by John Guy
The procession advanced toward St. Giles Kirk along the High Street. When it reached the Tolbooth, the scene of state trials and Parliament’s usual meeting place, a dumb show was performed in which a group of young virgins—their parts played by boys—represented Fortitude, Justice, Temperance and Prudence. These virtues were extolled by a narrator as those that a ruler should have, which was uncontroversial, as this pageant, unlike the previous one, was based on classical literature and was an almost identical repeat of one previously put on for Mary’s mother.
Mary stopped next at the High Cross fountain, where a third pageant was enacted. It, too, was accompanied by a commentary, but this time the words were inaudible. Unruly crowds were gathered there, because wine instead of water gushed from the fountain’s spouts. Almost nothing could be heard above the noise of breaking glass and drunken revelry. Mary acknowledged the cheers of the drinkers and quickly moved on again.
Farther down the High Street at the Salt Tron, one of several public weigh-houses where commodities sold in the market could be put on the official scales, a fourth tableau was in preparation. Choreographed by the Calvinists in a threatening way to show a Catholic priest burned at the altar in the act of elevating the host, it was stopped by the Earl of Huntly, who carried the sword of state at the front of the procession and got there well ahead of Mary. In its place, a revised scene was hastily improvised in which effigies of three Israelites were burned for defying Moses, which satisfied the Protestants but also delighted the Catholics, who took it as an allegory against blasphemy.
A fifth and final tableau was staged at the Netherbow Port, the gatehouse at the end of the High Street, which marked the eastern boundary of the old town and the point where the Canongate and the court sector began. Here, after a speech, a dragon made of canvas and papier-mâché was set on fire and a psalm sung while it blazed. This was an apocalyptic theme: the dragon was perhaps an allusion to the pope as antichrist, and it is unlikely that Mary approved.
On arriving at Holyrood, some children who had followed Mary in a cart sang a psalm and chanted yet another attack on the Mass. The provost and civic leaders then produced a coffer packed with gilt plate, which they humbly presented to their queen. She thanked them graciously, studiously ignoring the chanting, after which the procession dispersed and everyone went home.
It had been a stiff, decidedly awkward celebration, an expression of genuine joy and delight on the part of the vast majority of the nobles and people at their queen’s return, but also a blatant attempt by a Calvinist minority to dictate her religious policy.
Mary reacted prudently. She could see things in perspective. The Calvinists claimed the Mass was “terrible in all men’s eyes.” But this was hyperbole. “All men” were not Protestant. The religious divisions in Scotland were no different from those elsewhere in Europe. Mary could judge this from her knowledge of the Huguenots in France. The challenge was to manage things in a way that averted a religious war. Outside Edinburgh and the towns, Protestantism was far from entrenched. Many remnants of the old Catholic system survived as if nothing had ever disrupted it. In Edinburgh, it was easy to find the Mass celebrated openly at Easter: the official Reformation had gone too fast for most people. At other times of the year, Catholics still heard Mass in their own houses and even their local churches, especially in the remoter areas of the country.
As to the former Lords of the Congregation, only Châtelherault and his son Arran had staged a boycott of Mary’s entrée on religious grounds. The ordinary people of Edinburgh had greeted her warmly as the first adult reigning ruler of Scotland for twenty years. They were not put off by her Catholicism. The Calvinists might dominate the town council, but were of infinitesimal size in relation to the overall population of Scotland. And even the Edinburgh Calvinists had welcomed Mary, if ambiguously. That in itself was something of a triumph. It was certainly against the wishes of their leader John Knox, who had dismissed the day’s proceedings as verging on idolatry. “Fain,” he wrote, “would fools have counterfeited France.”
Mary decided to confront Knox, nipping the threat in the bud. She reckoned that with Lord James and his allies by her side, it was the Calvinists and not a majority of the lords who were most likely to try and oppose her. She was beginning to work out the values and honor systems of the Scottish nobles, which she knew from their treatment of her mother stemmed in most cases from ambition and opportunism more than from religious principle, but which they justified to themselves as protecting Scottish national interests. Lord James was shrewder than most of the nobles, and he was no friend of Knox. If anything, he agreed with his sister’s opinion of him.
Since returning to Scotland from Geneva, Knox had been the minister at St. Giles Kirk, the most influential pulpit in the country, where he preached against the pope and the Mass every Sunday for two or three hours at a time. He spoke in the language of prophecy and saw himself as a latter-day Jeremiah. A clash with Mary was inevitable. Lord James was unable to restrain him, since Knox was still smarting from the slight he felt he had received when Mary’s half-brother had ignored his demands that she be required to conform to the wishes of the reformed Kirk when discussing the conditions of her return.
Matters came to a head on Mary’s very first Sunday at Holyrood. While she was hearing Mass in her private chapel, a fracas erupted in the courtyard outside as Patrick, Master of Lindsay, the eldest son of Knox’s ally Lord Lindsay, brought his friends to heckle, shouting for the “idolatrous” priest to be killed. To protect Mary, Lord James stood sentry at the door, but the servant who carried the altar furniture was severely jostled, his candles snatched and “trodden in the mire.”
