by John Guy
She reviewed her options and decided to return to Scotland. Her mind was made up within a month. “Amongst others,” as Throckmorton informed the English Privy Council, “she holds herself sure of the Lord James, and of all the Stuarts.” Here Mary showed that despite her experiences with her uncles, she could still be too trusting. Throughout her life, she retained her belief in the importance of family ties. Lord James was her half-brother, the son of her father, James V, even if he was an enemy of the Guises. The reality was that by the terms of the treaty of Edinburgh, he could wield more power in Scotland than she did as long as she stayed away, but she naively believed that if she returned, he would be reconciled to her. Her suspicions turned more toward the ambitions of Châtelherault and his son, the young Earl of Arran, who had made a firm pact with Knox and the Calvinists. Their latest and most outlandish scheme was to send Arran south as a suitor to Elizabeth and so make him king of England.
Mary was learning to speak and act for herself. She was getting her information from her mother’s former servants in Scotland. She knew that she could win the hearts of the ordinary people there. Unlike the more selfish nobles, they did not seek war or revolt. “All those who hold themselves neuters,” she declared, would support her if she returned, as would “the common people, who now, to have their queen home, she thinks will altogether lean and incline unto her.”
But if Mary preferred to take up her own throne rather than to pit her wits against her mother-in-law for years to come, her uncles had other ideas. Their niece was their best hope for making a comeback. They were indefatigable, straining every nerve to engage Spain in the negotiations that they hoped would lead to Mary’s betrothal to Philip II’s son, Don Carlos.
Mary ignored their intrigues. By acquiescing in the treaty of Edinburgh, her uncles had betrayed her. She did not even begin to forgive them for almost a year. Not one of her letters between Francis II’s death and her return to Scotland is on the subject of a second marriage. It is impossible to believe that Mary, who could not resist writing to her family whenever she was genuinely excited, would have said nothing about a new marriage if she had really wanted one then. Instead, her uncles took the initiative, using her aunt Louise, Duchess of Arschot, as an intermediary on account of her many Spanish friends.
Offers came in thick and fast: from the king of Denmark, from the king of Sweden, from the Dukes of Ferrara and Bavaria, and from Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor and head of the Austrian branch of the Hapsburg family, who was in the marriage market on behalf of his sons. All of these suitors were credible, even if they were not good enough for the Guise family.
Other candidates included the overbearing and ineffectual Arran, whom Mary already held in contempt for his suit to Elizabeth, and Lord Darnley, the fourteen-year-old son of the Earl of Lennox and Lady Margaret Douglas, the couple who had married and lived inconspicuously in Yorkshire after Lennox’s hectoring attempt to become Mary’s stepfather had failed and he had defected to Henry VIII in 1544.
Court gossip went into overdrive, but the Venetian ambassador, who most feared a marriage to Don Carlos, knew that Mary was not herself a willing partner. It was all the work of her uncles, who sought to manipulate her against her will. In any case, Philip II rejected the suit. He was already closely allied to Catherine de Medici by reason of his recent marriage to her eldest daughter, Elizabeth. His links to Catherine were multiple: through his ambassador in Paris, through her letters to his wife, and through a secret correspondence with Catherine directly, in which Mary was discussed under the code name of “un gentilhomme.”
The Guises believed that Philip would sit up and pay attention to them, thinking that Mary could be the key to a future Spanish hegemony in the British Isles if she allied dynastically with his family. At this moment, they could not have been more wrong. Philip’s entente with Elizabeth had survived the setback (from a Spanish perspective) of the 1559 Protestant religious settlement: his relations with England were still cordial. He privately knew that he could depend on Cecil and his ally Lord James to keep Mary in her place. Catherine, too, was bound to Elizabeth and Cecil, and for some fifteen of the next twenty years, their rapprochement enabled Cecil to attack the Guises while staying on good terms with Catherine and her children.
