamilton, ‘the Kinge tooke it
verie ill, as though the Queene of England sought to controule him in
his own realme.’

The treatment of Mary touched a far more sensitive

nerve, for the monarch of a neighbouring state had no right to put on
trial one of his subjects, let alone a Scottish queen; Elizabeth’s action,
therefore, implied an English overlordship over his realm, a claim which
the Stewart kings had long resisted. At first, James had been prepared to
turn a blind eye to a trial for the sake of his recent treaty with England,
but he could hardly sit quietly while the sentence of a foreign court was
carried out.

Finally, the negative response of Elizabeth to his entreaties

on behalf of Mary appeared in his eyes nothing less than a grievous
insult. As early as 10 November 1586, James was said to be irritated
that ‘he hes done more for the Queene thair, and that country, than he
hes resavit [received] any great appearance of good meining.’

During

the following December and January, James presented his request for his
mother’s life as a personal favour. He had ‘perswaded himselfe that the
Queene of England would attempte nothinge againste her without his
consente and advise, and yf she did, he knewe howe to behave himselfe.’
At the very least, he had not expected Elizabeth to execute Mary with-
out informing him beforehand; her unilateral action made him appear
to the world as a man of no consequence in her eyes.

Lest James should forget the importance of his honour in this matter,

there were many in Scotland who were quick to remind him of it: ‘The
people and all estates heir ar so far moved be the rigorous proceading
against the quene that his majestie and all that hes credit ar importuned
and may not go abrod for exclamations aganis thame and imprecations
against the quene of England.’

Some noblemen, like Lord Claude

Hamilton, who were Catholic and pro-French, took the opportunity to
inflame public opinion against Elizabeth and the English alliance. But
even Protestant Scots, including royal councillors such as Maitland and
the earls of Mar and Bothwell, deeply resented Elizabeth’s offence to their
sovereign and sovereignty, and spoke of retaliation. At a convention of
the estates in November, the nobility offered a voluntary subsidy ‘for the

Courcelles, pp. 5–64, Oct. 1586.

Cal. Scot. P., ix. 165, Robert Stewart to the Commendator of Pittenweem, 27 Nov. 1586; Courcelles,

pp. 50–1, 3 April 1587.

Master of Gray, pp. 114–15, Gray to Douglas.

Courcelles, pp. 8, 10.

KJS, p. 57, Maitland to Keith, 27 Nov. 1586. See also Courcelles, pp. 4, 8, 10; PRO SP 52/41,

fo. 61 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 155–6), Gray to Douglas, 16 Nov. 1586; Queen Elizabeth and her Times,
ed. Thomas Wright (2 vols., 1838) [hereafter Wright, Elizabeth I ], ii. 326–7, Henry Widdrington to
Walsingham, 7 Dec. 1586.

600

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

furnessing of ambassadors to forayne prencis to complayne againis
Ingland’. This donation was confirmed in a council meeting on 20 De-
cember 1586, which contained Protestant as well as Catholic lords.

Even

before the news of Mary’s execution finally reached Scotland, some of
the Scottish nobility were preparing to fight. The Hamiltons had offered
James 5,000 armed men, while Lord Maxwell was planning a ‘danger-
ous devise’ against England on the borders.

The execution of Mary was greeted with horror in Scotland and resulted
in a diplomatic breach between the two monarchs, disturbances on the
border and international uncertainty about the future of the Anglo-
Scottish league. As soon as the news of her death reached Scotland, James
made a public show of great grief and anger: he dressed in mourning
clothes, ‘a dule weide of purple’, and attended obsequies for his mother.
He also refused to admit Sir Robert Cary, Elizabeth’s messenger, into
Scotland or to communicate directly with either the queen or the Eng-
lish ministers whom he held responsible for the execution; and he openly
swore revenge, protesting that he would ‘hazarde his Crowne, his lyfe yea
his soule too, if neede were for that purpose’.

More alarmingly, reports

reached the English government during the last week of February and
throughout March that the Scots were planning reprisals. On 26 Febru-
ary, Sir John Forster notified Walsingham that James was encouraging
the Scots of Liddesdale to plunder the English side of the border; three
weeks later Forster relayed the news that a force had been raised on the
authority of the king in Liddesdale and West Teviotdale which was ‘fullye
bent to have roon a forraye within the Mydle Merches’; and later in the
month he gave his opinion that Bothwell was planning to ambush him if
he crossed the border at a time of truce. Only the weather and time

The Historie and Life of King James the Sixt, ed. Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh, 1825) [hereafter

Historie of James the Sixt ], pp. 224–5; Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, ed. David Masson
(14 vols., Edinburgh, 1877–98) [hereafter PC Register 1585–92], pp. 129–30.

Cal. Scot. P., ix. 275–6, Laird of Powry Ogilvie to Burghley, Feb. 1587; BL Harleian MS 292,

fo. 41, Scrope to Walsingham, 24 Dec. 1586. Not all the Scots, however, reacted with such patriotic
fervour; the burghs were more backward than the nobility in contributing funds to help Mary for
fear of provoking a war with England, while some of the Presbyterian ministers refused to obey the
royal order to pray for the life of their ex-queen; PC Register 1585–92, pp. 140–2; Calderwood, The
Kirk, p. 606.

