An Accidental Tragedy

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An Accidental Tragedy Page 40

by Roderick Graham


  Mary’s status in England suffered a more serious blow in August thanks to affairs in France. Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot leader, had been gaining more and more in power and popularity, with the result that on the evening of 23 August 1572, St Bartholomew’s Eve, Henri de Guise, the son of Mary’s assassinated uncle, marched a squad of soldiers to Coligny’s house in Paris. Coligny was murdered and word spread, erroneously, through Paris that a general slaughter of Protestants had been ordered. Over the next three days an orgy of violence against Protestants took place with up to 3,000 killed, often mutilated and thrown into the Seine. Needless to say, the houses of the dead were looted before being burned. In the countryside there were erratic outbursts until October. In all, about 12,000 Protestants were slaughtered across France.

  Given the Northern Rising and the recent events in East Anglia, it was clear that militant Catholicism was still bubbling just under the surface in England, so the news of such a bloodbath and the possibility of it happening in England was Elizabeth and Burghley’s worst nightmare. Both of them had only just managed to survive the reign of Mary Tudor, which had ended a mere fourteen years previously. In some village churches which had moved from the Protestant rite observed under Henry VIII to the Catholic Mass under Mary – sometimes with the same incumbent – altar cloths and vessels had simply been hidden when Elizabeth came to the throne, as people waited to see if orthodoxy would revert to Rome. In the main, English public opinion did not anticipate a return to the martyrdoms of Mary Tudor with any enthusiasm and linked the continued existence of Mary as a Catholic claimant to the throne with the possibility of an event similar to the Massacre of St Bartholomew occurring in England. The populace had never been overly friendly to Mary before, but it now became violently anti-Catholic. Mary had previously been a royal nuisance, but now she was seen as a malignant sore on the Protestant body politic.

  The anti-Marian campaign continued with the Bishop of London suggesting to Burghley that she be beheaded, and a long anonymous letter was sent to Leicester declaring that ‘there is no remedy for our Queen, for our realm, for Christendom, but the due execution of the Scottish Queen. The botch of the world must be lanced’. The tone of this letter is similar to the one of 26 May by ‘the higher clergy’.

  Mary’s servants were reduced to sixteen and Elizabeth ordered that Mary be ‘kept very straightly from all conference’. No one was allowed to enter Shrewsbury’s properties without an express warrant from Elizabeth. And Shrewsbury wrote, ‘She is meetly quiet, saying that she mislikes she cannot go hunting on the fields upon horseback, which I trust the Queen’s Majesty will not assent to.’ Shrewsbury made sure that the malignancy did not spread by ordering frequent searches of Mary’s apartments and papers, and sending all correspondence immediately to Burghley for deciphering. Burghley, in his turn, asked Shrewsbury to ‘tempt her patience and provoke her to answer’; in other words to act as an agent provocateur and encourage her to make disloyal statements. But Shrewsbury drew the line at that sort of behaviour. Mary was kept close within the walls of Sheffield Castle, but on 10 October Shrewsbury reported, ‘This lady complains of sickness by reason of her restraint of liberty in walking abroad, that I am forced to walk with her near unto my castle, which partly stays her from troubling the Queen’s Majesty with her frivolous letters.’ For all this care and worry, Elizabeth created Shrewsbury Earl Marshal of England. The post had been held in heredity by the Dukes of Norfolk, and the new creation brought Shrewsbury no further income but did involve him in occasional extra expense. It cost Elizabeth nothing.

  Throughout England there was great concern in October 1572 when Elizabeth contracted smallpox. Since the probability was that she would die, Shrewsbury was now acting as gaoler of the next Queen of England; he could expect either news that Elizabeth had recovered, or he might see the approach of a party of, probably Catholic, horsemen come to carry the new queen to Westminster – a queen who might reflect vindictively on the behaviour of her erstwhile gaoler. He wrote anxiously to London and on 22 October was rewarded with a touching letter: ‘My faithful Shrewsbury, let no grief touch your heart for fear of my disease; for I assure you, if my credit were not greater than my show, there is no beholder would believe that ever I had been touched with such a malady, Your faithful loving sovereign, Elizabeth R.’ Shrewsbury vowed to keep the letter – ‘far above the order used to a subject’ – ‘for a perpetual memory’.

