Mary Queen of Scots (7 page)

Having requested assistance from Henry II, the successor of Francis I in 1547, Arran and Mary of Guise agreed on 7 July that the queen should wed Francis the dauphin, who was born 19 January 1544. Arran had earlier pledged that in return for a French duchy and a marriage for his namesake son with Frances, the elder daughter of Louis of Bourbon, duke of Montpensier, he would seek parliamentary consent for Mary’s union with the dauphin, her removal to France, and French control of certain Scottish fortifications. Clearly interested in this alliance because Mary was also a claimant to the English throne, Henry II promised Arran full authority in Scotland during her minority and support for his accession in the event of her death without children.

These were substantial concessions, as Henry subsequently granted Arran the dukedom of Châtelherault with an annual income of 12,000 livres. Although his son, referred to hereafter as the earl of Arran, moved to France, he failed to win Montpensier’s daughter. In March during these negotiations, Mary contracted a case of measles, which because of its rumored severity may have been rubella. Her illness raised concerns about the Scottish succession, since measles had a high mortality rate among children in the early modern period, but by the 23rd the crisis was over.

Meeting in tents erected near the Abbey of Haddington in July, parliament approved Mary’s French marriage and residence and the employment of Henry II’s forces to expel the English invaders, thereby transforming Scotland into a French protectorate. Although French fleets had provided occasional assistance to the queen mother, the Treaty of Haddington, which agreed to a permanent French military presence in the realm, moved Henry II far beyond a short-term level of commitment. On 19 June even before parliament confirmed the treaty, a French armada reached the Firth of Forth and several days later a joint Franco-Scottish army began besieging Haddington.

Nicholas Durand, sieur de Villegaignon, and Artus de Maillé, sieur de Brézé, took four galleys from the fleet northward around the realm to Dumbarton to transport the queen to France. On 29 July Mary and her train, including four maids named Mary, representing the Fleming, Livingston, Beaton, and Seton families, boarded the galleys. Some accounts have greatly exaggerated the importance of the queen’s having four attendants named Mary, but they surely gained selection because of their royal connections and their nearness in age to her and not because of their names. Seton and Beaton were daughters of two of Mary of Guise’s French attendants; Fleming’s mother, Janet, the widow of Malcolm, third Lord Fleming, and an illegitimate daughter of James IV, was Mary’s governess; Livingston’s father was one of her guardians.

Although Mary was a generic name for Scottish maids of honor, these four girls were all christened Mary and were surely goddaughters of the queen mother. Godparents, especially royal ones, regularly named their godchildren after themselves. In England during Jane Seymour’s brief queenship, four noblewomen gave birth to girls christened Jane, almost certainly because the queen was one of their two godmothers. Had Jane’s young Edward been female, four Janes might well have attended him.

Besides the Maries, the queen’s escort of some 200 individuals included three of her illegitimate half brothers, Lords James, Robert, and John, the commendators of St Andrew’s, Holyrood, and Coldingham, respectively. On board also were Erskine and Livingston, her two guardians, nurse Sinclair, governess Fleming, her spiritual advisers, and other attendants. For several days the fleet remained in the harbor, waiting for the adverse winds to change.

When they boarded the galleys, de Brézé promised to keep Mary of Guise informed about how her daughter fared during the voyage. On 3 August 1548 he assured her that the winds tossing them about in the harbor had not made her child sick, and three days later reported that the fleet had sailed but storms had forced its return to port. Despite this and other misadventures, such as a broken rudder, they left Dumbarton on 7 August and disembarked at St Pol de Léon near the port of Roscoff in Brittany on 15 August.
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He reported on the 18th that Mary had been less ill than everyone else and that Henry had sent his
valet de chambre
, Antoine Cabassoles du Réal, to welcome her to France.
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Following a two-day rest at Morlaix’s Dominican convent, Mary’s party reached Nantes, where she made her entry on the 22nd. Surely following the prompting of her guardians or governess, she explained to her greeters at Nantes that she believed they were honoring her as Henry II’s daughter. When informed about the five-year-old queen’s statement, the gratified king repeated it several times, affirming he held her as his true daughter.

