Elizabeth and Mary

by Jane Dunn

  By July it was obvious that Catherine de Medici had an uncontrollable fire on her hands as the first French war of religion was ravaging the land. Elizabeth vividly expressed her shock to Mary: ‘For what hope can be in strangers when cruelty so abounds in a family? I pass over in silence the murders on land, the burials in water, and say nothing of men cut in pieces; pregnant women strangled, with the sighs of infants at their mothers’ breasts, strike me through’, and used this as eloquent reason for her committing men and money to the Huguenots’ cause. But more immediately, the projected meeting of the two queens had to be postponed. Elizabeth could not now turn her mind to social events, and the danger to Protestants abroad meant she dare not risk leaving London, her centre of operations and power, at a time of general unrest. ‘We must guard our houses from spoil when our neighbours’ are burning.’45

  When the message of postponement arrived in Edinburgh, Mary freely expressed her disappointment with a downcast face and floods of tears. Having already revealed her propensity for emotional collapse when faced with stress, frustration or failure, Mary once again took to her bed in an overwrought state. She soon recovered her equilibrium with the promise that a new meeting would be arranged in the spring. Mary’s tears may not have seemed so disproportionate, however, if she had known that this first postponed meeting was the closest the two cousins would ever get to a direct encounter.

  The fact that they were never to meet is the black hole at the heart of their relationship, the dramatic axis of their story. It fuelled a tragedy that ended in bitterness, fear and death. The lack of human connection allowed each to make what she would of the other. The idea of the rival could grow out of all proportion to become a shadow more threatening than any flesh and blood, something superhuman but also less than human and therefore easier to kill. This lack of intimacy and absence of knowledge also meant the opinions and interests of others held powerful sway. Mary, always more avid for personal contact, became the supplicant to her cousin, pleading, increasingly desperate, for an audience, for intimacy. Elizabeth, increasingly suspicious, withheld her presence, backed off, fearing her rival’s reputation for enchantment, then disdainful of her undoing.

  Within a month of her disappointment Mary embarked on her first progress to the north. It was August 1562, she was not yet twenty, and this kind of outdoor adventure appealed to her energetic and passionate nature. Randolph accompanied her, his plaintive reports to Cecil indicating just how little he cared for the discomforts and privations that seemed to so inspirit the Scottish queen. It was ‘a terrible journey both for horse and men, the country is so poor and victuals so scarce’.46 They travelled up through Stirling to Aberdeen, Randolph still complaining, this time of the foul weather and the scarcity of corn, so green this late in the year it had no chance of ripening. Mary’s high spirits seemed undiminished, she regretted nothing other than ‘that she was not a man, to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk on the causeway with a jack and a knapschalle [a kind of helmet], a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword’.47 This dream of being a man of action, a man of war, free to pursue his own destiny, illustrated her own appetite for life and pleasure in her physical energies, a gift from her Guise inheritance explored to the full in dangerous and physically demanding circumstances. Mary was always less able to deal with emotional strains, and became hysterical at any attempt to curb or thwart her ambitions, but on the open road nothing seemed to disconcert her.

  However, a strange and unsettling incident occurred, which became known as the Huntly Rebellion, and ended with two of her staunch northern allies and many of their supporters dead. At the beginning of the year, Mary had awarded her half-brother Lord James Stewart the Earldoms of Mar and Moray, extensive areas of land and influence in the northern territories. For more than a hundred years, under an informal agreement with the crown, these had been administered (and the revenues collected) by the Earl of Huntly, a powerful Catholic magnate and a natural and potentially valuable ally to Mary, whose Gordon family were to claim the proud epithet ‘Cock of the North’. This impulsive gift of Mary’s aimed at pleasing her half-brother was ill-judged and badly handled, and could only foment trouble. As befitted a northern earl not much used to anyone’s authority but his own, Huntly had unruly sons, the wildest and handsomest being his second, Sir John Gordon. He had already been imprisoned in Edinburgh for an attack on another lord but had escaped and fled north. Known to the queen for his dashing manner and the fact that he professed to have fallen in love with and was determined to marry her, John Gordon was an extreme example of his independent-minded lineage.