  Mary too had been ill and had sent a letter to Elizabeth that she had a ‘cold’ in one arm which made it impossible for her to write, but ‘if I did not fear it would importune you too much, I would make a request to you to allow me to go to Buxton well . . . which I think would give ease to it and to my side with which I am very much tormented’. Shrewsbury, who had visited the spa at Buxton for his gout, did not think it would cure her maladies and nothing came of Mary’s request. However, he did become more sympathetic, but wished to delay her going there until 1573, ‘when the house there shall be in readiness, and which, not being finished now, is nothing meet for that purpose’.

  The Well of St Anne at Buxton had been a popular curative spring in the Middle Ages and the walls were festooned with the obligatory crutches and sticks, abandoned by the miraculously cured, when it came into the hands of the Talbot family in the fifteenth century. This popularity continued until the reign of Henry VIII – who might have done well himself to take the cure. But on Henry’s behalf Sir William Bassett came to Buxton, suspecting the well to be a centre of Popish superstition, and sealed the ‘baths and wells of Buxton that none shall enter and wash there until your Lordship’s pleasure be further known’. However, by the 1570s the reputation of Buxton was once again high. Shrewsbury had built a four-storey house, adjacent to the chief spring, with thirty rooms as well as a ‘great chamber’ around the spring, with seats around the baths and chimneys for ‘fire to air your garments in the bath’s side’. Bowling alleys and archery butts vied with a game of Troule in Madame in which balls of various sizes were thrown at holes worth differing scores. Buxton was starting to attract a fashionable clientele and Bess made plans to become even richer with a scale of charges: 12d for a yeoman, through £3 10s for a duke and up to £5 for an archbishop.

  Shrewsbury wrote to Walsingham in July 1573: ‘Mary seems more healthful now, and all the last year past, than before. What need she have of Buxton Well I know not.’ He asked for direct guidance from London, and in August 1573 Elizabeth granted permission for Mary to visit the spa, but with an increased guard. There was to be no contact with strangers and strict orders that the visit was to be medicinal and not social. Elizabeth was not a cruel woman and she was sympathetic towards a younger woman in poor health, but she had to balance this with the ever-present suspicion that Mary might be in the midst of some new plot – her new chancellor, de Vergé, had just left for France; was he carrying secret messages? – and with Burghley at her elbow feeding her disquiet she had genuine concern. Power has always brought the suspicion that others are plotting to remove it, and such paranoia has existed from Egypt’s pharaohs to contemporary presidents and prime ministers.

  The visit to Buxton was a success, not only from the point of view of relieving Mary’s pain in her side, but also providing a much-needed break with the undoubted monotony of Chatsworth or Sheffield. Since Mary’s furniture and wall hangings travelled with her, the interiors of these places were very similar, with the obvious exception of the loathed Tutbury, and her limited exercise gave her little relief. Mary was a very social lady, revelling in new acquaintances and gossip, but when every visitor was closely watched and regarded as a possible spy, her entertainments were severely curtailed. Buxton was a very different matter. Here was a fashionable town, now with an exiled queen – a queen with a very racy reputation and renowned as one of the age’s great beauties – visiting the baths under intriguing circumstances of secrecy. Everyone would be eager to catch a glimpse of her, and even the strictest security could not wholly prevent Mary from ha
ving some contact with the outside world.

  In the 1950s Estoril in Portugal became the refuge du goût for exiled royalty from Europe and the Middle East and the fashion-conscious flocked to catch a glimpse of an erstwhile monarch on the beach or at the casino. Four hundred years earlier, Buxton necks were craned for a similar glimpse of the dangerous queen. Although Mary was now thirty-one – middle-aged in her times – and becoming stooped and overweight, she still retained her allure, and Buxton profited from it as Brighton would later profit from the visits of the Prince Regent.

  Mary found relief at Buxton and believed, ‘If in the coming year, it should please her [Elizabeth], at a better season, to grant me the same permission, and to give me a rather longer time, I believe that will quite cure me.’ Mary now seemed to accept that her imprisonment would continue with periodic transfers to and from Shrewsbury’s various houses, hopefully interspersed with occasional trips to Buxton.

