by Jane Dunn
As Mary left Tixall to return fleetingly to Chartley, she was greeted by a crowd of beggars who knew of her reputation for largesse to the poor. Mary gave them a sad valediction, ‘Alas, good people, I have now nothing to give you. For I am as much a beggar as you are yourselves.’ She can have meant this only as a self-dramatizing metaphor, for she was still a queen with her jewels and her dowry to protect her from beggary. But the distribution of alms to the poor was an important part of her sense of herself as merciful and endearing. When Paulet had forbidden this activity, she wrote to the French ambassador that without this contact with the people she feared that in the locality she would be ‘reputed and held as some savage and complete stranger’.75 To connect with others and have an effect was the driving force of her life.
Soon after, Mary wrote a letter to the Duc de Guise outlining her plan for this the final act. She had always denied any implication in the treasonous plots that had sprung around her throughout her captivity. She had decided that she would stand on her unimpeachable sovereignty and die freely now as a martyr for her faith. Mary appeared to wish to dignify her struggle with Elizabeth by making it a microcosm of the religious wars of Catholic against heretic which were raging over the Channel: ‘I have declared to them that for my part I am resolute to die for mine [my religion] as she declared that she would do for the Protestant [religion]’, she explained. Having determined on this course of public martyrdom Mary feared most the secret assassin, robbing her death of its power and meaning. She confided to her Guise cousin, ‘I am expecting some poison or other such secret death’, a thoroughly plausible fear at that time.
She continued her letter despite, she said, the pain she suffered from her swollen arm: ‘the heart will not fail me in the hope that One who made me to be born what I am will do me the mercy of making me die for His cause’. Her abandonment of Scotland was complete with her request that her body be sent to Rheims to rest beside her mother and her heart be placed beside her first husband, François II. She ended the letter with an intimation that her death would be avenged by the Catholic princes. But even as Mary bade her cousin an affecting farewell she requested that he pass a message on to Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, that meant her betrayal of Guise and French interests in favour of the Spanish. The message – that she would not abandon what she had promised to Mendoza’s friends – could only refer to the promise she had made to will her rights to succession of the English throne to Philip II, should her son continue to refuse to convert to Catholicism. A draft of this document in her own handwriting was found in her papers after her death.
As Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire on 25 September 1586 the stage was set for the final act in the struggle between the two queens. They would deny the roles of cruel oppressor and villainess that each had written for the other and display instead the archetypal characters that each had chosen for herself, as heroic populist queen and Catholic martyr. Mary the bold adventurer and enchantress had her chance to draw on her inner reserves for a dramatic consummation of her life that would gain her immortality at least. Elizabeth, until then the great equivocator, now made up her mind at last and through action transcended royalty to become an iconic queen.
* * *
*Hercule became François, Duc d’Alencçon, and then Duc d’Anjou, but is usually referred to as d’Alençon to differentiate him from his brother, the Duc d’Anjou who became Henri III in 1574. Monsieur was the more usual contemporary name for him, the name Elizabeth used when she didn’t call him her nicknames of Frog, or Little Fingers.
*Don John was a dashing young prince who had become the hero of Europe since commanding the Christian fleet at Lepanto in 1571 in a historic victory against the previously indomitable Turkish fleet.
*Prior to his arrival in London, Simier had heard that while away, serving Alençon in his campaign in the Low Countries, his young wife had committed adultery with his younger brother. He sent his men ahead to kill this brother at the gate of his château, and his young wife died soon after, of poison, fear or grief, no one could say.
*Apparently it was an ulcer just above her ankle which did not heal for seven years.
*The thirteenth-century church in the diocese of Orléans, a favourite place of worship and pilgrimage for the Valois kings. Orléans was an important city for Mary. It was here she had nursed her first husband François II to his death in 1560. It was also the setting for one of the great stories of French feminine heroism when, at the battle of Orléans in 1429, Joan of Arc saved France from England. There is no reason to doubt that Mary was affected herself by the stories of this singular woman’s heroic martyrdom and her subsequent immortality in the sentimental history of her country.
*Esmé Stuart, Duke of Lennox (1542?–83), cousin of James VI and some thought successor to his throne should he die childless. Handsome, charming, an adroit and plausible schemer, on his arrival in Scotland in 1579 he was immediately irresistible to the young, fatherless king. Ambition made him convert to Protestantism. After the execution of the regent Morton in 1581, his influence over James was at its zenith and he was rewarded with his dukedom. In 1582 he clandestinely agreed to command an army, raised by Philip II, to invade England. Philip’s procrastination meant this came to naught, but controversy over Lennox’s true religious affiliation meant he was forced to leave Scotland and return to France, where he died.
*The cipher used by Elizabeth in her letters for ‘eyes’, one of her pet names for Leicester.
†Elizabeth’s motto, semper eadem, which had also been her mother’s.
*Roughly equivalent to £750,000.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Consequence of the Offence
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.
