Mary Queen of Scots (38 page)

While assisting with the housing arrangements, Somer reported on her diet. She ate capons, rabbit, partridge, various other wild fowl, and venison in season and especially liked mutton. Because Wingfield was so far from the sea, it was impossible for her to obtain the good seafood, such as the plaice, turbot, sole and lobster that she enjoyed. Throughout her imprisonment, Mary continued the hierarchical arrangements for dining that she utilized in Scotland. She was served, for example, 16 dishes at the first and second courses while her master of the household and her chief officers were served 10 dishes at the first and second courses.

Her ill health continued to cause concerns. Even during the journey to Wingfield in September 1584, she suffered from a swelling in her left leg. In the next few weeks, her left foot became swollen and by early November she was bedridden with swellings in her right arm and hand and left foot and left leg. Sadler noted that insomnia further weakened her condition. By the end of November her health had improved except for her sore foot, which, he thought, she could rest on a pillow in the coach during the journey. Her sickness plus her promise to cooperate in the move at Nau’s return led Sadler to postpone their departure. On 13 January 1585 about two weeks after Nau’s arrival, they began the 16-mile trip, spending that night at Derby and entering Tutbury on the 14th. The coach ride may have further aggravated her problems. In February she was bedridden for six days with chronic pain in her side and hips and could walk only with assistance.

While planning the transfer, Sadler pleaded for release from the custodianship. He described the country as a cold and miserable place with foul weather that prevented the exercise necessary for his health, thus unwittingly validating Mary’s claims about her captivity’s adverse effects on her physical well-being. In October 1584 Elizabeth had appointed a reluctant nobleman, John, second Lord St John, of Bletsoe, Bedfordshire, to succeed Sadler, but on 4 January citing St John’s ill health, she replaced him with Paulet, her former French ambassador who was originally scheduled to serve as St John’s deputy. For personal reasons Paulet did not reach Tutbury until 17 April.

The instructions of her new guardian, which were dated 4 March, permitted Mary for the first time officially since the Ridolfi Plot to take air either on horseback or on foot for up to two miles from the castle. It is likely, however, that Shrewsbury had occasionally allowed her to do some limited horseback riding; in an October 1584 note is the information that when Mary exercised, the earl’s soldiers were always at hand to lead her horse through difficult terrain.

Whether or not Sadler was aware of Paulet’s instructions granting Mary the privilege of horseback riding within two miles of the castle is unknown. Chafing from lack of exercise while awaiting his replacement, Sadler sent for his hawks and falcons to help pass the time. He decided to permit Mary to join him because she took great delight in the sport. On 22 March, consequently, he had to respond to Walsingham’s charge that he had taken her riding six or seven miles from Tutbury. Sadler explained that he allowed her to join him on two or three occasions only and traveled no more than three miles from the castle. When furthest away from it, 40 or 50 servants on horseback, some armed with pistols, accompanied him. Sadler further groused that if he had known he must continue in this office so long, he would have refused it as others had, apparently a gibe at St John. Somer also assured Walsingham that had she attempted to escape she would have placed her life in great jeopardy.

Sadler left two days after Paulet’s arrival and Somer departed in May. Mary dreaded Paulet’s custodianship because she feared that, as a Puritan, he might inflict personal injury on her. She was also aware that when he served as English ambassador to France, he condemned the activities of her Guise relatives. In their first interview, she confided that she believed he was ill-affected toward her, but as she had recently learned of his good qualities, she was content to have him serve as her guardian. It was not long before their disagreements led her to describe him as one of the most bizarre and cruel (
bizarres et farouches
) persons she had met and to avow that he was fitter to be in charge of criminals than of someone of her rank and quality.
⁶

