The queen enjoyed outdoor and indoor entertainments. All her palaces possessed gardens in which she took walks and practiced archery, usually shooting at the butts (mounds on which targets were erected). In April 1562 Randolph observed her and Patrick, the future sixth Lord Lindsay of the Byres, competing against Moray and his wife in this archery contest. As the roads were primitive, she mostly traveled on horseback. When Elizabeth granted her a license in 1561 to obtain six or eight geldings, Lethington responded that she needed at least 15 or 16.
Randolph characterized her indoor pastimes as pleasant and comely. Despite Knox’s complaints, the ambassador recorded only occasional festivities. He noted banqueting, masking, and running at the ring in early May 1563, probably in celebration of May Day. Annually on 6 January, Twelfth Day, her courtiers played a game in which the person who found a bean concealed in a cake reigned as the night’s sovereign. In 1564 the queen permitted the winner, Mary Fleming, to dress in her robes and jewels. For that night and for two succeeding nights, Buchanan composed Latin verses for the banquet servers to sing. In February 1564 before Shrovetide, she hosted a feast that Randolph judged as sumptuous as those usually honoring royal marriages. The following October after Lennox returned ending a 20-year absence, Mary, while masked, lost to him in a dice game a crystal jewel set in gold.
Six months later at Stirling on Easter Monday, 1565, Mary and her ladies twice dressed up as bourgeois wives and walked out to take pledges from individuals for a coin to attend her banquets, which were held at the house where Randolph usually stayed. To the guests’ amazement, she hosted the meals as their queen. In July 1565 about two weeks before their wedding, she strolled with Darnley twice into Edinburgh in disguise. Early modern monarchs often favored incognito visits with local people, avoiding the pomp and ceremony required for royal appearances. The disguises also provided them opportunities to be judged for their virtue rather than their lineage or status.
During quiet moments Mary studied languages and history. With Buchanan after dinner, she read Livy; one lesson included the Oppian Law, a criticism of women’s finery and a denunciation of their wielding political power. During the negotiations with Philip in 1564, she was observed studying Spanish. She also indicated a willingness to learn about other religions. When a copy of Theodore de Beza’s oration to the Gallic religious assembly at Poissy was forwarded to her in 1561, she and Elboeuf read it, and Buchanan dedicated an edition of his Latin paraphrases of the Psalms to her in 1564. She also owned a copy of the reformer, Peter Martyr’s treatise on the sacrament, which, of course, denied Catholic doctrine.
Several Scotsmen besides Buchanan composed poetry at her court, which was culturally as important and up to date as her father’s more famous one. As a New Year’s gift in 1562, Alexander Scott, her court’s most outstanding vernacular poet and a canon of the chapel royal at Stirling, wrote a poem welcoming her home. Alexander Seton penned elegant Latin verses, and the important heterogeneous Bannatyne Manuscript was collected by 1568. In addition, Alexander Montgomerie, an imitator of Ronsard’s style, and John Stewart of Baldynneis, a translator of Ariosto, were at her court but which, if any, of their compositions can be traced to her reign has not been established. Foreign scholars also visited her: Charles Utenhove, a Greek writer who probably reached Scotland in 1563, composed a sonnet for her, and Pietro Bizarri, an Italian Protestant who arrived in 1564, dedicated his De Bello ac Pace to her. He later testified that “she was beloved and esteemed in the highest degree by the whole kingdom and that the island enjoyed her most prudent and courageous government.”12
HEALTH PROBLEMS
Meanwhile she continued to endure bouts of ill health. An indisposition in June 1563 briefly kept her bedridden, but her first serious attack in Scotland occurred that December. Her attendants believed her excessive dancing on her birthday caused her sickness, but Randolph, noting that during the past two months she had often wept without cause, thought she caught cold from lingering too long at divine service or from her despair at failing to arrange her marriage. Although still unwell on 11 December she invited Randolph to her chamber to accept a ring from Elizabeth that she kissed several times signaling her desire for the friendship that this gift customarily validated. She possessed two jewels, she explained, that she would keep until her death, this one and a ring from Francis. By the 21st she was complaining of a pain near her spleen, which the physicians treated as a symptom of melancholy, since they believed an excessive display of emotion adversely affected the spleen. For several days, she underwent purgations to cleanse her body through bowel movements, and her attendants feared for her life, but she soon began to recover and was completely healed by February 1564.
