by Linda Porter
One suspects that, in fact, she did. By 1 June she could not eat or sleep and six days later, propped up in a chair, she sent for the Scottish lords over whom she had ruled for six years and whom she had known for much longer, since she first came to Scotland as a reluctant but dutiful second wife to James V. Châtelherault, with whom she had vied so long for the regency, Lord James Stewart and the earl of Argyll were chief among those who came for their last audience with her. Still pleading with them to uphold the French alliance, she requested their obedience to her daughter and asked their forgiveness for any offence she had given during her time in Scotland. Even for the stern and ambitious men who had opposed her, it was an emotional interview. Eventually, she lost the power of speech but lingered for a few days more, dying with Lord James and Argyll at her side just after midnight on 11 June 1560. Her body lay in a coffin in the Chapel of St Margaret atop Castle Rock in Edinburgh until, in March 1561, it was returned to France, to be buried in the choir of the church of St Pierre-les-Dames in Reims, where her sister was abbess. Her tomb survived until the French Revolution, when, like the fate that befell the last resting place in Perth of her mother-in-law, Margaret Tudor, it was destroyed.
Mary Queen of Scots was not informed of her mother’s death for more than two weeks and was overwhelmed by grief, as her French family had feared. In Scotland, the exercise of power passed to that doughty survivor James Hamilton, duke of Châtelherault, and to Mary’s half-brother, the increasingly ambitious Lord James Stewart. William Maitland of Lethington, who had been Mary of Guise’s secretary, would serve her daughter in the same capacity. Maitland was a man of great ability, descended from an old Anglo–Norman family but not of the Scottish nobility. He completed the trio of those who now governed in the names of Francis and Mary, whether the young pair in France liked it or not. In agreeing to the Treaty of Edinburgh, the Guise family betrayed their own niece for a brief respite of personal survival, hoping that they could increase their influence over young Francis II.
In August 1560, two months after her mother’s death, Throckmorton recorded at some length an interview he had with Mary Queen of Scots at the French court which is highly revealing of the young queen’s attitude towards her role at the time – or, at least, the impression that she wished to give. It should be remembered that the ambassador, who had long been in and around the English court but was not as important as he liked to believe (a trait he had in common with most diplomats of the time) was primarily concerned with making the right noises on behalf of his own queen. Punctiliously referring to Mary throughout as ‘the French Queen’, Throckmorton noted that she deferred to Catherine de Medici in the first instance but when the ambassador had said his little piece to her mother-in-law, Mary then conferred with him in Scots.
Throckmorton defended Elizabeth’s honour and intentions:
however much she [Mary] might have been persuaded of his mistress’s sinister intentions and unkind dealings towards her, she now saw whereunto it tended … he further thought that she would not be so bent to serve the affection of the King [Francis II] as utterly to neglect her country and suffer it to be suppressed by strangers, and under a foreign government.
Mary sidestepped this swipe at her dependence on France and refrained from pointing out that the English, who had effectively toppled her mother, might also be viewed as ‘strangers’. Instead, she merely thanked Elizabeth ‘and said that the duty she ought to bear to her husband was none otherwise than to have a care for her country, which she could not easily forget … She said that she was glad of peace and hoped that Elizabeth would continue it, as she would do.’ Later in the month Mary saw Throckmorton again and he once more tried to get her to say something definite about ratifying the Treaty of Edinburgh. Again, she demurred politely, saying ‘that what the king, her husband, resolved in that matter, she would conform to herself, for his will is mine and … I have as much cause to esteem her amity as any other, for I am the nearest kinswoman she hath, being both of us of one house and stock.’16
This clever reminder of her proximity to the English throne was probably not what Throckmorton or, indeed, Elizabeth wanted to hear. It was not precisely true, since Elizabeth’s other cousins, the sisters Catherine and Mary Grey, were favoured as Protestant successors to the English queen by a substantial number of parliamentarians, though they were descended from Henry VII’s younger daughter, Mary, and not Margaret, the elder, as was Mary Queen of Scots. And there was also one other, overlooked figure who could claim descent. This was the young Henry, Lord Darnley, son of the earl and countess of Lennox. They had certainly not forgotten that he had a claim in both England and Scotland, and had sent him hurriedly to Paris to commiserate with Mary following the death of Henry II. She does not seem, at this stage, to have paid him anything other than polite attention, perhaps because he was only fourteen years old at the time.
Mary’s interviews with Throckmorton, her first recorded meetings with an English diplomat, show a young woman of dignity and intelligence, using her husband as a shield when pressed on Scottish matters but cleverly reminding Elizabeth that she could be viewed as her heir. Her apparently submissive attitude was a convenient cover while affairs in Scotland were so fraught, for even as she spoke to Throckmorton, what became known as the Reformation Parliament was making sweeping changes in Scotland. It abolished the Mass, denied the pope’s authority and established a new Confession of Faith. Catholic clergy remained in charge of their own benefices but their future was uncertain. The same session also petitioned Elizabeth of England to marry the earl of Arran, Châtelherault’s son, thus uniting the realms of England and Scotland if Mary died without heirs.
