Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587; Queens -- Scotland -- Biography; Scotland -- History -- Mary Stuart, 1542-1567
Now Moray had been admitted to Mary’s presence two days after the death of
Riccio, before her flight to Dunbar. On April 25, 1566, Randolph writes
from Berwick to Cecil: ‘Murray, Argyll, and Glencairn are come to Court. I
hear his (Moray’s) credit shall be good. The Queen wills that all
controversies shall be taken up, in especial that between Murray and
Bothwell.’[84] On April 21, 1566, Moray, Argyll, Glencairn, and others
were received by Mary in the Castle, and a Proclamation was made to soothe
‘the enmity that was betwixt the Earls of Huntly, Bothwell, and
Murray.’[85] Thenceforward, as we have proved in detail, Moray was
ostensibly in Mary’s favour. Moray would have us believe that he only
obtained this grace by virtue of his promise to sign a band with Huntly,
Bothwell, and Argyll: the last had been on his own side in his rebellion.
But the band, he alleges, was not signed till October, 1566, though the
promise must have been given, at least his ‘favour’ with Mary was
obtained, in April. And Moray signed the band precisely at the moment when
Darnley was giving most notorious trouble, and had just been approached
and implored by Mary, the Council, and the French ambassador. That was the
moment when the Privy Council assured Catherine that they ‘would never
consent’ to Darnley’s sovereignty. Why was that moment selected by Moray
to fulfil a promise more than four months old? Was the band not that
mentioned by Randolph, Archibald Douglas, and Nau, and therefore, in some
sense, an anti-Darnley band, not a mere ‘sign of reconciliation’? The
inference appears legitimate, and this old band signed by Moray seems to
have been confused, by his enemies, with a later band for Darnley’s
murder, which we may be sure that he never signed. He only ‘looked through
his fingers.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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