Miscarriage At Lochleven

Miscarriage at Lochleven

An important event in the life of Mary Stuart while a prisoner at Lochleven in 1567 has been little investigated, but is crucial in settling the controversy about her relations with Bothwell before her marriage to him. The event is recorded by Claude Nau, her French secretary and closest adviser in the last years of her life, in his Memoirs which were only discovered and published in 1883. Although he was with her only during the last eleven years of her life, there is every reason to believe that the details of earlier events were given to him personally and privately by Mary herself. He records that some time about the middle of July 1567 Mary miscarried of twin foetuses. His actual words are (translated from the French): “On the afternoon of the 24th day of July 1567, the Lords Lyndsay and Ruthven, accompanied by two notaries and the said Melvil, came into the Queen’s chamber. She was lying on her bed, in a state of extreme weakness, partly because of the great trouble she was suffering, partly in consequence of a great flux (the result of an abortion of two children, her issue by Bothwell), so that she could move only with great difficulty.” The French for the miscarriage was “avortement de deux enfans”.

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The reason for her “extreme weakness” was her treatment during the first weeks of her detention at Lochleven. On 16 June she had been hurried at night, rudely and without ceremony, from Holyrood to Lochleven Castle and thrown into a room by herself with no clothes but a nightdress. “In the night privily she was conveyed, and with haste, to the strong fort of Lochleven; and after a few dayes, being stripped out and spoyled of all her princely attirement, was clothed with a coarse brown cassock.” ( Leslie’s “Defence”). Earlier that same day she had suffered the indignity and shame of being led away, a common captive, from the confrontation at Carberry, insulted and spat upon by her enemy’s soldiers and jeered at by an Edinburgh mob inflamed by the preachers’ invective against her. At Lochleven she was put under the baleful eye of the insolent and tyrannical Lady Margaret Douglas, her father’s erstwhile mistress and the mother of her enemy and half-brother James, Earl of Moray. Closely confined, harassed and importuned daily to confess her part in the murder of her husband four months earlier, and bullied incessantly to abdicate her crown, she was frequently in tears and terrified with fear. Worn out as she was with deprivation and sickness, it was not surprising that she was in a state of extreme weakness, nor that she would have suffered a sudden miscarriage. It was while in this state of debility and terror that she was forced to sign the papers of abdication brought to her by Lyndsay and Ruthven. -3-

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The only other credible mention of this pregnancy was made by Mary herself to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador, when he had come to Lochleven at some time in the middle of July to try to persuade Mary to divorce Bothwell who had fled after Carberry and was now a fugitive in the Shetlands. Mary refused to do so, giving the following reason, as reported by Throckmorton on 18 July in a letter to Elizabeth’s secretary Cecil: “I have also persuaded her to renounce Bothwell for her husband, and to be contented to suffer a divorce to pass betwixt them; she hath sent me word that she will in no ways consent unto that, but rather die, grounding herself upon this reason, taking herself to be seven weeks gone with child; by renouncing Bothwell she would acknowledge herself to be with child of a bastard, and to have forfeited her honour, which she will not do to die for it.” Therein is the crux of the matter: her statement that she was “seven weeks gone with child”. Between the time of that admission to Throckmorton and the visit on 24th July by Lord Lyndsay and the others , she had the miscarriage mentioned by Nau, as she was still haemorrhaging and lying weak in bed when the lords arrived. At the latest that would make the miscarriage eight weeks after conception, which would put the time of conception towards the end of May. She had been married to Bothwell on 15th May, so she could have conceived immediately after the marriage.

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However, it has been argued by an obstetrician writing in a medical journal in 1932 that it would have been very difficult to distinguish twin foetuses at eight weeks’ term particularly in a “great flux of blood”, that they would be no more than three centimetres in length. He objected to the use by Nau of the words “deux enfans” in that Mary must have been considerably more pregnant to have someone describe them as “children”. However, it must be remembered that Nau got his information from Mary herself, and any mother suffering a miscarriage, however early, would refer to what she had lost as “a child”. There are two other allusions to Mary being pregnant, both unreliable, but, if true, with important implications. Writing to the Earl of Leicester on 15th June the Earl of Bedford informs him that “The Queen is with child.” Wherever the information came from (and it could not have come from any reliable source) he must have learned of it before Mary’s surrender at Carberry on 15th June. This would mean, if Mary’s statement to Throckmorton is true, that she was less than a month pregnant when Leicester reported the matter. It is clear that this is unlikely as it would not be possible to be certain at such an early date.

