Queen of Scots and Bothwell ' s bracelets

One of the famous Casket Letters mentions Mary, Queen of Scots making bracelets for the Earl of Bothwell. Is this an implausible story which casts doubt on the alleged authenticity of the letters, or is it something she could have done? This articlef examines an unusual aspect of 16th-century Sco ttish jewellery. The jewellery of Mary, Queen of Scots (illus 1) was famous throughout Europe in her own time and outdid even the glittering array of gems possessed by Elizabeth I of England. Rather different in style, however, was a bracelet which features in the notorious Casket Letters. The eight letters and the long poem (printed and discussed in Davison 1965 passim), apparently discovered in the casket taken from one of the Earl of Bothwell's retainers, were produced by her accusers at Mary's first trial in York. If authentic, they proved that she had gone to Glasgow in 1567 with the deliberate intention of luring her second husband, Lord Darnley, to his death at the hands of Bothwell (illus 2), her alleged lover. If forgeries or artificial concoctions of some kind, they are evidence not of her guilt but of her enemies' determination to destroy her. Since the documents vanished in the 1580s and are known to us only in 16th-century copies, the originals cannot be subjected to scrutiny by modern scientific techniques, and so every detail they contain takes on a heightened significance. The mention of the bracelet at first sight seems implausible. According to the copy of the second long letter made by the clerk at the Westminster Conference in December 1568 (Fraser 1969, 560) the Queen explained: This daye I have wrought till two of the clock upon this bracelet to putt the keye in the clyfte of it, which is tyed with two laces. I have had so lyttle tyme that it is very yll, but I will make a fayrer, and in the meane tyme take heed that none of those that be heere doo see it, for all the world wold know it, for I have made it in haste in theyr presence . . . [Later, she continues] I have not seene him [Darnley] this night, for ending your bracelet, but I can fynde no claspes for yt. it is ready thereunto and yet I feare least it shuld bring you yll happ, or that it should be knowen if you were hurte. Send me word whither you will have i t . . . . In short, rather than visiting her sick husband, a task she said she abhorred, Mary apparently sat up late working on this very personal gift for another man. Her fondness for playing cards until the small hours with courtiers who had included David Rizzio had already * Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD t This paper was awarded the R B K Stevenson prize. 890 SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND, 1997 ILLUS 1 Silver medal commemorating the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, 1565, by an unknown artist. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery PG752d) ILLUS 2 Miniature, oil on copper, of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Both well, 1566, by an unknown artist. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery PG869) been jealously noted by Lord Darnley (illus 3), but is it possible that a queen could actually make an item of jewellery? Although the word 'wrought' could be used in connection with, say, needlework, it is plain that more than sewing was involved. There was a key, a lock (the contemporary Scottish translation reads 'for to put the key of it within the lock thairof, quhilk is couplit underneth with twa courdounis') and there was a need for clasps. The notion of Mary undertaking any metalwork is out of the question. Only goldsmiths or silversmiths who had undergone years of apprenticeship and training could produce such an item, using specialist tools. Is the passage about the bracelet therefore a glaring inaccuracy, which casts immediate doubt on the authenticity of the Casket Letters, or could the bracelet have taken some form which does make an unlikely story plausible? Bracelets certainly were worn by men in the 16th century, but not until the closing decades. In documentary evidence, it is often difficult to tell whether the bracelets mentioned are intended for men or women. A discharge by Mr John Lyndesay, parson of Menmuir, in Edinburgh on 28 April 1583 to James Guthrie, burgess of Edinburgh on behalf of James, Lord Ogilvy is for 12 crowns in payment of a pair of bracelets, but there is no indication of whether these were for Lord Ogilvy himself or for a female friend or relative (SRO Airlie MSS GD16/32/2). Visual evidence in the form of paintings is, however, unambiguous. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery holds in its Reference Archive more than 30,000 black and white photographs of portraits in public and private collections throughout Britain. Although the number of 16th-century portraits from any country is small, the selection in the Archive is comprehensive. There is not one example of a 16th-century English, French, German or Dutch male sitter wearing a bracelet. This is not altogether surprising, since the tight-fitting cuffs and hand ruffs of the period would make it virtually impossible to display bracelets, and for this same reason they are not to be found in female portraits of the period either. Interestingly, there are two Scottish examples in male portraits, but not until the end of the century: the 1586 painting of George Dundas of Dundas by an unknown artist (illus 4), and the 898 | SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND, 1997 The reference to the key and the lock is more puzzling. The 1610 portrait of Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (illus 11) shows him with a small key suspended from a fine silk cord wound round his left wrist (illus 12). The cord might even be made of hair. Its significance has long puzzled observers. Could it have been a love token? The key could conceivably have had some symbolic significance as the key to a lady's heart, or it might have opened a coffer of a private nature. However, since the sitter was the former Lord Chancellor of Scotland, and a man in his middle fifties, a romantic explanation for this detail of a public portrait seems unlikely. Perhaps it is an allusion to the fact that he had become a member of the English Privy Council the previous year. Finally, the fact that Mary was making a single bracelet is not without significance. It was customary to wear precious bracelets in matching pairs, one on each wrist, but a hair bracelet was a single item, sufficient in itself. Of course, Mary wrote of her intention of making another bracelet, and Both well did indeed receive more than one from her. On 10 August 1569, Nicholas Howbert, better known as Paris, was interrogated in St Andrews about the events leading up to the explosion at Kirk o' Field. In his deposition, he alleged that Mary sent him from Glasgow to Bothwell 'avec des brasseletz', and that he delivered them to the Earl (Pitcairn, Trials, i, pt 2, 507). The Casket Letter makes it clear, however, that the second bracelet was not intended as a matching fellow for the first, but as a more satisfactory replacement for the original. Its status as a love token was thus emphasized. Unlikely as the tale of Mary making bracelets may at first seem, she could well have done so, and one small doubt about the Casket Letters is therefore removed. From the evidence of other hair bracelets, we may conclude that the anecdote was not a clumsy and implausible invention, but even so we are no closer to knowing whether or not the letters are authentic. Was the story of the bracelets a deft touch by a calculating enemy determined to incriminate the Queen, or the involuntary admission of a young woman ready to sacrifice everything for love? Like so much else in her life, the answer remains veiled in mystery.