Mary Queen of Scots

  Don Carlos himself had little to commend him personally as a husband, and indeed in many ways was merely a still feebler version of the wretched Francis, without the advantage of having been well known to Mary in childhood. He was physically undersized, weighing less than five and a half stone. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, he had a marked speech impediment and was also an epileptic. At the time of Mary’s first widowhood, he was sixteen, a few months older than his young step-mother Elisabeth of Valois. At the age of seventeen he fell headlong down a staircase, supposedly pursuing a serving maid, and the resulting concussion did nothing to improve his mental state. He lay for a long time, blind and partially paralysed, until an Italian surgeon gave him partial relief by a trepanning operation to cut a triangular piece out of his skull. This relieved the paralysis, but left him in turn prone to fits of homicidal mania: he also subsequently developed a passionate attachment to his young step-mother and a corresponding hatred of his father, the king.* There was certainly nothing in Don Carlos to inspire any flight of fancy in the mind of a young, recently widowed queen: it is interesting to note that at this stage in her career, Mary Stuart’s choice of husband was without hesitation one whose attractions were strictly political and dynastic. She thoroughly justified Throckmorton’s shrewd estimate of her character in this respect – so commendably different from that of his own wayward mistress Elizabeth. ‘As far as I can learn, she more esteemeth the continuation of her honour and to marry one that may uphold her to be great than she passeth to please her fancy by taking one that is accompanied with such small benefit or alliance, as thereby her estimation and fame is not increased.’9

  Fortunately or unfortunately, Mary Stuart was not destined to become another Spanish bride, like her cousin Mary Tudor. The possible consequences of such an alliance to a strong Catholic power, early in her career, for Mary herself, for Scotland and indeed the whole British Isles, lead one down the pleasurable but irrelevant avenues of speculation. There was an implacable, if unseen, obstacle in the way of these early negotiations, in the shape of the hostility of Catherine de Médicis. The death of Francis had resulted in a real political triumph for the dowager queen: although it was confidently expected that the regency of the kingdom would fall into the hands of the king of Navarre, Catherine had, by a mixture of coercion and cajolery, cleverly persuaded him to leave it in her own hands. In return she allowed his brother Condé to be pardoned, and past misdemeanours on the part of the Bourbons to be forgotten, and further fobbed off the king with the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. It was a gesture of supreme political and personal intelligence, since by retaining the regency in her own hands Catherine both prevented the warring nobles of the court from tearing the kingdom in two, and also promoted the interests of her own family, in the way which was dearest to her heart. The Guises, who only eighteen days before Francis’s death had been so confident of Catherine’s support, found that their power was considerably and effectively diminished, although Catherine was once again too clever to go so far as to drive them into open hostility. Her ultimate object was, after all, the safe rule of her son over all nobles in the kingdom, rather than personal revenge.

  Catherine’s attitude to her son’s widow showed the same judicious mixture of outward conciliation and inward rigidity on any subject where their interests might clash. In her letter to the Estates of Scotland, in January, Mary paid Catherine a warm tribute for her kindness, and said that she could not have expected more consolation in her sorrow from her own mother. She also told the Estates that since France was now ruled by the queen mother, the Franco-Scottish alliance would be firmer than ever. Catherine’s private letters to her daughter Elisabeth of Spain tell a very different story.10 Mary is referred to by the code name of le gentilhomme, a figure of whom Elisabeth is to be extremely wary. Officially, Catherine was given no cognizance of Mary’s negotiations for a Spanish marriage; but her hostility to the match was none the less effective for being devious and serpentine, since it allowed her to maintain a delusive mask of friendliness to her daughter-in-law. Catherine feared that the house of Valois would be twice threatened by Mary’s return to glory, through her marriage to Don Carlos. First of all, the star of the Guises would inevitably rise again, and with their niece so close to the Spanish throne, who knew what new twists they might not give to the skein of their ambitions. Secondly, Catherine feared for the position of her own daughter Elisabeth on the throne of Spain if Philip should die and Carlos inherit, in which case Elisabeth might be pushed aside as she, Catherine, had once been. While Catherine gave Elisabeth precise instructions on how to frustrate the match from the Spanish end, Catherine herself complicated the issue by dangling the prospect of another royal bride for Don Carlos in front of Philip’s eyes – her own daughter Marguerite.

