An Accidental Tragedy by Roderick Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

as far as Dunbar in the east and Queensferry in the west. He destroyed the Chapel of Our Lady of Loretto in Musselburgh as well as the orchards at Seton, ‘The fairest and the best that we saw in all that country.’ Crossing the Forth again he advanced as far as Kinghorn but realised that he could never reach St Andrews in the time Henry had allowed him.
    In Stirling, plans were made to transport Mary, first to the Highlands, where it was ‘not possible to come by her’, then to the cathedral at Dunkeld, where Arran’s brother was now bishop. Hertford was within six miles of Stirling when he was forced by lack of time to turn for home. He and his men ‘sent home spoil and gunshots, returned home on foot through the main country of Scotland, burning both pile, fortress and town which was in their way and lost scant 40 persons’. Hertford recorded the destruction of the abbeys of Kelso, Jedburgh, Dryburgh and Melrose, 7 monasteries, 16 castles, 5 market towns, 253 villages, 13 mills and 3 hospitals. He had slain 192 Scots in battle, taken 816 prisoners and was driving 10,386 cattle,12,242 sheep and 200 goats south as booty, as well as 850 bolls 1 of corn. In all the towns the civilian populations had been slaughtered. Hertford had been given his strict timescale because Henry had been planning to invade France with a view to seizing Boulogne, and Hertford now rode south to join these invasion forces.
    Hertford’s invasion had been a disaster for Scotland. One effect of it was, however, to strengthen the view held in Scotland that Mary should now marry in France. Help was promised from François and Marie’s stock had risen hugely as Arran’s had fallen, with Marie now sitting on the council, and it was clear that from now on she would have personal control of the choice of a husband for Mary.
    Having helped Henry to win back Boulogne from François, Hertford returned to Scotland in February 1545 and once again slaughtered and burned in the border country, but when he met a Scottish army at Ancrum Moor on 27 February, it was no longer under the sole command of the inept Arran. The Scots forces were now in the more capable hands of the Earl of Angus and, for the first time in his career, Hertford was routed.
    Both sides drew breath and for a year concentrated on making alliances and restocking treasuries for the inevitable restart of hostilities. Mary continued her gilded childhood in the safety of Stirling Castle, where she was starting to speak the Scots tongue of her nurses. The behaviour of the court, however, followed Marie’s tastes and French fashions prevailed. Mary accepted that regular attendance at Mass was a normal part of life, as was the formality of aristocratic attendance on her. Had it been possible for her to be taken on journeys around Stirling she might have gleaned some knowledge of life beyond the court, but security made this impossible, and her nurses’ enthusiasm in their adoration of the queen in their care went some way to compensating for her claustrophobic existence. She had no knowledge of the events unfolding in East Lothian.
    On the night of 16 January 1546 the Earl of Bothwell’s soldiers, acting on orders from Cardinal Beaton, arrested a group of men in Ormiston, a village near Haddington. Bothwell’s various amorous pursuits had caused him to fall out of favour with Marie – he was ‘in glondours’, or disgrace – and his efforts in the Catholic cause restored his position. The cardinal’s target had been George Wishart, a Protestant reformer who had been gaining support wherever he preached. Wishart was under the personal protection of his ‘sword-bearer’, John Knox. Knox, a St Andrews University graduate and ordained priest, had been converted to the reformed cause by Wishart and was now one of a growing number of Protestant apostates.
    Wishart was taken under arrest to St Andrews – the other men were allowed to ‘escape’ – and tried under circumstances that would