Mary Stuart

  Suddenly, however, a spark kindled in the Queen’s heart. Mary Stuart, who had famous kings and princes as wooers, herself began to woo this foolish stripling of nineteen. Passion flamed up in her, as it is apt to do in those who have not prematurely frittered away their feelings in petty love adventures. For Mary, Darnley was the object of her first great passion. Her child marriage to Francis II had made of her little more than the young King’s playmate. Since Francis’ death, the woman in her had remained in abeyance. Now she had come into contact with a man upon whom her affection could discharge itself like a torrent. Unreflectingly, in the happy intoxication of self-forgetfulness, she gave herself up to the rush of feeling, in the belief that Darnley was all she could have dreamt of, was to be the one and only love of her life.

  To expect reasonableness from a young woman in love is to look for the sun at midnight. It is of the essence of the love passion to be unanalysable and irrational. Always it is outside the range of mathematical calculations. Beyond question Mary Stuart’s choice of Darnley conflicted sharply with the general excellence of her understanding. The young man was crude, vain, with nothing to commend him but good looks. Like countless other men who have been passionately loved by women of outstanding intelligence, Darney’s only merit, his only magic, was that he chanced to be the man who, at the decisive hour, presented himself to a young woman whose willto-love had long been pent up.

  Long, too long, had been the pause before the amatory passions of this proud daughter of the Stuarts were aroused. Now, after this time of waiting, she was impatient, was twitching with eagerness. When Mary Stuart wanted anything, she was not inclined to wait and to consider; as soon as she had made up her mind, her impulses urged her to action. The woman forgot the Queen; political considerations did not weigh with her for a moment. What mattered England or France or Spain, what mattered the future, as compared with the entrancing present? She would no longer trifle with Elizabeth’s proposal of Leicester as husband, nor would she await the slothful wooer from Madrid even though he was to bring her the crown of two worlds. Here, ready to her hand, was the bright-visaged, gentle and voluptuous youth, with his full, red lips, his childlike eyes, his cautious advances! A speedy alliance, that she might give herself to him unrestrainedly—such was the unquestioning impulse of her happily awakened senses. At first, however, she confided her intention to only one person at court, David Rizzio, who did his utmost, like a skilful smuggler, to guide the lovers’ ship past all rocks into the harbour of Cythera. A confidant of the Pope, Rizzio believed that Mary’s marriage to the Catholic Darnley would ensure the re-establishment of the old Church in Scotland. His zeal for the union was the outcome, not so much of a desire for Mary’s happiness or for Henry’s, as of the political scheming of a champion of the Counter-Reformation. Before James Stuart or Maitland of Lethington, the effective rulers of Scotland, had any notion of Mary’s intentions, the young Italian had written to the Pope for the dispensation requisite to the marriage, since Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was Mary’s cousin. Foreseeing every possible difficulty, Rizzio likewise wrote to Philip II to ask whether Mary could count upon the King of Spain’s help should Elizabeth make trouble about the marriage. Both by day and by night this confidential agent was hard at work, for Rizzio believed that the rising of the two stars would promote his own ascent in the courtly heaven as well as the triumph of Catholicism. But for all that he drove his mines so busily, he worked too slowly and too cautiously for Mary’s impatience. She would not be stayed for weeks and weeks while the letters took their tedious course across seas and lands. There would not be any hitch in the negotiations for the Holy Father’s dispensation. Why should she wait for a piece of parchment before having her desires gratified? As if to cut off the possibility of retreat (had she an inkling that her passion would be inconstant?), she wanted to give herself wholly to her lover without delay. Always in her resolves Mary showed this same blind disregard of consequences, this charming and foolish exaggeration. The faithful and adroit Rizzio soon found a way of gratifying the wishes of his royal mistress. He arranged for a Catholic priest to come to his room. Even though irrefutable evidence of a premature wedding be undiscoverable (as for all the details of Mary’s life, there is a conflict of testimony here), some sort of formal betrothal must have taken place. Why, otherwise, should the trusty henchman have exclaimed: “Laudate sia Dio”—Praised be God? Why should he have declared that no one could now “disturbare le nozze”—disturb the wedding? Long before any at court except Rizzio had taken Darnley’s wooing seriously, Mary’s cousin had become lord of her life and perhaps also of her body.

  This “matrimonio segreto”—secret marriage—remained secret for a time because the pair chiefly concerned and also Rizzio and the priest knew how to hold their tongues. Still, the lovers’ manner betrayed them, as the heat of a hidden fire can be felt. It was not long before the court began to watch Mary Stuart and Darnley more closely. At this juncture the poor young fellow fell sick of measles—a distressingly childish ailment for a bridegroom. The anxious Mary watched day after day at his bedside and, when he was convalescent, continued to spend her time with him. The first among Mary’s statesmen and advisers to become seriously uneasy was James Stuart, Earl of Moray. Doubtless with a keen eye to his own advantage, he had honestly done his best to promote a good marriage for his sister and, although he was a strict Protestant, he had urged her to wed Don Carlos, scion of the Spanish Habsburgs, and therefore one of the leading figures in Catholic Christendom. But a wedding with Darnley ran athwart his plans and interests. Moray was clear-sighted enough to know that, should the conceited, soft-headed Darnley become prince consort, he would at once wish to wrest the royal authority into his own hands, and would never be content to let James Stuart rule. Besides, Moray had sufficient political flair to guess whither the intrigues of Rizzio, Italian secretary and papal agent, were tending—namely, towards the re-establishment of Catholicism and the downfall of the Reformation in Scotland. In his resolute mind personal ambition joined forces with religious conviction, the will-to-power with patriotic anxiety. He therefore urgently warned his sister against a marriage which would lead to disastrous conflict in a land that was just beginning to quiet down. When he saw that his warnings were unheeded, he abruptly left the court.

