An Accidental Tragedy

by Roderick Graham

  Privy Councils had existed often enough previously, often as a temporary measure in one of the frequent regencies, but this situation was new. The council had formed itself, based on the inherited rights of the nobility, and had been endorsed by the 1560 parliament although, in the strictest sense, that parliament, not having been summoned by the monarch, was itself illegal. While Mary was the undoubted queen regnant, she could not diminish their hereditary rights, and now she joined what was an already existing government, as its head. The Scottish historian Julian Goodare describes it as the start of ‘corporate government’.

  Of her council, Secretary Lethington was the perfect embodiment of a sixteenth-century politician. He had been born William Maitland at Lethington Tower, now renamed Lennoxlove, the seat of the dukes of Hamilton. Since William Maitlands were all too common in his home area, he was known, as were most Scots in his position, by the name of his estate, hence he was usually referred to as ‘Lethington’. Mary’s son James VI would comment, ‘I would there were not a surname in Scotland, for they make all the trouble.’ Lethington’s father was Sir Richard Maitland, a gentleman devoted to gardening and literature, who would rise to the post of Lord Privy Seal under Mary until blindness forced him into a long retirement before his death in 1586. Lethington’s education had followed a similar pattern to Knox’s: the local school in Haddington followed by university at St Andrews, until money and position sent him to Europe, where he learned French and Italian. He was fluent in Latin and – a rarity for the time – also in Greek and Biblical studies. He rose through the ranks of the government as a civil servant under Marie, enjoying the patronage of fellow Protestants Lord James and the Earl of Cassilis. He joined the Lords of the Congregation, not out of religious fervour, nor with an eye to choosing the winning side, but rather because he felt that Marie’s reliance on France was distorting the legal basis for her rule. Lethington saw the proper order of the realm restored in her daughter and quickly became her chief counsellor, charming her by providing legal bases for her actions, as he had charmed Elizabeth on his many missions south with industrial quantities of flattery. In his portrait he is the perfect courtier, with lace at his throat and a scattering of pearls in his hat, but his gaze is unrelenting and his eyes are cold. The picture gives a true portrait of the man, but gives no hint of his terrible end.

  Alongside Mary’s bastard half-brother Lord James Stewart, Lethington was one of the two most influential men in the kingdom. As Thomas Randolph, Elizabeth’s ambassador, said, ‘Take these two out of Scotland and those that love their country shall soon feel the want of them.’ Randolph also said of them, ‘Lord James deals after his nature rudely, homely and bluntly – Lethington more delicately and finely’.

  Thomas Randolph himself was ‘of a dark intriguing spirit, full of cunning and void of conscience. He was a faithful servant of his mistress Elizabeth.’ However, curiously, he and Mary formed a close friendship and shared an enthusiasm for horseback exercise, although Randolph always put Elizabeth’s interests first. He had met Mary on 1 September 1561, and pressed her on the vexed question of ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, but she blithely said she was unacquainted with the matter, and would take counsel and then speak to him again. Mary clearly had an ease of manner when speaking to men like Randolph, at first in French, then, as her facility with the language improved, in Scots. Randolph treated her with the full court protocol of being in the royal presence and his manners held memories of St Germain and the Louvre. When the formalities were over she enjoyed a lack of ceremony, which, combined with her undoubted beauty, was captivating. Diane de Poitiers’s lessons were being put to good use, even if Mary had no substance beyond the sugar coating.

