Mary Queen of Scots

by Retha Warnicke

  At the pavilion Charles Bourbon, the cardinal archbishop of Rouen, performed the ceremony, and following the couple’s exchange of vows, Henry removed a ring from his hand, which Bourbon blessed and presented to Francis for placement on Mary’s finger. After the bishop’s oration, they entered the cathedral in the order they marched through the gallery. As they processed, the heralds cried largesse three times and tossed numerous gold and silver coins into the crowd. The rush of people scrambling for them caused great confusion: some fainted; some lost pieces of clothing; others were so frightened they begged the heralds to cease the distribution.

  While the wedded pair sat on a throne beneath a canopy of cloth-of-gold, the bishop celebrated the nuptial mass at the high altar. Afterwards, the heralds again tossed coins, this time inside the cathedral. Finally, the bishop blessed the bride and groom as they stood under a silver cloth suspended over their heads. Departing in the same order as before, the wedding party attended a banquet and enjoyed various festivities at the bishop’s palace. Later that afternoon, they journeyed to the Palais of Justice, the official residence of the Parlement of Paris, for a banquet, dancing, and masques. The evening’s highlight was a pageant of ships, the duke of Lorraine’s gift to the bridal couple. An artificial wind supposedly blew six miniature ships, adorned in cloth-of-gold and crimson velvet and equipped with silver sails and masts, across an undulating blue cloth covering the floor. On each ship sat a masked nobleman dressed in cloth-of-gold, who invited a lady to sit beside him. The duke of Lorraine selected Claude, his future bride; Henry chose Mary; the dauphin took Catherine; Jacques of Savoy, duke of Nemours, claimed Margaret; Navarre summoned his wife; Condé opted for the duchess of Guise and away they sailed.14

  In the early hours of the morning at the Hôtel of Guise, the royal family bedded down the bride and groom, as custom dictated. Scholars have assumed that the chronically ill and physically immature 14-year-old dauphin was incapable of consummating the marriage and had probably not done so at his death in December 1560 when he was still 16. Even so, as Mary and her relatives deemed divine intervention necessary for conception, they could petition God to bless this union and make it fruitful. During their short marriage, two interesting but contradictory rumors, both of which lack confirmation, circulated concerning their marital relationship: some diplomats claimed she would never be able to bear children while others surmised that she had a miscarriage. The day after the bedding-down ceremony, the wedding party dined at the Palais of Justice before moving to the Louvre for several days of festivities.

  Poets composed verses in at least three languages to honor the marriage: French, Neo-Latin, and Scots. Two prominent ones were by Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington and George Buchanan. Lethington’s verse welcomed Francis as Scotland’s ruler:

  O michtie Prince, and Spous to our Mistreiss!

  Ressaive this realme in loive and heartliness;

  Set Furth our lawis, mantein our libertie;

  Do equall justice bayth to mair and less;

  Reward vertew; and punishch wickedness;

  Mak us to leive in gude tranquillitie.15

  Buchanan, an eminent Latinist who held a private teaching position in France, composed a Neo-Latin Epithalamium in which he called Mary the “most accomplished lady of her kind,” confirmed she was “Maturely grave ev’n in her tender years” and promised Francis:

  If matchless Beauty your nice fancy move,

  Behold an Object worthy of your Love!16

  Afterwards, Mary and Francis traveled to Villiers-Cotterets, some 50 miles northeast of Paris, for several days of rest. In May they returned to the court at Compiègne, and in September Francis joined his father at Amiens to oversee military operations, although a truce with the Spanish and English was signed shortly thereafter.

  DEATH OF MARY TUDOR, 1558

  During the next two years, four royal deaths impacted on Franco-Scottish relations. First, on 17 November 1558 Mary Tudor died, leaving her throne to Elizabeth, whom Catholics deemed illegitimate and, therefore, ineligible to succeed. Henry II and the Guises claimed that as Mary Stewart was the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, she had the best hereditary claim to the English throne and was the rightful monarch. In January 1559 at the marriage celebrations of Henry II’s daughter, Claude, to the duke of Lorraine, the king had Mary proclaimed queen of Scotland, England, and Ireland.