Historie of James the Sixt, pp. 225, 230; Courcelles, pp. 45–6; Calendar of State Papers Spanish

Elizabeth, ed. M. A. S. Hume (4 vols., 1892–9) [hereafter Cal. S. P. Span.], iv. 34; PRO SP 52/42,
no. 26 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 324), Douglas to Walsingham, 1 March 1587. According to Lord Scrope,
‘he not only took that news very grievously and offensively, but also gave out in secret speeches that
he could not digest the same or leave it’; BL Cott. MS Caligula C ix, fo. 217 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 300),
Scrope to [Walsingham], 21 Feb. 1587; Calendar of Letters and Papers Relating to the Affairs of the
Borders 1560–1603, ed. Joseph Bain (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1894–6) [hereafter Border Papers], i. 247,
Sir Henry Wodryngton to Walsingham, 25 Feb. 1587. On the other hand, Robert Persons later
claimed that James spent the day laughing at the news; Stonyhurst Manuscripts Collectanea P. 310,
p. 387, Persons to Mr Standen, 8 Sep. 1595. I would like to thank Dr Michael Questier for allowing
me to consult his photocopies of abstracts of Person’s correspondence at Stonyhurst and elsewhere.

SUSAN DORAN

601

of the year, Forster believed, was preventing major incursions into Eng-
land.

It was also heard in England that James ‘geveth eare to forrayne

nations’, a rumour that was not without foundation, for the king had
indeed made overtures to France. Soon after he had learned of Mary’s
execution, James sent Melville to speak to the French ambassador,
M. de Courcelles, about the possibility of reviving the ‘Auld Alliance’ and
joining together ‘for the reparatione of the wronge’.

Furthermore, on

17 March, Mary’s old ambassador in France, William Erskine, the arch-
bishop of Glasgow, was restored to his bishopric by act of parliament
and accredited as James’s resident ambassador in Paris.

The English government was undoubtedly worried about James’s

intentions. Although one or two of its informers suspected that his display
of grief was feigned and that he had no desire at all for revenge, the weight
of opinion reaching London was that the king was ‘highly offended’ by
his mother’s execution and that the league would be broken unless he
could be appeased. Most observers concluded that even if the king per-
sonally preferred to stand by the alliance, he would be unable to ‘stay
the rigour of his people’ who were crying for vengeance.

The English

government, therefore, took military and political initiatives to ward
off the danger. To protect the borders and withstand an invasion, the
wardens of the marches were ordered to muster armed men and be in a
state of alert.

On the political front, efforts were made to keep James

in the league by pacifying his anger and appealing to his self-interest.
Since Douglas had given advice that Elizabeth should prove her inno-
cence in Mary’s death by punishing the ‘malefactors’ who were respon-
sible, punishments were unfairly doled out to the ‘pryncypall actors’.
Favoured councillors (notably Burghley) were temporarily banished from
court, while William Davison became the chief victim of the attempt
to satisfy the king and suffered trial, imprisonment in the Tower and
the imposition of a fine of 10,000 marks (which was later remitted).

To mollify James further, Job Throckmorton was also dispatched to the
Tower for the ‘lewd and blasphemous spechis . . . ageynst the honor of
the Kyng of Scottis’, which he had delivered to parliament on 23 Febru-
ary 1587.

Border Papers, i. 247, 252, 253. See also Cal. S. P. Span., iv. 40, ‘Advices from Scotland’,

17 March 1587. Dr Macpherson, however, considers Forster’s judgement to be seriously flawed.

Border Papers, i. 249–50; Courcelles, pp. 44–5, 54. See, too, Calendar of State Papers Foreign,

1586–8, 258–9, Stafford to Walsingham, 24 March 1587.

PC Register 1585–92, pp. 145–5; Border Papers, i. 252, Forster to Walsingham, 18 March 1587.

Cal. Scot. P., ix. 325–6, Laird of Poury Ogilvie to Douglas, 2 March 1587; BL Cott. MS Caligula

C ix, fo. 226 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 330), Robert Carvell to Walsingham, 6 March 1587; Historical Manu-
scripts Commission [hereafter HMC], Ninth Report, Salisbury MSS (24 vols., 1883–1976) [here-
after Salisbury MSS ], xiii. 336, Richard Douglas to Archibald Douglas, 12 March 1587.

Border Papers, i. 247, 249.

PRO SP 52/42, no. 26 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 324), Douglas to Walsingham, 1 March 1587; Salisbury

MSS, iii. 236, Walsingham to Douglas, 20 March 1587; PRO SP 52/42, no. 35 (Cal. Scot. P.,
ix. 393–6), [Burghley] to Sir Robert Cary, 3 April 1587.

Warrender Papers, ed. A. I. Cameron (Scottish Historical Society, third series, xviii–xix, 2 vols.,

Edinburgh 1931–2) [hereafter Warrender Papers], ii. 11. Throckmorton had referred to James

602

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

At the same time, both Burghley and Walsingham made plain to James

that he had far more to lose than gain by seeking revenge. Burghley
advised Douglas that James should refrain from any action that could
lose him ‘the harts of gret nombers lyving, that befor they dye, may will
hym more good than his mother’s lyf cold have doone if she had
contynued’. On 4 March, Walsingham wrote a very full letter to Maitland,
who was thought to be advising James to break with England and move
towards France. Walsingham explained that any Scottish act of revenge
would be prejudicial to James’s estate and reputation: not only did the
king’s inadequate resources and lack of active allies make it improbable
that an attempt against England would be successful but, more signifi-
cantly, the revival of ancient Anglo-Scottish enmity would make it im-
possible for the English to choose James as their king. The nobility who
had been Mary’s judges and the lords and gentlemen who had confirmed
the sentence in parliament would fear his revenge and consequently
oppose his succession. So far, warned Walsingham, the king’s mediation
on behalf of his mother had not alienated England as it was natural con-
duct for a son, but all reasonable men considered that he had sufficiently
discharged his duty. If he now accepted the inevitable, there would be no
hard feelings nor slight to his honour. Instead of looking to France or
Spain, recommended Walsingham, James’s wisest course was to ‘seeke
to winne the hartie good willes of this realme’.

