The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Kate Williams

  On 18 June, Throckmorton asked again for Mary to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. She told him that she would deal with the matter when she returned to Scotland, which she soon expected to do. Still, Mary wanted Elizabeth to make two concessions: to withdraw the proviso that she could interfere in Scotland and make Mary officially her heir. If Elizabeth gave this concession, Mary would be in a position of great strength.

  Mary had lost everything: no longer Queen Dauphine of France, out of favour and influence at the French court, and her country in the hands of Protestants. She was determined to return herself to power. And yet the lords had been used to governing themselves as they pleased. The Scottish Reformation had been set in train by Parliament. They wanted a figurehead, who would rubber-stamp their decision. Mary wanted to rule. The stage was set for a battle of wills.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I Will Never See You Again’

  Mary was eighteen and about to embark on becoming a queen regnant, ruling in her home country for the first time. She had no understanding of Scotland and little memory of it. It was to her a foreign country. The nobles, vivified by complicated family loyalties and conflicts, were very unlike those she had known in France: they were driven above all by the fight for family power and unlike the French lords, they refused to pretend.

  Mary planned her departure. Elizabeth denied her application for a safe-conduct pass until she ratified the treaty and Mary set off without it. She told Throckmorton politely that she had travelled safely between Scotland and France before and would do so again. As she said, ‘I am determined to adventure the matter, whatsoever come of it; I trust the wind will be so favourable as I shall not need to come on the coast of England’. If she did, she was ready for the worst, and declared dramatically that if Elizabeth ‘be so hard-hearted as to desire my end, she may then do her pleasure and make sacrifice of me’.1 She told a rather stunned Throckmorton that she was leaving the matter up to God.

  Mary’s Guise uncles did not try to dissuade her from going. Instead, the Cardinal suggested Mary might leave her jewels with him for safe keeping. Mary refused but did give her beloved grandmother a handsome necklace of diamonds, rubies and emeralds – as the only Guise member who had been truly kind to her.

  On 8 August, Mary sent another request for a passport. Arrange­­ments were made for her ships. Unfortunately for Mary, James Bothwell, still Lord High Admiral, had come to assist with arrangements, along with the Bishop of Orkney and Lord Eglington.

  On 14 August 1561, Mary’s transport was assembled for the journey that might take a week or so. She would be accompanied on her boat by the four Marys, retrieved from the Priory, a second boat carrying her other staff. Ten more ships were packed up with her things; tapestries, gold, plate, gowns, jewels, paintings and animals and forty-five dismantled beds. As they left, a ship sank in front of them, killing all the sailors, and the party was devastated. Still in mourning for her husband, Mary burst into tears as she sailed away to her new life and cried over and over, ‘Adieu France. I think I will never see you again.’

  Mary spent the journey back in very low spirits. Her incredible courage, so strong as she had prepared for her journey, deserted her. The fear of the unknown, the new land ahead of her, and what she had left behind struck deep at her heart. Elizabeth had actually sent a message that she could have safe conduct, but it had arrived too late for Mary to see it.

  Mary progressed swiftly, so fast that they arrived at Leith on Tuesday 19 August, in advance of expectations and Holyrood Palace was not yet ready for her. The port of Leith, so long fought over while Mary had been in France, was intended to be the first stopping point in a reign of peace and unity. She dined at a house there and then a party of lords, including Argyll and her half-brother, James Stewart, came to escort her to Edinburgh. Everything that Mary said, James would report back to Cecil’s men. James had failed to persuade Mary to become a Protestant but he and Cecil both hoped that she would be malleable, and allow James to push forward the Protestant Reformation.

  James Stewart, thirty to Mary’s eighteen, had always been in the inner circle of power. Mary of Guise had even considered making him regent in place of Arran. He was clever, well spoken, a skilled fighter and entirely unscrupulous. He had an excessively solemn manner and a face that always looked dour at rest, though this worked to his advantage. Foreign ambassadors thought him a man of great gravitas and intellectual capacity, more driven by law, reason and religious faith than passion and ambition – when the reverse was entirely the case. Unlike Mary, he knew the way to work with the lords: divide and rule, do not tell the truth and always think of your own advantage. He did not always tell her what he knew or suspected – but at this point, he was by her side, her great supporter. Still, he meant to manipulate her, a mere woman who knew nothing of Scotland.

