Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

  Darnley was on the borders of Scotland by 10th February, and at Dunbar the next day, whence he went on to Haddington, finally reaching Edinburgh on 13th February. Here he spent three days, in the course of which he was most warmly received by Elizabeth’s envoy Randolph, who lent him his own horses, as Darnley’s had not arrived. Darnley was entertained by Lord Robert Stewart at Holyrood where, according to Randolph, his pleasant social manner made an agreeable impression. Mary was away hunting in Fife. Here on Saturday, 17th February, at the house of the Laird of Wemyss, the first meeting for four years between the ill-starred couple took place. The young man whom Mary saw before her was eminently handsome. Although Melville had assured Queen Elizabeth that he found him almost too effeminate – ‘beardless and lady-faced’ were the words he used – this was more evidence of Melville’s wish to please Elizabeth, than of Darnley’s lack of attraction.19 The contemporary portraits by Eworth, standing with his younger brother, or painted alone three-quarter length, show that Darnley at the age of eighteen* was nothing if not outwardly good-looking. In these portraits Darnley appears at first sight like a young god, with his golden hair, his perfectly shaped face with its short straight nose, the neat oval chin, and above all the magnificent legs stretching forth endlessly in their black hose. But on closer inspection the god appears to be more Pan than Apollo: there is something faun-like about his pointed ears, the beautiful slanting hazel eyes with their unreadable expression, and even a hint of cruelty in the exquisitely formed mouth with its full rosy lips. It was Darnley’s height which was considered at the time to be his main physical characteristic – had not Elizabeth called him ‘yon long lad’ when she pointed him out to Melville – and he was fortunate in being slender with it, or as Melville put it, ‘long and small, even and straight’. His elegant physique could hardly fail to commend itself to Mary for two reasons. Firstly, beautiful as she was, Mary was nevertheless tall enough to tower over most of her previous companions, including her first husband Francis. The psychological implications of this height can only be guessed at, but Darnley was certainly well over six feet one inch.* Mary for once could feel herself not only overtopped at dancing, but also physically protected by her admirer if she so wished; as a novel sensation it could hardly have failed to be pleasant. Secondly, as Mary was also a woman of strong aesthetic instincts, she would tend to appreciate the effeminate beauty of a Darnley more than the masculine vigour of some of her Scottish nobles.

  The handsome youth had been well-trained in all the arts considered suitable for a gentleman – or princeling – of the period; he could ride a horse, hunt, dance gracefully and play the lute extremely well. In this respect he took after his father Mathew, earl of Lennox, who had been one of the most gallant figures at the Scottish court before his English marriage. The aim of his ambitious mother had been to make his courtly ways as winning as his outward appearance. To his internal qualities she had unfortunately paid less regard. It was true that his education was in the impressive mould of royalty at the time of the Renaissance: when he was only eight he was accomplished enough to send a letter to Queen Mary Tudor in which he asked her to accept ‘a little plot of my own penning’ which he termed Utopia Nova. He is traditionally supposed to have translated the works of Valerius Maximus into English. Better attested is the fact that he wrote some pleasant poems, a talent he must have inherited from his mother, herself a poetess;21 the subjects Darnley chose for his verses included fittingly enough a long address ‘to the Queen’ on how to treat her subjects, in which he adjured her somewhat priggishly:

  Be governor both good and gracious

  Be loyal and loving to thy lieges all

  Be larger of freedom, and nothing desirous;

  Be just to the poor, for any thing may fall …

  But whatever the veneer of education lovingly applied to his surface, it had in no sense left Darnley an intellectual. Throughout his short life he showed remarkably little interest in any matters of the mind, and a single-minded concern for the pursuit of pleasure. The truth was that Darnley was thoroughly spoilt: he was the product of a striving mother and a doting father, and even the most rigorous education would probably have left little impact on a personality which from his earliest years had been encouraged to regard himself as the important centre round which the world revolved.

  As a character there was very little to commend him despite or more probably because of all the maternal solicitude which had been expended on him – on his first arrival in Scotland Randolph did not want ‘a little cold’ which he was suffering from to get to the ears of Lady Lennox, lest she should be alarmed.22 Apart from being spoilt, he was headstrong and ambitious; but he was ambitious only in so far as his mind could hold any concept for long enough to pursue it, since above all he desired the palm and not the race. It was the outward manifestations of power, the crown, the sceptre and the orb, which appealed to him: the realities of its practice made no appeal to his indolent and pleasure-loving temperament. Vanity was by far the strongest motive which animated him. It was vanity which made him seek out evil companions, such as the profligate Lord Robert Stewart, even from the first moment of his arrival in Edinburgh, and seek solace in the admiration of low company. If the pursuit of pleasure led him inevitably on to fresh excitements, and thus to more vicious enjoyments as simpler pleasures failed, it was his vanity which brought about his quick touchy temper, and his fatally boastful nature; finally, his vanity was the fatal flaw which made Darnley incapable of assessing any person or situation at its true worth, since he could not help relating everything back to his own self-esteem. The kindest judgement made about him was that of the cardinal of Lorraine – ‘un gentil huteaudeau’23 (a nice young cockerel) – but such lightweight figures had a way of becoming dangerous if they were inserted into serious situations.