When the forty days of official mourning ended, Mary withdrew six miles into the countryside. She used this period of privacy and retreat to collect her thoughts and reconstitute her household from that of a queen to a dowager queen of France. It was a significant change, one she planned with her return to Scotland in mind, because she chose as her new advisers those with recent experience of the country. The most important of her appointments was Henri Cleutin, Seigneur d’Oysel, formerly her mother’s chief lieutenant, who was made a knight of honor, the equivalent of a lord-in-waiting. Next in rank was Jacques de la Brosse, the French ambassador to Scotland at the time of Henry VIII’s Rough Wooings and a long-serving Guise client who had accompanied her to France in 1548.
Mary’s appointments confirm that she was eager to return and wanted to learn much more about her country than she had gleaned from Ptolemy’s Geography in the schoolroom. D’Oysel had recently married a beautiful young Parisian woman. He had no further desire to live and work in Scotland, but in advising Mary in this interim phase, he made a vital contribution, since only a native Scot knew more about noble factionalism and the habits and idiosyncrasies of the individual lords.
D’Oysel briefed Mary fully on the revolt of 1559–60, urging her to give credence to Lord James despite his prominent role in her mother’s deposition. His undoubted treachery aside, he was the most capable of the lords and the only one who could hold them together. So far, he had applied all his wit to his own private ambition, which he had cloaked under the pretense of religion. Lord James was a Protestant, but a pragmatic rather than an ideological one. He was not a hard-line Calvinist, and was no friend of Knox. The trick for Mary would be to turn her illegitimate brother from a virtually autonomous agent into a royal servant. If she could do that, she could succeed in ruling her country as well as any of her royal predecessors.
In February 1561, Catherine de Medici and the court moved from Orléans to Fontainebleau as they usually did about this time of year. Mary ended her retreat a few days later, and on the 16th received Throckmorton and the Earl of Bedford, whom Elizabeth had sent with letters of condolence for her.
It was a successful audience. Mary read Elizabeth’s letters, then “answered with a very sorrowful look and speech.” Bedford was to thank his mistress “for her gentleness in comforting her [Mary’s] woe when she had most need of it.” Elizabeth, said Mary, “now shows the part of a good sister, whereof she [Mary] has great need.” As she spoke, Mary gained in confidence and reiterated her idea of a fresh start after the debacle of the treaty of Edinburgh, saying she interpreted Elizabeth’s letters as a positive gesture and would strive to match her goodwill. She invited the ambassadors to return whenever they wished, asking d’Oysel to escort them back to their lodgings.
They reappeared on the 18th, when Mary repeated her desire for “amity.” She and Elizabeth, she started to say, were two queens “in one isle, of one language, the nearest kinswomen that each other had . . .”
But the ambassadors interrupted her, raising the vexed issue of the treaty of Edinburgh, which they insisted be ratified “without delay.” It was a peremptory demand, and Mary balked. Perhaps Bedford, Cecil’s close ally and one of his most trusted friends, imagined that she could be bludgeoned into submission. If so, he had seriously misjudged her.
She refused to be intimidated, anticipating Elizabeth’s own later and more celebrated tactics when browbeaten by her ministers or Parliaments. “She was,” Mary said disingenuously of herself, “without counsel.” The Cardinal of Lorraine was absent, and none of her Scottish nobles had yet arrived, although some were on their way. Their “counsel and advice” were essential, since “the matter was great for one of her years.”
; Pressed by Throckmorton, Mary countered that she “was not to be charged” for contracts to which she was not a party. She turned the argument around, accusing Elizabeth of breaking her own agreements, because although she had accepted Mary’s portrait in her deuil blanc the previous year, she had not sent her own in return. Mary now asked Throckmorton to bring it as he had promised.
It was a shot across the bow, because the exchange of portraits was, in Mary’s view, symbolic of her offer to make a fresh start. If the portrait was to be withheld and demands for ratification of the treaty continued, then by implication all subsequent bets were off.
The ambassadors tried again on the 19th, when Mary stonewalled them. She recited the aphorisms on the duties of rulers she had learned from her tutors, saying she must always be “advised” on matters touching her crown and state, turning prudence into an excuse for delay.