  The people of the country were delighted to see her. They sang and lit hundreds of bonfires as she made her way to the royal apartments at Holyroodhouse – the palace had been laboriously rebuilt and repaired after it had been burned down by the English in 1544. Mary’s new home had originally been an Augustinian abbey and the abbey guest house was probably first used as a royal residence in the fourteenth century, and over the following century dedicated royal apartments were added. When James IV came to the throne, he built a new palace next to the abbey in order to house him and his new bride, Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, around a quadrangle, with a chapel, new royal rooms and a great hall. He even added a lion house to display his incredible menagerie. James V rebuilt the palace in symmetrical Renaissance style, renovated the north-west tower to add brand-new royal apartments and converted the chapel into the council chamber. He transformed Holyroodhouse into a full, working royal residence, with an armoury, the mint, a forge and huge kitchens meant for entertaining.

  Holyrood was hardly Fontainebleau or even Saint-Germain, but the palace was large and well appointed – and it was all Mary’s. She took the apartments that her father had rebuilt in the north-west corner: a large presence chamber, a sizeable bedroom and two small rooms, a dressing room and a supper room. Her ladies tried to make them homely and in the morning, six hundred amateur musicians lined up under her windows to play music to welcome her.

  The four Marys were greatly pleased to be out of the convent and finally preside at a court. Mary Fleming was always the senior, for she was Mary’s actual kinswoman, as a half-cousin, and she was pleased to be reunited with her mother, although only briefly for Lady Fleming departed to France within a few days, hopeful of advancement for her son, now Diane de Poitiers was firmly out of favour. Mary Fleming, only a few months older than her queen, was sweet-natured and a generous friend – Mary later took her as her bedfellow after the shocking Chastelard affair. Mary Beaton was the prettiest of the Marys, a fair-haired and merry girl, who captivated the men at court, and she and Mary enjoyed playing cards and games together. Her handwriting was oddly similar to Mary’s – and Mary may have used her to write letters at times. Mary Livingston was gay and fond of dancing. Mary Seton, who remained with Mary for the longest, because she never married, was the closest of the four to a lady’s maid, she helped Mary dress and she was skilled at arranging and styling Mary’s magnificent hair.

  Mary began decorating her apartments. All her life, she loved beautiful surroundings and fine dress. When an inventory was taken of her clothes in 1562, there were sixty gowns (fewer than Elizabeth’s thousands, but still plenty), many of gold and silver or expensive velvet. Mary liked white or black – she preferred simpler designs to Elizabeth – but she also had gowns of crimson, orange, yellow and blue, many of them beautifully and intricately embroidered. Mary knew that she was expected to be the most well-dressed and magnificent woman at court and she had grown up in one of the most fashionable courts in history. But, like many queen regnants, Mary liked to sometimes dress as a man and dressed at least once in this way to lead her army.

  She kept an intricate record of her marvellous clothes an
d incredible collection of jewels. Many of them had been given to her, but she also bought her own from Edinburgh jewellers, including beautiful Scottish pearls, of which she was particularly fond. She most often wore rubies – a striking contrast against her white gowns. In her collection, she had necklaces, rings, bracelets, belts, earrings and golden caps on her furs. One of her pendants – rubies, diamonds and emeralds set in gold and enamel – was engraved with a serpent coiled around the tree of life and the words ‘vie et mort’. She held tight to her jewels from her mother and those given to her in France by the king and the dauphin, reminders of the childhood that had been lost for ever.

  Mary brought in a court that had entertainments and masques focused on women and queens – her Marys would sometimes dress as historic queens for the enjoyment of the court. But under all the beauty, grace and festivity, the court was a place where masculine power was fighting to be resurgent. Mary was surrounded by men. And they were all jostling for control, using her to get power in whichever way they could. She trusted James Stewart and made him her chief advisor. The advice he gave her was usually in his own interests and he always reported back to the English, who were as keen as ever to see him push forward the Protestant Reformation, and might have given him further financial reward – as we know they did for his efforts to persuade Mary towards supporting the Reformation in early 1561.

