by Jane Dunn
Melville then imparted the distressing detail of Mary’s long and difficult childbirth: ‘dear bought with the peril of her life, for I said that she was so sore handled that she wished she had never been married’.74 This, he admitted, was a ploy to put Elizabeth off the idea of marriage for herself, as the Archduke Charles was still being mooted whenever the matter of Mary as Elizabeth’s successor was raised. As everyone recognized, the birth of a son strengthened Mary’s cause immeasurably.
It also added fervour to the long-running debate of the succession. On 5 November 1566 a joint delegation of Lords and Commons, emboldened by Elizabeth’s dire need of extra funds, suggested that the money would not be forthcoming unless she settled the succession. The queen was incandescent with rage and her self-righteous rhetoric took their breath away: ‘Was I not born in this realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country? Is there any cause I should alienate myself from being careful over this country? Is not my kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to others’ harm? What turmoil have I made in this commonwealth, that I should be suspected to have no regard to the same? How have I governed since my reign? I will be tried by envy itself. I need not to use many words, for my deeds do try me.’75 She got her subsidies without any further settlement of the succession.
Mary, however, hearing of the delegation’s frustration with Elizabeth, wrote to the English Council direct, promoting her own case with an insinuating feline intelligence: ‘We believe ye have always been good Ministers to move your Sovereign to show her own reasonable favour to our advancement in that which is right, and firmly believe ye shall continue. We take ourself (as we doubt not ye know) to be the Queen your Sovereign’s next cousin, and, next herself and the lawful issue of her body, to have the greatest interest of all other to that which has been (as is reported) lately moved in the Parliament House.’76
In all her formal communications with the English, she was always careful not to stress her supremacy over Elizabeth but rather after her, as her most rightful successor. The temperature was raised even further by the publication of a book by a Scot called Patrick Adamson who claimed Mary’s baby was the rightful heir to the English throne. Elizabeth acted fast and wrote to Bedford sending him a copy of the title page and describing it as ‘a small tryfflinge boke in Latin verse’. She must have thought better of using such a dismissive adjective because ‘tryfflinge’ was crossed out. She requested that Bedford inform the Queen of Scots of this ‘audacious rashe attempt’, and suggest that she punish the author accordingly and destroy his book. What rankled most was the declaration that Mary’s son was ‘Prince of Scotlande, Englande, and Irlande’77 with Scotland first! So exercised was Elizabeth that she followed this directive up a month later with a letter in French to Mary herself. She declared herself sorrowful at seeing a book ‘si scandaleux pour vous, si injurieux a moy, si fol en soy [so scandalous to you, so injurious to me, so foolish in itself]’ and sharply reminded Mary, ‘You know, Madame, nothing can touch my honour more, than there should be another Queen of England than myself. For as Alexander said, Carthage cannot endure two kings.’78
Despite the triumph of delivering a son, Mary’s pregnancy and labour had been fraught with emotional extremes of fear and danger. Even in the immediate aftermath of delivery she still could not rest. She was aware of the scurrilous rumours that had circulated about her and her murdered secretary, she knew that people whispered her baby was not the king’s, and so when Darnley entered her chamber she greeted him with the defiant words, ‘My Lord, … God has given you and me a son, begotten by none but you!’ She was desperate to convince Darnley of her child’s parentage and establish his legitimacy. Of course, if Darnley refused to acknowledge the baby as his child not only would that deprive Mary of a legitimate heir but it would also ruin her reputation. According to Lord Herries’ memoirs Mary took her newborn into her arms and, uncovering his face in front of Darnley and her women of the bedchamber and other lords there assembled, declared:
My Lord, here I protest to God, and as I shall answer to Him at the great day of judgement, this is your son, and no other man’s son! And I am desirous that all here, both ladies and others, bear witness; for he is so much your own son that I fear it will be the worse for him hereafter!
In fact Darnley appeared perfectly willing to accept the baby as his own but the slanderous rumours were never quite erased. Riccio had been considered an ugly, unprepossessing figure; the baby who was soon to become James VI, and eventually James I of England too, grew into the unhandsome son of handsome parents: speculation and gossip followed inevitably, even into adulthood. Mary, her son still in her arms, then turned to Sir William Stanley: ‘“This” says she, “is the son whom, I hope, shall first unite the two kingdoms of Scotland and England!”’
