An Accidental Tragedy Page 3
Henry VIII had the same ambition for personal power, but, unlike Arran, he knew precisely how to achieve it. His cheapest, and most effective, way to bring Scotland into his orbit was for the young Mary to marry Prince Edward, and so the nobles were released on condition that they supported this plan. Oaths of fealty and agreements of loyalty were struck, rewards were promised and Arran unwittingly welcomed back a faction totally committed to English domination. Better to be a rich earl under an English king than a poor one under an indecisive governor and a French dowager. Arran suspected none of this.
James V was buried with full royal pomp on 10 January 1543 in Holyrood Abbey beside Madeleine and his two dead sons. He had not had a happy reign. His ruthless expertise at raising money from his nobility struck fear into the clergy, who were well aware of the king’s Tudor uncle’s enthusiasm for looting churches and monasteries, and felt that they could easily be next to be fleeced. James had, however, put in place the basis for contemporary Scots law, founding the High Court of Justiciary in 1532 – albeit based on the Northern Italian courts of Pavia – and he left a treasury of £26,000 Scots. He was also said to be ‘well-plated’; in other words he had a considerable hoard of gold and silver plate. This was a popular form of investment as it could be quickly melted down in time of need. The same was true of the gold chains worn by the nobility. The sixteenth-century historian John Leslie called James the ‘poor man’s king – a maintainer of justice, an executor of the laws and a defender of the innocent and pure’.
The dowager queen was still at Linlithgow Palace with her daughter, but was well aware of the incompetent machinations of Arran. History has accused Marie de Guise of many things but incompetence has never been one of them. Wisely, since she had her own plans for her daughter, Marie now made sure that the infant Mary stayed at Linlithgow in her personal care rather than that of Arran. She was well aware of the importance of her new daughter as a dynastic prize, knowing that Henry would be keen to gain control over both her and her daughter. Henry’s warden of the Marches, Viscount Lisle, had said of Mary, ‘I would she and her nurse were in my lord prince’s house.’
The first official approach came when Mary was less than four months old. Sir Ralph Sadler rode into Holyrood Palace as Henry’s ambassador to negotiate a marriage treaty. Sadler was ‘of low stature . . . well skilled in all exercises and remarkable for both strength and activity’. He was a professional diplomat, trained under Thomas Cromwell and no stranger to Scotland. He had attempted to separate James V from his French alliances, but James had ‘weighed the profuse liberality of François I against the niggard present of a set of horses’. A propitiative gift of a mere six geldings had been sent by the parsimonious Henry.
Now, in late March, Sadler was met by Arran, who told him that he would have no objection to the marriage and that the assent of the Scottish estates, could be guaranteed provided Henry dealt with Arran alone. This made it clear that bribes and guarantees of Arran’s continuation as governor would be needed. Sadler hinted that a marriage between Arran’s son, James Hamilton, and Henry’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, might be considered, but Arran was unimpressed by this and made it clear that his current price was a single payment of £1,000. He promised Sadler support for Henry’s religious reformation but, in private, he continued to practise as a Catholic. Arran would cheerfully have sold Sadler the furniture in the palace, all of which, as governor, he had the power to dispose of. The Englishman realised very quickly that Arran represented a problem that could simply be bought off or threatened into submission. Therefore Sadler’s next move was to Linlithgow where, he was certain, a Guise queen mother would be made of sterner stuff.
Sadler, as a properly cautious ambassador, insisted on seeing the infant himself – a not uncommon practice – and Marie instructed the nurses to unwrap the five-month-old baby for him. Sadler was even allowed to hold Mary on his knee while the royal nurses watched anxiously, but Mary gurgled winsomely and Sadler became the first of many men who fell under the spell of Mary Stewart, describing her as ‘as goodly a child as I have seen and as like to live, with the grace of God’.
The child was wrapped up again and removed for her feed while Sadler and Marie discussed the possibility of a marriage to Edward. Knowing her devotion to the Catholic faith and her strong ties with France, he expected that she would object violently and he would have to return to the venal Arran. But Sadler did not know that on 20 February Marie had received a letter from Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Henry’s lord lieutenant of the Borders, telling her that the marriage was ‘not only to the high advancement of [her] daughter but also thereby shall cease much trouble and effusion of blood’. It was an offer she was not supposed to be able to refuse, but such threats only brought grim smiles of determination to the face of Marie de Guise. Marie knew what Sadler’s expectations would be and now completely outflanked him by agreeing to every demand. She was ‘most willing and comfortable to [his] majesty’s purpose’, and even to having the child removed to safekeeping in London. She had, of course, no intention of doing any of this.
