Mary Queen of Scots

  Mary’s future was affected politically by the power of the next generation of Guises at the court of Henry II, principally the two eldest sons of Duke Claude’s enormous family – Francis, second duke of Guise, and Charles who followed his uncle into the Church, and became first cardinal of Guise, later cardinal of Lorraine in his turn. During her childhood Mary also formed deep attachments to some of her Guise aunts and their children. For lack of any brothers and sisters she came to regard these young Guises as her own intimate family, especially once she was grown up, and back in Scotland, no longer in such close touch with the French royal family. Her gentle and cultivated aunt, Anne d’Esté, wife of Duke Francis, she loved with an especial warmth. The attachment was reciprocated: Duchess Anne wrote rapturously to Mary of Guise that her nine-year-old niece was ‘the most beautiful and prettiest little Queen that anyone could want’,3 and she only hoped that her own daughter Catherine would be allowed to serve her when she grew up. When Mary was older, she used to dance with her aunt in front of the court, a sight which Brantôme romantically compared to the two suns of Pliny appearing together in the heavens to astonish the world – Mary being all grace and slenderness, and Anne having the statelier, fuller figure and the more apparent majesty of bearing. One effect of Mary’s friendship with her aunt was to throw her together with her little Guise cousins, despite the disparity in their ages. The future Duke Henry of Guise was eight years younger than Mary, a handsome, blond, curly-haired little boy whom Marguerite de Valois, his contemporary, considered arrogant and overbearing. Mary Stuart, however, from the vantage point of superior age, described Henry and his brothers more sentimentally as the best-looking little boys in all the world.4

  The three main centres of Guise family life were the palace of Joinville in the north-east of France whose gardens and parks were much beloved of Mary and her cousins, the palace of Meudon, close to Paris, and the Hôtel de Guise in Paris itself. Meudon was in the course of construction under the direction of Primaticcio and his pupils in the 1550s, at the cardinal’s behest to include an exquisite grotto: Mary boasted of its coming marvels in a letter to her mother. The magnificent Hôtel de Guise occupied the site of four previous hotels: on the vast quadrangular space, the duke and duchess of Guise built a splendid new hotel, in which the chapel, decorated by Niccol ò del Abbate from drawings by Primaticcio, showed them to be patrons of the arts, and the staircase, decorated by their emblem of the Cross of Lorraine, signified their conscious pride in their family. In each of these three magnificent homes, Mary was welcomed as the young and promising member of the Guise connection, from whom much could be expected.

  The influence of the Guise family was marked at the very outset of the reign of Henry II: at his coronation, the new king received his crown from the hands of Charles of Guise, who was created cardinal five days later. At the royal tournament in celebration of the event, it was Francis of Guise who made a particularly brilliant appearance. The glamour of Duke Francis was indeed such that anti-Guisard historians like de l’Aubespine, the courtier, could not bring themselves to condemn him totally, but were inclined to ascribe his actions, of which they disapproved, to the ambitions of his brother Charles.5 The spell which he cast over his contemporaries was, however, due not only to his pre-eminent generalship, but also to the fact that he was fortunate enough to be able to come to his country’s rescue on two dramatic occasions. The history of Europe in the early part of the 1550s was dominated by the rivalry between the house of Austria, personified by the Emperor Charles V, who included Spain in his vast dominions, and the house of Valois under Henry II. When the Emperor Charles handed over Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip in 1556, this struggle narrowed to a rivalry between Spain and France. In this rivalry both England and Scotland were involved as pawns – England was linked to the side of Spain by the marriage of the English queen, Mary Tudor, to the Spanish King Philip; Scotland was linked to France by the planned marriage of their queen, Mary Stuart, to Henry’s son Francis. But at the beginning of 1552, by making an alliance with the federation of Protestant German princes, who applied for help against the emperor, which allowed him to occupy the key border fortresses of Metz and Verdun, King Henry had brought to an end the uneasy peace which existed between France and the Empire. In reply, the emperor massed his troops with a view to regaining possession of Metz; and it was Francis of Guise who gallantly held the fortress during the prolonged siege which followed. In February the next year, the duke of Guise was solemnly thanked by the French Parliament for saving his country; he seemed indeed to justify the verdict of his brother, that he was ‘the most valiant man in the whole of Christendom’.6