This advice did not go unheeded. Maitland, who had previously been

leaning towards renewing the ‘Auld Alliance’, also came to agree with
Walsingham that his master would do better to stick to the treaty with
England. James reached the same conclusion, and by 14 March was be-
ginning to consider the possibility of accepting compensation from Eng-
land for the injury rather than resorting to war. Cary’s written message
from Elizabeth, declaring her innocence in ordering the execution and
grief at Mary’s death, provided him with a diplomatic opportunity. Since
it implicitly admitted the injustice of the action against Mary, it opened
the door for him to demand ‘satisfaction’. Towards the end of March,
therefore, James permitted Melville to meet Cary and inform Elizabeth
that he required ‘full satisfaction, in all respectis’ to ‘obleig me to be, as
of before I war’. Despite this approach, James had not yet given up all
thoughts of breaking the Anglo-Scottish league, but was waiting to see
what offers Elizabeth and the French might make him before he deter-
mined on the direction of policy.

On 26 March, the decision was taken

disparagingly as ‘the young imp of Scotland’ and had questioned his legitimacy as well as his devo-
tion to the Protestant cause; The House of Commons 1558–1603, ed. P. W. Hasler (3 vols., 1981),
ii. 292–4.

Warrender Papers, ii. 11–16. Though Walsingham was understanding about James’s honour based

on his blood-tie, he was stone-deaf to concerns about the honour of the Scottish nation impugned
by the English action.

Lee, Maitland, pp. 108–9; Salisbury MSS, iii. 235, 239, Richard Douglas to Archibald Douglas,

14 and 31 March 1587; Courcelles, pp. 50–1; Letters of Queen Elizabeth and King James VI of Scot-
land, ed. J. Bruce (Camden Society, xlvi, 1849), pp. 45–6. It is unlikely that this draft letter of James

SUSAN DORAN

603

for William Stewart to go as a special envoy to France with a view to
negotiating a new alliance.

On the same day, James looked for help

further afield and sent an embassy to Denmark both to investigate the
possibility of a marriage alliance and aid against England.

As time went on, however, the case grew stronger for restoring rela-

tions with Elizabeth. In April 1587 a discouraging answer arrived from
the French king, saying that an act of revenge was out of the question
given the present difficulties within both realms. In the summer James
also learned that the Danes would ‘not joyne in any enterprise, or yeald
to any thinge prejudiciall to the Queene of England’. At the same time,
the lack of response from the Guise family gave no cause for hope of mili-
tary assistance from that quarter.

Over the next few months, therefore,

James waited with increasing impatience for Douglas to secure ‘full
satisfaction’ for his mother’s death. The king refused to ‘condescend to
particulars’ and specify what recompense he was seeking but instead
expected Elizabeth to make an offer for him to consider. It was left to
Douglas to hint that James required satisfaction in the matter of the
succession.

While Douglas’s negotiations were taking place, James tried

to restrain his nobility who were still determined to make trouble and
‘losse no opportunity that they may work a breach’. In April 1587 he
marched against Lord Maxwell, and soon afterwards ordered his war-
dens to co-operate with their English counterparts to keep the peace on
the borders. This intervention, however, had only a limited effect, and
the Scottish border lords continued their raids into England. Still more
sinister, Lord Huntly and other Catholic earls stepped up their earlier
dealings with Philip II and the Guises in a conspiracy that had started
even before the crisis of Mary’s trial and execution.

On the question of satisfaction, James found Elizabeth unco-operative.

Not only did she decline to designate him heir presumptive or appoint
him prince of Wales, as he desired, but she refused to take smaller prac-
tical steps to clear his way to the succession. One of the main impedi-
ments to James’s right to the throne was his foreign birth, since both
common law and a statute of 25 Edward III prohibited aliens from
inheriting English property. To be granted an English earldom or per-
mitted to inherit the English estates of his father and grandmother would,
therefore, help James overcome this obstacle and greatly strengthen his

to Elizabeth, which was dated March 1587, was actually sent as he was still refusing to deal directly
with the queen, but it gives an indication of the way his mind was working.

PC Register 1585–92, pp. 145–5; Border Papers, i. 252.

Courcelles, pp. 58–9; Calderwood, The Kirk, p. 612.

The response from France probably arrived in Scotland in early to mid-April. The Danish

response was reported by Courcelles on 22 August; Courcelles, pp. 60–1, 77.

Salisbury MSS, ii. 239, Richard to Archibald Douglas, 31 March 1587.

Wright, Elizabeth I, ii. 336, Walsingham to Leicester, 3 April 1587; Salisbury MSS, iii. 257, 260,

Richard to Archibald Douglas, 22 May and 1 June 1587; Mackie, ‘Scotland and the Armada’,
16–18.

