September 2010

Parish History Episode 113 - Mary, Queen of Scots

Mention has frequently been made, in previous articles in this series, of Queen Mary I of Scotland, a lady who was to cause many problems for the English, but who would eventually be put to death by order of England’s Queen. But long before that, the North of England would be plunged into civil war, fought between the partisans of Queen Elizabeth (and of the Protestant Church), on the one hand, and of Queen Mary (and the Catholic Church) on the other.

Mary, we may remember, had been born in 1542, the daughter of King James V of Scotland, his only legitimate child. He died six days later, so Mary, at the age of one week, was proclaimed Queen of Scotland, her French mother, Marie de Guise, acting as regent on her behalf. The King of England, Henry VIII, proposed betrothing the little queen to his own son, Prince Edward, so that the two kingdoms would, on Henry’s death, become united. Neither Queen Marie nor the Scottish people had any desire for that, and so the English immediately invaded, in a campaign known as “the Rough Wooing”, and ravaged the Border Counties, looting the great abbeys (Henry had already despoiled those on his own side of the Border).

Old Queen Marie appealed for help to her countrymen, and French ships won some victories in the North Sea, thus securing communications between France and Scotland, and French troops landed in Scotland, and drove out the English. But the situation remained volatile and dangerous. Even after the death of King Henry (in 1547), Edward Seymour, the “Lord Protector”, ruling England on behalf of Henry’s son, King Edward, attempted to revive the marriage plans, and further fighting broke out.

Then, in 1548, when little Queen Mary was only five-and-a-half, her mother resolved to send her to France, to the protection of her kinsman, King Henri II, and it was arranged that the little Queen would be betrothed to Prince François, the Dauphin, the eldest son of the King of France. Thus, when Henri died, the French and Scottish Crowns would be united. As France was not immediately contiguous to Scotland, this arrangement pleased the Scots more than an English marriage, as there was less chance of their country being absorbed by its partner. It pleased the English not at all, as it seemed to mean that France and Scotland, which already frequently allied themselves together against England, would become, effectively, a single, united, hostile power.

In order to affirm the alliance more definitely, it was decided to take little Mary to France, to meet her fiancé. This also left something of a power vacuum in Scotland, where old Queen Marie remained, but she had difficulty in ruling effectively, as John Knox and other preachers took advantage of the situation, steadily altering the Orders and Liturgy of the Church to make them accord with Reformed practice.

Little Queen Mary saw none of that. She was put aboard a French warship, at Dumbarton, on the Clyde. This roundabout route to France was chosen, because the English navy had won back control of the North Sea, and it was felt by the Scots to be too dangerous to send their little Queen by the direct route. So she sailed, aboard a Gallic ship, through Celtic seas, along the coasts of Cowal, Arran, Galloway, Ulster, the Isle of Man, Leinster, Dyfed, Cornwall and Brittany. Though people then would be unlikely to recognise the analogy, it might seem to be a repetition of the voyages, in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, of the megalith-builders, the pioneer farmers, and the tin-traders, who opened up the Western sea-routes.

The little Queen was safely delivered to her relatives in the French Court in Paris (the Guise family, to which her mother belonged, was connected by marriage to the Royal Line of France), and she soon charmed everybody by her cuteness, good looks and vivacity. She quickly forgot the Scottish tongue, which had been the only language she had been able to speak at the time of her arrival in France, and she was soon chattering away in French, among the gallants and ladies of King Henri’s court. French would, until her sad death at Fotheringhay, always be her native language.

Prince François, the boy to whom she was betrothed, was a sad contrast to his fiancée. While Mary was, by all accounts, tall, clever and attractive, he was short, slow of speech, and clumsy. But perhaps Mary did not notice his defects, being constantly engaged in the entertainments and frivolities of the French Court. In 1558, François and Mary were married, and he was proclaimed as King of Scots, taking title from his wife (just as King Felipe II of Spain had been acknowledged, after his marriage to Mary Tudor, as being additionally King of England).

And then, in 1559, King Henri II, after a highly successful reign, during which he had defeated the Spaniards and the English (and had regained Calais, until then the last remaining English possession on the mainland of France), was killed in an accident at a tournament, and France found that it had the graceless François II as its king.

But he did not reign for long. In 1560 he died, and his brother ascended the Throne as Charles IX. François and Mary had had no children. Indeed it is said that the King, sixteen years old when he died, had not yet reached puberty.

