Mary Queen of Scots
Calvin wrote triumphantly to Sturm: ‘Did you ever read or hear of anything more timely than the death of the little King? There was no remedy for the worst evils when God suddenly revealed himself from Heaven, and He who had pierced the father’s eye, struck off the ear of the son.’27 Calvin’s Knox-like exultation reflected the natural view of the French Huguenots who had seen their cause forever swallowed in the voracious Catholic maw of the Guises. Now with the likelihood of Navarre’s regency, it seemed that the French Huguenot cause had indeed been presented with a renewed opportunity to triumph through the death of the wretched Francis. The position of Mary was equally transformed by her husband’s death: at the age of just eighteen, she was no longer queen but queen dowager of France. Her entire position in Scotland, which had been founded on the umbrella-like protection which the French crown had extended to those Scots which it favoured, was likely to be in jeopardy now that her husband no longer sat on the French throne, and her uncles no longer directed French policy. Time would show whether she would evolve a better Scottish policy, or a worse one, but at all events on the death of Francis, Mary Stuart was obliged to work out a different one.
It is doubtful whether these political considerations were uppermost in the young queen’s mind during the days before her husband’s death, and the days of mourning afterwards. On the contrary, the evidence shows that, almost alone of the central figures at the French court, Mary abandoned herself to passionate grief at the death of the king, a grief founded on deep affection which she had felt for him, rather than the possible upset of her political plans. She had lost the companion of her childhood, the boy-husband who had loved her, and who had shared with her the happy intimacies of their charmed upbringing at the French court. Elisabeth had departed for Spain, Claude for Lorraine. Alone of her close royal companions of her youth, Francis had remained part of her life, and to their childhood intimacy had been added the natural intimacy of husband and wife. Since the first moment of their meeting at St Germain in October 1548, when the five-year-old Scottish queen had been solemnly presented to the four-year-old dauphin of France, and King Henry II had rejoiced over the immediate love which the children felt for each other, Mary and Francis had never been apart for longer than a few months at a time. They had thus been united by over twelve years of continuous friendship and companionship, and all that happy childhood memories can signify in the mind of a romantic and affectionate young girl. It was only six months since the death of her mother which had induced in her such profound feelings of affliction: now she found herself bereft of a husband, with whom indeed she had led a far more prolonged and contented existence than the few short months she had spent with her mother since babyhood. It was small wonder that Mary gave herself up to transports of true grief.
The sincerity of her feelings was not doubted at the time. Throckmorton commented that Francis had left ‘as heavy and dolorous a wife as of right she had good cause to be, who, by long watching with him during his sickness, and painful diligence about him’ had worn herself out and made herself ill. The stanzas which Mary wrote on the death of Francis, which struck a chord in the heart of Ronsard, bear witness to the eloquent simplicity of her grief for the lost love of her childhood:
Si en quelque séjour
Soit en Bois ou en Prée
Soit pour l’aube du jour
Ou soit sur la Vesprée
Sans cesse mon coeur sent
Le regret d’un absent
Si je suis en repos
Sommeillant sur ma couche
J’oy qu’il me tient propos
Je le sens qui me touche
En labeur et requoy
Tousjours est prez de moy …’*
The political realities of the situation would appear to her later – although some of them may have begun to come home to her when Catherine asked for the return of the crown jewels, which the date on the order of release and the short, hurriedly prepared inventories shows to have been only one day after King Francis’s death, in a ghastly parody of events after the death of King Henry, when Mary herself had demanded the return of the jewels from Diane de Poitiers. In the meantime Mary wore white and shut herself in a black room lit by torches to give herself up totally to her sorrow. As the Venetian ambassador commented: ‘Soon the death of the late King will be forgotten by all except his little wife, who has been widowed, has lost France, and has little hope of Scotland … her unhappiness and incessant tears call forth general compassion.’28
* The Spanish ambassador, who described how Queen Catherine and the principal nobles of the court were almost always present at the savage questioning of the prisoners, did not list Mary’s name among them (although it has sometimes been added to the list inaccurately by popular historians).7
* Already Mary was regarded as a foreigner by many of the people who were in fact her subjects; it is significant that an account of her magnificent wedding written by a Scotsman who was a member of the crowd makes absolutely no mention of the fact that Mary was herself Scottish. The writer proceeds as if Mary had actually been an Englishwoman.11
* A portrait of her mother, brought by Maitland to Scotland in 1563, was carried with her by Mary on all her travels throughout her captivity, and was finally found among her belongings at Fotheringhay.
* Wherever I may be
In the woods or in the fields
Whatever the hour of day
Be it dawn or the eventide
My heart still feels it yet
The eternal regret…
As I sink into my sleep
The absent one is near
Alone upon my couch
I feel his beloved touch
In work or in repose
We are forever close…
Translated by the author.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mary the Widow
‘Since her husband’s death the Scottish Queen hath showed … that she is both of great wisdom for her years, modesty and also of great judgment … which, increasing with her years, cannot but turn greatly to her commendation, reputation, honour and great benefit of her and her country.’
