The Scottish weather may have occasionally limited, but not prevented, hawking and hunting, but indoors Mary had a range of diversions and played billiards and backgammon with her Maries. She also continued her Latin studies with the scholar and poet George Buchanan. Whether she made any significant progress is not known. Holyrood filled with music, and Mary played both the lute and the virginals, although Sir James Melville of Halhill acknowledged that she was not as expert a musician as Elizabeth. Mary maintained a professional court orchestra and her courtiers played lutes and viols as well as singing as a choir. However, it was a choir which lacked a bass singer, and a young Piedmontese valet in the service of the Savoy ambassador joined Mary’s household to fill the gap. His name was David Rizzio.
All of Mary’s furniture had now arrived from England – the inventory shows 186 items – and Holyrood was transformed into a vibrant echo of the great Valois palaces. Situated neither on a river nor on a cliff top, its place in open parkland was ideal for a court that took such pleasure in outdoor activities. Inside, the palace was lavishly furnished with more than a hundred tapestries and thirty-six Turkey carpets. Significantly, Mary’s favourite tapestry was a set showing the French victory over Spain at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512, and this tapestry travelled with her wherever she went. Ten cloths of state decorated her thrones; there was even a crimson satin cloth to be used especially when the queen dined out of doors. To the end of her life her cloth of state carried the arms of Scotland and Lorraine. There were twelve embroidered bed covers, some worked with gold or silver thread, and twenty-four table covers, two of which were fourteen yards long. Even the cupboard linings were of damask.
For travel there was a litter covered with velvet and fringed with gold and silk, which was carried by mules. She had a coach as a novelty, although it was hardly ever used. During Mary’s stay in France there were only three coaches in the kingdom, belonging, predictably, to Henri, Diane and Catherine. However, by 1563 there was a petition to prevent the use of coaches in Paris since there were then so many of them that they blocked the narrow medieval streets. The traffic jam had arrived. For normal travel, the court preferred to ride on horseback.
All of this was under the control of Servais de Condé, Mary’s French chamberlain. Personally, she was served by her ladies of honour, three ladies of the bedchamber under Margaret Carwood, grooms, butlers, cooks, upholsterers, furriers and jewellers. Usually by Mary’s side was la Jardinière, one of her fools, whose piquant remarks were often as near to the truth as any Mary heard. Another favourite fool whom Mary had brought from France was simply known as Nicola la Folle, although poor Nicola was sadly forgotten when disaster struck, and two years after Mary had fled to England the poor lady was still haunting the corridors of Holyrood. Mercifully, the Earl of Lennox noticed her plight, gave Nicola a pension and arranged for her return to France.
Closest to Mary were her Maries, with Mary Seton still arranging the queen’s hair, often twice a day. In 1568 Sir Francis Knollys told Cecil that Mary Seton was ‘the finest busker, that is to say, dresser of a woman’s head of hair that is to be seen in any country’. Since the queen’s coiffure often had jewels entwined in it, Mary Seton was helped by Mary Livingston, who kept control of Mary’s jewellery. The inventory of jewellery had 180 entries including, touchingly, a cross of gold set with diamonds and rubies which Marie de Guise had pawned for cash to pay her soldiers during her war with the Lords of the Congregation. Mary redeemed her mother’s pledge for £1,000 Scots. Mary also possessed one of the finest collections of Scottish pearls. A hundred years earlier Aneas Sylvius, later Pope Pius II, had claimed that Scottish pearls were the best in Europe. In all, her jewels were valued at 490,914 Scots crowns, or £171,810 in English pounds sterling.
Jewellers and dressmakers were always on hand, since dresses were often remade, jewellery reset or pearls restrung. In the case of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, this was sometimes done overnight so that each day a fresh Gloriana would emerge. In Mary’s case, her wardrobe inventory tells of 131 entries, with even her pet lapdogs having blue velvet collars.
The rooms in Holyrood were elaborately decorated. There was a ballroom ‘glowing with heraldry’, and a dining-room draped in black velvet with embroidered table covers, some with gold fleurs-de-lis, for gold and silver plates and Venetian glass to glitter in the light from four gilt candle-holders.
Objets d’art stood on side tables. There was a priceless piece of amber carved into a life-size man’s head, along with busts of heroes and gods alongside the busts of a priest and a nun. It was a lavish Renaissance palace to stand beside any in Europe.
