Maitland’s interview with Elizabeth took place in London, in the presence of both Cecil, Elizabeth’s adviser, and Dudley, her favourite. The Scottish point of view on the subject of the succession had already been put to Elizabeth in a humble letter from Lord James, before Mary even arrived in Scotland. Ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh was to be given in exchange for Elizabeth’s acknowledgement that Mary stood next in line to the throne, after herself and her lawful issue. Maitland pointed out on behalf of Mary that this meant that she could not ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh as it now stood, because the terms of the Treaty called on Mary to surrender not only her present claim to the English throne, but also all further claims after the death of Elizabeth and her problematic offspring. In reply, Elizabeth showed herself nothing if not friendly towards the queen of Scots; although her first impulse was to concentrate on the vexed subject of the treaty (‘I looked for another message from the Queen your sovereign’), once she realized that the Scots lords, as well as Mary, were in earnest on the subject of succession, she gave herself over to a frank discussion of the whole question.
In the course of this, Elizabeth even went so far as to vouchsafe the information that she herself preferred Mary to all her rivals: she knew of no better right than Mary’s, and no one who was strong enough to keep Mary from the throne. At the same time she positively declined to give Mary the acknowledgement she desired. The reason she gave was the impossible burden which it would lay on her own relations with Mary. ‘The desire is without example,’ said Elizabeth, ‘to require me in mine own life, to set my winding sheet before my eyes. Think you that I could love my own winding sheet? Princes cannot like their own children, those that should succeed unto them … How then shall I, think you, like my cousin, being declared my Heir Apparent?’ She also put forward a more practical, less personal reason of her own safety: ‘I know the inconstancy of the people of England, how they ever mislike the present government and have their eyes fixed upon that person that is next to succeed.’ And she quoted in Latin: ‘They are more prone to worship the rising than the setting sun.’ Elizabeth went on to describe her own experiences as a focus of opposition during the reign of Mary Tudor. With these personal revelations, and an unresolved situation, Maitland had to be content. However, Elizabeth made one concession in that she agreed to accept a certain modification of the treaty, so that Mary should not have to sign away her claim, beyond the period of Elizabeth’s life and that of her lawful offspring. Elizabeth also suggested that Maitland and Cecil should correspond privately on the subject, although under the supervision of the two queens; the situation, if fluid, seemed also full of promise. In this auspicious atmosphere Maitland returned to Scotland at the end of September.
The truth was that Elizabeth was in a more complicated situation apropros her successor than might appear from a first glance at the Tudor family tree. Mary Stuart, the obvious successor, had as we have seen been theoretically debarred by the will of Henry VIII, which precluded foreigners from succeeding. Maitland, in the course of his mission, did not enter into controversy concerning the will of Henry VIII, but merely made the point that Henry VII, in wedding Margaret Tudor to James IV, had not intended to deny her the succession; Elizabeth herself, by saying that she knew of no better right than Mary’s, showed that she was not allowing her father’s will to enter her calculations. But in 1561 Mary was extremely unpopular in England, being considered virtually a Frenchwoman and a Guise, as well as a Catholic, and she was especially disliked by the English Parliament, which was strongly Puritan in tone; Elizabeth, in her personal favour towards Mary, was certainly in contradiction to the majority of her subjects at this period. There were other claimants, whom the English as a body might be thought to prefer: Margaret, countess of Lennox, mother of Darnley, was a granddaughter of Henry VII; although her claim was inferior to Mary’s as she descended from Margaret Tudor’s second marriage, yet she was an English subject, which gave her an advantage in some English eyes. On the other hand her legitimacy could be questioned, since her father Archibald Angus had divorced her mother on grounds of precontract. Then there was the twenty-five-year-old Henry Hastings, earl of Huntingdon, who descended from the countess of Salisbury, niece of Edward IV, and last representative of the Plantagenets. His strength was in his sex – in 1560 the Spanish ambassador de Quadra reported, ‘the cry is that they do not want any women rulers’.18 He was also Dudley’s brother-in-law, he was a Protestant, and was lieutenant for Leicestershire where he had strong connections.