Throckmorton to Queen Elizabeth, January 1561
By tradition the mourning period of a queen of France lasted for forty days. The obsequies of the young king ended when his heart, enclosed in a leaden vase, was taken to the cathedral of Saint-Denis, outside Paris, traditional resting-place of the kings of France: here amid the numerous tombs the vase was placed on a pillar surrounded by sculptured flames, to symbolize that Francis as king had been as a pillar of flame in the Hebrew desert – a reference to his stand against the heretics. Immediately after the death of Francis, Mary, as we have seen, was prostrated by grief, and kept herself solitary; in any case visitors during the first fifteen days of her widowhood were limited by convention to those whose rank was considered sufficiently elevated to justify their entrance – the new King Charles IX, the king of Navarre, her uncles of Guise and the constable of Montmorency. For more personal consolation Mary depended on her grandmother Duchess Antoinette. However, once the first fortnight was over, and Mary’s storm of sorrow had abated, it was inevitable that she should consider her future in the world: more especially did the subject of her future come rapidly into prominence since ambassadors were permitted to visit her during the second period of her mourning, and whatever the private unhappiness of a girl of eighteen who had lost her husband, they at least were untroubled by such considerations and, like her uncles of Guise, eager to press on to the burning topic of her future.
There were two possible cornerstones on which such discussions could be founded: a theoretical second marriage, and Mary’s prospective return to Scotland. The Scottish situation was, however, rendered extremely uncertain by the fact that any sort of royal government had been in virtual abeyance since the death of Mary of Guise: the country was now ruled by a Protestant régime containing both John Knox and the queen’s half-brother Lord James Stewart, under the titular leader
ship of Hamilton duke of Châtelherault. Mary was virtually an unknown quantity in Scotland at the time of Francis’s death, and what little was known of her was feared: she was regarded not only as a Catholic by a country newly Protestant, but also as a foreigner by reason of her French upbringing and marriage. It therefore seemed highly unlikely that Mary would be received back in Scotland unless some foreign army propelled her there; for this reason her return to Scotland was regarded as being bound up with and dependent on her second marriage. Consequently during the spring of 1561 it was this marriage which received the full force of diplomatic and courtly considerations.
The historian Froude, in a trenchant phrase, has accused Mary herself of speculating on her next choice of husband before her first husband’s body was cold.1 In fact the marriage of a queen was unavoidably a political issue in the sixteenth century; just as Mary’s first marriage had been fervently discussed from the very moment of her birth, when she was far too young to take any effective interest in the subject, so now it was natural that the subject of her second marriage should obsess the conversation and correspondence of ambassadors and courtiers, to say nothing of her Guise relations, quite regardless of her own personal feelings. The English ambassador, Throckmorton, made the point with his usual clarity when he indicated to the Council three weeks after Francis’s death, on the occasion of his first interview with Mary: ‘Now that death had thus disposed of the late French king, whereby the Scottish queen is left a widow, one of the special things your lordships have to consider, and have an eye to, is the marriage of that Queen.’2 His letters are abundantly filled with rumours on this critical subject. A whole week before Francis’s death when Mary was immured in her husband’s sick-room, Throckmorton reported from Orléans that there were plenty of discourses to be heard already of the French queen’s second marriage and he cited the names of Don Carlos of Spain, Philip II’s heir, the Archduke Charles of Austria, and the earl of Arran, Châtelherault’s heir. After the death of Francis, beside the three front-runners already cited by Throckmorton, who continued to lead the field of gossip, an increasing number of other names were mentioned, including the kings of Denmark and Sweden, the young Lord Darnley, with his desirable inheritance of English royal blood, even the recently widowed duke of Ferrera, who was thought to have a special affection for the Scottish queen. There was always the possibility, mentioned at the Spanish court, that Mary would eventually marry her own brother-in-law, Charles, with a papal dispensation: even the name of her own uncle, Grand Prior Francis of Guise, was canvassed. In short, by the time Mary emerged from her forty days of mourning, possible candidates could be said to include almost any currently unmarried male of roughly suitable age, whose own position could be held to benefit in any way that of the queen of Scots, either by establishing her own throne of Scotland, or by strengthening her claim to the throne of England, or even by re-establishing her on the throne of France.
The torrent of speculation made it inevitable that Mary herself would have to express some sort of personal predilection on the two subjects of re-marriage and Scotland, once she returned to the ways of ordinary life – unless, of course, she was content to leave her affairs and her future in the hands of her uncles as she had done in the past. This, however, she did not seem especially inclined to do, or at any rate, not to the extent which she had suffered herself to be guided during her time as dauphiness and queen of France. It has been suggested that the Guises lost interest in their niece once she no longer occupied the throne from which she could advance their interests: but the evidence of Mary’s widowhood in France shows that on the contrary, it was she who attempted to stretch her political wings, and to struggle free as a butterfly from the chrysalis in which the Guises had lovingly contained her. As she was careful to tell Throckmorton just before her departure for Scotland, her uncles did not advise her on Scottish matters ‘being of the affairs of France’.3 Yet in the negotiations for a second marriage, the cardinal showed himself as anxious as ever to guide his niece. It was Mary the widow who was making the first efforts to think for herself, in a way which impressed all those around her.