  The character of the cardinal is both more complex and less outwardly attractive than that of his brother. He certainly possessed intelligence, erudition and statecraft, amply illustrated in his letters, but there was also another side to his character on which anti-Guisards loved to dwell: he was accused of avarice, probably with truth (despite the fact that he died deeply in debt and did not show much skill in managing his own financial affairs or those of Mary) since he was in perpetual need of funds to keep up his army of couriers bringing him political news from every corner of Europe. His ecclesiastical career certainly provided an example of pluralism: however, as even in youth he showed sufficient precocity to present King Francis I with a thesis on morals and theology, perhaps his ecclesiastical advancement was not totally unjustified. His sermons aroused the general admiration of the French court; in Holy Week 1560 the Venetian ambassador reported that no one could think of anything else except these uplifting discourses, which were attracting huge audiences – although at the same time the cardinal’s enemies were busy in the streets pinning up scurrilous placards against him.7 In his career the cardinal of Guise summed up most completely of all his brothers the dichotomy in the Guise character: on the one hand lay their superb endowment of natural gifts, to grace the public life which they craved; on the other side of the balance lay their remarkable family ambition, which was capable, under certain circumstances, of vitiating all their services. This dichotomy is seen in the two contemporary explanations of the family emblem – the two-barred Cross of Lorraine. At the funeral oration of Duke Claude of Guise, it was pronounced that the cross meant that the Guises would die twice for Christ, once in France and once in the Holy Land. But at the time of the Holy League, under Duke Henry, it was cynically suggested the double cross meant that Christ had been crucified twice, once by the Jews, and once by the Leaguers.8

  It is difficult to estimate the true nature of the cardinal of Lorraine’s religion, since by modern standards his determined persecution of the French heretics arouses abhorrence, and by the political standards of the day they led not to peace but to the disastrous civil wars of the next ten years. The word tolerance has a mellifluous ring in modern ears. To us, tolerance of another’s beliefs has become a touchstone of liberalism, and intolerance is considered, by many, to be the final crime in a civilized society; but in the sixteenth century tolerance was certainly not among the public virtues expected in a ruler. As Father Pollen pointed out, what to us may seem like defence of the weak, seemed to them more like allowing vice to flourish; liberty of conscience was scarcely worthy of discussion, let alone worth fighting for. Sufferers on both sides of religious issues certainly did not expect to find that their ordeals had resulted in the spread of religious tolerance; they merely bore witness to their faith. The question of how far diversity of religion could be tolerated was indeed largely a question of public order: the Guises believed that French Catholicism was strong enough to eliminate Calvinism altogether, whereas in the next decade, Catherine de Médicis was obliged to exhibit political tolerance because she found that on the contrary neither religion was strong enough to drive out the other. In neither case can true conclusions be drawn about their private qualities of mercy. It is an interesting fact that Mary Stuart, whose religious views, as well as her views on statecraft, were formed with such care by
the cardinal during her adolescence, showed throughout her career a quite remarkable clemency and lack of bigotry towards her subjects of a different religion, marking her off from almost all her contemporaries, except possibly her own mother. Every letter to her mother bears some sort of witness to the detailed supervision which her uncle was now giving to her upbringing: deeply impressionable as she was by nature, Mary Stuart’s admirable innate quality of mercy could certainly have been tempered by the teachings of the cardinal, had he so wished. On the contrary, it was allowed to flourish, and guide her actions as ruler of Scotland in her later career, for better or for worse.