604

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

claim to the English crown. But Elizabeth continued to deny him the
English Lennox lands, which she had confiscated in 1578 on the death
of his paternal grandmother, and ‘wold mak Ladie Arbella competitour
to him’ for title to them (and by implication the succession). The most
that Elizabeth would do for James in the matter of the succession was
to hand over in writing the legal opinion of her judges ‘that the saide
sentence [against Mary] doth in noe sorte preiudice any pretence he
may make to the saide Crowne’, a judgement which had already been
given orally to Douglas before Mary’s death.

Elizabeth still believed that

James would be more dangerous as a designated successor than as a dis-
appointed suitor for the throne.

By early June 1587, James was beginning to lose patience with the

English negotiations. Although open war was now out of the question,
he started to encourage the anti-English sentiment within Scotland in
order to use it as a form of bargaining counter. Thus, in an assembly of
the nobility he reminded the Scottish lords of England’s ‘cruelty’ towards
his late mother and ‘the devices which they use daylie to deprive him of
his lawfull right’ to the English succession. His nobility’s reply, ‘they
would be alwayes redie to bestowe life and goodis in that quarrell and
fight in it, as longe as any drope of bloud rested in their bodies’, was so
satisfying that a similar scene was re-enacted when parliament met the
following month.

At the same time James kept up his contacts with

the French and the Spanish king. Evidently he hoped that such menaces
would induce the queen to grant his political requests in order to separ-
ate him from his bellicose nobility at home and the Catholic powers
abroad. Douglas certainly warned Elizabeth that clarifying James’s
right to the succession was the only way ‘for remedying the differences
between England and Scotland’ and persuading the king to join with the
Scottish Protestants against the ‘forces of the Papists’.

James was, how-

ever, playing a dangerous game. He ran the risk that he would not only
alienate the English government, but also prove unable to contain the
anti-English sentiment within Scotland while he was fanning it himself
with calls for revenge. For a time during the second half of 1587, it looked
as though he had miscalculated. The violence along the borders was slip-
ping out of control, and some observers in England and Scotland feared
that the two realms might drift into war. In August, Scottish forces crossed
into England and ‘spoled suche tounes as in tyme of the most cruelleste

PRO SP 52/42, no. 39 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 400–1), ‘Her Majesty’s answers to certain propositions

made by the Scottish ambassador’, 7 April 1587; Burghley Papers, pp. 587–8, 12 April 1587; Salis-
bury MSS, iii. 261, 267, Richard to Archibald Douglas and instructions to Richard Douglas, 7 June
and 8 July 1587.

In the parliament it was Chancellor Maitland who spoke out against the queen’s cruelty, not James

himself; Courcelles, pp. 69–71, 75, 78; Salisbury MSS, iii. 261, 279, Richard to Archibald Douglas,
7 June 1587 and Francis Wroth to Burghley, 5 Sept. 1587; PRO SP 52/42, no. 56, Roger Aston to
Archibald Douglas, 8 July 1587; Border Papers, i. 265, Carvell to Walsingham, 3 Aug. 1587.

Salisbury MSS, iii. 295–6, 14 Nov. 1587.

SUSAN DORAN

605

warres that haith bene in the memory of man were never molestid by the
enimy’. Although James offered redress and sent the earl of Angus to the
borders to restore law and order, many in the north were of the opinion
that ‘her majesty will not put up this last attempt so that many beleeve
there wilbe present warre.’

Some of them, moreover, were not persuaded

of the genuineness of James’s moves to keep the peace; Sir Henry Wither-
ington, the marshal of Berwick, for example, believed that the king was
making preparations to capture the town, while Lord Hunsdon, the gover-
nor of Berwick, thought the royal expressions of good will were a sham.

Elizabeth was also by no means convinced that James would remain

loyal to the English alliance. She strengthened her borders, placed her
troops on the ready in the north, appointed the earl of Huntingdon as
lieutenant general with orders to raise an army, and in December com-
missioned Hunsdon to carry out reprisals against the Scottish lairds who
were mounting raids into England.

None the less, she refused at any

point to be intimidated into yielding on the succession. On the contrary,
she deliberately showed favour to James’s rival, the eleven-year-old Lady
Arbella Stewart, who was allowed during the summer of 1587 to join the
court at Theobalds and was treated there as a princess of the blood.

Furthermore, Douglas’s new project of the autumn, that Elizabeth should
privately designate James her successor ‘under own hand writ’ or, at the
very least, recognize him to be her nearest cousin and kinsman, fell on
deaf ears.

Instead of offering James any concessions, the queen issued

the warning that if he joined with any foreign power in an invasion of
England, he might lose ‘his expectation’. Furthermore, she denied that
there was any need for her to give satisfaction for Mary’s death; no longer
was she prepared to extend apologies and excuses: ‘For hyr deth’, declared
Elizabeth, ‘theare are most manifest unfained and irreprovable argu-
mentes; soe as than it is a direct injustice to seeke revenge against the
Quene of England, being not guiltie thereof.’ Her privy councillors re-
peated the point and officially protested to Douglas that the proceedings
against Mary had ‘bene done sincerelye, justlye, honourablye and by
good warrant of the lawes of God’.

At the end of 1587 James found himself in a dangerous diplomatic

impasse. His ambassador’s attempts at securing his title to the succession
had failed, and, by dealing with foreign princes and ‘winking at’ border
violence, he was jeopardizing his present safety and future prospects.
The Catholic earls were pressing him to help the prince of Parma in an

PRO SP 52/42, nos. 66, 67 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 477–9), 15 and 19 Aug. 1587.

Salisbury MSS, iii. 280, 11 Sept. 1587; Burghley Papers, p. 591, 24 Oct. 1587.

