by John Guy
In late January 1569, she was taken on a long journey south to Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, a ten-day trip through the steep and muddy pathways of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Tutbury lay in the Midlands, the heartland of England: far enough away to make a rescue by the northern Catholic gentry difficult, and sufficiently distant from London and the ports to make a dash for freedom unlikely.
Mary was received by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was to be her custodian for the next fifteen years. He was one of Elizabeth’s leading noblemen, the highest-ranking peer after the Duke of Norfolk and the ideal candidate, from Elizabeth’s viewpoint, to manage an exiled Catholic queen. He was a Protestant, but only just, and knew better than anyone the sorts of contradictions involved in dealing with Mary. He had to win her compliance, but definitely not her affection. He had been present at the concluding sessions of Elizabeth’s tribunal, so he knew of Moray’s accusations and the Casket Letters. As Mary had never made a secret of her Catholic and Guise connections or her desire to outwit her captors, she was a constant focus of gossip, rumor and innuendo.
Mary came to respect Shrewsbury, whose gruffly expressed opinions of Cecil were closer to those of Sussex and Norfolk than anyone else. He outlived his ordeal, even if after more than a decade in the post he sank into black moods and a sense of paranoia in his dealings with Elizabeth and her courtiers. He felt obliged to denounce Mary periodically as a “foreigner,” a “papist” and “my enemy” to maintain his credentials. He also faced the burden of the spiraling costs of entertaining Mary and her suite. It was lucky that he could afford it, because Elizabeth was too tightfisted to bear the full expenses of his charge. Sometimes she would give some money, often none at all, and while Mary could afford to support herself, she refused to contribute any of her French income unless she was granted her liberty. Shrewsbury was caught in the middle, forced to pay the lion’s share of what amounted to a gigantic cuckoo in his domestic nest—a mimic royal court.
Shrewsbury had his own domestic ambiguities. Shortly before becoming Mary’s custodian, he had married the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, with whom Mary was to spend a great deal of her time. Bess was a woman of lofty pride, quick jealousy and insatiable ambition for herself and her children by a previous marriage. In her dealings with Shrewsbury, her fourth and last husband, the traditional gender roles were reversed. Her favorite Greek heroine was Penelope, the most independent woman in classical literature, whose picture, flanked by those of Perseverance and Patience, was Bess’s theme for her best-loved tapestry. Her ambition, not to mention her unfounded suspicion that her husband was sleeping with Mary, led to the breakdown of her marriage. Whereas in 1568, Shrewsbury called Bess “my own sweetheart,” “my dear,” “my jewel,” ten years later he would castigate her as “my wicked and malicious wife,” “my professed enemy” or simply just “wife.” He refused to spend a single night under the same roof as her.
Fortunately, the earl had a mistress and seven mansions, while his wife owned houses at Chatsworth and Hardwick, in Derbyshire, in her own right. Tutbury was their least important property, a royal castle belonging to the duchy of Lancaster that was merely leased. It was damp, dilapidated and almost destitute of furniture, and had a particular problem with the drains. Elizabeth sent beds, bedding and a dozen carpets to provide a minimum of creature comforts for Mary on her arrival, but these were inadequate to the task, and within days of crossing the drawbridge into the courtyard, the exiled Queen of Scots was in bed with rheumatism and a fever.
Over the ensuing months, Shrewsbury painstakingly negotiated with Elizabeth and Cecil to transfer Mary from Tutbury to one of his more comfortable residences. She was moved first to Wingfield Manor and then to Bess’s house at Chatsworth. Then, in November 1570, she was taken to Sheffield Castle, the earl’s principal home, where she was allowed to settle down for more than two years, her longest unbroken stay in any one place.
A mile or so from the castle was Sheffield Lodge, or Manor, a magnificent house on the site of a former hunting lodge which Shrewsbury extended and rebuilt while Mary was in his charge. She first stayed there in April 1573, and over the next eleven years was shuttled between the two Sheffield addresses, making occasional forays to Chatsworth and to a lodge that Shrewsbury built for her at the spa at Buxton—until the earl was replaced as her custodian in 1584.