  The cardinal’s lessons in statecraft encouraged the young queen to take an interest in Scottish affairs. In her letters to her mother on the subject, she shows aptitude and application, rather than any marked independence of judgement, and at every juncture quotes, or refers back to, the opinion of one of her uncles. Scottish affairs were also the more vivid to Mary Stuart now that her mother had at last succeeded in ousting the ineffective Arran from the official role of regent, and in April 1554 her appointment was ratified by the Estates of Scotland. At the end of one letter on the subject of some presents she heard were coming from the Duke Châtelherault (Arran had been granted this French dukedom in 1549 and was now known by his new title) Mary told her mother that she had shown the missive to her uncle of Guise as she knew this was what her mother would wish her to do. On another occasion, she paid tribute to the enormous care her uncle and aunt of Guise had taken of her – and most of all her uncle the cardinal. In 1555 specifically on the advice of her uncle the cardinal she sent back blank letters to her mother signed MARIE* for administrative purposes.9

  Despite the agreeable tutelage of the cardinal, and her modest advance into the realms of statecraft, Mary Stuart’s adolescence was marred by a tiresome domestic drama, the more enervating because it occurred right in the heart of her little household. Mme de Parois, the governess who replaced Lady Fleming, proved to be admirably lacking in the human frailty of her predecessor, but she had defects of character of her own which were considerably less beguiling. Money matters led to constant troubles. On one occasion Mme de Parois was forced to write to Mary of Guise and ask for more money to buy her mistress’s clothes; Mary Stuart positively had to have a dress of cloth of gold for the approaching marriage of the Count de Vaudermont since she had been so annoyed at lacking a dress of cloth of silver for the marriage of the governor’s son. On another occasion Mme de Parois bemoaned the fact that the princesses’ dresses were now lined with cloth of gold, which made them so dear to copy, and she explained that the Scottish queen was very anxious to have embroidered ciphers on her dresses, also an expensive luxury. Permission was sought for two new outfits a year, for reasons of prestige, whatever the lack of finance at home.10

  There was another side of the story: some of Mary’s entourage took the line that there was quite enough money to go round if only Mme de Parois had employed it more economically. The controversy was at times bitter and at times petty. In one letter, Mary of Guise’s controller inquired angrily what had happened to some money which the French king had given to Mary to spend at the fair at Saint-Germain. Mme de Parois continued to grumble over the general shortness of funds, although she pointed out primly that she took care to keep her young mistress in happy ignorance of the situation. The fact that Mary’s accounts for the year 1556–7 showed outgoings of 58,607 livres and incomings of only 58,000 livres showed that wherever that fault lay, the financial situation was certainly not a satisfactory one.11

  But now the governess fell out with her mistress. In their fractious disputes, which read like a domestic storm in a teacup, the real irritant seems to have been Mme de Parois’s ill-health. When she finally surrendered the post of governess it was due to advancing dropsy; no doubt her declining health exacerbated her troubles with her charge in her own mind, and equally made her difficult to deal with. The trouble began with the distribution of the Scottish queen’s outworn clothing, which Mme de Parois felt to be her own perquisite. Mary had other ideas. In a furious letter to her mother she complained that she had given some of the dresses to her Guise aunts, the abbesses of Saint Pierre and Farmoustier, to make vestments, and others to her servants, all according to her mother’s instructions. In April 1556 the cardinal himself intervened and wrote to Mary of Guise that in his opinion Mme de Parois was no longer suited to be her daughter’s governess. Nevertheless, in the May of the following year, Mme de Parois still had not been dislodged; and Mary wrote again to her mother complaining that Mme de Parois was now making such bad blood between Mary, Duchess Antoinette and Queen Catherine, that Mary was terrified that the malicious governess would go further and stir up trouble between mother and daughter.12