  What fragile hope there had been of Mary’s restoration in Scotland died when Regent Mar died on 29 October 1573 and his place was taken by Morton, who was firmly determined to bring the chaos of recurring civil wars to an end. There was now no hope of Mary being restored to her throne in Scotland, and a peace treaty of February 1573 left only Lethington, Kirkcaldy of Grange and a few others embattled in Edinburgh Castle as the rump of the Queen’s Party. Elizabeth sent 1,500 men to Leith, and on 16 June the garrison of 164 men, 34 women and 10 boys surrendered. Most, including Kirkcaldy of Grange, were hanged, while on 9 July, Mary’s last supporter, Maitland of Lethington, the ‘Machiavelli ’ of Scotland, took poison and died, his body being found some days later as a feasting ground for maggots. Mary Stewart was now Queen of Scots in name only.

  Mary also realised about this time that the Cardinal of Lorraine was withholding the bulk of her French pension for his own use. She had high hopes, alas unfounded, that de Vergé might manage to stop this plunder by her own family, but since she was of no further political use to the Guises they felt that they could rob her with impunity. Her brother-in-law Charles IX dismissed her summarily: ‘The poor fool will never cease until she lose her head. In faith, they will put her to death. I see it is her own fault and folly. I see no remedy for it.’

  The facts of her isolation and imprisonment were further brought home to her during this time as any news of the enormous changes in her kingdom arrived second-hand and at the discretion of Burghley. It was no longer felt important that she knew anything of Scotland; as a focus for plots, the less information she had, the better.

  In December, an informer, W. Hayworth, warned Leicester of a plot by the papists of Lancashire to convey the Scottish queen to France, Spain or Scotland. The warning was vague in the extreme, giving no specific details, and could have actually been true at any moment of Mary’s captivity. The letter reads like a plea from a bigoted and aggrieved citizen against his Catholic neighbours, but Mary was a focus for even petty disputes at the most local level. William Wharton suggested that counterfeit letters be sent to Mary, giving her false news and drawing her and her friends into a conspiracy so that they could all be arrested. The scheme was rejected, but Walsingham noted the idea as worthy of improvement.

  The year 1574 started with a letter of reassurance from the Cardinal of Lorraine but advising her, ‘dissimulate still a little and do not embitter anything’, and vowing, unconvincingly, to work for her ‘greatness and liberty’. Mary wrote yet again to Elizabeth expressing her concern at her cousin’s long silence, and begging to be told, through Fénélon, how to please her, while ‘waiting for God to inspire you to put an end to my long troubles’. She received no reply. Shrewsbury’s policy of being strict but sympathetic drew criticism, and in April two men, Corker and Haworth, accused Shrewsbury of undue kindness to Mary and alleged that he favoured her claim to the throne. The result was a letter from the earl to Burghley: ‘I doubt not, of God’s mighty goodness, of her Majesty’s long and happy reign to be many years after I am gone . . . how can it be imagined I should be disposed to favour this Queen for her claim to succeed the Queen’s Majesty? I know her to be a stranger, a papist and my enemy.’ The rumour, which arose out of petty jealousies rather than fact, since Shrewsbury was the most meticulous gaoler, refused to go away, and a year later, on 24 December 1575, he wrote again denying the rumour that he had become Mary’s ally at Buxton. He was very sharply rebuked by Elizabeth ‘with plain charging of me favouring the Queen of Scots’. He replied, ‘As for the Queen of Scots, truly I have no spot of evil meaning to her: Neither do I mean to deal with any titles to the crown: if she shall intend any evil to the Queen’s Majesty, my sovereign, for her sake I must and will mean to impeach her: and therein I may be her unfriend or worse.’ In other words, he had no personal animosity towards Mary, unless she posed any threat to Elizabeth.

  Another of Mary’s links with France parted when her brother-in-law King Charles IX died of tuberculosis in May 1574, to be succeeded by his brother, the Duc d’Anjou, as Henri III. Europe held its collective breath to see what alliances the new king would make – he was already King of Poland and had to be hastily recalled to take the French throne, and he was already accused of incest with his sister, homosexuality and black magic. He faced a disastrous economy, growing Huguenot strength under their leader Henri de Navarre and a resentful aristocracy. This left Elizabeth free to attempt negotiations with Philip over the troublesome Netherlands. Mary wrote, no longer to Catherine de Medici, but to James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow and her ambassador in Paris, expressing her sorrow at the death of Charles and wishing Henri III well.