  None of this was apparent to Mary Queen of Scots at her first meeting with her cousin in Scotland, at Wemyss Castle. She merely saw and admired his charming exterior, which, like a delightful red shiny apple ready for the eating, gave no hint of the maggots which lay inside. Her reaction was instantaneously romantic: she told Melville that ‘he was the properest and best proportioned long man that ever she had seen …’24 Although the long man went on to see his father Lennox who was at Dunkeld with his kinsman Lord Atholl, he was back at the queen’s side on the following Saturday, in order to cross over the queen’s ferry with her towards the south. From now on, he was scarcely allowed to be away from her side. On Monday Darnley listened to Knox preach, dined with Moray and Randolph, and finally at Moray’s instance danced a galliard with Mary – the tall graceful young couple looked so suitable together that at this point Randolph reported, ‘A great number wish them well – others doubt him, and deeply consider what is fit for the state of their country, than, as he is called “a fair jolly young man”.’25 Yet the tide was running very strongly in favour of the fair jolly young man – more especially since in mid-March Randolph was finally instructed to tell Mary that the Leicester marriage would definitely not be exchanged for her succession rights. Mary was deeply depressed by the news, and wept bitter tears: but it had the inevitable effect of focusing her attention still more strongly on Darnley now physically present by her side, as Elizabeth and her advisers must surely have anticipated when they sent the final crushing message.

  In the meantime marriage was in the air of Mary’s little Scottish circle. During the previous autumn Mary’s secretary Maitland had begun to court the dazzling Mary Fleming, he being a recently widowed man of forty, and she a girl of twenty-two. Maitland was clearly fascinated by her radiant youth and vitality, although Kirkcaldy scornfully described her as being about as suitable for him ‘as I am to be pope’.26 Maitland’s passion became an open subject for discussion at the court, and in February Maitland confessed to Cecil that his passion brought him at least one ‘merry hour’ out of the four and twenty, whatever the troublesome affairs of the kingdom, even advising Cecil himself to turn to such amorous spor
t for relaxation since ‘those that be in love, be ever set upon a merry pin’.27 Randolph was scornful over Maitland’s infatuation which he described in withering terms, but Randolph himself, a forty-five-year-old bachelor who observed the gambolling of the Mars with gallant approval, was himself an unsuccessful admirer of Mary Beaton, and his account was probably tinged with jealousy. In the end it was not the acknowledged belle Mary Fleming who was to be the first Marie to wed, but, as we have seen, her energetic agile companion, Mary Livingston, who chose as her bridegroom a younger son of Lord Sempill. The marriage took place on Shrove Tuesday, 6th March, 1565. The queen was not only party to the marriage contract and gave the bride a dowry of £500 a year in land, but also paid for the wedding gown and bridal banquet, as was her custom with her favourite ladies. As the first of the Maries to marry, the wedding of Mary Livingston naturally attracted a great deal of attention, and the French and English ambassadors give many details of the impending ceremonies for two months beforehand (the detailed preparations certainly give the lie to Knox’s suggestion of a hurried ceremony). Randolph described Sempill as ‘a happy Englishman’ for winning the estimable Mary Livingston as a bride. Mary Stuart’s own views on the subject were best expressed by the French ambassador in his report to Catherine de Médicis: ‘She has begun to marry off her Maries, and says that she wished she herself were of the band.’28

  Up to this point, however much Mary had enjoyed the company of Darnley, she had not shown any evidence of passion for him: Randolph weighed up the favour she had shown him as proceeding ‘of her own courteous nature’ rather than anything more serious. In March Mary still seems to have regarded Darnley as a suitable candidate for marriage only because of his English and Scottish royal blood and his religion, and not for any more personal reason. But in April the situation dramatically changed. Darnley fell ill – an illness which was to transform his fortune and that of Mary Queen of Scots. The illness itself was of no great moment: it began with a cold, which Darnley attempted to cure by sweating it out, and then turned into measles. The young man was incarcerated in his room in Stirling Castle. It was the situation of his sick-room which was the crucial fact about his illness. Inevitably, within the confines of the enormous fortress, like a private town hanging above the plain of Stirling, the young queen found her way with increasing frequency to the bedside of her handsome young cousin. She began to visit him continually and at all hours, and she even took to staying past midnight. She constituted herself his nurse. When measles was succeeded by an ague, the distracted girl refused to ride forth to Perth until Darnley was recovered, and her care was redoubled. Under the influence of the proximity of the sick-room, and the tenderness brought forth by the care of the weak, the suffering – and the handsome – Mary had fallen violently, recklessly and totally in love.