  France was not the only country where Mary’s Spanish match was looked on with concern. In England the prospect of Mary Stuart’s marriage to a foreign prince, especially a Spanish one, was regarded as scarcely less threatening to the maintenance of English power, and when in March Elizabeth’s minister Cecil wrote a memorial to his agent in Scotland, Thomas Randolph, on Anglo-Scottish affairs, the third point on his draft was headed ‘the menace of a foreign marriage by the Scottish Queen’.11 To Philip, confronted with the firm hostility of Catherine and Elizabeth of England, and with the prospect of Marguerite held out before him, Mary no longer seemed so alluring as a future daughter-in-law. Not only did Philip believe he would have to establish Mary on her throne by force, but he would also have to sacrifice his present good relations with Elizabeth of England. Hitherto Philip had supported her in calming down her English Catholics, in order to balance the opposing Franco-Scottish nexus. So long as Elizabeth did not marry Dudley – and the possibility was now slightly receding – a Catholic rising in England to put Mary on the throne was unlikely. Faced with these considerations Philip understandably preferred the substance of Elizabeth to the shadow of Mary; perhaps he also shrank somewhat from the prospect of introducing a Guise cuckoo into the Spanish nest. By the end of April, Elisabeth of Spain was able to inform her mother that the Spanish negotiations with Mary had foundered finally, for lack of interest on Philip’s part.

  In the meantime Mary naturally continued to be a focus of interest for other countries, other aspirants. In February, the earl of Bedford arrived on an official embassy of condolence from Queen Elizabeth of England. Queen Mary thanked him graciously for her fellow-queen’s comfort in her distress and added in her most friendly manner ‘considering that the Queen now shows the part of a good sister, whereof she has great need, she will endeavour to be even with her goodwill; and though she be not so able as another, yet she trust the Queen will take her goodwill in good part’. It was on this occasion that Mary also took the opportunity to remind Throckmorton that he had not sent her the portrait of Elizabeth, despite her fervent desire to exchange pictures.* Bedford’s next two interviews with Queen Mary were, however, on a less gracious, more down-to-earth level, since he had been instructed to ask her yet again to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. This treaty, by which peace had been established the previous July between England, Scotland and France, provided for the withdrawal of French troops from Scotland and pledged both France and England to a policy of non-interference there; it had also laid down that Mary and Francis should abandon forever the bearing of the English royal arms. Mary politely but firmly declined to agree to the ratification on the grounds that she must first consult with her Council, in view of her changed status as a widow, but once again went out of her way to show friendliness. She hinted that ‘if her Council were here she would give such an answer as would satisfy him’, and expressed a strong desire to meet Elizabeth personally, to talk over their differences, for she felt that thus ‘they would satisfy each other much better than they can do by messages and ministers’.13 This desire on the part of Mary to meet Elizabeth face to face, whether prompted by friendship, political wisdom or sheer feminine curiosity,
was perfectly understandable; it is also easy to sympathize with Mary’s reluctance to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh so long as Elizabeth declined to recognize her cousin as heiress-presumptive to the English throne. By ratifying the Treaty of Edinburgh immediately, Mary would be discarding a potentially valuable card, for in return for the ratification it was Mary’s hope that Elizabeth would set aside the will of Henry VIII from the English succession.

