Mary Queen of Scots (12 page)

Furthermore, he later revealed his conversations with Mary to Throckmorton in Paris and to Cecil and Elizabeth on his return home through England. Regardless of whether Mary harbored personal reasons for preventing his journey to Lorraine, it was inappropriate for him and his attendants to arrive at the duke’s court, representing the Provisional Government of Scotland, without an official commission or an invitation. As noted earlier, Surian maintained that, if she had met with the Scottish envoys at the French court, she would have violated diplomatic protocol. She, herself, explained on 22 April that Lord James had no commission except to do his duty to her as his monarch.

The conversations with her half brother and with Leslie on Huntly’s behalf alerted Mary to the existence of deep political divisions in Scotland, only partly rooted in religion, that ultimately erupted into revolts against her authority. By compounding her differences with Lord James and other Protestants, she signaled to Huntly her unwillingness to challenge overtly the governmental and religious
status quo
.
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At Joinville she met her grandmother, renewed her friendship with a cousin, Anne of Lorraine, dowager duchess of Arschot, and greeted Archibald Crawfurd, parson of Eaglesham, her mother’s almoner. He had recently brought her corpse to Fécamp, Normandy, where it lay in state at the cathedral before its interment at St Pierre. The grateful queen appointed him her almoner until she could grant him a benefice.

The purpose of Mary’s visit to Nancy was to witness the baptism of Vaudémont’s child, her godson and Lady Arschot’s nephew, but it is possible that Lord James was correct and that discussions about her possible marriage did occur. Until 1564 Lady Arschot remained hopeful that Philip would name his son Don Carlos the regent of the Spanish-controlled Netherlands and that Mary would become the regent’s wife. The House of Lorraine possessed a claim to Guelders through the marriage of King René, Lady Arschot’s grandfather and
Mary’s great-grandfather, to Philippa, the sister and heiress of Charles, the last Egmond duke of Guelders, who died childless. Lady Arschot’s father, Duke Anthony, lost his bid to enforce his mother Philippa’s claim to Guelders when Emperor Charles seized it in 1543 from William of Cleves, who had attempted to exercise an even more ancient claim to the duchy than Lorraine’s when he became its ruler in 1538.
If Mary did wed Don Carlos after he became the Netherlands’ regent, her maternal relatives could view her marriage as a means of recovering their lost rights.

Lady Arschot’s presence also fed rumors that Mary might wed William of Orange, whom she had met at the Paris wedding of Elizabeth to Philip’s proxy. William was the cousin and heir of Lady Arschot’s first husband, René of Nassau, prince of Orange. Shortly after reaching Nancy on the 22 April where guests were entertained with hunting and plays, Mary was stricken by tertian fever and decided to return with her grandmother to Joinville, convalescing there until late May and missing, therefore, Charles’s coronation on the 15th.

On the 28th after spending two days at Rheims, Mary departed for St Germain, where the king, the queen regent, Prince Henry, Navarre, Condé, and others greeted her on 10 June. Shortly thereafter, she left court for the Louvre and then for Lorraine’s castle at Dampierre. On the 18th, having returned to the Louvre, she assured Throckmorton of her determination to go home that summer, despite not having fully recovered her health. While awaiting Elizabeth’s response to her request for a passport to land in England in case of an emergency at sea, Mary suffered another, shorter bout of tertian fever. Then on 20 and 21 July, after Throckmorton explained that Elizabeth had denied her a passport because she refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, Mary replied that she would consult with her estates about the treaty and reminded him that she had not worn England’s arms since her husband’s death, implying that she had been following his and his councilors’ advice.
Indeed, in late December 1560 Throckmorton commented on her former subjection to Francis and thought, considering her youth, she was showing wisdom, modesty, and great judgment. Even without the passport she planned to return home because her arrangements were well advanced and her baggage had been dispatched to Le Havre. The seas that could be treacherous to navigate even in the summer months could not deter her.

