The Mermaid and the Hare
Placard depicting Mary and Bothwell
Bothwell was Sheriff of Edinburgh, and so immediately after the explosion he led men to investigate the scene. No suspects lingered, and so he arranged for the King's body to be taken to the new Provost's House, placing it in the care of Sandy Durham, one of Darnley's servants. The body would later be taken to Holyrood, embalmed and laid in State.
That same morning the Privy Council, including Bothwell, met and dictated a letter to France to break the news. It then set up a board of inquiry concisting of Bothwell, Argyll and Murray of Tullibardine (a Lennox man).
Neighbours gave evidence of things they had heard, and shed no light on the proceedings, other than that a large number of men had been seen running away. The evidence of the surviving servants was equally un-enlightening, and it is possible that no member of the board of enquiry had any interest in seeking the truth.
Mary offered a reward of £2000, a free pardon and a year's rent to any informant. Her feelings at this time are unknown. She must have known that her pardoning of the Riccio murderers effectively passed Darnley’s death sentence. Yet by the time of his death she was making attempts at reconciliation. This may have been a heartless ruse to entice Darnley back to Edinburgh or she may have steeled herself to making the best of her situation. She may even have been a newly-pregnant adulteress, desperate to legitimise her unborn child [40]. Whatever the truth, it is unlikely that a woman who was expecting the murder of her husband would then falter to the extent of losing control of her country completely.
Her behaviour, letters and actions following the explosion show a woman suffering from severe shock and mental breakdown [4, 5, 25]. Mary had probably believed that no-one would act against Darnley without first informing her. She certainly was not expecting a plot which openly threatened her own life, and her devastation following Kirk o’ Field was thus perfectly genuine. She has been criticised for not pursuing the culprits more vigorously, but she must have felt completely trapped. She knew exactly who the murderers were, but to name them would be to lose almost all her closest advisors and would risk them revealing her complicity.
Even Lennox was wary of digging too deeply, as he was unsure how much Mary knew of his involvement in Darnley's plots against her. A week after the murder he requested a Parliamentary enquiry, which Mary had already arranged.
The dead Darnley assumed a popularity he had never achieved in life. A week after his murder, Bothwell's old adversary and libeller, James Murray of Purdovis, began planting placards to divert attention from the guilty to the innocent. The campaign continued for a month. Murray eventually gave himself away with his famous placard of the Mermaid and the Hare, since few people were able to paint them, and on 14th March the Privy Council ordered his arrest - but he was nowhere to be found.
Bothwell was repeatedly named in the placards, and he was in edge, accompanied by fifty armed men wherever he went. He was heard to say he would wash his hands in the blood of the billstickers. Balfour was another named on the placards and had a guard of fifty men. It was also said that he had killed a servant who was thinking of betraying him.
On top of all this, Bothwell's money worries continued causing him to sell more land. And his wife Jean was in ill-health, her life now in danger, and her death by poison already announced in diplomatic circles. No doubt Bothwell would have been accused of her murder, had she not gone on to live for another 62 years. However, her imminent death may have caused Bothwell to consider his next bride, for by the end of March the English Ambassador in Paris had heard of his possible marriage with Mary.
What Bothwell didn't know was that Moray, Morton and Lindsay had met with the Catholic Earls of Caithness and Atholl at Dunkeld. Moray, Argyll and Atholl then visited Lennox. Lennox was then emboldened to write again to Mary demanding an immediate enquiry and the arrest of everyone named on the placards. Moray was not about to let Bothwell achieve pre-eminence and was already plotting his downfall. The explosion at Kirk o Field could still be used to kill him.