Tudors Versus Stewarts

by Linda Porter

  For ten years, Catherine was childless, a circumstance explained by both her husband’s reluctance and the late onset of puberty. Then in 1543 she finally gave birth to a son, the first of a large family of eleven, not all of whom survived. Mary Queen of Scots would soon get to know this growing brood and her future mother-in-law, who took a keen interest in her education, very well. What she made of Diane de Poitiers is impossible to say, though she must have observed that lady on her visits to court. In one respect, however, Diane had a very direct influence on Mary, when she ousted Lady Fleming, the young Queen of Scots’ governess, in 1551. Henry II may have been devoted to Diane but he was not immune to the temptations offered by the daughter of James IV and they began an affair. As Lady Fleming occupied the same suite of accommodation as her charge, Henry’s nocturnal visits and surreptitious early morning exits were soon known to Diane de Poitiers, who made a scene and accused Henry of dishonouring the Queen of Scots by such behaviour. After giving birth to a son by the French king, Janet Fleming was sent back to Scotland in disgrace. Diane did not tolerate rivals, except, of course, Queen Catherine herself. But then she hardly regarded Henry’s wife as a threat to her own position.

  While he may, from time to time, have had trouble with the women in his life, Henry II began his reign with notable successes on the international scene. He was supremely confident about Scotland now that he had its monarch under his wing and there was every reason to believe that Mary of Guise, though not yet regent in Scotland, would continue to influence affairs there in his favour. He had bought (or so he thought) the regent Arran, now enjoying his French title of duke of Châtelherault, and most of the Scottish nobility preferred a French alliance to English domination. There was the possibility of religious divisions working against him but he would commit men and arms to keep this in check and support the queen dowager in every way he could.

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  SO MARY STEWART remained firmly in France and there her education and training, eventually overseen by her Guise uncle, Charles, the cardinal of Lorraine, began in earnest. There was also input from Catherine de Medici, who corrected some of Mary’s earliest efforts at Latin, and the ubiquitous Diane de Poitiers. The Queen of Scots was given an education that was very typical of that prescribed for Renaissance ladies of high birth, with the notable difference that, because she was also a queen in her own right, her curriculum more closely matched that of the dauphin. Soon after she arrived in France she was learning French, and her quick mastery of the language was noted. Dancing, that vital accomplishment of aristocratic ladies, also featured firmly as she became familiar with the etiquette of the court. By 1554 there was a much more serious academic emphasis. Mary was learning to compose letters, including formal ones to the dauphin, her intended husband, and to the other royal children; she had also begun to translate from French into Latin, write poetry and learn about ancient Greece and Rome. Later she would write speeches and even deliver an oration to Henry II, but in this she evidently had to be heavily coached. In addition, she had lessons in history, geography and languages, becoming fluent in Italian as well as French, and learnt some Spanish. She may also have known a little Greek and Hebrew. Nowadays we would regard her curriculum as notably lacking in the development of numeracy skills, though she must have learned basic arithmetic.

  A functioning grasp of accounts was necessary for the running of any household, large or small, and Mary’s was no exception. Women were not remote from the day-to-day management of their estates and households in the sixteenth century and, indeed, in the frequent absences of their husbands on military campaigns or at court, many aristocratic ladies handled family and estate finances with great success. In England, Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder daughter, had been signing off her monthly privy purse expenses since she was in her teens and as a great landowner in her brother’s reign kept a close eye on expenditure, even though she had trusted servants to undertake the detail of such work for her. Mary Queen of Scots began to sign her accounts from an even earlier age. But before that there had been difficulties in the payment of servants and a dispute about the significance of her own status.

  The problem was partly, if unintentionally, exacerbated by Catherine de Medici. When the dauphin was given a separate establishment of his own, the queen wanted her daughters to stay together at court, and it was at first expected that Mary would remain with them. This arrangement, which appeared to suggest that a queen regnant of Scotland was the equivalent of the daughter of a king of France, did not go down well with the Guise family and was probably troubling to Mary as well, as she had already begun to exhibit a keen awareness of who she was. Feeling that her continued presence in the princesses’ establishment undermined his niece’s status (and therefore family honour as well), the cardinal of Lorraine pressed Mary of Guise to find the money to fund a separate household for Mary. The justification for this was to be provided by declaring that the young queen had attained her majority at eleven years of age, a year earlier than was the custom in Scotland. By the beginning of 1554 she had her own apartments and presence chamber, where, as Queen of Scots, she could receive official delegations and hold audiences.

  It was possible to set up the separate household because Mary of Guise signed over to her daughter the pension of 20,000 livres she received annually from the king of France, an additional 25,000 from her estates in Scotland and some smaller sums from her French estates. Of the total of 58,000 livres, 5,000 went on ‘clothes, plate and pocket money’.3

  So life was not all learning and official functions. The young Scottish queen was the possessor of an elegant and growing wardrobe and a collection of jewellery. And there were pleasurable pastimes. Queen Catherine taught her how to embroider and Mary’s skill in this respect provided comfort in the long years of her English exile. Some of her work can still be seen, most notably at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. Mary also loved music and was a competent musician, as befitted someone of mixed Tudor and Stewart descent. Her singing voice, though not outstanding, was better than that of her father, James V, and she could play a variety of instruments, including the virginals and lute. Painting and chess were other pastimes and Mary was also an enthusiast for outdoor sports. She loved horse riding, hunting and playing tennis.