So ended Queen Mary’s first marriage. It had not been for her a disaster - she seems to have been so much enjoying herself as the centre of Court life in Paris that she hardly noticed the deficiencies in her husband - but it had not been all that satisfying.

If the French wished to continue in their policy of a matrimonial alliance between the Scottish and French crowns, the obvious next thing to do would have been to marry Mary off to the new king, Charles IX. But such a marriage could not be permitted, as it would be forbidden by the Church’s Tables of Affinity, specifying who could marry whom, and definitely forbidding the marriage of a man with his deceased brother’s wife. Of course, such impediments could always be got round, if you paid a big enough fee to the courts of the Vatican.

That is what King Henry VII of England had done, when his oldest son, Prince Arthur, had died. The King, anxious to preserve the matrimonial alliance that he had negotiated with Spain, arranged for Arthur’s brother Henry (later King Henry VIII) to “inherit” Catherine of Aragon, his deceased brother’s wife. The older Henry had paid the appropriate fees to the Courts of the Vatican, and had secured a Papal dispensation for young Henry to marry Katherine.

So, it could be done: but just look at the troubles that that irregular wedding had caused ! The Popes had, ever since, regretted it, and the French had no wish to try to obtain a dispensation for Mary to marry Charles. So Mary remained for a while at the French Court, enjoying herself in a way, at masked balls and other entertainments, but she soon wanted to do something more fulfilling. She decided to return to Scotland, and become Queen of her own country.

She asked her cousin Elizabeth for a passport (we would now call it a visa) to travel across England, to go to Edinburgh, and to occupy her rightful Throne. That was the obvious route to travel, but Mary also wanted to meet Elizabeth, and hoped that the two queens could, by a personal meeting, resolve all sorts of issues. Prominent among these issues was Mary’s claim to the English Throne.

This claim was based on her descent from Henry VII of England (through Henry’s daughter, Margaret). If you believed that Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was unlawful (and Catholics did believe that), then Elizabeth was illegitimate, and could not inherit the English Throne: so that Throne should pass to the legitimate heir, who was Queen Mary of Scotland.

However, Mary did not wish to press Elizabeth too hard. She proposed that Queen Elizabeth could occupy the English Throne for the duration of her life, but on her death, she would be succeeded by Queen Mary, or, if Mary died first, by Mary’s children (of whom there were none so far). Mary was even willing to accept that if Elizabeth married, and had children, it would be not the Stewarts but her own children who would be her heirs. But Elizabeth refused to issue a passport, and so, in 1561, Mary defied her by taking the sea route, across the North Sea, once again in a French warship. She landed at Leith, and found her Kingdom rent by division between the Reformers, who ran the Church in most of the cities and burghs of the South, and the clan chieftains, who ruled the North, spoke only Gaelic, and were still Catholic.

Mary, like her mother Marie of Guise before her, was permitted the use of her private chapel in Holyrood House for the celebration of the Mass, but John Knox grudged her even that, and railed against her idolatry. Trying to meet him halfway, she took to attending one service a week in St. Giles’ Church in Edinburgh. Fortunately she still understood very little Scottish, so she did not understand the furious denunciations which Knox poured down upon her, from the pulpit just above her pew.

More agreeably, the Spanish ambassador approached her with an interesting proposition. He asked her if she would consider marriage with a lively lad named Carlos, who was the eldest son of King Felipe II of Spain. (Carlos was Felipe’s son by his first marriage, before he met Mary Tudor.). Felipe would have been delighted to have been able to marry Mary Stewart himself, the ambassador said, but unfortunately, since Mary Tudor’s sad death, he had married another woman, so the Queen of Scotland would have to be content with marrying his son and heir.

Felipe, of course, regretted the loss of his English foot·hold. He wanted Scotland as a “second best”, as it would still serve to threaten France (and England) from the North, and the Dutch rebels from the West.

Mary expressed interest, but then an appalling accident happened, very reminiscent of the accident, described in last month’s “Signpost”, which led to the death of Amy Dudley. Don Carlos, the so-called lively lad, had been chasing a reluctant servant-maid through the upper landings of the Escorial Palace, when he tripped and fell beside a stair-head, and fell down the well of the stairway, on to a stone floor, several stories below.

Servants (perhaps including the reluctant servant-maid) rushed to pick him up. He was still alive, but completely unconscious. He was put to bed, and physicians and surgeons were sent for. It was soon realised that he was in what we now call a coma. He continued breathing, but remained unconscious, and unable to do anything for himself. He could only be fed through a specially-made feeding tube.

