by John Guy
If Randolph is to be believed, Darnley’s behavior became so “intolerable,” Mary suffered a severe attack of melancholy. She was not just depressed, her whole appearance changed. “Her majesty is laid aside,” he confided to Dudley, “her wits not what they were, her beauty another than it was, her cheer and countenance changed into I wot not what.” Mary had become “a woman more to be pitied than any that I ever saw.” The change was so sudden, necromancy was suspected.
And yet on the very same day, Randolph could tell Cecil how Mary was excitedly keeping abreast of her French and Spanish diplomacy, and doing all she could to bind her lords to herself “by gentle letters and fair words.” She was carefully building up support for her marriage.
A juggernaut had started to roll. Cecil convened the English Privy Council on the 4th to discuss Mary’s answer to Throckmorton. The debate lasted all day. The entire life story of the Queen of Scots was retold, from the treaty of Haddington and her marriage to the dauphin to Henry II’s claim that she was the heir to a triple monarchy, and with special reference to the blazoning of the heraldic arms of England on her escutcheons and the cries of her ushers to “make way for the queen of England!” Nothing was omitted or allowed to be forgotten.
Cecil led the debates and wrote the minutes, explaining why Mary was so dangerous. By announcing her intention to remarry and settle the succession in Scotland, she would benefit from a surge of new support. A majority of Elizabeth’s subjects—he spoke repeatedly of “the people of England”—favored Mary. They would flock to a queen who, unlike their own, was prepared to marry and have children. The sixteenth century was an age of gender stereotypes. By marrying, Mary would do what Cecil and every other male councilor and head of household wanted a female monarch to do. She would put a man at the head of the royal family. She would recreate a truly regal monarchy and prove that it would be her heirs, and not Elizabeth’s, who would eventually unite the thrones of England and Scotland.
The “people of England,” Cecil said, whether Protestants or Catholics, would be so won over by this, they would be “drawn away from their allegiance” to Elizabeth and transfer it to Mary.
It was a fascinating argument, opening for us a window into a lost world in which royal marriages had the power to alter people’s lives. Cecil was Mary’s most single-minded opponent. Any marriage that she contracted while Elizabeth was unmarried posed a threat to England’s security. To speak of “drawing away” the “allegiance” of the people was uniquely resonant, as it was the language of the law of treason. Cecil implied that if Mary married without Elizabeth’s consent, this in itself was a hostile act.
No one challenged Cecil. In fact, some privy councilors argued that if Mary married Darnley, the threat was even greater than if she had allied herself to Don Carlos or the archduke. Their fear was that Darnley, an English subject of royal blood, had the potential to raise an army in England in support of the Catholic cause and so begin a civil war.
With hindsight, it seems like a tremendous overreaction, and yet this is what Cecil and his allies believed. Their starting point was Throckmorton’s report, which had argued that Mary was so intent on marrying Darnley, “the matter is irrevocable otherwise than by violence.” The main purpose of the debate was to decide whether England was willing to go to war. Hence the meeting turned into a full-scale strategic review, ending with an action plan that included asking Elizabeth to look more favorably on the plight of Lady Catherine Grey.
Cecil gave Elizabeth a copy of these minutes. She was not usually disposed to listen to his fears about her “safety,” but this time she did. The Earl of Bedford, the most senior English border official and the governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed, was ordered to keep a strict watch and to assist Randolph in planting spies. The Countess of Lennox was sent to the Tower, and the letters recalling Lennox and Darnley were reissued. Randolph received them in his diplomatic bag on July 2 and delivered them at once. As he reported, their recipients were “marvelously abashed.”
When Mary heard that Lennox and Darnley were recalled, she burst into tears. Up until now, her weeping had tended to stem from disparate groups of emotions: grief at her bereavements, sadness or depression during her attacks of melancholy, anger and frustration with Knox or her factious nobles, or helplessness and self-pity at the betrayals of others. This time, she felt them all. A great storm of emotion overtook her, and she did nothing for a fortnight. Then the skies cleared and she made her decision. She ordered Lennox and Darnley to remain in Scotland and defy Elizabeth.
