The True Life of Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots

by John Guy

  When she first arrived in France, Mary was too young to hunt, but she could watch and showed visible excitement each time the hounds were let loose from their kennels. Falconry was, however, within her grasp, and within a few weeks of arriving at St.-Germain, she astonished the ladies of the court by dressing her own pet falcon, casting the bird off and fearlessly reclaiming it on her arm without help from the falconers.

  Later she watched while the dauphin learned to hunt, and joined in herself when she was twelve or thirteen. Her two favorite horses, given to her by Henry II, were called Bravane and Madame la Réale. (Bravane was perhaps Mary’s nickname for a fearless filly and la Réale for a Spanish mare—literally the “royal” one.) She loved riding and soon relished hunting, for which she adopted the daring habit of wearing breeches of Florentine serge underneath her skirts. The fashion was introduced by Catherine de Medici from Itaty, and was risque because it allowed the wearer to ride astride her horse and not sidesaddle as female protocol required, a habit for which Mary would be greeted with suspicion in Scotland.

  On wet days or candlelit evenings in the royal apartments, Mary liked to play cards with the dauphin, whom she beat more often than not, although on the occasions when she lost, her stakes were characteristically higher than his. Already Mary was prepared to take risks. Her other indoor amusements included chess, backgammon and playing with a set of Italian puppets.

  By the time she was fourteen, Mary was much taller than average. In an age when a woman was considered tall if she reached five feet four inches, Mary finally grew to almost six feet (perhaps five feet ten inches or so), which, along with her delicately formed breasts, slim waist, soft white skin, marble-like complexion, high forehead and auburn hair crimped into ringlets, made her a striking figure. One potential flaw was in her posture, because as a child she refused to hold herself up straight. It was probably laziness rather than embarrassment at her height. Either way, it was a fault corrected by Parois, if only after a struggle. In consequence, Mary’s deportment in her prime lacked any trace of the rounded shoulders and slight stoop that were her hallmark in middle age.

  When the dauphin was eight and Mary nine, Catherine de Medici commissioned portraits of the royal children, which she asked to be sent to her as soon as possible. When they arrived, she complained that the artist had not caught their features adequately. So she called for improved likenesses, even if these were only done in chalk. The new portraits were ready by December 1552. Mary’s was sent to Henry II, who liked it so much he refused to part with it. This finished version has not survived, but a preparatory sketch in red and black chalk shows her at age nine and a half.

  Despite her tense expression, perhaps the result of being required to sit still for the artist, her almond-shaped eyes are unmistakable. Her ears were disproportionately large. Her nose was childish and snubbed, and not yet aquiline. Although perhaps less attractive to us, the high forehead, imperceptible eyebrows and tight lips were considered elegant at the time. To smile for a portrait was the height of rudeness then.

  She was dressed in the latest couture: a close-fitting outer bodice with slashed sleeves, puffed at the shoulders and clinging to the arms. Her crimped hair, centrally parted, was fitted into a richly embroidered caul banded with jewels. She sported earrings, a gold necklace with rubies and diamonds, a string of pearls that looped up and down across the shoulders, and a large jeweled pendant. As a queen keen to maintain her status at the royal court, she would have regularly dressed this way despite her youth.

  When Mary was twelve or thirteen, a more detailed drawing was commissioned from François Clouet, one of the leading court artists. More than any other portrait, it is a mesmerizing image of the young woman known in France as “la plus parfaite.” Her face and lips were fuller, her gaze less anxious, her nose snubbed no longer, her eyebrows more in evidence and delicately penciled, her charm and vivacity signaled by her escaping curls and the gleam in her eyes.

  A third and final drawing shows Mary shortly before her first marriage. She was little more than fifteen and yet looked twenty. She was slim, confident and poised, her expression purposeful, even assertive, radiating charisma and savoir-faire. This is a drawing of someone who knows what she wants and is used to getting it.