  Possibly Huntly was already nurturing a grudge against Lord James, although the full extent of his depredations on the Huntly fiefdom was not made public knowledge until September. Perhaps he was committed to protecting his errant son. As Mary and her party, including Lord James, soon to be Earl of Moray, approached Gordon territory, Huntly rode out to meet them at Aberdeen. Defying her request that he limit his entourage to a hundred clansmen, he arrived surrounded by fifteen hundred, all armed and implicitly threatening. Mary had already been provoked by Sir John’s refusal to surrender himself at Stirling. When she reached Inverness Castle to find that the captain there refused her entry on the orders of Lord Gordon, Huntly’s eldest surviving son and heir, her hackles were up and she was ready for anything. With the growing support of the local people, drawn to see for themselves the vision of their lovely young queen on horseback among them, the castle eventually was surrendered. The captain, another Gordon, was summarily hanged from the ramparts.

  Randolph was amazed at the way Mary thrived in what was a turbulent, violent and dangerous enterprise. While the unpredictable and predatory Sir John Gordon was still at large, riding with his loyal clansmen among his own hills, he remained a marauding threat to her. But Mary had never seemed happier. To Cecil, and by extension Elizabeth, Randolph exclaimed in admiration: ‘In all these garboils I assure you I never saw her merrier, never dismayed, nor never thought that so much to be in her that I find.’48

  In fact, until this point sex and marriage had been for Mary a matter of diplomatic and political concern. Proposals were forwarded and alliances made with little thought of any personal attraction between the two dynastic candidates. Status and power had been the overriding consideration for herself and her ambassadors. But here, in the rough and beautiful land of her birth, amongst its robustly masculine and independent lords, it was not surprising if this, probably still virginal, nineteen-year-old’s appreciation of sexual desire should begin to stir. It was not surprising that men were drawn to her. It was entirely likely that Mary’s youthful delight in exercising her power of attraction over them should surround her with a certain sexual energy. Certainly the strict Protestants in her court had already complained that she was too light-hearted and fond of pleasure. Knox railed from the pulpit ‘sore agaynste the Quenes dansynge and lyttle exercise of her self in vertue or godlines’.49 Her foreign, flirtatious, courtly manners may well have been misinterpreted at times by the rougher, bluffer Scots. Her impetuosity and warmth of feeling were seductive qualities in themselves. Her youth and beauty were irresistible enough to quicken even elderly, more fireproof hearts.

  Undoubtedly John Gordon thought he had a chance as an exciting if totally unsuitable suitor. The contemporary historian Buchanan described him as ‘a handsome young man in the very flower of youth, more worthy of a royal bed than to be cheated by the offer of it’.50 He and his clansmen continued to harry their young queen until father and son were soundly beaten at the Battle of Corrichie at the end of October. At only nineteen, Mary may have been a charming and seductive figure but she was also intelligent, masterful and ambitious. Unsentimental, her desire to please her half-brother disposed her to be ruthless. She believed she could not afford to be merciful in victory for both father and son had proved themselves contemptuous of her authority, and Randolph was convinced that she was ‘utterlye determined to brynge hym [H
untly] to utter confusion’.51

  She was as good as her word. After a strenuous battle, the overweight and overwrought earl dropped dead, probably of a heart attack, at the moment of surrender and his unruly son was tried quickly at Aberdeen and found guilty of treason. His execution was conducted in front of the queen in order to quell any rumour that she had somehow encouraged his advances. For Mary this was even more of an ordeal than she had expected. ‘He was a handsome young man in the very flower of youth’, Buchanan wrote. ‘What roused much indignation as well as pity was the fact that he was mangled by an unsuccessful executioner.’52 The gruesome butchery of this youth, known to her, probably attractive to her, shocked her so much she was in a tearful state of collapse.

  Mary’s unnecessary ferocity towards a potentially loyal Catholic earl and his family can be understood best as her attempt to bond her closest surviving relation to her, by pursuing his interests to the end. Having been brought up among her adopted and blood family in France, she was more like a queen in exile now that she was transplanted back to Scotland, isolated from everything she had known and loved. Lord James Stewart was the half-brother who had accompanied her into both exiles, as a child to France and as a woman back to the kingdom of her birth. He appeared to be the one person who could provide some of the warmth of family connection and support which she now so sorely missed. Earldoms, revenue, power and the diminishment of Catholic might suited the ambitious and fervently Protestant Lord James.