From Nantes Mary and her escort traveled by barge up the Loire River, rested at Ancenis, were welcomed at Angers on 21 September, and continued on to Tours, where the joyous duchess of Guise greeted her granddaughter. On 1 October she predicted to her son, Charles, archbishop of Rheims, future cardinal of Lorraine, that Mary would become a beauty, for she was pretty, intelligent, and graceful. A brunette, she had white skin, a fine and clear complexion, small deep-set eyes, and a long face.
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After lingering at Maille, they passed by Amboise and Blois and disembarked at Orléans to complete the journey overland.

On 14 October they reached the nursery, which was located at the château of St Carriéres in St Denis during the refurbishing of the palace at St Germain-en-Laye, its usual headquarters some 12 miles from Paris. Away on a progress, Henry sent instructions to its director, Jean de Humières, sieur de Mouchy, and his wife, Frances de Contay, to prepare for Mary’s arrival. As his heir’s betrothed, Henry raised her in rank above his daughters and granted her the privileges held by his consort, Catherine de’ Medici, to grant pardons and release prisoners.
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After meeting Mary, probably on 9 November at St Germain, Henry judged her the prettiest and most graceful princess he had ever seen, an opinion reflecting the views of the whole court, according to de Brézé. Catherine echoed her husband’s praise and later remarked that the little queen needed only to smile to turn all French heads.
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Lord Erskine also confided to Mary of Guise that the royal family greatly honored her child.

De Humières taught the four-year-old Francis how to welcome Mary, and he apparently rose to the occasion admirably. His greeting impressed Henry’s long-time mistress, Diane de Poitiers, duchess of Valentinois and widow of Louis de Brézé, count of Maulévrier. She counseled the tutor that if he wanted to please Henry he should continue coaching Francis to perform those small courtesies. De Humières followed her advice so well that Anne de Montmorency, constable of France, could report to Mary of Guise in March 1549 that Francis paid her six-year-old daughter little attentions, proving they were born for each other.

Mary was immediately introduced to the court’s protocol. The children assembled daily in the nursery’s great hall to pay homage to the dauphin and his betrothed as their social superiors. Imitating their elders’ dinnertime etiquette, Mary and Francis dined at the same table while their young attendants sat elsewhere according to their rank. In 1553 her French governess, Frances d’Estamville, madame de Parois, assured her mother that Mary behaved very well toward Francis.

Whenever possible, parents arranged for betrothed children to be brought up together so that they could become acquainted and emotionally attached to each other. Representing the perfect examples of this practice, Francis and Mary impressed observers, as they approached adolescence, with their caring relationship. In January 1555 when she was 12 and Francis was 11, Giovanni Capello, the Venetian ambassador, characterized their intimacy as love after witnessing them caressing each other and whispering together in a corner of the room.
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Capello almost certainly was referring to an emotional rather than a physical attachment. Modern studies indicate that the onset of puberty was later in the sixteenth century than in the twenty-first century. Although the church permitted twelve-year-old girls and fourteen-year-old boys to marry, when children did wed at this young age, parents and guardians usually delayed their sexual intimacy until the bride, at least, was about sixteen.

As soon as the Treaty of Haddington was ratified, the children’s supervisors began teaching them the significance of their future marriage, which would unify their realms as well as join them together personally. Early modern Europeans customarily placed a romantic gloss on these matches to obscure their economic and political underpinnings. In 1548, for example, Francis, the future second duke of Guise, wrote to his sister, Mary, that for their family’s honor their father Claude traveled south toward Italy to greet Anne d’Este, the elder daughter of Hercule II, duke of Ferrara, and praised her to him so that he fell in love with his future bride at a distance. Michel de Montaigne later remarked: “Men do not marry for themselves, whatever they may say. They marry as much or more for their posterity and house. The custom and profit of marriage concerns our race much more than ourselves.”
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At a time when family honor was a high priority, Mary’s and Francis’s commitment to these dynastic arrangements could bind them together in a relationship as compelling, perhaps more compelling, than that of a romantic liaison. In 1554 under the guidance of Claude Millet, her classics tutor since 1550, Mary addressed a Latin letter to Francis as part of a classroom assignment in which she explained that her love prompted her to advise him to honor his instructor, as Alexander the Great honored Aristotle.
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The nursery was most often situated at St Germain, although when it needed cleaning the children were moved to other châteaux. Deeply interested in their well-being, Henry kept them at St Germain because he favored staying at this palace when he had business in Paris. Its main building contained 55 lodgings with his apartments on the second floor since no one but a member of the royal family could be housed above him. As social rank also dictated the children’s room assignments, Mary shared the best bedchamber with Princess Elizabeth, who was born in 1545. At this time, only one other royal child, Claude, who was born in 1547, resided in the nursery, but Catherine gave birth in early 1549 to a prince named Louis for whom Mary of Guise was selected as godmother. By 1556 Catherine was delivered of six more children, four of whom survived to adulthood: the future monarchs Charles IX and Henry III, Hercules-Francis, duke of Anjou and Alençon, and Margaret, queen of Navarre.