Antony and Cleopatra, act 5, scene 2
ELIZABETH AND MARY SHARED a grand sense of the dramatic. They were aware that their theatre was the world, everything they did was noticed and interpreted by a constituency much wider than their immediate kingdoms. They had the expectations of their ancestors upon them and the hindsight of history would judge them. Their public utterances rang with appreciation of their significance in the great drama of human affairs. Mary, addressing the commissioners sent to Fotheringhay in October, was exhorting Elizabeth. They were ‘to look to their Consciences, and to remember that the Theatre of the whole World is much wider than the Kingdom of England’.1 In that warning was her recognition that she was above all, a European prince and a Catholic queen. She could look to her fellow Catholic princes to avenge her and to future generations to absolve her.
Elizabeth, addressing her Parliament in the following month, expressed her own awareness of the situation: ‘for we princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world duly observed. The eyes of many behold our actions.’2 Not only was personal privacy denied them, every public word and action was relayed, embellished or interpreted, through the country and beyond to the capitals of European power.
Having protested with tears and anger at her impotence during the long years of her captivity, having complained volubly at every change of abode from castle to manor house and back again, Mary accepted the move to Fotheringhay without demur. With characteristic courage she had decided to embrace what she now recognized as the inevitability of death with the nobility of the righteous and the resolve of the martyr. In doing so she stage-managed her exit for maximum impact on history and the watchers of the world. Mary had shown already how well she rose to the most daunting physical challenges. Just as she had done when riding with her troops to battle, in taking control of her fate she became fearless herself, and awesome to others.
Elizabeth and Mary’s last confrontation was a struggle for the moral high ground. Their reputations at stake, they sought now to justify their actions towards each other throughout their lives, with the eloquence of their own rhetoric and a canny use of propaganda. Both masters of their arts, they reduced to tears the Membe
rs of Parliament and trial commissioners who heard their emotive submissions. Elizabeth was determined that Mary should admit her wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness, and she still clung to the possibility of saving her life and saving herself the agony of that capital decision, ‘a most grievous and irksome burden’.3
One of Elizabeth’s most famous letters, much copied and distributed in her lifetime to show Elizabeth’s magnanimity and Mary’s guilt, was to Sir Amyas Paulet, in the month Mary was conveyed to Fotheringhay, recommending his safekeeping of his royal prisoner:
Amyas, my most careful and faithful servant,
God reward thee treblefold in the double for thy most troublesome charge so well discharged. If you knew, my Amyas, how kindly besides dutifully my careful heart accepts your double labours and faithful actions, your wise orders and safe regards performed in so dangerous and crafty a charge, it would ease your troubles’ travail and rejoice your heart …
But let your wicked mistress know how with hearty sorrow her vile deserts compels these orders, and bid her from me ask God’s forgiveness.4
In her communications on the discovery of the Babington Plot, Elizabeth intimated more than once that if only Mary would admit her guilt and show herself ready to make amends then she would be happy to pardon her. Mary herself knew this was the bargain. Even after being found guilty, she wrote to Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, suggesting that if she would only admit her guilt and ask for forgiveness her life might be saved: ‘I am threatened if I do not plead for pardon, but I reply that they have already condemned me to death.’5 Mary’s stance was uncompromising; she wanted martyr not traitor to be the judgement of history.
For her part, Elizabeth conveyed a wistfulness that she and Mary had never met and been able to conduct their relationship unencumbered by the weighty matters of politics, religion and the balance of European powers. To her Parliament that November she memorably explained:
I assure you, if the case stood between her and myself only, if it had pleased God to have made us both milkmaids with pails on our arms, so that the matter should have rested between us two; and that I knew she did and would seek my destruction still, yet could I not consent to her death … Yea, if I could perceive how I might be freed from the conspiracies and treasons of her favourers in this action – by your leaves she should not die.6
To Mary she sent a similar message via her councillors: ‘if the consequence of the offence reached no further then to ourself as a private person, wee protest before God we coulde have bene verie well contented to have freely remitted and pardoned the same’.7 If these sentiments were even half-sincere it was interesting to see that she considered how simple and less threatening their relationship would be if they had been merely private citizens. Elizabeth went on to explain that the fact that they were queens and represented opposing religions and alliances abroad complicated the situation and increased the danger. The danger Mary represented emanated more from those adherents and interests that attached themselves to her cause. The need to execute her only became a pressing debate because the security of the realm, not just Elizabeth’s life, was at risk.
To break this cycle of plots and threats of invasion, Elizabeth’s ministers desperately argued for Mary to be tried, found guilty and executed for treason. With this intent, the thirty-six commissioners assembled at Fotheringhay by 12 October 1586, ready to proceed. They hoped to persuade Mary to attend the trial in person as her recognition of the proceedings would add an extra dimension of legality. Although it was decided she should be tried under the newly minted Act of Association, there were some doubts as to whether their country’s laws could be applied to a foreign queen, particularly one who had sought asylum and then been constrained against her will.
