Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

  It is difficult to explain Moray’s conduct in terms of statesmanship: not only was Mary not threatening the Protestant religion at the end of July, but it was actually his rebellion which enabled Mary to send an emissary to Rome in September asking for a papal subsidy to assist her in the conflict. Mary had understandably been experiencing some difficulty in the past two years in convincing the Pope that she truly had the cause of Scottish Catholicism at heart. Yet papal money continued to be a golden lure as was papal approval to one who might at any moment need foreign Catholic support: now Moray’s rebellion, so publicly stated to be in the cause of Protestantism, presented the Scottish queen with a perfect opportunity to present herself in Rome as a champion of the Catholic faith. But the truth was that Moray, in his revolt, was no more championing Protestantism than Mary was championing Catholicism by attacking him. The composition of their respective parties shows how strongly feudal and family alliances still acted in Scottish politics.

  Moray had Châtelherault on his side, because the Hamiltons were perennially opposed to the Lennox Stewarts, who contested their claim to be the next heirs to the Scottish throne; Mary in turn reacted to Moray’s revolt by pardoning young Lord Gordon, Huntly’s son, who was released from ward and restored to his father’s title on 3rd August, for the very good reason that the Huntlys were now the sworn enemies of Moray. Even Bothwell was now allowed back into royal favour because his enmity against the Hamiltons could be relied on keeping him loyal to the queen: the crude insults which he was said to have bestowed on Mary after her escape to France (she was the ‘cardinal’s whore’, and she and Elizabeth between them did not add up to one honest woman)16 were conveniently forgotten in the need to suppress Moray. The presence of the keen Protestant and traditional Hamilton ally, Argyll, on the opposing side meant that Atholl could be relied on to act against him on Mary’s side to preserve the balance of power in the north of Scotland. Indeed during the Chaseabout Raid, Argyll took the opportunity to despoil Lennox and Atholl, which he considered evidently a more important task than supporting Moray against the queen. Lastly the ‘slow and greedy’ earl of Morton, head of the Douglas clan, supported the queen, because Lennox’s wife Margaret had been a Douglas, and Darnley was thus ‘mother’s kin’ to the Douglases.

  The Chaseabout Raid, as Moray’s abortive rebellion was called, marked a significant change in Mary’s attitude to her Scottish nobles, which may not have been politically wise, but whose genesis was certainly easy to trace. She certainly did not despair of the Scottish people – indeed her experiences during the raid only confirmed her in her prognostication to Throck-morton when still in France, that she would manage to appeal to ‘the common people’ of Scotland. But in the course of four years, her two major subjects had both revolted against her, in the interests of their own power, as it seemed to her. She had defeated them both, married the man of her choice, and had been able to reestablish herself as a champion of the Scottish Catholic cause abroad, without in fact making as yet any significant concessions to the Catholics in Scotland – in short, she was riding high. None of these experiences had taught her to trust her own nobility at any point where her interest might conflict with theirs: she therefore took the natural step of relying more and more on those who had no mighty Scottish lands and clans to back them up, no family feuds to sway them, and who did not belong to the spider’s web of Scottish family relationships. In her newly important relations with the papacy, her vast correspondence with her French relations, and even with Spain, Mary began to make use of a sort of middle-class secretariat. These rising stars were not even lairds as Maitland had been but, in Randolph’s term, ‘crafty vile strangers’17 – although Mary saw them as loyal and discreet servants. It was a move which was passionately resented by the nobles who saw themselves about to be edged out of the centre of a stage they had occupied so tempestuously and for so long.