The close proximity of Sheffield Lodge and the castle was invaluable, since to counterbalance the number of Mary’s attendants and cope with the security threat should an escape attempt be made, Shrewsbury had to maintain an even larger staff than she did. This meant that the total size of the joint household was second only to Elizabeth’s own court. And in the absence of modern plumbing, long stays at individual houses occupied by large numbers of people were always to be avoided for sanitary and medical reasons. To keep houses free from disease, the drains and latrines had to be cleaned periodically. This involved digging them out and carting the excrement and kitchen waste elsewhere, a noxious chore not easily undertaken while the house was inhabited.
Throughout her long years in Shrewsbury’s custody, Mary was treated honorably. Her rooms were luxuriously hung with tapestries and lit at night by candles set in gilt chandeliers, which was just as well, since Mary often refused to go to bed until one o’clock in the morning. Turkish carpets lay on the floor, items so valuable they were normally used only as table covers. Mary’s chairs were upholstered with crimson velvet and cloth of gold, while her female attendants sat on low stools, as they had at Holyrood when she was still a reigning queen. At one end of her presence chamber was a high-backed chair under a cloth of state on a dais. A smaller cloth of state was erected over her chair in her bedroom. She slept in a large canopied state bed shrouded by curtains, and her sheets were of the finest linen, changed every day. She would have expected no less.
One of Cecil’s emissaries, Nicholas White, who visited her at Tutbury on his way to Ireland, remarked on the layout of her space. She had two main rooms, which she had arranged as a privy chamber and a presence chamber. Mary “came forth of her privy chamber into the presence chamber where I was, and in very courteous manner bade me welcome.” She then conducted a royal audience, impressing even this staunchly Protestant visitor with her looks and charm. “She hath withal,” he informed Cecil, “an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish accent, and a searching wit, clouded with mildness.” The conversation turned to connoisseurship. It was a subject on which Mary felt at home, and she extolled painting as the “most commendable” of the arts.
When White protested that painting, at least in religious art, was “false truth,” Mary ended the interview. It was a deliberately provocative remark. “She closed up her talk, and bidding me farewell, retired into her privy chamber.” White was left to find his own way out, but before departing, he looked up at her cloth of state. “I noted this sentence embroidered” on it, he said: “‘En ma fin est mon commencement’—‘In my end is my beginning’—which is a riddle I understand not.”
Little did he know about Mary’s love of emblems and epigraphs. “In my end is my beginning” was the motto of her mother, Mary of Guise, whose emblem, or impresa, was the phoenix. This was the mythical bird that set fire to itself and rose anew from the ashes every five hundred years; it stood for unsurpassing beauty or quality, for hope and for ultimate triumph. Up to now, Mary’s own impresa, chosen while she was in France, had been the marigold turning to face the sun. Her motto was “Its virtue draws me.” Later she had used the same motto with an iconographic variant: the lodestone, a naturally magnetic rock used by sailors as a navigational aid.
Now a prisoner in England, Mary changed her motto to her mother’s, which was much better suited to her predicament. It was innocuous in the sense that it belonged to her family, but was resonant with prophetic meaning. “In my end is my beginning” was her way of proclaiming that even if she was killed, her dynastic claim would live on in the person of her son, James, who would inherit the English throne.
White’s report shows how civilized and luxurious Mary’s surroundings were. And yet they were still a prison. She despised the guards who patrolled outside her bedroom window and who escorted her, often carrying pistols, on the rare instances when she rode out in the park or on the moors. Indoors, she was watched night and day by sentries who were summoned by a drumroll at five in the morning. She increasingly feared poison, which was why she insisted on appointing her own kitchen and pantry staff.
But if Mary sometimes lapsed into pessimism, she never forgot she was a queen. She stuck stubbornly to protocol, clinging to the rituals of royal eating whenever she took her meals. Her “diets” were recorded in her household accounts. Like Elizabeth, she enjoyed two “courses” at both dinner and supper, and each course included sixteen separate dishes, individually presented and accompanied by bread, wine, salads and fruit. This meant thirty-two dishes for each meal and sixty-four for each day. Sometimes there were more, sometimes slightly fewer “as the provision serveth” (i.e., depending on what was available). And it was Mary’s prerogative to choose whichever of these dishes she wished to eat or taste.