She also scored a palpable hit. She cautioned Bedford that if she treated her nobles as contemptuously as he appeared to be suggesting by acting without their advice, she could only expect them to behave as badly in the future as they had done in their revolt against her mother.
If Mary kept her dignity, however, she made no progress beyond this. Elizabeth, if left to her own devices, would almost certainly have offered concessions before very long, since, like Mary, she was well aware of the clandestine nature of the treaty of Edinburgh.
But there was a more formidable obstacle. Mary’s most determined opponent was Cecil. To him, Mary’s refusal to ratify the treaty was tantamount to a hostile act; it meant in his opinion that she had refused to recognize Elizabeth as the rightful ruler of England, in which case he was more convinced than ever that she was the prime mover of an international Catholic conspiracy to depose and kill his queen.
Mary left Fontainebleau in the middle of March, beginning a three-month tour of her family to say goodbye. It was a gesture typical of her, and yet she received a mixed reception. Her aunts were sympathetic. They could see that she had taken a bold, brave step: she would have no mother to greet her in Scotland and was leaving almost all she knew behind. Her uncles were far from understanding or approving, and perhaps this was why there was so much confusion over the itinerary for these farewell visits.
Mary went first to Rheims, where she was met at the city gates by her uncles and grandmother, but stayed with her aunt, the Abbess Renée, at the convent of St.-Pierre-des-Dames. After three weeks there, she had just set out for the Duke of Lorraine’s estates at Nancy when she was overtaken at Vitry-le-François by John Lesley, a young Catholic lawyer who had ridden posthaste from the Netherlands, and at St.-Dizier a few miles down the road by Lord James, who had come from Calais. They had been sent to her by the rival factions in Scotland, as it was expressly said in the case of Lord James, to “grope her mind” before she set sail for home.
Their soundings were the coordinates for her return. Lesley, who arrived first by a whisker, was the emissary of the Catholic contingent. Led by the Earl of Huntly, the murdered Beaton’s successor as chancellor and the head of the Gordon family, this group included the Earls of Atholl, Cassillis, Caithness and Crawford. A powerful faction, almost as powerful as the Protestants and far more united, they had convened at Stirling, where they urged Mary to return home unconditionally.
Lesley warned Mary against Lord James, whom he denounced as treacherous and a rebel, a man attacking Catholicism with the intention of overthrowing the monarchy. She ought to have him imprisoned in France, or else she should land in Aberdeen, where her loyal Catholic nobles would meet her with an army of twenty thousand men and march with her to Edinburgh.
Mary sensibly rejected this advice, which was a recipe for civil war. She turned instead to Lord James, the Protestants’ representative. His mission was to capitalize on the success of the Lords of the Congregation, who in August 1560 had successfully outflanked the Catholics and convoked a Parliament declaring Scotland to be officially Protestant.
But Lord James was calculating the odds: he had also come to safeguard his own position. For this he was accused by Lesley and even by some of his own side of conspiring “to make himself great.” As he talked intently to Mary over the next few days, he came to sense her determination to return to Scotland. Although his own strong preference must have been for her to stay permanently in France, especially given his role in the treaty of Edinburgh, he could see that she had made up her mind.
Throughout their conversations Lord James marketed himself as reliable and incorruptible. Whatever his ambition, he had a keen intelligence, a rare ability to bring people together and predict their reactions. He could even build bridges to the Catholics. And he was, after all, a blood relative, for Mary a strong and important bond.
She talked to him for five days until he steadily won her confidence. They agreed that she would follow his advice and maintain the religious status quo, the existing uneasy balance between Catholics and Protestants, but one in which Protestantism was recognized as Scotland’s official religion, even if a majority of people were still privately Catholic and worshiped as such when they could. In exchange for this arrangement, Mary might hear the Catholic Mass in her own chapel at her palace of Holyroodhouse.