This must have been an alarming development for the Queen of Scots but worse was to follow. In the space of a year she had lost her father-in-law and mother, two key figures in her life. But she had at least the comfort of a secure place in France, troubled though the country was. There were some signs that Francis II might have adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards the Huguenots if left to make his own decisions, though the religious opponents of the French monarchy were articulate, determined and increasingly militant. In October, amid high security, Francis and Mary established themselves in Orléans for the autumn hunting season. But by mid-November 1560 Francis was seriously ill. He had mastoiditis, an infection of the ear that can affect the brain and lead to seizures. Extremely painful, it was, until the advent of antibiotics, a notable killer of children and young people. The king had never been strong but even someone in better health might well have succumbed. There is evidence that his surgeon, Paré, who had attended on his dying father as well, was unwilling to make the incision that would drain the infection because he was a Protestant and feared that if Francis were to die anyhow, he would be blamed because of his religion. So he did nothing.
With his distraught mother and anxious, confused wife in attendance, the teenaged king of France died on 5 December, having reigned for barely eighteen months. Mary was left with only grief and uncertainty, to pass Christmas in the white mourning garb of a widowed French queen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Return of the Queen
‘To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation or city, is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to His revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.’
John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, 1558
‘Yet you like better of yonder long lad.’
Elizabeth I perceives that the young Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, may be more acceptable to the Scots as a consort for their queen than her favourite, the Earl of Leicester
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS passed her eighteenth birthday three days after the death of her husband. Widowhood at such an early age was not unusual in the sixteenth century, when many noblewomen married men much older than themselves, but in the case
of a younger spouse it was less predictable. Though Mary knew that Francis was far from robust, his passing was a great shock. Having sat beside the dead body overnight, Mary then donned the white robes customary for a widowed queen of France and began the period of forty days’ mourning that etiquette dictated. She retired into the darkness of a private chamber lit only by candles, its windows blacked out. For two weeks she pondered the blow that had befallen her and considered its implications. During this time she saw her Guise uncles and other family members but refused to receive the condolences of the diplomatic community until she felt more in command of her emotions.
There was plenty to occupy her thoughts. The death of her husband following so closely on that of her mother was a personal tragedy but its immediate effect was even more disquieting. Childless queen dowagers of France, as her great-aunt, Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, had found nearly half a century earlier, had no further role to play. They were unwelcome reminders of what might have been and, furthermore, a potential drain on the state’s coffers. And while Mary sat in the suffocating isolation of her widow’s weeds, events were moving fast around her. She would have realized from the information imparted by her uncles that their day, too, was passing. The impetus came from her mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici.
We do not know how much relations between Mary and Catherine had already cooled but the queen mother of France exhibited little sympathy for the predicament of the Queen of Scots. The meeting of the French Estates General that Francis II had coincidentally called shortly before his death went ahead and now it confirmed Catherine in the official role of regent for her ten-year-old son, the new king, Charles IX. Catherine took her opportunity to end years of Guise domination boldly and its inevitable consequence, regardless of how she felt about her daughter-in-law, was to marginalize Mary. But it appears that their relationship was no longer close, if, indeed, it ever really had been. Catherine cannot have forgotten the unwelcome intrusion of her bitter rival, Diane de Poitiers, in Mary’s upbringing and there were rumours that Mary had compounded this by referring to Catherine as ‘a merchant’s daughter’. It would have suited Mary’s uncles if the queen mother had acquiesced in their first idea to salvage their influence and their niece’s position. This was the scarcely credible proposal that Mary should retain her role as queen consort by marrying Charles IX, despite the fact that he was half her age and could not be expected to cohabit with her as man and wife for at least five more years. But Catherine now held the whip hand and she was having none of this distasteful proposition. Neither would she support the possibility of a match between Mary and Don Carlos, son of Philip II of Spain, fearing it might undermine the position of her daughter, Élisabeth, Philip’s wife. Catherine was not about to give the Guise family an alternative power base in Spain, particularly as it was becoming apparent that France was spiralling closer and closer to religious civil war.
Before Mary even emerged from seclusion to attend a Requiem Mass for Francis II in Orléans, once the period of mourning was passed, it must have been obvious that her options were diminishing. Perhaps there had only ever really been one. She was not wanted in France and had no status there any longer. But she was, as she had always been, Queen of Scots. There she would rule in her own right, not as a consort. It was time to go home.