  Randolph told Cecil, ‘She herself finds three points necessary to maintain her state – first to make peace with England: second to be served with Protestants – which surprises her.’ The third point was ‘to enrich her crown with Abbey lands, which if she do, what shall there lack in her, saving a good husband, to lead a happy life.’ It would have been more accurate if Randolph had said that the first two points were the policy of the Privy Council and that the third was a financial stricture proposed by the Reformers. The political inevitability of Mary’s marriage was her known and accepted destiny, but one which could be delayed for the present.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dynastic entity

  Mary, not entirely through her own efforts, had now set up a Privy Council through which she could rule, established her right to hear Mass in private and shown herself to the population of Edinburgh. Amongst her nobility, her more obvious opponents and allies had been identified and she felt that she could ignore her opponents, at least for the present. Knox she had met out of curiosity and had been baffled by his approach. He was the spiritual leader of a growing part of the population, but his religion was meaningless to her. For Mary, religion happened daily at Mass and was meant to comfort and soothe, not to disturb and provoke. She, therefore, classified the Reformation as a movement of undoubted importance to those who followed it, but, provided the reformers showed tolerance to those of her faith, it could be ignored as something which, quite simply, as yet required her to take no action.

  Mary’s next move was to show herself to the people outside Edinburgh, and on 11 September 1561, before the coming autumn gave notice of her first Scots winter, she set out for Linlithgow. Having left the palace eighteen years previously as an eight-month-old child to seek refuge in Stirling, she had no memories of the place. But now her father’s glorious fountain ran with wine as she returned, and some of her tapestries and wainscoting had already been sent ahead. The palace had been largely remodelled by James Hamilton of Finnart, a bastard son of Châtelherault. He had visited Blois and Amboise on the Loire and would have been introduced to François I’s prize guest, Leonardo da Vinci. Returning to Scotland he brought the latest in French Renaissance design with him. Care had been taken to ensure that French noses would not be turned up, and instead of grunts of scorn there were gasps of admiration at the height of the palace and murmurs of approval at the elaborate carvings surrounding the windows and, most of all, the palace’s position on a low hill sweeping down to an extensive loch. Across the water and beyond the River Forth, the hills of Fife lay on the horizon, giving a hint of the more northerly mountains. It was a totally different location from the Loire and, importantly, demonstrated quite clearly that there was a Scottish Renaissance style of building, which, though deriving from the Franco-Italian style, had a separate, equally elegant manner of its own. Mary rode through the town and banqueted with the awe-struck local gentry while the court relaxed on the loch-side. After two days, the royal entourage travelled the same route as had the messenger with news of her birth nineteen years previously, and Mary arrived in Stirling to lodge in the castle which had once been her second home.

  Marie de Guise had arranged for French masons and plasterers to carry out James V’s wishes and Stirling owed more to the French style than Linlithgow. The layout of the buildings and the furnishings of the royal apartments here were very similar to the Guise stronghold of Joinville – so much so that her three uncles started to feel almost at home and began to believe that their niece’s future life was probably acceptable. A particular feature of Stirling was the profusion of carved wooden heads looking down from the ceilings, and today the outside bays carry a wide variety of carved figures, possibly one of Finnart himself carrying a broken sword. Even Brantôme now thought that life in Scotland was not so barbaric after all.

  However, Mary narrowly escaped death when a lighted candle set fire to the curtains and tester of her bed while she slept. Since the curtains of the bed were drawn for the night, she awoke panicking and surrounded by flames. Knox, typically, interpreted the incident as a presage of her time in Scotland being followed everywhere by fire. A few days later, on 14 September, her ‘devout chaplains’ were to sing Mass in the Chapel Royal, where she had been crowned, but they were prevented by Argyll an
d Lord James, who ‘so disturbed the quire, that some, both priests and clerks, left their places with broken heads and bloody ears. It was a sport alone for those that were there to behold it’. Given that Lord James himself had negotiated her peaceful celebration of Mass at Holyrood, this eruption sounds very like drunken hooliganism.

  The court travelled on to visit the Earl of Rothes, who claimed that he lost some plate during the visit, and Randolph reports that wherever the royal party lodged they ‘paid little for their meat’. At Perth there was a familiar civic ceremony during which the queen was presented with a heart full of gold pieces, accompanied, however, by the obligatory Protestant sermon condemning the errors of the Catholic world. The result of this on top of the various admonitions she received in Edinburgh was too much. Mary, predictably, fainted and had to be carried from her horse to her lodgings. Recovered, she received an honourable reception in Dundee before passing on to St Andrews, where a false rumour began that a priest had been murdered, and the dangerously devout Earl of Huntly proudly announced that he would ‘set up Mass in three shires’ if Mary would only command him. She briskly refused this offer, which strengthened her view that, if she wanted to keep peace in her kingdom, or even make herself acceptable to Elizabeth, the Earl of Huntly was a serious liability.

