Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

  The victory of Francis of Guise at Calais and the reappearance of the bright star of the Guises had an important effect on the fortunes of his niece Mary. She was now, in the spring of 1558, over fifteen, and the dauphin was just fourteen. By the standards of the age, Mary was marriageable, but Francis only marginally so.* But Henry II now had two strong motives, both political, to persuade him towards the finalization of this marriage which had been arranged in theory nearly ten years previously. The words of the Venetian ambassador Giacomo Sorenzo, writing on 9th November, 1557, sum up the situation: ‘The causes for hastening this marriage are apparently two; the first to enable them more surely to avail themselves of the forces of Scotland against the kingdom of England for next year, and the next for the gratification of the Duke and Cardinal of Guise, the said Queen’s uncles, who by the hastening of this marriage, choose to secure themselves against any other matrimonial alliance which might be proposed to his most Christian majesty in some negotiation for peace, the entire establishment of their greatness having to depend on this; for which reason the Constable by all means in his power continually sought to prevent it.’17 Henry sent to Scotland, to remind the Scottish Parliament that the time had come to implement their promises. In years gone by, there had been other matrimonial possibilities suggested for Mary Stuart, despite her theoretical betrothal to the dauphin. In July 1556, the French ambassador at Brussels threatened that if the king of Spain married the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria to Elizabeth Tudor, Henry II would give Mary Stuart to Lord Courtenay, an English aristocrat in the line of succession to the English throne.18 The aim of this dynastic and diplomatic marriage roundabout was to prevent the house of Austria establishing itself in England, from which position it was felt it could effectively threaten France. But in the end Mary Stuart was not forced to ride on the roundabout. The death of Lord Courtenay, a few months later, put an end to this interesting possibility. Mary Stuart was given back her original position on the chess board of the French king’s policy as the Scottish pawn who would help to checkmate England by marrying his son.

  Commissioners were duly appointed in Scotland to come to France, in order to carry out the marriage negotiations. The nine envoys thus chosen included three supporters of the Reformation – the queen’s half-brother, James Stewart, the earl of Cassillis and John Erskine of Dun; for in her anxiety to arrange the marriage contract of her daughter smoothly, Mary of Guise determined to exhibit the utmost conciliation towards the reformers, who might otherwise upset the design to which she attached such importance. The reformers took full advantage of her quiescent mood, and as the marriage negotiations proceeded, so did the reformed religion and its preaching spread in Scotland. The First Band of the Congregation which pledged the signatories to work for the cause of the reformed religion in Scotland was actually signed by Argyll, his son Lord Lorne, later the 5th earl of Argyll, Morton, Glencairn and others, in the same month in which the commissioners left for France.

  Unable to leave Scotland herself, Mary of Guise appointed her mother Antoinette to act as her proxy during the arranging of the marriage contract. As a result the formal betrothal of the young pair took place on 19th April, 1558, in the great hall of the new Louvre, with the cardinal of Lorraine joining their hands together. A magnificent ball followed, at which Henry II danced with the bride-elect, Antoine of Navarre with Catherine de M é dicis, the dauphin with his aunt Madame Marguerite, and the duke of Lorraine with the princess Claude whom he later married. By the terms of the betrothal contract, the dauphin declared that of ‘his own free will and with the fullest consent of the King and Queen his father and mother, and being duly authorized by them to take the Queen of Scotland for his wife and consort, he promised to espouse her on the following Sunday April 24th’.19

