The Story of Civilization: Volume VII: The Age of Reason Begins

by Will Durant

  “Yea (quod she), but ye are not the Kirk that I will nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for I think it is the true Kirk of God.”

  “Your will (quod he), Madam, is no reason; neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. And wonder not, Madam, that I call Rome a harlot, for that Church is altogether polluted with all kind of spiritual fornication …”

  “My conscience (said she) is not so.”

  If this conversation is faithfully reported, it was a dramatic confrontation of monarchy with theocratic democracy, of Catholicism with Calvinism. If we may believe Knox, the Queen took his reproofs without retaliation, merely saying, “Ye are oure sain [overmuch sore] for me”; she went off to dinner, and Knox to his ministry. Lethington wished “Mr. Knox would deal more gently with her, being a young princess unpersuaded.”14

  His followers did not feel that he had been too hard with her. When she appeared in public some called her idolater, and children informed her that hearing Mass was a sin. The Edinburgh magistrates issued a decree of banishment for “monks, friars, priests, nuns, adulterers, and all sic filthy persons.”15 Mary deposed the magistrates and ordered new elections. At Stirling the priests who tried to minister to her were driven off with bloody heads, “while she wept helplessly.”16 The General Assembly of the Kirk demanded that she should be forbidden to hear Mass anywhere, but the lords of the Council refused to comply. In December 1561 a hot dispute arose between the Council and the Kirk over the distribution of ecclesiastical revenues: the Protestant ministers were allotted a sixth, the Queen a sixth, the Catholic clergy (still in the great majority) two thirds. Knox summarized the matter by saying that two parts were given to the Devil and the third was divided between the Devil and God.17 The ministers received, on an average, one hundred marks ($3,333?) per year.18

  Throughout the ensuing year the clergy of the Kirk continued to denounce the Queen. They were scandalized by the masques and revels, the singing, dancing, and flirting, that went on at Mary’s court. She diminished her amusements in deference to the protests, but the ministers felt that she had yet far to go, for she still heard Mass. “John Knox,” wrote a contemporary, “thundereth out of the pulpit, so that I fear nothing so much as that one day he will mar all. He ruleth the roost, and of him all men stand in fear.”19 Here again the Reformation came to grips with the Renaissance.

  On December 15, 1562, Mary summoned Knox. Before Murray, Lethington, and others she accused him of teaching his followers to hate her. He answered, he says, that “princes … are more exercised in fiddling and flinging than in reading or hearing of God’s most blessed word; and fiddlers and flatterers … are more precious in their eyes than men of wisdom and gravity, who, by wholesome admonition, might beat down in them some part of that vanity and pride whereunto all are born, but in princes take deep root and strength by wicked education.” According to Knox, the Queen replied (with unwonted meekness), “If ye hear anything of myself that mislikes you, come to myself and tell me, and I shall hear you”; and he answered, “I am called, Madam, to a public function within the Kirk of God, and was appointed by God to rebuke the sins and vices of all. I am not appointed to come to every man in particular to show him his offense, for that labor were infinite. If your Grace please to frequent the public sermons, then doubt I not but that ye shall fully understand both what I like and mislike.”20

  She let him go in peace, but the war of faiths went on. At Easter of 1563 several Catholic priests who had violated the law by saying Mass were seized by local agents and were threatened with death for idolatry.21 Some were jailed, some escaped and hid in the woods. Mary sent for Knox once more and interceded for the imprisoned priests; he replied that if she would enforce the law he would guarantee Protestant docility; otherwise he thought the papists deserved a lesson. “I promise to do as you require,” she said, and for a moment they were friends. At her order the Archbishop of St. Andrews and forty-seven other priests were tried for saying Mass and were sentenced to prison. The ministers rejoiced, but a week later (May 26, 1563), when Mary and her ladies attended Parliament in their best raiment and some of the people cried “God bless that sweet face!” the ministers denounced “the targetting [tasseling] of their tails,” and Knox wrote, “Such stinking pride of women … was never seen before in Scotland.”22

  Shortly thereafter he heard that Lethington was trying to arrange a marriage between Mary and Don Carlos, son of Philip II. Feeling that such a marriage would be fatal to Scottish Protestantism, Knox spoke his mind on the subject in a sermon preached to the nobles attending Parliament:

  And now, my Lords, to put an end to all, I hear of the Queen’s marriage … This, my Lords, will I say: Whensoever the nobility of Scotland professing to Lord Jesus consents that an infidel (and all papists are infidels) shall be head to your sovereign, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm.23

  The Queen lost her temper. She summoned him and asked (he reports), “What have ye to do with my marriage? Or what are ye in this commonwealth?” He made a famous reply: “A subject born within the same, madam. And albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.”24 Mary broke into tears and bade him leave her.