Next day, Mary issued a proclamation declaring her resolve, on the advice of her councilors, to make a final order for “pacifying” the differences between Catholics and Protestants, which she hoped “would be to the contentment of the whole.” Meanwhile, “in case any tumult or sedition be raised,” she would preserve the status quo. No one should attempt to alter the state of religion “which Her Majesty found publicly and universally standing” upon her arrival. In addition, no one was to harass or molest her servants or any member of her retinue, whether Scots or French, “for any cause whatsoever.”
Arran lodged a protest. He complained that Mary’s subordinates were being allowed to avail themselves of a concession granted solely to her. If any members of her household attended Mass in her chapel, he held that they had committed “idolatry,” an offense “more abominable and odious in the sight of God” than murder or assassination.
Mary ignored this bluster, summoning Knox, the main author of the campaign against “idolatry,” to justify himself. It was a risky strategy, but she had been practicing her debating skills on Throckmorton.
Knox arrived on September 4, when Mary received him attended by Lord James. She cut straight to what she believed to be the point. This had little to do with theology and everything to do with armed political resistance. She was well aware that while in exile at Geneva, Knox had written The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, a diatribe against female rulers, published in 1558.
The gist was that “idolatrous” rulers—whether male or female, but especially if female—could be overthrown by force. Knox had asserted that female monarchy was “repugnant” to God and Scripture, and a woman ruler was “a monster in nature.” The Old Testament, he claimed, provided the necessary precedents, notably Queens Jezebel and Athalia, both victims of legitimate regicide.
A year after publishing the First Blast, Knox had applied his theory to Scotland. He argued that the regent, Mary of Guise, and even the Queen of Scots herself, could lawfully be deposed by the nobles. So far, his dilemma had been Saint Paul’s defense of authority: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13:1). Knox was honest enough not to ignore this text, but found it tricky to negate. He at last circumvented it
by noting that the word “powers” was in the plural and therefore had to mean more than just the ruler (or “superior power”) alone. He claimed that since multiple powers were intended, then the nobility (whom he designated as the “inferior power”) had to be included as well as the ruler. Both “powers” were legitimate and both “ordained of God.” In which case, concluded Knox, the nobles (or “inferior power”) could resist and, when necessary, depose the ruler in a godly cause, because by resisting an “idolatrous” ruler and demolishing “the altars of Baal,” they were in fact “obeying” God’s ordinances and “fulfilling” the Ten Commandments.
Knox had made a conceptual leap, turning him from a theologian into a resistance theorist. Mary began the interview by accusing him of inciting her subjects to armed revolt. To this he answered that all he had done was to profess the faith of Jesus Christ.
“You think then,” said Mary, “that I have no just authority?”
“Please Your Majesty,” protested Knox, “learned men in all ages have had their judgments free.” He claimed the right to hold his opinions, adding, “If the realm finds no inconvenience from the rule of a woman, that which they approve shall I not further disallow . . . but shall be as well content to live under Your Grace as St. Paul was to live under Nero.”
Mary was stung to be compared to the Roman emperor most berated for his tyranny. She demanded an explanation from Knox, who tried to limit the damage by claiming the First Blast had been directed against one particular queen, Mary Tudor of England. She had been a special case, because by repealing the Protestant legislation of her brother Edward VI, she had broken what Knox regarded as the “covenant” made between the English nation and God, and so could be deposed.
Mary saw this as specious. She was discussing her mother and herself, not Mary Tudor. Moreover, the First Blast had attacked all women rulers without distinction. As she reminded Knox, ‘You speak of women in general,” proving she had actually read his book. She held her ground and demanded a plain answer. And she returned to her original question. “Think ye,” she said, “that subjects having power may resist their princes?”
Finally, Knox answered. “If princes exceed their bounds and do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but they may be resisted, even by power.” He compared rulers to parents and argued that children might lawfully form a confederation to overpower and disarm a father “stricken with a frenzy,” and “keep him in prison until his frenzy be overpast . . . It is even so, madam, with princes . . . their blind zeal is nothing but a very mad frenzy.” Far from being unlawful, it was a positive act of “obedience” to resist forcibly and imprison rulers who disobeyed God, “until that they be brought to a more sober mind.”
Mary was stunned by this speech, which was quite unlike anything she had heard in France. Not even Lord James, a man not normally at a loss for words, could break the silence. After a lengthy pause, she said, “Well then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me; and shall do what they like, and not what I command: and so must I be subject to them, and not they to me.”
When Knox departed, Mary wept in anger and frustration. She was on the defensive, wishing now that she had not issued the challenge. Yet she had kept her nerve. At least while Knox was in the room, she had shown no visible signs of weakness. In fact, his own impression of Mary was one she might well have taken as a compliment. As he told Cecil, to whom he could not resist sending a verbatim account, “her whole proceedings do declare that the cardinal’s lessons are so deeply printed in her heart that the substance and the quality are likely to perish together.” In other words, she had proved to be his equal in a quarrel!