One of its greatest treasures was Mary’s own library, which replaced the royal library burned by the Earl of Hertford during the Rough Wooings. There were 240 works catalogued under ‘Greek, Latin and Modern Tongues’, although there were very few Greek works, with Latin and French dominating. The standard histories and commentaries on Scripture were in Latin, while Modern Tongues held a few works in Spanish and Italian. The bulk of the collection of Modern Tongues comprised works in French by Marot, whose songs Mary had listened to, and, inevitably, the poetry of du Bellay and Ronsard. Ronsard’s First Book of Poems had pride of place and there is no doubt that he was Mary’s favourite author. She once gave him a plate worth 2,000 crowns inscribed ‘A Ronsard l’Apollon des Français’. In prose there were two editions of Amadis de Gaul, Boccaccio’s Decameron, the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso – a continuation of the adventures of Roland – and Rabelais’s Pantagruel, but, oddly enough, no Gargantua. There were very few works in English – no Chaucer or Thomas More, only The Rules of Chesse, a Catechism and a copy of the Acts of Parliament of Mary Tudor. Peculiarly to us today, Mary did not possess a single copy of the Bible, but as a devout Catholic relied on prayer books, books of hours and lives of the saints.
The extent of this library has given Mary a reputation for great learning and devotion to study that may well be unfounded. After all, in our own day, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, was chatelaine of one of the finest libraries in private hands, but there is no evidence that she ever used it. Indeed, she is reputed to have said, ‘I did read a book once, but I didn’t like it and never read another.’
Mary’s time spent with George Buchanan reading Livy seems to have been no more than an attempt to continue her schoolgirl studies. Buchanan was important to Mary, however, since he was the deviser of many of her court masques. These were much-loved fantasies, often based on the Classics. Courtiers took part and the masques were designed to astonish by stage effects as well as to idolise the sovereign. One, with the whole court including Mary herself dressed in black and white – as an echo of Diane – lasted for three days. Later masques featured shepherds, dressed in white damask and playing silver flutes, or Highlandmen in goatskins with their women in other animal skins. Mary’s ‘Highland’ dress consisted of a long black cloak embroidered with gold thread.
Mary was enjoying herself thoroughly. An example of the lavishness of court entertainment occurred in February 1562, when Lord James was married to Agnes Keith. There was a religious ceremony in St Giles with a sermon from Knox, after which the bridal party walked down the High Street to the palace – without Knox – where they were greeted by Mary. She created Lord James Earl of Mar and knighted twelve of his gentlemen, prior to a banquet which was followed by fireworks and a masque. On the following day the party moved to Cardinal Beaton’s old town residence in Blackfriars Wynd for another masque and banquet. The climax came on the third day when they returned to Holyrood for a last banquet and another masque. Mary drank her cousin Elizabeth’s health from a twenty-ounce gold cup which she then gave to Randolph, who reported in May that Mary’s court ‘did nothing but pass the time in feasts, banqueting, masquing and running at the ring’. By springtime the weather allowed for an outdoor masque half a mile from the palace, by St Margaret’s Loch under the romantic ruins of St Anthony’s chapel.
This was a high-spirited court headed by a nineteen-year-old girl, surrounded by her four best friends, all with similar tastes, and full of physical energy. The masques gave them a golden chance for dressing up and, led by the tall Mary, the ladies of the court on occasions disguised themselves as Edinburgh housewives and, with much giggling, went unescorted into the town. In this case half of the fun must have been escaping from the halberdiers, chamberlains and servants who watched their every move. When Mary was en travestie, with her long legs exposed, Brantôme confessed that he could not tell whether she was a beautiful woman or a handsome boy, and this mixture of freedom and flattery was a heady brew for royalty usually closely confined by strict convention. Even for Mary’s middle-aged courtiers her behaviour and the atmosphere it engendered were a welcome breath of fresh air from the weightier matters of the court. The Privy Council sat on 29 February and did not meet again until 19 May; Mary – who was in Edinburgh at the time – attended neither session. It seemed a carefree existence.
Mary had created a replica of life in the Valois courts of her childhood, devoid of all political cares. Her private court did not involve itself in the affairs of Scotland, and, apart from her allowance of the thirds, she cost the country nothing at all, while providing a permanent party at Holyrood. Provided she ensured that her close courtiers, especially the foreign elements among them, took no part in Scottish affairs, Mary would be tolerated as a highly decorative figurehead.