The best surgeons in Italy were sent for, and by trepanning his skull, to remove pressure on the brain, they brought him back to consciousness. It seems that they were almost better than today’s surgeons, but Don Carlos’ recovery was not complete. He remained dull-brained, slow-witted, and pretty much of an idiot.

Queen Mary was not impressed. When the Spanish ambassador returned to Holyrood House, she told him firmly, “No thankyou”.

She also spent a lot of time with the English ambassador. She was still wanting to arrange a personal meeting with Queen Elizabeth about how, after Elizabeth’s death, the English Succession would be arranged. The two Queens discussed a personal meeting in either Berwick (on the border) or York (half-way between London and Edinburgh).

But then, in 1562, far away in France, in the village of Vassy, in Champagne, the Duke of Guise (a distant relative of Queen Mary, from her mother’s family) was riding through the countryside with an escort of armed men, when he came across a party of Huguenots (Protestants), some of them armed, who were holding an illegal prayer- meeting in a barn. He ordered his men to attack them, and the unprepared Huguenots were massacred Reprisals against Catholics were taken, and the Kingdom of France, erupted in religious discord (the Wars of Religion), and looked as if it might soon disintegrate.

Queen Elizabeth now refused to consider a meeting in York or Berwick. She insisted in staying in the South, in case the conflict in France crossed the Channel to England. Once again Mary was thwarted.

Queen Mary spent the next few years trying to subdue some troublesome Highland clans. Generally she directed military operations from Edinburgh, but sometimes she rode with her troops. On one occasion she is said to have led a charge, riding astride, with two pistols in her belt, and waving a third in her hand (not having been a boy, she had never been taught swordsmanship in her youth).

One result of these campaigns was, of course, the weakening of the clan system, and the entry of the Reformers into the Highlands Cathedrals and kirks were one by one converted for Presbyterian worship, until all Scotland (save only Barra, South Uist and Ardnamurchan, which were never “reformed”) accepted the new discipline.

Mary remained personally a Catholic, attending the Mass in the chapel of Holyrood House, accompanied by a few loyal servants, of whom the most forward was a Piedmontese secretary (and musician) called David Rizzio.

However, she realised she needed a husband, and when she met Henry Darnley (he had many titles, but we will call him that), she realised that that was the man for her. He was tall, about six-and-ahalf feet, even taller than her (she was a six-footer). When she danced with him, she was, for the first time in her life, “over-topped” by her partner, and she found the experience delightful.

After refusing Queen Elizabeth’s kind offer of her discarded suitor Robert Dudley as a “companion”, and feeling insulted about it, she intimated to Darnley that it was time for a proposal. The result was a royal wedding, in 1565, four years after he had first danced with her.

He was proclaimed as “Henry, King of Scots”, but he soon found that he was frozen out of all governmental business, and was only required at dances and at night-time. He grew increasingly disgruntled, and began, in his cups, to express treasonable thoughts to his friends. However, reconciliation took place at night, in the bedchamber, and in the autumn of 1565, Mary became pregnant.

Darnley, however, was not happy with the situation, and, rightly or wrongly, he suspected that Mary and Rizzio were lovers. In March, 1566, he, together with a group of bravoes and hard-drinkers burst into a private chamber in Holyrood House, where Queen Mary was having supper, along with five guests, one of whom was Rizzio. They drew their swords, causing panic, and murdered Rizzio, right in front of Mary, now six months’ pregnant. The Queen became hysterical as Rizzio, clinging to her gown, was hacked to pieces before her eyes. That done, the murderers departed, killing a Catholic priest on their way out.

Mary left Holyrood, and moved to quarters in Edinburgh Castle, where she may have felt safer. There she was safely delivered of a child, the future James VI. The conspirators meantime had fallen out among themselves, and Darnley had also left Holyrood, and moved to Kirk o’ Fields, the house of s friend. Though neither Darnley nor his friend had ordered any gunpowder, delivery men started arriving, and placing barrels of it in the cellars of the house. It was later assumed that they were in Queen Mary’s employment.

Then, one night, when Darnley and others were in bed, the whole place exploded. Several people were killed, and Darnley’s body was found in the garden. Some said that he had been killed in the explosion, but others said that his still-living body had been stabbed by one of Queen Mary’s men.

She was now, of course a widow again. So ended Queen Mary’s second marriage. It certainly finished with a bang.

But when she returned to Holyrood, she brought a baby boy with her. This was the future King James, the man who would at long last unite the Kingdoms of Scotland and England under his rule. . . . .

Dick Toy

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