Mary’s decision to return to Scotland appears to have been taken within a month of her husband’s death and she did not waver from it once made, despite the depth of her attachment to the country in which she had passed most of her life. France and all things French would always retain the primary place in her memories and affections. Scotland was largely unknown. It was a place of mists and winter darkness, a minor player on the European stage compared to her adopted country. But her father and grandfather had ensured that it was not to be ignored, that its court and palaces were fit for kings, and Mary knew that she had a claim to the throne of England that might, one day, see her as ruler over the whole of Britain. Here was a prize worth having. With the instinctive Stewart confidence that she would soon win the hearts of her Scottish subjects, of all ranks and degrees, Mary began to put in place her plans. She would not be pushed out of France in unseemly haste and there was, in any case, much to be settled before she could take up the reins of government at home. Questions of religion, of political roles and the choice of advisers for the queen all had to be addressed. As these were aired, Mary must have at least glimpsed the complexity of the situation in Scotland and the potential for difficulty. She was not entirely unfamiliar with Scottish politics, having received regular reports from her mother and from members of the Scottish council after the death of Mary of Guise. Still, it was one thing to read these and to absorb their implications and quite another to enter into the fray, as a woman in a man’s world, and try to direct government. Mary had been educated for the role of queen consort of France, not queen regnant of Scotland. And advice, as she would find before she left France, could come from different sources and lead to conflicting viewpoints.
The reaction in Scotland was mixed. For nearly twenty years there had been no resident adult monarch in the country and, despite Mary of Guise’s best efforts to be a surrogate Stewart, some of the prestige associated with the family name had worn off. James V’s many bastards were wealthy and, in at least one case, influential, but the taint of illegitimacy hung over them. The religious upheaval came late and its effects were still unfolding. The country remained much as it had been under James IV: overwhelmingly rural, with prosperity confined mainly to the central Lowlands, the eastern coast between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and the valley of the river Tweed in the south. In these areas, where the mix of rich agricultural land and busy ports ensured considerable prosperity, trade thrived and urbanization grew, but only very slowly. Edinburgh’s population in 1550 was around 15,000, only 5,000 more than it had been at the start of the sixteenth century. The comparison with London, then a city of 120,000 souls, was stark. Family and clan loyalties remained strong in Scotland and could lead to decades (or longer) of simmering hatred, as the Hamilton feud with the Lennox Stewarts illustrated. This was very much a masculine society, though not one in which women were entirely powerless. Some titles could pass in the female line and where management of businesses and property rights were concerned, women could and did take to the courts to resolve disputes and gain what they believed to be rightfully theirs. But a strong, male monarch, who understood the country, was still the leader that the Scots desired. Mary was essentially a charming Frenchwoman who they did not know. Ruling them was never going to be an easy task.
Although the Scottish response to Mary’s announcement that she would shortly be governing them in person did not divide cleanly on religious lines (she had many Protestant supporters as well as Catholics), her religion was certainly an issue. Firebrands like John Knox, who despised Mary doubly because she was a woman and a Catholic, would make much of it, thus overemphasizing its significance for posterity. But while she was still in France, Mary received earnest supplications from two quite different sources that must have brought home to her that, however much she was prepared to compromise personally, there had been a revolution in Scotland that her mother had ultimately failed to contain.
News of the queen’s intention to return greatly heartened the Catholic nobility in Scotland and the future bishop of Ross, John Leslie, was sent to see her in the spring of 1561 by the earl of Huntly. He promised that if Mary landed in Aberdeen, 20,000 men would be waiting to help her restore Catholicism. Mary was no longer at the French court at this stage, but when Leslie saw her, at Vitry in Champagne, she listened politely to Huntly’s proposal but rejected it. Leslie, however, clearly won a place in her esteem, for she remained close to him thereafter and invited him to join her entourage. Yet another aspect of his advice she rejected at the time of their first meeting, which she would eventually have cause to regret, was his warning against her half-brother, Lord James Stewart. And Lord James was hot on Leslie’s heels.
Lord James was the much older sibling who accompanied Mary when she left Scotland in 1548. Then he had been on his way to university in Paris, a predictable development for the illegitimate seventeen-year-old son of a European king. It appears that he did not stay long. On returning to Scotland, he continued his support of Mary of Guise, travelling with her to France in 1550 and attending his sister’s wedding in 1558. But as the troubled decade of the 1550s unfolded in Scotland, Lord James began to weigh the favours he had received from France against the price that his country was paying and his allegiance was gradually whittled away from the regent. There were other factors at play, too. He wanted a role in Scottish politics on his own terms and his religious views were turning towards Protestantism. Still, he acted with caution in committing himself wholeheartedly in opposition to the influence of France, and it was not until the last day of May 1559 that he openly declared his support for the Lords of the Congregation. Thereafter, he was firmly committed to amity with England and earned the approbation of Cecil, who admired his military and political skills. These were amply displayed in 1560 when he supported the Hamiltons as the legitimate heirs of Mary Queen of Scots and the young earl of Arran, son of Châtelherault, as a suitor for the hand of Queen Elizabeth of England.
