Later in Scotland Mary continued dressing in black in honor of Francis’s memory until after her marriage to Darnley in 1565. On the day before the first anniversary of his death, she had a dirge said for him at Holyrood chapel and in a solemn procession the next day she presented a huge wax candle draped in black velvet. Sometimes mourners scheduled for their deceased loved ones ceremonies one month after their demise, which were called the month’s mind, but more often they held the services on the first anniversary of their death.
While adjusting emotionally to widowhood at Orléans, Mary began making plans for returning home. On 18 January she wrote to Elizabeth for a passport for four commissioners to travel through England to Scotland with a letter for the parliamentary estates, informing them of her decision. Her letter to the estates was conciliatory; she sent them promises of immunity and requested they dispatch a representative of the Provisional Government to finalize the arrangements for her personal rule. In the event storms interrupted her voyage home, she also hoped to obtain Elizabeth’s permission to journey through her realm or at least to seek shelter in an English harbor. Unless absolutely necessary, travelers did not venture on to the North Sea before summertime and even then the weather could be challenging.
Throckmorton visited Mary in seclusion on 31 December, but for his queen’s official condolences to her, he awaited the arrival in France of the earl of Bedford, Elizabeth’s special envoy. Between 16 and 19 February, Bedford met with Mary three times at Fontainebleau, where she had accompanied the court on the 3rd, to tender Elizabeth’s condolences, to blame her French marriage for her realm’s disturbances, and to request she ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. Looking sorrowful, according to Throckmorton who accompanied Bedford, she replied that she could make no decisions concerning the treaty without her estates’ advice. This was an appropriate response, since the prevailing wisdom was that British queens regnant should seek and follow their male councilors’ recommendations.
Soon after Francis’s demise, rumors began to circulate about her remarriage;1 among the proposed candidates were Charles IX, Eric XIV of Sweden, Frederick II of Denmark, William of Nassau, prince of Orange, Don Carlos, Archduke Charles of Austria, Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, Albert III, duke of Bavaria, Don John of Austria, her uncle, Francis, Grand Prior of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in France, and the earl of Arran. Philip’s decision to send Don Juan Manrique to condole with her in late January fueled reports that a Spanish marriage was imminent. To all inquiries she responded that previous agreements required her to obtain the estates’ consent before remarrying. Throckmorton believed she valued her honor so highly that she would select only someone who would enhance her rank and reputation.
CHANGING POWER AT COURT
Meanwhile after becoming Charles’s regent in December 1560, Catherine persuaded Navarre, who had a hereditary claim to that high office, to serve as lieutenant general. Consequently, Mary’s uncles lost political authority, a change in their fortunes that surely explains her estrangement from Catherine. As recently as late 1559 Mary reported sympathetically to her mother that if Francis did not obey Catherine as well as he did, she would die and that would be disastrous for France. During his short reign the two French queens dined at the same table and attended sermons together daily. Three months after his demise, however, Catherine had begun to suspect that Mary was operating as a spy for Lorraine, who had left court, and his brother, Guise. In a letter to Sébastien de l’Aubespine, bishop of Limoges, the French ambassador in Spain, she explained that Mary was as obsequious as ever but that she was undeceived about the true feelings of her daughter-in-law, who undoubtedly favored her Guise relatives.2
From December 1560 Catherine’s activities, focusing as they did on the future of her three small children whom she believed God had placed in her care, seem to have caused Mary concerns that she was neglecting the appropriate mourning for her deceased son. Apparently pleased that the French dynasty’s future was no longer tied to that of the Guise family, Catherine sought to perpetuate that separation, opposing Mary’s union with her son, Charles, and also with Don Carlos. Catherine especially hoped to prevent Guise influence spreading in Spain because her eldest daughter was its queen and because she had been attempting to marry her youngest daughter Margaret to the Spanish prince.