By far the most serious counter-claimant was Lady Catherine Grey, the twenty-three-year-old sister of the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey. Catherine Grey, like Mary Stuart, was a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, but she descended from his young daughter Mary Tudor who had married the Duke of Suffolk. By 1561 Lady Catherine had already led a checkered matrimonial career, by which she had incurred the spiteful enmity and personal dislike of Queen Elizabeth. Her first marriage to Lord Pembroke’s son was dissolved. She then secretly married Lord Hertford in late 1560, but without the queen’s permission, which had been made necessary by an act of 1536. In the summer of 1561, her obvious pregnancy forced her to admit to the marriage, as a result of which both she and Hertford were clapped in the Tower. On 24th September, at roughly the same moment as Maitland’s mission to Elizabeth on behalf of Mary, she gave birth to a son, Edward Seymour. This piece of unwelcome parturition roused Elizabeth to a pitch of vindictive fury. She referred to the unpleasant subject bitterly to Maitland when she alluded to those who, by showing themselves not to be barren, had declared to the world that they were more worthy of the throne than herself or Mary. Elizabeth had both mother and father cross-examined, and as they could provide no witnesses of their wedding or find the priest involved, the marriage was finally declared invalid in May 1562. Despite this stern lesson in the unwisdom of illicit romance, the unhappy Lady Catherine managed to have sufficient contact with her husband within the confines of the Tower to give birth to a second son Thomas in February 1563. By the finding of Elizabeth’s commission, both these sons were of course illegitimate, somewhat reducing Lady Catherine’s desirability as a candidate for the throne.
Nevertheless in the 1560s it was Lady Catherine who was regarded as the most likely successor to Elizabeth by the English Parliament, on the grounds that she was Protestant and she was English. So strong were her claims thought to be that Philip II of Spain is even supposed to have worked out a scheme by which he would have abducted her, in 1560, and married her off to that famous putative bridegroom Don Carlos, in order to establish her immediately on the throne of England, on the grounds that she was legitimate, and Elizabeth was not.19 However, when Lady Catherine was revealed to be a Protestant, Philip lost interest in her. Mary Stuart on the other hand was the subject of various English attacks at this period. ‘Garboduc’ attacked her right to succeed as an alien; in the Parliament of January 1563 Sadler made a speech against Mary the foreigner succeeding to the throne: ‘Our common people and the very stones in the streets should rebel against it.’ In October 1562, when Elizabeth was gravely ill with smallpox, de Quadra reported that there was absolutely no certainty about the succession, the Protestants being divided between Catherine Grey and Huntingdon, and the Catholics between Mary and Margaret Lennox. Under the circumstances it is easy to understand why Mary believed that the personal favour of Elizabeth constituted her best hope of being recognized. Mary believed that Elizabeth could and would override the will of Henry VIII. Elizabeth’s dislike of Catherine was blighting her chances. Elizabeth’s love of Mary – if it was sufficiently stimulated – might be the making of her fortunes. Throughout the autumn and spring, Mary devoted all her efforts to bringing about the personal meeting between the two queens, by which she felt certain she could win the all-important affections of Elizabeth.
Mary was not deluding herself on the subject. In the opinion of one of Elizabeth’s modern biographers, Sir John Neale, ‘There is no resisting the conclusion that
Elizabeth was prepared virtually to assure Mary of the succession, assure her of it on conditions that are easy to guess: no league with France, friendship with England, an acceptable marriage, and probably ultimate conversion to Protestantism.’20 The first three of these conditions would not have been difficult to fulfil for a Mary so set on being acknowledged as heiress, and the last one lay only in the sphere of possibilities. The important point, which Mary had ably grasped, was that she herself should inspire Elizabeth with confidence, so that she would be armoured by Elizabeth’s favour against the hostility of the English Parliament, and presumably many of the English Protestants. By far the best way of inspiring this confidence was to meet the English queen face to face: had she not won the golden opinions of Throckmorton? Surely it would be no more difficult to win the affections of Elizabeth, with whom she had in common not only their cousinly relationship, but also the mutual problems of government in the hands of the weaker sex. As she had told Bedford, when she was first widowed: ‘We are both in one isle, both of one language, both the nearest kinswoman that each other hath, and both Queens.’21 In view of Mary’s known success in the sphere of personal contact, her steady aim to meet Elizabeth must be regarded not as the caprice of an inquisitive woman, but as a sound piece of political reasoning.
