The True Life of Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots

by John Guy

  The news reached her in St. Andrews on March 15. She was “marvelous sad, her ladies shedding tears like showers of rain.” She decided to console herself by riding for days on end across the fields, hawking and hunting as she passed from place to place. Randolph accompanied her to Falkland, her favorite hunting palace, beside the gently sloping Lomond hills. As the ambassador took his leave, she suddenly regaled him with an account of “all her griefs and the great adventures that have fallen unto her since the death of her husband, and how she was now destitute of all friendship.”

  Mary felt very much alone. In some ways she was too gregarious to be a queen. She could be naive, impulsive and impatient, sending Maitland to negotiate her marriage to the most eligible bachelor in Europe and then expecting quick results. Although she could work with her advisers, one doubts whether she liked any of them. They were too self-interested, too concerned with their private quarrels for anyone not brought up in Scotland to understand. Mary was a charismatic queen who showed her emotions, but she also needed emotional support. With her mother dead, this she could rarely obtain. Scotland was still in many ways a foreign country. There were few people she could really talk to apart from the four Maries, who knew Scotland no better than she did. She loved her family, but often felt badly let down by them. And now the Duke of Guise was dead, which brought the terrible dangers of religious war home to her.

  A week or so later, Randolph did exactly the right thing. While Mary hunted near Pitlessie, he brought her a letter of condolence from Elizabeth, written in her own hand. She stopped her horse and read the letter, “not without some tears that fell from her eyes.”

  “Monsieur Randolph,” she said, “I have now received no small comfort, and the greatest that I can, coming from such a one as my dear sister, so tender a cousin and friend as she is to me. And though I can neither speak nor read but with tears, yet think you not but that I have received more comfort of this letter than I have of all that hath been said unto me since I heard first word of my uncle’s death.”

  Mary tucked the letter into her bosom. At dinner when she seemed to be alone, she took it out and read it again, saying aloud, “God will not leave me destitute. I have received the best letter from the queen my good sister of England that ever I had, and I do assure you it comforteth me much.”

  Mary was genuinely grateful for the letter, but this latest scene was a piece of theater from beginning to end. Mary knew she was being watched by her servants, who she knew would be suborned by Randolph, who in turn would inform Cecil. She was learning to put on a show. Despite her comfort at Elizabeth’s letter, she was under no illusions that the interview between the queens would ever take place, but rather than show her disappointment, she would keep Elizabeth guessing.

  Mary did not intend to be snubbed again. She meant to be fully occupied during the summer months, when a rescheduled interview might have been expected. To avoid looking like a suppliant, she threw herself into plans for another royal progress, this time to Ayrshire, and from there into Argyllshire and the western Highlands, the main Gaelicspeaking territory.

  Knox, meanwhile, notched up another scandal. A few days after Huntly’s attainder, Parliament passed an act against adultery, the penalty for which was now death. That very same night, one of Mary’s French chaplains was discovered in bed with another man’s wife, providing further “proof” of the moral deficiencies that sprang from saying or hearing Mass. Knox could scarcely contain his glee, attempting to inflame his congregation at St. Giles Kirk against Mary and the licentiousness of her court. His strictures were always the same:

  O Lord, if thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the queen’s majesty from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and thralldom of Satan . . . The queen’s idolatry, the queen’s Mass, will provoke God’s vengeance . . . Her house, whither her subjects must resort, is become the haunt of dancing and carnal concupiscence . . . Get thee to the prophets, I say, for Elijah saith: “The wrath of God shall not spare rulers and magistrates . . . The dogs shall lick the blood of Ahab and eat the flesh of Jezebel” . . . The devil takes the depraved at his will. Dancing is the vanity of the unfaithful, which shall cause the people to be set in bondage to a tyrant.

  When the summer progress finally began, Mary’s attention turned to archery, hunting and hawking, the outdoor sports she loved so much. But her European diplomacy was not forgotten. In late July, before she left Argyllshire, Luis de Paz, an agent of de Quadra, came all the way from London to visit her. Mary eagerly received him.