  Mary’s last stop before returning to Edinburgh was at Falkland Palace, the very palace in which her father had died. They had never met, and Mary had only a dutiful respect for him, although one hopes the royal servants ensured that she did not sleep in the room in which he died. At Holyrood there are no accounts of a Mass being said for him at his grave in the abbey. Mary did not regard him as a part of her family; hers was the house of Guise by emotion and occasionally the house of Stewart by right of dynastic succession. Mary returned to Holyrood on 29 September and, without the careful orchestration of the Guise uncles to ensure smiling and cheering crowds everywhere and at all times, she realised that while the Scots liked their beautiful young queen well enough, her popularity was yet to be fully established. Knox thought that all these towns had been ‘polluted with her idolatry’. Scotland was not France.

  Her return to Edinburgh was slightly marred by a proclamation from the magistrates, town council and deacons of the crafts in her absence declaring that ‘all monks, friars, priests, nuns, adulterers, fornicators and all such filthy persons’ must leave town within twenty-four hours on pain of whipping, branding on the cheek and exile. Mary, as was her right, promptly removed the Provost and bailies from their offices. Knox ranted hysterically, but on the advice of Lord James and Lethington new officials were appointed and the matter was allowed to drop.

  What was not allowed to drop was Elizabeth’s insistence on the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, removing Mary’s direct claim to the English throne, and Lethington travelled to London with letters of undying friendship, hopes for eternal peace between the kingdoms and a request that Elizabeth recognise Mary as her rightful heir. This was a slight shift of ground, but Elizabeth was having none of it and insisted on a full and formal ratification. When Lethington visited Elizabeth with the offer she told him bluntly, ‘I looked for another message from your queen . . . I have long enough been fed with words’, and he was told to increase the pressure on Mary to ratify. Mary simply ignored the request, not realising the long-term implications of her inactivity. The English historian Camden said of her claim to the English crown that from it ‘flowed as from a fountain all the calamities wherein she was afterwards wrapped’.

  Thomas Randolph met Mary regularly and repeated the ratification request but was met with polite deafness. He wrote, ‘Her grace at all times gave me good words and those nearest about her, as Lord James and Lethington, say they are meant as they are spoken’, and Randolph was admitted to meetings of the council. On 24 October, he noted that ‘In the council chamber . . . she ordinarily sits most part of the time sewing some work or other’. Mary’s enthusiasm for embroidery was clearly greater than her enthusiasm for affairs of state.

  On 1 November she celebrated All Hallows Day with a sung Mass, the music probably by Robert Carver, but afterwards a priest was beaten up and a repeat proclamation that Mary’s Mass was strictly private was expected. None, however, was forthcoming. A policy of political inactivity seemed to have taken over at Holyrood. Mary had now made her first tour of at least some of her country, had been greeted by the people of Edinburgh and was settling into her palace at Holyroodhouse. Hangings and carpets were being put in place and cooks were adapting to the needs of French tastes. Her horses were still in Berwick. Apart from the Marquis d’Elbeuf, her Guise uncles returned to France, the Duc d’Aumale taking the royal galleys while the Grand Prior and M. Damville travelled overland, both men carrying safe-conducts from Elizabeth.

  Mary did manage to manipulate events to her own ends when on 16 November she awakened the palace by ‘taking a fray [fright] in her bed as if horsemen had been in the close and the palace had been closed about’. The alarm was raised and armed guards searched the grounds but nothing untoward was found and everyone returned to bed. Suspicion fell on Arran, who was now rumoured to be coming to Edinburgh with a body of his Hamilton kinsmen to seize the queen, although, again, no such event took place. The final result was that Mary now had a personal guard of twelve halberdiers, which she would shortly double. Randolph, properly suspicious, was of the opinion that Mary had engineered the entire affair.