Once Maitland was back in Scotland, he corresponded with Cecil for the rest of the autumn and winter, according to Queen Elizabeth’s suggestion. At the same time Elizabeth herself sent Sir Peter Mewtas to Scotland, officially to greet Mary on her arrival in Scotland, unofficially to demand ratification of the treaty. Mary diplomatically suggested in reply that as so many matters in the treaty had concerned her late husband, the whole subject should be considered anew: in November she put forward the names of new commissioners. All Mary’s letters to Elizabeth throughout this period have the same attitude of friendliness which would seem positively sugary to our ears, were it not for the high stakes which were to be won by cajolery. Mary means ‘nothing more earnestly than continuance of tender amity and good intelligence’ between the two of them; she finds that Mewtas has ‘so wisely and discreetly uttered and expressed the sincerity of your [Elizabeth’s] affection towards us’.22
Elizabeth still evinced a personal desire that the whole affair should be conducted secretly, or through the medium of Randolph; thus on 23rd November she replied to Mary’s gracious letter, turning down the idea of new commissioners. Maitland now tried in vain to discover privately from Cecil what the next approach should be from the Scottish queen. But as Cecil did not take the hint, Mary’s answer had to be framed without any secret advice from England. Mary’s letter of 5th January is skilful, and once again tolerant and loving; she cannot imagine what lack Elizabeth has found in her letter and her answer to Mewtas, she now fully accepts Elizabeth’s own suggestion that she should communicate ‘privily’ to Elizabeth’s envoy Randolph instead of relying on a new set of commissioners, ‘Or rather’ – and here once again Mary is hammering on her favourite theme of personal contact – ‘by our own letters to you.’ ‘We will deal frankly with you,’ cried Mary to Elizabeth, ‘and wish that you deal friendly with us; we will have at this present no judge of the equity of our demand but yourself.’23 Mary was well aware of the value of flattery. If Mary was dealing with some other prince on the whole question, there is no one whose advice she would rather take than Elizabeth’s – ‘such opinion have we conceived of your unrightness in judgment’. She injects a note of appeal: ‘We will require nothing of you, but that which we could well find in our heart to grant unto you, if the like case were ours.’ Once again Mary suggested that she would ratify the treaty immediately, if only her ultimate right could be recognized, but she ended by proposing her pet objective, a personal interview. ‘If God will grant a good occasion that we may meet together, which we wish may be soon, we trust you shall more clearly perceive the sincerity of our good meaning than we can express by writing.’ It was a masterly letter, a tribute to the political cunning of Maitland, and the propitiatory temperament of Mary.
Mary did not rely only on the seductive quality of her letter: she also wooed the English queen with gifts and even verse. Randolph reported in February that Mary intended to send Elizabeth a fair ring with a diamond in it, made like a heart, and this ring seems to have been finally conveyed to England by du Croc in the summer.24 According to Bishop Jewel the ring was further enhanced by ‘flattering and elegant verses’; these may have been in French in which case they were by Mary herself, who was fond of saluting such occasions with poems of her own composition, or alternatively they were Latin epigrams composed by George Buchanan, who included two such in his works, suitably inscribed from the queen of Scotland to the queen of England. It was in return for this gift that Elizabeth sent a fine ring to Mary the next year via Randolph, which was by his account ‘marvellously esteemed, oftentimes looked upon, and many times kissed’.
