Mary Stuart

Front matter

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Contents

I. The Mother ..... i

December 1543— July 1548

II. At THi French Court . ... 13

Chapter I

THE UOTHER December 1543 — Jul; 1548 NY one wishing to know what the direct influence of women would be in the governing of nations has only to make a study of Western Europe in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The English throne was occupied successively by two women sovereigns, and simultaneously in Scotland a queen regent was followed by a queen in her own right, while in France the widowed Catherine of Medici swayed the wills and directed the policy of her two effeminate younger sons for almost thirty years.

The epigram of the Duchess of Burgundy, that the times are happy when women rule because then men direct the policy, holds good only in the case of Elisabeth, paradoxically the most imperious and self-willed of the five.

Of these crowned ladies, thus fatefully and fatally placed at the head of affairs, none presents a figure so toudiing, digTiified ^nd attractive as Mary of Guise ; none had so difificult and thankless a task. In her worst difficulties Elisabeth was upheld by Ae instinct that she had behind her the life of a great pec^e, the consciousness that she had their endiusiastic sympathy. Neither the bitterness of personal disappointment nor the loneliness of unpopularity could deprive Mary Tudor of the consolation of thinking herself God's chosen instrument to bring back the English nation to the true faith. Through her long widowhood Catherine gratified to the full that passion for power which had been famished and repressed during her married life.

Mary of Guise alone had no personal ends to serve, nor did she find support and sympathy in her lonely task. The end of her unceasing labours was to keep secure the inheritance of a child she was barely to see after her seventh year ; she spent her life ruling over aliens and saw her early popularity turning into suspicion and sour dislike ; she tried to hold Scotland as an appan^^e of France, and France let her die at last besieged and defeated, looking in vain for adequate succours ; all her actions — her high endeavours and her serious mistakes, her patience and her dissimulation alike — were prompted by one constant motive, devotion to the fortunes of France and of her daughter.

The eight children of Claude of Guise — Duke Francis at the head of the armies of France, the three younger brothers in their several commands by sea and land, the two cardinals in their plurality of benefices, Ren^e and Antoinette praying in their convents, Mary in alienated Scotland carrying out the family policy in defiance of her better judgment, were all united in one great aim, the glorification of the House of Guise. This family of magnificent adventurers was a cadet branch of the Dukes of Lorraine, one of those smaller semi-royal houses which, like But^ndy, held now to the Empire now to France. Consequently the 3uises knew no real patriotism. They gained victories at the head of French armies but they recklessly sacrificed French

THE MOTHER 3

troops U the visionary hope of gaining the crown of Naples for their house. Though they had been thtt chief counsellors at the courts of four French lings, they owed no loyaJty to the House of Valois. They bore eight royal quarterings in their arm : and the idea of founding a dynasty haunted the imagination of the whole family. This fomily destiAy was only fulfilled in the persons of Mary of Guise and her daughter. In her girlhood Mary Stuart was simply the flower in which the family tree had blossomed.

Why Mary of Guise was chosen to play her important part in the family fortunes while her two sisters were suffiered to spend their days praying (or tbem, we are not told. Probably her appearance and her alert, practical character marked her out for her part She had been thought of at one time as the bride of the French King, Henry II., before his brother's death raised him to importance. She just escaped making one in the succession of Henry VIII. 's wives. There is a picture of her beside her second husband James V. The head is small in comparison with the tall figure and pillar-Iike throat, die face firm, intelligent and serenely friendly, a far stronger, happier face flian that of her husband. It is from her father that Mary Stuart inherited the fine lines of her features, the delicate eyebrows and long scrfit eyes, but the resolve and animation come from the other side.

These fine qualities were needed to carry Mary of Guise through her troubled and anxious life, they never secured her prosperity or tranquillity. In the quiet old home at Joinvitle her mother, the Duchess Antoinette, had many anxious thoughts about the

T I high-spirited heavily-laden daughter in Scot And. In one of her simple, motherly letters she writes to her : "You have had so little joy in the world, and pain and trouble have been so often your {lot, that methinks you hardly know now what/ [Measure means."

