Mary Queen of Scots (22 page)

Having already accompanied Mary from place to place, Henry remained at Stirling when she departed for Edinburgh with Moray and Argyll on 6 September to raise funds for the christening. After witnessing the annual audit of the crown revenue at the Exchequer on the 11th, she borrowed £12,000 from some merchants, which she planned to repay with a special tax. Monarchs often relied on procedures such as these to finance events occurring before the tax revenue could be collected.

Mary had earlier assigned another task to Bishop Chisholm, who was at Paris
en route
to Scotland from his mission to obtain the papal dispensation for her marriage to Darnley. She sent Chisholm back to Pius V to request funds for the Catholic religion in Scotland, including her son’s christening. The agreeable pope not only advised Charles and Philip to provide assistance to Mary, whose masculine spirit he lauded for escaping Riccio’s murderers, but he also authorized his nuncio, Vincent Laureo, bishop of Mondavi, to deliver to her 20,000 crowns in five installments.
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A few weeks after entering France
en route
to Scotland in late July, Laureo dispatched to Mary with the first payment John Beaton, the archbishop’s brother whom she had sent to greet the nuncio. After receiving her welcoming message, Laureo was surprised to learn from secret intelligence when he reached Paris in October that she had only reluctantly authorized his visit to her realm. In December she wrote, explaining that her subjects would receive him but only on some business other than religion without clarifying what that business was. These mixed signals prompted Laureo to request Chisholm, returning from his latest papal mission, and Edmund Hay, a Scottish Jesuit and a French subject, to determine from her whether he could safely enter Scotland. Meanwhile, he stayed at Paris with the remaining funds.

Following the Exchequer audit, Mary journeyed to Stirling to find, according to Philibert du Croc, the French ambassador, a discontented husband, who declined accompanying her to Holyrood on 23 September. His negative attitude probably resulted from his realization, as he observed the lavish christening preparations, that since Elizabeth was to serve as their child’s godmother, he would have to endure the public slight of her proxy because she still refused to recognize his royal status.
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Feeling marginalized, he confided to his father who was visiting his grandson at Stirling, that he planned to go into exile probably to France.

On the 29th at Holyrood Mary received Lennox’s letter from Glasgow, requesting that she prevent his son’s departure. At 10:00 p.m. that evening, Henry appeared at the palace gates, refusing to enter until she dismissed certain councilors, probably Moray and Lethington. She greeted her husband, conducted him to her bedchamber, and remained with him that night. The next day following her instructions, Leslie announced to the privy council the king’s decision to go abroad. Also summoned to the meeting, du Croc officially warned Henry that abandoning Scotland would adversely affect his and the queen’s honor. Mary requested Henry to explain why he wished to leave the realm. While holding his hand, she further asked if she had offended him in anyway. He responded negatively and departed for Glasgow, remarking that she would not see him for awhile.
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On 1 October Mary informed Lennox of this exchange, assured him that she was attempting to treat his son in a reasonable manner, and promised that she would never deal with him otherwise.
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In a later discussion with du Croc somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow, Henry admitted he longed for his previous relationship with her and confessed he was apprehensive about being slighted at the christening.

JUSTICE AYRE AT JEDBURGH

While the Stirling preparations continued, Mary turned her attention to the Borders. It remained a lawless area despite her on-going efforts to administer justice there, which the gratified Randolph had once praised. In June Killigrew discussed Border violence with Mary, who agreed to summon her wardens of the marches to confer about the disturbances. Then, as noted above, Henry and she proclaimed a justice ayre at Jedburgh.

The clans that lived in fortified houses in the buffer zone, the 121-mile frontier between Scotland and England, were organized for war. In this poverty-stricken area with its high rugged terrain, they mostly eked out a living raising cattle, horses, and sheep, often supplementing their incomes by raiding and stealing goods and livestock, especially cattle. Clan allegiance to their surnames took precedence over other loyalties, and the Scottish and English Borderers had more in common with each other than with their compatriots in the settled communities to the north and south of them, which they regularly raided.