This was the point of no return. Mary rallied herself and began the arrangements for her wedding. She had made her choice and would live with it. “I know,” she told Randolph, “that your mistress went about but to abuse me, and so was I warned out of England, France and other parts, and when I found it so indeed, I thought I would no longer stay upon her fair words, but being [as] free as she is, I would stand to my own choice.”
Just as Cecil had given the English Privy Council a lecture that went back to the treaty of Haddington, now Mary also harangued Randolph with the history of her diplomacy with Elizabeth, starting with her desire for a “fresh start” and an exchange of portraits, continuing with her efforts to arrange a meeting between the queens at York or Nottingham, and concluding with the innumerable zigzags and weasel words produced by English attempts to dictate her choice of husband.
It was now, she said, “too late.” What could have brought great mutual benefits had come to nothing. And it was entirely Elizabeth’s fault. “For if your mistress would have used me as I trusted she would have done, she can not have [had] a daughter of her own that would have been more obedient to her than I would have been.”
Mary could not quite let go of the vocabulary of kinship and dependency that had colored her relationship with Elizabeth since the death of Francis II. But she vigorously defended her right as a queen and a woman to choose her own husband. This was not Elizabeth’s business, even if Mary had hoped that Elizabeth might approve of her choice. “Let not her be offended with my marriage, no more than I am with hers,” she said, “and for the rest I will abide such fortune as God will send me.”
Randolph then made a serious mistake. He suggested almost as an afterthought that Mary might do well to convert to Protestantism. Elizabeth might treat her better if she did so. Mary hit back instantly.
“What would that do?” she asked.
“Peradventure,” replied Randolph, it would “somewhat move Her Majesty to allow the sooner of your marriage.”
“What!” Mary exclaimed. “Would you that I should make merchandise of my religion, or frame myself to your ministers’ wills? It cannot be so.”
This suggestion was humiliating and degrading. It made Mary even more determined to do as she pleased.
“You can never persuade me”—she almost spat out the words—“that I have failed to your mistress, but rather she to me; and some incommodity it will be as well for her to lose my amity as hers will be to me.” With that, she got up and left.
On the morning of Sunday, July 22, 1565, the banns for Mary’s marriage were read in St. Giles Kirk, and in the afternoon Darnley was created Duke of Albany. At nine o’clock on the following Saturday evening, heralds appeared at the Market Cross in Edinburgh to proclaim that the couple would be married the next day. And when the celebrations were ended, Darnley would be made king of Scotland.
Darnley himself had insisted on this, even though Parliament was usually consulted before royal titles were bestowed. The Privy Council had debated the proposal for much of the day. Even as Mary was fast winning the support of those lords who were wavering over the marriage, Darnley was losing it by boasting that he cared more for the English Catholics than the Scottish Protestants, a typically insouciant and foolish remark that canceled out the goodwill he had earned by attending Knox’s sermons.
Mary was unwise to yield to Darnley’s influence over the title. She acted naively and impulsively, and would have done better
to insist that Parliament be asked, using it as an excuse to delay a decision until she could see whether he was going to be able to handle this sort of power.
But he would not take no for an answer. The force of gender stereotypes had come into play. He was the man and Mary was the woman, and for the moment she felt that she had to indulge him. She needed the wedding to go ahead if she was not to lose face. She even attended the Privy Council, talking around a sufficient number of lords to win the vote. When the decision was finally agreed, the heralds had been kept waiting for over six hours to make their proclamation.
The wedding took place on Sunday the 29th. Shortly before six o’clock in the morning, Mary was led to the altar of her private chapel at Holyrood by the Earls of Lennox and Atholl. She wore her deuil blanc to signify that she was a widow, dressed exactly as when Throckmorton had described her after the death of Francis II.