  Elizabeth’s response was to warn Maitland that such secret diplomacy with Spain must cease. Her bluster would not have mattered had Mary been supported by her Guise family. This was her best opportunity to escape from the straitjacket into which the English were now steadily trying to force her. Only through an alliance with a major European power could she make the sort of marriage to which she aspired, and since Catherine de Medici refused to help her, that ally, she believed, must be Philip II. Her case against the archduke was that, although a Hapsburg and Philip’s cousin, he lacked sufficient weight to force England to recognize her claim to the succession, not least because he was already Cecil’s favored candidate for Elizabeth’s hand.

  Even as Mary was closeted with de Paz, her uncle was bargaining for the archduke. The cardinal was so unmoved by Mary’s objections to his diplomacy and so supremely confident of his ability to talk her around, he traveled to Innsbruck without her knowledge to sign a treaty.

  It was a wasted journey. Mary always intended to reject the suit, and when she understood the full extent of her uncle’s double dealing, she rebelled. As she later told her aunt the Duchess of Arschot, “Not that I don’t consider it great and honorable, but less useful to the advancement of my interest, as well in this country as in that to which I claim some right.”

  A sudden crisis blew up when Sir Thomas Smith, the new English ambassador to France, reported what he believed to be the terms of Mary’s offer to Don Carlos. He was misled by inaccurate French intelligence, wrongly supposing that her uncle had brokered a deal with the pope to give England as a dowry to Don Carlos. If only he had known that Philip II had entertained Maitland’s overtures in the first place solely to counter a possible marriage to Charles IX, and would end them as soon as he knew for certain that Catherine had vetoed that idea, there would have been no reason for the English to panic.

  But if Smith was misled, his report was taken at face value. In March 1563, three months after the Huguenots had been resoundingly defeated at Dreux and their leader Conde captured by the Catholics, the two sides made peace at Amboise. Then, to Elizabeth’s bewilderment and chagrin, their forces had united in a joint campaign to expel the English army of occupation from Normandy.

  As the combined French armies advanced on Le Havre, the English dug in, but bad weather and plague compounded their woes. By late July, they had no option but to surrender. It was an ignominious defeat, although not a complete disaster, because the Guises had failed to achieve the mastery in Normandy to which they had aspired.

  It was bad enough, however, to persuade Elizabeth not to get involved in a war for the next twenty years. She became an isolationist in foreign policy, which made her all the more determined to dictate the terms of Mary’s marriage. If England was to become a fortress, it was essential to box in Mary and coerce her to cut her own European links; otherwise, the perennial problem of Scotland as the back door into England would arise again, just as it had repeatedly under Henry VIII.

  Elizabeth’s policy toward Scotland went into overdrive after her retreat from Normandy, and came to focus on a right to veto any husband Mary might actually seek to choose. When Elizabeth and Cecil heard of the cardinal’s visit to Innsbruck, Randolph was told to inform Mary that if she married the archduke or anyone else from the emperor’s family, the amity with England would be at an end.

  Randolph delivered this message on September 1 at Craigmillar Castle, one of Mary’s favorite retrea
ts just south of Edinburgh. She greatly disliked what she heard. As he spoke, she constantly interrupted him, asking so many questions “that scarce in one hour could I utter what might have been spoken in one quarter.” She demanded that his message be submitted in writing so that she could reflect on it.

  Then Smith’s report arrived on Cecil’s desk and Randolph was recalled to London. Mary angrily insisted on knowing what marriages were “sortable” for her. As Elizabeth complained, her royal cousin was threatening a showdown. She wanted to know “whom we can allow and whom not; secondly what way we intend to proceed to the declaration of her title.”