Rumors of the French queens’ estrangement must have circulated at court. In June 1563 almost two years after Mary’s departure for Scotland, Prospero Publicola Santacroce, cardinal bishop of Chessamos and the papal nuncio to France, claimed that Catherine developed a grudge against her daughter-in-law after overhearing her demeaning her, a de’ Medici, as a shopkeeper’s daughter. Since Santacroce had replaced Sebastian Gualtier, bishop of Viterbo, as papal nuncio in 1561, it is odd that he should have so belatedly reported this gossip. Diplomats often repeated unconfirmed even stale rumors, as this surely was. Given Mary’s upbringing, it seems unlikely that she would have criticized her late husband’s mother within her hearing, and Catherine’s letter to Limoges confirms that she was not breaching court protocol. Catherine’s appointment of Coligny to the conseil des affaires and her conciliatory religious policies led Guise to conspire against her authority. In April after forming a triumvirate with Jean d’Albon, Marshal St André, and Montmorency, his former enemy, Guise sought Spanish aid to bolster the Gallic Church. While Philip felt obliged to support his mother-in-law’s regency, he felt sympathy for her opponents. He also disliked her policies, which many believed were encouraging the spread of Protestantism.
PREPARING TO RETURN TO SCOTLAND
On about 18 March Mary left for Rheims to celebrate Easter, breaking her trip at Paris on the 20th to inventory her possessions in preparation for returning home to Scotland. Surian explained that she departed Fontainebleau because she anticipated the Scottish envoy’s arrival to discuss her realm’s affairs. Diplomatic protocol was precise. According to him, it was inappropriate for these deliberations to occur at the French court since Francis’s death officially ended his realm’s concern with Scottish business.3 Earlier, during his reign, English ambassadors conferred with him in his presence chamber about his kingdom’s affairs and with Mary in her presence chamber about her realm’s business.
After reaching Rheims on the 26th, Mary celebrated Easter at St Pierre with her Aunt Renée and then left on 10 April for Nancy via Joinville, intending to return later to Rheims for Charles’s coronation. On the 14th while in transit with Lorraine, Guise, Aumale and other relatives, she encountered John Leslie, future bishop of Ross, at the village of Vitry-le-François in Champagne. Representing Catholic Scotsmen, most notably the earl of Huntly, the lord chancellor, Leslie suggested that she disembark at Aberdeen, meet up with the earl, who would gather a large army and overthrow the Protestants. Since Huntly had joined the Lords of the Congregation in April 1560, Mary distrusted him and refused this request. Unwilling to place herself under his control and to plunge Scotland into civil war, she was probably following her uncles’ advice to form at least a temporary alliance with the Protestant lords to facilitate her return.
The next day her half brother, Lord James, representing Scotland’s Provisional Government, caught up with her at St Dizier, 138 miles from Paris. In their discussions over a five-day period, she promised to uphold the Protestant settlement on the condition that she be allowed to worship privately as a Catholic and pledged to seek the estates’ consent before marrying a foreign prince but still declined to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. Her refusal to permit him to accompany her to Nancy caused him to surmise that she was going there to pursue secret marriage negotiations. His concern that she was withholding important information from him is understandable since he, himself, was duplicitous. He did not inform her of his discussions with Cecil and Elizabeth en route to France.
Furthermore, he later revealed his conversations with Mary to Throckmorton in Paris and to Cecil and Elizabeth on his return home through England. Regardless of whether Mary harbored personal reasons
for preventing his journey to Lorraine, it was inappropriate for him and his attendants to arrive at the duke’s court, representing the Provisional Government of Scotland, without an official commission or an invitation. As noted earlier, Surian maintained that, if she had met with the Scottish envoys at the French court, she would have violated diplomatic protocol. She, herself, explained on 22 April that Lord James had no commission except to do his duty to her as his monarch.
The conversations with her half brother and with Leslie on Huntly’s behalf alerted Mary to the existence of deep political divisions in Scotland, only partly rooted in religion, that ultimately erupted into revolts against her authority. By compounding her differences with Lord James and other Protestants, she signaled to Huntly her unwillingness to challenge overtly the governmental and religious status quo.4
At Joinville she met her grandmother, renewed her friendship with a cousin, Anne of Lorraine, dowager duchess of Arschot, and greeted Archibald Crawfurd, parson of Eaglesham, her mother’s almoner. He had recently brought her corpse to Fécamp, Normandy, where it lay in state at the cathedral before its interment at St Pierre. The grateful queen appointed him her almoner until she could grant him a benefice.