The following week, Mary decided to make a royal progress to Stirling, and beyond to Perthshire and Fife. She wanted to see more of her country and her people, and to show herself to them. Far from being homesick for France, she seems to have felt that she had at last stepped into her proper place.
She stayed for two days at Linlithgow, her birthplace, before leaving for a nostalgic visit to Stirling, where her mother had spent so many years. Her sojourn there was brief but eventful. A candle on a table beside her pillow set her bed curtains alight in the middle of the night while she was asleep. Smoke filled the room, and she was lucky to escape before she was suffocated.
On Sunday, the issue of religion came again to the fore. Mary wished to attend a High Mass in the Chapel Royal, where as a baby she was crowned Queen of Scots. Her chaplains were making the arrangements when the Earl of Argyll and Lord James arrived and drove them away. Lord James was honoring his agreement with Mary, but to the letter. He had promised that she might hear Mass in her chapel at Holyrood. It was now clear he did not intend the concession to extend to any of her other palaces. He was hedging his bets after Mary’s clash with Knox, keeping the Protestants at bay by appearing to forbid his sister’s Masses, whereas in reality he was happy to allow them at Holyrood. That, of course, was still anathema to Knox, who wanted the Mass abolished completely. But it was acceptable to a majority of the other ex-Lords of the Congregation, including the most powerful of them, Argyll.
Mary’s next stop was Perth, where another triumphal entry was staged. But although she was acclaimed by the ordinary people and presented with a “heart of gold, full of gold” by the civic authorities, she was once again lobbied by the Calvinists, who had copied Edinburgh’s example. The tension was starting to build, and as she rode in the procession, she suddenly felt sick and had to go indoors to recover. The English ambassador, Thomas Randolph, who was accompanying her, described her illness as one of those “sudden passions” to which she was prone “after any great unkindness or grief of mind.”
Over the next four and a half years, Randolph got to know Mary extremely well, providing a wealth of information about her. His weekly (sometimes daily) reports to Cecil are invaluable; but he must be seen for what he was: a partisan witness. He was a close ally and former student in Paris of George Buchanan, the brilliant classicist and poet, who was also a Calvinist, a republican and Mary’s later vilifier.
Randolph was also a protégé of Cecil, who had used him to smuggle men and bags of untraceable gold coins into Scotland during the revolt of 1559–60, which he did under the code name of “Barnabie.” He was then posted officially to Scotland, where he assisted the rebel lords and acted as their liaison with Cecil. He was the right man for the job, as he already knew Lord James and Knox, both of whom he had met in Paris. As a result, he understood the tensions between political pragmatism and religious conviction among the lords, barely disguising his own sympathies, which were closer to those of Knox.
As a resident ambassador in Scotland, Randolph enjoyed the customary diplomatic privileges. He was licensed to attach himself to Mary’s court as it made its way from Stirling to Perth, from Perth to Dundee, and from Dundee across the River Tay on the ferry to Fife. After visiting St. Andrews for a week, Mary returned to Holyrood, where her first progress was judged a success. She had taken possession of her country despite the Calvinists’ taunts. It was a delicate balancing act, but there was a more compelling reason why her policy was succeeding.
Her concordat with Lord James was paying dividends. Four days after her entrée into Edinburgh, Mary named her first Privy Council. A cross section of the nobles, it included the territorial magnates such as Argyll, Châtelherault and the Earl of Huntly. Seven out of twelve were Protestants. And the heavyweights whom Mary placed in her inner cabinet were Lord James and his supporters Maitland and the Earl of Morton. They were the lords who had steered the council of twenty-four nobles after the overthrow of Mary’s mother. They had rebuilt their bridges to Mary before she left France, and were to play a decisive role in the tumultuous events of her reign.
When Mary arrived home, the trick was to engineer the transition of power. In 1559–60, the Reformation had combined with the innate factionalism of the lords to create a moment when the monarchy was suddenly vulnerable. When Mary’s mother was
deposed as regent, the government of Scotland had ceased to be that of the queen and become that of the lords, to the point where Cecil’s clerk, filing letters from Scotland in his office in London, endorsed them “Letters from the States of Scotland.” The word “States” had strong republican connotations, and the council of twenty-four nobles was to all intents and purposes a quasi-republican institution.
Mary knew she had to restore the monarchy’s prestige. Her solution was to choose Lord James as her chief adviser, to preserve continuity, while subordinating him and his cronies to her authority as ministers and servants of the crown. This largely suited them, because their favored relationship to Mary enabled them to maintain their private power and factional interests exactly as before, at the same time indemnifying themselves against any possible reprisals for their part in the revolt against the regent.
Everyone was walking a tightrope. Mary’s success was not a foregone conclusion. A fortnight before she left Calais, reality had dawned on the lords. Their queen was coming home and their role was about to change from that of near-autonomous governors to servants of a woman ruler. It was Mary to whom they would now be accountable. For this reason, a quite different relationship toward England would be required, because everyone knew that Mary would never agree to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh.