An Accidental Tragedy (19 page)

Since the voyage had been so fast and the Scots lords had not thought to post look-outs, there was no one to meet the royal party and Mary, wearing her
deuil blanc
with her Maries in the more conventional black or grey, stepped ashore alone in the fog and the rain. Cannon were fired from her galley to notify the town and a messenger was sent into Edinburgh to fetch help – the horses were still in Tynemouth – while the royal party approached the most prosperous house they could discern in the fog. It belonged to an astonished merchant, Andrew Lamb, who managed to arrange a makeshift luncheon for his unexpected royal guests. Two hours later, the breathless Châtelherault arrived with apologies, followed shortly by the official welcoming party of Lord James, the Earl of Argyll and Erskine of Dun with horses and even more apologies. Messengers were sent to make hasty preparations at Holyrood, which was not yet entirely ready, so Mary and her dripping wet entourage set off on what was hardly an
entrée joyeuse
. It goes without saying that Mary wept at the squalor of her reception and Brantôme tells us that she felt she had exchanged Paradise for Hell, although he was probably speaking for himself.

Hardly had they set out when they were approached by a party of petitioners. A month previously a Feast of Misrule had taken place in Edinburgh and one John Gillon, a tailor, had played the part of Robin Hood, the ‘Lord of Inobedience’. This was a festival of mischievous nonsense, and ‘Robin Hood’ was given licence to indulge in petty pilfering for the day – although most of the goods were returned. Heavy drinking and casual sex also played major roles and the festival had got out of hand. Gillon had been arrested and sentenced to death, expecting the sentence to be reduced to a judicial whipping in accordance with tradition, but Knox had forbidden the pardon. On the day of Mary’s arrival a mob had broken into the Tolbooth – Edinburgh’s civic jail – and rescued Gillon. He was now on his knees, as was the mob, before Mary and begging for his life. She had not the slightest idea of what was going on, or of what the condemned man was accused of, but was advised, probably by Lord
James, to grant the pardon, and the mob returned to Edinburgh shouting the praises of a beautiful and merciful queen. Politically this was the perfect start to her reign – today it would be a photo opportunity – and cannot have been a pure coincidence. By the time Mary arrived at Holyrood there were bonfires lit around the city to welcome the new and merciful queen who, the populace had been informed, had paid Scotland the compliment of landing without a bodyguard. Mary had only been in her kingdom for a few hours and, unknowingly, she had already been manipulated by her nobles. All of this, to say nothing of the laggard welcome and the weather, were completely unexpected and quite unlike anything she had ever experienced before; neither had any of the accounts of the political and religious changes in Scotland prepared her for it. She now faced an impossibly steep learning curve.

It is fair to say that any memories Mary retained from her infancy in Scotland would have been of no use whatsoever since during her absence the country had undergone one of the most profound changes in its history. Calls to Queen Regent Marie for greater tolerance toward the Protestant faith by such nobles as Lord James Stewart and Erskine of Dun had fallen on deaf ears; the Catholic Mary Tudor had ruled England with fierce intolerance; the absentee Queen Mary had become Queen of France, and Marie de Guise was firm in her resolve to contain, or even to reverse, the reforming movement. The exiled Knox had returned briefly in the winter of 1555/56 and dined with Erskine of Dun and Maitland of Lethington, but his presence was only tolerated provided he maintained a low profile. Since his profile was never low, he returned to Europe to bombard Scotland with the inspirational letters of an exiled leader. On 3 December 1557 the earls of Argyll, Glencairn and Morton, along with Lord Lorne and Lord Erskine, had signed the Band of Congregation, openly declaring their Protestant faith and, in so doing, becoming an alternative government to that of the queen regent. They were now the Lords of the Congregation and their reformed faith attracted growing support from the minor lairdry and some of
the burgh elite – provided, of course, it did not interfere with trade.

