Mary Queen of Scots

by Antonia Fraser

  † Fiscal business had of course been greatly interrupted by the English wars, with consequent loss of revenue to the crown.

  * The libraries of her ancestors had been destroyed at the time of the sack of Holyrood in 1544, so that previous kings cannot be credited with the listed books. On the other hand, the Edinburgh Castle list does include the childhood books of James VI.

  †Translated by James Michie.

  * Tartan is also not to be understood in the modem sense: it was the name given to a certain material, which in the sixteenth century was not necessarily checkered. During his visit to the Highlands at the beginning of the next century, John Taylor still did not describe tartan more specifically than as a ‘warm stuff of divers colours’.27

  * From this anecdote of Knox it used to be deduced, notably by Sir Walter Scott, that the beautiful and melancholy ballad of the Queen’s Maries with its haunting refrain

  Last night the Queen had four Maries

  Tonight there’ll be but three

  There’s Mary Seton and Mary Beaton

  And Mary Carmichael and me.

  applied to the court of Mary Stuart, despite the fact that the Maries of the ballad were named Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael and ‘me’ (Mary Hamilton) whereas Queen Mary’s last two maids were of course named Mary Fleming and Mary Livingston. The ballad has subsequently been traced to a scandal at the court of Peter the Great in early eighteenth-century Russia, where one of his wife Catherine’s maids of honour of Scottish origin, Mary Hamilton, was executed for the murder of an illegitimate child, after having had a love affair with the Tsar Peter. The ballad, which Child dated between 1719 and 1764, evidently made use of the well-known fact that Queen Mary in the sixteenth century had employed four girls named Mary to serve her, and grafted it on to the tragedy of Mary Hamilton in Russia.35

  * There are no contemporary portraits of the four Maries to be seen. One picture once thought to be that of Mary Beaton showing her with fair hair and dark eyes is now thought to date from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Fall of Huntly

  Far o’er the crashing forest

  The giant arms lie spread:

  And the pale augurs murmuring low

  Gaze on the blasted head

  Lord Macaulay

  On nth August, 1562, Mary Queen of Scots rode north on her first visit to her Highland dominions. She had long intended to visit these wild and individual territories: a ceremonial visit to Aberdeen had been planned for Easter-tide as early as January, but had apparently been delayed by the English negotiations. Now that the interview with Queen Elizabeth was temporarily postponed, the queen of Scots was free to resume the plan; but in the interval since the progress was first mooted, it seemed that her purpose had altered. Her primary intention was no longer to extend her knowledge of her kingdom, nor merely sporting (as the date might suggest to modern eyes); it had now become distinctly punitive. The might of the Gordons, under their magnificent but unpredictable head, George, 4th earl of Huntly, had long loomed over the northeast of Scotland like the shadow of a great eagle which might at any moment swoop on its prey. This fact in itself, however disquieting, would not have inspired a martial expedition – quite apart from the fact that Huntly’s state approached that of an independent monarch, he was in any case the leading Catholic magnate. Firstly, it might be dangerous to attack him, and secondly, it might be unwise. But in the course of the summer, Huntly’s third son, Sir John Gordon, became involved in an unsavoury scandal, and provided the queen with a casus belli against one Gordon at least, if she needed one.

  In June Sir John severely wounded Lord Ogilvie in a street brawl in Edinburgh as a result of which he was thrown into prison. The feud with the Ogilvies had arisen because the Ogilvie of Findlater had disinherited his own son James Ogilvie of Cardell and left his lands, including the castle of Findlater, to Sir John in his place. The disinheritance was at the instance of Ogilvie’s second wife, who persuaded Ogilvie that his son had made amorous advances to her, and thus deserved punishment. The step-mother herself now became the mistress or ‘pretended spouse’ of John Gordon, who was not only a bold cavalier but good-looking also, and as Buchanan put it ‘in the very flower of youth’. Public opinion was outraged and the scandalous alliance did the poor woman little good in the end, for when Sir John could not secure from her all the lands he wanted, he shut her up in a ‘close chamber’ and both discarded her as a mistress and disowned her as a wife.1 But matrimony was much on the mind of the ebullient Sir John: as a scion of the Catholic Gordons, he had been suggested as a possible husband for the queen herself. He himself seems to have been confident (on little foundation) that his dashing good looks had already caught her eye. Now his volatile temperament could not long endure the incarceration of prison. He escaped, and fled northwards to the safety of his father’s domains.

