by John Guy
Sadler then broached the topic of Mary’s betrothal to Henry’s son. To his amazement, Mary of Guise was positive, offering to help and even endorsing the English plan to take Mary to London for “safekeeping.” Her reaction was so different from Sadler’s expectation, he was at first nonplused. He suspected some “juggling,” and he was right. Mary of Guise dissembled. But she had a clear purpose, which now unfolded. Whereas Henry VIII wanted to subordinate Scotland to England through a dynastic marriage that detached the country permanently from French influence, Mary of Guise was equally determined to protect French and Guise interests there. And if Arran tried to marginalize her by negotiating with England behind her back, she would pretend to ally with England too, lulling Sadler into a false sense of security and so outflanking Arran, who would remain at a disadvantage as long as he lacked physical custody of Mary.
Mary of Guise had good reason to suspect Arran, who had severed her channels of communication with France. He had planted spies in her household and sought to intercept her letters. She did get one message through. Antoinette of Bourbon had received news of her daughter’s troubles by June 10, sending word to her sons at Francis I’s court to see if any pressure could be applied to assist her.
Arran’s actions, swiftly following Beaton’s arrest, were meant to undermine the pro-French party. The governor had decided to ally with Henry VIII. As if to cement his links to the English king, he issued a surprise declaration in support of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries. Arran’s action was the more bizarre in that he was still a Catholic who acknowledged the authority of the pope. But he was increasingly on the defensive, caught between the pro-French and pro-English lords, who were evenly divided: the moment was right for a coup.
In charming and beguiling Henry VIII’s ambassador Sadler, Mary of Guise showed her political skill. A plan had formed in her mind. She would move Mary from Linlithgow, a pleasure palace that could not withstand a siege, to the security of her own castle of Stirling, an almost impregnable fortress at the top of a steep rock that was also near enough to the coast to restore her links to France by sea.
Already she had sent a trusted servant to Stirling with coffers packed with clothes and household goods. Larger consignments of beds and furniture followed, with further deliveries of silver plate, tableware, linen, dry foodstuffs and kitchen utensils such as pots, pans and roasting spits.
Arran insisted that no one was to leave Linlithgow. Mary of Guise ignored him, playing her cards brilliantly. She spun Sadler the yarn that Arran had no intention to have Mary marry in England. Arran would bargain with England to send Mary south to win rewards for himself and his allies, but then break his word and keep her a prisoner in Scotland, biding his time until Henry VIII was dead, when he planned to usurp the Scottish throne. Sadler was to report this to Henry, but not to disclose his sources, or else she and her daughter would be in danger.
In England and France alike, plotting what might or might not happen in the future if and when the king died was a serious crime. It seemed to make his death more likely as a contingency, and was called “imagining or encompassing” his death, a branch of the law of treason and punishable by death. Sadler had to distance himself from Arran if he was scheming in this way. Otherwise he might himself be indictable as an accomplice.
And worse was to come. Arran, the dowager continued, planned to marry Mary to his own son. Henry VIII should take care to prevent this by ordering Arran to release Beaton, who had been maligned over the business of the forged will and who should replace Arran as governor. Unlike his enemies, Cardinal Beaton “could better consider the benefit of the realm.”
It was a classic bluff. Mary of Guise was maligning Arran based on her low opinion of his character. She knew she was in a deadly struggle for the custody of her daughter and was determined to get Sadler’s support for her move to bring Mary safely to Stirling. Furthermore, Sadler, who by now deeply mistrusted the scheming, vacillating Arran, was taken in.
There were other reasons why Sadler was receptive to Mary of Guise. Her own mother’s lobbying at the French court had paid off. Francis I had decided to intervene. He wanted to thwart Henry VIII and distract him from his plans to invade France. It was already the talk of Paris that the Duke of Guise was preparing to embark for Scotland. His commission was said to have been issued, and Sadler badly needed to know exactly what was about to happen and what the French really intended.