She can hardly have been ha[^y wit j James V. She came to Scotland a young widow of tiventy-three, leaving behind her an only child and the memory of her first short but happy marriage, to find a husband c^ twenty-eight who had in innumerable transitory passions wasted a heart and character richly endowed. The pathos and romance of his marriage in the previous year with Madame Madeleine, the consumptive little daughter of Francis the First who died a few weeks after landing in Scotland, had touched the heart or at least the sensibility of James Stuart, but the marriage with Mary of Guise was a pure matter of policy. The real true love of his fickle heart had been Janet Erskine. He had made tentative efforts to obtain her divorce from her husband, Douglas of Loch Leven, meaning to marry her and thus to legitimate the son she had borne him. This son, James Stuart, was afterwards to save his country and betray his sister Mary as the Regent Murray. Had King James succeeded in his plan, it would have saved a world of woe.

Two sons were bom to Mary of Guise, but. both died in babyhood within twenty-four hours of each other. James, worn out by dissensions with his nobles and all the difficulties of his short life and long reign, saw in the loss the judgment of Heaven, and it served to deepen the depression and lassitude that were settling down upon him. At thiity-two, to the

THE MOTHER 5

jolly " King of the Commons," the popular " Gudeman of Ballangeioch," life meant only new difficulties and disappointments ; a strong and menacing uncle across the Border ; disafiected nobles at home ; children of ^ his begetting in other men's houses, but no heir to his throne. Yet there should have been hope. A child was expected, and, in the stately palace at ^ Linlithgow, the queen was awaiting the event.

The king was in the south, organising the attack on England that ended disastrously at Solway Moss. Stricken to the heart with shame, and unable to face the new difficulties of the situation, he had stolen away secretly but not to Linlithgow where, if ever, his wife required his presence. A silent heart-broken guest, he sought comfort at other men's hearths ; then, finding his inward wound too intolerable, crept off by himself to Falkland.

Never was woman in more desolate case than Mary. She was alone in a strange land, her husband was dying, indifferent to her and to the child she was to bring him ; men talked of little but defeat and the fears of invasion, even the earth was bound in an early and* vigorous winter. Under such conditions Mary Stuart was born on the 8th of December 1 542. Hardly the birth of a son would have roused James from his sorrowful apathy ; the news of the birth of a daughter only deepened his gloom : " Devil go with it," he muttered. " It came with a lass, it will go with a lass."

It was Cardinal Beaton who brought the news of her husband's death to Mary at Linlithgow. The two were firm allies, the cardinal was "as good a Frenchman as she was a Frenchwoman." It was rumoured that in those early days they had put their heads together and had secretly sent to the French king for aid. Women in those days had little time or peace to mourn their husbands; and never were woman and child more surrounded by enemies and dangers than Mary and her baby queen. France was many days' journey away, the Scotch nobles were hostile or at least suspicious, and across die Border, like the ogre in a fairy-tale, was Henry VIII. It amounted to an obsession, this desire of Henry's to profit by his nephew's death, to seize the strongholds of Scotland, and to gain possession of the child. Once he had her in England, betrothed to his young son, he hoped to be practically Governor of Scotland. By the end of January all the prisoners taken at Solway Moss were sent back deeply pledged to forward Henry's policy at any cost of patriotism and honour.