In the conversation which followed, Mary alluded to the breach with her husband. When chided by Darnley, ‘Sweet Madam, is this your promise that you made to forgive and forget all?’ she answered, ‘I have forgiven all, but will never forget.’79 She was over-optimistic in her analysis. Just as she would never forget so too was she obdurately unforgiving. Mary had pledged revenge in the cold aftershock of Riccio’s murder. Darnley’s shifty witlessness, arrogant nature and betrayal of every principle and person had alienated her completely. He had introduced her to the power and pleasure of sexuality and had provided her with a son and heir. The fever of desire had turned cold and now she could barely endure his presence. He had become less than useless to her. Patience, forbearance and self-sacrifice were never Mary’s forte; being constrained by circumstance made her restless for freedom. Trapped in her personal unhappiness, she was ready to take desperate measures to effect her escape.
* * *
*The death threats are plausible, as is Bothwell’s swaggering irritation with both queens. However, the description of Mary as the whore of her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine, Bothwell’s own patron, does not ring true. If in fact Bothwell had ever used those words it would be much more likely a reference to Mary’s mother Mary of Guise who had rejected Bothwell’s father’s suit and of whom it was scurrilously rumoured that she had been involved sexually with her Catholic Cardinal Beaton.
*An ancient Scottish legal practice whereby a person was declared an outlaw by three blasts of the horn at the market cross at Edinburgh.
*A Scottish version of hale meaning ‘whole of’ or ‘all’.
*Scottish term for ‘confederacy’.
*The editors of Elizabeth I: Collected Works, date this poem to this time of the Heneage/Lettice flirtation by a reference by Cecil of the queen writing an ‘obscure sentence … in a book at Windsor’ when she was ‘much offended with the Earl of Leicester’ in August 1565. The psalter is now owned by Elizabeth II whose archivists put forward an alternative suggestion that the poem was a rebuke by Elizabeth to Robert Cecil, Burghley’s son, for his jealousy of either Leicester or his stepson Essex. (Sunday Times, 5/1/2003)
*Where Prometheus meant ‘forethought’ and the Greeks gave him a brother Epimetheus, to epitomize the opposite quality of ‘afterthought’.
*Amongst those present were the Countess of Argyll and Lord Robert Stuart, both half-siblings to Mary, illegitimate children of her father James V.
*Interestingly, according to Randolph (State Papers, Scottish, II, 69), Mary considered her pregnancy to be six weeks more advanced than it was. On 21 March 1566, she thought she only had six weeks more to go; in fact her son was not born for another twelve weeks (19 June). Her dating of her pregnancy would have meant she thought she had conceived immediately after her marriage to Darnley. It seemed that her passion for Darnley in the early months of their relationship was sheer sexual infatuation: the fact that she dated her pregnancy from that short-lived post-marital bliss may be significant of that fact.
*See John J. McCusker, ‘Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in Great Britain from 1264 to Any Other Year Including the Present’, Economic History Services, 2001.
CHAPTER NINE
Outrageous Fortune
Madame: My ears have been so deafened and my understanding so grieved and my heart so affrighted to hear the dreadful news of the abominable murder of your mad husband and my killed cousin that I scarcely have the wits to write about it … I cannot dissemble that I am more sorrowful for you than for him.
O madame, I would not do the office of faithful cousin or affectionate friend if I studied rather to please your ears than employed myself in preserving your honour.
However, I will not at all dissemble what most people are talking about: which is that you will look through your fingers at [ignore] the revenging of this deed …
However I exhort you, I counsel you, and I beseech you to take this thing so much to heart that you will not fear to touch even him whom you have nearest to you if the thing touches him, and that no persuasion will prevent you from making an example out of this to the world: that you are both a noble princess and a loyal wife.