Shortly after Mary’s arrival, the court began to participate in gala festivities. In December her uncle, Francis, wed Anne d’Este, whose mother, Renée, duchess of Ferrara, was the younger daughter of Louis XII. Some observers claimed that the Guises achieved this important connection because of their kinship with the dauphin’s betrothed. Henry wrote Mary of Guise that in plain view of all the ambassadors at the wedding’s festivities, he gave Mary and Francis little caresses and insisted that they dance together, delighting everyone, he thought, except Dr Nicholas Wotton, the English ambassador. The next year in June, Catherine was crowned on the 10th; Francis and she made their Paris entries on the 11th and 18th respectively, and Henry on the 16th.

Soon after reaching St Germain, many of Mary’s attendants lost their positions to French appointees. Henry, like other monarchs, routinely culled the trains of foreign-born brides to reduce expenditures and to limit the number of potential spies at court. These changes also facilitated the absorption of Mary’s household into the French nursery. While the Maries were sent to the Dominican convent at Poissy to be educated, nurse Sinclair was permitted to remain with Mary but lost her authority in the nursery.

A scandal that led to governess Fleming’s expulsion from France was probably an episode in Montmorency’s political struggle with Valentinois and the Guises, who were related to her through her daughter Louise de Brézé’s marriage to the duke’s namesake son Claude of Guise, future duke of Aumale. During Valentinois’s absence, Henry impregnated Fleming, who boasted at court about her condition, outraging both the queen and the duchess. Blaming Montmorency for encouraging the liaison, Valentinois joined Catherine in persuading Henry to send Fleming home after she gave birth to his namesake son in April 1551.

For her successor Lorraine chose madame de Parois, a former attendant of Anne d’Este, duchess of Guise, his sister-in-law. As Mary approached adolescence, she was involved in several disputes with Parois, who complained, for example, that her mistress slighted her when distributing her wardrobe to her attendants. In 1557 on the recommendation of Lorraine, Catherine, and Valentinois, Mary took the opportunity of Parois’s chronic illness to replace her with Maréchalle de la Marche, countess of Brêne. In Brêne’s absence, Antoinette de la Marck, mademoiselle de Bouillon, a granddaughter of Valentinois, agreed to bear Mary’s train and a niece of Brêne, an old widow, was appointed to sleep in her chamber. Gratified by these arrangements, Mary informed her mother that year of the duchess’s many kindnesses. Lorraine had earlier assured his sister that her daughter could not be better behaved if she had a dozen governesses.

Partly because of Henry’s relationship with Valentinois, some writers, mainly Protestants ones, have characterized his court as licentious and have assumed that Mary’s French upbringing adversely affected her character. Despite some lapses, Henry was devoted to the duchess, who was solicitous about his children’s needs and made efforts to be agreeable to his queen. Some contemporaries even claimed that Henry’s court was outwardly more respectable than his father’s and praised Valentinois for this refinement. Catherine’s attitude contributed to this atmosphere; although privately resentful, she emphasized publicly her love for her husband and bore Valentinois’s presence with equanimity. Actually, Henry’s court was as respectable, if not more so, than some Scottish ones. His three illegitimate offspring, for example, were far fewer than the nine James V sired with his serial mistresses. Sir James Melville, who visited Mary in France, even credited her upbringing there for her virtuous behavior and natural judgment.
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