Much as Mary dreaded the Engliah alliance for her child, another danger seemed nearer and more urgent The next heir to the throne, the Earl of Arran, had been appointed governor. A stupid, vacillating mediocrity, he was not formidably ambitious,

. but his nearness to the throne was the one fact of any importance to him, and this made him eager to let no chance go past. He made proposals for a marriage between the little queen and his seven year old son. Such proposals were repugnant to the French queen mother but she dissimulated and received them diplomatically. Once, years later, when falsely accused o ' a breach of faith in her policy, she likened herself to a little bird constrained to build herself a nest as a " bield " from her foes ; and certainly in the winter of

"■ 1543 she might have compared herself to a wild bird using all her cunning to keep her enemies from her nest. To deceive both Henry and Arran and, if

THE MOTHER 7

possible, to sow distrust between them was a game that required patience and deftness. Her one friend the cardinal was powerless to help. The first action of the " English Lords " on their return had been to embolden the governor to throw his rival into prison.

When in Miirch, Sadler, the English Ambassador, brought the formal proposal of marriage from Henry VIII, the queen dowager received it with apparent cordiality, and took the opportunity to discredit Arran. '"The governor,' quoth the queen, 'said that the child was not like to live, but you shall see whether he saith truth or not' Therewith she caused me to go with her to the chamber where the child was and showed her unto me, and also caused the nurse to ufiwrap her out of her clothes that I should see her naked. I assure your Majesty it is as goodly a child as I have seen of her age and as like to live with the grace of God." Forty-three years later Sadler was among the judges who condemned the Queen of Scots to death! Dissimulation and a patient waiting on circumstance were the only policy possible for the queen mother. Henry was urgent with his adherents to kidnap the two queens or, better still, the child witl^ut the mother. Edinburgh Castle was too near t':^, Border to be safe; it was probably for security that Arran kept them virtually prisoners at Linlithgow.

Nothing in the short history of Mary Stuart's rdgn in Scotland is more romantic than the number of sudden flights she was constrained to make, hasty, unexpected rides through summer dawns or the blackness of winter nights. The first of such flights was when, in July {1543), the cardinal and his party — the cardinal was again at liberty and refbyGooglc establishing his ascendency— carried off the two queens - from under the very hands of the Hamiltons and conveyed them to Stirling. Meantime the marriage contract between Henry and the governor had been signed, with no great alacrity on the side of the Scots. The child was to be handed over to her granduncle at the age of ten. If force were used to get possession erf her before that age, Sir George Douglas informed Sadler that the women would rise with their distaffs and the small boys would hurl stones f^ainst English mtruders. When such is die temper of one of the contracting parties, any accident or delay is sure to be fatal to the transaction. Hostages to be sent to England were not readily come by ; the governor suddenly and without explanation rode off to join the cardinal ; Henry lost his temper and arrested Scotch merchant ships in his harbour. Since the death of the Maid of Noroway there hsd been no such opportunity of uniting the two kingdoms ; it was lost by the impatience of the Tudor temper. On the loth of September the child wa.s crowned at Stirling. Sadler sneers at the lack of costly ceremonial, and indeed Coronations were not very joyous affairs in Scotland. Three infants in succession, Mary, her father and her son, were all crowned in seasons of blackest national anxiety. In spite of an attack of smallpox in the spring, the little one flourished at Stirling. The mother with playful fondness noted this to Sadler. "The queen told me that her daughter did grow apace, and soon she would be a woman if she took after her mother, who indeed is of the largest size."

While she grew and throve, various sinister influences were at work shaping her destiny. In the.

THE MOTHER 9

gossiping pages orpitscottie we read that two Scottish nobles were rivals for the hand of Mary of Guise, Patridc, Earl of Bothwell, and Matthew, Earl of Lennox, a curious anticipation of the tragic situation of twenty-four years later. Mary entertained both with diplomatic courtesy, but " having been a king's wife her heart was too high to look any lower." Unlike all the other widowed queens of Scotland, her predecessors, she never aJlowed passion, nor vanity nor personal wea'jiess to complicate the difficult situation.