In 1558 Christopher Goodman, a fellow minister of Knox in Geneva, had published
How Superior Powers ought to be Obeyed
. In it he had argued that the people had the power and the moral authority to remove the government if it did not conform to their ideas of good administration and justice. This was totally revolutionary and highly suspicious to the nobility, but Marie had inflamed the majority of Scotland and reaffirmed the need for reform by the totally unnecessary burning of Walter Myln, a harmless eighty-year-old schoolmaster of ‘decrepit age’ who had been arrested for teaching a child its catechism. To the eternal credit of the town of St Andrews the civic authorities had flatly refused to take part in the martyrdom and the churchmen had had to perform the grisly deed themselves. Unfortunately they had bungled the affair, prolonging the old man’s agonies unnecessarily.

On 17 November 1558 Mary Tudor had died, and the Protestant Elizabeth had become Queen of England. Then in early May of the following year Knox had returned to Scotland. Marie, her resolution hardening, had outlawed the Lords of the Congregation, who had gathered in Perth – then called St Johnston – where Knox preached against idolatry in the Church of the Holy Cross and St John the Baptist. The result had been a riot in which all the decorations of the church were destroyed by what Knox called the ‘rascal multitude’ – for whose acts he never took responsibility – and the fire of reform had burst into flame with a sporadic war breaking out between the Lords and the queen regent. Both sides had suffered changes of fortune and defections, but the end had been put beyond all doubt when Elizabeth had sent military help to her fellow Protestants. Marie’s death on 11 June 1560 had marked the end of hostilities and paved the way for the Treaty of Edinburgh and the meeting on 8 August of the Reformation Parliament.

Technically, since the queen had not summoned the parliament, it had no validity, but the presence of the three estates of the nation in Edinburgh had given it all the authority it needed. Knox had preached for a religious settlement to be included –
according to Randolph, the English ambassador, ‘Mr Knox spareth not to tell them’ – and had begged that the Catholic clergy be excluded from the second estate. This did not happen, but, in the event, most of them stayed away. One of the first actions of the parliament had been for Speaker Lethington – he was called ‘Harangue Maker’ – to ask Knox to prepare a Confession of Faith. This endorsed the Protestant faith and could easily have been written in Geneva. Parliament had gone further by outlawing the Mass in Scotland and completely rejecting the authority of Rome. The celebration of Christmas and Easter had been banned as being Papist and idolatrous, but, perhaps wisely, the pagan festival of Hogmanay had been left untouched. Scotland had now become a totally Protestant country and a commission had been sent to France asking for Mary’s endorsement of these sanctions as well as her signature to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. This was when Lord James Stewart had arrived ‘to grope the young Queen’s mind’. He wisely had not pressed the points of her endorsements. Her acceptance of the Acts of the Reformation Parliament was vital for the peace of mind of the Lords since, in 1555, an agreement had been reached in Augsburg, principally to end the various wars and skirmishes between Catholic and Protestant factions in Germany, but with an overriding clause allowing that a ruler could personally decide on the legal religion of his – or her – subjects. Although this Peace of Augsburg had no legal force in Scotland, it could have been used as a dangerous precedent since Scotland was not simply a small country on the northern fringes of civilisation, but was subject to the pull of European tides. Therefore, what was current practice in Augsburg could have soon become a bone of contention in Edinburgh. Unsurprisingly, no endorsement of either the treaty or the Acts of the Reformation Parliament had been received, although Mary had endorsed the principle of ‘amity’ with England. With both Scotland and England now in the Protestant camp, this ‘amity’ was more important to the Scots than the Auld Alliance had been.

Meanwhile, Knox had produced a draft of the
Book of Discipline
and had presented it to an assembly of the reformed church, which was, in effect, the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This was rejected and the consultative committee was widened to redraft the book. This was a far-reaching proposal for the parishes – roughly equivalent to today’s parliamentary constituencies. Each parish was to elect a committee, or ‘session’, which would appoint the minister and the schoolteacher, teaching a surprisingly liberal range of subjects. The sessions were answerable to synods, although including some laymen, and all were answerable to the annual General Assembly which now formed the clerical estate. Secondary schools and universities were included in Knox’s proposal, with a range of fees making universal tertiary education available and, indeed, even obligatory to those who were ‘docile’ – in other words, of sufficient ability. The whole would be financed by the income from confiscated Catholic ecclesiastic revenues. Unfortunately most of the confiscated church revenues were already in the hands of the nobility, who were reluctant to give them up, so the book received praise but no financial support. Recently, a very senior Scottish political leader was asked what, in theory, he would do with such a document presented to him today as a green paper. His response was that he would sing its praises from the rooftops and then ask his civil servants quietly to bury it.