  Mary did not view his offence with either a merciful or an indulgent eye. He had escaped justice, and he had also possessed himself of the lands of her own master of the household – none other than that James Ogilvie of Cardell who had been so cruelly dispossessed by the accusations of his step-mother. Mary now determined to pursue Sir John in the course of her northern progress, and James Ogilvie was among the courtiers who accompanied her on the journey. Scandal apart, Mary also intended to demonstrate that the Gordons could not behave as they pleased with impunity. Huntly had been out of favour with the queen since January, since he had made no secret of his disapproval of her cool policy towards the Scottish Catholics. Not only had Mary rejected his plan of a Catholic rising at Aberdeen, when she was still in France, but ever since she had refused such provocative offers as ‘setting up the Mass in three shires’. The untrustworthy temperament of the 4th earl made him indeed a delicate subject to handle either in conflict or alliance – as Randolph observed unpleasantly, were it not for the fact that ‘no man will trust him either in word or deed’, he would have been capable of doing a great deal of mischief.2

  The character of the 4th earl belongs to that great tradition of independent Highland lords who throughout history have posed such problems for the central government – since their policies, which have seemed so strangely inconsistent from the viewpoint of the centre, have in fact been consistently bent towards the aggrandizement of their own clans. Huntly had powerful royal connections: as the grandson of James IV by his natural daughter Margaret Stewart, he was, although thirty years older, Mary Stuart’s first cousin (she always addressed both him and his son as ‘cousin’ in her letters), and since his own father died when he was a baby, he was actually brought up with King James V. Two of his nine sons were married to two daughters of the duke of Châtelherault. His power extended across the north-east of Scotland in a formidable array of tangible castles, and intangible but effective family alliances. Not only did he hold the royal castles of Inverness and Inverlochy, but he was further supported by his own castles of Strathbogie, Bog of Gight, Aboyne, Ruthven in Badenoch and Drummin in Glenlivat; from 1549 onwards, he was allowed to hold the large and profitable earldom of Moray under the crown. At different dates, the local Fraser lords of Saltoun and Lovat had made bonds of manrent to him, as had the captains of Clan Cameron and Clan Chattan. The grandeur of his household impressed even Mary of Guise’s French court when they came north. Now, at fifty, grown corpulent with age, like a great northern bear, he seemed the very pattern of the Highland patriarch.

  The past career of this patriarchal figure had, however, been somewhat chequered. As one of the leaders of the Scots army at Pinkie Cleugh (where his white and gilt armour dazzled the eye) he had been captured by the English; although Leslie tells the story of his romantic escape from Morpeth while his jailers were playing cards, in fact he procured his release by the more down-to-earth method of signing an indenture with Somerset to pursue the cause of King Edward VI in Scotland. He was imprisoned by Mary of Guise in 1555, but restored to favour to become lieutenan
t-general of the kingdom two years later. Yet her favour and his Catholicism did not prevent him defecting to the reformers briefly in April 1560: his motives seem to have been his notorious ‘doubleness and covetousness’ since he was careful to stipulate that he should continue in supreme authority in the north as before. When his castle of Strathbogie was sacked, among its contents was found a large proportion of the ecclesiastical ornaments of Aberdeen Cathedral which Huntly was said to have stored away for use when Catholicism was restored.3 Yet his defection at this critical moment virtually wrecked the Catholic cause. Now Huntly was once more openly professing the faith of his fathers, but Mary’s caution towards this unstable character can readily be imagined, since not only she but all his contemporaries generally reckoned him to be totally untrustworthy in the final analysis, in all except that which intimately concerned his own clan.

