Mary Queen of Scots (43 page)

It was not a tragedy stemming ultimately from the disappointment of romantic love affairs gone sour. It was a tragedy largely rooted in the gender relations of early modern Europe through which she was forced as queen to negotiate her rule. She made two decisions that ignored the advice of her councilors, one to marry Darnley, and the second, to seek refuge in England, which contributed greatly to her tragic ending.
When she chose to wed Darnley, she gave him the trappings of royal office but not the power, which most people, including her husband, expected he would wield. She had depended on her experience and his youthful status to help her retain her regal authority, but she underestimated the influence of his male relatives and allies, who urged the ambitious young man, a claimant to her throne, to take charge of his household and, therefore, the realm. His ambition for power led him to plan Riccio’s death, which culminated in his own murder and made Mary vulnerable to abduction, forcible marriage to Bothwell, and then imprisonment.

After escaping Lochleven and facing defeat at Langside, her advisors and friends begged her to remain in Scotland. Clearly, she should have done so, but prevented from reaching the safety of Dumbarton, she would have had to place herself in the power of either the Hamiltons
or the Campbells, one of whom she would have been expected to marry and who, like her second husband, would have demanded control of her realm. Argyll could certainly have protected her from Moray in his mountainous retreat, for example, but there she would have lost independence of authority and action.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Mary, herself, viewed the end of her pilgrimage on earth as a triumph, not as a tragedy, and she believed that her suffering was part of God’s plan for her. She approached death calmly, having defended her honor at the trial, and looked forward to eternal salvation. It was with this expectation that she prepared herself to die bravely and serenely. It seems appropriate to close here by letting her speak for herself. The following, which is part of “Meditation in Verse” written originally by her in French in 1573, seems to capture her feelings in 1587:

So, when, my Savior, from captivity,

Thy clemency and goodness set me free,

And when I turn to bid a last adieu

To woe and grief and sickness, then I sue

That Thou wilt grant me this one favor yet,

That never shall my weeping soul forget

Thy grace and mercy, and Thy boundless love,

Which Thou hast ever sent me from above.

And finally,

I plead no merit. Witness, on my part,

Thy Passion, deeply graven in my heart.
¹⁹

When she composed this piece, she could not have anticipated, of course, that a public execution would liberate her. Because of her chronic, debilitating illness, she may have supposed she would die in prison of natural causes, although she feared then and continued to fear until shortly before her death, that she would suffer private assassination. The bloody execution that she sought in 1587 allowed her to prove publicly and courageously that she died a true woman to her religion and a true woman of Scotland and France.

1: INTRODUCTION

1 The Scottish spelling for her name is used because her importance in British and continental diplomacy stemmed from her status as queen regnant. Although as a child, she learned to use the French spelling of her name, she never ceased to identify herself with her native land and with her Stewart relatives.

2 Antonia Fraser,
Mary Queen of Scots
, New York: Delacorte Press, 1969; New York: Delta, 1993, 2001.

3 Michael Lynch (ed.),
Mary Stewart in Three Kingdoms
, London: Blackwell, 1988.

4 Jenny Wormald,
Mary, Queen of Scots: Politics, Passion and a Kingdom
Lost
, New York: Tauris Park, 2001;
Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in
Failure
, London: George Philip, 1988.

5
The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland
, (ed.) J.H. Burton,
et al
., 14
Vols, Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1877–98.

6 James MacKay,
In My End is My Beginning: A Life of Mary Queen of Scots
, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1999.

7 Susan Watkins,
Mary Queen of Scots
, New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001.

8 John Guy,
The Life of Mary Queen of Scots: My Heart is my Own
, London: Fourth Estate, 2004;
The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill
, ed.
Gordon Donaldson, London: Folio Society, 1969, p. 64.

9 Guy,
Mary Queen of Scots
, pp. 226–7 (for my discussion, see Chapter 4, note 18); see also pp. 282, 366, for other examples.

10 Alison Weir,
Mary Queen of Scots
,
and the Murder of Lord Darnley
, New York: Random House, 2004; Claude Nau,
The History of Mary Stewart
From the Murder of Riccio Until her Flight into England
, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1883. Another popular work appearing in 2004 is Jane Dunn,
Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals,
Queens
, New York: Knopf, 2004.