The purpose of Mary’s visit to Nancy was to witness the baptism of Vaudémont’s child, her godson and Lady Arschot’s nephew, but it is possible that Lord James was correct and that discussions about her possible marriage did occur. Until 1564 Lady Arschot remained hopeful that Philip would name his son Don Carlos the regent of the Spanish-controlled Netherlands and that Mary would become the regent’s wife. The House of Lorraine possessed a claim to Guelders through the marriage of King René, Lady Arschot’s grandfather and Mary’s great-grandfather, to Philippa, the sister and heiress of Charles, the last Egmond duke of Guelders, who died childless. Lady Arschot’s father, Duke Anthony, lost his bid to enforce his mother Philippa’s claim to Guelders when Emperor Charles seized it in 1543 from William of Cleves, who had attempted to exercise an even more ancient claim to the duchy than Lorraine’s when he became its ruler in 1538. If Mary did wed Don Carlos after he became the Netherlands’ regent, her maternal relatives could view her marriage as a means of recovering their lost rights.
Lady Arschot’s presence also fed rumors that Mary might wed William of Orange, whom she had met at the Paris wedding of Elizabeth to Philip’s proxy. William was the cousin and heir of Lady Arschot’s first husband, René of Nassau, prince of Orange. Shortly after reaching Nancy on the 22 April where guests were entertained with hunting and plays, Mary was stricken by tertian fever and decided to return with her grandmother to Joinville, convalescing there until late May and missing, therefore, Charles’s coronation on the 15th.
On the 28th after spending two days at Rheims, Mary departed for St Germain, where the king, the queen regent, Prince Henry, Navarre, Condé, and others greeted her on 10 June. Shortly thereafter, she left court for the Louvre and then for Lorraine’s castle at Dampierre. On the 18th, having returned to the Louvre, she assured Throckmorton of her determination to go home that summer, despite not having fully recovered her health. While awaiting Elizabeth’s response to her request for a passport to land in England in case of an emergency at sea, Mary suffered another, shorter bout of tertian fever. Then on 20 and 21 July, after Throckmorton explained that Elizabeth had denied her a passport because she refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, Mary replied that she would consult with her estates about the treaty and reminded him that she had not worn England’s arms since her husband’s death, implying that she had been following his and his councilors’ advice. Indeed, in late December 1560 Throckmorton commented on her former subjection to Francis and thought, considering her youth, she was showing wisdom, modesty, and great judgment. Even without the passport she planned to return home because her arrangements were well advanced and her baggage had been dispatched to Le Havre. The seas that could be treacherous to navigate even in the summer months could not deter her.
DEPARTING FRANCE
On 25 July after the royal family hosted a four-day series of parties for her at St Germain, she began the 148-mile trip to Calais with six Guise uncles and the duchess of Guise. As their route took them through Normandy and Picardy, she hoped to honor her mother’s body at Fécamp, but the illness of Lorraine and Guise that delayed them at Méru on the 28th ended this plan. They were at Beauvais on 3 August, rested at Abbeville on the 7th and 8th, then left for the Abbey of Forest Monstrier, and reached Boulogne on the 10th and Calais on the 11th. About noon on the 14th, her fleet set sail. Realizing that refusing to grant Mary a passport was a breach of etiquette and opposed, as Surian said, “to the dictates of humanity,”5 Elizabeth belatedly forwarded one that arrived after her cousin’s departure.
Although not with her on this voyage, Buchanan, her future tutor and court poet, later alleged that Lorraine advised his niece to leave with him her furniture and wardrobe, presumably including her jewels, from concerns that they might be lost at sea. She reportedly responded: “When she ventured upon danger, she did not see why she should take greater care of her valuables, than of her person.”6 This was surely Buchanan’s little joke about the cardinal’s alleged greed, since when he wrote it, he was one of Mary’s bitterest enemies. Jewels did actually figure in her farewell, as she gave a string of pearls to Lorraine and a necklace of assorted gems to the duchess. Much more important than mere decorative trinkets, jewels constituted portable wealth that during perilous times could be buried in the ground without fear of decay. As coins were scarce and bullion was rare and inferior, a government’s prime asset was its gems that could be substituted for money. Both Châtelherault and her mother had exchanged many pieces for equipment and supplies to defend against English aggression. In 1556 the duke forwarded to Mary in France the items he still possessed, including 31 rings, many jeweled ornaments, 12 pieces of cloth-of-gold or silver tapestry, and a bejeweled dagger presented to her father by Francis I. Her inventory in 1561 included 159 items, many of which were deposited in the Jewel House at Edinburgh Castle.