  Lethington, the other trustworthy adviser, likewise offered resistance. He too saw that his position and the religious peace of Scotland were endangered. By degrees there assembled round the two Protestant statesmen the whole body of Scottish nobles that supported the Reformed Church. At length even Randolph, the English ambassador, began to notice what was going on at court. Afraid lest he should have been nodding at the decisive hour, in his report to Elizabeth he described handsome young Darnley’s influence with the Queen as the outcome of “witchcraft”, and began to drum lustily for aid. But the discontent and murmurings of these lesser folks were as nothing in comparison with the fury of Elizabeth when she learnt of Mary’s choice of husband. Now, indeed, she was distressingly repaid for the dubious game she had been playing; she had actually been made a fool of. While Mary was pretending to negotiate with her for her favourite Leicester, the real wooer had been smuggled out of her hands and across the border into Scotland; she was left stranded in London to reap the fruit of excess of diplomatic craft. In the first outburst of her anger, regarding Lady Lennox, Darnley’s mother, as at the bottom of the whole business, she caused the countess to be arrested and confined in the Tower. Threateningly she commanded Darnley, as one of her “subjects”, to return instantly to England; she alarmed his father with the threat of confiscating his estates; she summoned the Privy Council which, acting on her instructions, declared the marriage of Mary to Darnley “unmeet, unprofitable and perilous to the sincere amity between the queens and their realms”; she uttered veiled menaces of war. Substantially, however, she was so greatly alarmed and perplexed that simultaneously she tried chaffering. To save her own face, she played her last trump, the card which
she had hitherto been careful to keep out of sight.

  Now, when Elizabeth (though she does not yet know it) is too late in the field, for the first time she makes Mary an open and firm offer of succession to the English crown. Being in a great hurry, she sends a special envoy to convey the following declaration: “If the Queen of Scots would accept Leicester, she would be accounted and allowed next heir to the crown as though she were her own born daughter.” Here we have a signal instance of the futility of diplomacy. What Mary Stuart has for years been striving to attain with skill, urgency and cunning, that her rival should grant this right of succession to the English crown, is now put almost within her reach—would have been within her reach, had she not gone too far—by the most foolish action of her life.

  It is part of the nature of political concessions that they come too late. Yesterday Mary Queen of Scots was still playing the political game; today she is only a woman, only a woman in love. Her leading ambition was, until a few weeks ago, to become acknowledged heiress to the throne of England. Now this desire for an enhanced royal state has been forgotten because of the woman’s impulsive longing to surrender her body to the embrace of a handsome young man. Even if she wanted to draw back, to secure the coveted prize in England, the secret marriage has made withdrawal out of the question. She and Darnley are man and wife, or at least formally betrothed. Too late come Elizabeth’s menaces; too late her offer of the English succession; too late, likewise, are the warnings of sincere friends, such as the Duke of Lorraine, her uncle, who urges Mary to have nothing more to do with that “joli hutaudeau”—that popinjay. Intelligence and reasons of state no longer weigh with the impetuous young woman.

  Sarcastically she replied to the angry Elizabeth, who had been caught in her own net: “I am truly amazed at my good sister’s dissatisfaction, for the choice which she now blames was made in accordance with her wishes. I have rejected all foreign suitors, and have chosen an Englishman who is of the royal blood of both kingdoms, and, as far as England is concerned is, on his mother’s side, the eldest male descendant from the royal House of Tudor.” Elizabeth could not say a word to the contrary, for it was literally true that Mary had fulfilled her wishes, although after Mary’s own fashion! Mary had wedded an English nobleman, and one sent to her by Elizabeth, although the latter had an ambiguous intent. Elizabeth Tudor, her nerves distraught, nevertheless continued to overwhelm Mary Stuart with offers and threats. Thereupon Mary grew blunt. She denied any right on Elizabeth’s part to exercise “overlordship”, any grounds for interference. She herself, said Mary, had so long been “trayned with fayre speeches and beguyled in her expectations”, that she had at length made her own choice, with the full consent of her estates. Regardless of missives from London, whether sweet or sour, in Edinburgh Mary made speedy arrangements for a public marriage. Darnley was knighted, made Earl of Ross and granted other honours. The English envoy, who galloped up at the last minute carrying a pack of protests from England, arrived just in time to hear the proclamation that Henry Darnley was henceforward to be “namit and stylit king”.