  His boldness reached its peak in October (1563). A crowd again gathered about the royal chapel to protest against the Mass that was about to be said there. Andrew Armstrong and Patrick Cranstoun entered the chapel and frightened the priest into retiring. The Queen, who had not been present, ordered the trial of the two Calvinists for invading her premises. On October 8 Knox sent out a letter bidding all “my brethren, of all estates [classes], that have preferred the truth,” to attend the trial. The Queen’s Council judged this call to be treason, and cited Knox to stand trial before her. He came (December 21, 1563), but so great a crowd of his supporters gathered in the courtyard and on the stairs and “even to the chamber door where the Queen and her Council sat,” and he defended himself so skillfully, that the Council acquitted him, and the Queen said, “Mr. Knox, you may return to your home for this night.” “I pray God,” he replied, “to purge your heart from papistry.”25

  On Palm Sunday, 1564, the indomitable prophet, aged fifty-nine, married his second wife, Margaret Stuart, aged seventeen, a distant relative of the Queen. A year later the Queen too married a second time.

  IV. THE QUEEN IN LOVE: 1565–68

  Whom could she marry without a diplomatic mess? A Spaniard? But France and England would protest, and Protestant Scots would rage. A Frenchman? But England would oppose, even to war, any renewal of the Scottish-French alliance. An Austrian—the Archduke Charles? But Knox from the pulpit already thundered against union with a Catholic “infidel,” and Elizabeth let Mary know that marriage with a Hapsburg—old foes of the Tudors—would be construed as a hostile act.

  In a moment of passion Mary cut the diplomatic knot. Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, who held himself to be the next in line to Mary for the Scottish throne, had lost his estates by supporting Henry VIII against Scotland, and had fled to England to elude the Scots’ revenge; now (October 1564) he thought it timely to return. Soon thereafter came his nineteen-year-old son Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who through his mother was (like Mary) descended from Henry VII of England. Mary was charmed by the beardless youth; she admired his skill at tennis and on the lute; she forgave his vanity as the due of his good looks, and rushed into love before she could discern his lack of mind. On July 29, 1565, over the protests of Elizabeth and half her own Council, Mary made the lad her husband and named him king. Murray retired from the Council and joined the enemies of the headstrong Queen.

  She enjoyed a few months of troubled happiness. Her need for love had mounted in her four years of widowhood; it was pleasant to be desired! She gave her love unstintedly, and without stint she lavished gifts upon her mate. “All dignities that she can indue him with,” reported Eliz
abeth’s ambassador, Thomas Randolph, “are already given and granted. No man pleases her that contenteth not him…. She hath given over unto him her whole will.”26 Good fortune turned the boy’s head; he became dictatorial and insolent, and he demanded joint powers of rule with the Queen. Meanwhile he caroused, drank heavily, alienated the Council, had fits of jealousy, and suspected Mary of adultery with David Rizzio.

  Who was Rizzio? An Italian musician, he had come to Scotland in 1561, aged twenty-eight, in the train of the ambassador from Savoy. Mary, fond of music, attached him to her service as organizer of musical fetes. She enjoyed his wit, his quick intelligence, his varied Continental culture. As he knew French and Latin well and wrote a fine Italian hand, she used him also as secretary. Soon she let him draft as well as write her foreign correspondence; he became an adviser, a power; he shared in directing policy; he ate with the Queen; sometimes he sat closeted with her far into the night. The Scottish nobles, seeing themselves superseded, and suspecting Rizzio of serving the Catholic cause, plotted to destroy him.