As the justice clerk, Bellenden cooperated with local officials in preparing the dittays or indictments. At least fifteen days before the justice ayre was scheduled to begin, sheriffs were notified to secure the attendance of those accused of murder, arson, rape, and theft. Wealthy individuals could purchase remissions in advance for their crimes and then pay compositions to the designated official at the justice ayre. Assizes or juries, usually composed of 15 men, decided the other defendants’ culpability. On 10 October, the day after reaching this town some 40 miles southeast of Edinburgh, Mary met with the council to regulate prices and prevent merchants from taking advantage of the justice ayre’s many participants. Having followed her there, du Croc remarked that he never saw her subjects honor her so much. Although originally planning to accompany her, Henry remained at Glasgow.

Earlier on the 8th while chasing criminals in upper Liddesdale as lieutenant general of the marches, Bothwell encountered John Elliot of the Park, a notorious thief and murderer. In a hand-to-hand skirmish after receiving some serious wounds, the earl managed to kill Elliot. For medical treatment his aides carried him to the Hermitage, a royal castle in his keeping. On the 15th or 16th Mary and some of her councilors rode the 50 miles round-trip to the Hermitage to discuss Border problems with him. The presence of Moray, usually identified as Bothwell’s enemy, indicates she was pursuing crown business rather than personal interests. After two hours, they returned to Jedburgh since the Hermitage lacked adequate housing for them.

PREPARING FOR DEATH

For some time Mary had been ailing and by the 17th she was extremely sick. Believing that physical overexertion and emotional distress caused sickness, some blamed her condition on the Hermitage visit while others cited her grief at her husband’s indifference. Traveling 50 miles on horseback in one day was unusual but not an impossible feat for an intrepid horsewoman like Mary.

On the 17th and 18th she suffered her chronic side ache, diagnosed by Dr Arnault Colommius as a spleen malfunction, and vomited 60 times. On the next two days she lost her sight and consciousness several times. Fearing death, the 23-year-old queen confessed her sins to Leslie, swore she accepted the fate God had appointed her, and summoned her councilors, including Huntly, Moray, and Bothwell, who had just arrived on a horse litter. She begged them to be loving to each other, cease oppressing Catholics, care for her son, and execute her will deposited at Stirling. Assuring du Croc of her deep faith, she recommended her son to Charles and Catherine.

Late on the 24th Colommius vigorously massaged her numb and cold limbs for four hours. At 6:00 a.m. she became unconscious, appearing dead with her mouth clinched shut, her limbs stiff, and her eyes closed. He again massaged her limbs, this time for three hours, poured wine in her mouth, and administered a clyster or enema. After vomiting blood, she slowly recovered her sight and speech. On the 28th her husband arrived, stayed one day, and departed for Stirling.
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When he heard of her illness, Marc’ Antonio Barbaro, the Venetian ambassador in France who had probably never seen her but was relying on his predecessors’ views, lamented the possible death of the most beautiful princess in Europe.

Mostly endorsing in some form the humoral theories of Galen, a Graeco-Roman physician, early modern medical practitioners blamed the imbalance of their sick patients’ sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic humours as the immediate cause of their symptoms. When Mary’s spleen malfunctioned, creating her melancholic condition, it reportedly failed to fulfill its primary function of absorbing excessive black bile from the blood and the liver, permitting hot vapors to corrupt her body and interfere with the digestive system. Physicians usually identified one of the following for the imbalanced conditions: a bad environment, including emotional problems and excessive exercise, divine punishment, or the
maleficium
of witches. The physicians did not attempt to cure diseases; that was God’s domain. Their more mundane goal was alleviating symptoms with purges, bloodlettings, vomits, and massages. They also advised cold-and-dry melancholic people to eat moist foods, sleep in warm beds, and moisten their bodies.