END OF THE EARLIER COURTSHIPS AND DARNLEY’S ARRIVAL
By the end of 1564 both Mary’s Spanish and English marriage negotiations had stalled, but she did not relinquish hope that one of them might still have a successful outcome. While communications with England continued, Mary tried deceptive politics with Spain. She required her French resident ambassador, James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow, to schedule audiences with Catherine in January 1565 to delude others, particularly Philip, into believing that a French marriage was afoot.13 In the meantime, she began to consider marrying a bridegroom of Scottish and English descent.
That in February 1565 Darnley joined his father in Scotland to recover their family estates proved to be timely for their royal ambitions. Although Lennox, an English subject, had repeatedly petitioned Mary to restore his property, his requests only won serious attention in June 1563 when Elizabeth recommended that Mary give positive consideration to returning his lands that were forfeited in 1544. Since then, Lennox’s foe, Châtelherault, remained in possession of his estates despite conspiring against Mary of Guise’s authority. Sympathetic to the Hamiltons, Randolph challenged Lennox’s reinstatement not from fear that Mary might wed his son but from concerns about internal dissension. When Elizabeth retracted her permission for Lennox’s departure, Lethington and Moray protested that Protestantism’s survival did not depend upon his absence and that Mary considered a breach of promise as dishonorable. Elizabeth relented, and Lennox arrived at Edinburgh in September 1564, having left his family behind as hostages. Mary attempted to reconcile him and Châtelherault, but the offended duke only belatedly attended the December parliament that ratified her restoration of the earl’s title and estates. As she explained, since Lennox was of her blood and name, she could not be so unkind as to refuse his petition.
When he requested permission for Darnley to join him so that they could be enfeoffed in their property together, a common legal procedure, Elizabeth assented, still retaining his mother as hostage. Later after Mary and he were wed, some contemporaries, including Elizabeth, charged that Mary solicited Darnley’s visit because she believed his lineage made him an eligible husband for her.14 After reaching Edinburgh in February 1565 and learning that Mary was at the castle of Sir John Wemyss, her lieutenant in Fife, Darnley, who was three years her junior, crossed over to the northern side of the Firth of Forth and met with her on the 17th. According to James Melville, who surely could not remember her precise words, she exclaimed that he was “the lustiest and best proportioned long man that she had ever seen; for he was of a high stature, long and small, even and erect, and from his youth well instructed in all honest and homely exercises.”15
Biographers who believe she was enamored with Darnley assume that the word, lustiest, referred to his sexual allure. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, however, contains numerous definitions for lust, including among others: cheerful, light-hearted persons, filled with or giving pleasure, delightful to look at, lovely faces, good-looking people, handsome, gallant, dashing, well-built, sturdy men, vigorous, healthy people, even fair, gallant ships, and finally, carnal, sensual pleasures.
Melville’s usage of this word seems similar to Randolph’s, who referred to Mary as lustier, probably meaning more vigorous or healthier, than she was before le
aving to brave the winter storms. Earlier, in response to Elizabeth’s remark that he preferred Darnley to Leicester as Mary’s spouse, Melville characterized the young man as inappropriate for a woman of spirit because he was more like a woman than a man, lusty, beardless, and with the face of a lady. In the sixteenth century, facial hair was thought to confer masculinity: the beard made the man. Later, Robert Melville even called the infant James lusty. On 18 February, meanwhile, Darnley departed to visit his father who was at Dunkeld with their kinsman, the earl of Atholl, but returned to Wemyss on the 24th and traveled with Mary to Holyrood. Two days later in a conciliatory gesture, he attended Knox’s service with Moray before going to Holyrood and dancing a galliard with her.