  There was a further complication between Huntly and the central government: although Huntly, free from interference in the north, had profited from the revenues of the lands of the earldom of Moray ever since 1549, the title itself had been given secretly to Lord James at the end of January 1562 by the queen. At his wedding in February Lord James had actually been invested earl of Mar, but when Lord Erskine protested that this earldom was an Erskine perquisite, Lord James resigned it a few months later, retaining only the secret Moray earldom; nevertheless despite this private assurance of Moray from the queen to Lord James, the news was not broken to Huntly. It has been suggested that the prospect of the formal acquisition of the earldom of Moray provided a sinister motive for Lord James to drag his sister northwards, and persuade her to strike down the overmighty Huntly. It was true that Lord James was quite as avaricious as most of his contemporaries: certainly his best chance of publicly acquiring the earldom which he had already acquired secretly was to proceed north with an adequate force, and possess himself of it. In this, he clearly needed the assistance of the queen. But it is equally certain that when Mary and James set forth for the north in August 1562 they were perfectly united in their aims. For the last year James had been Mary’s chief adviser and she had accepted all his lessons. James did not need to drag Mary north: she herself was anxious to make her progress and in doing so restore the errant Sir John to the arms of justice. As for the earldom of Moray, one of the points of the gift was intended to be the curtailment of Huntly’s expanding powers. With regard to Mary’s ultimate intentions towards Huntly, the evidence suggests that in August the queen had made no positive decision, but was content to see how Huntly would react to her northern progress before judging whether he was indeed an over-mighty subject, or merely a convenient Catholic viceroy. The focus was therefore for better or for worse on the behaviour of Huntly.

  Queen Mary arrived at Aberdeen, via Stirling, Coupar Angus, Perth and Glamis, on 27th August. Here in this Huntly-dominated town, she paid a visit to the university (although it was to St Andrews she left a bequest of Greek and Latin books to its library in her will of 1566). At Aberdeen she was also greeted by the countess of Huntly, who was surrounded by a splendid train of attendants. This remarkable and vigorous woman had been born at Keith, a sister of the Earl Marischal, and was incidentally aunt to that Lady Agnes Keith whom Lord James had recently married. Clearly the strain provided a series of redoubtable helpmeets, for Elizabeth, countess of Huntly, not only provided the decision which her husband often lacked, but was also not above turning to the aid of her tame ‘familiars’ or witches, when inspiration from any other source was lacking. Now she pleaded as a mother with the queen to overlook Sir John Gordon’s indiscretion and pardon him. Queen Mary, with the strictness with which she seems to have regarded all scandalous misdemeanours, insisted that Sir John must return to ward at Stirling before he could be pardoned. The gallant Sir John was thus temporarily induced to surrender himself – but shortly afterwards his turbulent nature reasserted itself, and escaping once more, he gathered a force of 1000 horse about him.

  The Gordons were traditionally skilful horsemen. With this force, Sir John now proceeded impudently to harry the queen’s train as she proceeded north. He later admitted that this was done with the deliberate intention of abducting her and, unlike Arran, he seems to have been gaily certain that the queen would accede to the arrangement. His confidence in his powers of physical attraction was unfortunately misplaced. This flagrant defiance of her royal authority enraged the queen, who promptly refused to visit the Huntly stronghold of Strathbogie, on her road to Inverness. Caution as well as anger may have played its part in the decision: for it was highly uncertain what might befall her once inside the Gordon stronghold, in the grasp of the unstable Huntly, to say nothing of the mercurial Sir John. It was afterwards suggested that had Mary stopped at Strathbogie, Huntly would have had Lord James, Maitland and Morton killed and established a Catholic coup. He would most likely have completed the operation by marrying off Mary – to be ‘kept at the devotion of the said Earl of Huntly’ – to his son. Mary certainly told Randolph indignantly later that among Huntly’s crimes had been the fact that he would have married her off ‘where he would’.4

  In the meantime Huntly was given no chance to put these dastardly plans, if indeed he held them, into effect. Queen Mary by-passed Strathbogie, and taking a more western route to Inverness, she stopped instead at Darnaway Castle. Here in this stronghold a few miles from the sea, set aloft amid surrounding forests in the centre of the earldom of Moray (‘very ruinous’ complained Randolph, except for the hall which was ‘fair and large’) she took the opportunity to announce that Lord James had been granted the earldom in place of that of Mar. She also issued an order against John Gordon for his efforts to ‘break the whole country, so far as is in his power’, as well as failing to return to ward.5 When Mary finally reached Inverness on 11th September, she had brusque confirmation of Huntly’s attitude towards her. The keeper of the castle, Alexander Gordon, another of Huntly’s numerous offspring (he had nine sons and three daughters), refused her entrance, although it was a royal, not a Gordon, castle, being only committed into Huntly’s charge by virtue of his position as sheriff of Inverness. This was not so much insolence as actual treason, whether by Huntly’s specific orders or not, and in the queen’s mind certainly lent colour to what he would have done if Mary had stopped at Strathbogie. Huntly, on hearing that the rest of the Highlanders were rallying behind the queen, took alarm at the situation, and sent orders to his son to admit the queen. Mary Stuart then entered Inverness Castle, and its captain was promptly hanged over the battlements for his defiance.6