Paulet was soon corresponding with Walsingham about Mary’s claims that he was treating her and her household too rigorously. For security reasons, he confirmed, he prohibited her coachman from leaving Tutbury without his permission and from eating with his staff, since he preferred to keep the two households separate. He also admitted forbidding her attendants to walk on the walls overlooking the gates to prevent them from observing those entering and departing the castle but emphasized he allowed them to accompany her abroad. Most of his comments concerned his removal from the great chamber of her cloth of estate with the arms of France and Scotland. He explained that he believed it was inappropriate for a canopy with foreign insignia to hang in the governor’s dining room and that she had supped under it only once at which time Sadler had eaten at the lower end of the chamber, a familiarity Paulet deemed inappropriate. He later reminded Walsingham that a cloth of estate continued to hang in her personal dining chamber and that since she had been taking physic for several days and planned to follow a diet that would keep her confined in her bedchamber for about six weeks, she would not have an opportunity to eat in his great chamber for some time.

In May he justified forbidding de Préau, whom he suspected was a Catholic priest, from distributing alms to the town’s poor because he believed Mary was using the funds to win local friends. Mary protested that her only goal was to encourage the paupers to pray for her better health. Later, when she went to watch her new greyhound chase a deer in Stockley Park, less than one mile from the castle, Paulet further angered her by denying her almoner permission to accompany her because she had to pass through the town to reach the park.

Paulet’s duties also included monitoring her correspondence. From October 1584 until January 1586, Walsingham intercepted all her secret communications and sent them to Paulet to decide which to distribute to her and her household. Paulet delivered to her reports from her French council, unimportant letters from Scotland, and unciphered messages from Mauvissière, Beaton, and other officials. The cessation of her secret correspondence made even more unpleasant her incarceration at Tutbury, which she described as a dungeon fit only for the worst criminals.

After suffering from Tutbury’s damp and cold for several months, she began to insist that Elizabeth order the repair of its lath and plaster walls that were riddled with cracks. In August Mary complained to Mauvissière that she had hoped her special diet would restore her health, but for 15 days she suffered chills, especially in one thigh, and sciatica. Paulet commented insensitively that her crippled legs made his supervision of her easier. He blamed her illness on her emotional state but did admit that her lodgings were extremely cold even in August.

When she requested the repairs to Tutbury, she made other demands of Elizabeth, who returned mixed responses. She agreed thereafter that Mary could remove to another dwelling to permit the regular cleansing of Tutbury, that she would have access to a dining hall and a gallery in her temporary residence during Tutbury’s renovation, that she could distribute alms but only with Paulet’s knowledge, and that she could ride a mile or two from the castle. Since Paulet’s instructions had permitted his prisoner this last privilege, Mary’s request may have been an allusion to his strict supervision of her. He later defensively informed Walsingham that at least three times when Mary had gone into the little park one-half mile away, she had ridden from it into another park, traveling in all almost two miles. Elizabeth offended Mary, however, by refusing to permit annual visits from her councilors, Fontenay and Chérelles, although the latter was allowed to meet with her in early 1586. She also denied Mary’s request for the attendance of a Scottish noblewoman, Margaret Fleming, the widowed countess of Athol, who assisted her at James’s birth. Finally, Elizabeth was undecided about whether to permit her French embroiderer to return home, possibly from concerns that he might act as Mary’s messenger.

REMOVAL TO CHARTLEY AND THE BABINGTON PLOT

Rather than repair Tutbury, Elizabeth found her cousin another prison. Over the protests of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, she ordered Mary transferred to his moated manor at Chartley, which was 12 miles from Tutbury. Walsingham questioned whether Mary might reject Chartley because of the water but she was so desperate for a different prison that she sent assurances she had no objection to the moat. The move on Christmas Eve required four carts to carry her books and apparel. To transfer Mary, ailing from a weakness in her right arm, Paulet had the assistance of Richard Bagot, his new deputy.

This journey may have further aggravated her physical condition. In late January after asserting that she was feeling better, Paulet reported that she walked haltingly, had a diseased hand, slept little, and ate less. In early February he noted that she had been bedridden for a month with painful swellings in her limbs that prevented her from walking without assistance. On the 17th she suffered a severe, painful attack in her side that lasted for seven or eight hours. Showing unusual sympathy, he repeated her servants’ testimony that they had never seen her condition so grave and even judged as reasonable her request for a softer bed, but he also warned that her sickness increased household expenses since she kept four fires going continuously in her chambers.