In May one result of being a beautiful and unmarried monarch manifested itself grimly. Knox, who had a highly efficient intelligence service, was informed that Arran and Bothwell had conceived a plot to ride to Falkland Palace, where Mary was in residence, seize the queen and murder Mar and Lethington, Knox’s enemies. Knox was a zealot, but he was no fool, and he set about defusing the danger by sending for Arran, who now told him that when the queen was taken she would undergo a forced marriage to himself [Arran]. Arran also told Knox that he knew that Mary was secretly in love with him. Knox realised that the man was totally mad and counselled him to wait, instead of which Arran fled to his father Châtelherault’s house at Kinneil, near Bo’ness, where he confessed all to the duke. Acting with prompt good sense for once in his life, Châtelherault locked his mad son in his room, but he failed to mount a proper guard, whereupon Arran wrote a letter, of unknown content, to be given to Mar by Randolph. He then escaped by the traditional method of knotting sheets together and climbing down them into the garden. Randolph received the letter when he was riding in Holyrood Park with Mary and immediately sent the news on to Mar that Arran and Bothwell were plotting treason. Both were swiftly arrested, although, as normally happened, Bothwell escaped to his castle, Hermitage. Arran, now totally mad, was locked up in Edinburgh Castle, where he believed Mary was in bed with him. He was shackled, but he sent for a saw to cut off his legs, and, since he was now no danger to anyone, he was eventually released into the care of his family, who kept him in more or less benign imprisonment with occasional releases until his death in 1606. In this instance, Knox had acted as a useful alarm bell on Mary’s behalf.
More distant warning bells came from France, where the freedom of Huguenots to worship in their own way had suffered a severe setback. There had been an attempt at reconciliation between Catholics and Huguenots in October 1561 at the Colloquy of Poissy, but little had been achieved except for a very uneasy truce. Then, on 1 March 1562 at Vassy, a Huguenot village in the Champagne region, the Duc de Guise had found the Protestant villagers holding a church service contrary to the agreements in force. According to one source – and there are many versions of what took place – he sent some armed men to stop what he considered to be blasphemy and the dispute grew to an armed conflict ending with thirty dead Huguenots. This was a sufficient spark for the Huguenot Louis de Condé to start the first of France’s seven Wars of Religion. Randolph was inundated by requests for passage through England by Scots volunteers eager to join the Huguenot cause, and over 1,000 Scotsmen left from Mary’s kingdom to take arms against her uncle. Catherine de Medici was forced to support the Huguenot Condé to prevent the power of the Guises becoming all-powerful, thus putting politics and her family before the interests of the Catholic Church. This misfired badly when Condé announced Catherine’s support as a call to arms for all Huguenots, and she was forced hastily to backtrack.
Mary herself was brought into contact with Catholic Europe in July when the promised papal nuncio, Nicholas de Gouda, arrived in Edinburgh. He had travelled in secret, but knowledge of his presence leaked out and the street cry was for true followers of the Reformed Kirk to make ‘a noble sacrifice to God and wash their hands in his blood’. Having travelled from safe house to safe house, he entered the capital on foot with a Scots priest, Edmund Hay, and was admitted into Mary’s presence, with, according to legend, the four Maries guarding the door, an hour before the time that Knox was due to start preaching in St Giles. De Gouda spoke in Latin, which Mary claimed to understand, but, in fact, she had to rely entirely on Hay as a translator. De Gouda delivered an appeal from Pope Pius IV begging Mary to accept letters once again inviting the Scottish bishops to attend the Council of Trent, where the Counter-Reformation was being put into motion. Mary, according to de Gouda, was nervous throughout the interview and kept glancing at clocks, but assured him that she would rather die than abandon her faith. She also refused him a safe conduct and advised him ‘to keep in some secret chamber’.