When Darnley arrived, the wedding vows were exchanged and the bridegroom put three rings on the fingers of Mary’s right hand, the middle one set with a rich diamond and enameled in red. (The wedding ring was then worn on the right hand.) They knelt for the prayers, after which Darnley abruptly left. He wished to avoid the charge of “idolatry” and so went straight to the royal apartments, refusing to attend his own nuptial Mass.
The service finished, Mary returned to her bedroom. She was elated and determined to make a success of the marriage in spite of Darnley’s behavior. She particularly wanted the ceremony to be inclusive. All the nobles had been invited, and in a ritual staged to mark her passage from widowhood to wifehood, she allowed each of those attending to remove one of the pins holding her veil to her gown. Everyone except Darnley then left while Mary changed her clothes. As Randolph primly noted, they “went not to bed, to signify unto the world that it was no lust [that] moved them to marry, but only the necessity of her country, not long to leave it destitute of an heir.”
There followed great “cheer and dancing.” Or as Knox sourly put it, “During the space of three or four days there was nothing but balling, dancing and banqueting.” Mary and Darnley walked in procession to a state banquet attended by their lords. As they entered the great hall, trumpets sounded. And in an echo of Mary’s wedding to the dauphin at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, heralds cried out “Largesse,” showering money on the guests. The afternoon was spent in dancing and revelry, after which there was a second banquet to which others were invited. The dancing went on late into the night, “and so they go to bed.”
Randolph was invited to the second banquet, but was obliged to refuse. As Elizabeth’s ambassador he could do nothing that seemed to recognize the marriage. Already Elizabeth and Cecil were determined never to acknowledge Darnley as king or even as Mary’s husband. Mary understood this and wanted Randolph to attend the banquet so badly, she kept Mary Beaton, his mistress, away from him for a fortnight beforehand, promising that they could dance together if he attended, but to no avail.
On Monday at midday, heralds proclaimed Darnley’s title as King of Scotland. A dual monarchy was to be established in which sovereign power would be “conjointly” exercised by the king and queen. The official style for all letters and state papers would be “Henry and Marie, King and Queen of Scotland.”
The proclamation was heard in a resentful silence. Of all the nobles, no one so much as said “Amen,” until the lone voice of Lennox cried out, “God save His Grace.”
The wedding had been on a sumptuous scale, yet the celebrations were largely hollow. At the first banquet, the royal couple had been served by Atholl and Morton, the only nobles to offer their unreserved support for the new king. No one else was willing to wait on Darnley or serve his food. Moray, Argyll and Châtelherault had refused to attend. All three were in disgrace and building up their armies. They intended to rebel, to force Mary to separate herself from a man they feared would try to destroy them. They wrote to Cecil seeking troops and artillery, and sent a messenger to London to press their case. Next they approached Randolph and the Earl of Bedford, appealing for money. They demanded £3000, the same amount Cecil had given them six years before when they had begun their revolt against Mary’s mother.
On July 30, Elizabeth sent John Thomworth, a gentleman of her privy chamber, as a special ambassador to Scotland. He was to see Mary, while at all times ignoring Darnley, and remonstrate over her “very strange” and “unneighborly” conduct. He was to tell her she was beguiled by “sinister advice.”
Elizabeth decided to set Mary straight. She must know that “she forgets herself marvelously to raise up such factions as is understood among her nobility.” A civil war was in prospect, or so Elizabeth supposed. Mary should reconcile herself to Moray, a man “who has so well served her.”
But Mary was having none of it. Before Thomworth reached Edinburgh, Moray was declared a rebel. And when the ambassador arrived, Mary gave him a lecture. A queen, she said, had every right to marry without rendering an account to other princes. It had not been her practice “to enquire what order of government her good sister observed within her realm,” nor did she believe it was the custom of princes to interfere in the internal affairs of neighboring states. Princes were “subject immediately to God, and to owe account or reckoning of their doings to none other.” No one should know that better than Elizabeth herself.
As to Moray, Mary advised Elizabeth “to meddle no further with private causes concerning him or any other subjects of Scotland.” She should follow this advice unless she wished Mary to reciprocate by taking up the cause of her mother-in-law, the Countess of Lennox, whom Elizabeth had unworthily imprisoned.