  Despite the formality of the language, and the political considerations which had prompted his elders to hurry forward the match, the young groom does seem to have felt genuine affection for his bride. His mother, Catherine de Médicis, and Mary Stuart seem to have been indeed the only two human beings for whom this pathetic, wizened creature felt true emotion. Sickly in childhood, he had become difficult and sullen in adolescence; his physique was scarcely developed and his height was stunted; furthermore there is considerable doubt whether he ever actually reached the age of puberty before his untimely death, when he was not quite seventeen.* The dauphin showed little enthusiasm or aptitude for learning, although his enthusiasm for the chase astonished the courtiers, considering his frail physique. All the Venetian ambassadors in turn commented on the fact that he was an invalid, from Matteo Dandolo who saw him when he was three, to Sorenzo who was at the wedding. Dandolo described him as being pale and swollen rather than fat, but rather dignified (as child invalids do often acquire a certain pathetic dignity). Obviously, for better or for worse, he soon became conscious of his high position: in 1552 he was described as having a considerable sense of his own importance, and Capello commented again on the fact when he was eleven: ‘He shows that he knows he is a prince’, before going on to say that he spoke little, and seemed generally ‘bilieux’.21 This taciturn and stubborn character suffered from a chronic respiratory infection, resulting from his difficult birth, which cannot have added to his appeal, since it prompted his mother Catherine at one point to write to his governor and urge that the dauphin should blow his nose more, for the good of his health.

  However, the same ambassadors who described him as a rather unattractive and self-important invalid also commented on the real signs of love which he exhibited towards his future bride. Capello wrote that he adored ‘la Reginata de Scozia’ who was destined to be his wife, and whom Capello called an exceptionally pretty child. He paints a touching picture of the pair of them drawing apart into a corner of the court, in order to exchange kisses and childish secrets. When he was eleven, the cardinal referred to him jokingly as ‘l’amoureux’, and when he was only six, he was hoping to joust with the duke of Guise in order to enjoy the favours of ‘une dame belle et honnête’, his niece Mary Stuart.22 They played childish games of chance together, on one occasion Mary won 74 sols, and on another lost 45. In short, she was the companion to whom he was accustomed, and she was in addition young, romantic and beautiful – increasingly so, in the eyes of the courtiers. It would have been odd indeed if the dauphin had not loved and admired this exquisite and radiant bride being presented to him, who was in addition a comforting friend from his childhood.

  What were Mary’s own feelings for her bridegroom? First of all it must be said that it is not difficult for the young to be fond of those who are fond of them, and openly display this fondness. Furthermore, as a character, Mary responded exceptionally easily to love all her life. She was used to being loved in the widest sense, since her childhood; she desired to continue being loved, since it was a state she enjoyed; where she saw love, or thought she saw it, she found it easy to bestow her own generous affections in return. The dauphin loved her, of that she felt certain enough in herself, but in any case the Guises and the French court combined were always assuring her that he did. Her feminine wish to charm and please those around her made her naturally want to show the conventional affection for her bridegroom which was clearly expected of her. And as she showed the affection, the imitative side of her nature made her begin to feel it. To those who have never known the transports of romantic love, companionship and the feeling of general approval are agreeable substitutes: Mary felt that she loved her bridegroom in the most worthy manner, although his infantile physique and immaturity make it unlikely that he actually aroused in her any of the feelings with which most adults would endow the word.

  While the two protagonists of the match were thus perfectly content to be united, there were certain political undertones to the arrangements which were considerably more sinister than the innocent childlike emotions of Francis and Mary. Two marriage treaties were in fact signed, one open and one secret. The first official marriage treaty, whose witnesses included Diane de Poi
tiers, provided terms with which the Scottish delegates were adequately satisfied: the young queen bound herself to preserve the ancient freedoms, liberties and privileges of Scotland; so long as she was out of the country, it was to be governed by the regency of the queen mother, and the French king and the dauphin both bound themselves and their successors, in the case of Mary’s death without children, to support the succession to the Scottish throne of the nearest heir by blood – still the head of the house of Hamilton, the duke of Châtelherault. Mary was given a satisfactory jointure. It was further agreed that the dauphin should bear the title of king of Scotland and that, on his accession to the French throne, the two kingdoms should be united under one crown, and the subjects of both countries should be thus naturalized with each other, in anticipation of the joint reign. Letters of naturalization were granted to Henry in June, and confirmed by the parliament of Paris on 8th July. In November the Scottish Estates in their turn granted letters of naturalization to all the subjects of the king of France. Up till the death of Henry, Francis and Mary were to be known as the king-dauphin and the queen-dauphiness. In the case of the death of her husband, Mary was to be allowed to choose whether she remained in France or returned to her kingdom; as a widowed queen, Mary was to receive a fortune of 600,000 livres; should there be male issue, the eldest surviving child should inherit both crowns, whereas if the couple bore only daughters, owing to the workings of the Salic Law in France, the eldest daughter would inherit the Scottish crown alone.