  At first Darnley himself had been captivated by the clever Italian. They had played together, slept together. But as Rizzio’s functions and honors grew, and Darnley’s foolishness reduced him to political impotence, the affection of the King for the servant-become-minister descended the gamut of feeling to hatred. When Mary became pregnant Darnley thought she was bearing Rizzio’s child. Randolph believed it; and, a generation later, Henri Quatre quipped that James I of England must be “the modern Solomon,” since his father was the harpist David.27 Having warmed his courage with whiskey, Darnley joined with the Earl of Morton, Baron Ruthven, and other nobles in a plot to murder Rizzio. They signed a “band” pledging themselves to uphold Protestantism in Scotland and to give Darnley the “crown matrimonial”—full rights as Scotland’s king—and the right of succession should Mary die. Darnley promised to protect the signers from the consequences “of whatever crime,” and to restore Murray and other banished lords.28

  On March 6, 1566, Randolph revealed the plot to Cecil.29 On March 9 it was carried out. Darnley entered the boudoir where Mary, Rizzio, and Lady Argyll were at supper; he grasped and held the Queen; Morton, Ruthven, and others rushed in, dragged Rizzio from the room over Mary’s helpless protests, and stabbed him to death on the stairs—fifty-six wounds for good measure and sure. Someone rang the town tocsin; a crowd of armed citizens marched on the palace, proposing to cut Mary “to collops,”30 but Darnley persuaded them to disperse. All that night and the next day Mary remained in Holyrood Palace, a prisoner of the assassins. Meanwhile she played upon Darnley’s terror and love, and he helped and accompanied her when, on the following night, she escaped and fled to Dunbar. There, vowing revenge, she issued an appeal to all loyal supporters to come to her defense. Perhaps to divide her enemies, she recalled Murray to her Council.

  The most effective of those who offered her protection was James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell. A strange and fateful character: not handsome, but strong of body, passions, and will; an adventurer on land and sea, skilled with sword and rapier; cowing men with his cool audacity, alluring women with his talk, his recklessness, and his reputation for seducing them; but also a man of superior education, a lover of and author of books in an age when many a noble Scot could not write his name. At first the Queen had disliked him, for he had spoken ill of her; but that is one way of winning a woman’s interest. Then, seeing his martial qualities, she had appointed him Lieutenant of the Border; hearing of his familiarity with ships, she had made him Lord Admiral; learning of his desire for Lady Jane Gordon’s hand, she promoted their marriage.

  Now, fearing the assassins of Rizzio and suspecting her husband’s complicity, she turned to Bothwell for protection and advice. She did not take to him precipitately, but his masculine qualities of courage, vigor, and confidence were those that her feminine nature had longed for and had not found in Francis II or Darnley. She noted how respect for his sword and his troops drove the conspirators into hiding or submission; soon she felt secure enough to return to Holyrood. Though Knox had approved the murder of Rizzio, Mary quieted the ministers for a while by making better provision for their maintenance. The common Scots, never in love with the lords, sympathized with her, and for a few months more she enjoyed a general popularity. “I never saw the Queen so much beloved, esteemed, and honored,” wrote the French ambassador, “or so great harmony among her subjects.”31 Nevertheless, as she approached her confinement she was obsessed with the thought that she would be murdered or deposed in her helplessness.32 When she safely gave birth to a boy (June 19, 1566), all Scotland rejoiced, as if foreseeing that this lad would be king of both Scotland and England. Mary was in apogee.

  But she was miserable with Darnley. He resented her renewed trust in Murray and her rising admiration for Bothwell. There was talk that Bothwell would kidnap the royal infant and rule in its name.33 Darnley accused the nobles of killing Rizzio and claimed innocence; in revenge they sent to the Queen proof of his participation.34 Argyll, Lethington, and Bothwell proposed to the Queen that she should divorce him; she objected that this might endanger the succession. Lethington replied that they would find some means of freeing her from Darnley without prejudice to her son. She did not approve; she offered rather to retire from Scotland to let Darnley rule; and she ended the interview with a caution: “I will that ye do nothing whereby any spot may be laid to my honor or conscience; and therefore, I pray you, let the matter be as it is, abiding till God of His goodness put remedy thereto.”35 Several times now she talked of suicide.36