DEPARTING FRANCE

On 25 July after the royal family hosted a four-day series of parties for her at St Germain, she began the 148-mile trip to Calais with six Guise uncles and the duchess of Guise. As their route took them through Normandy and Picardy, she hoped to honor her mother’s body at Fécamp, but the illness of Lorraine and Guise that delayed them at Méru on the 28th ended this plan. They were at Beauvais on 3 August, rested at Abbeville on the 7th and 8th, then left for the Abbey of Forest Monstrier, and reached Boulogne on the 10th and Calais on the 11th. About noon on the 14th, her fleet set sail. Realizing that refusing to grant Mary a passport was a breach of etiquette and opposed, as Surian said, “to the dictates of humanity,”
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Elizabeth belatedly forwarded one that arrived after her cousin’s departure.

Although not with her on this voyage, Buchanan, her future tutor and court poet, later alleged that Lorraine advised his niece to leave with him her furniture and wardrobe, presumably including her jewels, from concerns that they might be lost at sea. She reportedly responded: “When she ventured upon danger, she did not see why she should take greater care of her valuables, than of her person.”
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This was surely Buchanan’s little joke about the cardinal’s alleged greed, since when he wrote it, he was one of Mary’s bitterest enemies. Jewels did actually figure in her farewell, as she gave a string of pearls to Lorraine and a necklace of assorted gems to the duchess. Much more important than mere decorative trinkets, jewels constituted portable wealth that during perilous times could be buried in the ground without fear of decay. As coins were scarce and bullion was rare and inferior, a government’s prime asset was its gems that could be substituted for money.
Both Châtelherault and her mother had exchanged many pieces for equipment and supplies to defend against English aggression. In 1556
the duke forwarded to Mary in France the items he still possessed, including 31 rings, many jeweled ornaments, 12 pieces of cloth-of-gold or silver tapestry, and a bejeweled dagger presented to her father by Francis I. Her inventory in 1561 included 159 items, many of which were deposited in the Jewel House at Edinburgh Castle.

Among her attendants on the two galleys, one painted red and the other white, and two other ships were three Guise uncles, Aumale, Elbeouf, and Francis, the Grand Prior, and five other noteworthy
Frenchmen, Damville and his servant, Pierre de Boscosel de Châtelard, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, Michel de Castelnau, seigneur de Mauvissière, who had been raised in Guise’s household, and, René Benoist, her confessor. A few Scots also accompanied her, including Leslie and the four Maries. As the fleet departed, according to Brantôme’s later account, they witnessed the sinking of a vessel with its entire crew, a tragedy interpreted as a bad omen for the voyage.

Brantôme also recalled Mary’s despair and repeated her sad words of farewell at their departure: “
Adieu, France! Beloved France, Adieu
!”
When it was supper time after five hours at sea, the grief-stricken queen, he noted, could eat only a salad and chose to spend the night on deck. Before retiring, she asked the agreeable pilot to awaken her in the morning if the coast were still visible. He kept his promise, and she again said good-bye to the realm where she had lived for 13 years.
Expressing sadness as she was leaving was an appropriate way for her to show respect for the land of her upbringing, but Brantôme surely exaggerated the signs of her grief. On a seafaring ship the deck is the best place to stay to avoid seasickness, and others, including Châtelard, slept there. The ship’s movement could also have been as responsible for her diminished appetite as her melancholy. The main meal, furthermore, was served before the voyage began.
⁷

Brantôme’s recollections have led writers to emphasize her reluctance to leave France, but despite Elizabeth’s decision to withhold the passport, Mary insisted on sailing home, risking the stormy weather that might force her to land illegally in England rather than using her cousin’s unfriendliness as an excuse to linger. And why should she act any differently? Although Scotland was not Christendom’s most prestigious realm, the papal list of precedence in 1504 ranked it above Navarre, Cyprus, Bohemia, Poland, and Denmark. Many in this hierarchical society avidly sought to maintain and achieve regal status. In a letter of 1549 complaining about the lack of French support for Scotland, for example, her mother claimed that nothing ought to be spared to save a kingdom. Princess Madeleine had fulfilled her royal ambitions by marrying James V in 1537, and Charles the Bold, the last great duke of Burgundy, had died at Nancy in 1477 while attempting to wrest Lorraine from Mary’s ancestor, René II. Because in the Middle Ages, Lorraine had gained recognition as the kingdom of Lotharingia,
Burgundy had hoped possession of it would make possible his advancement to kingship.

