Mary Queen of Scots (24 page)

Lacking the charm of his father, Lord James was a man of solemn manner and appearance; yet this
gravitas
, so unlike the qualities of the contemporary French nobility, was to prove highly successful in impressing the English when he dealt with them. From his Stewart father, James had inherited at least a subtlety lacking in many of his contemporaries among the Scottish nobility, which to the English made him seem a distinct improvement on his peers – or perhaps this fortunate ability to deal with England could be attributed to the fact that he was also one quarter Tudor. The English were delighted to be able to discern in him what they supposed to be a type of new Scotsman, upright, serious-minded and full of conscious rectitude, frequently given public expression, who seemed to them a distinct advance on the self-seeking Scottish nobles of the previous generation. Although more gifted politically than the sons of his fellow-nobles, Lord James was in fact far from immune from that practical avarice so characteristic of the Scottish nobility of this period – nor did he lack the hypocrisy which so often accompanies frequent public statements of the subject of honour. But this temperament, and above all the quality of his religious views, which fitted in so well with those of the English politicians of the period like Cecil, meant that he was always able to deal easily, if not honourably, with his English equivalents, and this was to give him a practical advantage in Anglo-Scottish affairs at a later stage in his half-sister’s career.

On his way to France on this occasion, Lord James had stopped in England: he certainly conferred with Cecil, with whom he had an old friendship, and may even have stayed in his house. His interview with Mary, held at St Dizier, was not unsatisfactory to both the participants, despite their widely differing points of view. Lord James had been instructed to ask the queen to embrace the Scottish Protestant faith: this she steadily refused to do. But she did state with some courage that she was prepared to come home without any other restrictions, or a personal armed escort, provided she could have use of her own religion in private. This Lord James himself had already expressed publicly to the Scots as being an acceptable demand. When it was suggested to him that the celebration of any sort of Mass, public or private, within the realm of Scotland would be a betrayal of the cause of God, he replied reasonably enough that this might indeed apply to a public Mass – ‘but to have it secretly in her (Mary’s) chamber, who could stop her?’
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Mary also allowed herself to be convinced by Lord James that it was politically wise to give the Protestant party its head for the time being in Scotland, although James later told Throckmorton Mary had begun the interview by offering him a cardinal’s hat, and several rich benefices in France, if he in turn would forswear Protestantism. The sacrifice of the prospect of these rich benefices did not mean that Lord James’s mind was altogether concentrated on Scottish affairs, on this occasion, to the exclusion of personal gain, since he almost certainly took the opportunity to ask his half-sister for the rich earldom of Moray. Apart from the general understanding which they had reached on the subject of her return, Mary must also have been impressed as a result of this meeting with the notion that Lord James would constitute her natural adviser in Scotland, by virtue of their blood connection, as the Guises had done in France. She had emphasized to Throckmorton that she was prepared to listen to advice, and even if all Lord James’s advice had not been to her liking, the basis for some tolerable
modus vivendi
, in the event of her return, had at least been reached between them.

Yet Lord James was very far from being a Scottish Guise, in any sense of the word; his next actions showed that in his order of loyalties he placed the interests of the Scottish Protestant party, as embodied in an English alliance, well above those of his sister’s confidence. Returning to Paris, he went secretly to Throckmorton’s lodgings, and, in Throckmorton’s own words, ‘declared unto me at good length all that passed between the Queen, his sister and him, and between the Cardinal of Lorraine and him’.
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Throckmorton in turn passed the information on to Elizabeth. Although James did actually inform Mary that he had met Throckmorton, he presumably did not impart to her the full nature of their discourses. On his way back to Scotland, Lord James once again stopped in England, and conferred with Cecil: it has been suggested on the evidence of Camden’s Annals, that during his two weeks in London, James suggested to Elizabeth that she should provide for her religion and her safety by intercepting Mary on her journey back to Scotland.
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But in fact, he had little motive for doing so, so long as Mary showed herself so adaptable, and so amenable to his advice; his subsequent actions show that his real intentions were to keep in well with both queens, rather than secure the captivity of one by the other. The prospect of a Queen Mary on the throne of Scotland, dependent on his counsels, and Queen Elizabeth on the throne of England, favourable to his policies, opened up new and agreeable avenues of ambition
to Lord James. In the meantime James certainly won golden opinions from Throckmorton as a result of his confidences, who despite their illicit nature, wrote ecstatically that he was ‘one of the most virtuous noblemen, and one in whom religion, sincerity and magnanimity as much reign as ever he knew in any man in any nation’. He also took care to suggest that there should be a genuinely silver lining to this cloud of intrigue – in the shape of a distribution of £20,000 sterling, among the chief men of Scotland, to include Châtelherault and, of course, Lord James.