  All these terms were nothing more than those the standards of the time dictated, when a female heiress married the representative of a more powerful kingdom. The only condition at which the Scottish commissioners demurred was Henry’s suggestion that the crown of Scotland be sent to France, to be used for the coronation of the dauphin. As by the following November the Scottish Estates had agreed that the dauphin should be granted the crown matrimonial – which gave him equal powers as king of Scotland with his wife as queen – even this objection seems to spring from an admirably cautious attitude towards sending away a valuable object to a foreign country, rather than a disinclination towards granting the office itself. The state documents of Scotland were henceforth signed by both Francis and Mary jointly: Francis’s signature, however, always appeared on the left hand and Mary’s on the right – the left hand in this case, as dexter in heraldry, being the more important position, because it was read first.

  At the same time, a second secret treaty was drawn up, of which the Scottish commissioners were given no official knowledge. Before the marriage contract was actually signed, Mary signed three separate deeds by which, first of all, in the event of her death without children, Scotland and Mary’s rights to the throne of England were made over freely to the crown of France; secondly Scotland and all its revenues were made over to the king of France and his successors until France should be reimbursed of the money spent in Scotland’s defence; and thirdly, Mary actually renounced in anticipation any agreement she might make at the Estates’ behest which might interfere with these arrangements. If implemented, these secret agreements would certainly have had the effect of transforming Scotland into a mere French dominion, in the pocket of the French king. To some, the fact that Mary Stuart signed these deeds represents the first blot on her character. Yet surely Mary, aged fifteen years and four months at the time of her marriage, should not be judged too harshly on this issue, and condemnations should rather be saved for the French king and French statesmen who presented her with the deeds. She was given them to sign by an older man whom she had been trained from childhood to love and admire, and by the uncles who had been as parents to her, and had given her for the last ten years every proof of their devotion and welfare. She also had been brought up to believe that although she was virtually born reigning queen of Scotland, her actual destiny was to be queen consort of France. France was her adopted country, and half of her blood was French; as we have seen, little attempt had been made to preserve in her a sense of the true importance of Scotland. Although she had been conscientiously inculcated in statescraft by her uncle, the net result of hearing about her mother’s troubles must have been to lead her to believe that Scotland was not much more than a tiresome colony or protectorate; it needed firm government, but had little right to sovereign interests, so long as the French existed to provide it with a wise administration, through the queen regent, and the French officials in power in Scotland.

  All Mary’s emotional inclinations led her to believe that the happiest fate of Scotland would be to be united with France – this was, after all, the union which she was about to effect by her marriage. She was far from unique in this attitude, in her age. The French panegyrics on her marriage exhibit exactly the same half-patronizing approach towards Scotland.23 There are conventional tributes to the young queen’s charms – she is Helen in beauty, Lucrece in chastity, Pallas in wisdom, Ceres in riches, Juno in power. But the panegyrists agree that while the bride is beautiful, her country is a minor one, which must consider itself fortunate to be governed for the future by France. The wedding hymn of Michel l’Hôpital puts forward the political gain to France in acquiring new territory and revenues, it is true, but also expresses the view that the Scots will be delighted to gain a new set of rulers in the French. With perhaps a certain overconfidence, he suggests that even Mary’s father James V will be pleased to notice Scotland now taking second place to France, as he looks down from his eternal resting-place:

  Nor would he shrink his ancient realm to see

  Ranked second in his regal blazonry.