  As Mary prepared for the successful rout of the Gordons, her first military enterprise, Elizabeth’s own enterprise in France was doing less well. Elizabeth had determined to hold Havre* (which the English called Newhaven) against the future return of Calais. In fact, in early October, Mary received news of her uncles’ victories over the Protestants: ‘many thousands were slain’. Almost more welcome news to Mary and her French court seemed to be the fact that Elizabeth’s three thousand soldiers were expected to be driven back within the month. ‘These have made our Court so merry, for 3 whole days we had almost no other talk.’53 The eclipse of the Guises appeared to be temporary, as the duke’s military genius and ruthless prosecution of war once more was in the ascendancy.

  This news had depressed Randolph, not a natural optimist at the best of times. It also concerned him that the Duc de Guise apparently had taken Throckmorton prisoner and destroyed his house in Paris, injuring his servants. Mary herself seemed to be in the highest spirits, complaining that the messenger had diminished the extent of Guise victory and ‘made the English so few’.54 While she was celebrating this and mustering her forces for the big push against Huntly, she received Elizabeth’s letter explaining her reasons for sending succour to the French Protestants. It was the last letter she would write for some weeks for the queen ended it with the ominous words, ‘My hot fever prevents me writing more.’55

  Elizabeth had taken a bath to try and ease the fever but had caught a chill and suddenly was very ill indeed. Quickly she was diagnosed as having succumbed to the dreaded smallpox. Cecil was immediately sent for and told to expect the worst. In the extremity of the illness Elizabeth was unconscious and incapable of speech. She recalled later how close to death she had come: ‘death possessed almost every joint of me, so as I wished then that the feeble thread of life, which lasted (methought) all too long, might by Clotho’s* hand have quietly been cut off’.56

  After a week of violent fever all hope for her seemed gone. The queen was not expected to live and the court was in turmoil. In the midst of all the anxieties over English intervention in a French war of religion, there was this very real fear that Elizabeth would die. And die without having named her heir. Hurried meetings of the council were convened at which some members favoured Catherine Grey, wishing to honour the spirit of Henry VIII’s will as well as ensure the continuance of the Protestant religion; others, including Lord Robert Dudley, favoured the Earl of Huntingdon, staunch Protestant and another cousin to Elizabeth. Most auspiciously of all, he was male, the natural sex of monarchy. The more moderate argued for less haste, fearful that ‘they would divide and ruin’ the country if each candidate’s claim was not weighed judiciously.

  Luckily, civil unrest was averted and the queen’s fever began to subside. Revealingly, the first words she uttered, believing herself to be dying, were to promote her beloved Lord Robert. More physically weakened than she would be for the next forty years, she uncharacteristically ‘begged’ her council to make Dudley protector of the kingdom with a title and an income of £20,000. The council were keen to concur with anything she said, but the wily Spanish ambassador noted, ‘Everything she asked was promised but will not be fulfilled.’ Perhaps the most remarkable words Elizabeth spoke as she returned from the grave were a declaration as to her immutable chastity, despite the depth and longevity of her feelings for her favourite, and the behaviour that might have suggested otherwise. ‘The Queen protested at the time that although she loved and had always loved Lord Robert dearly, as God was her witness, nothing improper had ever passed between them.’57 The timing of this confession and the simplicity and directness of her words had the definitive ring of truth.

  News travelled fast over the border to Mary that Elizabeth was mortally ill. In fact it was Mary who had received her last letter with the ominous valedictory line. But the news most troubling to the Queen of Scots was just how unwavering the English council were in their antagonism to the idea of her as their future queen. She was not once considered a possible candidate in the urgent discussions as to whom they preferred as the inheritor of Elizabeth’s throne. According to the Spanish ambassador, however, a powerful and silent Catholic minority favoured the Queen of Scots and were particularly fervent in the matter of her marriage to Don Carlos and the consequent alliance with Spain.