In Scotland there had by no means been an overwhelming call for Mary’s return since many people saw her as a possible replica of her mother, and on 9 August Randolph reported to Cecil, ‘Some care not though they never saw her face.’ The Earl of Huntly’s wife consulted her ‘familiars’ – she maintained a private coven of witches – and was assured that Mary would ‘never set foot on Scottish ground’.

Mary’s plans, however, had been made without regard to Scottish opinion; her relations with France had been severed, and, like it or not, Scotland now had a queen regnant whose actions would be closely watched for any signs of persecution or tolerance, and her choice of privy councillors would be examined
as closely as the Roman augurs picked over the entrails of sacrificial animals – that is, unless Mary herself was that sacrificial animal. Whatever was to happen, the new queen had now arrived at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which was to be her home for the next six years.

As she approached the palace from the hill of Abbeymount to the north, the sight lifted her spirits. A richly carved gateway, surmounted by James V’s coat of arms, led into a wide forecourt beyond which was the west front, finished in the best French style, with a rectangular tower at the north-west corner and the old abbey church nestling against the north side. The abbey had been restored after the Rough Wooing, but it would, technically at least, be limited to members of the Protestant faith since a new royal chapel had been built by James V in the south quarter and would be Mary’s private chapel. The entrance led into an inner courtyard, with the royal apartments on the west side and, to the east, a range of buildings providing accommodation for the court and the officers of state. The building was surrounded by a huge royal park with three lochs, dominated by the volcanic plug of Arthur’s Seat with the spectacular crags to its west. In the forecourt there was space for a tiltyard to be constructed, and there were plentiful private gardens and stabling beyond the main building to the east. It was a far cry from the magnificence of Chambord or the charm of Chenonceau, but it was certainly not squalor and it represented a welcome shelter from the rain. Grooms rushed to take the horses and Mary was shown to her private quarters on the first floor: an audience chamber, measuring about fifty feet by twenty with a table and stools; a hastily lit warming fire; and a bed which would be disassembled during the day to provide a private chamber. Servants were unpacking what had been carried from the ships at Leith – the bulk of Mary’s goods were still impounded at Tynemouth. Mary went on to inspect her private supper room, which was in fact a tiny twelve-foot square closet with a fireplace and windows opening from her bedroom. All the windows faced west and the quarters were still rather dingily decorated, although she had a clear view of
Edinburgh, half a mile distant and now ablaze with celebratory bonfires.

By dark, an impromptu band of musicians and singers had assembled in the forecourt below her windows. According to Knox, ‘a company of the most honest, with instruments of music and musicians gave their salutations at her chamber window’. ‘The melody’, as she alleged, ‘liked her well; and she willed the same to be continued for some nights after.’ Knox was not present, but Brantôme was, and he gave a different view of the same event: ‘Five or six hundred knaves of the town came under her window, with wretched fiddles and sung psalms so badly and out of tune that nothing could be worse.’ Admittedly Brantôme was by now a convinced Scottophobe, but to one raised on the court music of Jannequin and de Sermisy the first contact with Protestant psalms chanted throughout the night must have been a considerable culture shock.

By the next day the nobility had made themselves ready and ‘all men [were] welcome and well received, with good entertainment great cheer and fair words’. Even the most firmly Protestant knew that preferment sprang first from the crown, and a new queen, albeit a Catholic, might wish to ingratiate herself with her subjects by being lavish. These men were aristocrats and their first loyalty was to their newly arrived queen, so their immediate response was to visit and pay homage. Later they would make personal judgments as to the strength of their loyalty. They had all taken part in the Reformation Parliament and had dutifully listened to Knox’s sermons, but he himself had said ‘the belly hath no ears’, and the nobility of Scotland had a very great regard for their bellies. The doors of Holyrood began to resemble the door of 21st-century No. 10 Downing Street with a Cabinet reshuffle in progress. The Reformation, which was still young, could easily now be reversed.