The presence of Lennox A'as in itself a complication. Next heir to the thron<i after Arran he had been brought from France by the cardinal as a menace and '^counterweight to the governor. The reconciliation of those two heads of opposing factions and the firm attitude of the dowager sensibly diminished Lennox's importance. Chagrined and knowing no motive but self-interest he, iri the autumn of 1543, sold himself to Henry. He used his credit with the envoys sent from France to seize arms and money landed at Dumbarton. For this treachery his lands were confiscated and he himself was exiled for more than twenty years from Scotland. As a reward for his services Henry, in the next year (1544), gave him in marriage the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV. and of Douglas, Earl of Angus, the hereditary enemy of the Stuarts. His nearness to the Scottish throne — Arran the other claimant was of doubtful legitimacy ; — her close relationship to the Royal Family of England ; her claims to the confiscated estates of the Douglas ; his embittered regrets for the forfeited lands of Lennox — here were elements to produce a hungry.

restless, intriguing household life ; and in this home Darnley, Mary's future husband, was to grow up.

The five first years of Mary's life are filled with invasions, lawlessness and the treachery of Scottish noblemen. In this turmoil, we lose sight of the widowed Queen and her child. The guardians of the little Queen, Lindsay, Livingston, Erskine and Montrose held themselves ready at a moment's notice to carry her off to a place of safety. Once, with the English foeman within reach of Stirling, ^he was hurried off to Dunkeld in the inaccessible Highlands. In 1547 the bfitde of Pinkie almost repeated the disaster of Flodden. Then, also, men asked one another when the English invader would be at their gates. The child was sent off to the island consent on the lake of Monteith, on the Borders of the Highlands.

Because no other place connected with Mary is free from associations of pain and fear, modem imagination has dwelt fondly on the picture of the six-year-old child in that peaceful place, fancying pleasant things hardly compatible with her short wintry visit At least there was freedom from alarm and the child had merry company in the four little Maries, chosen as her attendants from the loyal houses of Beaton, Livingston, Fleming and Seton. If the old French soldier of fortune who a few months later accompanied the child to France, described her as "themost perfect child in the world," one may be sure that the good leisurely monks of Monteith were equally charmed and amused by their little guest

Mary of Guise had profited by the national fear of England and hatred of Somerset to draw closer the alliance with France. The point she had always byGoogIc

V

MARY OF GUISE

THE MOTHEK U

aimed at was attained when in July 1548, she persuaded the council and governor to consent to the little Queen being affianced to the Dauphin, and sent her off at once to be brought up in France out of reach 9f the rough wooing of the English Protector.

Quickly, secretly, the departure was arranged. A French fleet sailed out of the Forth, then swept round the north of Scotland and put in again at Dumbarton. It was a large party that went on board ; the four Maries accompanied the queen as well as several of her half-brothers and the governor's children. Mary was under the care of her governess, Lady Fleming,- her father's half-sister, a merry, pretty woman curiously lacking in the discretion necessary for her post.

Here the story must follow the child to France, to prosperity and happy days, leaving the childless mother to carry on her troublesome task alone. The old Duchess of Guise knew what it meant to part with a child across the seas. She wrote pitying her daughter for her sorrow in the parting, *' But at least you must hope that this loss of your child will mean rest and repose for the little creature." . . . She adds the fervid hope that she herself may see her daughter again before she died. She was to live to mourn not only that daughter's death, but the imprisonment of the little granddai^hter she was so eager to welcome. Her own badly-spelled letters reveal in Mary of Guise not only indomitable courage — that she shared with most of her family — but a tender-hearted percepticm of suffering that she had learned in her own troubled life. She complains of the depredations of the French soldiers on the Scotch peasant, she knows the ruin brought on them by ruthless requisition, she grieves over their taUes and chairs seized on for fuel. Of her own severe sufferings — -the sciatica which was the consequence of constant night alarms and hasty preparations — she speaks cheerfully and without self-pity. One lingers the more willingly in her company because we shall find no other character of such worth and attraction in the whole history of her daughter.