  Despite mixed private emotions, Mary’s official concern for Elizabeth centred on the terrible depredations the disease could exact on the complexion. Writing in early November: ‘I thank God with all my heart, especially since I knew the danger you were in, and how you have escaped so well, that your beautiful face will lose none of its perfections.’58 At the request from Randolph for the recipe of a potion to prevent a relapse of the disease, Mary mentioned Fernel, the French king’s chief physician, by then dead, who refused to divulge the recipe for the special water with which he used to swab her face and body as a preventative. Elizabeth’s complexion may have been saved but Lord Robert’s sister, Lady Mary Sidney, who devotedly nursed her through the disease, not only fell victim to it but was disfigured for life.

  Elizabeth’s attack of smallpox may not have had any lasting effect on her face but it frightened Cecil and her council almost to death. Civil war was the spectre they feared most. There was an increased urgency in their desire to clarify the succession, ideally by persuading her to marry and produce an heir but failing that, and in the short term, to line up a suitable candidate. Elizabeth resisted the added pressure that was brought to bear on her. She was emotional about it. Any talk of the succession stirred all the old insecurities and she wished it to be left aside until the time was right to make her choice known.

  Just a month after her recovery Elizabeth heard about a meeting of her noblemen at the Earl of Arundel’s house, called expressly to discuss this inexhaustible subject. It lasted until two in the morning and the general view was that in an unexceptional field Lady Catherine Grey’s claim was the most favoured. This news upset Elizabeth greatly. She ‘wept with rage’ and sent for the earl to rail further at him. Arundel’s response was stern and paternalistic. ‘He told her that if she wanted to govern the country by passion he could assure her that the nobles would not allow her to do so.’59

  Modest characters valuing an unmolested life were filled with foreboding as the searchlight of succession ranged over their family trees. The Earl of Huntingdon wrote in panic to his friend Lord Robert after he was promoted as a possible claimant. ‘How far I have been always from conceiting any greatness of myself, nay how ready I
have been always to shun applause, both by my continual low sail, and my carriage … What grief [this consanguinity to the crown] hath concealed within my poor heart (but ever true).’60 But Arundel pointed out that the lords were opposed to the claim of the Earl of Huntingdon because Lord Robert approved of him, although that was not likely to have been the reason stressed to the queen. Elizabeth agreed with Arundel.

  The council decided to release from the Tower the unfortunate Earl of Lennox, Lord Darnley’s father and the husband of Lady Margaret, whose own claim, along with her son, could appease the Catholic interest in the country. It would also provide a claimant less alarming to Elizabeth’s government than Mary Queen of Scots.

  Her council were full of foreboding at Elizabeth’s continued resistance to any attempt to secure the succession. It was a fundamental necessity of a peaceful interregnum, and they were growing desperate. The Commons’ petition to their queen in the Parliament of January 1563 showed how much they feared a disputed crown. ‘the unspeakable miseries of civil wars: the perilous intermedlings of foreign princes with seditions, ambitions, and factious subjects at home; the waste of noble houses; the slaughter of people’.61 No doubt the passion in their address to their monarch was in response to the terror that the civil war currently raging in France had visited upon its people, and the consternation felt by all Protestant neighbours. Elizabeth’s reply advised procrastination, reminding her Parliament of the papal jurisdiction from which she had saved them, while soothing them with parental omniscience and care. ‘Do not forget that by me you were delivered whilst you were hanging on the bough ready to fall into the mud – yea, to be drowned in the dung … I assure you all that though after my death you may have many stepdames, yet shall you never have any a more [natural]* mother than I mean to be to you all.’62

  In the same petition the Commons made clear how vivid were their memories of the heresy trials and burnings conducted under Mary I’s fanatic decree, and they allied it with their antipathy to the idea of Mary, tainted with the Catholic fanaticism of her Guise family, ever having dominion over them. After reminding their sovereign of ‘the great malice of your foreign enemies, which even in your lifetime have sought to transfer the right and dignity of your crown to a stranger’, they explained they feared those traitorous subjects who, ‘not only hope of the woeful day of your death, but lay in wait to advance some title under which they may renew their late unspeakable cruelty to the destruction of the goods, possessions, and bodies, and thralldom of the souls and consciences of your faithful and Christian subjects. We see nothing to withstand their desire but your life. Their unkindness and cruelty we have tasted.’63 As if to reinforce the council’s wish and underline her own fitness to be the next heir to the throne, Lady Catherine Grey, still imprisoned in the Tower, gave birth to her second son just ten days later.