Mary Queen of Scots (42 page)

The world’s reaction was mixed. Attempting to distance herself from the execution, Elizabeth ordered Davison fined and imprisoned for delivering the warrant without her permission. The courts of France, Spain, and Lorraine dressed in mourning and held funeral services in her honor. Philip became more fully committed to sending an armada to collect Parma’s army in the Netherlands for an invasion of England. Although James protested the execution, many people believed he was more concerned about his succession rights and a promised English pension than his mother’s life, but he did order his court to go into full mourning for one year.

At Fotheringhay surgeons embalmed her body shortly after her death, but it was not until August that she was buried and a heraldic funeral was held for her. Elizabeth decided to have her interred in the choir of Peterborough Cathedral near Catherine of Aragon’s grave. On the evening of 30 July carrying torches, William Dethick, garter king of arms, five other heralds, and 40 horsemen escorted her body to the cathedral where it was immediately buried. On 1 August, Lammas Day, an effigy rather than a coffin was carried in the funeral procession of some 300, a small number for a royal occasion, in which Bridget Hussey, countess of Bedford, acted as chief mourner.
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William Wickham, bishop of Lincoln, the conductor of the Protestant service, admitted in his sermon that he was unacquainted with Mary but that he learned “she took her death patiently, and recommended herself wholly to Jesus Christ.”
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CONTROVERSY OVER QUEENS REGNANT

In life and death she was and remains the center of controversy. Her accession and that of the other two queens regnant in the British Isles intensified sixteenth-century debates over the locus of sovereignty.
Representing the humanist opposition to women rulers, Buchanan validated the theory of popular sovereignty that justified the revolutions against Mary of Guise and her daughter. In
De Jure Regni Apud Scotos
and in
Rerum Scoticarum Historia
, published in 1579 and 1582 respectively, although both dated from about 1567, he manipulated Scottish history and customs, which he identified with natural law, to prove his case.
Claiming that monarchs were subject to their realm’s laws, he argued that they must carry out the will of a majority of the people, who possessed the right to restrict regal authority. Identifying as elective the Scottish monarchy, allegedly founded by Fergus I in 330 BC, Buchanan was able to claim that the coronation oath represented a pact between rulers and their subjects. If monarchs acted tyrannically, as had Mary, whose alleged licentiousness led her to aid and abet her husband’s murder, the people had the right to revolt against them. For the most recent historical exercise of that right before Mary’s reign, Buchanan cited the murderous rebellion against James III in 1488.

In the 1580s several Catholic writers, including Mary’s clients, Ninian Winzet and Adam Blackwood, responded with publications defending divine-right theories of monarchy. In some ways, however, the most interesting reaction was that of James, who demanded in 1584 that all who possessed copies of Buchanan’s
De Jure
or
Historia
must hand them over to the privy council to be censored or incur a fine of £200. Ironically, in condemning the slanderous comments about his mother, he also denounced the theory that justified the revolution enabling his accession.

Scholarly debate continues about whether or not he was responding to the deceased Buchanan’s work in
The True Law of Free Monarchies
, which was published in 1598 during his struggle with those Presbyterians who espoused the popular sovereignty theory. As James’s assertion that kings were answerable only to God relied on scriptural evidence, which was not essential to Buchanan’s arguments,
The True
Law
as a whole cannot be said explicitly to refute his theory. Some scholars do believe, however, that his view of Scottish history and his
approach to fundamental laws were intended to counter Buchanan’s version of natural law. Denying that the Scottish monarchy was elective, James insisted that Fergus I had conquered the realm and that James III was assassinated by a few murderers and not removed from office by the majority exercising their right of rebellion. Furthermore, as the kingship was hereditary, it was impossible for the coronation oath to represent a pact between the monarch and his subjects. As they were God’s agents, kings were obligated to rule according to the law but were responsible only to God for their actions. A patriarchal analogy expressed his understanding of natural law: as children must obey their fathers, subjects must obey their monarchs.