During the next few weeks while Darnley attended court daily, Mary still hoped that Elizabeth would agree to obtain official recognition of her English succession rights, making it possible for her to marry Leicester. On 16 March Mary received extremely disappointing news. Elizabeth sent a letter, informing her cousin that she would not allow her successor to be named until she decided not to marry or notified her determination not to marry. After a tearful audience with her about Elizabeth’s decision, Randolph reported that Mary’s grief sprang from the “dishonor and shame” she felt from having been so deceived.16
From Darnley’s arrival, Randolph carefully monitored Mary’s behavior toward him. On 15 March he assured Cecil he saw no great “goodwill borne to him” and on the 31st informed Henry Sidney that he had seen no evidence that Mary’s heart was affected.17 On the latter day Randolph traveled with the court to Stirling where he continued to observe Mary’s interactions with Darnley; the ambassador and his partner, Mary Beaton, defeated the two of them in a game of billiards called biles. Shortly thereafter, Darnley contracted a serious case of measles but was past danger by 6 April.
By then Randolph had detected a change in Mary’s treatment of Darnley. The ambassador was astounded to learn that she was greatly honoring the ailing patient by sending him food from her own table. Later, because Darnley continued to suffer pains in his stomach and head, she delayed departing for Perth.
After 16 March, the day that the greatly disappointed Mary had received Elizabeth’s written refusal to name her successor, the Scottish queen had been considering measures that might change her cousin’s mind. She probably demonstrated a public interest in Darnley in early April because she was finalizing plans to send Lethington to London for discussions with English officials about marrying Leicester. Her behavior toward Darnley, which she knew Randolph would reveal to his government, can be interpreted as a warning that she had a groom in reserve if arrangements to wed Leicester could not be worked out to her satisfaction.
Reaching London in mid-April, Lethington discussed the Don Carlos match with Diego Guzman de Silva, dean of Toledo, the Spanish ambassador, and Mary’s succession claims with English officials. Lethington’s instructions required him to discover if Mary’s diplomatic ploy in January to make Philip believe she was arranging a French alliance had caused him to rethink his previous rejection of her marriage to Don Carlos. Lethington dispatched de Silva’s and Elizabeth’s responses, which reached Stirling on 3 May, that Philip would not reopen the negotiations18 and that Elizabeth would not name Mary as her successor.
While Lethington was checking on the viability of her English and Spanish courtships in London, Cecil was digesting Randolph’s dispatch, written at Berwick on the 15th, that Mary was favoring Darnley over all other suitors. When questioned about this report, Lethington confirmed Randolph’s assertions but denied the rumors that Darnley’s relatives had been spreading in England that she risked her life to “attend upon him” with “much diligence” during his infectious bout.19 Overlooking this denial, all her recent biographers, including Antonia Fraser, Jenny Wormald, and John Guy have credited the rumors that she fell in love with Darnley while nursing him. As a queen regnant in this hierarchical, honor-driven culture, Mary would have seriously damaged her reputation by attending to the medical needs of a young, unmarried man. It should also be noted that it is usually the grateful patient not the nurse who falls in love.
A concerned Elizabeth decided to send Throckmorton to warn Mary not to wed Darnley. In the ambassador’s initial instructions, drafted by Cecil on 24 April, can be found the confirmation that Lethington was denying that Mary attended to her ailing suitor. Two letters Cecil recently received from Berwick had alerted him to this rumored behavior. On the 18th Bedford related that the bearer of Lennox’s letter reporting on Darnley’s convalescence claimed she risked her health to visit him during his illness, and on the 23rd Randolph stated enigmatically that the greatest and fairest often visited the ailing Darnley. It is noteworthy that Bedford, Randolph, and Cecil never used the word nurse in these documents. Indeed, in Randolph’s dispatches of the 7th and the 15th, written after he left Stirling on the 6th, he failed to refer either to her nursing or to her attendance on Darnley. The news he forwarded on the 23rd about her visits to Darnley was from others’ reports and not from personal observation.20
Randolph’s dispatches reporting that she was favoring Darnley and contemplating marriage to him probably caught Elizabeth and her councilors by surprise. They did not confirm Throckmorton’s final instructions until 2 May. Their concern about Guise influence on Mary was seemingly more significant for the fears that it aroused in them about her completing a foreign Catholic marriage than for its actual effect on her decisions. Cecil probably met Francis, the Grand Prior, and Elboeuf when Elizabeth entertained them at her court as they returned overland to France in 1561 and 1562. Any discussions Cecil and Elizabeth might have held with them neither diminished the secretary’s firm belief in the existence of a Guise conspiracy to destroy Protestantism nor the queen’s opinion that Mary’s uncles were the ones mainly responsible for her assumption of England’s royal arms. Some foreign diplomats were predicting that the Guises would choose Mary’s next husband, an opinion expressed by Randolph, who had greatly criticized Elboeuf in his dispatches. In 1563 partly in response to Lorraine’s attempts to match Mary with the archduke, Elizabeth had agreed to reopen marriage negotiations with the Austrian prince.