Letter from Elizabeth to Mary, on hearing the news of Darnley’s murder and Bothwell’s involvement: 24 February 1567
FOR MORE THAN FOUR HUNDRED YEARS, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, King of the Scots, has been vilified as amoral, pernicious and stupid. It is worth remembering, however, that he was just twenty when he was thrust under Mary’s nose by his ambitious parents. He had lived a pampered and prodigal youth, brought up to expect great things with little recognition of the responsibilities that came with greatness. There was barely much chance to learn, for Darnley was murdered when he was just twenty-one. More sympathetic and insightful contemporaries painted a pathetic picture of an ostracized young man in the latter part of 1566 and early ’67, cast off by his wife, the queen, friendless and alone, trying to curry favour with Mary or the lords who had once courted him. Sir James Melville recognized him as a ‘good young prince … who failed rather for want of good counsel and experience than of evil will’.1 Guzman de Silva, the astute Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth’s court, pointed out that the continued imprisonment of the Countess of Lennox, Darnley’s forceful mother, had contributed to the waywardness of her son: ‘if she had been in Scotland … her son would not have been led astray … as she is prudent and brave, and the son respects her more than he does his father’.2
Melville was more psychologically subtle in his insights than many of his contemporaries who passed judgement on the Icarian destruction of the ill-fated youth. Although loyal and sympathetic to Mary, he nevertheless pointed out that she had some responsibility for the way her feelings for Darnley had inverted from overwhelming desire to implacable hatred, and all in a month or so of marriage. He counselled tolerance and understanding, ‘praying Her Majesty, for many necessary considerations, to remove out of her mind all causes of ill-feeling against him, seeing that she had chosen him herself against the opinion of many, and promised him favour again of new’.3
This was not what Mary wanted to hear. Passionate as a lover she was equally passionate in her hatreds. Not only did she spurn Darnley, she demanded no one else show any friendship or favour to her outcast spouse. Bedford, writing to Cecil, related an incident involving Mary and Melville: ‘an Englishe merchaunt there, having a water spanyell that was verie good gave him to James Melvyn [Melville], who, afterward for the pleasure that he sawe that the King had in suche kind of dogges, gave him to the King. The Quene thereupon fell mervelously out with Melvyn, and called him dissembler and flatterer, and sayed she could not trust him who wold gyve any thing to such one as she loved not.’4
The vengefulness of his wife and the abandonment by his peers frightened and depressed Darnley, and he talked of escaping abroad. When a herd animal is cast out by its group, death is the usual outcome, although seldom brought about by its own kind. Darnley became a rogue male, in danger and dangerous. His dreams of grandeur veered away from seizing the Scottish crown matrimonial and encompassed instead pretensions to Elizabeth’s own crown. He boasted that he was better loved in England than Scotland and had at least forty English gentlemen who would support his claim; his fantasy invasion starting in the north and centring on Scarborough and including Irish rebel Shane O’Neill. All this crazy talk was reported to Cecil by a spy in Darnley’s company.
Elizabeth was adamant in refusing to recognize Darnley as King of the Scots but she had no trouble in accepting his son as legitimate and embraced her position as chief godparent with princely generosity. A dazzling solid gold font,* encrusted with jewels and ‘of exquisite workmanship’,5 was ordered as soon as Elizabeth heard the news. She feared, however, that perhaps her generosity had been slightly stretched and that the font would be too small for full immersion by the time of the baptism six months later. She was careful to send a message via the Earl of Bedford, whom she instructed to ‘say pleasantly … it may be better used for the next child, provided it be christened before it outgrow the font’.6 In fact, this impressive gift which, as the aesthetically sensitive Venetian ambassador pointed out, ‘combined elegance with value’, did not last long enough to baptize another baby. After Darnley’s death Mary sent it off to the mint to have its ornamental 330 ounces of gold reduced to useful bullion and coin.†
Although it may not have been reciprocated, Elizabeth appeared to extend a certain female solidarity and sympathy to Mary at this time. Certainly she did not choose to believe, or make any kind of capital from, the rumours which abounded of Mary’s immorality with Riccio, precipitate sexual relations with Darnley prior to marriage, or indeed the wild accusations that she and her half-brother Moray had been closer than siblings ought to be. Loath to join the band of gossips and defamers, she was to urge Mary in the crises to come to protect her reputation and princely authority at all costs, advice her cousin was to treat with as scant regard as that shown to her gift of the font of solid gold.