11 Gordon Donaldson (ed.),
Scottish Historical Documents
, Edinburgh:
Scottish Academic Press, 1970, p. 68, quoted from
Acts of the
Parliament of Scotland
, vol. I, 492–3.

12
The Warkis of Schir David Lyndesay
(Edinburgh, 1574), New York: Da Capo Press, 1971, p. 108 (see Chapter 2).
The Political Works of James I
, ed. Charles McIlwain, New York: Russell and Russell Reprint, 1965, p.
34; David Calderwood,
The True History of the Kirk of Scotland from the
Beginning of the Reformation unto the End of the Reign of King James VI
, ed. Thomas Thomson, 8 vols, Edinburgh: Woodrow Society, 1843–49, vol. I, p. 57;
Selected Sermons of Hugh Latimer
, ed. Alan Chester, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1968, p. 34.

13 A.N. McLaren,
Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and
Commonwealth
,
1558–1585
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 1–2, 26.

14 Roger Mason, “Imagining Scotland: Scottish Political Thought and the Problem of Britain, 1560–1650,” ed. Mason,
Scots and Britons: Scottish
Political Thought and the Union of 1603
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 6.

15
Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots
, ed.
J. Bain,
et al
., 13 vols, Edinburgh: H.M. General Register Office, 1898–1969, vol. I, pp. 270, 510, 517. (Hereafter
CSP Scot
.) 16 Margaret Christian, “Elizabeth’s Preachers and the Government of Women: Defining and Correcting a Queen,”
The Sixteenth Century
Journal
, 24, 1993: 561–76.

17 Julian Goodare, “Scotland,” in B. Scribner, R. Porter, and M. Teich (eds),
The Reformation in National Context
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 95–111; Michael Lynch,
Edinburgh and the Reformation
, Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981, pp. 214–23.

18 These can be accessed through a variety of printed catalogues. Most, but not all, are at the Public Record Office, the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. An example of the misuse of diplomatic records is the oft-quoted allegation that in 1560 Mary ridiculed Elizabeth’s intention to marry her “horse-keeper.” Her alleged remark survives in Robert Jones’s letter to Throckmorton, the English ambassador in France. He reported that Lord Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s master of the horse, asked whether he knew about Mary’s comment, which Cecil had recently repeated to Dudley. Jones admitted he knew nothing about
her quip but lacked any evidence denying she had said it. A reading of Jones’s dispatch indicates that Dudley was less concerned about Mary’s description of him as a “horse-keeper,” a somewhat accurate, although simplistic, rendering of master of the horse, than about her claim that Elizabeth would marry him. See P. Yorke (ed.),
Miscellaneous State Papers from 1501 to 1726
, 2 vols, London: Strahan and Cadell, 1728, pp. 163–4.

19
Lettres, Instructions et Mémoires de Marie Stuart
,
Reine D’Écosse
, ed.
Alexandre Labanoff, 7 vols, London: Dolman, 1844.

2: SCOTTISH BEGINNINGS TO 1548

1 Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie,
The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from
the Slauchter of King James the First to the Ane Thousand Fyve Hundreith
Thrie Scoir Fyftein Zeir
, ed. A.J.G. MacKay, 3 vols, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966, vol. I, p. 358.

2 An English crown was worth 5 shillings.

3
Lettres, Instructions et Mémoires de Marie Stuart Reine D’Écosse
, ed.
Alexandre Labanoff, 7 vols, London: Dolman, 1844, vol. II, p. 2.

4 Lindsay,
Historie
, vol. I, 407;
John Knox’s History of the Reformation in
Scotland
, ed. W. Croft Dickinson, 2 vols, Philadelphia, PA: Philosophical Library, 1950, vol. I, ix, p. 39, made a similar claim, which was likely a rumored expectation that was transposed on to James. Knox’s and Lindsay’s writings remained in manuscript until after their deaths, Knox’s first appearing in an incomplete and suppressed version in 1586–87 after Lindsay composed his in the 1570s.