HENRY VII’S CHAPEL AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY

The attitude of James toward his mother was somewhat ambivalent during her lifetime, but after his accession to the English throne in 1603, he honored her memory as a step in the process of validating his dynasty’s legitimacy. Although he failed to order the destruction of Fotheringhay Castle as legend claims, he did finalize arrangements to transfer her remains from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey while leaving his father’s body undisturbed at Holyrood chapel.
First in 1606, however, James had Elizabeth buried in the north aisle of the chapel of Henry VII at the Abbey under a white marble tomb holding a recumbent figure of her, valued at £785. Beneath her coffin lies her half-sister Mary. Six years later, his mother’s tomb, which cost
£2,000 and which displays a white marble, recumbent effigy of her with her hands raised in prayer, was completed in the south aisle of the same chapel.

It is appropriate that the remains of these three British queens regnant should together occupy the chapel of their ancestor, Henry VII.
Although provided with a humanist education like their male counterparts’, their subjects still doubted their ability to rule and demanded they heed the advice of male councilors. Even Mary’s son James stated in the
Basilikon Doron
, his advice book for his heir Henry which was published in 1599, that when his grandfather, James V, died, he left a
“double curse behind him to the land, both a woman of sex, and a new borne babe of age to reign over them.” Although he also described
Buchanan’s and Knox’s works as “infamous libels,” thus condemning their outrageous statements about his mother, his belief that women were the “frailest sex,” may have influenced his decision to accept his councilors’ recommendation to reject the treaty of association with her.
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These three female monarchs responded to dynastic expectations with different degrees of success. Mary Tudor is often viewed as a failure partly because she could not bear children at what was then considered an advanced age for a first pregnancy. Having learned from her Guise relatives the importance of marriage for the advancement of family goals, Mary Stewart wed Darnley to strengthen her English succession claims and gave birth to a male heir, but partly because she lost her throne to that son, she, too, is deemed a failure. Most contemporaries and subsequent writers have condemned her third, forced marriage that fostered the discord that led to her captivity, but it is a fact that rebellions were directed against not only all three of her unions but also that of Mary Tudor because their subjects anticipated that their husbands would gain control of their realms. Having the advantage of learning from their experiences, Elizabeth ultimately chose to ignore contemporary expectations about marriage, thereby avoiding sharp factional divisions on that issue among her advisors and possibly rebellions against her authority. Her decision kept her from bearing children, but partly because of her longevity, her choice proved wise and her reign is deemed a success.

More particularly, it is also appropriate that Mary’s and Elizabeth’s tombs lie in precise symmetry on the north and south sides of Henry VII’s chapel. Too much emphasis has focused on their personal rivalry that supposedly arose from differences in their personal make-up, one exhibiting masculine self-control and the other demonstrating feminine passion, but their disagreements derived from dynastic and religious issues much larger than their individual characteristics. Elizabeth, who never departed England’s shores, slowly and reluctantly agreed under pressure from her advisors, especially Burghley, to seek for defensive purposes the pacification of the British Isles under essentially Protestant rule. By contrast, through her marriages, Mary hoped to attach Scotland and ultimately England to a Catholic continental empire governed by either the royal families of France or Spain. This was a goal she learned in her childhood education and experience in France.

By placing their tombs in the same chapel, James sought to achieve dynastic reconciliation, since Elizabeth was the godmother that his mother chose for him. It is noteworthy that godparents’ duties in the sixteenth century were not limited to supervising their godchildren’s religious education but also involved aiding them in achieving their political and social aspirations, especially in the absence or the death of their biological parents. In 1581 Mary reminded James that Elizabeth was his second mother, godmother, and kinswoman. In 1592 some years after Mary’s death and the defeat of Philip’s Armada, although Elizabeth’s relationship with James still had to endure difficult periods, her message to him reflected a sense of her duty but not exactly as his mother had intended:

You know my dear brother, that, since you first breathed, I regarded always to conserve it my womb it had been you bear. Yes, I withstood the hands and helps of a mighty king to make you safe, even gained by the blood of many my dear subjects’ lives. I made myself the bulwark betwixt you and your harms when many a wile was invented to steal you from your land, and making others possess your soil.
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Mary not only gave him an hereditary claim to England but also selected Elizabeth as his godmother, making it possible for her in some sense to view him as her son.