  That June Henry publicized Mary’s rights at festivities honoring the two marriages arranged by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, which ended France’s war with Spain and England. Having accepted Elizabeth as queen in the treaty, Henry decided to counter that diplomatic concession by again displaying his daughter-in-law’s rights to the English crown publicly. On the 21st at the Louvre, his daughter, Elizabeth, was betrothed to the widowed Philip II, a bridegroom of more than twice her age. Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva, acted as his proxy for the betrothal and for the wedding the next day at Nôtre Dame in which Mary and Claude carried the bride’s train. On the 27th Henry’s sister Margaret was betrothed to Emmanuel-Philibert X, duke of Savoy. At the subsequent three-day tournament, the king dauphin and the queen dauphiness sat under a canopy on which the English arms were incorporated with those of Scotland and France. When the English ambassador, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, protested this employment of his realm’s arms, French officials responded that his queen bore the French arms, although the Salic law barred her from the succession. Despite losing Calais, the last vestige of their French empire, English monarchs continued to claim the French kingship until the Treaty of Amiens in 1802.

  ACCESSION OF FRANCIS II, JULY 1559

  The wedding festivities on 30 June ended with a joust between Henry and Gabriel de Lorges, count of Montgomery and captain of the Scottish Guard. Montgomery’s lance accidentally splintered into the king’s throat and eye, critically wounding him. Royal aides carried Henry to the nearby Hôtel de Tournelles, where upon recovering consciousness, he ordered the completion of his sister’s marriage. Instead of the planned Nôtre Dame ceremony, Margaret married Savoy privately at the nearby chapel of St Paul on 9 July. Henry died the next day and was buried on 13 August at St Denis, the cardinal of Lorraine having conducted the funeral service.

  After hearing of the king’s death, Lennox sent his 13-year-old son, Darnley, who traveled incognito with his tutor, John Elder, to condole with Mary and to request her assistance in recovering the family’s Scottish estates that were confiscated in 1544 when the earl became an English subject. Darnley probably stayed with his paternal uncle, John Stuart, fifth seigneur d’Aubigny, the successor of Montgomery as captain of the Scottish Guard. At Chambord Darnley caught up with Mary, who rejected his father’s petition but invited him to Francis’s coronation and gave him a gift of money.17

  In September Mary journeyed with her 15-year-old husband to Rheims, making their separate entries on the 15th and attending vespers at the cathedral on the 17th. The next day, the cardinal of Lorraine presided at Francis’s coronation, which Mary witnessed as an independent sovereign, sitting in the gallery with Elizabeth, the Spanish queen.

  After Francis’s accession, the Guises assumed control of his government, and Montmorency and Valentinois departed from court, but only after the duchess had surrendered the crown jewels to Mary. Although Navarre headed the Bourbon family that would succeed if the Valois dynasty failed in the male line, he was not offered a governmental position. In fact, when he reached court after Henry’s burial, Navarre withdrew from the political competition by agreeing to escort Elizabeth to Spain. Mary, Francis, and Catherine accompanied Navarre and Elizabeth to Châtelherault, near Poitou, and bade farewell to them in late November. Here and elsewhere Mary displayed the arms of England with those of France and Scotland. The royal party then returned to Blois, their headquarters for the winter season.

  By this time the political and religious measures of Francis’s government had generated controversy. His councilors not only diligently enforced his father’s repressive policie
s against the Huguenots but also insisted on drastic financial entrenchment to counter the crisis created by his military expenditures that left the crown 41 million livres in debt. Although these were Henry’s policies, protestors associated them narrowly with the Guises, especially the cardinal of Lorraine, widely denounced as a tiger and a viper.

  The animosity culminated in a conspiracy called the Conjuration of Amboise, led by a Huguenot adventurer, Jean du Barry, seigneur de la Renaudie, who planned to assault the royal family at Blois, murder Lorraine, and release Francis from his control. Mary’s uncles, however, viewed it as a plot to abduct Francis, force Protestantism upon him, and murder his family. In February 1560 when rumors of the conspiracy reached Guise, he transferred the court to Amboise, the most defensible royal château, and organized search parties that arrested armed raiders as early as 11 March. Some, including la Renaudie who died on the 19th, were killed in the skirmishes; some drowned in the Loire while others were hanged from the château’s balconies. As some rebels had connections to the Bourbons, Lorraine and Guise blamed Navarre’s brother Condé for the conspiracy.