In the end, the duke never arrived. Francis I revoked his commission, sending the young exiled Scottish lord Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, in his place. This was almost as worrying to Sadler. Lennox, head of a minor branch of the Stuart family and a naturalized French subject, had the best claim to the regency if Arran was toppled. He landed in April at Dumbarton, his family’s ancestral stronghold on the north bank of the Clyde, and went straight to see Mary of Guise.
She had become the linchpin. Whether or not Sadler was fully persuaded by her blandishments, simply to have unhindered access to her was to his advantage.
Arran strove to recover the initiative. He felt more and more beleaguered when a group of (mainly) Catholic lords congregated around Lennox and Beaton escaped from prison. With Lennox back in Scotland, Henry VIII suspected a plot to kidnap the infant Mary and carry her off to Dumbarton. He ordered Arran to muster his forces and bring Mary into the “safety” of Edinburgh Castle without delay.
But Arran was in a quandary. He sensed his own weakness, and by the end of April was temporarily reconciled to Lennox. Many of his allies had resisted Mary’s betrothal to Henry VIII’s son and heir. It was a step too far, and Lennox capitalized on this. Arran finally told Sadler that England’s terms were so unreasonable, “every man, woman and child in Scotland would liever die in one day than accept them.”
Henry VIII issued an ultimatum. If Arran refused the English dynastic plan, he would face outright war. Henry’s bullying was deeply resented. On July 1, 1543, however, he was minimally rewarded by the terms of the treaty of Greenwich. Ostensibly, he got what he wanted. Mary was to stay in Scotland until she was ten, at which age she would marry Prince Edward in England. Her dowry, to be paid by Henry, was to amount to the considerable sum of £2000 per annum, which would double automatically if she duly became queen consort of England.
The rest of the treaty was a compromise. Until she was married, Mary’s education was to be left to the Scots, except that for her “better care,” Henry might, at his own expense, send an English nobleman with his wife or other governesses and attendants, not exceeding twenty in total, to live with her. This was a clause designed to ensure that Mary would speak English as her native language rather than Scots or French.
But Henry had to make concessions. He wanted a speedy settlement to free him to concentrate fully on his planned invasion of France. To achieve a quick result, he found himself accepting terms that guaranteed Scotland’s independence. A key clause confirmed the country “shall continue to be called the kingdom of Scotland and retain its ancient laws and liberties.” The Scots also insisted that if the marriage was childless, Mary might return home as an independent queen. This was to be a dynastic “union” of England and Scotland with the core stripped out.
Mary of Guise was jubilant; the loopholes in the treaty were obvious. Arran started to panic. He warned Sadler that the infant Mary had to be closely watched, being “a little troubled with the breeding of teeth.” Not even Sadler was this credulous. Writing to Henry VIII, he attempted to fathom why Arran should suddenly want to protect Mary “as if she were his own child.” Of course, Arran’s greatest fear was that she would be secretly conveyed to France and brought up there by her mother’s Guise family.
The treaty of Greenwich was a dead letter from the start. Mary of Guise had no intention of honoring it; she had used the period of negotiation simply to face down Arran and Henry VIII and to win time to build a new, more comprehensive coalition. Now she revealed her true hand. She allied with the pro-
French Beaton and Lennox, whose joint forces mustered at Linlithgow on July 24. There, a bond* was signed to prevent Mary’s removal to England and for mutual defense against the pro-English Arran.
Two days later, Arran himself arrived, but with a much smaller retinue. From that moment, his capitulation was assured. Sadler had already sanctioned Mary’s removal to Stirling, where she was to be guarded by a group of Scottish lords officially nominated in Parliament. Mary of Guise now contrived that her daughter was taken there under very different circumstances.
The child and her mother made their journey on the 27th. Lennox provided their bodyguards, mustering an army of 2500 cavalry and 1000 infantry to protect a baggage train extending for almost a mile. Although barely out of swaddling clothes, the young Mary traveled with all the pomp and circumstance she would one day take as her due.
Stirling, always Mary of Guise’s chosen destination, would become their home for the next four years. It was an appropriate setting, as its magnificent great hall and royal apartments had been lavishly reconstructed as part of a massive royal rebuilding program. The great hall alone could seat three hundred people for dinner.