Arran had dismissed her French ambassadors and was attempting, ineffectually, to isolate Marie by trying to have her correspondence intercepted. However, she had already smuggled out one letter to her mother, who was gathering allies in François I’s court against the possibility of trouble in Scotland. By agreeing completely, if insincerely, with Sadler, Marie sidelined Arran. Sadler could now deal directly with the queen mother and forget Arran. He could reassure Henry that he had influence over the real power, while Marie quietly continued with her own agenda.
Marie knew that, however idyllic Linlithgow Palace was, it could never withstand a siege, and she knew that a weakling like Arran would quickly turn to violence when thwarted. She called Arran ‘the most inconstant man in the world, for whatsoever he determineth today, he changeth tomorrow’. To ensure her continuing custody of Mary, her mother had already started sending covert loads of treasure, plate and furnishings to her own castle of Stirling, which was much more easily defended.
Stirling Castle, which Marie held in her own right as part of her marriage settlement, stands, like Edinburgh’s, high on a rock with an eagle’s viewpoint over the surrounding countryside. It is all but impregnable. Once there, the infant would be secure, but Arran, who had got wind of her plans, forbad Marie to leave Linlithgow. The dowager queen continued to subvert Sadler, telling him that Arran would break his word, wait until Henry was dead and then marry Mary to his own son and seize the throne himself. Marie had no evidence for this except that most people were willing to believe the worst of Arran, and Sadler was inclined to believe her. In fact, as it turned out, there was no need to implement the move to Stirling, since Marie’s Guise connections in France were beginning to bear fruit.
The intelligence from France was that François was financing Mary’s uncle the Duc de Guise to raise an army, if it should be needed. In the event, François sent Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, Arran’s rival in the line of inheritance, to Scotland. (While living in exile, Lennox had become a French citizen and changed the spelling of Stewart to Stuart, the French version of his name.) Lennox came prepared for conflict and occupied his castle at Dumbarton on the north coast of the Clyde – another impregnable rock-perched stronghold. Cardinal Beaton – called by Henry ‘the best Frenchman in Scotland’ – had been moved from prison to his own stronghold at St Andrews, and the Catholic lords were gathering around him. Henry, impatient and sickened by the lack of results in Scotland, now ordered Arran to move the child to Edinburgh Castle. The impotent Arran, since he had no power to do this without a confrontation with Marie, Lennox and Beaton, prevaricated. His feeble excuse was that the baby was teething and could not be moved. The two sides were now clearly defined. Marie, Beaton and Lennox had the growing backing of François and were in possession of the infant Mary. Arran had a few of the lords, who were fulfilling their promises given to Henry during their imprisonment after Solway Moss,
and Henry himself was breathing down Arran’s neck, demanding action.
Tudor patience was very limited and Henry’s had run out. ‘The king’s majesty causeth such preparations of force and power to be made on the borders, as in case these promises, gentle handling and reasonable communication take not effect, the king’s majesty may use his own princely power and strength.’ He let Arran know that he would send a treaty to be agreed with the implied threat that if it was not immediately agreed to Scotland could expect an English invasion. This was the Treaty of Greenwich, and on 1 July 1543 it was duly agreed with no great enthusiasm. Henry, above all, wanted Scotland to be tied to him by treaty and to be unlikely to call for French help, while he himself had the freedom to look across the Channel for an opportunity to invade France. The terms of the treaty were therefore surprisingly favourable to Scotland. Mary would stay in Scotland until she was aged ten, and Henry would send a nobleman and his wife to supervise her education when she was of a suitable age. In other words he wanted Edward’s bride to speak English, not French or Scots. On her tenth birthday Mary would marry Prince Edward in England, the implication being that she would not return to Scotland. The terms of the dowry were agreed, although both sides knew they could be renegotiated. Astonishingly, Henry agreed that the kingdom of Scotland should ‘retain its ancient laws and liberties’. He was guaranteeing Scotland’s independence for ten years, with the promised marriage postponed for the same period. In the manner of these treaties, both sides knew that everything could change in this space of time, and all the parties involved set about making what profit they could from it.
