Robert Stedall

William Maitland of Lethington (died 1573) was one of the most influential politicians in Scotland during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots. He served as her emissary on many occasions. Despite being of relatively lowly status, he played a major role in setting policy. As a middle-aged man, he married Mary Fleming, one of the "Four Maries," one of Mary Stewart's closest friends. After Queen Mary was overthrown, he was one of the defenders of the last stronghold to hold out for her, and when it was captured, he died, perhaps by suicide, before the new anti-Mary forces could execute him.

He is a man well worthy of further study, and his own book. Sadly, this book is not it.

There are several views possible of Maitland. One is that, being perhaps the cleverest person in Scotland at this time (other sources have called him the one modern man in a basically feudal court), he was pro-England, realizing that that was the best way to bring stability to Scotland. He was a genuine supporter of Queen Mary who was opposed to some of her choices -- her legitimately bad choices, first to marry Henry, Lord Darnley and then to marry the Earl of Bothwell. The former marriage weakened her government severely; the latter caused her overthrow. Maitland may have opposed his mistress, but he was right, and if he opposed her actions, he did not oppose her personally.

The other view is that Maitland was Mary's evil genius. This, at its heart, is Robert Stedall's view -- for instance, that Maitland was at the heart of the conspiracies against David Riccio and against Darnley (even though the only evidence, in either case, is the statements of deeply prejudiced witnesses), and that he was responsible for altering, and perhaps even forging some of, the "Casket Letters" that were used as evidence against her after she fled to England.

The evidence we have to work with is extremely thin. For example, the Casket Letters are gone; there is no way to examine the writing, the ink, the paper. All we have is unreliable transcripts and translations. Similarly with most of the other documents which might have told what Maitland was up to -- and of course we have no memoirs by either Maitland or Mary Fleming. Any conclusions we reach much be based on logic and inference from limited facts.

And Stedall is, to me at least, utterly unconvincing. He seems to have chosen his side, and having done so, he interprets all the evidence in ways that support this view, even if the plain sense of the evidence points another way. Nor does he ever offer a rational explanation for why Maitland did what he did. In no instance is what Stedall says impossible -- but rarely is it the most obvious conclusion. To paint his picture, he must offer a Maitland whose every documented act points one way and every undocumented act points another. And there are a few places where, based on his endnotes, he simply bridges over unknown information with pure speculation.

Perhaps my conclusion is a little unfair; Stedall might have been more convincing were he a better writer. But he is not a good writer; his work is leaden, and it is also frequently unclear -- full of places where the meaning of a sentence depends entirely on who it refers to, where it uses an ambiguous pronoun to make its point.*

For a true scholar of Marian politics, deeply versed in the events of this time, there are probably some ideas in here worthy of pursuit (e.g. those dangling pronouns probably would not be confusing!). For me -- as a pretty knowledgeable layman but not a professional scholar of post-medieval Scotland -- it was simply an unconvincing, uncomfortable slog.

* (A good, because very obvious, example of Stedall's problems with references comes in another book of his, Mary Queen of Scots' Downfall: The Life and Murder of Henry, Lord Darnley, p. 240: "We know from Mary's correspondence that she thought the king's [Darnley's] murder was also aimed against her, and Moray was behind a conspiracy to bring her down." Does this mean that Mary thought Moray was behind a conspiracy, or that Moray was behind a conspiracy? It's flatly impossible to tell from the sentence -- but vitally important.)… (altro)