  While still at Orléans, Mary received another manifestation of the importance of her claim to the English throne. A young scion of both English and Scottish royal houses, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, appeared at the court on an official visit of condolence to his widowed cousin. Darnley, then a youth of only fifteen or sixteen, had not himself provided the impetus for the visit. He had in fact met Mary Stuart briefly once before at the time of Francis’s coronation, when his mother Margaret, Countess of Lennox, dispatched him with a letter to the French court, concerning the restoration of Lennox to the family estates in Scotland. Now his ambitious, striving mother propelled the good-looking boy yet again in the direction of France, with the clear intention of dangling him, royal blood and all, in the path of the newly marriageable young queen. Darnley’s mother was a Catholic, and having been born in England, it could be argued that he was not debarred from the succession by the will of Henry VIII. The Spanish ambassador in England, de Quadra, told his master Philip that if anything happened to Elizabeth, it was understood that the English Catholics would raise Darnley to the throne of England. But in the convoluted world of royal claims and counter-claims, wavering rights were held to be generally strengthened if reinforced by marriage to someone with other wavering rights. The plan was to induce Mary to wed Darnley, with the lure of thus bolstering up her claim to the English throne; Margaret Lennox entered into negotiations with the Scottish nobles at the same time, to the same effect. But, on this occasion at least, the royal fish did not rise to the bait. Mary herself was still involved in her dreams of a glorious Spanish alliance: if Darnley’s appearance did make any impression on her sensibilities, this impression was stored away for the future, since her sensibilities at this time were so acutely subordinated to her political activities.

  In the middle of March Mary decided to leave the French court, and set off on a prolonged round of visits to her Guise relations. She went first of all to the Guise château of Nanteuil, and then on to Rheims, where she made a three-week stay in the convent of her Aunt Renée, abbess of St Pierre, breaking the journey for a brief visit to Paris on 20th March to check over her clothes and jewels. From Rheims, she planned to go to Nancy, in Lorraine, to visit the court of her kinsman, Duke Charles, and her sister-in-law, Duchess Claude; from Nancy she could proceed easily to Joinville, the most outlying of the Guise châteaux. Melville, in his memoirs, attributes the journey to the spite of Catherine, now openly displayed: ‘Our Queen, then Dowager of France, retired herself by little and little farther and farther from the court of France; that it should not seem that she was in any sort compelled thereunto, as of truth she was by the Queen Mother’s rigorous and vengeable dealing; who alleged that she was despised by her good daughter, during the short reign of King Francis her husband, by the instigation of the House of Guise.’14 But Melville is not always strictly accurate in his recollections. Mary had plenty of motives to take such a journey, without the animus of Catherine to inspire her, while Catherine herself understood only too well that hostile intrigues were more easily conducted under the guise of friendship to the victim. Apart from her natural desire to pay a round of visits to the family of whom she had always been so fond, it seems likely that Mary was also anxious to take part in family conclaves on the subject of her future, which would be easier to arrange away from the confined atmosphere of the French court.

  It so happened that while Mary Stuart was on the route from Rheims to Nancy, she received two rival embassies from Scotland, which at the moment when the Spanish negotiations were foundering, opened up new possibilities in terms of a Scottish future. To Vitry in Champagne came first of all John Leslie, bishop of Ross, Mary’s future envoy and historian, representing the party of the Scottish Catholics, and secondly James Stewart her half-brother, on behalf of the self-constituted Scottish Protestant government. Leslie’s suggestions were bold enough: he believed that Mary should detain Lord James in France, and herself disembark at Aberdeen, where he swore she would find 20,000 men levied by her friends in the north of Scotland. She would then be in a position to take Scotland by storm. It is to Mary’s credit that she rejected such extremist counsels immediately. The advice was of doubtful value in any case since even the strongest Catholic noble Huntly showed uncertain loyalties at this moment. However, one of the side-effects of Leslie’s embassy was to confirm Mary’s own view that she would be personally popular once she reached Scotland. (Had she not confidently told Throckmorton that the common people would be glad to see their queen come home?) Leslie told the queen that he expected her to ‘over-shadow’ her subjects with her presence when she returned like a newly-risen sun to scatter the clouds of all tumult shortly from the minds of her subjects.15 In her interview with her half-brother the next day, Mary retained the bishop’s image, while rejecting his advice.

