An Accidental Tragedy

by Roderick Graham

  Most of these machinations were of little or no interest to Mary, who hunted, hawked and rode through the beauties of her kingdom. She expected nothing from a marriage but a dynastic alliance sealed by her giving birth to a prince, and her first marriage had demonstrated that, had she been able to produce a dauphin, her usefulness would have been over. She was in no hurry to carry out what she knew all too well was her expected function as a broodmare. However, when she returned to Edinburgh, she found that Knox had been busy in her absence. He had composed a private prayer to be said after grace with his own family: ‘Deliver us, O Lord, from the bondage of idolatry. Preserve and keep us from the tyranny of strangers.’ There is no doubt that those of Mary’s household remaining at Holyrood had breached the agreement made with Lord James when they celebrated Mass in her absence, not in Mary’s private chapel but more openly in the abbey. A mob, led by Patrick Cranston and Andrew Armstrong, burst in and broke up the proceedings on 15 August. On receipt of this news Mary impetuously ordered their arrest for ‘forethought, felony, hamesucken [showing violence to a householder in his own home], violent invasion of the palace and spoliation of the same’. Knox, equally impetuously, wrote to his principal supporters to ‘make convocation’ in Edinburgh and oppose Mary’s continued celebration of the Mass. The trial of Cranston and Armstrong was adjourned and eventually forgotten, but Mary judged Knox’s letter to be treasonous and he was again summoned to Holyrood on 21 December 1563 where he and Mary met for the last time.

  On this occasion, Knox had arrived with so many supporters that they spilled out of the audience chamber, down two flights of stairs and filled the inner court of the palace, while the entire Privy Council took their seats across the table from the bareheaded Knox. They then rose and applauded as Mary came in with ‘no little worldly pomp’, flanked by Lethington and the Master of Maxwell, who sat on either side of her and offered advice into alternate royal ears. To everyone’s astonishment she took one look at Knox and burst into laughter saying, ‘That man made me weep and wept never [a] tear himself. I will see if I can make him weep.’ Knox was shown one of his letters, confirmed his authorship and was asked to read it aloud. Mary then asked her council if they did not think it treasonous. To her horror, Ruthven pointed out that, since as minister of St Giles, Knox regularly summoned convocations to pray and hear his sermons, such a letter could not be held to be treason. Mary briskly overruled Ruthven and demanded that Knox answer the charge of accusing his sovereign of cruelty. Knox denied this but told her that the cruelty was done, not by her, by rather by the ‘pestilent papist’ who had inflamed her against pure men. Mary warned him that he was not now in the pulpit, but he replied that he was now in a place where he was obliged to speak the truth, thus placing Mary in the invidious position of having brought the forthcoming tirade on her own head. As Knox continued, citing lengthy Biblical examples of preachers being persecuted although God-inspired, Lethington shook his head and smiled in admiration of this virtuoso display of Knox’s training in argument by medieval Schoolmen. He then whispered in Mary’s ear that she had lost the argument. Mary blustered but Lethington told Knox, ‘You may return to your house for this night.’ A vote of the council was taken and, overwhelmingly, Knox was exonerated. Mary swept out of the room in a violent temper.

  It had been foolish of Mary to attempt the trial, probably against the advice of Lethington, who was probably delighted for Mary to see the results of ignoring his counsel. There had never been any reason for Mary to instigate the confrontations, and had she carried out her policy of non-intervention in the affairs of Scotland more rigorously, she would not have caused the resultant hardening of reforming attitudes.

  The year 1563 was one Mary probably wanted to forget, and immediately after her twenty-first birthday she took to her bed with a pain in her right side, remaining incommunicado over the Christmas and New Year celebrations. She claimed she had caught a cold ‘being so long at divine service’ but Randolph, supported inevitably by Knox, believed it came from over exertions in late-night dancing.