MARTYRDOM?

From the moment of Mary’s death, Catholics began to recognize her as a martyr to their cause while Protestants, like Burghley, denied that the English punished individuals for their faith. Others have argued that Mary’s early flirtation with Protestantism and her political scheming prevented her from achieving martyrdom status. For the validity of Burghley’s claim, it will be helpful briefly to consider the life of Norfolk’s heir, Philip, earl of Arundel.

Along with other Howards, the government suspected Arundel was involved in Throckmorton’s plot. After the earl converted to Catholicism in late 1584, he worried about his fate and without royal permission attempted to seek sanctuary abroad with William Allen.

When Arundel was captured, the Court of Star Chamber ordered him to pay the exorbitant fine of £10,000 and imprisoned him at Elizabeth’s pleasure. In 1588 still in captivity, he was accused of urging a priest to say mass for the Armada’s success. Although he admitted only to praying for Catholicism and for himself, he was condemned as a traitor and remained a prisoner in the Tower until his death in 1595.
Lacking any firm evidence except his attempted flight and his prayers, his government incarcerated him for ten years during which time he was not permitted to see his wife or child. Can it truly be said that Catholics were not being punished for their faith? In 1970 he was canonized.

When considering whether Catholics may view Elizabethan victims as martyrs, the judgments of Catholics and the condemned’s preparation for death should have more credibility than the opinions of Protestants. In the early 1580s on the continent, Catholic authors, such as Richard Verstegan, extolled Mary’s commitment to her faith and in various publications after her death described her as a martyr to their religion. From her first communion to her execution, only briefly did Mary personally flirt with Protestantism. That she was willing to support the Scottish Protestant establishment was a decision she made in association with her six Guise uncles, three of whom traveled with her to her realm. Although Mamerot, her confessor, deserted her after she married Bothwell in a Protestant service to protect her honor, the Frenchman testified to her previous religious constancy. As an English prisoner, she held out the possibility of converting to the Church of England in negotiations to obtain her freedom, but by 1570 she had won the sympathy of Catholic leaders abroad. On 9 January of that year, Pius V avowed his “paternal affection” for her and praised her
“burning zeal” for their faith.
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Afterward, she behaved as a loyal Catholic, repeatedly demanding a resident priest for her household, aiding religious refugees abroad, and calling for the return of Catholicism to Britain. Finally, in despair at her son’s betrayal and refusal to accept her faith, she bequeathed her English succession rights to Philip, who commended her for privileging her religion over her son.

In 1587 her faith aided her in preparing for a Christian death to the outrage of the dean of Peterborough and the earl of Kent, who challenged her to convert to their religion. Had she complied, they would
have eagerly welcomed her into their church. Mary relished Kent’s earlier claim that her life would be the death of his religion, since she interpreted his words to mean she was dying for hers.

Catholics unanimously condemned her execution, and soon after her translation to Westminster Abbey, her bones were rumored to work miracles. Henry Clifford, the contemporary biographer of Jane Dormer, an English Catholic who wed Don Gomes de Figueroa, duke of Feria, and moved with him to Spain, referred to Mary as a dying saint and martyr.
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So did others.

Although through the centuries that have passed, biographers have sometimes presented her life within a romantic framework, both sixteenth-century sympathizers and critics often interpreted her life as tragic. Michele Surian, the Venetian ambassador in France, predicted in 1569 that someday the English and their monarch, instigated by Moray, would find the means to kill Mary because she had treated Elizabeth as a bastard when she assumed her arms and style. And so, he said, “her life, which till now has been compounded of comedy and tragi-comedy, would terminate at length in pure tragedy.”
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And so it did.