  Randolph, in his discussion of the subject, mentioned two Italians, Davy and Francisco (Francisco de Busso), and an Englishman called Fowler. Others who were complained of were Sebastian Danelourt and the Scottish lawyer James Balfour. In his criticism of Mary, Moray had mentioned that she relied on such men, rather than take what he chose to term ‘the wholesome advice and counsel’ of her barons. Of these men, Davy or David Riccio* was the most interesting character. He had first arrived in Scotland in 1561 in the train of the ambassador from Savoy, and he came of a good but impoverished Savoyard family; he was of course a Catholic, although no evidence has ever been found in the Vatican to confirm the suggestion of his enemies that he was at any time a papal agent. He was now aged about thirty-five; but otherwise the only fact on which everyone agreed about this cuckoo in the royal nest – which appears in every contemporary record whether of friend or foe – was that Riccio seemed extremely ugly by the standards of the time,† his face being considered ‘illfavoured’ and his stature small and hunched. Although he had a Latin love of fine clothing – after his death an extravagant peacock’s wardrobe was discovered – Buchanan commented spitefully ‘indeed his appearance disfigured his elegance’.18 Riccio also seems to have been avaricious, since a cache of £2000 was discovered among his effects, which would have been difficult to amass out of his yearly pay of £80 and lends colour to the accusations of his enemies that he took bribes. Riccio, however, first came into Mary’s service on a more spiritual level.

  Ugly as he might be, avaricious as he might be suspected to be, Riccio was generally conceded to be a fine musician. Music as we have seen was Mary’s private passion. Riccio entered Mary’s employ when she needed a bass singer to make up a quartet with the valet of her household. Although Riccio was clearly a talented performer, there is no concrete evidence to prove that he combined these talents with those of a composer.* Riccio, apart from his musical talent, was also an amusing conversationalist; to a queen who was in Melville’s phrase ‘of quick spirit, curious to know, and get intelligence of the estate of other countries and would be sometimes sad when she was solitary, and glad of the company of them that had travelled in other parts’,19 Riccio provided an agreeable opportunity to discuss the Europe they had both once known.

  When Mary’s French secretary Raullet died at the end of 1564 Riccio was appointed in his place; this meant that he was nominally responsible for her French correspondence, as opposed to Maitland, who was her secretary of state and responsible for all her affairs. But by the autumn of 1565 Randolph was able to observe spitefully about Maitland that he had been sufficiently pushed out of the centre of affairs to have the leisure to make love – to his coy mistress, Mary Fleming.20 Melville paints a picture of Riccio standing at the entrance to Mary’s chamber, smiling at the nobles as they went by, and being glowered on in return.21 Certainly Maitland, in terms of power politics, had reason to resent the advancement of Riccio, since it had led to his own decline. But to Mary the loyalty of Riccio at least was beyond reproach, and she had a natural horror of disloyalty, especially when it was accompanied by ingratitude. As Mary wrote to de Foix, the French ambassador in London, in November 1565, in a long letter pleading with him to get her mother-in-law Lady Lennox released from the Tower, the ingratitude of Moray seemed to her fantastic: here was a mere subject on whom she had showered honours and goods, trying to prevent her marrying whom she pleased. Again and again she reverted to the topic as she utterly refused to allow the release of Lady Lennox to be made conditional on her pardoning Moray and his fellow-rebels.22 In a memorandum on the reasons for her second marriage, she bitterly related how Moray had deliberately agreed to the idea of Darnley at first, in order to spite the pretensions of the Hamiltons, under the impression that he could scotch the match whenever he wished.23

  Mary had au fond an unhypocritical and undissembling nature: in this respect she was curiously unlike her contemporary queens, Elizabeth Tudor and Catherine de Médicis, who had after all been brought up from childhood in far harder schools of learning than the idolized young queen of Scotland. Although Mary enjoyed t
he prospect and motions of intrigue, and took a keen interest in letters, schemes and news, she lacked the disposition of the true intriguer: the born double-agent, by not knowing which interest he really wants to come out on top, except his own survival, is able to take advantage of every new twist of the situation and thus in the end always survive – both Elizabeth and Cecil had something of this temperament. Mary on the other hand was by nature frank and open, as she knew herself; she was also passionate, quick to love, quick to hate, easy to weep, easy to laugh. This meant inevitably that she had a love of being committed: she preferred action, whatever the cost, to inaction, whatever the gain. Her fluctuating health may well have played some part in this; it was infinitely easier for one of her nervous energies to galvanize herself to spring forward than to rally her strength for a debilitating period of waiting. But such tendencies marked Mary off from the real plotters. Her love of commitment meant that in turn she felt bitterly betrayed when those around her seemed to neglect her interests for their own, showing no equivalent commitment to her. Her fiercest hatreds were always reserved for those whom she had raised up and who now let her down – Moray was now in this category and Darnley was shortly to enter into it.

