An Accidental Tragedy (27 page)

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 Elizabeth 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.

Melville’s next engagement was to take a private boat trip with Leicester himself, who told him that the marriage proposal had first come from Cecil and thus had left him powerless, ‘For if I had appeared desirous of that marriage I would have lost the favour of both queens.’ He was clearly unhappy at being used as a marriageable chess piece by the woman he loved.

The following day Melville returned to Scotland showered with presents – a gold chain for himself from Cecil and Elizabeth’s diamond for Mary, while Lady Lennox outdid both with a ring with a ‘fair diamond’ for Mary, an emerald for her husband, a diamond for Moray, a watch set with diamonds for Lethington and a ring with a ruby for his brother, Sir Robert. Melville concluded that Lady Lennox was a very wise and discreet matron. Randolph said she was ‘more feared than beloved of any that know her’. In Scotland her husband had been welcomed to parliament and moves were afoot to restore his lands and incomes to him. Meanwhile he ingratiated himself with Mary, playing at dice with her and diplomatically losing a crystal set in gold.

As had been proposed, Lethington and Moray met Randolph and Bedford at Berwick, but the meeting achieved nothing. Cecil continued to push Leicester’s case, while Mary dithered. She was simply waiting for events to catch up with her, but these were moving very slowly. From the politician’s point of view, both sides hesitated for different reasons: if the marriage took place (and it was now clear to all that a marriage would take place) and then foundered, no one wanted to be seen as the architect of disaster. Lethington disliked the idea of Leicester because he was English and Moray disliked Darnley because he would favour the Catholics if it was to his advantage. The two lords were ‘in great agonies and passions’.

Cecil still hoped for a marriage with Leicester and wrote himself a memorandum: ‘Seeing they two [kingdoms] cannot
be joined by marriage, the second degree to make them and their realms happy is that Mary marry whom Elizabeth favours and loves as her brother . . . she has already begun to advance him both to honour and livelihood and therein means not to deal sparingly with him.’ Here there is a hint that Leicester’s dowry might be lavish.

The log-jam showed signs of moving when, astonishingly, on 12 February 1565 Randolph noted that Cecil and Leicester had both encouraged the granting of a licence for Darnley to come to Scotland. He came first to Berwick, then by way of Dunbar and Haddington to Edinburgh. He was well spoken of, although ill equipped, and Randolph had to lend him a pair of horses.

When Melville described Darnley to Mary he differed from the opinion he gave so diplomatically to Elizabeth. Now he had told Mary that Darnley was ‘the lustiest and best proportioned long man . . . of a high stature, long and small, even and erect, from his youth well instructed in all honest and comely exercises’ and his physical attributes seem to bear this out. In his portrait, painted three years previously, he is certainly slim and elegant, but his face has a narcissistic look and his arched eyebrows look superciliously on viewers whom he seems barely to tolerate. He had been given the Renaissance education thought necessary by Margaret Lennox, and, with a royal marriage as a prospect, he undertook the role of suitor with great style.

Darnley crossed the Forth to lodge in the Laird of Wemyss’s house in Fife, where on 17 February 1565 he met Mary and was ‘well received of her’. Mary Stewart’s second husband had arrived in Scotland.

CHAPTER TEN

Yonder long lad

Darnley’s arrival in Scotland set tongues wagging immediately: ‘If she take fantasy to this new guest, then shall they be sure of mischief.’ His father, Lennox, was to be reinvested with his lands in the west, especially the castle of Dumbarton, which had been taken from him during his English exile. Châtelherault was furious at his reinstatement. This had the effect of sealing Châtelherault’s uneasy alliance with Moray, who now saw the possibility of a Lennox on the throne as king with heirs to succeed him, thus driving Moray’s claim to the crown further away: ‘If he match here in marriage it shall be the utter overthrow and subvention of them and their houses.’ But, for the moment at least, Moray was friendly towards Darnley. Randolph continued to press Leicester’s suit, but with no great hope of success. Mary had quite firmly rejected the idea of marrying Leicester, and, in order to calm some objections to Darnley, she reissued her proclamation of 1561 assuring the Scots that she had no intention of disturbing the religious status quo. Having heard that the Mass was ‘planted again’ in the north, Mary wrote to the participants asking them not ‘to do any such thing as was feared by the Protestants’.