  A few nights later another fracas disturbed the sleep of Edinburgh’s inhabitants. Bothwell, d’Elbeuf and Lord John Stewart, Lord James’s brother, had been partying with one Alison Craik, ‘a good handsome wench’, and some of her female friends. Unfortunately Alison Craik was also known to be Arran’s ‘hoor’, and the pleasure-bound trio were met on their next visit with an armed gang of Hamiltons. D’Elbeuf ran to fetch a halberd, declaring that ten men could not restrain him from the battle, the town guard was called out, and Randolph watched the riot from the safety of his lodging; ‘I thought it as much wisdom for me to behold them out of a window as to be of their company.’ The result of this fracas was that Bothwell went into another temporary exile from Edinburgh and Arran fell further from Mary’s favour.

  A problem that would have to be faced was still occupying gossipy minds in Europe. Monsignor Commendone, a papal representative in Louvain, wrote to Cardinal Borromeo on 23 November, ‘The queen should quickly make up her mind to marry someone who could uproot heresy from that kingdom.’ The contemporary historian Marcus Merriman has commented, scathingly, ‘Mary was never as significant as a person as she was as a dynastic entity.’

  Pope Pius IV wrote to Mary on 3 December with a reminder of her duty as a Catholic sovereign. ‘Persevere with the utmost constancy – remember how good Mary was,’ he counselled her, referring to the reign of Mary Tudor, during which more than 300 Protestants were burned to death. For the moment at least, Mary was content to postpone dealing with these problems; the court settled down to enjoy itself and Mary concentrated on doing what she knew best.

  On Leith Sands, half of the male courtiers dressed as women while the others wore masks to ‘run at the ring’, a game in which mounted horsemen tried to spear a cloth ring suspended on a pole. Then, in complete contrast, shortly after, Mary ordered the court to wear mourning on the first anniversary of François II’s death. None of the Scottish nobles observed the order. During the Requiem Mass Mary herself approached the altar and offered up a large wax candle covered in black velvet. She was an enthusiastic participant in the more theatrical rituals of the Church, and on the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, or Candlemas, the queen carried more candles than all the rest of the court. On Maundy Thursday, during Easter Week, 1567, Mary duly appeared in a simple white apron and cap to wash the feet of twenty-four virgins – the number of years in her age. To perform this humble act of contrition Mary was attended by forty-six courtiers.

  The Scottish nobility were taking a great interest in the redistribution of the incomes seized fr
om the Catholic clergy, much of which was now in lay hands. It would be impossible for these funds to be reallocated without some pain, and in December a method had been devised which was, at least, less painful than other systems. No allocation had yet been made for the payment of ministers in the reformed system or for a subvention to the queen, and a system of ‘thirds’ was put in place whereby one third of the seized wealth was paid to Mary, while she, in turn, used half of these sums to pay the reformed clergy. Her direct income from customs was £2,155 Scots, her thirds varied wildly from £2,033 to £12,700 Scots and her French income, when it was paid, was £30,000 Scots. Knox was furious that she had been allowed any money at all from the public purse, while Lethington, on his mistress’s behalf, complained, ‘the Queen will not get at the year’s end enough to buy a new pair of shoes’. But for the first time the Scots had a sovereign who needed no direct taxation for her upkeep. Mary built no palaces and indulged in no foreign wars – she could not have afforded them without crippling taxes – but her domestic household remained nearly at Valois level at no great cost to the people of Scotland.

  This was not a meagre court in a broken-down palace, but a glittering presence. There were fireworks, equestrian displays, banquets and balls, with Knox decrying her ‘dancing of the purpose’, that is to say ‘lasciviously’ – ‘more like to the brothel than to the comeliness of honest women’. Randolph reported that he never found himself so happy and that the merry ladies were lusty and fair. Knox also objected to the balls continuing late into the night, but, since he never attended them and had probably never seen the decorum of minuets and pavanes, his vehement ranting is totally unjustified.