  On the marriage question, Randolph reported the following private conversation on 21 February: ‘Sometimes she likes to hear of marriage. Many times the widow’s life is best; sometimes she may marry where she will, sometimes she is sought of nobody.’ Randolph asked that ‘at least she will have compassion on her four Maries, who for her sake have vowed never to marry if she be not the first’. In fact, Mary Livingston was already married and two other Maries would marry before their mistress.

  Mary’s comments here are revealing for a queen who had, so far, avoided any of the responsibilities of power. Mary lived in a time when women were largely defined by their condition as wives. There were, certainly, three outstanding exceptions in Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers and Elizabeth I, but, by and large, unmarried women were only of interest as possible wives, and the relative importance of wives was directly related to the importance of their husbands. Widows, on the other hand, were presumed to have performed their duties to society and could be left to lead their own lives. The fact that they were often financially independent and vigorously set about interfering in the lives of their younger relatives marks them out as being outside the normal strictures of society. Mary felt that she had no need to make any further effort to establish her own personality, but could simply enjoy the rest of her life dancing, eating and hawking.

  In addition, Mary’s wish to ‘marry where she will’ was strictly proscribed by her position and religion, but since she had from childhood accepted the advice of others she now had no real sense of her own will, except in a petty and wayward manner.

  Mary’s regret that she was ‘sought of nobody’ is no more than childish self-pity. At least three European rulers had offered themselves and she could have accepted any one of them. But Mary had seen many of her household marry for love. They had been wooed, courted and adored and their stolen kisses had led them to love and marriage. Mary had been scrupulous in attending their weddings and the christenings of their children, always enjoying these low-key domestic celebrations. Clearly she envied them their freedom to behave as private people; there have been very few monarchs who have not envied the lack of responsibility enjoyed by their subjects. It is always easy to envy the poor from the comfort of a velvet chair in a palace.

  It is true that Mary did not choose to be a queen – few queens ever do – but she enjoyed the privileges that accompanied her position. There have been many queens who have acceded to the throne unexpectedly – both the Queen Elizabeths who came to rule in England and Great Britain are good examples – and have made brilliant monarchs, but they accepted the necessary sacrifices uncomplainingly. Mary avoided royal responsibilities but continued to enjoy her state and fondly attend the weddings of her ladies-in-waiting. She was still waiting for her Amadis, her knight errant, to spirit her away on his pure-white charger.

  One marriage that did take place did not please her at all. Knox had been a widower since 1560, and on 1 March 1564 the banns of marriage between him and Margaret Stewart, the daughter of Lord Ochiltree, were read out. She was seventeen and Knox was fifty, and there was something of a scandal. More importantly, however, the young bride was distantly related to Mary – ‘of the blood and name’. The queen ‘stormed wonderfully’.

  However, matters of her own marriage lay quiet until, later in March that year, Lethington told Randolph that a further offer for Mary’s hand had been received from the emperor, who was prepared to finance his son, the archduke, to the tune of 2 million francs during his lifetime and 5 million after his death, to ‘live with her in Scotland [bringing as personal retainers] as few in number as shall seem good to her council’. Lethington added that the emperor expected an answer by the end of May. This was confided to Randolph as ‘a great secret’, and Randolph suspected that this increased offer was no more than a gambit to force Elizabeth to make a decision.

  It was a sufficient stimulus for Randolph to ‘declare at good length w
hat [he] had received in writing from her majesty’. It does seem possible that Randolph had been given his instructions some time before and had been told to judge when the time was right to deliver them. He carried them out on 30 March 1564, when Mary was at Perth, a town which she loathed because it was thought to have been Knox’s sermon in St John’s Church that had actively launched the Scottish Reformation. Here Mary broke off a Privy Council meeting to receive Elizabeth’s ambassador. Elizabeth now openly recommended that Mary should marry Lord Robert Dudley.