In 1564 Randolph did report troubling gossip to Cecil. Many Scots, he claimed, believed that when their queen invited Mary to wed any appropriate Englishmen, she actually meant Darnley; the ambassador had also heard that they believed Mary preferred Darnley to the other English candidates. Despite these and other rumors, Elizabeth relied on her ambassador’s assurances that her cousin would never marry beneath the rank of prince and ennobled Dudley to make him more acceptable to her. In September 1565 two months after Mary wed Darnley, Cecil was still complaining about the inequality of the match, and when Mary was her prisoner, Elizabeth continued to accuse her of enticing her English subject to Scotland and marrying him without her permission.
Throckmorton’s initial instructions on 24 April directed him to warn Mary to wed Leicester rather than Darnley, but if she must choose a foreign prince, she could marry Condé. Apparently, this Huguenot’s name surfaced because after his wife died in 1564, Elizabeth’s advisors heard that Lorraine was recommending him to his niece. Following discussions with Paul de Foix, the French ambassador, Cecil dropped this option from Throckmorton’s final instructions, dated 2 May, which ordered him to inform Mary that she was free to marry any English nobleman except Darnley. However, only if she wed Leicester, whom Elizabeth regarded as if he were her own son and whose virtues she esteemed, would she permit an inquiry into Mary’s English succession rights or a publication of her claims to the throne.
After receiving Lethington’s negative messages from London on 3 May about both her inheritance claims and the Spanish marriage, Mary planned on the 15th to grant Darnley the lordship of Ardmanoch and the earldom of Ross and to knight 14 men, nominated by Lennox, and scheduled on the 16th to advance Darnley to the dukedom of Albany. When Throckmorton reached Stirling on the 15th and found the gates closed to him, he reti
red under protest to await her summons to an audience, as he still hoped to prevent Darnley’s ennoblement. Later that day, Mary explained to Throckmorton that she informed Elizabeth as soon as she had decided to marry Darnley, but she promised to delay the ducal ceremony until after receiving further communications from her cousin.
Mary then sought her privy council’s approval for her decision to wed Darnley, but without the presence of Moray, who had left court greatly offended by her marital plans. Upon gaining the council’s agreement, Mary invested Darnley with the earldom and knighted the appropriate candidates. Despite the council’s official action, some of its assenting members, including Lethington, were privately opposed to her plans. He later complained to Archbishop Beaton that she had advanced Darnley to great honors without the advice of her friends or her subjects and had received only ingratitude from him.
Throckmorton believed she was either a victim of love or cunning and recommended that Elizabeth incarcerate Darnley’s mother and invite Anne, dowager duchess of Somerset, to court. As she was the mother-in-law of Catherine Grey, who was still under arrest for marrying Hertford, observers might view this royal treatment of the duchess as a move toward recognizing the Grey succession claims.
Mary’s wedding preparations included dispatching messengers to the continent concerning Darnley’s candidacy. As Francis’s widow, she appropriately sought his mother’s permission before remarrying. Both Catherine and Philip accepted her choice primarily because Darnley was neither Spanish nor French. Since she and Darnley were related in the second and fourth degrees of consanguinity, Mary also sent William Chisholm, bishop of Dunblane, to Pius IV to request a dispensation. Although unenthusiastic about his niece’s plans, Lorraine assisted Chisholm in obtaining the dispensation, which was issued in September after the wedding but was backdated to May. It was not unusual for individuals to wed before a dispensation arrived or even to request one retroactively.
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