  A work of Estienne Perlin, published in 1558, and dedicated to Henry’s sister, the duchess of Berry, observes patronizingly: ‘How happy oughtest thou to esteem thyself, O kingdom of Scotland, to be favoured, fed and maintained like an infant on the breast of the most magnanimous King of France, the greatest lord in the whole world, and the future monarch of that round machine, for without him thou wouldn’st have been laid in ashes, thy country wasted and ruined by the English, utterly accursed by God’.24

  In such a climate of opinion, it would have needed a woman of maturity, and of stubbornly independent political opinions, not a young girl who had been trained to act in feminine obedience to her powerful uncles, to hold out against the signing of the secret treaties. In April 1558, Mary Stuart can scarcely be blamed for thinking more of the gorgeous pageantry of her wedding celebrations than of the true implications of the three deeds which she had just been led to sign.

  * Throughout her life, Mary used the name in its French form in her signature. A feature of this signature, seen already in her earliest letters, is the fact that all the letters, including the first M, are made to be of the same size. She may have modelled her signature on that of her mother: the two signatures are not unalike.

  * It has been suggested, on the evidence of a letter from Henry to Mary of Guise, that the French king had even contemplated carrying out the marriage a year earlier, when the bride and groom would have been only fourteen and thirteen respectively. This letter has now been convincingly re-dated to the next year, and thus disposes of the theory that Henry did ever in fact consider such a union of children.16

  * He probably suffered from the condition known medically as undescended testicles. The Protestant historian Regnier de la Planche used these words to describe the formation of his body: ‘Il avoit les parties génératives du tout constipées et empeschés sans faire aucune action.’ Although deeply hostile to the Guises, and thus prejudiced in many of his views of history, la Planche was likely to be well-informed on this subject through his friendship with Catherine de Médicis.20

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Queen-Dauphiness

  Just as we see, half rosy and half white Dawn and the Morning Star dispel the night In beauty thus beyond compare impearled The Queen of Scotland rises on the world

  Ronsard to Mary Queen of Scots,

  translated by Maurice Baring

  The French court, in true Renaissance
fashion, desired its principals to shine out luminously against a background of endless pageantry; never were its wishes more splendidly gratified than in the marriage ceremonies of Francis, dauphin of France, and Mary Queen of Scots. The wedding itself took place on Sunday, 24th April at the cathedral of Notre Dame. The contemporary Discours du Grand et Magnifique Triomphe faict du Mariage gives a full description of the festivities, in which the writer himself seems to be frequently awed by the magnificence of what he is recounting.1 Already in March, Henry had asked the French Parliament to stay at the convent of the Augustins, in order that its palace could be adequately and conveniently prepared. Notre Dame itself was embellished with a special structure outside in the antique manner, to make a kind of open-air theatre, and an arch twelve feet high inside. The royal fleur-de-lys was embroidered everywhere, and positively studded the canopy in front of the church.

  The first sign to meet the eyes of the eagerly waiting crowds were the Swiss guards, resplendent in their liveries, who entered the theatre to the sound of tambourins and fifes. Then came Francis, duke of Guise, hero of France, uncle of the bride, and in the absence of the Constable de Montmorency, in captivity in Brussels since the defeat of Saint-Quentin, actually in charge of the proceedings. Then came Eustace du Bellay, the bishop of Paris, who considerately made sure that the view of the common people was not impeded so that they could see the show. Then came a procession, headed by a series of musicians, all dressed in yellow and red, with trumpets, sackbuts, flageolets, violins and other musical instruments. Then followed a hundred gentlemen-in-waiting of the king. Then came the princes of the blood, gorgeously apparelled, to the wonder, and presumably satisfaction, of the onlookers. Then came abbés and bishops bearing rich crosses and wearing jewelled mitres, and after them the princes of the Church, even more magnificently dressed, including the cardinals of Bourbon, Lorraine and Guise, and the cardinal legate of France (who had given the bride and groom the necessary papal dispensation for the marriage since they were cousins) who entered with a cross of gold borne before him.*