  Mary’s tutors, Claude Millot, Antoine Fouquelin and Jacques Amyot, the last a classicist, also employed to teach the dauphin more advanced Latin, were carefully chosen to give her the best possible education. The training she received was impeccable so far as it went, but what did it fit her for? Despite the fact that she kept up her Scots and some evidence that at least as early as 1552 she was being kept informed about Scottish affairs by her mother, presumably so that she would not be completely cut off from an understanding of the governance of the country she ruled at least in name, it is hard to escape the view that Mary was being brought up as a queen consort of France, not as a queen regnant of Scotland. She might have had her own rooms at court, but her destiny had changed when she crossed the sea. One day she and Francis would be king and queen of Scotland and, as a woman, she would defer to him, even if she was the true hereditary occupant of the throne. Her isolation from Scotland and all things Scottish began early, when her Scottish male attendants, thought by the refined courtiers of France to be lacking social skills and even basic cleanliness, were sent back home. Lady Fleming clung on until her pregnancy became an embarrassment and she, too, returned. The Four Marys were packed off elsewhere to be educated separately, though they still saw the queen from time to time and figured among her servants in her household accounts. This left Mary with a new governess, Françoise d’Estamville, dame de Parois, an elderly lady of unimpeachable virtue but a rigid and unloving woman who did not get on with her high-spirited and proud charge. This lady’s subsequent vindictive backbiting demonstrated to Mary early on that the French court was not a carefree place. Trust must be given carefully and spying was rife. It was better, in this atmosphere where superficial politeness and exquisite manners
often hid much darker intentions, not to give too much of yourself away.

  Mary’s relationships with the French royal children were, nevertheless, positive and affectionate. She was fond of the king’s daughters and initially shared a bedroom with Princess Élisabeth. The dauphin Francis, a year younger than Mary, had been taught to pay her small attentions as soon as she arrived in France. They were to grow up together, working towards the bond of matrimony that would unite their crowns. Such closeness was unusual for sixteenth-century monarchs, many of whom did not meet their spouses until just before the wedding. But though there seems to have been a genuine warmth and concern for each other as the two children grew, this does not mean that it would have translated into deep love in adulthood. They were two very different people. Mary grew tall, regal and confident. Francis, though intelligent, was a stunted stammerer who was never really well. Their relationship, not surprisingly, seems to have been more like that of brother and sister, even by the time they married. Both were content to do their duty – the course of their young lives had been shaped around this concept – and romantic love, if it ever came, would be a bonus. And though Mary may have looked more robust than her baby-faced intended, her own health was far from certain. Especially from her early teens onwards, she was often ill. There were unexplained fevers, fainting fits and ongoing digestive problems. These latter, in particular, would bedevil Mary throughout her adult life and bring her apparently close to death on more than one occasion. Opinion is still divided as to the causes of Mary’s frequent bouts of ill health, but stress undoubtedly played its part in some of these episodes. A gastric ulcer is probably a more likely explanation for her eating disorder than acute intermittent porphyria, a rare hereditary disease affecting the blood, even though this diagnosis is favoured by one of her more recent biographers.4

  The high point of Mary’s early childhood in France, however, came in 1550–51, when she was reunited with her mother, Mary of Guise, during a long and momentous visit by the queen dowager of Scotland. There were several reasons why James V’s widow wished to visit France at this time. Of course, the desire to see her daughter again, and also her son, the duke of Longueville, from whom she had parted so sadly eleven years before, weighed heavily on Mary of Guise. But there were political motives beyond these natural desires to spend time with her children again. Her influence in Scotland had ebbed and flowed in the years since the death of James V, but she had maintained and even improved her position. Arran had not succeeded in negating her influence and she was still determined to oust him if she could. The assistance and support of Henry II in achieving this aim was vital. Now that her daughter was safe across the water and successfully established in France, she believed the time was right to make the journey home.

  She arrived in September 1550 with an impressive retinue of Scottish nobility. Always keenly aware of the benefits of distributing patronage effectively, the dowager queen did not want to lose this chance of making further allies and tying Scotland ever more tightly to France. The senior nobles accompanying her were the earl of Huntly, ready to offer his services to anyone for a price, and the earl of Cassilis. Mary of Guise was probably reunited with her daughter on 25 September 1550 at Rouen and as the child had recently recovered from a bout of illness it must have been an especially happy occasion. The grandest of festivities was to follow this personal triumph, for Henry II, determined to display his successes as protector of Scotland and recoverer of Boulogne, planned an official entry into the major city of Normandy that would leave no one in doubt of the imperial nature of his aims. This very public projection of his image was intended to challenge that of the Emperor Charles V. After a series of parades featuring the great and the good of the town, a series of impressive tableaux entertained and awed the crowd. But nothing was more inspiring than the representation of the king himself. A chariot carried a lifelike effigy of the king, wearing a splendid suit of armour ‘surrounded by palm leaves, his head wreathed like a Roman victor’s. Seated at his feet were his four children, Francis, Elisabeth, Claude and two-year-old Louis.’5 No opportunity was lost to emphasize the future role of the dauphin as King of Scots when he married Mary. Scotland was accorded a significant place in the pageant and the associated celebrations, but only because its already crowned queen was going to marry the heir to the French throne. Mary Queen of Scots and her mother watched the processions from a gilded pavilion but the Scottish queen was given no formal role in the festivities. She would be an appendage, not a major actor. It is hard to believe that the two queens regnant of England, Mary and Elizabeth, her contemporaries, would have accepted such a role with equanimity.