  It was turning into a battle of wills. In an ideal world Mary would have ignored Elizabeth and gone her own way. By demanding, whether mockingly or sarcastically, to be told whom she might marry, she was giving the English queen a clearly defined hold over her. But then she had precious little choice. Scotland was a weak country lacking the troops or cash reserves to fight a war without foreign aid. Even the richer Lowland territories were reliant for their trade and commerce on the northern counties of England. Since Catherine de Medici refused to help her, and as Philip II was still protecting Elizabeth for the moment, Mary was in a vise. At the same time, she felt she needed to be recognized as Elizabeth’s successor if she was to bolster the legitimacy of her reign and curtail the insubordination of Knox and her more turbulent lords.

  By the end of 1563, Mary had brushed aside her uncle’s advice to marry the archduke, but this did not mean she had to cut her diplomatic links to the Continent. The extent of her breach with her Guise family was exposed when she bitingly remarked, “Truly I am beholden to my uncle: so that it be well with him, he careth not what becometh of me.” But if support from France was for now beyond her reach, she might yet outmaneuver Elizabeth and Cecil.

  On November 17, Randolph was given new instructions spelling out the limits of Mary’s choice of husband. They had proved to be a drafting nightmare. The main gist remained constant. Mary was to be asked to marry someone, preferably an English nobleman, who was fully committed to the amity. If no one met those qualifications, she might seek English permission to marry a foreigner as long as he was prepared to live in Scotland after he was married. He must be “naturally born to love this isle” and be “not unmeet” (Elizabeth was fond of double negatives), but “no one” from Spain, France or Austria would ever be acceptable.

  That was the first draft. Elizabeth then softened her line. Once again, she followed her instincts as a queen and a woman and laid down the basis of a compromise. Should Mary accept this English advice, her dynastic claim could be reinstated, in which case “we will not be behind on our part to satisfy her as far forth as if she were our only natural sister or dear only daughter.”

  Cecil took one look at this and balked. First he crossed out “dear only” in the last sentence. Then he deleted Elizabeth’s entire paragraph. “We do,” he wrote in its place, “promise her, that if she will give us just cause to think that she will in the choice of her marriage show herself conformable,” then “we will thereupon forthwith proceed to the inquisition of her right by all good means in her furtherance.” Mary might submit evidence in support of her right to the succession. A legal adjudication would then follow, declaring whether or not her claim was upheld. Only then, “if we shall find the matter to fall out on her behalf,” could Mary expect to be treated as Elizabeth’s “natural sister or daughter.”

  Cecil’s amendments prevailed. They were not only insulting to Mary, suggesting that an anointed queen and sovereign of an independent nation should submit herself to the jurisdiction of an English court, they introduced the novel element into the equation that her right should be put on trial.

  It was an extraordinary requirement. Simply by seeking to marry and so fulfill the universally accepted obligations of a woman ruler, as Cecil could only wish his own queen would do, a course had been set by which Mary would be turned into an English suppliant. Already regarded as the chief antagonist, she had been imagined as the defendant in a court case.

  It was surely a drastic overreaction that exposed the increasing paranoia in England over the threat of Guise and papal conspiracy. If Mary had as yet failed to find a husband who was able to secure her rights, she might still renew the attempt. But first she would have to deal with the demands of Elizabeth and Cecil, whose efforts to assert their superiority over her and her country were becoming as blatant as they were threatening. Conciliation had been replaced by confrontation. The trick would be to appear compliant, then to pull off a fait accompli.

  12

  “My Heart Is My Own”

  IN NOVEMBER 1563, Elizabeth had asserted a right of veto over Mary’s choice of husband and advised her to marry an English nobleman. If Mary refused, she might consider a foreigner as long as he was not from Spain, France or Austria, but the conditions laid down were so narrowly restrictive they would be impossible to fulfill with honor. No names had yet been mentioned. Did Elizabeth all along have one of her own favorites in mind? It was impossible to be sure.

  Cecil then went one step further, demanding a trial of Mary’s dynastic claim. Elizabeth gave in to Cecil’s nagging, but softened the blow by sending Mary a token of her affection. It was a jewel, a diamond ring that she “marvelously esteemed.” Not the least of her challenges, in the year before she finally broke free of English intimidation over the terms of her marriage, was making sense of such mixed messages.