  When Mary reached the age of fifteen, her uncles, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise, were satisfied that she was ready to take on the duties her momentous role entailed. Statecraft was the benchmark the cardinal had in mind. “Discretion sur tout” was a maxim he had always tried to teach her. She had been trained to keep her letters safe and not to leave them lying around or in unlocked cabinets, where they could be purloined or read by the servants. “I can assure you,” she had knowingly informed her mother, “nothing that comes from you will ever be disclosed by me.”

  She had learned to mark the confidential passages of her letters for encoding in cipher. This was done by her private secretary after she had written or dictated her draft, although when she was excitedly trying this out for the first time, her secretary advised her that there was no need, since he was already sending her mother all sensitive information in code.

  Despite these concerns, Mary could sometimes be too trusting. When she needed to reply as queen to certain letters and petitions delivered in Scotland, she sent her mother thirty-five blank sheets with her signature at the foot. Fourteen, simply signed “Marie,” were for general use. Fifteen signed “La bien votre Marie” were for more favored or important recipients, and six signed “Votre bonne soeur Marie” were exclusively for sovereign rulers, to be used when covering letters were required for diplomatic credentials or other special purposes.

  Another distinctive trait arises from this period. Mary was taught to write in italic script in the newly fashionable Italian (or roman) manner rather than in the Gothic handwriting of the later Middle Ages, using a formulary to ensure her letters matched the norms of this elegant style. When she put her mind to it, Mary could write impeccably: her best writing is indistinguishable from that of Henry II’s own daughters or of her young aunt Anne d’Este, who also learned the italic hand in her teenage years.

  What often happened in practice was that Mary began neatly enough, but on the second or third page started to rush. Her tutors were on the whole tactful: “she formed her letters elegantly and, what is rare in a woman, quickly” was a typical comment. In reality, she found herself constantly apologizing for her untidiness. In a postscript to her mother, written at the age of fourteen, Mary urged her to “excuse please my terrible handwriting, because I was in a great hurry.” And about a year later, “You must forgive me if my writing is so bad, but I’ve had no time to do it properly.”

  Mary was, therefore, no academic genius. She was vivacious and quick-witted, an increasingly sophisticated and confident pupil who accepted, even relished, her royal status. Precocious as a personality, if less so in her studies, she followed her instincts and concentrated on what she liked best. But she disliked pedagogy and did not agree that ancient literature was the best training for queenship. When assigned written exercises, she would try to finish them as quickly as possible.

  According to Rabelais, the most celebrated French author of the early sixteenth century, one of the main functions of an education was to enable young aristocrats to grow like plants in the sun. Mary liked this idea so much, she took it as her emblem. She chose the marigold, a flower that always turns to face the sun, and the motto “Sa virtu m’atire” (“Its virtue draws me”), a near-perfect anagram of the name Marie Stuart as spelled in roman letters, with the u represented by v.

  In Henry II’s France, the game of anagrams was greatly in vogue. It was played with letters like Scrabble and often linked to pictorial puzzles from Italy in which badges, or imprese, were drawn. Mary based her personal monogram on the Greek letter M (or mu), which she wrote twice in an interlaced form: once right side up and once upside down, so it could be read either way. Above her monogram she placed her anagram, which
was then illustrated with a drawing of the marigold.

  Mary could hardly have chosen the marigold without knowing the reference to Rabelais, because it was one of the examples in the emblem books she used for her embroidery. The motto given there was different: “Non inferiora secutus” (“Not following lower things”) was the original Latin version, which she decided to rewrite.

  It seems to be an instance of her intellectual ingenuity, until one realizes that the very same emblem had already been chosen by Princess Marguerite, Henry II’s youngest daughter, who was also in the schoolroom. She had retained the Latin version of the motto, but altered the flower from the marigold to the daisy—or “marguerite,” to suit her name—whereas Mary kept the flower but changed the motto, transposing her friend’s idea.

  No sooner had Mary lighted on the marigold as her impresa than her uncle the Duke of Guise entered Calais and the spotlight turned again to her family’s political and dynastic ambitions. She was only too aware that her uncles had set their sights on acquiring the throne of England for her and the dauphin, so making themselves indispensable at the heart of the Valois state.