HMC, Fifty-eighth Report, Bath MSS (5 vols., 1904–80), v. 84–5, Elizabeth to the earl of Shrews-

bury, 3 Nov. 1587; HMC, Fifty-fifth Report, Various MSS (8 vols., 1901–13), ii. 101, 20 Dec. 1587;
Border Papers, i. 297, Hunsdon to Burghley, 14 Dec. 1587.

The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, ed. Sara Jayne Steen (Oxford, 1994), pp. 20–1. She remained

in London until July 1588; BL Lansdowne MS 34, no. 154.

Salisbury MSS, iii. 295–6, 14 Nov. 1587.

PRO SP 52/42, nos. 78, 79 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 495–502).

606

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

invasion of England, yet, as he was fully aware, he had neither the
financial resources nor political strength to avenge ‘the haynous Murther’
of his mother by war. Rumours had reached him, moreover, that Eliza-
beth was raising ‘a grete army’ to be sent north. James was in desperate
need of some evidence of good will from the queen to parade before his
nobility so that he could extricate himself with honour from the cold war
with England, which was threatening to heat up with catastrophic results.
For this reason, James decided to bypass Douglas in London, and start
direct negotiations with Elizabeth’s representative in the north. Thus,
in mid-December he appealed to Hunsdon for ‘sum honorable offer . . .
wherby he myght fynde hyr Majesti’s good wyll and favor towardes
hym, and too shew that she ys wyllinge too have hys amyty and frend-
shyppe’. This was the first time that he had had any personal communica-
tion with any of Elizabeth’s servants since the execution, and it was a clear
sign that he wanted to reach some agreement for renewing the league.
Hunsdon read his intentions correctly, but advised the queen ‘yf she wyll
doo anythynge heryn, too lose no tyme’.

Elizabeth, however, ignored

this counsel. By now confident that James would not take any large-scale
military action against England, she waited nearly three months before
making any response and then censured the king for continuing to de-
mand satisfaction. Burghley wrote in a similar vein to Maitland, also
dismissing the request for compensation and warning the Scots against
a policy of war.

The advice was unnecessary. James was well aware that the time had

come for honour to be sacrificed for political survival, and in the spring
of 1588 he set to work to patch up his relationship with Elizabeth. In
this spirit, he co-operated with the English wardens to bring peace to the
borders, proceeded against Maxwell who had returned to Scotland, and
ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from the realm. In addition, he
disassociated himself from Douglas’s earlier negotiations by saying that
he had no commission to act as ambassador. In May, James agreed to
meet Cary personally for talks.

Yet, despite all these encouraging moves,

the English government was still not entirely sure that he could be
fully trusted. When in July 1588 Elizabeth sent her official response to
James’s requests via Hunsdon, her envoy was given lengthy instructions
to investigate ‘what the Kinges religion is, what his affection and opineon
of her majestie and the nation is’ and how his negotiations stood with
France, Spain and Denmark.

She and her ministers only relaxed some-

what after the Armada was repulsed and James gave no help to Spain.

Border Papers, i. 297–9, Hunsdon to Burghley, 14 and 28 Dec. 1587; BL Cott. MS Julius F vi,

fo. 75v.

PRO 52/42, no. 94 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 541–2), Burghley to Hunsdon, 1 March 1588; BL Cott. MS

Caligula B viii, fo. 242 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 542–6), [Burghley] to [Maitland] 4 March 1589.

BL Cott. MS Caligula D i, fos. 329, 253, 280, Robert Bowes to [Walsingham], 8 May 1587 and

intelligence from Scotland; Salisbury MSS, iii. 329–30, Cary’s instructions, 16 June 1588.

BL Harleian MS 290, fo. 248 and Cott. MS Caligula D i, fo. 156 (Cal. Scot. P., ix. 561–72,

580–2), instructions for Sir Richard Wigmore, May and 16 July 1588.

SUSAN DORAN

607

They then immediately repudiated the generous offers, which her agent
William Ashby had made to the king on his own initiative, dismissing
them as ‘onlie Matters of his pryvate Conceite’.

III

‘I promeis to behave my self, not as a strangear and foreyne prince, bot
as zour natural sone and compatriot of your countrey.’

These words,

chosen by James to express his loyalty to Elizabeth during the Spanish
invasion scare, set out his stall as heir presumptive: he was the queen’s
closest relation and an Englishman by descent. Because of these strong
arguments in support of his claim, historians have been convinced that
the problem of the succession to the English throne was resolved with
Mary’s death. They contend that Protestant objections to the Scottish line
faded, in part because the two main English candidates for the title were
lightweight by comparison. Lady Arbella Stewart’s claim was inferior
in blood while her gender and lack of political experience disadvantaged
her. Edward Lord Beauchamp, the elder son of Catherine Grey, was
legally a bastard while his secret and scandalous marriage to Honora
Rogers, a gentlewoman of relatively modest wealth and status, had weak-
ened his political position.

Yet, James was by no means confident that all Elizabeth’s subjects saw

him as her natural successor. Until the end of the century he feared that
some would rally round the other candidates on the queen’s death. He,
therefore, continued to press Elizabeth to name him heir and grant him
the title of prince of Wales or duke of Lancaster.

He also betrayed his

anxiety that he might have to fight for the English throne on her death,
particularly against competitors from abroad. Thus, in 1596, he sent
William Keith to Venice to canvas ‘quhat vald be thair pairt’ if he had
difficulties in asserting his legitimate right to the English succession.