A fortnight after their arrival, Sadler was summoned for an audience. Mary of Guise still dissembled, yet the ambassador was unable to figure out why. She said she had all along been willing to allow Mary to be taken to England for “safekeeping.” Only Arran’s duplicity had prevented her. In fact, she hoped the better to perform her true intentions now that she had escaped from his clutches. She was “in good plight” to deliver Mary to Henry’s nominees if he still so wished.
She used this interview to win more time. Sadler, who had a soft spot for children, was taken to see Mary, who was growing fast. She “soon would be a woman,” he said, “if she took after her mother.” She had suffered a mild bout of chickenpox, but was fully recovered. As Sadler noted, she was “a right fair and goodly child.”
He had been duped again. Mary’s removal to Stirling was for her mother the beginning and the end of the matter. Arran, ever the survivor, cut his losses and made peace with his rivals. On September 3, the governor left Edinburgh, apparently to visit his sick wife, but met Beaton secretly at Falkirk. The two men embraced and rode to Stirling, where Arran disclosed the full extent of his dealings with Henry VIII and recanted his support for the Reformation.
On the 8th, Arran agreed to revise the terms of his regency, promising to share power with Beaton and to follow the advice of a council comprising representatives of the pro-French and pro-English factions and headed by none other than Mary of Guise. The effect was to reconcile the nobles, who closed ranks against Henry VIII’s aggression.
The climax ensued. Next day—by a delicious irony the thirtieth anniversary of the battle of Flodden—Mary was carried in procession from her nursery at Stirling and crowned Queen of Scots in the adjacent Chapel Royal. It was an event of the utmost significance. The coronation was the most solemn ritual known to church and state: its symbolism was sacramental and conferred religious as well as civil legitimacy on her. In the course of the ceremony, a nine-month-old child was transformed into an anointed queen, possessed of those sacred powers of majesty that God alone could bestow or call to account.
In the procession, Arran bore the crown, Lennox the scepter, and the Earl of Argyll, the most powerful of all the Scottish lords and Arran’s brother-in-law, the sword of state. These regalia, known collectively as the “honors of Scotland” and still on display at Edinburgh Castle, had been obtained by James IV and his son in their tireless efforts to trumpet their prestige. They were first used together on this day. The crown, originally worn by James V at the coronation of Mary of Guise, was far too big and heavy for a child. It was held over Mary’s head by Beaton, who was dressed in the full panoply of a cardinal. He blessed her and anointed her with holy oil. She howled volubly and kept it up while every bishop and peer present knelt in turn to recite his oath of allegiance.
By tradition, heralds read aloud the royal genealogy, a roster of titles and dignities that could take up to half an hour to recite. In view of Mary’s lusty interventions, this part of the proceedings was omitted. The pro-English lords were conspicuous by their absence, but otherwise the day passed “with great solemnity” and was rounded out with banquets, masques, dramatic interludes and other entertainments in the great hall, followed by “great dancing before the queen with great lords and French ladies.”
Mary’s coronation concluded a remarkable interlude that had begun when her mother first turned her attention to Henry VIII’s ambassador. It signified a reversal of the balance of power. The pro-English lords had been marginalized and Arran reconciled to Beaton, who was restored to office as chancellor. The treaty of Greenwich was all but renounced: the pro-French faction was ascendant in Scotland.
Henry VIII had played his opening hand and lost. He had also learned an important lesson. He would never again, as he told almost anyone who would listen, trust the Scots. Under the watchful eye of her mother, Mary had ascended to her throne. And if she was now queen, her mother was indisputably queenmaker.
2
The Rough Wooings
WHEN MARY OF GUISE pulled off the coup that made possible her daughter’s coronation, she knew the breathing space would be short. Arran and Lennox were rival claimants to the succession. Their families were old enemies; it was impossible to believe they would stay on the same side for long. Even before Arran agreed to share power with Cardinal Beaton and restored him to office, Lennox was growing disaffected. In any case, Arran’s reconciliation to Beaton was only the prelude to his efforts to stage a comeback. Mary of Guise knew she must retain his support for her pro-French policy until the treaty of Greenwich was officially renounced by Parliament.