  It would not be long before a quite unintended effect of Mary’s education began to surface. She started to think independently of her uncles and to question what they told her. Under the curriculum they had chosen for her, she had acquired the same skills as a male student and was taught to think for herself. However unimpressed she may have been by classical rhetoric, it had trained her in how to argue a case and how to spot the strengths and flaws in the reasoning of others.

  For the time being, this tension was latent. It was still hidden when, as a reward for their recapture of Calais from the English, the Guise family at last attained their goal. At a public ceremony held in the great hall of the Louvre on April 19, 1558, Henry II announced the date of Mary’s marriage to the dauphin. She was still fifteen, and Francis fourteen. The Cardinal of Lorraine joined the hands of the couple, who plighted their troths and exchanged rings, promising they would give themselves in marriage, each to the other, on their wedding day.

  Within three days, the city magistrates of Paris had been invited to the wedding. It was to take place almost immediately. Once Henry II had made up his mind, nothing was allowed to stand in his way. His son’s marriage, he avowed, was to be the most regal and triumphant ever celebrated in the kingdom of France. The secret preparations had been under way for a month: the ceremonial officials, stewards, wardrobe staff, purveyors, carpenters, dressmakers, embroiderers and pastry cooks had been working night and day to be ready in time.

  After she was married to the dauphin, Mary altered her monogram so that the Greek letter mu was inscribed within the letter phi, to be transliterated as M and F, for Mary and Francis. When her copy of Ptolemy’s Geography was rebound by the royal bookbinder, she chose front and back covers of olive morocco on which palm branches were stamped in gold leaf with the newly intertwined monograms at the center. She kept her anagram, “Sa virtu m’atire,” the same—but with one important difference. No longer adorned by the marigold, it was emblazoned with the crown of France.

  6

  A Dynastic Marriage

  MARY’S WEDDING was spectacular. The service took place on Sunday, April 24, 1558, at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, the spiritual heart of Paris. The cathedral stood at one end of the Cité, the slender island in the middle of the Seine. The excited citizens packed into the Place du Parvis, the square in front of the building, or leaned out of the windows of neighboring houses, determined to catch a glimpse of the ceremony, largely held outside. A temporary gallery or covered walkway, twelve feet high, connected the starting point of the grand procession, the nearby palace of the Archbishop of Paris, to Notre-Dame itself. The gallery, in the shape of an arch, was decorated in the antique classical style and led to an open pavilion on a stage across the west front of the cathedral, surmounted by a canopy of azure silk embossed with gold fleurs-de-lis. It continued into the church along the nave to the chancel, ending in the royal closet where the bride and bridegroom were to hear Mass. The sides of the walkway were open so everyone could watch the procession as it passed by. This was doubtless Henry II’s idea, with his grasp of the way glorifying spectacle could consolidate power.

  The nobles and foreign ambassadors were seated outside on the stage, close to where the bride and groom were to be married. At ten o’clock, the Swiss halberdiers led the procession, marching in their smart uniforms while showing off their weapons to the sound of tambourins and fifes. They entertained the crowd for half an hour, until the bride’s uncle and the head of the Guise family, Francis Duke of Guise, appeared on the stage.

  He struck an imposing figure: tall and handsome like the rest of his family, his skin was tanned by sun and war. He strode forward purposefully with his head carried high, his fair golden hair cut short beneath a black velvet cap festooned with a plume of white feathers, and his beard and mustache neatly trimmed. Officially the master of ceremonies, he had been temporarily promoted, if only for this special day, to the post of Grand Master of the King’s Household, the highest court office and a position usually held by his absent rival Montmorency, still a captive in Brussels.