In the meantime, Sadler was receiving the inevitable requests for money to secure the loyalty of the Scottish lords. These ranged from £100 from the Earl Marischal and the Earl of Angus, through £300 for Lord Maxwell, up to the £1,000 for Arran himself. Arran assured Sadler that he could control the Scottish lords: ‘If they would not do their duties to him he would notify the world of their disloyalty and would seek help of England and all parts of the world to be revenged on them.’ If his adversaries opposed him he would ‘surely stick’ to Henry, and all the strongholds south of the Forth ‘should be ready at [Henry’s] commandment’. He now wanted to have a contract of marriage between Elizabeth and his son, and hinted that his purchasing loyalty for Henry had meant that he had had to melt some of his own plate into coin, but the immediate payment of £1,000 would put matters right. Sadler, wisely, had withheld this money since he felt that Arran’s use of it would be ‘unfruitful’, but in July he released the funds. The effect of this was that by August, Arran was asking for another £5,000.
To Sadler’s disquiet, Arran still wanted to have close supervision over Mary, in case she was whisked away to France. This was beginning to look more likely as Marie had made a formal alliance with Beaton and Lennox and their troops were gathering at Linlithgow. There was a rumour that French ships were lying off the coast, although no one had actually seen them directly. Sadler wanted Mary to be taken to Stirling, out of the way of possible armed conflict, and, since this was precisely what Marie wanted, she was delighted to oblige.
On 27 July, Mary, accompanied by Lennox with 2,500 cavalry and 1,000 infantry, travelled to Stirling in state along the path taken by the messenger who had delivered the news of her birth to James V. She was only some eight months old, still being suckled by her wet nurse, but no one who saw the procession could have been in any doubt that it was the progress of a queen. Mary was firmly in the care of Marie de Guise, and Arran had no further negotiating power.
The castle was, if anything, more impregnable than Edinburgh. It had also received the attentions of James V and had magnificent carved roundels in the French style and a great hall that, it was rumoured, could seat 400. Thanks to Marie’s clandestine removals from Linlithgow it was furnished to the standards expected of a royal palace. The castle was the first royal building in Scotland to have a Chapel Royal. There were gardens within the walls and here Mary could be brought to womanhood in perfect safety. Even Sadler, used as he was to his king’s extravagances at Hampton Court, was impressed and reported of the mother and child, ‘she is very glad to be at Stirling. Her daughter did grow apace and soon she would be a woman if she took of her mother who is indeed the largest stature of women.’ Although in later life her weight would become a major problem for her, Marie was still an attractively tall woman.
Henry, trying desperately to keep control of a deteriorating situation at 500 miles distant, now asked that only Mary be lodged in the castle and that her mother be lodged in the town with only limited visiting rights. He was quite right in diagnosing what everybody on the ground could see: Marie was totally in charge of the situation. His request was simply ignored.
Sadler, however, cautious as usual, asked to see the child Mary again and she was obediently displayed, in good health after recovering from a bout of chickenpox. Arran, realising that he had now lost any chance of deceiving anybody, decided, as he usually did, to join the winning side and met Beaton, who arranged for him to make a public confession of his apostasy and to receive absolution. Arran also gave his son, James Hamilton, into the cardinal’s care in the castle of St Andrews. Now, all the power of Scotland was united around Mary, and her mother could proceed immediately to the next vital stage.
Mary’s coronation took place on 9 September 1543. She was exactly ten months old and can have remembered nothing of it in later life. The ceremony was held in the Chapel Royal in Stirling with, according to Sadler, ‘such solemnity as they do use in this country, which is not very costly’. Arran carried the crown – as his descendant, the Duke of Hamilton does to this day – Lennox carried the sceptre and Argyll the sword of state. Mary was carried by her mother, and Beaton, in the scarlet vestments of a cardinal, conducted the ceremony. The crown had last been worn by James V at the coronation of Marie; now it was being held by the cardinal above the tiny queen’s head. She was duly anointed with the holy oil mixed with balm – chrism – and immediately became God’s anointed. She was now possessed of certain holy powers – such as curing scrofula, or the King’s Evil, with a touch – and her wearing of the crown, with the secular power represented by it, had been given to her by divine right. She was, in effect, two people in one: Mary Stewart, a ten-month-old baby, and Queen Mary, verging on being half human and half divine in one body. In later life, when speaking as queen, to show the presence of both elements she would refer to herself as ‘we’. Adherence to these quasi-medieval beliefs would contribute to the end of the reign of the house of Stewart 200 years later.
