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  An Accidental Tragedy

  THE LIFE OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

  Roderick Graham was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Edinburgh University, before serving with the Royal Army Education Corps as Staff Officer (Education) East Africa Command. He subsequently enjoyed a long and varied career in television and radio as a writer, freelance director and producer, and worked for a period as Head of Drama for BBC TV Scotland. He has also taught writing and directing at Napier and Leeds Metropolitan Universities, Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He is the author of the critically acclaimed John Knox: Democrat (Hale, 2001) and The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (Tuckwell Press, 2005). His latest book, Arbiter of Elegance: A Biography of Robert Adam (Birlinn), is due for publication in autumn 2009.

  This eBook edition published in 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  Copyright © Roderick Graham 2008

  The moral right of Roderick Graham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-84158-803-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-497-3

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  TO

  Jane and Peter, Marian and Hugh

  (originally Anna Throndsen and Erik Rosencrantz),

  Michael and Melissa, and Robert and Valerie

  Thank you for your friendship

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Family trees

  PART I : Scotland, 1542–48

  1 As goodly child as I have seen

  2 One of the most perfect creatures

  PART II : France, 1548–61

  3 We may be very well pleased with her

  4 The most amiable Princess in Christendom

  5 She cannot long continue

  6 She universally inspires great pity

  PART III : Scotland, 1561–68

  7 We had landed in an obscure country

  8 Dynastic entity

  9 The dancing grows hot

  10 Yonder long lad

  11 She wished she had never been married

  12 Some evil turn

  13 It does not appertain to subjects to reform their prince

  PART IV : England, 1568–87

  14 Whistling in the dark

  15 A lawful prisoner?

  16 My fortune has been so evil

  17 Stranger, papist and enemy

  18 To trap her in a snare

  19 You are but a dead woman

  20 A place near the kings

  Appendix: The Scots Tongue

  Note on sources

  Bibliography

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Mary of Guise, Queen of Scotland, wife of James V and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots

  James V, King of Scotland and father to Mary, Queen of Scots

  Linlithgow Palace

  Stirling Castle

  Mary, Queen of Scots aged nine years and six months

  Henri II, King of France and father-in-law to Mary

  Catherine de Medici, Queen of France and wife to Henri II

  Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois and mistress of Henri II

  François II aged eight

  The chateau of Chenonceau

  The chateau of Amboise

  The death of Henri II

  Mary in Deuil Blanc, the white mourning of France

  Lord James Stewart, the illegitimate son of James V and half-brother to Mary

  William Maitland of Lethington, nicknamed ‘Michael Wylie – Scotland’s Machiavelli’

  John Knox, the spiritual leader of the Scottish Reformation and an implacable enemy of Mary’s way of life, both religious and social

  Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Mary’s second husband

  The north wing of the Palace of Holyrood House

  Edinburgh Castle

  Elizabeth I of England, Mary’s cousin

  James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and Mary’s third husband

  Craigmillar Castle, a few miles south of Edinburgh, where the Confederate Lords plotted the murder of Darnley, almost certainly with Mary’s knowledge

  Hermitage Castle, Bothwell’s implacable fortress in the Scottish borders

  The banner carried by the Confederate Lords at the battle of Carberry

  Lochleven Castle

  Mary’s last letter, written to her brother-in-law Henri III of France

  The replica of Mary’s Westminster tomb in the Museum of Scotland

  Preface

  Mary Stewart was the victim of a golden childhood snatched away by widowhood, and her tragedy was an accidental one. This book seeks neither to blacken her character, by portraying her as a murderess of husbands, nor to sanctify her as the lonely champion of her faith, but to recount the circumstances which formed her character and to explain the events which determined her fate.

  Mary was undoubtedly one of the great beauties of her era. Since the golden age of Hollywood, many technical tricks have been used to enhance the beauty of the subject when photographing the stars: the focus of the camera might not be entirely sharp, the lens might be smeared with oil or grease, sometimes a gauze might be stretched across the front of the lens – often with holes strategically placed to allow the sitter’s eyes to sparkle – and smoke might even be diffused across the studio; all that before the negatives passed into the hands of the retouchers. The result has been a totally unreal icon of beauty. This is how we now see not only a Garbo or Dietrich, but also many of today’s celebrities. The same gauze, smoke and retouching have been liberally applied to the memory of Mary Stewart.

  She was born in Scotland to a French mother, crowned at the age of nine months and, to avoid a forced marriage with an English prince, was sent at once for safekeeping to her relatives in France. Here she was educated to be a fairy princess, betrothed to the Dauphin – sadly, he was retarded both mentally and physically – and she was destined to become a glittering queen of France. When she gained the throne, her uncles and their allies ruthlessly used her position to wield power for themselves until she was rendered useless by the death of the feeble boy-king. Therefore, still a virgin and now a widow at the age of eighteen years and seven months, her career in France was over, and, with her carefully protective education abandoned, she returned to Scotland.