  There can be no doubt that whether Mary herself realized it or not, her feelings for Darnley were overwhelmingly physical. The demanding nature of her passion can easily be explained by pent-up longings which were the result of an inadequate first marriage, which had aroused few physical feelings in her and satisfied none. In the years since Francis’s death she had led a life of celibacy, allowing herself courtly flirtations but nothing more, and had been seemingly horrified at any more crude confrontation with life, such as Châtelard presented to her. Her thoughts about marriage had been concentrated on the power it would bring her, for Don Carlos as a bridegroom could have offered few other consolations, and she had shown little interest in the prospect of that great lover Robert Dudley as a possible husband. Now at one touch of Darnley’s hand, the caution, the concentration on the issue of her marriage in which Elizabeth’s approval was so vital, the discretion and wisdom which all had praised in her during her four years as queen of Scotland – all were swept away in a tide of tumultuous feelings which Mary Stuart can scarcely have known she possessed.

  * Confronted with such a problem, it was perhaps regrettable that the solution of the royal family of Egypt was not open to that of Scotland: Dr A. L. Rowse once suggested that if Mary had been able to marry her half-brother Moray, as Cleopatra married Ptolemy, she might have fared much better.

  * The earl and his countess were never permanently reconciled despite the good offices of Knox and the queen: they were finally divorced and Argyll married again.

  * Dr Strong has pointed out that the double portrait of Darnley and his brother, from which Eworth copied his own picture, is in the unusual medium of tempera painted on linen, which suggests that it was designed for travelling: it may therefore have formed part of the ambitious countess’s plans for bringing her handsome son to the notice of the queen of Scots.15

  * See G. H. Tait, FSA, ‘Historiated Tudor Jewellery’, Antiquaries Journal, 1962.

  * Hay Fleming pointed out that there is mystery about the actual date of Darnley’s birth. This is usually given as 7th December, 1545. But Knox’s Continuator states that Darnley was not yet twenty-one at the time of his death (10th February, 1567). In March 1566 he was specifically stated by Mary’s own messenger to the cardinal of Lorraine to be nineteen years old.20 It seems that the earliest date he could have been born to fit with this evidence was 11th February, 1546. If the 7th December birthday is accepted however, Darnley must have been born on 7th December, 1546: he was thus four years younger than Mary, not three.

  * His height has been calculated to have been between six foot one and six foot three inches on the evidence of his reputed thigh bone in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. See Skull and Portraits of Henry Stuart Lord Darnley, Karl Pearson, FRCS.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Carnal Marriage

  Nuptiae carnales a laetitia incipiunt et in luctu terminantur (Carnal marriages begin with happiness and end in strife)

  Cecil’s comment on the marriage of Amy Robsart and Leicester

  In March 1565 Darnley had been one possible candidate among the many from whom the queen of Scots might choose her consort. In April he became the one man she was determined to have beside her as husband. From Stirling she took a keen interest in the intrigues on the subject in Edinburgh. The faithful Maitland was promptly dispatched to London to acquaint Elizabeth with the news and, as it was hoped, win her approval – this sanction being doubly necessary because Darnley was not only a member of the English royal family through his Tudor descent, but also held to be an English subject. At this point Mary genuinely believed that she would receive this approval. Her confidence was easy to understand: Darnley had come north with the official blessing of England, and he was an English noble of the type whom Elizabeth had often observed that she wished Mary would marry. From hearsay Mary had reason to suppose that Darnley was one of Elizabeth’s own candidates, if the Leicester marriage failed. Maitland reached London on 15th April. But at this point the honeyed trap – as Darnley now turned out to be – was sprung. Mary to marry Darnley! Darnley, the great-grandson of Henry VII, with a claim of his own to the English throne! No indeed. Elizabeth, made newly aware of the disapproval of the Scottish Protestants for a Catholic bridegroom and anxious to dissociate herself from the project, now took the line that the whole idea of the marriage was preposterous, and represented a renewed attempt on Mary’s part to acquire the English throne for herself. In London Margaret, countess of Lennox, was first commanded to keep to her room and later sent to the Tower. Regardless of the fact that Lennox and Darnley had gone north with her express permission, Elizabeth exploded with anger and demanded their instant return. When neither paid any attention to her angry bulletins, Throckmorton was sent north to dissuade Mary from the disastrous, nay, menacing course of marrying Darnley.

  Mary in Scotland was in no state to listen to the advice of even the sagest counsellor. Love was rampant in her heart for the first time, and she could hear no other voice except the dictates of her own passionate feelings. In the words of a poem of the period, it was a case of ‘O lusty May, with Flora Queen’ at the court of Scotland.1 Randolph wrote back to Leicester
in anguish of his ‘poor Queen whom ever before I esteemed so worthy, so wise, so honourable in all her doings’, now so altered by love that he could hardly recognize her. To Cecil he described a queen seized with love, ‘all care of common wealth set apart, to the utter contempt of her best subjects’.2 Randolph was in a particular state of despair at the whole situation because it was being widely stated in Scotland that Darnley had been deliberately dispatched by Elizabeth to trap Mary into a mean marriage, and he only wished that there was not so much concrete evidence to back up these suspicions.