  The dispute does reveal significantly the direction in which Mary Stuart’s character was developing. There is a vein of near hysteria in some of her letters to her mother on the subject: she was passionately upset at the notion that the love of her mother might be turned away from her by the trouble-making efforts of this woman. She rebuts with anguish the notion that she who is generous should be so unfairly described as mean. The episode suggests that from adolescence onwards, Mary Stuart was peculiarly sensitive to the onslaughts of criticism which she had good reason to feel were unfair. This feminine and perfectly understandable sensitivity had dangerous possibilities for one who was, after all, destined to be a queen regnant: for there was no certainty that she would always be surrounded with the right sort of advisers to provide a balancing stability of attitude. The suggestion that the young queen had become positively ill as a result of this domestic fracas is also of interest for her future. She told her mother that Mme de Parois had almost been the cause of her death ‘because I was afraid of falling under your displeasure, and because I grieved at hearing through these false reports so many disputes and so much harm said of me’.13 This tendency of apparently nervous stress to show itself in physical symptoms almost approaching a breakdown was something she clearly inherited from her father, since the Guises were remarkably free from it: as a characteristic it was to play a marked part in her later career.

  After a robust childhood, Mary Stuart’s general health began to show cause for concern in adolescence. When she was thirteen, her uncle thought it necessary to write angrily to her mother in order to contradict reports that she was generally ailing; he told her that the verdict of the doctors was that she would outlive all her relations, although she sometimes got a certain heartburn or plain indigestion, due to a hearty appetite which would certainly lead to her overeating if the cardinal did not watch her carefully. ‘I am astonished at what you have been told about her being sickly,’ exclaimed the cardinal, in disgust at the very idea of such tale-bearing behaviour. ‘It can only have been said by malicious persons out of ill nature.’14 The truth was that, despite the cardinal’s vehement protests, all her life Mary Stuart was to suffer from gastric troubles, of which these were only the first ominous symptoms, and her fierce appetite, coupled with sickness, stood for something more sinister than the mere hunger of a healthy adolescent girl. Other illnesses from which Mary suffered during adolescence included smallpox – possibly for the third time, if the two other reported attacks in Scotland are correct, but more probably for the sole occasion in her life. She told Queen Elizabeth in 1562 that she had been cured and her beauty preserved by the action of the famous physician Jean Fernel – certainly in all the tributes to the famous complexion of the queen of Scots, there is no suggestion that it was ever marred by the pox. In the summer and autumn of 1556 she fell ill with a series of fevers, possibly the precursor of the tertian fevers which haunted the rest of her life, and for all his angry denials to outsiders the cardinal’s letters to Mary of Guise in Scotland show that he felt extreme concern at the time.15

  In 1556 peace was once again temporarily established in Europe by the Truce of Vaucelles: the Emperor Charles V, anxious to retire from the world and hand over his vast
dominions to his son Philip, agreed to accept the general results of the war between France and the Empire for five years. The cardinal of Lorraine was absent in Rome, and his counsels had not been felt effectively at the French court for six months; Henry II was swayed in his absence by the advice of the great rival of the Guises, the Constable Anne of Montmorency. On his return home the cardinal determined to undo the peace, which meant the virtual wrecking of his work in Rome, where he had at last persuaded the aged Pope Paul IV to enter into an alliance with France against the imperialists. As it happened, even the constable was not totally reluctant to see the great duke of Guise wasting his reputation in a series of fruitless Italian campaigns: so that once more war was resumed, and in Italy, for once, the duke was not immediately successful. The importunity of Philip of Spain to his wife, Mary Tudor, queen of England, eventually succeeded in bringing England also into the war on the side of Spain. In August 1557 the army of the constable, on its way to relieve beleaguered Saint-Quentin, was routed by King Philip’s army, which included English units. Philip now captured Saint-Quentin and seemed set to march on Paris. Once more it was Duke Francis of Guise who came to the rescue of the French people. By turning the tables of the war, and finally capturing Calais itself from the English in January 1558, after 220 years, Francis of Guise not only confounded those anti-Guise critics who had rejoiced at his Italian failure, but also elevated the prestige of his family to new heights.