Later she accepted the letters, but John Sinclair refused to meet de Gouda who commented, ‘Hoc de illo!’ (‘So much for him!’). After a meeting with the Bishop of Dunkeld, which he had to attend disguised as a banker’s clerk, de Gouda’s final conclusion was one of despair: ‘Et haec quidem de Episcopis’ (‘And so much for the bishops’). Of Mary he said, dismissively, ‘She has been nurtured in princely luxury and numbers scarce twenty years.’ He went on, ‘Although religion is most dear to her, yet, as I have said before, she cannot execute the holy desires of her heart, because she is alone and well-nigh destitute of human aid.’ Needless to say, by ‘human aid’ he meant Catholic doctrinal advice.
Mary’s wish for a face-to-face meeting with Elizabeth had now grown urgent. She had written to Elizabeth on 5 January 1562 offering to create a new treaty in favour ‘of you and the lawful issue of your body . . . we shall present to the world such an amity as has never been seen’. Her letter was backed up by Lethington on the same day, asking Cecil to ‘push forward’ with the plan, and again, on 29 January, saying that Mary ‘is a great deal more bent on it than her councillors dare advise her’. In Scotland the Protestants favoured the meeting while the Catholics were wary of it, and in England the Privy Council was deeply suspicious. Lethington was in London petitioning Elizabeth directly, while Elizabeth objected on the grounds of seeming to ally herself with a niece of the anti-Huguenot faction. Then, on 29 May, Mary met with Randolph, who tried once more to delay a meeting, suggesting postponement for a year since Elizabeth could not travel far from London during the French crisis. Mary, while ‘tears fell from her cheeks’, avowed that she would rather forfeit her love for her uncles than lose ‘amity’ with her sister. By mid June Elizabeth wrote to Mary agreeing, in principle, to a meeting. Mary was so overjoyed that she sent Elizabeth a heart-shaped diamond, and melodramatically showed Randolph that she kept Elizabeth’s letter next to her skin. ‘If I could put it nearer to my heart, I would.’
The lengthy memorandum by Cecil agreed a suitable midway meeting place between York and the River Trent between 20 August and 20 September. The terms of the meeting were that Mary must ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, while Elizabeth was not obliged to discuss any subject offensive to her. Mary would pay her own costs – Elizabeth had a cautious way with money – and would change her Scots currency for English at Berwick, where she was not allowed to pass with more than 200 people in her train, although her final court could number 1,000, all of whose names would be sent to Cecil at least ten days before their departure from Scotland.
Mary could hear Mass privately. It was a supreme civil servant’s agreement with every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed. Elizabeth sent Mary a portrait and the latter asked Randolph if it was a true likeness, to which he replied that she would soon be able to judge for herself. By 8 July Cecil had, through gritted teeth, prepared a safe-conduct for Mary, who was preparing her council for the journey south. Cecil had even taken possession of an elephant, which would carry an effigy of Peace for the inevitable accompanying pageant. Châtelherault claimed he had a diseased arm and could not travel, while Huntly, his Catholic suspicion of Elizabeth coming to the fore, had a sore leg and had to remain at home. Randolph believed neither of these schoolboy excuses.
Four days later, on 12 July, Protestant England went to war with Catholic France as the Duc de Guise strengthened his hand by hiring more ‘Switzers’ [Swiss mercenaries], and Catholic troops started to pour into France from Spain, Savoy and the Papacy. Elizabeth wrote to Mary, ‘Our good sister will well understand and consider how unmeet it is for us and our councils to be so careless of the time as to depart from these parts.’ Everything was cancelled, with both sides protesting that this was only a temporary postponement, but with everyone, apart from Mary herself, foreseeing that such postponements would be a regular feature of the plans for future proposed meeting.
Mary’s reasons for wanting the meeting were politically naïve. If she were to become legally established as Elizabeth’s heir, in default of Elizabeth having children of her own – Elizabeth was thirty – then Mary’s children would inherit the crown of England to add to that of Scotland. Ironically, this was exactly what would, in fact, take place. Mary was relying solely on her personal charm to achieve Elizabeth’s acceptance, since Elizabeth would gain nothing by the arrangement except peace and ‘amity’ on her northern border. Mary’s charm was legendary, honed by Diane de Poitiers and applauded by the French court, but courtiers are by nature sycophantic, and, in reality, her charm had failed totally with the politically minded Catherine de Medici. Mary’s chances of success with Elizabeth, backed by Cecil, one of the sharpest political intellects in Europe, whose Treaty of Edinburgh she resolutely refused to sign, were precisely nil.
An Accidental Tragedy Page 17