1598 he asked the king of Denmark and princes of the Holy Roman
Empire to apply pressure on Elizabeth to have him designated heir, and
requested them to supply military aid if she refused and ‘a crisis’ arose.

The following year, he told the Scottish parliament that he expected to
have need of arms to win the throne, and he secured a bond in which
twenty-seven of his nobility swore ‘to defend our soveraigne’s undoubted
right and title to the Crowne of England’ and to ‘bestowe our selves, our
lives, children, servantes, goodes, friendes and geare whatsoever in persuite
therof ’.

Cal. Scot. P., ix. 80, 589, 596; Burghley Papers, p. 635.

Cal. Scot. P., ix. 588, 1 Aug. 1588.

Calendar of State Papers Venetian, 1592–1603, 35, 25 May 1592.

James Maidment, Letters and State Papers of James VI 1578–1625 (Abbotsford Club, xiii, Edin-

burgh, 1838), p. 10.

Warrender Papers, ii. 49–50, 359–61, 362.

PRO SP 52/65, fos. 133–5 (Cal. Scot. P., xiii. 576–8), general band for King James VI and his

title to England and Scotland, Nov. 1599.

608

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

Nor were James’s concern about the succession during these years as

obsessive and unnecessary as has sometimes been alleged.

On the con-

trary, he had good reason to be anxious, for the removal of Mary had
far from closed the succession issue. First, there was indeed some ques-
tion over whether Elizabeth’s leading ministers or nobles would give James
their allegiance on the queen’s death. Even as late as the early 1590s, it
was being said in some quarters that the English nobility would never
consent to his succession because of fears ‘least he take revenge of them’
for the trial and execution of his mother.

More important, in the mid-

and late 1590s, James’s credentials as the Protestant heir were beginning
to look less strong. His appointment of Catholics to important posts in
government (James Elphistone as secretary of state and Alexander Seton
as president of the court of session), his toleration of Catholic priests,
his protection of Catholic nobles, and the conversion of Queen Anne to
Catholicism (1597) raised some doubts in England about his commitment
to Protestantism.

The Cecils were the recipients of the various reports

informing on James’s Catholic contacts and sympathies, and it is quite
likely that they believed them. In any event, they were certainly thought
to prefer other candidates. Burghley’s earlier support for the Suffolk line
was never forgotten, and some were of the opinion that he favoured
Beauchamp as king. In 1591 there was also gossip circulating (almost
certainly unfounded) that Burghley was considering marrying his son
Robert or some kinsman to Arbella Stewart, and in the late 1590s the
actual marriage of his grand-daughter Elizabeth to the earl of Derby
(another claimant through the Suffolk line) aroused suspicions.

After

Burghley’s death it was being said in Scotland that Robert Cecil ‘was
esteemed a crosser of the King’s affairs and now the avancer of a Span-
ish course’. James VI was informed more specifically that Robert Cecil
intended to support the claim of the infanta in return for a treaty of peace
with Spain.

This tale was almost certainly a lie, but it seems quite likely

that James’s links with his rival Essex might have made Cecil less than
enthusiastic about a Scottish accession.

Secondly, the English succession question was attracting interest

from abroad and threatening to invite foreign intervention. During the

Lee, Solomon, p. 65.

PRO SP 12/251, fo. 152v, confession of Nicholas Williamson, 7 April 1595. See also PRO SP

12/ 243, no. 119. Catholics may, however, have presented this view to James in order to persuade him
to convert to Catholicism and rely on the pope (rather than on the English) to grant him the throne.

John Strype, Annals of the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth (4 vols., Oxford, 1822–4) [here-

after Strype, Annals], iv. 281–2, dean of Durham to Burghley, 9 April 1594; Calendar of State Papers
Domestic [hereafter Cal. S. P. Dom.], 1595–7, 391, 520–1, Petit to Phelippes, April and Oct. 1597.

PRO SP 85/I, fo. 150, April 1593; Warrender Papers, ii. 43, James’s instructions, 17 April 1594.

PRO SP 52/66, no. 78, James Hudson to Cecil, 19 Oct. 1600; Salisbury MSS, x. 93–4, Cecil to

Nicolson, 1 April 1600. James’s informant was probably Essex.

For the debate over Cecil’s attitude to the succession, see Leo Hicks SJ, ‘Sir Robert Cecil, Father

Persons and the Succession 1600–1601’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, xxiv (1955), 95–139,
and Joel Hurstfield, ‘The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England’, Elizabethan Govern-
ment and Society, ed. S. T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C. H. Williams (1960), pp. 369–96.

SUSAN DORAN

609

early 1590s, princes, including Henry IV of France, looked upon Lady
Arbella Stewart as a potential matrimonial partner. At about the same
time, English Catholic exiles and priests also began planning conspir-
acies to carry her off to Spain and marry her to a Catholic nobleman
who would use force to protect her claim.

Upon Mary Stewart’s death,

moreover, a new foreign Catholic pretender was immediately thrust
forward: Isabella the infanta of Spain. Her spurious title was first aired
by Robert Persons and William Allen in Rome in March 1587, but it
was given greater promotion in 1595 with the publication of Persons’s
A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crowne of England, printed
(though not disseminated) the previous year under the pseudonym of
Robert Doleman.