  Mary was stunned by the news, saying that Randolph had ‘taken her at an advantage’ since she had rather expected news of peace between Elizabeth and France. This was mere procrastination while Mary gathered her thoughts, at first insulted that her cousin should recommend marriage with a commoner – whom Mary had previously called ‘Elizabeth’s groom’ – while Randolph speculated that such a union might bring about eventual possession of the throne of England. Mary brushed this aside, ‘My respect is what presently be for my commodity, and for the contentment of friends, who I believe would hardly agree that I should imbase my state so far as that!’ Mary then made Randolph repeat the offer to the few of the Privy Council who were still sitting. Formally, she then posed the question to him of what Elizabeth thought would happen to Mary if Elizabeth had children and Mary had made a commoner King of Scotland. Randolph could only reply weakly that these were matters he was sure Elizabeth had foreseen and would deal with correctly. Mary, now with Argyll, Moray and Lethington, went in to supper ‘merry enough’ and Moray asked Randolph if he could not persuade Elizabeth herself to marry rather than bother Mary when she was hungry for her supper. Privately, Moray favoured a marriage with Lord Robert, who was a personal friend, and being seen as the sponsor of Dudley’s bid for the Scottish crown would be greatly to his advantage.

  After supper Lethington told Randolph that all three statesmen had conferred and they would like to discuss the matter further with some suitable person – the Earl of Bedford was suggested – at a future conference at Berwick; ‘Nothing shall be omitted in this sovereign’s part towards amity.’

  Why Elizabeth made such an offer is a mystery. There can be no doubt that she tended towards love for Dudley, though never physically, and she possibly thought that she could control Mary through him. Although Dudley would have obeyed Elizabeth as his queen, he was ambitious and arrogant, so as a puppet ruler in Scotland he would have been disastrous. Also, to offer Mary a husband who was not only a commoner but also a man many saw as a cast-off lover was insulting in the extreme. But he was an available Protestant and Elizabeth was now desperate to bring the matter to a conclusion. One of the great procrastinators of history, she was always very keen to tie up other people’s loose ends.

  Elizabeth did tie up one loose end, much to the horror of Cecil. The Earl of Lennox had been in exile in England for twenty years, and Elizabeth made approaches to Mary to allow his return. Cecil’s horror was that Lennox’s wife was a Catholic, only recently released from the Tower for stirring up disaffection, and, above all, that his son, the twenty-year-old Henry Darnley, was a prime candidate not only for Mary’s hand but even for the crown of Scotland itself. Darnley’s own religious beliefs are difficult to pin down, in that his father had worked for Henry VIII and Protector Somerset, while Margaret Douglas, his mother, was firmly Catholic and had carefully raised her son to be acceptable to English Catholics. Perhaps the best that can be said of Henry Darnley is that he swam with the tide of advantage. In April 1564 Elizabeth granted Lennox a passport to travel north.

  Mary was now hinting that she was indifferent but would probably not marry Lord Robert. Instead she favoured Darnley, and to demonstrate her lack of concern, in July she left for another royal progress, this time to Argyll and the Gaelic-speaking north-west. It was also part of her personality that she did not react well to being criticised or being given instructions, and was very likely to rush impetuously in the other direction. Lethington did not accompany the royal party but remained in Edinburgh: ‘In the place I occupy, I cannot be spared for voyages, nor do I like it (for it lacks not peril) unless to some good end.’

  Elizabeth, realising that she may have set light to a trail of gunpowder, panicked and now refused to allow Lennox to travel, causing Lethington to write to her on 13 July assuring her that the rumours of hostility in Scotland towards Lennox were exaggerated – Lennox had been hated since his flight to England in 1544, and that, for his part, Lennox’s return was ‘no great matter up or down’. Elizabeth’s fears extended to the dreadful possibility that if Mary predeceased Darnley, then his mother, Lady Lennox – Elizabeth’s current bête noire – might succeed her.