  DEATH OF MARY OF GUISE AND THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION

  Because Mary was still recovering from this frightening and bloody experience, Lorraine delayed informing her until 28 June of her mother’s death on the 11th of that month. The news overwhelmed her with sadness, manifested by her bitter tears and her retirement to her bedchamber to mourn in seclusion. Her family and friends feared that her profound grief would cause her to become seriously ill.

  While the French government was facing religious and political challenges, so was the queen regent of Scotland. In late 1557 five Scotsmen, known as the Lords of the Congregation, had first signed a band promoting reform:

  We do promise...that we shall...maintain, set forward, and establish the MOST BLESSED WORD OF GOD, and His Congregation: And shall labor...to have faithful ministers purely and truly to minister Christ’s evangel and sacraments to his people.18

  In the next two years by downplaying doctrinal matters and demanding the expulsion of French troops, the Congregation attracted increasing numbers of supporters.

  In France in May 1559, two years after the endorsement of the first band, Arran, himself a Protestant convert, learned that Montpensier’s daughter, the bride promised him in 1548, planned to wed Valentinois’s grandson, Henry Robert de la Mark, duke of Bouillon, at the Louvre on 11 June. To prevent the alienated Arran from returning home and complicating the queen regent’s political problems, Henry II had ordered his arrest. Eluding governmental officials, Arran fled France with the aid of English agents and in August reached England, met with Elizabeth, and then returned home. The next month supported by English allies in Scotland who accused Mary and her relatives of having mistreated him, Arran persuaded his father Châtelherault to join the Congregation. Once again, the duke changed his religious stance, this time in response to concerns that Mary’s French marriage had negated his succession rights. As the heir presumptive, his public support enhanced the Congregation’s political viability, and in October the Lords, with Châtelherault and Arran holding leadership roles, issued a proclamation, deposing the queen regent and claiming the governance of Scotland.

  Rejecting their authority and attempting to cause the English to suspect Châtelherault’s loyalty, Mary of Guise had a letter from the duke to Francis II forged in which he promised to serve as the French king’s faithful and loyal servant. She instructed Michel de Seurre, the French ambassador in England, to present it to Cecil. When the duke of Norfolk learned about it, he sent a message on 15 March about its contents to the putative author, Châtelherault. Challenging Seurre to a duel, the outraged duke offered personally to fight with anyone equal to him in status or to appoint one of inferior quality to fight a like individual. Later that month English agents intercepted the queen regent’s message to Lorraine and Guise, condemning the ambassador for not more effectively utilizing the forgery. She noted that the letter in question was written on one of two blank papers she had obtained with the duke’s seal.

  Concerned that the French army might invade England from its Scottish headquarters, Elizabeth ratified the Treaty of Berwick, negotiated with the Congregation in February 1560, which provided for joint military action for mutual defense in the British Isles, including Ireland. Although the English army had small success against the French at Leith, the expected French navy failed to arrive, first because storms destroyed an armada commanded by Elboeuf, whom the king appointed as lieutenant general and successor of his ailing sister, the queen regent, and second, because domestic discord, including the Conjuration of Amboise in March 1560, prevented him from sailing with another fleet that was outfitted for departure that spring. Elboeuf’s disappointed niece had already assured Throckmorton that she would be a better neighbor to his queen than the Scottish rebels.

  After the queen regent’s death, Châtelherault and Lord James, along with William Maitland of Lethington, her secretary, as representatives of the Provisional Government, became the effective rulers of Scotland. In July, the month after her demise, French and English commissioners negotiated the Treaty of Edinburgh, requiring Mary to cease bearing English arms, providing for the withdrawal from Scotland of all foreign troops, authorizing the calling of a Scottish parliament, and establishing procedures for appointing a government that would basically leave the Congregation in control of the realm. When in November the treaty was finally presented to Mary and Francis for their approval, they refused to ratify it, mainly from concerns that its language might be interpreted to deny her English succession rights. In the meantime, all troops had departed Scotland, except for 120 Frenchmen.19

  In August without Francis’s and Mary’s authorization, the Provisional Government had summoned a parliament, known as the Reformation Parliament because of its religious enactments. It abolished the mass and papal authority and established a reformed Confession of Faith, although it left untouched the Catholic clergy’s jurisdiction within their benefices. The estates then proposed to Elizabeth that she wed Arran to consolidate the Anglo-Scottish alliance and to set up the possibility of a British monarchy if Mary died without heirs.