In the first instance she evidently used the period of her mourning for a serious consideration of her future problems once her first collapse had given way to a more philosophical mood of resignation. Throckmorton visited her on 31st December, and his account of the interview shows us the first glimpse of the new Mary Stuart. There is no question but that the young queen made an excellent impression upon the English ambassador.4 He wrote back to England that no great account had been made of the queen during her husband’s lifetime, seeing that she had been ‘under band of marriage and subjection to her husband (who carried the burden and care of all her matters)’, and there had thus been no great opportunity to get to know her. But, he continued, since her husband’s death she had shown, and continued to do so, that she was ‘both a great wisdom for her years, modesty, and also of great judgment in the wise handling herself and her matters, which, increasing with her years, cannot but turn greatly to her commendation, reputation, honour and great benefit of her and her country’. Mary further impressed Throckmorton by professing herself ready to be guided by suitable advisers; ‘And for my part,’ continued Throckmorton, ‘I see her behaviour to be such and her wisdom and kingly modesty so great, in that she thinketh herself not too wise, but is content to be ruled by good counsel and wise men (which is a great virtue in a Prince or Princess, and which argueth a great judgment and wisdom in her).’
Throckmorton’s last comment was of course not only intended to apprise the English Council as to the true nature of the Scottish queen with whom they had to deal, it was also intended as an acid reference to the somewhat less wise and modest conduct of their own Queen Elizabeth. The later reputations of Elizabeth and Mary have somewhat obscured the fact that in the early 1560s, when they were both young women, it was Elizabeth who was considered headstrong, extravagant and stubborn, whereas Mary was generally rated to be modest, intelligent and anxious to do her best as a ruler by taking wise advice. One contemporary described Elizabeth’s court at this period as a by-word for frivolity: ‘Nothing is treated earnestly, and though all things go wrong they jest, and he who invents most ways of wasting time is regarded as one worthy of honour.’5
Only a few months before, in September 1560, Amy Robsart, wife of the English queen’s favourite, Robert Dudley, had been found dead in mysterious circumstances. The scandal, which invites comparison with the Scottish court tragedy of Kirk o’Field, although it had a different outcome, was not allayed by Elizabeth’s continued association with Dudley and profuse rumours throughout the following winter that she intended to marry him now that he was free. Throckmorton himself was so terrified that his hair stood on end at the very thought, and he declared that he would not wish to live should that day ever come. How different was the conduct of the young queen of Scots, and how infinitely more becoming! It was no coincidence that Throckmorton chose to write to Dudley in the same vein, praising Mary’s youthful discretion.6
Mary’s forty days of mourning were officially ended when she attended a memorial service for Francis in the convent of Grey Friars at Orléans on 18th January 1561. She now withdrew from the strict seclusion of her first deuil to a palace a few leagues outside the town of Orléans, which she occupied with her grandmother. By this date Mary had already written to Scotland a moderate temporizing letter, by which she broke the news of Francis’s death formally to the Scottish Estates, and assured them that she intended to forget past troubles and differences; she went on to express her desire to return to Scotland as soon as possible, in token of which she asked for royal accounts since the death of her mother, and demanded from the Estates a list of candidates to fill the roles of treasurer and controller in Scotland.7 The gentle, positively placating tone of this letter was thoroughly in tune with what Mary had also told Throckmorton on the subject of Scotland – that she wished to return home as soon as possible, and hoped it wou
ld be at the request and suit of her subjects.
But at this very moment, Mary was also the willing participant in marriage negotiations with Don Carlos of Spain; it is evident that her attitude towards Scotland in the spring, despite her soft words to Throckmorton, was very much one of ‘wait and see’. Marriage to Don Carlos, heir to the great throne of the Spanish empire, was an infinitely more glorious prospect than a highly speculative return to a distant kingdom. Mary Stuart had been trained to believe herself a worthy incumbent of thrones, and the Guises had encouraged her in this belief. Don Carlos was a Catholic and could be expected to be supported by Spanish troops. The Spanish marriage was Mary’s first choice for her future after Francis’s death, and the return to Scotland only assumed its full importance once the prospect of the Spanish marriage faded from the scene for the time being. As has been seen, while Francis lay in extremis, there had been rumours at the French court of the possibility of such a match. When the Spanish ambassador visited Mary in the second stage of her mourning, he was thought to have lingered an unconscionably long time, ‘above an hour together’ – too long, thought Throckmorton, for a conventional visit of condolence. The cardinal told Chantonay that his niece only wished for a Spanish marriage. On 10th January Throckmorton reported that ‘the house of Guise use all means to bring to pass the marriage between the prince of Spain and the Queen of Scotland’. At the end of January Don Juan Manrique arrived at the French court, and according to the Venetian ambassador ‘went to visit the Queen of Scotland, with whom, in the presence of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, he held very confidential communications and, I am assured that, besides his other concerns, Don Juan is also empowered to treat a marriage between her Majesty and the Prince of Spain’.8