  Installed at Inverness Castle, Mary was now able to taste the sweets of Highland life, which has commended itself to so many royalties since: the sport, the freedom, the beauty of the scenery all appealed to her romantic temperament. She felt a childish happiness to feel herself among this strange people dressed in their skins (half of whom only spoke Gaelic, a language she could not speak), so tough that they habitually slept out in the heather, said Leslie, but now came down from their distant glens to gaze on this beautiful young creature they were told was their queen. In order to please them, not only did the queen herself adopt Highland dress, some of it acquired hastily in Inverness according to the royal accounts, but plaids were also purchased locally for several of her courtiers. To Inverness came the local lords: the young gentlemen of the Fraser clan were presented to her, at their head their seventeen-year-old chief Lord Hugh of Lovat, nephew of that Lord Lovat who had perished with his eldest son and so many of the Fraser men eighteen years before in a clan battle on the Field of Shirts at Loch Lochy. The newly be-plaided courtiers were impressed by this muster of Highlanders, having never seen such an abundance of them before, and the queen showed particular favour to the good-looking young boy. As a result young Lord Hugh, ‘not a little vain’ of the dash which he had cut, offered the services of his Frasers to the queen against the Gordons, in order to avenge the deaths of his forebears at the Field of Shirts. The queen tactfully replied, however, that she was loath
to give cause for a further quarrel between the clans. When Queen Mary departed from Inverness, Lord Hugh and his Frasers merely conveyed her to the banks of the Spey – and sad to relate for the self-confidence of youth, a number of Frasers ended by fighting against the queen for the Gordons.7

  Although Randolph grumbled dreadfully at the appalling journey from Stirling to Inverness, and though the surrounding power of the Gordons was to say the least of it menacing, all in all Mary Stuart had never seemed more blithe. She evidently looked on the Highlanders as noble savages, a category she found more sympathetic than their opposite numbers, the savage nobles, in the south. Randolph was amazed at her happiness and her health: ‘In all these garbullies,’ he wrote, ‘I never saw her merrier, nor dismayed, nor never thought that stomache to be in her that I find! She repenteth but, when the lardes and other at Inverness came in the mornings from the watch, that she was not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and knapscall [helmet] a Glasgow buckler and a broad sword.’8 In short, Rosalind was in her element: the very spice of danger, provided by the fact that Sir John still hovered impudently in her wake, far from upsetting, merely stimulated the queen.*

  From Inverness, Mary, still dogged by Sir John, proceeded to the seat of the Catholic bishop of Moray at Spynie. It was suspected that Sir John might finally choose to attack as the royal party crossed the Spey, and Mary’s scouts reported that up to 1000 Gordon horsemen were concealed in the woods. But no attack came. As the queen passed the castle of Findlater, the former Ogilvie stronghold, she called on it to surrender; but since there was no response, and the castle could not be captured without cannon, owing to its sea-girt position, she abandoned the effort, and passed on back to Aberdeen. Here, on 22nd September, she was received with a rapturous and loyal welcome, whatever intrigues Huntly might be meditating at nearby Strathbogie. The great question which now faced the queen and the new earl of Moray* was how next to proceed against Huntly: was he to be allowed to maintain this mighty sway over the north of Scotland, so complete that his son temeritously dared to defy the queen outside her own castle of Inverness, and another son, an escaped criminal, harried the queen’s troops, with impunity, while he himself apparently planned a state of near-independence? Mary, spurred on by Moray, now sent for 120 harquebusiers and experienced soldiers such as Lord Lindsay, Kirkcaldy of the Grange and Cockburn of Ormiston (all incidentally keen Protestants), as well as some cannon. She also forwarded a message to Huntly asking him to surrender his own formidable cannon, which stood in the courtyard at Strathbogie, in order to menace the Highlanders into subjection.