In 1561 Scotland was Mary’s dowry: without it she might be unable to arrange another prestigious marriage. When quizzed about her union with his son, Archduke Charles, Emperor Ferdinand I responded that after her realm received her, he would consider the proposal. In fact, neither he nor most other potential fathers-in-law or husbands were prepared to fund a Scottish conquest for her. Later as Elizabeth’s prisoner, she repeatedly requested English, French, and Spanish assistance for recovering Scotland and then became irate when her son refused to associate with her in its governance.

In France she realized that the royal family valued her betrothal to Francis partly because Scotland was her dowry. She did not reject her heritage, which lent her a certain distinction or charm. The courtiers affectionately called her
La Petite Sauvage
, and she sent for Scottish ponies and terriers to amuse them. Brantôme remembered her dressing in highland plaids and speaking melodiously her native tongue, which he deemed barbaric. She even conversed in Scots with Throckmorton, doubtlessly a political strategy because he could communicate in French. Since in less than two years, Guise would be assassinated in the first of eight religious wars, Mary was leaving behind in 1561 neither a peaceful realm nor a sympathetic court.

Although Surian blamed the French for mistreating her, “a widow unarmed and almost banished from her own home,”
⁸
she said good-bye to many friends two of whom were her favorite poets: Jerôme de l’Huillier, seigneur de Maisonfleur, and Ronsard. Another poet she greatly admired was the deceased Joachim du Bellay, whose elegy by William Aubert she owned. The most well known of them was and is, of course, Ronsard, who composed a farewell elegy in the Petrarchan style, claiming that the court would miss her as a pasture would miss its flowers, the sky its stars, or the sea its waves. The next year, he again lamented her absence and recalled her loveliness:

Even so your beauty, brilliant as the sun,

In one brief day for France has risen and set;

Bright as the lightning, ’twas as quickly gone,

And left us only longing and regret.
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This and other references to her beauty have caused skeptical historians, after closely examining portraits of her, to accuse her contemporaries of flattering her looks. Since artistic conventions and practices have altered over time, studying images of her to determine her beauty is at best an unproductive exercise. Modern likenesses usually exude warmth, vitality, and sometimes friendliness, while early modern portraits are often stylized representations, intending to display the rank and wealth of their subjects as embodied in their clothing and jewelry. Ultimately, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder and is culture bound, it seems sufficient to note that not only poets but also relatives, diplomats, and other observers lauded her attractiveness beyond the level that the royalty might usually have expected. Indeed, in December 1559 even d’Oysel reported to Mary of Guise that her daughter was gentle and beautiful and that the king, her husband, greatly esteemed her. It is possible that those who praised her were influenced by her height of six feet, which provided her with a special presence at a time when males were on average only about five feet, four inches tall.

Meanwhile, Mary’s fleet moved northward, all but one of her ships outdistancing an English squadron. Its crew captured the vessel with her stable of horses and escorted it to England but subsequently released it with apologies, although the warden of Tynemouth impounded the horses for a month. A thick, normal summer fog, a Forth ha’, descended as they sailed into Leith about 9:00 a.m. on 19
August, discharging cannons to announce their arrival.

REACHING SCOTLAND

Because the voyage went so smoothly and quickly, Mary reached Scotland before Holyrood Palace was prepared to receive her. Andrew Lamb invited her to his Leith home where Châtelherault, Arran, and Lords James and Robert welcomed her. Later she and her attendants rode to Holyrood on borrowed ponies, which Brantôme ridiculed as inferior beasts. Since she expected to utilize her own horses, which remained at Tynemouth, she had not anticipated transportation difficulties and was probably grateful for any animals that could be rounded up on such short notice. In June 1562, moreover, Mary later
viewed Scottish horses as suitable gifts for her French friends.
Brantôme also disparaged the serenade sung and played on violins and rebecs by several hundred Edinburgh youths, but she seems to have appreciated their thoughtfulness in welcoming her and thanked them for their efforts. As he wrote after her death, it is not surprising that he was critical of the Scots, who usurped her throne. Some of his assertions were obviously inaccurate, for example, that her fleet left France in the autumn and that she died on 7 February. In his memoirs, Mauvissière also indicated he retained mostly vague memories of her reception, noting incorrectly, for example, that no one greeted her until she removed to Holyrood.
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