While she was still at Tutbury, meetings were underway that were to culminate in the Babington plot. In October 1585 Gilbert Gifford, whose family home lay near Tutbury, visited Morgan at the Bastille and impressed him with his alleged loyalty to Mary. Two months later Gifford disembarked at Rye with a recommendation to her from Morgan, who hoped he would be able to re-establish their secret communications. The port’s searcher took Gifford to Walsingham, who recruited him as one of his servants, appointing him to spy on the queen of Scots. Perhaps Walsingham was reacting to heightened fears concerning the political divisions in France. Earlier that year, noting the growth in the political power of Mary’s Guise relatives, he had warned Sadler, who was still her custodian at Tutbury, to guard her closely.

Some historians have questioned Morgan’s trustworthiness mostly because he sent Gifford and other unreliable persons to Mary with good references. Confined to prison and at odds with some of her other allies, he was likely unaware of the success of Walsingham’s spies in infiltrating Catholic households even Allen’s seminaries. Later in 1591 the cardinal, who was not Morgan’s friend, denied he had purposely betrayed Mary or the “common cause”
⁷
but also claimed that he was involved in double-dealings that prompted many to suspect he cared more for his advancement than for God’s service.

After leaving Walsingham, Gifford met with Trianou Cordaillot, secretary to Châteauneuf, to establish procedures for delivering her secret messages. A brewer, dubbed the honest man, was recruited to collect her secret letters, place them in a cork tube, slip them through a barrel’s bung-hole, and then surrender them to Gifford for display to Paulet and delivery to Thomas Phelippes with whom Gifford lodged in London. Phelippes was already an acquaintance of Paulet, having assisted him at Paris in decoding intercepted letters in 1578. Either in London or at Chartley, Phelippes deciphered Mary’s correspondence for Walsingham, who retained the copies; his clerk, Arthur Gregory, coun-terfeited the seal, and Gifford’s servant took her original ciphered messages to the French embassy. When Châteauneuf received packages for her, these same procedures were followed only in reverse order. Mary obtained her first letter via this route on 16 January 1586 from Morgan, who had written it in October 1584.

An interesting and important secret letter that she received in April 1586 was from Persons, who composed it in late 1584. After deploring their failure to liberate her, he warned against fostering an invasion because if English soldiers captured her after an unsuccessful escape attempt, her imprisonment would become more difficult and might result in personal injury to her. He recommended the strategy that worked in Scotland: she should slip out of her residence in disguise at night with one or two servants and await the arrival of some designated individuals to assist her in leaving England secretly. After also relating that Parma had inquired about whether she planned to remarry, Persons recommended that she hold out some hope to the duke, who might then follow his own interests and aid her.

In late May Mary responded to Persons’ letter, explaining that she might well have followed his recommendations had she received them at Wingfield, where Sadler permitted her more liberty than she had previously enjoyed. At Chartley not only was she watched too closely to escape the building with her attendants but she was also in poorer health. As for Parma, she asked Persons to assure him that she would be greatly beholden for any service he rendered her.
⁸

Deeply disappointed by James’s failure to approve the treaty of association and by the delays in launching the enterprise, Mary decided to make an invasion of England more attractive to Philip and Parma, who were combating Leicester’s military support of their rebels in the Netherlands. In May she wrote Mendoza at Paris that she planned to cede her English succession rights to Philip if by her death James had not converted to Catholicism and that she wanted the Spanish king to take her under his protection. She requested that they keep this bequest secret because otherwise she would lose her French dower, receive even worse English treatment, and become irrevocably estranged from her son whose heretical views were sorely troubling her. Philip had hitherto worried that aiding Mary would advance Guise interests in England. When he learned she was adopting him as her heir and privileging her faith over her love for her son, he agreed to undertake the protection of her person and interests and promised financial support as soon as Mendoza could arrange to deliver funds to her.