Mary’s relationship with her husband could only deteriorate further as Bothwell rose to be the lord upon whom she most relied. By nature he was neither popular nor naturally conciliatory, but his new prominence in the queen’s affections and her own fatal lack of discretion meant that her obvious favour of him fuelled even greater resentments. Bedford did not mince his words to Cecil: ‘Bothwell carries all credit in the Court’, he wrote, adding that he had become ‘the most hated man among the noblemen in Scotland.’7 Bothwell was a renowned fighter, a man of action and ambition with large appetites and a direct manner. Above all he was unwaveringly loyal to his queen and country. As an uncompromising patriot, he was a Scottish nobleman who had never accepted tainted English money – having only ever stolen it. Consequently he was just as hated and distrusted by the English as he was by most of the Scottish nobility, although the English animus against him was less personal.
Bothwell’s ascendancy in Mary’s affections gained some momentum in early October when he was seriously injured in an attack by one of the notorious border rievers, Elliot of the Park. The queen set out within the week to ride from Jedburgh to Bothwell’s fortress, the Hermitage, a forbidding fourteenth-century castle with dark associations of past cruelties, murder and devil worship. This was a round trip of more than sixty miles through country as rough and unforgiving as the borderers themselves who rustled, thieved and brawled for a living. Although accompanied by Moray and a small party of noblemen, it was an expedition fraught with danger and a gruelling ride for a woman who only three months previously had been through a long and difficult childbirth. But Mary was an accomplished horsewoman who thrived on physical exertion, and welcomed risk and adventure. She was also propelled by a desire to see the man on whom she had come to rely, a man who according to first reports had died from his injuries. Just as Mary’s passions had been suddenly engaged during her vigil by Darnley’s sickbed, so now the sight of Bothwell, brought low by sword blows to his head, torso and hand, may have touched her volatile heart.
A week after the exertion of the ride and understandably weakened with the emotional stresses of the last few months, Mary fell grievously ill herself. News reache
d Elizabeth not just of Bothwell’s demise ‘[the Queen of Scots] has lost a man she could trust, of whom she had but few’8, but of Mary’s imminent death too. Elizabeth was in the middle of being battered by the militants in her Parliament who were determined to wring a promise from her to settle the succession or marry. One of the main candidates to succeed to her throne lay mortally ill, even her baby son and heir, it was rumoured, was ill.
The unpredictability of life was never so pointed. Elizabeth ranted and stamped her feet, ducking and weaving as speech after speech exhorted her to have a care for the state of her country if she should die without issue. At least Mary had produced a son and heir. Mary had fulfilled her central duty as queen while Elizabeth was treated by her presumptuous Commons as a recalcitrant who was neglectful of her people. She felt beleaguered also by her Lords: ‘saying that they had abandoned her, and were all against her’. In her hurt and fury she attacked the Duke of Norfolk, calling him ‘traitor or conspirator, or other words of similar flavour’, and felt particularly betrayed by Leicester, declaring ‘she had thought if all the world abandoned her he would not have done so’. When he answered that he would die at her feet, she irritably retorted, ‘that had nothing to do with the matter’! She was outraged – and almost outmanoeuvred. Elizabeth thought the best way to head off the opposition was to say she would marry, ‘And I hope to have children; otherwise I would never marry.’9 With that she left her escape route open.
In early November 1566, while Elizabeth promised, with fingers crossed, to do her duty as a woman, Mary lay close to death with what the Spanish ambassador reported as ‘a female complaint, which is called “mal de madre”’.10 She had collapsed with a pain in her side, convulsed with continuous vomiting, some of it of blood. After days of virtual coma, Mary seemed so cold and rigid that her distraught household had given her up for dead. Her ladies of the bedchamber already had flung open the windows so that her soul might escape to heaven while her half-brother Moray, more temporal minded, had begun helping himself to her jewellery and other pocketable valuables. At this point of extremity the queen’s spirit in fact returned.