  At a signal from the duke, troupes of musicians emerged, playing trumpets, bugles, oboes, flutes, viols, violins and more. Clad in lavish red and yellow costumes, they astonished the crowd by their virtuosity. Then came a hundred gentlemen of the king’s household in their finery, then the princes of the blood, then the mitered abbots and bishops bearing their croziers. Next were the senior Church dignitaries: the archbishops; the cardinals, including Mary’s uncle Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine; and the papal legate, Cardinal Trivulzio.

  In pride of place were the royal party. The bridegroom was flanked by his younger brothers Charles and Henry, and by Anthony of Bourbon, Duke of Vendome and titular king of Navarre, who had married one of Henry II’s cousins. Mary walked between Henry II and her own cousin, Charles Duke of Lorraine, head of the branch of the Guise family whose lands lay in Lorraine and Bar on the eastern border of France. Catherine de Medici brought up the rear, escorted by Anthony’s brother, Louis Prince of Conde, and attended by a dozen or so princesses, duchesses, ladies and maids of honor.

  The crowds had eyes only for Mary. They virtually ignored Francis, whose short, weedy build must have presented a strange contrast to her height and womanly beauty. They craned their necks to catch sight of her, cheering and waving their hats in the air. She looked radiant in her shimmering white dress, itself a daring and unconventional choice because white was the traditional color of mourning for royalty in France. Mary, however, was not going to be bound by convention on her wedding day. She meant to make a dramatic gesture. She knew that white suited her delicate skin and auburn hair, and insisted on it. Her dress was “sumptuously and richly made,” lustrous with diamonds and jeweled embroidery, its long, sweeping train carried by two maids of honor. From her neck hung a magnificent jeweled pendant, the one she called “Great Harry,” a gift from her father-in-law and engraved with his initials, which she valued so much that she later placed it with the Scottish crown jewels. Her hair hung down loose—another bold choice—and on her head she wore a gold crown studded with diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. A huge gemstone at its center flashed in the sunlight and caught everyone’s gaze: the rumor went around that it cost half a million crowns.

  We have a good idea what Mary was thinking as she walked in the procession toward the stage. Early that morning, she had written to her mother to say she was so excited, “all I can tell you is that I account myself one of the happiest women in the world.”

  The Archbishop of Paris greeted the royal family as they reached the cathedral’s great doors. Henry II drew a ring from his finger and gave it to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen, who performed the marriage there and then on the stage. After a short sermon from the Archbishop of Paris, it was time for the bride and bridegroom to withdraw to the royal closet for the
nuptial Mass.

  Before going inside, the Duke of Guise, eager to win popularity and seeing the crowd’s view was obstructed, with a gesture of his hand ordered the heralds to shunt the guests off the stage and into the overflow seating in the church. The spectators roared their approval, the duke acknowledging their cheers.

  No ordinary Parisian was likely to forget the day. As the royal family turned to enter the church, heralds cried out three times “Largesse” and began throwing gold and silver coins of all types into the crowd. Money showered down like confetti, causing something of a riot. People jumped or dived for the coins, pushing and elbowing their neighbors to grab a share of the spoils. Several people were knocked over, receiving cuts and bruises. Others fainted in the crush, while those nearest the stage were jostled or had their clothes torn. The melee was so intense, there was a risk of a serious accident: those within earshot of the stage begged the heralds to stop before someone was killed.

  The royal family withdrew to the closet, where the bride and bridegroom knelt on cushions of cloth of gold to receive the sacrament. During the offertory, heralds once again threw money, this time inside the church from one side of the nave to the other. After the Mass, the royal party reappeared, but before retracing their steps to the archbishop’s palace, Henry II ordered the bride and bridegroom to make another circuit of the stage to please the crowd. Another roar of approval went up, louder than before and audible a mile away.

  The procession returned to the archbishop’s palace, where a private banquet was prepared. During the meal, Mary found her solid-gold crown had become too heavy to wear. She signaled to Henry II, who ordered one of his gentilshommes to hold it over her head. A magnificent ball followed at which she danced without her crown, letting her hair flow freely. She took to the floor with her father-in-law, reveling in everyone’s delight and admiration.