NoU. — While these chapters are passing through the press my attention has been called to a delightfiil anecdote of the baby Queen. When she was only three or thereabouts, Cftrdinal Beaton entered the room where die was, apparently in bis red robes. In sudden terror the child cried out, " Kill Redeaton I Kill Redeaton I He will take me ftway." The rhyme that was running in the quick-witted little creUtire's head wm the old Scottish nursery tale ;

" The red Etin of Ireland,

He lived in Ballygan,

He stole King Malcolm's daughter,

The King of fair Scotland ;

He beats her, he binds her

He lays on her a band,

And every day he dings her

With a bright silver wand."

To u> who know Queen Mary's biUory even her baby prattle has a strangely ominous ring.

WAKV AT THE AGE OF FOURTEEN

CHAPTER 11

July 1548—1557 'TpHE brilliaiK^ and corruption of the French court ■■- at which Mary was brought up is so much a commonplace of history that there is a strong temptation to find it false. It may at least be conceded that the court of Henry H. was neither so brilliant as the court of his father Francis I. nor was it by any means, as coarse, cruel and corrupt as it became later when the widowed Catherine bore sway during the reigns of her sons.

Catherine played indeed no greater part at the court of her husband than she had played during her father-in-law's lifetime. She was merely the mother of the king's children ; whatever consideration she received at his hands she owed to the careless, secure kindness, and sense of decorum of her rival Diane de Poictiers. Beautiful, with a peculiar, white, smooth beauty, this 'remarkable woman kept her hold on the dull heart of her royal lover to the end of his days. She ruled his life, his court, his policy, superintended his children's education and dictated his behaviour to his wife. It ' has been finely said of her that her influence was blighting and unfruitful as that of the moon which she adopted as her symbol.

A few years before Henry's accession evangelical rdigion had been in vogue in his househc^d ; the psalirs of Clement Marot were on every tongue. But soon religious liberalism shrunk before the dangers and difficulties of Reform ; the French court definitely chose the line of reaction and persecution. The love of serious study and the patronage of literature was represented by the second Madame Margaret of France, the learned sister of Henry II., the patroness of Ronsard. The love of art that had glorified the court of Francis survived chiefly in the arts that adorn luxury and pomp, splendid architecture, applied to royal residences, delicate jewelry, and sumptuous bindings, and finely printed books.

With a self-control that does her ivo honour, Catherine acquiesced in her abasement before the favourite. Her passion for power, thwarted and repressed, instinctively sought to raise up means of influence through her children. From the time they emerged from childhood till they were married she caused her elder daughters Madame Elisabeth and Madame Claude to sleep in a room within hers and to know no authority nor influence but her own. She terrorised her daughters; Margaret — the third Madame Margaret of France — the youngest and most spirited of the children, has recorded that her mother's eye upon her struck a chill of fear to her heart

Of her father, the king, her reminiscences are charmingly genial. She describes herself at the age of five as sitting on his knee and discussing her boy lovers.

The royal children had an establishment of their own, and it was an amiable trait in the king that he liked to pay them visits when " he could have them all to himself." He showed the greatest eagerness to see the little Queen of Scots when in August 1 548 she arrived at St Germain-en-laye where the court

DIANE OF POICIIERS was residing. He was enchanted with the beautiful child. According to Brantdme she spoke in her native speech, rendering its harshness musical by her sweet voice. Nor did she suffer from shyness. " I find her and the Dauphin as familiar as if they had known each other all Uieir lives," wrote the king. It was probably the delicate little boy of four and a half who required most to be put at his ease.

Diseased and mean-looking from his birth Francis, like many another frail little boy, had an -imagination preoccupied with the romance of weapons and of warfere. There is a pretty letter dictated by him at the age of five in which he thanks the Duke of Guise for the gift of a little suit of armour and challenges him to a single combat In this he hopes to have the favour "d'une dame belle et honnSte qui est votre nifice."