Among her attendants on the two galleys, one painted red and the other white, and two other ships were three Guise uncles, Aumale, Elbeouf, and Francis, the Grand Prior, and five other noteworthy Frenchmen, Damville and his servant, Pierre de Boscosel de Châtelard, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, Michel de Castelnau, seigneur de Mauvissière, who had been raised in Guise’s household, and, René Benoist, her confessor. A few Scots also accompanied her, including Leslie and the four Maries. As the fleet departed, according to Brantôme’s later account, they witnessed the sinking of a vessel with its entire crew, a tragedy interpreted as a bad omen for the voyage.
Brantôme also recalled Mary’s despair and repeated her sad words of farewell at their departure: “Adieu, France! Beloved France, Adieu!” When it was supper time after five hours at sea, the grief-stricken queen, he noted, could eat only a salad and chose to spend the night on deck. Before retiring, she asked the agreeable pilot to awaken her in the morning if the coast were still visible. He kept his promise, and she again said good-bye to the realm where she had lived for 13 years. Expressing sadness as she was leaving was an appropriate way for her to show respect for the land of her upbringing, but Brantôme surely exaggerated the signs of her grief. On a seafaring ship the deck is the best place to stay to avoid seasickness, and others, including Châtelard, slept there. The ship’s movement could also have been as responsible for her diminished appetite as her melancholy. The main meal, furthermore, was served before the voyage began.7
Brantôme’s recollections have led writers to emphasize her reluctance to leave France, but despite Elizabeth’s decision to withhold the passport, Mary insisted on sailing home, risking the stormy weather that might force her to land illegally in England rather than using her cousin’s unfriendliness as an excuse to linger. And why should she act any differently? Although Scotland was not Christendom’s most prestigious realm, the papal list of precedence in 1504 ranke
d it above Navarre, Cyprus, Bohemia, Poland, and Denmark. Many in this hierarchical society avidly sought to maintain and achieve regal status. In a letter of 1549 complaining about the lack of French support for Scotland, for example, her mother claimed that nothing ought to be spared to save a kingdom. Princess Madeleine had fulfilled her royal ambitions by marrying James V in 1537, and Charles the Bold, the last great duke of Burgundy, had died at Nancy in 1477 while attempting to wrest Lorraine from Mary’s ancestor, René II. Because in the Middle Ages, Lorraine had gained recognition as the kingdom of Lotharingia, Burgundy had hoped possession of it would make possible his advancement to kingship.
In 1561 Scotland was Mary’s dowry: without it she might be unable to arrange another prestigious marriage. When quizzed about her union with his son, Archduke Charles, Emperor Ferdinand I responded that after her realm received her, he would consider the proposal. In fact, neither he nor most other potential fathers-in-law or husbands were prepared to fund a Scottish conquest for her. Later as Elizabeth’s prisoner, she repeatedly requested English, French, and Spanish assistance for recovering Scotland and then became irate when her son refused to associate with her in its governance.
In France she realized that the royal family valued her betrothal to Francis partly because Scotland was her dowry. She did not reject her heritage, which lent her a certain distinction or charm. The courtiers affectionately called her La Petite Sauvage, and she sent for Scottish ponies and terriers to amuse them. Brantôme remembered her dressing in highland plaids and speaking melodiously her native tongue, which he deemed barbaric. She even conversed in Scots with Throckmorton, doubtlessly a political strategy because he could communicate in French. Since in less than two years, Guise would be assassinated in the first of eight religious wars, Mary was leaving behind in 1561 neither a peaceful realm nor a sympathetic court.
Mary Queen of Scots Page 8