  After James Stewart, Bothwell and the elder Arran, the nobles who had the most influence over Mary’s life and who recur most in her story were Huntly, Argyll, her secretary Maitland and James Douglas, Earl of Morton. Argyll, at twenty-eight, had only just succeeded to the earldom after his father’s death in 1558. He had married Mary’s half-sister, Jean Stewart, daughter of James V and Elizabeth Bethune, in 1553 – and this was a powerful alliance, for Jean had been brought up at the court of Mary of Guise and would be a companion to the Queen of Scots. Argyll was a keen Protestant and he was an admirer of John Knox and a strong ally of James Stewart. But he also had loyalty to Bothwell, who had attempted to help his father claim his position on baby Mary’s council, provided for by James V in his will but denied by Arran. George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly, was a member of the Regency council and had accompanied Mary of Guise to France. He fell out with Mary, Queen of Scots when she gave his historic title of Moray to her half-brother, James. He died in 1562, and so it was his successor, his second son, also called George Gordon, who would have the impact on Mary’s life: he was a great ally with Bothwell, and married his sister to him, and would be one of the men to sign the fatal Craigmillar bond.

  The Earl Morton was around forty-four when Mary arrived in Scotland, part of the large and territorial Douglas family, a man of great family loyalty and a lot of energy and intelligence. Tall, with gingerish hair and beard, he had a pale complexion and wasn’t much of a fighter – he was the type better suited to writing a strategy behind the scenes. He had been no supporter of Mary of Guise, had strong Protestant sympathies, and signed the Treaty of Berwick to expel the French troops and fatally undermine her. Now, if he were given the choice between James Stewart and Mary, Queen of Scots he would choose James Stewart. William Maitland, whom Mary appointed her Secretary of State, was intelligent, hard-working and probably the nearest the queen had to a loyalist. All of them would shape her future – James Stewart most of all.

  On Mary’s first Sunday in Edinburgh, she heard private Mass with her servants and attendants. The priest attending trembled as he conducted the service.

  Mary pronounced that she would keep religious matters as they were – and issued a declaration that there should be no change to the state of religion that she had found when she arrived in Scotland and that her French servants and attendants should be allowed to keep their religion. This seemed an excellent idea and the kind of reasonable announcement that Elizabeth I has been congratulated for – it was very close to Elizabeth’s own pronouncement that she would not look into men’s hearts. But the fact that she heard private Mass was too much for many of the nobles. The ever-furious Knox declared that one Mass was more awful than ten thousand foreign soldiers landing in the country. Most of the lords had been disposed to give Mary a chance – but to Knox, forty-seven to her eighteen, she was the enemy, another one of the ‘Monstrous Regiment’.

  For Mary, there was too much history, division and hatred close at hand. She had seen her arrival in Scotland as a new start. But to the Scots, they could not see her rule free of the horrors of the past years, with the battles at Edinburgh and Leith, the deaths and wars over religion. The lords laid these miseries at the door of Mary of Guise and her daughter was blamed as a matter of course. Yet Mary proved herself once more a measured and excellent queen and invited Knox to a meeting. Initially, there was a rapprochement and when Mary challenged him about his tract on the Monstrous Regiment, Knox said he would not condemn Mary on the grounds of her sex alone. Certainly, some aspects of his pamphlet were coming to seem rather rash – Elizabeth was so offended by it that she had refused to allow him to be part of the negotiations over the Treaty of Edinburgh and it was very unlikely she would offer him sanctuary in England or even safe passage if he returned to Geneva. But if Knox had softened his position on female rulers now he was surrounded by them, he was still resolute on religion. If Mary retained the Catholic faith, it was against the true word of God and her subjects could be allowed to rise up against her.