Though clearly the work of a Catholic polemicist,

Doleman’s book caused considerable unease in both England and
Scotland. The first part of the work was deemed seditious as it argued
against the divine right of kings and the principle of heredity. The
second part opened up a political can of worms since it identified
and examined the title of some fourteen claimants to the English throne.
Its conclusion, moreover, was anathema to both James and Elizabeth.
Doleman challenged James’s pretensions on legal as well as religious
grounds, and put the weight of his argument behind the infanta, whose
title, he alleged, stemmed from her rights to Brittany and the parts
of France not under salic law. The two other candidates he favoured
were William Stanley, who had become sixth earl of Derby in 1594, and
Thomas Seymour, the younger son of Catherine Grey. The latter was
thought to have two advantages over his elder brother: unlike Beauchamp,
he was arguably legitimate since his parents had publicly affirmed their
vows before his birth; and, as yet unmarried, there was the prospect that
he might be induced to marry a Catholic, possibly Isabella, in return for
the throne.

The Conference was not the first work on the succession to be pub-

lished abroad, but the English government viewed it more seriously than
the others.

Sir Robert Cecil procured copies from abroad; Burghley

made a note of its arguments; the authorities interrogated captured
priests closely about the book; and anyone possessing it came under
suspicion of treason. At the same time Elizabeth showed a new wari-
ness towards the Seymour family. In July 1595 she ordered the book which
recounted the process against the ‘pretended matrimony’ of Catherine

Salisbury MSS, iv. 144; Cal. S. P. Dom., 1591–4, 117, 209, 242. There were also rumours of

a plot in 1597; Salisbury MSS, xiv. 18.

The Letters and Memorials of William Cardinal Allen, ed. Thomas Francis Knox (1882), pp. lxxvi–

c; Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, SJ, ed. Leo Hicks (Catholic Record Society, xxxix,
1942), pp. 295–303; R. Doleman, A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crowne of England
1594 (English Recusant Literature, civ, Menston, Yorkshire, 1972). For background to the book,
see Peter Holmes, ‘The Authorship and Early Reception of A Conference about the Next Succession
to the Crown of England ’, Historical Journal, xxiii (1980), 415–29.

In March 1594 the government learned of the News from Spain and Holland, printed in Antwerp

in 1593, which had identified sixteen claimants to the succession; Salisbury MSS, iv. 498.

610

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

Grey to Hertford to be placed on record in the Tower, and she for-
bade its removal without her express permission. A few months after-
wards, she ordered Hertford’s imprisonment for the offence of trying to
prove his sons’ legitimacy, and there were rumours that she intended to
strip Beauchamp of his honorary title.

In these circumstances, Thomas

Seymour, one of Doleman’s favoured English candidates, realized that
he had to tread carefully. In June the following year, therefore, he was
quick to inform upon his kinsman, Sir John Smith, after the latter had
foolishly referred to him as ‘a noble man of the blodd’ in a seditious
speech made to a band of soldiers, which urged them to refuse to fight
in France. Significantly, in the inquiry that followed, Smith was asked
what he knew of Doleman’s book and why he had made reference to
Seymour.

The government, however, could not respond to the Con-

ference by producing counter-propaganda since it was against the law
to discuss the succession. None the less, a few men were sufficiently
concerned that Doleman’s arguments would carry weight on Elizabeth’s
death that they composed their own replies. Peter Wentworth, already
in trouble for writing a Pithie Exhortation and raising the succession in the
parliament of 1593, was pressed by ‘some privie friends’ to produce a
rebuttal. His discourse, though, was left largely unnoticed until a brave,
but anonymous, friend had it published posthumously in 1598. Three
years afterwards John Harrington also penned an answer to Doleman but,
in order to avoid prosecution, he deposited his manuscript for safety with
his friend Toby Matthew, archbishop of York, probably with the inten-
tion of publishing it, if the succession were disputed on Elizabeth’s death.

In addition, several books and pamphlets, which took issue with the
Conference and disagreed with its conclusions about the English succes-
sion, were composed by English Catholic exiles and published abroad.

James had been notified of Doleman’s book by the English govern-

ment, and was also sent copies from Alexander Tayte, a Scottish Jesuit,
and Robert Denneston, a Scottish agent in Flanders. Although the king
claimed to be unworried by the Conference, it is clear that he was both
‘heyhly ofended’ and unsettled by its appearance. No sooner had he heard

Unpublished Documents, ed. J. H. Pollen (Catholic Record Society, v, 1908), p. 263; PRO SP

12/251, fo. 152; PRO SP 12/255, fo. 113; Salisbury MSS, v. 252–3, 273– 4; HMC, Seventy-seventh
Report, De L’Isle and Dudley MSS (3 vols., 1925–36), ii. 177, 182, 183.

PRO SP 12/259, fos. 131–8, Examinations June–July 1596; Strype, Annals, iv. 413–14, 417.

Under the protection of Burghley, Seymour was found innocent of any treasonable behaviour
while Smith was imprisoned in the Tower for a couple of years. The affair none the less demon-
strates the nervousness of all concerned.

A Pithie Exhortation to her Maiestie for Establishing her Successor to the Crowne Whereunto is

Added a Discourse Containing the Author’s Opinion of the True and Lawful Successor to her Maiestie
both Compiled by Peter Wentworth Esquire 1598 (Amsterdam, 1973); A Tract on the Succession
to the Crown 1602 by Sir John Harrington of Kelston, ed. Clements R. Markham (Roxburghe Club,
1880).