Meat dishes predominated except on “fish days”—usually Fridays and every day of Lent. At dinner, normally served between 11 A.M. and noon, there would be soup, veal, beef, mutton, pork, capon, goose, duck and rabbit for the first course, followed by pheasant, partridge, kid lamb, quail, pigeon, tart and frittered apples or pears for the second. At supper, generally between 5 and 6 P.M. in winter and 7 and 8 P.M. in summer, there would be soup, veal, kid lamb, tripe, tongue, chicken, pheasant, pigeon and rabbit, followed by quail, baked pudding, tart and fruit. On fish days there would be plaice, whiting, haddock, cod, turbot, skate, barbel, ling, eel and pike, followed by carp, sprats, trout, tench, herring and tart for dinner; and salmon, chub, trout, herring, perch, eel, shrimp and crayfish for supper.
Mary dined in state at her own table. Her food was delicately served off silver dishes, her wine poured into crystal glassware. She probably used cutlery made in Sheffield. It was of such high quality, she sent it as gifts to her relatives in France. Before beginning to eat and while taking a break between the two courses, she washed her hands in a silver-gilt bowl. Her principal officers presented her food and wine to her in her presence chamber (which doubled as a dining room) before themselves sitting down to eat at their own table. Mary’s gentlewomen were given meals of nine dishes; her secretaries were allowed seven or eight. Most of the lesser servants and their wives and children ate in the kitchens, consuming the leftovers but holding some back for Mary’s many dogs.
Inevitably, Mary put on weight. Although her diet was similar to what she had enjoyed in Scotland, there she had exercised daily, usually in the form of long rides, whereas now the combination of limited exercise and heavy meals caused problems. As she became stouter, her shoulders became rounded and she acquired a slight stoop. She suffered from constipation and other digestive disorders, and her old episodic illness returned.
Almost as soon as Mary had reached Tutbury, she was ill for a fortnight. No sooner had she recovered than she was ill again. She complained of severe abdominal pains, which were blamed on “wind” but could easily have been caused by complications arising from her gastric ulcer. Shrewsbury wrote anxiously to Cecil, “Oft times, by reason of great pains through windy matter ascending unto her head and other parts, she is ready to swoon. On Thursday last she received pills devised by her own physician, whereof she was very sick that night, but after the working amended.”
A few weeks later, Mary vomited and fainted after taking her pills. Her doctor gave her whisky to bring her around, just as his predecessor had done at the court of St.-Germain ten years before. A petition was sent to Elizabeth that Mary might have two physicians in constant attendance, which was swiftly granted. Almost all her illnesses in captivity seem to have been related to her gastric ulcer, to neuralgia and severe headaches caused by inactivity and frustration, to digestive and bowel imbalances, or to a severe swelling of her leg. This last was perhaps an ulcerated leg or a form of deep-vein thrombosis—again, most likely stemming from inactivity—that is known to have first afflicted her in prison at Lochleven. She also suffered from chronic rheumatism, from pains in her left heel and from recurrent bouts of an unidentified viral illness. One of these attacks occurred at Sheffield in 1575, where she was laid low by what she said was a fever linked to abdominal pains and catarrh.
Mary felt she was aging before her time. She complained of “an incessant provocation to vomit,” when she threw up “a very great quantity of raw, tough and slimy phlegm.” Her abdominal pains were always on her left side, “under her short ribs.” She was unable to sleep, sometimes for ten or twelve days at a stretch. Her doctors prescribed an enema, which caused her to vomit again. She continued to take her pills, without visible signs of improvement. At least some of her illnesses were psychosomatic, brought on by stress at times when it seemed that Elizabeth had forgotten her or refused to extend an olive branch. “No one can cure this malady as well as the queen of England,” Mary repeatedly said, not without justification.