  All long-term prisoners search out any form of diversion, some often keeping, and even becoming an expert on, caged birds. In July 1574 Mary wrote to the Archbishop of Glasgow, asking him to send her some turtle doves and ‘Barbary chickens’ so that she might raise them; ‘This is the pastime of the prisoner.’ She also made further requests for cloth of gold, silver thread and headdresses, and also for her uncles to be reminded of their promises to send more caged birds. Some small dogs came from the Cardinal later in the year, and Mary wrote, ‘the little animals are the only pleasure I have.’ Mary had started to manufacture gifts for various people, especially Elizabeth, and in May, Fénélon had presented Elizabeth with a skirt of red satin embroidered with silver thread, ‘to whom the present was very agreeable’.

  She wrote again to the archbishop in mid August, and it is clear from her style that she was, at last, aware that her letters were being read by Burghley and Walsingham. She mentioned the rumours that she might be proposed as a wife for Henri III, the Earl of Leicester and Don John of Austria, and she stressed that all the rumours were untrue. There was a chance that the alliance with Don John might come to fruition since he was the illegitimate half-brother of Philip and, in March 1576, he became governor of the Netherlands, an appointment he accepted on the understanding that it would be a platform for the reconversion of England and rescue and marriage to the captive Queen of Scots. The situation was complicated by the fact that Mary was technically still married to Bothwell, but in April 1578 Bothwell mercifully died, blind and insane in Denmark. In October Don John of Austria himself died during a siege in the Netherlands, thus removing another possible, if unlikely, suitor. He was at least romantic, but his proximity to the Spanish throne made him dangerous. Burghley, who knew he was lying when he said it, loudly proclaimed Don John’s death as being due to venereal disease. It was probably typhus. Walsingham wrote, ‘God dealeth most lovingly with her Majesty in taking away her enemies.’ In fact, back in 1574, Mary’s correspondence with France was suffering greatly as a result of the prolonged illness of her French secretary, Augustine Raulet, first noted on 20 February. He had been nominated as Mary’s secretary in Scotland by the Duc de Guise in 1560 but had been sent back to France as a result of the xenophobia surrounding Rizzio. Now he had returned and had served Mary faithfully in exile, but he died on the morning of 30 August 1574, allowing the eager Shrewsbury an opportunity to sea
rch Mary’s papers. The search was fruitless, but Raulet’s death gave the Guise clan the chance to place another candidate close to their wayward relative. He was Claude Nau de la Boiselière and he arrived in early summer 1575. Nau had been a protégé of the Cardinal of Guise, who had arranged for him to study law. In some respects he was similar to Rizzio in that he dressed extravagantly and had the manners of the French court, which Shrewsbury, who spoke little or no French, found objectionable, but Mary found refreshing. Walsingham, a more objective witness, found Nau quick-spirited in Italian, Latin, and English. He merely smiled at Nau’s protestation that if his mistress failed for want of any help, ‘her Majesty [Elizabeth] would be answerable for the same before all the princes of Christendom’. Mary was so enamoured of Nau that she dictated a sort of memoir of her days in Scotland to him. In his turn he was so dazzled by her that he reported as fact her subjective account.

  By September 1574 Mary was showing her usual care for her servants in asking the archbishop to find a watch – with an alarm – for Mary Seton. She was the last of the Maries to remain unmarried and was the object of devotion for Andrew Beaton, who had succeeded his father, John, as master of Mary’s household. But Mary Seton claimed a vow of perpetual chastity, presumably made while she was a child with her mistress in France. Beaton, obviously a man of some determination, went to France in 1577 to obtain an annulment for Mary. Whether it was successful or not is a mystery, since, on his return journey, the unfortunate Beaton drowned, and six years later the still-virginal Mary Seton retired to France and lived out her days in the convent of St Pierre in Reims, where Renée de Guise was abbess.

 

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