The new queen behaved extremely badly throughout the ceremony, screaming constantly so that no one could hear the nobility pledging their often hypocritical allegiance. The heralds, whose duty it was to announce Mary’s lengthy new titles in full, simply gave up the task, and while Janet Sinclair put her new queen in her night cradle the court attended a ball in the great hall. The pro-English lords were absent, and there now seemed no possibility of them being able to carry out their promises to Henry. Marie de Guise had demonstrated that she was not simply the queen mother, to be respected and quietly bypassed, but a woman of skill and determination, representing a Franco-Scottish power base that could not be ignored. Henry was left with his Treaty of Greenwich, now worthless, and never again would he trust the Scots.
Although it was autumn, the court could still for the moment enjoy itself with hawking, hunting and dancing. Musicians and painters flocked to Stirling, and Marie, for once free of her dynastic cares, started to enjoy the pleasures of young widowhood. She was twenty-eight years old and sexually attractive, so her simplest way to ensure the loyalty of her squabbling nobility was to play the marriage game. Arran could be bought by power and money but Lennox’s favour could be bought with the flicker of an eyelash. He was cosmopolitan, having been a lieutenant in the Garde Écossaise, a group of aristocratic mercenaries who acted as the French king’s personal bodyguard. He was sophisticated and could easily beguile the
ladies of the court with his elegant manner.
Such a flirtation with one person could be dangerous unless balanced by another, and Marie had a perfect foil in Patrick Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. He had already been exiled for arrogant unruliness and was reputed, wrongly, to be a royal bastard – a slander he did nothing to correct. Hereditary lord admiral, he was entitled to the profits from the sales of all ships wrecked on the coasts of Scotland, giving him a steady and dependable income. His castles were Crichton, near Edinburgh, and the grim tower of Hermitage in the Middle March, held on the royal behalf, but from where he could challenge or welcome any force from England as the fancy took him. His behaviour would have been recognisable to the knights of the twelfth century, with violence as the immediate answer to any problem; today he would enthusiastically embrace the code of honour of the Mafia. He was married, but as soon as he realised that he could soon be the stepfather of the queen he gained a rapid annulment.
Lennox and Bothwell vied as to who should be the ‘most gallzeart in their clothing’ and ‘behaved themselves in the queen’s presence sometimes in dancing, sometimes in shooting, sometimes in singing and jousting and running of the great horse at the lists, with all other knightly games that might satisfy the queen’. They were carrying out the sort of courtship which had delighted Eleanor of Aquitaine 400 years previously in her Courts of Love. The chronicler Lindsay of Pitscottie said Marie’s court ‘was like Venus and Cupid in the time of fresh May’.
The commanding presence of the court was undoubtedly Marie, the queen dowager, but the jewel at its heart was the infant Queen Mary. Marie made sure that the child was treated with the dignity due to her, and when she was allowed to watch the court dancing its galliards and pavanes, the ladies and gentlemen would bow gravely to the child before taking their first steps. When the ever-watchful Janet Sinclair decided it was time for Mary to be taken to bed, the chamberlain would call out, ‘The Queen retires!’ The dancing would stop and the entire company would drop onto one knee. Mary would never have seen the armed guards who surrounded her at a discreet distance, but would have been aware of the attention she was paid by courtiers privileged enough to come near to her. Hardened warriors like Bothwell would boast that the infant queen had smiled at them and they lifted their caps to her as she watched concourses of men on horseback ride out with birds of prey on their forearms, although she was too precious to be allowed to join them beyond the castle walls. Her young world was full of music, either at frequent balls or, more regularly, in the Chapel Royal, where sacred music by Robert Carver and Robert Johnson accompanied the Mass. She could not have remembered any precise details of this time, but the first adult influences on her infant mind were of music, dancing and courtly obeisance. She would not have known of the desperate scheming taking place just below the surface of the glittering court.