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A further reference to a pregnancy is made by Guzman, the Spanish ambassador in London. In a letter to Philip, the King of Spain, on 21st June he informs him that the Queen is five months pregnant. He himself was never at Lochleven and must have got the information at second hand and, like all gossip of this kind, was exaggerated as it went the rounds. It could quite easily have been invented by one of Mary’s detractors who wanted to insinuate that she was sexually active with Bothwell while Darnley was still alive. So, was Mary mistaken about how far gone she was, or was she deliberately lying? We must go back to a previous event, the date and circumstances of which are also crucial to a determination of the truth, namely the abduction of Mary by Bothwell on 24th April. Mary had been intercepted by Bothwell and a large troop of his Borderers on her way back from Stirling where she had been visiting her son. He had taken her by force along with several of her attendants to his castle at Dunbar and kept her prisoner there for over a week. There, according to several accounts, he had forced her to have sexual intercourse with him. Even the Protestant lords declared on June 12th that during the Queen’s imprisonment at Dunbar “the said Erll seducit by unlesum wayis our said Soverane to an unhonest marriage with himself.” On July 21st they wrote: “Our Soverane

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Lady was led captive, and by feare, force, and, as mony conjecture may be weil suspected, other extraordinary and mair unlauchfull meanys, compelled to become bedfellow of another wyve’s husband.” These “mair unlauchfull meanys” could refer to Bothwell’s notorious dabbling in the black arts and love potions, what might be called nowadays drug-induced sexual assault, or date-rape. Melville, in his Memoirs writes: “And the Queen could not but marry him, seeing he had ravished her and lain with her against her will.” Mary herself, in her instructions to the Bishop of Dunblane in May 1567 to go to France and explain the circumstances leading up to her hasty marriage writes…”so ceased he never till by persuasion and importune suit, accompanied nonetheless with force, he has finally driven us to end the work begun at such time and in such form as he thought might best serve his turn, wherein we cannot dissemble that he has used us otherwise than we would have wished….” So, as seems likely, Bothwell forced Mary to have sexual intercourse with him during her enforced detention at Dunbar . This would help to explain Mary’s agreement to a hasty marriage, fearing that she might be already pregnant. If the rape, or seduction, took place on or soon after their arrival at Dunbar on 24th April and Mary conceived then, that would make her about twelve weeks pregnant at the time of the miscarriage and the aborted foetuses more recognisable as such. -7Miscarriage at Lochleven/6

But the question remains: how do we explain Mary’s comment to Throckmorton that she was seven weeks gone with child on 18th July? The usual way that a woman determines the date of conception is by reference to her last period. This would indicate that Mary thought she had missed one period, but it was possible, in the enfeebled physical state she was in, that her bodily functions were out of order and that she was unable accurately to determine how far she was gone with child. Mary’s enemies, eager to find any indication that she had had an adulterous relationship with Bothwell, argued that the foetuses were at least five months developed (which would make “deux enfans” more acceptable to them) and had been conceived during a sexual relationship with Bothwell just after the death of Darnley. They could not use that pregnancy as an argument for a relationship with Bothwell while Darnley was alive (though they believed it and would like to have proclaimed it), because Mary could then have claimed that Darnley was the father. So, Mary was either mistaken in the belief that she was seven weeks pregnant and was actually eleven or twelve weeks gone, or she was lying to conceal the fact that she had committed adultery with Bothwell. If the former, conception would have taken place during her detention at Dunbar and would explain her desire for an immediate marriage. It would also explain her almost suicidal depression and unhappiness from the very day of the marriage.

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If we accept the latter explanation, that she was lying, then she had conceived during a sexual relationship with Bothwell in February or March. The argument against this charge is that they had little opportunity to be together clandestinely (despite Buchanan’s libellous claims) and what we know of Mary’s unsullied reputation up until then. Also, the watchful attention of the women of Lochleven, two of whom slept in her bedroom to keep an eye on her, would have easily detected and reported a suspicious swelling of Mary’s belly, as they reported every other sign of physical ailment. As Mary said in a letter to her mother-in-law, Catherine de Medicis: “I am so closely watched that I have no leisure except while they are at their meals, or when they sleep, that I get up, for their daughters sleep with me.” Like most other controversies concerning “the daughter of debate”, we shall never know the truth, but the most likely explanation is that Mary became pregnant during her ravishment by Bothwell at Dunbar in April and that she had a miscarriage of twins in July. There is one other reference to the obstetric history of Mary at Lochleven which is given no credence nowadays but was believed by several historians in the nineteenth century. That is, that Mary gave birth to a daughter in February 1568 before her escape from the island, that the father was George Douglas, one of the Lady of Lochleven’s

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sons, and that the child was smuggled abroad to become a nun in a convent in France. This unlikely event is regarded now as mere gossip and tittle-tattle. If Mary had miscarried in July she could not have given birth in February the following year. Also, that such a thing could have taken place and not be reported by the ever-watchful women is impossible to credit, nor did Mary herself ever refer to a daughter, not even at the end of her life when she was making provision for all her attendants and servants. The story was made into a romantic fiction by Charlotte Yonge in her novel “Unknown to History”. By her three husbands Mary had but one child, James. This baby James, the son of Darnley her second husband, was being crowned King of Scotland at Stirling at the same time as Mary was miscarrying at Lochleven of two other children by her third husband Bothwell. Mary Stuart’s own fate was not to be decided for twenty more years, after a brief glimpse of freedom and another nine prisons. ___________________

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