The effect of these advances upon the English queen was just as Mary hoped. Elizabeth rose to the bait. In late December Cecil wrote to Throckmorton that he found a great desire in both queens to have an interview, although he gloomily feared the worst from two such different women meeting.25 When Elizabeth finally replied to Mary’s letter of 5th January, she certainly did not object to the proposed interview. Mary and Maitland took this lack of negative for a positive acquiescence in their plans; although Maitland had hoped to get some of the outstanding issues settled first, it was decided that he should return once more to London, to negotiate for the meeting, the prime impulse being still the urgent desire of Mary that it should take place. Her relations with Elizabeth were indeed a subject on which she allowed herself to dwell with fantasy as well as affection; one of her favourite jokes at this period was the notion that if the queen of England had been a man, she would have willingly married her. ‘This Queen wished that one of the two were a man, to make an end of all debates,’ reported Randolph, adding perhaps rather unnecessarily, ‘This … I trowe was spoken in her merrie mood.’ This little pleasantry of the volatile queen of Scots had, however, already occurred a year earlier to the serious-minded Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Then in the full flush of his admiration for Mary Stuart as widow of France, he wrote: ‘Methinketh it were to be wished of all wise men and her Majestie’s good subjects, that one of these two Queens of the Ile of Britain were transformed into the shape of a man to make so happy a marriage, as thereby there might be an unitie of the whole and their appendances.’26
In the absence of any signs of such a miraculous transformation, however, the negotiations for the interview continued. On 19th May Mary persuaded the Scottish Council to agree to it in principle, although they were understandably worried about the safety of her person, in view of the fact that it was less than a year since the English queen had been threatening to imprison her if she landed on English soil. There were other considerations to dampen the ardour of the Scottish Protestants: such meetings were notoriously expensive, and the Scots did not especially wish to send so much money into England and leave it there. Not only that, but they feared that if Elizabeth was seduced by Mary’s charm she might cease to keep them under her protective wing. The Scottish Catholic party were concerned that their queen, who had shown a disappointing lack of interest in their case, should be further corrupted by a meeting with the Protestant Elizabeth and were correspondingly opposed to the whole project. But Mary’s will prevailed. Maitland was sent to London on 25th May and reached it on 31st May. Her enterprise bore dividends. Elizabeth now showed herself positively favourable to the whole project of the meeting and Maitland brought Cecil round to his way of thinking that on balance a meeting of the two ladies would be advantageous to their respective countries. The English Council were less enthusiastic and, like their Scottish counterpart, pleaded the expense – they reckoned that the whole undertaking would cost at least £40,000. Not only the two councils but the face of heaven itself seemed set against the meeting, since the summer of 1562 was so wet as to make many of the roa
ds between the two countries virtually impassable.
Despite these setbacks, articles for the proposed meeting were agreed on, and duly ratified by Elizabeth. In the articles, York was suggested as the best venue, and the dates mentioned were between 20th August and 20th September. Later, Sheffield House, which was to feature again in the years of Mary’s captivity, was put forward as a possible site, before Nottingham was fixed upon in the preliminary arrangements. Maitland optimistically termed Elizabeth to be ‘earnest bent’ on the project; on 10th June she wrote a letter to this effect to Mary, which pleased the Scottish queen so much that she placed it sentimentally in her bosom, next to her skin. When Maitland returned to Mary in Scotland with the good news, he brought with him Elizabeth’s portrait. Mary, with typical female curiosity, asked Randolph whether the likeness was a good one, to which Randolph replied that soon she would be able to judge for herself. Mary exclaimed that this was what she most desired – she hoped that they would strike such deep accord at the meeting, that afterwards the most painful thing which could happen to either of them would be that they had to take leave of each other.27 In London the prospect of the encounter was considered sufficiently certain for the actual masques to be devised which were to entertain the two queens, the chosen allegorical theme being the punishment of False Report and Discord by Jupiter at the request of Prudence and Temperance. The detailed and long-winded plans for the masques – three nights of them – were vetted personally by Cecil and much courtly care was exercised in the delicate task of balancing the allegorical compliments to both royal ladies.28