To this end, business could be combined with pleasure. With Mary crowned queen, her mother could afford some fun and dalliance. Scarcely had the great hall of Stirling Castle been cleaned up after the coronation festivities than it was Mary of Guise’s birthday. She was only twenty-eight. It was, wrote a chronicler, although late autumn, “like Venus and Cupid in the time of fresh May, for there was such dancing, singing, playing and merriness . . . that no man would have tired therein.”
Such celebration had a political point, because Mary of Guise, herself barely a year older than Lennox and still one of the most beautiful women in Scotland, planned to assure his loyalty by thoughts of marriage. She had accurately judged his ambition. It would soon become a fixation, to the point where Lennox scarcely distinguished between a marriage in Scotland or England as long as it brought him closer to a crown.
Lennox was lissome and urbane, intelligent if duplicitous, “a strong man, of personage well proportioned in all his members, with lusty and manly visage.” Tall and svelte, he oozed sophistication and was “very pleasant in the sight of gentlewomen.” His savoir-faire had been acquired in France, where he served as a lieutenant in the Garde Écossaise, the king’s personal bodyguard.
His rival in love if not in lineage was Patrick Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Exiled by James V to Venice and Denmark for his unruliness, he had recently returned to Scotland. His ancestors were lords of Hailes in East Lothian, an affluent Lowland region to the east and south of Edinburgh. His grandfather had risen on the battlefield, was promoted to an earldom and given Bothwell Castle in Lanarkshire. Later he exchanged it for the Hermitage, a vast and isolated border citadel in the valley of the Hermitage Water in Liddesdale, midway between Hawick and Carlisle, close to the Debatable Land. The exchange turned the Hepburns into powerful border lords. The Hermitage was a key location, the fortress from which the western and central sectors of the border with England were controlled. James IV also gave the family Crichton Castle, some eleven miles southeast of Edinburgh, enabling them to improve their position at court and in Parliament.
Patrick was a Scottish patriot: pro-French and anti-English, but also an opportunist who flirted with England when it suited him. Gossip said he was a royal bastard. T
his is unlikely, although his mother was briefly one of James IV’s mistresses. The family’s fortune derived from his grandfather, who had accumulated a cluster of offices retained by his heirs. As a result Patrick was hereditary Lord Admiral, a lucrative post, since it entitled the Hepburns to the profits of all ships wrecked off the coast of Scotland, making them one of the few noble families to enjoy financial independence from the king. He was also sheriff of Edinburgh, which gave the family influence with the legal profession in the Court of Session and in Parliament.
The Hepburns stood for the values of chivalry and warfare. They saw themselves as “men of honor,” which in their eyes justified dueling and even treachery as acts of self-defense. Their code of ethics flourished among military men on the Continent and in Ireland, but was considered repellent by civilian administrators and diplomats. Sadler, Henry VIII’s ambassador, described Patrick as “the most vain and insolent man in the world, full of pride and folly, and here nothing at all esteemed.” He might have said the same about Lennox, except the values of the Lennoxes were civilian, based on courtly manners and polite society: perfidy was just as rampant but cloaked by the veil of gentility.
Patrick was sandy-haired, of medium build, with a fair complexion and a slight stoop. He had a broad smile and a winning manner. Like Lennox, he could captivate women. He had numerous affairs, and had no scruple about abandoning his wife to advance his suit for Mary’s mother, using his influence in the Catholic Church to get an annulment of his marriage without prejudice to his children’s legitimacy.
Lennox and his rival calculated that whoever became Mary’s stepfather would be able to displace Arran as regent and rule in Mary’s name. So they dogged her mother’s steps from Stirling to Edinburgh and back, posturing like peacocks to catch her eye. They danced and sang and recited poems. They engaged in shooting and jousting matches, wearing the most fashionable clothes and running up massive bills with the jewelers and haberdashers of Edinburgh. They followed her to St. Andrews, where she was Beaton’s guest in his castle. She handled both men as befitted an accomplished practitioner of courtly love, making encouraging noises but offering “nothing but fair words.”