  In or about October 1566, Argyll, Sir James Balfour, Bothwell, and perhaps Lethington signed a pact to get rid of Darnley. The Earl of Len nox got wind of the plot and warned his son; Darnley, who had been living apart from Mary, joined his father in Glasgow (December 1566). There he fell ill, apparently from smallpox, though rumors of poison rose. Meanwhile Mary’s developing intimacy with Bothwell put her under suspicion of adultery; Knox openly called her a whore.37 She seems to have approached Archbishop Hamilton about arranging a divorce of Bothwell from his wife. She offered to visit Darnley; he sent her an insulting reply; she went to him nevertheless (January 22, 1567), asserted her fidelity, and reawakened his love. She begged him to return to Edinburgh, where, she promised, she would nurse him back to health and happiness.

  Here the “Casket Letters” enter upon the scene, and the rest of the story hinges in part on their authenticity, which is still in dispute after four hundred years. They were allegedly found in a silver casket which was presented by Mary to Bothwell and was taken from a servant of Bothwell on June 20, 1567, by agents of the nobles who were then seeking to dethrone the Queen. The casket was opened on the following day by Morton, Lethington, and other members of the Privy Council. As exhibited soon thereafter to the Scottish Parliament, and later to the English commission that tried Mary in 1568, the contents were eight letters and some fragmentary poems, all in French, undated and unaddressed but allegedly from Mary to Bothwell. The lords of the Council swore to the Scottish Parliament that the letters were genuine and had not been tampered with; Mary claimed that they had been forged. Her son apparently considered them authentic, for he destroyed them;38 only copies remain. Continental rulers, shown copies, acted as if believing them genuine.39 Elizabeth at first questioned, then hesitantly accepted, their authenticity. Our first impulse on reading them is to doubt that a woman meditating the murder of her husband would so carelessly and extensively express her intentions in letters entrusted to carriers who might be intercepted or corrupted; it appears improbable that letters so incriminating to Bothwell should have been preserved by him; and it is equally improbable that anyone in Scotland, even the clever Lethington (who is especially suspected), could have forged any substantial part of these letters in the single day between the capture of the casket and the display of the letters to the Council or the Parliament. The most incriminating letter—the second—is strangely long, taking up ten pages in print
; if it was forged it is a most remarkable forgery, for its emotional content seems as true to Mary’s nature as its writing is like her hand. It shows Mary as a pitying, hesitating, and ashamed accomplice in the murder of Darnley.I

  The ailing, fearful, trusting King allowed himself to be carried across Scotland in a litter and placed in the old parsonage of Kirk o’ Field on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Mary explained that she could not at once take him to Holyrood, lest he infect their child. For two weeks he lay there. Mary visited him daily and nursed him so sedulously that his strength returned, and he wrote to his father (February 7, 1567), “… my good health is the … sooner come through the good treatment of … the Queen, which I assure you hath all this while, and yet doth, use herself like a natural and loving wife. I hope yet that God will lighten our hearts with joy that have so long been afflicted with trouble.”41 Why she should have nursed him back through tedious weeks if she knew that he was to be killed is part of the mystery of Mary Stuart. On the evening of February 9 she left him to attend the wedding of one of her maids at Holyrood. That night an explosion occurred in the Kirk o’ Field house, and in the morning Darnley was found dead in the garden.

  Mary at first behaved like an innocent woman. She mourned and lamented and vowed vengeance; she had her room draped in black and curtained from the light, and she remained there in darkness and solitude. She ordered a judicial inquiry, and proclaimed a reward in money and land for information leading to the capture of the criminals. When placards appeared on city walls charging Bothwell with the murder, some implicating the Queen, a proclamation called upon the accusers to come forth with their evidence and promised the informers protection and rewards. The author(s) of the placards refused to appear, but the Earl of Lennox urged the Queen to bring Bothwell to trial at once. Bothwell seconded their demand. On April 12 he stood trial; Lennox, either lacking proofs or fearing Bothwell’s soldiers in the capital, remained in Glasgow; Bothwell was acquitted, and the Parliament officially declared him innocent. On April 19 he persuaded Argyll, Huntly, Morton, and a dozen other nobles to sign “Ainslee’s band,” attesting their faith in his innocence, pledging themselves to defend him, and approving his marriage with Mary. She now favored Bothwell publicly and added to the many costly presents that she had already given him.