  Catherine de Medici now made two surprising offers: first, that Elizabeth should marry Charles IX; and second, that Mary should marry his brother, the Duc d’Anjou. Both offers were refused, but the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau de la Mauvissière, was predictably enchanted by Mary, whom he found a ‘woman in the flower of her youth’. Elizabeth was in despair as to how she could move events forward and wrote to Cecil on 23 September, ‘I am in such a labyrinth that I do not know how to answer the Queen of Scotland . . . find something good that I may put in Randolph’s instructions.’ Mary now, atypically, took some action on her own behalf and despatched her own ambassador to Elizabeth to pour oil on the increasingly troubled waters. He was Sir James Melville of Halhill, a gentleman of her bedchamber.

  Melville was twenty-eight years old and had served Mary as a page for four years when she was only six, passing into the service of the French constable, Anne de Montmorency, and then serving with Casimir, son of the Elector Palatine. Melville returned to Scotland on 5 May 1564 and met Mary at Perth, just after she had heard of Elizabeth’s offer of Lord Robert Dudley. Needless to say, Melville was entranced by her: ‘I thought her more worthy to be served for little profit than any other prince in Europe for great advantage.’ She promptly sent him to England on 28 September ‘with instructions out of the queen’s own mouth’. His memoir gives verbatim accounts of conversations with Elizabeth, but the historian Gordon Donaldson warns that Melville probably reports ‘not what they actually said but what they thought afterwards that they might have said’.

  In his first conversation with Elizabeth, which took place in French, since Melville had been so long abroad, he ‘could not speak [his] own language so readily’, she told him that she was determined to end her life in virginity but was keen for Mary’s marriage with Lord Robert, whom she was about to create Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh. Melville was asked to stay and witness the ceremony, which took place in Westminster Abbey with Elizabeth breaking from the solemn ceremony to tickle Leicester’s neck. Melville acknowledged that he was a worthy subject, but Elizabeth pointed to Darnley, who, as the nearest prince of the blood, had carried the sword of state, and said, ‘Yet you like better of yonder long lad.’ Melville assured her that no woman of spirit would like such a person, more like a woman – beardless and lady-faced – than a man. Darnley was polished, urbane and effeminate beyond the point of fashion. His flagrant bisexuality had earned him the name of the ‘great cock chick’. Melville did not tell Elizabeth that he had a secret instruction to procure from Lady Lennox permission for Darnley to visit Scotland, ostensibly to accompany his father south again.

  Elizabeth reiterated her desire to stay a virgin, and Melville claimed that he told her, ‘Madam, I know your stately stomach. You think, if you were married, you would be but Queen of England; and now you are King and Queen both. You may not endure a commander.’

  Elizabeth continued to flatter Melville, showing him Mary’s portrait in her private collection of miniatures. But Melville noticed that on the top of the pile was one wrapped in paper inscribed in Elizabeth’s own hand ‘My Lord’s Picture’ – it was a miniature of Leicester. She showed Melville a ‘great ruby, as big as a tennis ball’ and he suggested that she might send it as a token of her love. After a sharp intake of Tudor breath Elizabe
th said that if Mary followed her wishes she might have the ruby and the man, but in the meantime she would send a diamond. Next day Melville was asked which woman was the fairest, and he replied that Elizabeth was the fairest queen in England and Mary was the fairest queen in Scotland. Asked to choose between them by a now increasingly acid Elizabeth, Melville admitted that Mary was lovely but Elizabeth was whiter, due to generous applications of poisonous white lead make-up. Mary was taller, so Elizabeth said that was too high. What were her favourite exercises? Melville was now improvising desperately and told Elizabeth truthfully that Mary had just come from hunting in the Highlands and, less truthfully, that she liked reading good books and histories. She also played on the lute and virginals. Elizabeth, who prided herself as a musician, demanded to know if Mary played well, and Melville risked everything by replying the she played reasonably well, for a queen. That night, after dinner, he was taken for a stroll by Lord Hunsdon whereby – quite accidentally, of course – he was able to overhear Elizabeth playing the virginals. Elizabeth summoned Melville and spoke to him in German, but since her German was not perfect she switched to Italian, which Melville did not speak. This late-night linguistic contest was a draw.