She especially yearned for her son. She could glean little news of him beyond the galling fact that he was being tutored by her enemies and brought up as a Protestant. She was not allowed to write to him, and in all the years of her captivity, she had hardly a single letter from him or his guardian. James’s first letter to his mother appears to have been written as late as March 1585, when he was eighteen.
Some two or three years before she received it, Mary could contain herself no longer. She blurted out her feelings: “Is this just and right that I, a mother, shall be forbidden not only to give counsel and advice to my oppressed son, but also to understand what distressed state he is in?”
That she longed to see him again is suggested by an item she kept beside her until the day she died. It was a thin gold case with a folding flap, described in her probate inventory as “a book of gold enameled [and] containing the pictures of the late Scottish queen, her husband and her son.” Aside from the fact that she wanted her son’s portrait miniature close to her, it would be surprising if she had kept it in the same frame as a picture of herself and her dead husband if she had murdered him.
Mary’s poor health was exacerbated by the lack of support she felt she had received from France. After two years had gone by, she so far humbled herself as to implore Catherine de Medici to take pity on her. She begged her hardhearted former mother-in-law to listen to “this little word of humble request to have some aid for Scotland.” When she wrote to Charles IX recommending a servant for a position in the Garde Écossaise, she let slip pathetically that “I have not received an answer to any of my letters, which is the reason I did not trouble you about any of my affairs.”
In all of the passing years, there was little sign of the acute intermittent porphyria from which some medical experts have claimed Mary suffered. Her illnesses stemmed chiefly from inactivity, stress and depression. To counter the last of these, she wore an amethyst ring, which she claimed had magical properties “contrę la melancholie.” She wrote to her ambassador in Paris for “mithridate,” a substance said to be an antidote to every poison and an instant remedy. She asked him to supply “a piece of fine unicorn’s horn, as I am in great want of it.” Unicorn’s horn was an expensive quack remedy that had a particular cachet among the ruling families of the age. Henry VIII had kept a supply of it with his ointments and salves. It was really made from rhinoceros horn or narwhal tusk, but was believed to be a miracle cure.
Mary was itching to get outdoors, knowing that she would feel much better for it. She first asked to visit the spa at Buxton in 1572. The hot springs there had been famous since Roman times for their curative powers. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and other courtiers made regular visits, giving the town a cosmopolitan flavor that appealed to Mary’s desire to venture into a wider and more sophisticated world. Ironically, she twice met Leicester there, coming face t
o face at last with the still cherished favorite whom Elizabeth had so bizarrely offered to her as a husband.
And there was always a chance that she would meet Elizabeth herself. In July and August 1575, when the English queen’s summer progress took her to the Midlands and so to Staffordshire, the two “sisters” and “cousins” were only a few miles apart. But Elizabeth would not take the risk of meeting Mary, who all along she feared would get the better of her in an argument. When she heard that Mary would be at the spa, she quickly changed her plans.
Between 1573 and 1584, Mary spent many of her summers at Buxton. She enjoyed it so much that a considerate Shrewsbury built a secluded lodge there for her private use. He had not wanted her to go at first; he thought it a security risk. Why did she need the baths when she already bathed regularly with herbs and had started using white wine as a facial toner? Mary’s request was sent up to Elizabeth, who handed it to Cecil, who referred it to the Privy Council, and from there back to the queen.
While this buck was being passed, Mary was taken to Chatsworth, a staging post on the road to Buxton, before her stay was finally approved.
Visitors at the spa both drank the water—several pints a day—and bathed in it. When their ablutions were completed, they played games or relaxed in the well-appointed bathhouse (also owned by Shrewsbury), which functioned as a thirty-room hotel. There were chairs around the hot springs, and “chimneys for fire to air your garments in the bath’s side, and other necessaries most decent.” The men amused themselves at bowling or archery, the women by playing a game of boules called “Troule in Madame.” Mary would have loved to mingle freely with the other visitors, but as far as possible was kept in isolation. She did sometimes get the opportunity to speak to the other bathers. When the spa was at its busiest, however, she was taken to visit the limestone caves nearby or confined to her lodge and its gardens.
