English: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (1542-1587). Letter signed as queen of Scotland (‘Marie R’) to the Earl of Cassilis, Edinburgh, 22 May 1567.

In Scots. Half page, 330 x 225mm, integral address panel, remnant of seal slits (small instances of loss and wear, mostly at folds and not affecting the text).

Just a week after her marriage to Bothwell and with political storm-clouds gathering, Mary, Queen of Scots, summons the Earl of Cassilis to her side in Edinburgh. Addressing her 'Traist cousing and counsalour', the queen acknowledges that it is neither possible nor necessary for her lords to remain always with her, unless there be urgent cause; she orders Cassilis to join her in Edinburgh for a forty-day period between 1 June and 16 July, after which time he will be relieved of his 'Dependence' by 'uther nobill men':

'As na thing is mair requisit for Us nor mair expedient for the governament of oure realme and ordouring of the co[m]monn effaris thairof, than to haif ane dalie and continewall resident counsale w[i]t[h] us/ Sa on the Uther p[ar]t we think it not possibill that the haill lordis may alwayis remane and abyde w[i]t[h] Us Neyther yit is it neidfull that thai sould sa do w[i]t[h]out heich and urgent causes occurrit/ Bot rather four and four to remane xl Dayis ay attanis in the somer season and als lang in winter w[i]t[h] oure ordinar officiaris as ye will p[er]save be the act at yo[u]r hithercu[m]ing/ The first tyme is appointit to begin the first Day of Juny nixtocum and ye haif fallin than to begin your Dependence...'

In the first half of 1567 Mary, Queen of Scots was to suffer a series of political disasters that would culminate in her forced abdication on 24 July: the murder of her first husband, Lord Darnley, in February, which triggered a nervous breakdown from which she took months to recover; her own implication in the explosive plot, suspicions that were shared by her cousin, Elizabeth I; and the rapidly souring of relations between herself, her noblemen, and the Earl of Bothwell, newly installed as her husband following his abduction of the queen on 24 April and their marriage on 15 May. Gilbert Kennedy, 4th Earl of Cassilis (c.1541-1576) was an ally of Mary’s: he sat on the assize that acquitted the Earl of Bothwell of Lord Darnley's murder, and was one of the lords who signed the Ainslie bond shortly afterwards in favour of Bothwell's marriage to the queen. Yet when the lords signed the bond they had envisaged a new, post-Darnley regime in which all would participate: when it became clear that Bothwell had no intention of including them in such a manner, they began to move against him. By the time Mary was writing to Cassilis in May 1567, a confederacy had already been formed against her, with military manoeuvres beginning that June – the date by which she stipulates he should join her in Edinburgh, as part of a rolling guard of ‘four and four’ political allies ordered to remain ‘ay attanis’ [all at once] for forty days at a stretch. The Earl of Cassilis was to find his loyalties tested: in spite of Mary’s missive, he fought against the royal couple at Carberry Hill on 15 June, but re-joined the queen’s side the following year at the Battle of Langside, and became one of her most trusted confidants during her imprisonment.