Mary was undaunted. Whatever Darnley’s many failings, she believed she had the upper hand. Whether she had actually improved her position is arguable, but she had gained the confidence to act strongly. For the first time in their relationship, she and not Elizabeth drew up an offer of terms. According to these, Mary and her husband would do nothing to enforce their immediate dynastic claim, nor to countenance English rebels. They would not ally with foreign princes against Elizabeth, nor seek to alter the religion, laws or liberties of England. In return, they expected Elizabeth not to ally with foreign princes or Mary’s rebels, and in particular to settle the English succession by act of Parliament in Mary and Darnley’s favor.
For the first time in her life, Mary was setting the agenda and reveling in it. After a brief infatuation in which she had been sexually attracted to Darnley and had believed she found love, she had come to realize that her marriage was purely one of convenience. Darnley, she knew, was unpopular. But her own popularity could counter this, and as a married queen with every likelihood of producing heirs, her position was more secure than at any time since her return from France. Only the jealous, perfidious Moray and his allies stood between her and a long and happy reign. And she intended to deal with them next.
14
Enter Bothwell
MARY COULD NOT have been more focused or astute in dealing with Moray’s latest revolt. She first isolated her opponents politically, then took to the field to rout them. Her skill and courage were more than sufficient to disprove Knox’s stereotype that a Catholic woman ruler would be too busy dancing or pursuing a life of material and sexual indulgence to rule her country properly
She began by exposing the flaws in the rebels’ propaganda. They were claiming that her marriage to Darnley would mark the end of the religious status quo. From the outset they had sought to ignite sectarian hatred between Protestants and Catholics for their own political ends.
Their campaign had begun on Palm Sunday. A Catholic priest celebrating Mass in Edinburgh was abducted in his vestments by a Calvinist gang and frog-marched to the Market Cross, where he was tied up and pelted with ten thousand eggs for four hours. Eggs, the Catholic symbol of Easter, were deliberately chosen for this act of ritual humiliation. Youths armed with cudgels then arrived to beat the victim senseless; he was freed only after a last-minute intervention by the provost. The fact that so many free
eggs were conveniently supplied shows that the attack must have been powerfully backed, although nothing can be proved to link it to Moray.
Mary had countered this shocking act of violence by confirming the religious status quo. A majority of the Protestants did not think their religion was under threat. Her policy of creating a broad coalition—in the Privy Council and the country at large—had so far worked. Even Knox did not believe there was a genuine threat to the Kirk this time, and he declined to speak out in Moray’s favor, a major prize for Mary and one she greatly relished.
To make sure that she kept bipartisan support, she put out further reassuring signals to the Protestants. She ate meat for the first time during Lent, defying the Catholic obligation to avoid it between Shrovetide and Easter. She did not hear Mass as often as she usually did. She attended a Protestant baptism, and volunteered to go to sermons if preachers could be found of whom she approved. She dropped heavy hints to Randolph and others that her subjects should “live as they list,” following their own beliefs.
A fortnight before she married Darnley, Mary wrote to the leading Protestants, reassuring them that they would always be free to worship according to their consciences. A month after the wedding, her religious proclamation of 1561 was confirmed for a second time, this time in the joint names of the king and queen.
Mary, meanwhile, was mustering a royal army. By July 19, ten days before the wedding, she had around six thousand troops within easy reach of Edinburgh. And in his abstracts of Scottish papers for the same day, Cecil made an entry that was brief but portentous: “The Earl Bothwell is sent for.”
No more formidable adversary, no more deadly rival of Moray, could be imagined. Like his father, Patrick, who had died in 1556, Bothwell was hereditary Lord Admiral and the Sheriff of Edinburgh. In the Lowlands, the family held Crichton Castle, just south of Edinburgh, and Hailes Castle in East Lothian. Their main stronghold was the Hermitage, an almost impregnable fortress in the border region of Liddesdale, not far from the Debatable Land.