Mary knew that by the terms of this new Act she was clearly guilty by association, at the very least. Her own defence was to stand on her sovereign power and immunity from the laws of an alien state. ‘It seemeth strange to me, that the Queen should command me as a Subject, to submit my self to a Trial. I am an absolute Queen, and will doe nothing which may be prejudicial either to Royal Majesty, or to other Princes of my place and rank, or my son. My Mind is not yet so far dejected, neither will I faint or sink under this my Calamity.’ She also made an affecting plaint by stressing how bereft she was of friend or counsel, deprived even of her personal papers: ‘The Laws and Statutes of England are to me altogether unknown, I am destitute of Counsellors, and who shall be my Peers I cannot tell. My Papers and Notes are taken from me, and no man dareth appear to be my Advocate.’ She continued to deny everything and would admit only one thing, ‘I have recommended my self and my condition unto foreign Princes.’8
Elizabeth had been exasperated throughout the nineteen years of Mary’s captivity by her obdurate refusal to accept responsibility or guilt for any of her actions or enterprises. In this perilous situation where she was about to authorize a trial of a fellow sovereign and foreign queen, watched by the world, she needed Mary to submit to her authority in some small way. Her reputation as a just queen required that Mary relinguish her haughty stance of injured innocence, her insistence that she was persecuted purely for her faith alone.
This was precisely what Mary intended to maintain. It was now clear that she would never freely admit any guilt or any conscious complicity in treasonous acts against Elizabeth. She was absolutely sure that the way to escape notoriety and claim immortality was to prove herself a martyr for her faith. Mary had to deflect the gaze from the wreckage of her reign and the ruination of her reputation through an act of nobility and courage. A heroic death went a long way towards reconciling a less than heroic life.
Elizabeth was not sympathetic to Mary’s bid for transfiguration. On hearing that she was refusing the right of the English commissioners to try her, Elizabeth dispatched an imperious broadside to Mary, post haste. This was in response to Mary’s insistence that she be tried only by her peers, not by those inferior to her in status. Elizabeth was her only available peer but she insisted her councillors were there as her representatives. It was indicative of Elizabeth’s ire that this letter carried no titles and no address, just a peremptory statement of fact and intent:
You have in various ways and manners attempted to take my life and bring my kingdom to destruction by bloodshed. I have never proceeded harshly against you, but have, on the contrary, protected and maintained you like myself. These treasons will be proved to you and all made manifest. Yet it is my will, that you answer the nobles and peers of the kingdom as if I myself were present. I therefore require, charge, and command you make answer for all I have been well informed of your arrogance.
Yet even given the sharpness of the riposte, Elizabeth appeared still willing to pardon Mary if only she would bend her pride, submit to Elizabeth’s authority and admit her guilt. Her valedictory sentence was peremptory: ‘Act plainly without reserve, and you will sooner be able to obtain favour of me.’9
Mary continued to argue fluently and persuasively against the legality of the trial and, despite her protestations that she knew nothing of English law, she showed herself more than capable of debating legalistic points with the best of her interlocutors. When they threatened to proceed anyway against her, even in her absence, she gave a brave, defiant answer, ‘that she was no Subject, and rather would she die a thousand Deaths than acknowledge herself a Subject’.10 Her long years of enforced inactivity had given her endless opportunities for rehearsing the wrongs done to her; now at last with an attentive audience, Mary could not resist running through her catalogue of woes. The commissioners eventually stopped her in mid-flow and asked her to answer plainly if she would attend the trial, yes or no. Her grasp of the weak points of the prosecution against her was impressive. She declared:
The Authority of their Commission was founded upon a late Law made to intrap her; That she could by no means away with the Queen’s Laws, which she had good reason to suspect; That she still had a good Heart full of Courage, and would not derogate fr
om her Progenitours the Kings of Scotland, by owning herself a Subject to the Crown of England; for this was nothing else but openly to confess them to have been Rebels and Traitours. Yet she refused not to answer, provided she were not reduced to the Rank of a Subject. But she had rather utterly perish than to answer as a criminal person.11
Mary was lame and her physical suffering added a distinct pathos to her appearance. This, together with her passionate self-righteousness, affected the more chivalrous and soft-hearted of the councillors. Sir Christopher Hatton, one of Elizabeth’s privy councillors and prominent in uncovering the Babington Plot, was not so easily moved. He pointed out to the Scottish queen the way she should best proceed, ‘appear to your Trial, and shew your Innocency; lest by avoiding Trial you draw upon yourself a Suspicion, and stain your Reputation with an eternal Blot of Aspersion’. He added that, should Mary clear herself, ‘the Queen herself will be transported with joy, who affirmed unto me at my coming from her, that never any thing befell her that troubled her more, than that you should be charged with such Misdemeanours’.12
Mary did agree to appear at her trial, despite suspecting that it would have no effect on the verdict. Her dramatic temperament led her to prefer to be centre stage in any arena. Mary had spent nineteen years out of power, away from the glitter and attention of court life. Through these long years she had felt abandoned by all governments, been refused consistently any interview with Elizabeth, barely offered acknowledgement of her requests, let alone a hearing to defend herself. She still maintained a strong sense of her importance and her ability to affect events. Now thirty-six of the most powerful men in England had assembled and here Mary had a stage and an opportunity to present herself and her case in public for the first time. Every word would be relayed with urgency to Elizabeth, who had held herself increasingly superior and aloof from Mary’s plaints. Now all of them would have to pay attention.