  Mary was infuriated by Knox but not unduly upset. Her people were still delighted by her and greeting her at every opportunity. She was convinced of the rectitude of her principle that the current religious status should continue and she should worship privately as she wished. And many key leaders of the reformation, clerical and noble, strongly disliked Knox’s message of uprising. Scotland had suffered enough bloodshed.

  At the beginning of September, Mary sent a diamond shaped like a heart to Elizabeth and staged a full triumphal entry into Edinburgh, with pageants and an angel descending from a mechanical cloud with the keys of the city for the new queen. It was a vision of pure harmony, but the lords were already fighting behind the scenes. She had appointed her sixteen-member Privy Council and although it included both Protestants and Catholics and representatives of noble families, it wasn’t enough. For the noble families, James Stewart, Maitland and Bothwell had too much power.

  It was arguably impossible to govern between the factions of lords and Mary did her best. Her great mistake in these early days was not sending back her French attendants. She was fond of them and relied on their counsel, but as far as the Scottish lords were concerned, she was actively excluding them and their relations from court positions. Naturally, at only eighteen, she wanted a gay, beautiful court of French elegance like the one she had grown up in.

  Mary’s other problem was that her crown, unlike Elizabeth’s, was impoverished. James V’s coffers had been much reduced and some lords had helped themselves to what was left after Mary of Guise’s regency. The income was a paltry £18,000 in Scots money. If she wanted to go to war, she would have to convene Parliament and ask for rises in taxation – never a popular request. She simply could not afford war. Another mistake was listening too intently to James Stewart. He was her half-brother, he was familiar with Scotland, feared, respected, powerful. He was naturally fond of a half-sister. But she was also a block to all the things he wanted: a Protestant reformation and power over the country.

  The queen set off to visit her birthplace and her mother’s old home at Stirling – and tried to attend high Mass in the Chapel Royal where she had been crowned. James Stewart stopped it – she was allowed to hear Mass only at her chapel in Holyroodhouse.

  Mary still refused to ratify the treaty. James Stewart begged Elizabeth’s pardon that Mary had ever made designs on her throne – and she was persuaded to be merciful. She agreed that both sides could appoint commissioners to review the treaty and consider the future.

  Mary thought she had won over Scotland – and she wanted England. She hoped to pay a visit to El
izabeth. Unfortunately, Elizabeth had changed her mind and decided Mary should ratify the treaty as it was. She did not wish to declare Mary her heir in case this led dispossessed English Catholics to gather around the Scottish queen. According to the Catholic Church, Elizabeth was a heretic and, as the daughter of the shocking Anne Boleyn, illegitimate. Mary, however, was truly royal, the bearer of real Tudor blood.2 Elizabeth could not afford to give her anything. ‘Princes cannot like their own children’, she told Mary’s envoy, the experienced administrator, William Maitland, bluntly. ‘Think you that I could love my own winding-sheet? How then she shall I, think you, like my cousin being declared my Heir Apparent’. Moreover, as she said, she knew the ‘inconstancy’ of the English people, how ‘they mislike the current government and have their eyes fixed on the person that is next to succeed.’ She was right to say that people tend to prefer the ‘rising than the setting sun’.3 Mary was the rising sun in Scotland and the English found her popularity over those she ruled disturbing.

  Mary had asked for her ‘cousin’s’ portrait, but Elizabeth still hadn’t sent it, prevaricating that the artist was ill. Nevertheless, Mary was still convinced that if she and Elizabeth met and spoke together, face to face, without advisors interfering, then they could reach a settlement.

  And Elizabeth had to choose someone to be her heir for, no matter how much she proclaimed her health, the court fussed over who would come next. Someone had to be the ‘winding sheet’. The sisters of the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, Katherine and Mary, were still threats and would have been Elizabeth’s heirs, had she died, since Henry had enfranchised the children of his sister, Mary. They were also seen as the ideal Protestant solution. Elizabeth disliked Katherine, the eldest, in particular and ‘could not abide the sight of her’.4 Queen Mary had been fond of the girls and given them positions (and Katherine had nearly married the scheming Earl of Hertford), but Elizabeth had them dismissed as ladies-in-waiting and installed them as lower maids of honour, who would get little time with the queen.