Modern diagnoses of Mary’s illness include epileptic seizures, hemorrhages from a gastric ulcer, as well as the more likely problem, acute intermittent porphyria. It is a rare metabolic disorder caused by an inherited enzyme deficiency, the symptoms of which usually emerge after puberty. In the 1960s when Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter investigated the madness of George III, Mary’s direct descendant, they discovered that his urine turned a reddish color, a sign it contained abnormal metabolites. Viewing the discoloration as proof he suffered from porphyria, they examined a descendant of his and another of George I, his great-grandfather, both of whom tested positive for the disease. They next turned to the clinical observations of Mary’s son while king of England by Dr Theodore Turquet Mayette, who noted his patient’s urine also turned reddish in color. Most of Mary’s recurrent symptoms, like James’s, were identical to those of individuals suffering from this disease: abdominal colic with nausea, insomnia, coma, temporary paralysis, convulsions, soreness, and limb malfunctions (these occurred in England), mental shifts from depression to excitement, and difficulty in swallowing.
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Since no record indicates that her urine changed color, the evidence remains inconclusive, but the goal here is not to prove a particular diagnosis but to emphasize that she suffered a chronic, debilitating malady that left her crippled before she was 40 years old.

Porphyria is still incurable, but modern doctors alleviate its symptoms with a high carbohydrate diet and drugs. Mary’s diet may well have exacerbated her condition. The contemporary wisdom was that patients, including pregnant women, needed additional protein to overcome their maladies. Church officials routinely issued licenses for them to eat meat during fast periods.

In November when her health improved, Mary toured the Borders with Moray, Huntly, Bothwell, Alexander, 5th Lord Home, Lethington, and 500 horsemen before turning northward toward Craigmillar. Their journey led them through a strip of English territory where Sir John Forster, warden of the middle march, met them and escorted them to Halidon Hill from which they could hear the distant salute of Berwick’s ordinance. On the 20th they reached Craigmillar, the seat of Simon Preston, which was separated from the capital by an extensive royal park.

Before arriving, she learned that Henry had informed the French and Spanish monarchs, Lorraine, and Pius V that her faith was insincere. His betrayal greatly troubled her. Instead of modeling herself after Mary Tudor as Pius IV requested, she was attempting to soften Protestant response to her son’s Catholic christening by granting the Kirk’s General Assembly control over appointments to the lesser benefices.

From Craigmillar on 2 December du Croc wrote Archbishop Beaton that the queen, who was still being treated for melancholy, had repeatedly said she wished she were dead. After reporting the king’s recent visit there for one night only, du Croc doubted that the two could be reconciled because Henry would not humble himself as he should and because she suspected he was plotting against her whenever she saw him conferring with anyone. In January she later informed Beaton that she had ordered an investigation into rumors that Henry wanted their child to be crowned so that he could rule Scotland as his regent.
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Aware of Mary’s marital difficulties, her councilors initiated a conversation with her about a divorce probably shortly after Henry’s brief visit. In English captivity in 1569, Mary referred to this discussion in a protestation, drawn up at Robert, fifth Lord Boyd’s advice and said to have been in conformity with Huntly’s declaration to Leslie. It was sent to Huntly for his and Argyll’s endorsement but was intercepted and forwarded to Cecil.
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According to the protestation, Moray and Lethington entered Argyll’s chamber to discuss obtaining pardons for Morton and his allies. Concluding that Mary would grant them if they could assist her in gaining a divorce, they consulted with Huntly and then Bothwell, who joined them in raising that issue with her. She maintained that she might agree to a divorce but worried that it would prejudice her son’s succession. Despite Bothwell’s reminder that he had inherited his family estates after his parents’ annulment, she remained unconvinced. To her assertion that she opposed any action that would besmirch her honor, Lethington replied that they would recommend only measures that parliament could approve.

In his 1570
Defence
of Mary, Leslie claimed that at Craigmillar she had categorically denied wanting a divorce. Leslie also revealed that unbeknownst to the queen, Moray and Bothwell signed a band at Craigmillar and inscribed indentures at various places with Morton and others, agreeing to Henry’s demise. Leslie placed much of the blame for the king’s assassination on Moray, who was not at the murder scene. Leslie claimed that the earl planned the king’s death before leaving Edinburgh. It is noteworthy that Leslie failed to note Argyll’s and Huntly’s presence at Craigmillar probably because he did not wish to implicate in the murder the captive queen’s two trusted allies in the Scottish civil war. In a manuscript dated in 1580, Leslie did add Argyll but not Huntly to the list of Craigmillar conspirators.
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