  Mary of Guise and her daughter took no direct part in these festivities but the dowager made sure that her long visit would bear fruit. At some point, perhaps at Blois in February 1551, she apparently persuaded Henry II that, if he wanted her to return to Scotland, then she would only agree to do so with the full powers of the regency. Arran must go if she was to stay. The Scottish nobility who formed part of her train, even the former ‘assured lords’ who had promised much and delivered little to Henry VIII, seem to have accepted this outcome. Their acquiescence may, in part, be explained by the generous financial inducements Henry II was offering.

  Although Mary of Guise stayed in France for more than a year, her visit did not always go well. In April 1551 a plot to assassinate the Queen of Scots was uncovered. Improbable as it sounds, one of the Scots who had attacked St Andrews Castle and been imprisoned in France had found his way into the king’s Scottish Guard and was planning to seek revenge by poisoning the young queen, blackmailing her cook into spiking her favourite dessert, frittered pears. The plot was foiled but left Mary of Guise understandably nervous for her daughter’s safety. Worse was to follow for the dowager, however. On her way back to the French coast her son, who was travelling with her, fell mortally ill. He died in her arms, the fourth son she had lost and perhaps the most distressing of all. Even when she finally set foot on Scottish soil again, she still had to wait more than two years before Arran was finally removed from the regency. Her daughter’s official coming of age provided the occasion. On 19 February 1554, after eleven years of warfare, plots and recriminations, Arran finally agreed to go. Mary of Guise had been greatly helped in the achievement of this aim by Henry II’s lieutenant governor and ambassador in Scotland, Henri Cleutin, Sieur d’Oisel, who had supported her and challenged Arran for a number of years.

  Arran did not go easily and he negotiated safeguards for himself and his reputation that show that the man often represented as a ditherer was very difficult to remove. D’Oisel reported back to Henry II: ‘with the help of God, this Princess’s leadership and also the fact that the said Governor has seen and knows all the Lords of this kingdom, both spiritual and temporal, who accompany us here and remain firm and steadfast, we have finally won the victory to the great regret of the said Governor.’ Arran’s regret was both personal and patriotic. He must have known, in the two days of fierce bargaining in which he gave up the role he considered as his birthright, that the French would now rule in Scotland. For, dynast and diehard supporter of her daughter as she was, Mary of Guise was also, in reality, an agent of France.

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  THE NEW QUEEN REGENT took up her post after a summer of high drama in her southern neighbour, England. Its outcome would have a palpable effect on both Scotland and France. For in the winter of 1553 Edward VI, the fifteen-year-old monarch who had been carefully prepared to assume the full mantle of government by the duke of Northumberland, fell ill. At first, it seemed nothing more than the sort of heavy winter cold that still afflicts many people at that time of the year. Apart from the normal childhood ailments, Edward had been an active boy who enjoyed sports. He was by no means the sickly swot of popular historical fiction. Whether he had an underlying tubercular condition of the sort that seems to have run in the males of the Tudor family we shall never know but there had been nothing that had caused serious alarm.
Yet as the spring arrived it was evident that the king was not recovering as he should. A bacterial infection seems to have slowly but remorselessly overwhelmed him. By early June it was obvious even to the boy himself that his illness was mortal. This raised the pressing and difficult question of who should succeed him.

  The immediate heir, according to Henry VIII’s Act of Succession of 1544, was his much older half-sister, Mary, followed by his father’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, the child of Anne Boleyn. But though Edward had been close to Mary during his childhood they had grown apart during his reign. Mary stayed steadfast to the Catholic religion while Edward, educated by religious reformers and encouraged by his bishops and advisers, was, by this time, a convinced, even zealous, Protestant. The thought of Mary ascending to the throne of England and undoing all the ecclesiastical changes that he had enthusiastically supported distressed the dying youth. It also disturbed Northumberland and the king’s councillors, who saw their influence waning rapidly if Mary should become queen. There was, however, another way out of this succession dilemma. Edward had earlier pondered on the question of who might succeed him in a schoolroom exercise. He decided that the best way forward was to remove both his sisters from the succession altogether (on the grounds that they were still declared illegitimate) and substitute his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, the great-niece of Henry VIII and granddaughter of Princess Mary Tudor, younger sister of Queen Margaret of Scotland. One can only imagine Margaret’s fury had she still been alive.