  When Randolph presented the ring, Mary was delighted. It symbolized Elizabeth’s role as her “lover” and seemingly turned the clock back to the spring of 1562, when the agenda was a meeting between the two “sister queens” as the prelude to their symbolic union. As if to emphasize the point, Mary “often looked upon and many times kissed” the ring.

  But Randolph sent it to her ahead of the stipulations for her marriage. When Mary read these, she showed great presence of mind. Not wishing to protest outright, but keen to set a different tone in her relations with England, she indulged her mischievous sense of humor, pointing to two rings on her fingers, one Elizabeth’s, the other the gift of her late husband, Francis II. “Well,” she said with a smile, “two jewels I have that must die with me and willingly shall never [be] out of my sight.” By this she made it clear she was keeping her options open.

  She then laid on a charade, poking fun at Randolph. Everyone joined in, and the scenes may have been loosely scripted. She would open with the line “Randolph would have me marry in England!” Argyll or someone else would then call out, “Is the queen of England become a man?” Mary would ask, “Who is it there in that country whom you would wish me to marry?” To which Randolph would have to answer lamely, “Whom you could like best. Maybe there is so noble a man there as you could like?”

  Or else Mary would pose as an innocent bystander, eager to oblige the English queen if only Randolph could be less “obscure” about whom Elizabeth wanted her to marry.

  It was all, at least on the surface, innocuous. It also caused a lot of merriment in the court. Randolph, whose instructions expressly forbade him from naming any particular candidate, could only squirm or suggest that a delegation be sent to London to quiz Elizabeth in person.

  Despite Mary’s sang-froid, the pressure was taking its toll. For two months she had been sick. Her affliction, as Randolph reported, was “divers melancholies.” She disguised these as best she could, but “often weeps when there is little apparent occasion.” The day after her twenty-first birthday, she was in bed all day after dancing late into the night. With Knox as vigilant as ever, the official explanation was a cold “being so long that day at her divine service.”

  But the sickness persisted. As Christmas approached, Randolph knew that “her disease . . . daily increaseth.” This is the first mention of symptoms that would later suggest a gastric ulcer rather than porphyria. “Her pain,” he continued, “is in her right side.” Here he was mistaken. He was soon correcting himself, reporting that the abdominal p
ain was on her left side. She had taken “divers medicines, but hitherto findeth herself little the better. Upon Saturday she was out of her bed, but took no great pleasure in company nor to have talk with any.”

  Knox had partly caused Mary’s distress. She had bided her time until the lords gathered in Edinburgh for Christmas, when she had finally decided to strike against the man she believed to be her scourge. During her last summer progress, a priest who had celebrated Mass in her private chapel in her absence was threatened by two Calvinists. When they were imprisoned for defying Mary’s proclamation on religion, Knox summoned “a convocation of the brethren” to free them. His letter, an implicit incitement to acts of violence, was shown to Mary, who consulted the Privy Council, a majority of whom thought it treasonable. Mary was elated by their response. It looked as if Knox had gone too far this time, and despite Maitland’s deep reservations, he was put on trial.

  The court was packed. Mary was flanked by her lords, and when she saw Knox standing at the other side of the table with his cap off, she first smiled and then “guffawed.” She was in high spirits, saying, “This is a good beginning . . . Yon man made me weep and shed never tear himself. I will see if I can make him weep.”

  A worried Maitland whispered in her ear, advising her to be quiet. He believed the proceedings to be ill-advised and wanted to minimize the damage, but Mary wanted her revenge on a man she saw as her implacable enemy. Knox was charged with conspiracy to “raise a tumult” against her. By attempting to “convoke” the Protestants to free the offenders, he had summoned Mary’s subjects to arms and so threatened armed resistance against his lawful queen.

  Knox conducted his own defense. He argued that there was a difference between a legal and an illegal assembly. In this he was supported from the table by Lord Ruthven, a Calvinist, who pointed out that Knox “makes convocation of the people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily.” To this, Knox himself added that all his actions were authorized by the Kirk, and therefore he had acted lawfully as a minister of the Gospel.