  *

  Unfortunately this July marriage, begun in the high summer of love, did not preserve its warmth into the cooler temperatures of autumn and winter. At first, as Melville said, Mary was so delighted with her new acquisition, Darnley, that she did him great honour herself, and willed everyone who desired her favour to do the like and wait upon him. But after the honeymoon was over – a honeymoon spent as it happened virtually on the field of battle, defending Darnley as a choice of husband – Mary was ready to return to the more serious business of ruling Scotland. In her work, she was only too happy to have Darnley beside her – for his signature, that of ‘King Henry’, was together with hers on every document, as she had promised, and even the summons to serve in the field at the time of rebellion was sent out jointly in their two names. It was true that Mary signed on the left (the position of honour because it was read first) and Darnley on the right* (unlike Francis who had occupied the left). But his signature was nevertheless always present with one exception – that of a safe-conduct to England; Elizabeth refused to accept it on grounds that she did not acknowledge Darnley as king but on the contrary as ‘a subject and an offender’, and after a debate in Council, Randolph did manage to get Darnley’s signature left off (‘notwithstanding all the former promises made to him’).24 Apart from this single victory of expediency over principles, Mary throughout the autumn continued to bolster up the power of ‘King Henry’.

  Yet Darnley was obviously not much interested in the process of government. He continued sulkily to demand the crown matrimonial (egged on by his father Lennox), and wished to spend more money than Mary, perpetually embarrassed in this respect as we have seen, could easily provide: the crown matrimonial, which Francis had enjoyed, could only be granted by Parliament, at the instance of Mary, but it would have ensured that Darnley’s power was equal with Mary’s while she lived, and continued after her death, if Darnley survived her. Darnley’s way of showing himself worthy for this high honour was a strange one: Knox’s Continuator summed it up neatly: ‘As for the King, he past his time in hunting and hawking and such other pleasures as were agreeable to his appetites, having in his company gentlemen willing to satisfy his will and affections.’25 Darnley’s continued love of the chase and sport in particular meant that governmental measures were often held up by his absence, since they demanded the joint signature. In the second half of November, when the queen was seriously ill with the recurring pain in her side, Darnley spent about nine days hunting in Fife: this was the occasion when an iron stamp or seal was made of his signature to prevent delays. Even Darnley’s partisan, Buchanan, admitted that Darnley raised no objection to the practice: the queen told Darnley that while he was busy hawking or hunting, matters of importance were unseasonably delayed, and ‘he consented to this proposal as he did not wish to offend her in anything …’26 The seal was duly given into the custody of David Riccio. At all events, to those accustomed to the double signature at the end of a document a stamp of one of the signatures would hardly have been noticed.*

  At the beginning of December, Mary went to the palace of Linlithgow to convalesce after her recent indisposition. Perhaps her illness had been exacerbated by other more fruitful symptoms: she must by now have been about two and a half months pregnant with the future James VI.† The birth of an heir – preferably male – was of vital importance to Mary’s plans; if she gave birth to a son, she would automatically be placed in a much stronger position with regard to the English succession than a mere childless queen. Randolph, in the manner of courtiers, watched the queen eagerly for signs of pregnancy, and was avid to pick up court gossip on the subject. By 31st October, he was reporting to London: ‘It is given out by some of her own that she is with child, it is argued upon tokens I know not what, annexed to the kind of them that are in that case.’ By 12th November Randolph wrote that it was now commonly said that ‘she is with child, and the nurse already chosen. There can be no doubt and she herself thinks so.’ Mary’s November illness temporarily persuaded Randolph that the rumours of pregnancy were false, especially as on 1st December, he reported her as being up once more, and ‘taking as much exercise as her body can endure’: although she herself believed she was pregnant, those around thought it to be ‘something worse’. However, when Mary set out for Linlithgow, it was not on horseback but on a litter, in Randolph’s words ‘being with child, as the rumour is again common among us’.28 By 19th December Lady Lennox in the Tower in London knew the happy news of her impending grandchild and by the spring the queen’s pregnancy was an undeniable fact.