  The new emissary with whom Mary had to deal was her half-brother the Lord James. James Stewart was now a man of thirty, some twelve years older than his half-sister. His mother, Margaret Erskine, was that royal mistress who had served for the model of ‘Lady Sensualitie’ in Sir David Lyndsay’s Satire of the Three Estates; as the sister of the earl of Mar she ensured her son a place in the network of Scottish noble families surrounding the crown, in which the Erskines were honourably situated. From his father King James V, Lord James inherited the royal Stewart blood which placed him so close yet so tantalizingly far from the Scottish throne. One consequence of the importance of kinship in sixteenth-century Scotland was to endow the sovereign’s illegitimate children with great natural importance, because they shared the royal Stewart blood. It was not quite impossible that a strong male ruler born out of wedlock might be preferred to a weak female of legitimate descent. Of the nine known bastards of James V, three sons – Lord James, Lord Robert and Lord John Stewart – occupied high positions at Mary’s court; and a daughter, Jean Stewart, who married the earl of Argyll, became one of her closest friends, a friendship which originated in their shared blood. James V had even made some sporadic efforts in 1536, when Lord James was four years old, to obtain the papal dispensation which would have enabled him to marry the child’s mother, Lady Margaret. However, the position of Lord James would not have been automatically clarified by the marriage of his parents: although by Scots law the subsequent marriage of parents legitimated their offspring, this only applied to parents who were free to marry at the time of the conception; Lady Margaret had been married to Robert Douglas in 1527, four years before the birth of her son in 1531. Lord James might also have found himself in a disadvantageous position compared to any subsequent children born to James V and Margaret, who would have begun life as royal princes, without the stain of bastardy.*

  Lacking the charm of his father, Lord James was a man of solemn manner and appearance; yet this gravitas, so unlike the qualities of the contemporary French nobility, was to prove highly successful in impressing the English when he dealt with them. From his Stewart father, James had inherited at least a subtlety lacking in many of his contemporaries among the Scottish nobility, which to the English made him seem a distinct improvement on his peers – or perhaps this fortunate ability to deal with England could be attributed to the fact that he was also one quarter Tudor. The English were delighted to be able to discern in him what they supposed to be a type of new Scotsman, upright, serious-minded and full of conscious rectitude, frequently given public expression, who seemed to them a distinct advance on the self-seeking Scottish nobles of the previous generation. Although more gifted politically than the sons of his fellow-nobles, Lord James was in fact far from immune from that pra
ctical avarice so characteristic of the Scottish nobility of this period – nor did he lack the hypocrisy which so often accompanies frequent public statements on the subject of honour. But this temperament, and above all quality of his religious views, which fitted in so well with those of the English politicians of the period like Cecil, meant that he was always able to deal easily, if not honourably, with his English equivalents, and this was to give him a practical advantage in Anglo-Scottish affairs at a later stage in his half-sister’s career.

  On his way to France on this occasion, Lord James had stopped in England: he certainly conferred with Cecil, with whom he had an old friendship, and may even have stayed in his house. His interview with Mary, held at St Dizier, was not unsatisfactory to both the participants, despite their widely differing points of view. Lord James had been instructed to ask the queen to embrace the Scottish Protestant faith: this she steadily refused to do. But she did state with some courage that she was prepared to come home without any other restrictions, or a personal armed escort, provided she could have use of her own religion in private. This Lord James himself had already expressed publicly to the Scots as being an acceptable demand. When it was suggested to him that the celebration of any sort of Mass, public or private, within the realm of Scotland would be a betrayal of the cause of God, he replied reasonably enough that this might indeed apply to a public Mass – ‘but to have it secretly in her (Mary’s) bedchamber, who could stop her?’16 Mary also allowed herself to be convinced by Lord James that it was politically wise to give the Protestant party its head for the time being in Scotland, although James later told Throckmorton Mary had begun the interview by ordering him a cardinal’s hat, and several rich benefices in France, if he in turn would forswear Protestantism. The sacrifice of the prospect of these rich benefices did not mean that Lord James’s mind was altogether concentrated on Scottish affairs, on this occasion, to the exclusion of personal gain, since he almost certainly took the opportunity to ask his half-sister for the rich earldom of Moray. Apart from the general understanding which they had reached on the subject of her return, Mary must also have been impressed as a result of this meeting with the notion that Lord James would constitute her natural adviser in Scotland, by virtue of their blood connection, as the Guises had done in France. She had emphasized to Throckmorton that she was prepared to listen to advice and even if all Lord James’s advice had not been to her liking, the basis for some tolerable modus vivendi, in the event of her return, had at least been reached between them.