  She had been educated in a time of aggressively masculine rulers and had been taught the skills of female empowerment by two eminently powerful women of contrasting personalities: Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici. She had seen direct female rule in its full effect under her cousin Elizabeth I of England, but such was the gilded cage that had been constructed around her that she never put any of her lessons into practice. She had been thoroughly taught the skills of, and excelled at, life in a Renaissance court, accepting extravagant praise, riding, dancing, singing, organising masques and pageants, flirting and presiding over a bejewelled court of lavish splendour. She knew nothing of politics or international diplomacy – except where it involved the marriage of her friends. Now, deprived of the advice of her uncles, she had to rule Scotland alone.

  Mary, during her short time in Scotland, lived on a self-created fant
asy island of delights modelled on the Valois court of France. At her arrival, in 1561, the nobility had looked for leadership, hopefully one working to their advantage, and had found instead a disinterested docility. Having assured the people that she would not interfere with their religion, Mary had taken no further interest in their affairs, provided that they adored her as she rode past on her progresses away from her court at Holyrood. Her council ran the country, she signed what she was advised to sign and made suitable noises towards her southern neighbour. Mary had no interest at all in politics, and on the rare occasions when she attended Privy Council meetings she took her embroidery.

  As a marriage prospect she carried with her everywhere the twin infections of religion and dynasty. Mary did not govern personally and gave no firm instruction to her council to rule on her behalf. This left the sometimes divided nobility trying, occasionally, to interpret her whims, thus causing a near fatal separation of monarchy and legislature.

  The skills required to decorate the court of France as a beautiful and graceful queen were very different to those needed to control a naturally quarrelsome nation just emerging from the Reformation. Having, metaphorically, been coached in the skills of a talented amateur to play selected exercises on the harpsichord with grace and charm to a sycophantic audience, she was suddenly thrust onto a very public platform to play entire Beethoven sonatas on a concert grand piano. Mary simply ignored this daunting task and was finally deposed by her exasperated aristocracy, escaping to leave a civil war raging while she threw herself on the mercy of her cousin Elizabeth Tudor.

  In England, Mary endured a form of house arrest of varying severity until, stupidly, she made an identifiable endorsement of a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. The latter was finally forced to act and Mary Stewart was executed aged forty-four.

  Mary was an enthusiastic dancer, gracefully slim and tall – her first dancing partner of her own height was her husband-to-be Henry Darnley – with fair, probably red-gold hair and a clear complexion. She was an enthusiastic horsewoman, often riding astride, and seldom happier than when at full gallop with the sun on her back.

  Men fell in love with her at an amazing rate, often with disastrous consequences. A French court poet hid in her bedroom and was executed for his pains, a Scottish earl tried to abduct her and was declared insane, and some fell on their knees with declarations of undying love.

  Mary lived, over two periods, for eleven years and six months in Scotland, thirteen years in France, and seventeen years and nine months in England, but she remained at heart a princess of France, more at home speaking French amid the châteaux of the Loire than anywhere else. She never took charge of her life, but was controlled by events, and the few decisions she did make all ended tragically.

  I have kept the modernisation of spelling and grammar to the minimum required for clarity and have dated the turning of the year at 1 January. There were three principal currencies in use during Mary’s lifetime – Scottish merks, crowns and pounds; English pounds, shillings and pence (£, s, d) and French livres tournois and crowns – and, unfortunately, there is no convenient factor by which we can multiply sums to convert to modern values. However, by the end of the sixteenth century an English professional – teacher, shopkeeper, or parson – could live comfortably on £20 annually (£90 Scots, 160 livres, 100 French crowns).

  Since weaponry was an integral part of male life, some explanations may be necessary. All males carried a dagger, which in Scots was called a ‘whinger’, and occasionally a long sword or rapier. In battle, swords were either of the rapier variety or the basket-hilted broadsword. The claymore was a two-handed sword used best on horseback. The 12-foot-long Scottish pike was used in a phalanx or ‘schiltron’ formation to repel cavalry. Firearms were, apart from cannon, relative newcomers and were mainly an early form of musket called variously ‘arquebus’, harquebus’, ‘hagbut’ or ‘hackbut’. To avoid unnecessary confusion I have called them arquebus throughout.