  The prospect of motherhood – much as she must have desired it for dynastic reasons – did not increase Mary’s affection for Darnley. In view of the four-year gap in their ages, there may originally have been something quasi-maternal in Mary’s feeling for the beautiful young Darnley, which she was now able to satisfy more conventionally in the prospect of impending motherhood. It is significant that her confidant Leslie, in his Defence of her Honour, deliberately chose to refer later to her ‘very motherly care’ for her husband – ‘for besides all other respects, though they were not very different in years, she was to him not only a loyal Prince, a loving and dear wife, but a most careful and tender Mother withal’.29 In addition ill-health was obviously causing her discomfort which may in turn have caused distaste for the more physical aspects of married love. Certainly her violent infatuation for Darnley had not survived the onsets of pregnancy, and she could after all no longer share the pleasures of hunting and hawking which both had once enjoyed so keenly. On 20th December, Bedford from Berwick reported that, ‘The Lord Darnley followeth his pastimes more than the Queen is content withal; what it will breed hereafter I cannot say, but in the meantime there is some misliking between them.’ On 25th December Randolph noted that ‘a while ago there was nothing but King and Queen, now the Queen’s husband is the common word. He was wont in all writings to be first named: now he is placed second.’ The relative placing of the two names Henry and Mary was at the heart of the mysterious matter of the silver ‘ryal’, a new denomination of coin introduced shortly after their marriage at a nominal value of thirty shillings. This ‘ryal’ showed the heads of Mary and Darnley facing each other on one side, and on the other in Latin a reference to their marriage – ‘Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder’. In December Randolph also reported that this coin had been withdrawn from circulation in Scotland, because the names of the royal pair were engraved on it in an unusual order as HENRICUS & MARIA D. GRA. R. & R. SCOTORUM. Randolph represented Mary as now regretting the prominence given to Darnley’s name, which for once preceded that of the queen.30

  The best summary of the points of difference between Mary and her husband is provided in the memoirs of Lord Herries: Mary believed ‘all the h
onour and majesty he had came from her: that she had made choice of him for her husband by her own affection only, and against the will of many of the nobility’. Darnley, on the other hand, was complacently convinced that ‘the marriage was done with the consent of the nobility who thought him worthy of the place; that the whole kingdom had their eyes upon him; they would follow and serve him upon the fields, where it was a shame a woman should command’. And as the memoirs added: ‘These conceits [were] being continuously buzzed in the young man’s head.’31 It was, however, quite one thing for Mary to get on badly with her husband, and for Darnley’s young head to buzz, and quite another for this disagreement to be put to savage use by Mary’s enemies. Darnley by himself was powerless, whatever his posturings. Darnley as the tool of Mary’s opponents could have a cutting edge. For it was a regrettable fact that by the beginning of 1566 there were quite a number of Scottish nobles who were inclining to put themselves in the category of the queen’s enemies. Their disputes with the queen had quite different origins from those of Darnley, and formed very different patterns. But the combination of two forces of disaffection was capable of proving very dangerous for Mary – and fatal for her servant David Riccio.

  * An unpublished letter in the Register House, Edinburgh, from Mary to John Spens, her advocate, on a legal matter, dated from Stirling on 9th April, contains a passionately scribbled postscript in the queen’s own hand, in which she directs the advocate to find out more concerning certain ‘secret gatherings’ said to be held in the evenings in Edinburgh between Knox and Gavin Hamilton: ‘I pray you endeavour to learn what is done or said and inform me thereof, using all the diligence you can, but take good care that no one learns that I have written anything to you on this matter …’7