  LAST MONTHS OF FRANCIS’S REIGN

  While these setbacks were occurring in Scotland, religious and political discord continued in France. Even before the Conjuration in early 1560, Francis’s government had adopted a more moderate stance, promising in the Édict of Amboise, for example, to pardon all religious prisoners who were not pastors or conspirators. Despite these conciliatory measures, the Huguenots continued their demonstrations.

  Having acquired a bodyguard, Francis accepted his advisers’ recommendation to convene a Council of Notables on 21 August in his mother’s chamber at Fontainebleau, to discuss the problems he had inherited. In attendance were Catherine, Mary, Guise, the cardinal of Lorraine, the princes of the blood, and other royal officials. The absence of Navarre and Condé fueled further suspicions about the latter’s involvement in the Conjuration. On the 23rd, Montmorency’s Protestant nephew, Coligny, argued unsuccessfully for the establishment of two equal churches, Catholic and Huguenot. Before adjourning on the 26th, the council recommended summoning the Estates General and convening an assembly of the Gallican Church. More convinced than ever of Condé’s guilt, the cardinal of Lorraine had him arrested on 30 October at Orléans where Francis and Mary made their entries on the 18th, amidst heightened security measures because of Huguenot disturbances in neighboring towns.

  At Orléans Francis became ill, and although on Sunday, 17 November, Catherine kept him in bed, his condition worsened. For three weeks he suffered crippling headaches and drainage from an infected middle ear; when the drainage ceased, it caused excruciating pains in his jaws and teeth and a swelling behind his ear. During his illness his wife and mother remained at his bedside, witnessing his death on 5 December after Lorraine administered the last rites. He left a grieving widow, his crown to his ten-year-old brother, and a repri
eve for Condé, whom Catherine ultimately freed.

  Custom required that the widow of a French king dress in white mourning clothes, en deuil blanc, and spend 40 days in a darkened room, hung with black cloths and lighted only by a few candles. On 6 December before entering seclusion attended by her grandmother, Mary surrendered the crown jewels to Catherine. The grief she reportedly displayed was surely genuine. Throughout their marriage, Francis and she related to each other as they had from childhood. That interaction resulted in the development of sincere emotional ties, and no observer ever questioned their mutual esteem.20 Michele Surian, the Venetian ambassador to France, who was not a Guise client, reported in early December that all pitied the young, beautiful, and graceful widow, who was full of tears because she lost a beloved husband, was deprived of France, and possessed small hope of recovering Scotland, her patrimony and dowry. A month later after condoling with her, he informed his government that although overwhelmed with grief, she expressed thanks in a few sorrowful words.21

  In the mourning room social precedence prevailed. For the first 15 days, only the king, his brothers, Navarre, her Guise uncles, and Montmorency could enter. Four or five days later the bishops and the elder knights of the Order of St Michael could pay their respects. The younger knights, except for the married one, were denied admission, as their presence was considered inappropriate because of her youth. Afterwards, ambassadors were permitted to condole with her. Speculation was already rife about her next husband, and in late December Lorraine proposed to Thomas Perrenot, seigneur de Chantonnay, the Spanish ambassador, that she wed Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. Although other names were mentioned, the queen dowager ultimately concluded that her honor was best served by marrying another prince.

  4: RETURNING HOME, 1561-63

  On 15 January 1561 having changed from white into black mourning clothes, 18-year-old Mary emerged from seclusion to attend a memorial service for Francis at the Grey Friars’ Church. Shortly thereafter she moved with her grandmother to a private residence and ordered the erection of an elegant marble pillar in the Cathedral of St Croix at Orléans where, according to custom, his heart was buried apart from his body, which was interred at St Denis. The bodies of prominent individuals, especially monarchs, were often buried in two places, providing pilgrimage renown and, therefore, honor to the interment sites.