5 Quoted by Elizabeth Bonner, “The French Reactions to the Rough Wooings of Mary Queen of Scots,”
The Journal of the Sydney Society for
Scottish History
, 6, 1998: 13. For the speculation about the disease, see Roger Mason, “Scotland, Elizabethan England, and the Idea of Britain,”
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
, 6th series, vol. 14, 2004: 283.

6 Calderwood,
The True History of the Kirk of Scotland from the Beginning of
the Reformation unto the End of the Reign of King James VI
, ed. Thomas Thomson, 8 vols, Edinburgh: Woodrow Society, 1843–49, vol. I, 57.

7
The Warkis of Schir David Lyndesay
(Edinburgh, 1574), New York: Da Capo Press, 1971, p. 108. All quotations have been put in modern English except verses in Lowland Scots.

8
The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler
, ed. A. Clifford, 2 vols, Edinburgh: Constable, 1809, vol. I, p. 87.

9 Ibid., pp. 253, 263.

10 Ibid., pp. 285, 347.

11
Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to Negotiations
Between England and Spain
, ed. G. Bergenroth,
et al
., 13 vols, 2 supplements, London: Longman, 1862–1954, vol. IX, p. 47.

12
Two Missions of Jacques de la Brosse, An Account of the Affairs of Scotland
in the Year 1543 and the Journal of the Siege of Leith, 1560
, ed. Gladys Dickinson, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1942, pp. 29, 39.

13 Sadler,
Papers
, vol. I, pp. 86, 265.

3: FRENCH UPBRINGING, 1548–61

1 Joachim du Bellay was not aboard, although his later poem quoted by Alphone de Ruble,
La Première Jeunesse de Marie Stuart
, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1891, pp. 15–16, referred to a similar voyage.

2 Biographers usually accept the 13th as the date of Mary’s arrival because of questions raised about a letter of Henry II’s by W.M. Bryce,
“Mary Stuart’s Voyage to France in 1548,”
English Historical Review
, 22, 1907: 43–50, but M.N. Baudouin-Matusek, “Mary Stewart’s Arrival in France in 1548,”
Scottish Historical Review
, 69, 1990: 90–5, discovered the draft of another of the king’s letters confirming her arrival on the 15th at St Pol de Léon after 18 days at sea.

3
Lettres du Cardinal Charles de Lorraine (1525–1574)
, ed. Daniel Cuisiat, Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1998, p. 116.

4 Baudouin-Matuzek, “Mary Stewart’s Arrival,” pp. 94–5.

5
Lettres de Catherine de’ Medici
, ed. H. de la Ferrière-Percy,
et al
., 11 vols
,
Paris: Imprimerie National, 1880–1943, vol. I, lvi, pp. 556–7.

6 Armand Baschet,
La Diplomatie Vénitienne: Les Princes de l’Europe au
XVIe Siècle,
Paris: Plon, 1862, p. 486.

7
The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne
, ed. M. Lowenthal, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1935, p. 83.

8 Anatole de Montaiglon (ed.),
The Latin Themes of Mary Stuart Queen of
Scots
, London: Warton Club, 1855; see also
Queen Mary’s Book: A
Collection of Poems and Essays by Mary Queen of Scots
, ed. Mrs. P.
Stewart-MacKenzie Arbuthnot, London: Bell, 1907: 41–83.

9
The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill
, ed. Gordon Donaldson, London: Folio Society, 1969, p. 43.

10 De Ruble,
Première Jeuness
e, p. 96.

11 She seems to have obtained her information from a letter of Politianus, which was printed in a volume of his epistles at Paris in 1523 with a commentary by Franciscus Silvius. For an inventory of her library, which no longer exists, see Julian Sharman (ed.),
The Library of Mary, Queen of
Scots
, London: Stock, 1889, p. 31.

12 Cuisiat,
Lettres
, p. 154, dates her birth in 1551 and her older brother Henry on 31 December 1549. According to Mack P. Holt, professor at George Mason University, who surveyed reference books, including ones online, concerning these birth dates, the consensus is that she was born in 1552 and he in 1550.

13 Marguerite Wood (ed.),
Foreign Correspondence with Marie de Lorraine
,
Queen of Scotland from the Originals in the Balcarres Papers
,
1548–57
, 2
vols, Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1923–5, vol. II, p. li.