For example, William Clitheroe, A Discovery of a Counterfeit Conference (Paris, 1600). Reference to

Clitheroe’s book appears in Cal. S. P. Dom., 1598–1601, 442, 456, 460. Henry Constable, A Discoverye
of a Counterfecte Conference . . . for th ’Advancement of a Counterfecte Tytle . . . (Collen, 1600).

SUSAN DORAN

611

of it than his ‘mynisters have mightely invayed in pulpitt’ against its
author, ‘calling him thefe and traitor to bothe soveraignes and contryes’.

Anxious that the new Latin version might be read in foreign courts,
James also made sure that details of his own right and title were sent
abroad to his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, and the dukes
of Meklenburg, Brunswick, Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, the landgrave
of Hesse and the elector of Brandenburg.

Alexander Dixson wrote

an answer to Doleman in Latin, presumably also for foreign consump-
tion, and Walter Quinn was said to be drafting another work support-
ing James’s claim.

James himself presented the counter-argument to

Doleman’s theory of resistance and idea that a parliament had the right
to put aside the legitimate rights of any claimant to the throne in his The
Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598) which emphasized the divine right
of kings.

In the main, however, James did little to initiate a propaganda

campaign against Doleman. It was left to Sir Thomas Craig, a leading
lawyer in Scotland, to marshal the arguments against the Conference
in a long manuscript treatise composed as late as 1602; in his dedication
to James he explained that he was only writing it because no other
protagonist had come forward.

James preferred to concentrate on more

practical measures for advancing his title. As already seen, he tried to
build up a front of Protestant allies in northern Europe who might come
to his aid out of a mixture of religious, political and dynastic motives.
He also actively looked for Catholic support abroad: he continued
his warm relationship with Henry IV to be sure of winning his support
in any future war of succession against Spain; he entered into a dia-
logue with the pope in order to ward off his own excommunication and
prevent papal recognition of Isabella; and he maintained contacts with
English Catholics, particularly those exiled abroad, who had been sup-
porters of his mother and were horrified by Doleman’s tract.

At the

same time, James tried to win friends at the Elizabethan court. Soon after
Leicester’s death, he cultivated the earl of Essex, in the hope that he would
replace his stepfather as an advocate with Elizabeth.

After 1600 he wrote

PRO SP 52/58, nos. 3, 10 (Cal. Scot. P., xii. 115, 116, 126), 7 and 18 Jan. 1596.

For their responses, Warrender Papers, ii. 366–8.

Cal. Scot. P., xiii. 219, Roger Aston to Robert Cecil, 12 June 1588.

The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles Howard McIlwain (New York, 1965, reprint of 1918

edn.), pp. 53–70. Jenny Wormald, however, argues that neither the Trew Law nor Basilikon Doron
was designed for an open readership; ‘James VI and Basilikon Doron and the Trew Law of Free
Monarchies: The Scottish Context and the English Translation’, The Mental World of the Jacobean
Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 48–9.

Patrick Fraser Tytler, An Account of the Life and Writings of Sir Thomas Craig (Edinburgh, 1823),

pp. 167–70. Thomas Craig, Concerning the Right of Succession to the Kingdom of England (1602),
ed. James Gatherer (1703).

BL Cott. MS Caligula B ix, no. 106, petitions of James VI to Pope Clement VIII, 1595?; Cal.

S. P. Dom., 1598–1601, 59, 4/14 June 1598; HMC, Ninth Report, Elphinstone MSS, 196–7, Thomas
Morgan to James VI, 4 and 13 Dec. 1601.

For this view, see Lee, Solomon, p. 101. For James’s correspondence with Essex, see Border

Papers, i. 333– 4, Sep. 1588 and Life and Letters of the Devereux Earls of Essex, ed. Walter Bourchier
Devereux (2 vols, 1853), i. 309–10.

612

THE IMPACT OF MARY STEWART’S EXECUTION

regularly to Lord Henry Howard, a leading Catholic peer; and even more
usefully, after the débâcle of the Essex rebellion, he began his secret cor-
respondence with Robert Cecil.

100

The succession issue dominated Anglo-Scottish relations in the 1590s.

James’s fear that Englishmen would try to exclude him if he were not
formally named heir, together with English anxieties that the Scottish king
would court Catholics at home and abroad in his bid to win the English
throne, were fundamental causes of strain in Anglo-Scottish relations.
As a result, trivial issues such as the Valentine Thomas affair of 1598 were
blown out of all proportion.

101

Yet throughout this period of uncertainty

and tension, James never allowed his ambition for the succession to
lead him into a weak or submissive relationship with Elizabeth. On the
contrary, he issued vague threats to the English ambassador in Scotland,
exchanged tetchy letters with the queen, and pursued an independent
foreign policy. His words of warning to Elizabeth during the Bothwell
affair clearly demonstrate that he refused to play the role of an English
lackey to secure the English throne: if her subjects gave aid to the earl,
wrote James, ‘I can no longer keep amitie with her but by the contrair
vill be enforced to joyne in freindschipp with her greattest ennemies
for my ouin safetie.’

102

Thus, both during the crisis of Mary’s execution

and in the succeeding years of Elizabeth’s reign, James never sacrificed
his royal dignity or Scottish interests in pursuit of his dynastic ambitions.

100

Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England

during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. John Bruce (Camden Society, lxxviii, 1861).

101

Thomas claimed that James had hired him to assassinate Elizabeth. Although no one believed

his allegation, James demanded a public declaration of his innocence and the obliteration of all
reference to his connection with the plot from the written records.

102

Warrender Papers, ii. 191, 23 March 1593.

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