  Acknowledgements

  Above all I must thank my publisher, Hugh Andrew, who suggested to me that he felt the time to be ripe for a balanced biography of Mary Stewart. Without his initial support, this book would never have been written. A place beside Hugh Andrew must be given to my wife, Fiona, for listening, with every sign of cheerful interest, to two years’ worth of often repetitious conversation about Mary. Fiona then took on the task of initial copy-editing, brushing aside my irritation when she pointed out, for example, that Mary was unlikely to have been crowned on two different dates. It was a labour of Hercules, carried out smilingly, and I thank her for it.

  Andrew Simmons, as managing editor at Birlinn, gave help and encouragement in huge quantities, along with the most tactful of suggestions, while providing eagle-eyed editors to clarify my sometimes presumptuous narrative. Laura Esslemont and Peter Burns ransacked picture libraries to make a pleasure out of a chore.

  Dr Jenny Wormald of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and the University of Edinburgh, read the manuscript and made extremely helpful suggestions. Michael Lynch, Professor Emeritus of Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh, read the manuscript for historical veracity and gracefully suggested corrections. Owen Dudley Edwards, formerly Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh, gave invaluable information on the various canonisation campaigns with breathless enthusiasm.

  Technical help from the Royal Armouries at Leeds on Henri II’s fatal joust and a weather report for the night of Darnley’s murder from the Nautical Almanac Office filled in two vital blanks.

  Medical advice from Professor I.M.L. Donaldson, Dr Morrice McCrae and Dr Peter Bloomfield helped with diagnoses made at a distance of 500 years. Kenneth Dunn, Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland, corrected my attempts at Latin translations, and the issue staff, both there and at the library of the University of Edinburgh, found books and manuscripts with their customary skill and helpfulness.

  However, none of these people can be held responsible for the way in which their advice and information have been presented and any errors are mine.

  Family Trees

  Guise

  Valois

  Tudors/Stewarts

  Lennox/Arran

  PART I

  Scotland 1542–48

  CHAPTER ONE

  As goodly a child as I have seen

  Early in the morning of 8 December 1542 armed messengers left the warmth of the Linlithgow Palace guardrooms at the gallop, their breath steaming in the sudden chill and their horses’ hooves striking sparks from the frozen cobbles outside the forecourt. Behind them the new white walls of the south façade gleamed in a reflection of the snow-covered ground. After only a few yards they passed the church of St Michael before plunging down the steep hill into the town, where they took their separate icy roads. Heavy snowfalls had blanketed the country in one of the worst winters of the century. The horsemen were all carrying the urgent news that Marie de Guise, Queen of Scotland, was safely delivered of a child. As her previous two children had died, more than usual care had been taken over the birth of this child in a first-floor room in the palace, and the messengers had been standing by since her labour had begun.

  Of these messengers, by far the most important was the man heading for the royal hunting lodge of Falkland Palace, where James V was lying, gravely ill. With little daylight and only one prearranged horse stage, the messenger would lodge for the night twenty miles distant at Stirling before turning east across Fife. His package was heavily sealed, secured in a saddlebag, and he did not know its precise contents, although the rumours in the guardrooms had all been of the queen’s successful confinement. Since he had been given two loaded pistols as well as his broadsword and dagger, he knew it was a vital despatch and that, given the rumoured condition of the king’s health, speed was of the utmost importance.

  In Stirling, he slept in his clothes with his sword by his side and a pistol on top of his package under his pillow. Early next day he left Stirling whil
e it was still dark to cover the thirty-five miles to Falkland Palace, where he finally delivered his despatch. It was immediately unsealed by a courtier, who read the document, frowned, and took the news to King James, now lying in his bed in his sickroom. At first the news was good in that the queen had survived childbirth and was safely delivered of a healthy child. The bad news which followed was that the child was a girl, to be called Mary. It was her mother’s name, and 8 December was also the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. It is possible that Mary was actually born the day before and the record was subsequently changed to allow what would be seen as a happy coincidence of dates.

  James V had not been with his queen, but since royal fathers were seldom present at their wives’ confinements, this was not unusual. What was unusual was that, a few days earlier, James had been personally leading a raiding force of 18,000 Scotsmen in a crossing of the English border at the Solway Firth. To invade Henry VIII’s England at this time was like poking a stick at a very angry bear, and James knew it.

  On the expedition, James had set up his headquarters twenty miles north of the border at Lochmaben, and the raiding party set out under the command of Oliver Sinclair, James’s loathed favourite, to cross the River Esk. Raiding parties were not unusual in the Border area, where a precise delineation of the frontier was impossible to achieve, and widespread cattle and sheep stealing, combined with kidnap and extortion, were carried out under patriotic banners. The area was generally known as the ‘Debatable Lands’ and even today, for imaginative tourists, its undoubted beauty is tinged with the feeling that hostile horsemen may be lying in wait just over the next hill.