The brilliant beauty and vitality of Mary Stuart distinguished her from the ailing, neurotic children of Catherine. Though the four little Scottish Maries were removed for a time that she might the quicker learn French, she had no lack of companions. Thirty- •seven children of the nobility shared the studies and sports of the children of France. So large a party involved an army of household servants. Twelve butlers with ten assistants looked after the cellars, the kitchen staff amounted to over fifty, wardrobes and stables were manned on a similar scale. It throws a curious light on the habits of the time that there was but one water-carrier for all this crowd, while, in some years, only two laundresses accomplished all the washing required. Doctors and apothecaries were attached to the household, and one could wish that a place had been found near Mary's person for a certain honest Scotch doctor, named William Bog, warmly recommended to Mary of Guise. The letter of recommendation insists on the importance of a doctor who could "diagnose Scotch temperament" — "You know what a difference there is between a doctor of one's own country and a foreigner. My friend besides being of that nation is bolJi a skilful druggist and doctor, and above all a lover of religion and of his country's liberty." Mary was at all times familiarly kind and affectionate with those of her own faousehdd ; a good, wise, middle-class Scotchman like the excellent Bog might have given her an insight into " Scottish temperament" and their "love of their country's liberty" which would have saved her from fatal blundering. Almoners, priests, confessors made part of the household, also tutors and masters of mu sic and dancing.

Classical learning was in those days one of the privileges of princesses and noble ladies. They were supposed to read and write Latin, to know enough Greek to justify th^resence of fine editions on their bookshelves and to talk the languages of the principal European courts. Now as these royal and noble ladies were often married at the age of twelve and were little older when they appeared at court, a great deal of education must have been compressed into these early years, even if tutors were complacent and ready to make a royal road. The eternal prerogative of childhood, the right to be a child, was fatally denied to all those poor, important little ladies.

In an age of learned women, Mary was no prodigy. She had not the pure love of letters of Jajie Gray, nor could she, like Elisabeth, exchange courtesies in Greek with heads of colleges. But with her fine wit and h^h, spirit she took kindly to her studies. She had to write priggish little Latin themes, moraj reflections on the duties of princes ; even copy books were made to minister to that self-importance which cruelly robbed , little royalties of "the first garden of their simpteness." At thirteen she entertained king and court by an harangue in Latin, and though the arguments might be the arguments of her tutor the voice and manner were the same that years after forced her Scottish subjects to exclaim, " Vox Dianae. . . . Was there ever orator spake so properly and so sweetly ? " Still greater was the charm of her intimate conversation. Even as a child she would entertain the king by her wise and witty conversation, "just like a woman of five and twenty," writes the exultant Cardinal of Lorraine.

The encouragement of learning, the pauonage of poets, even the practice of verse-making and especially the collecting books in beautiful bindings, were all l^htons in vogue at court. We have still an inventory of the books Mary brought taf Scotland with her, books which the ignorant carelessness of Murray and Morton suffered to be dispersed and destroyed. Among these books many are of a religious complexion, controversial as well as devotional. One is ' surprised to find Calvin's Institutes among them, but the cardinal was determined that his niece should know the stock replies and objections to the reformed doctrines. It was not from his mother that James VI. was to inherit his passion for theological subtleties. " She could not reason," she once told Randolph, " but she knew what she ought to believe " — an unassailable position into which many a simple gentlewoman is glad to follow her! If she did not readily commit hersdf to her own confession of faith, she had an instinct for the weak places in her adversaries' argument that no dialectic could have bettered.

Religious orthodoxy was one of the assets of the Guises. The old Duchess Antoinette — in her private relations a faithful, tender-hearted woman — carried on religious persecution on her estates with single-minded conviction. Her two daughters were abbesses of convents. The cardinal, the churchman, though a materialist and worldling, recognised the advantage to his house of being the acknowledged chamiHons of Catholicism, but the soldier, Duke Francis, had in addition to the family orthodoxy some genuine religious instinct He could pause in the heat of battle to urge a dying comrade to make his peace with God.