In making these terms, Lord James supped with the devil. His compromise was even more abhorrent to the Calvinists than to the Catholics. John Knox, the doyen of Calvinist preachers, and his allies the young Earl of Arran and Lord Lindsay, had already threatened to rebel again if Mary refused to submit to the demands of the reformed Kirk* and if the “idolatry” of the Catholic rite was allowed to persist in any form.
But when French troops evacuated Scotland, in accordance with the conditions of the treaty of Edinburgh, much of the fear of Catholicism evaporated in Scotland and so did most of Arran and Lindsay’s support. Many of the former Lords of the Congregation were inclined toward the Reformation, but of these only a small minority were genuine Protestants. And very few were outright Calvinists.
Arran, meanwhile, had become a figure of fun. His suit to marry Elizabeth had been rejected: it had been as forward as it was insolent and presumptuous. As if that were not enough, when the English queen had refused his offer, he set his sights on marrying Mary. He convinced himself he had fallen in love with her, even though he may have seen her only once, briefly, in Paris and from a distance, believing she was a woman who could easily be forced into marriage. It was an arrogant and absurd policy that completely misjudged Mary’s character and made Arran look like a fool.
Lord James had little to fear from Arran’s quarter. Moreover, to be excoriated by Knox was an attraction where Mary was concerned. She had never seen her brother as a Calvinist. His conversion to Protestantism was largely political, and within two years he would be quarreling with Knox almost as often as she did.
Mary saw eye to eye with her older brother. She even considered appointing him acting governor of Scotland, until she was informed afterward by d’Oysel that he had gone to meet Throckmorton in Paris as soon as he left her, not to mention briefing Cecil in London on both the outward and return legs of his journey. When she learned this, she had second thoughts about the regency, but stuck to the rest of their agreement.
Mary had no better option than to make terms with her half-brother. In her final days in France, she was trying to identify those who would be her leading councilors as a reigning queen of Scotland. She had to attempt this blindfolded, and all she could do was trust her instincts. It was not a difficult decision in the end. Lord James already led the council of twenty-four nobles that by the treaty of Edinburgh was the lawful government of Scotland. He had personal charm and outstanding diplomatic skills: he was the adviser most likely to be able to build up a broad consensus.
Mary knew that aligning herself with Lord James would mean accepting his cronies as her advisers. His closest allies were William Maitland of Lethington, the secretary of state to the council of nobles, and James Douglas, Earl of Morton. They formed an axis that—thanks to Lord James’s
journey to St.-Dizier—would prove to dominate policymaking in the formative years of Mary’s rule in Scotland.
Maitland was the cleverest of the three. He had been Mary of Guise’s secretary, but defected to the Lords of the Congregation, who sent him to London as their mouthpiece. A genuine and deeply committed Protestant, he had done more than anyone else to steer the Scottish Reformation legislation through Parliament. He formed a close bond with Cecil, at whose London house he stayed. Their friendship was based partly on their shared religious beliefs and partly on their mutual admiration for classical literature. Maitland was known in England as “the Scottish Cecil” and in Scotland would come to be known as “Mekle Wylie” (or Much Wily), a pun on “Machiavelli.” Neither nickname was meant to be complimentary, but acknowledged his political suppleness.
Morton was the most dangerous and least complicated. Vindictive, harsh and cruel, he was also a sexual predator who fathered four illegitimate sons and a daughter. Notably rapacious in fiscal matters, he was a technocrat who rose on the strength of his administrative ability and territorial power as the head of the Douglas family. In Edward Vi’s reign, he was a prisoner in England, where he tasted the Reformation and acquired an English accent. He vacillated in his support for the revolt against Mary of Guise, sitting on the fence until he was sure that the Lords of the Congregation would be victorious.
As soon as Lord James departed home for Scotland, confident of his success, the jockeying for position began. Morton wrote a memo justifying his role in the lords’ revolt, which his cousin Archibald Douglas delivered to Mary in person. He blamed others for the “wrong information” she had received about him. Unfortunately he spoiled the effect by asking her to ratify his claim to the estates of the earldom of Angus, which he held in trust for his nephew with a disputed legal title. And Mary ignored the request.