  Being already Duke of Albany, Darnley was proclaimed King of Scotland by Mary’s authority. On 29th July 1565, the nuptials of the pair were publicly celebrated in the Catholic chapel at Holyrood. To the general surprise, Mary Stuart, who always had an inventive turn where ceremonial was concerned, appeared in mourning dress, the robe she had worn at the interment of her first husband the King of France. She designed to show that she had not frivolously forgotten her first spouse, and now appeared a second time before the altar as wife in order to fulfil the wishes of her country. Not until after she had heard Mass and had withdrawn to her room did she allow herself to be persuaded by Darnley (though really all had been prearranged, and the festal robes were laid out ready) to doff her mourning and put on gay attire suitable to a bride. The palace was surrounded by a jubilant crowd. Largesse was freely scattered and the populace gave itself up to rejoicing—greatly to the annoyance of John Knox, who had himself just married a girl of eighteen as his second wife, but wished no one except himself to find enjoyment. In Knox’s despite, the rejoicings went on for four days and four nights, as though gloom were for ever to be dispelled from Scotland, and that misty land were to become a happy realm of youth.

  Measureless was Elizabeth’s despair when she, unmarried and never to marry, learnt that Mary had for the second time become a wife. Her most artful manoeuvres had brought her only slaps in the face. She had offered the Queen of Scotland her own favourite as husband, and Leicester had been publicly refused. She had vetoed the wedding with Darnley, and her veto had been openly disregarded. She had dispatched a special envoy with a last warning, and he had been kept waiting outside barred gates until the marriage ceremony was over. It was essential for her now to do something to regain prestige. She must either break off diplomatic relations or declare war. But what pretext could she find for either step? Obviously Mary Stuart had the right to choose a husband for herself; she had complied with Elizabeth’s wish, since Elizabeth had disapproved of her wedding a foreign prince. There was no flaw in the marriage. Henry Darnley, great-grandson of Henry VII and chief male descendant of the House of Tudor, was worthy husband to a queen. He was co-heir presumptive to the English crown, and Mary’s marriage to him greatly strengthened her claim to the English succession. Any further protest on Elizabeth’s part would only make her private spleen manifest to the world.

  Throughout Elizabeth’s life, however, ambiguity remained one of her chief characteristics. Although in this instance its result had been so unfortunate, she could not desist from it. Naturally she did not declare war on Mary Stuart; she did not recall her ambassador but, by underground ways, she did everything she could to make things uncomfortable for those whom she did not wish to be a happy wedded pair. Too timid, too cautious, to come into the open against Darnley and Mary Stuart, she intrigued against them behind the scenes. Rebels and malcontents were never difficult to find in the Scotland of those days when it was a question of running counter to the established authorities, and on this occasion there was forthcoming a man who stood head and shoulders in energy and wrath above all the petty rabble of the disgruntled. Moray had been conspicuous by his absence from his sister’s wedding, and his non-attendance was regarded as an evil omen. For Moray (this is what makes his figure so mysteriously attractive) had an extraordinary instinct for detecting the onset of changes in the political weather and an incredibly keen capacity at forecasting; he always knew where the danger points were to be found, and on this occasion he did the cleverest thing a politician of his stamp can do—he vanished. Having dropped the helm of state, he became invisible and undiscoverable. Like the drying-up of springs, the failure of rivers to flow, great natural catastrophes, the disappearance of Moray—as we shall see again and again in the history of Mary Stuart—always foreboded political disaster. For the time, however, he remained passive. During the days when the wedding was being celebrated he stayed at his castle, having quietly withdrawn from the court, wishing to show in a loyal and yet unmistakable manner that, as first minister of state and protector of Protestantism, he disapproved of the choice of Henry Darnley as King of Scotland. Elizabeth, however, wanted something more than this passive protest against the new royal pair. She desired open rebellion, was eager that Mary Stuart should pay for her private happiness with political trouble and, keeping this end in view, the Queen of England sought the favour of Moray and of the no less discontented Hamiltons. She herself must, on no account, be compromised. “In the most secret way”, therefore, she commissioned Bedford, one of her agents, to support Moray and Hamilton with troops and money “as if from himself”, and with the implication that Elizabeth knew nothing of the matter. The money fell into the clutching hands of the Scottish lords like dew upon a parched meadow; they rallied their courage, and the pledges of military aid soon brought about the rebellion England desired.

  It was, perhaps, the only mistake made by the shrewd and far-
seeing Moray that he should rely upon the English Queen, who was so utterly unreliable, and should put himself at the head of this insurrection. Being cautious, indeed, he did not start proceedings at once, and was content for the time being to find secret confederates, for he really wanted to wait until Elizabeth would openly espouse the cause of the Protestant lords, so that he could take the field against his sister, not as an ordinary rebel, but as defender of the threatened Church. Mary, on the other hand, disquieted by her brother’s ambiguous conduct, and rightly unwilling to tolerate a holding aloof that was manifestly hostile, formally summoned him to appear before parliament and justify his conduct. Moray, however, as proud as his sister, would not present himself in the character of an accused person. He haughtily refused to comply, with the result that he and his adherents were “put to the horn” in Edinburgh marketplace, that is they were publicly declared outlaws. Once more, arms were to decide instead of reason.