James’s advice to his sister on the subject of the Scottish Protestants accorded well with what Mary had already been told from other sources about the Scottish situation. Throckmorton heard that even the king of Spain had advised her to be prepared to temporize in matters of religion, on her first arrival. Melville tells us that all the Frenchmen who had recently returned from Scotland advised her to be most familiar with James, Argyll, Maitland and Kirkcaldy of Grange, in short to learn to repose most upon the members of the reformed religion.
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Such practical advice, coloured by tolerance, accorded well with Mary’s own temperament and religious convictions. In religious matters, her leaning was towards the tolerance of her mother, rather than the fanaticism of a cardinal of Guise. As a born Catholic, who had known no other creed, her faith was to her like her everyday bread, something which she took for granted, and yet which was essential to her, and without which she could not imagine her existence; it was, however, in no sense an Old Testament faith, a fierce Moloch of a faith, which demanded the sacrifice of all other faiths to propitiate it, such as animated Philip
II
of Spain.

Mary’s innate clemency in matters of religion has sometimes been mistaken for lukewarm convictions. The truth was that she drew a clear distinction between private faith and public policy. She herself gave Throckmorton the most explicit avowal of her beliefs, on the eve of her departure for Scotland:
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‘I will be plain with you,’ she told him. ‘The religion which I profess I take to be the most acceptable to God; and, indeed, neither do I know, nor desire to know any other. Constancy becometh all folks well, and none better than princes, and such as have rule over realms, and specially in matters of religion. I have been brought up in this religion; and who aught would credit me in anything if I should show myself higher in this case.’ This eloquent profession of faith can scarcely be bettered as the personal apologia of a ruler, who at the same time believed in toleration and mercy for those around her. Although Randolph wrote when she was in Scotland: ‘She wishes that all men should live as they please’,
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Knox was quick to realize that such permissiveness did not mean,
as some suggested in October 1561, that the queen herself should ever be of their opinion. Mary’s personal Catholicism was total, her attitude to a state religion inclined to be pragmatic.

Mary’s pilgrimage among her Guise relations culminated in a visit to the court of Lorraine, where Duchess Claude, her erstwhile friend, reigned in state. Claude was not destined to atone in public for the private disloyalty of her sister Elisabeth. The princess had grown proud, and used to the adulation of her little court; the widowed queen found little feminine consolation in her company. Nevertheless the Lorrainers gave her a grandiose reception, and ‘a magnificent triumph’ was planned, with cannons discharged from the city walls of Nancy, in her honour. Bishop Leslie describes how Mary was further entertained with hunting in the fields, and pleasant farces and plays.
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These diversions did not prevent her falling ill with one of those tertian fevers to which she was so subject. It is possible that the attack was induced by the mental stress of deciding about her future, now that the negotiations for the Spanish marriage were finally halted. The attack was certainly sufficiently severe and prolonged to prevent her arriving at Rheims in time for the coronation of the young Charles
IX
as she had planned. Instead her grandmother fetched her from Nancy to Joinville, and here even on 25 May, she was still in bed in the throes of a prolonged convalescence, and not allowed to speak to anyone except her doctors. However, by 28 May she had managed to reach Rheims, and was there entertained once again by her aunt the abbess and her uncle the cardinal. On 10 June, Mary finally returned once more to the environs of the French court, from which she had been absent for a critical three months. Her return was accompanied by the formal rejoicings which befitted her rank as a dowager queen of France. She was officially greeted a league outside Paris by the duke of Orleans, the king of Navarre, the prince of Condé and the other princes of the blood, who accompanied her in state into the town. Here she was conducted to her actual lodgings within the palace by the king, the queen mother and the entire court.

Whether Mary’s illness was induced by indecision or not, by the time she returned to the court from her wanderings, her mind was evidently made up to return to Scotland. Although a number of factors induced her to reach this decision, it was not the only alternative open to her. Despite the secret hostility of Catherine, Mary’s rank in France entitled her to an honourable position at the French court, from which it would have been difficult to dislodge her, if she had been determined to maintain it. Her marriage contract to Francis specifically stated that in the event of his
death, she was to be allowed the choice of remaining in France or returning to Scotland. Her marriage portion had made her duchess of Touraine, and her estates there and in Poitou were sufficiently widespread and lucrative to have maintained her in an adequate state; the Guise family, although somewhat blighted, were not totally destitute of power; if she remained on the Continent, it was not likely to be long before some more ardent royal suitor than Don Carlos emerged. To Mary herself must be given the credit of having personally settled for a bold course of adventure, rather than the more placid less demanding existence which it would still have been possible for her to lead in France. The truth was that even as a young girl, Mary showed signs of having a gambling streak, and she was certainly singularly unendowed with conservatism in her nature: the familiar path was never to her automatically the most attractive path while there was another more daring route to be explored. Life in France, as she had known it so gloriously, appeared to have come to an end; but on the horizon, Scotland beckoned, which might provide in time – who could tell, but Mary was an optimist – as many golden opportunities.

As it happened, at the same moment the Scots themselves were beginning to feel more warmly about their absent queen. Among the politicians, it was the quick-witted Maitland with his sense of international values who pointed out that Mary’s dynastic claim to the English throne could now work to the advantage of Scotland, rather than France, if she returned to her own country. They suddenly realized that a malleable young ruler, with a strong personal claim to succeed to the neighbouring throne, and apparently prepared to behave reasonably over religion was certainly not to be discarded in a hurry. As a result of these cogitations, Lord James wrote a letter on 10 June which constituted a virtual invitation on behalf of the Protestant lords to return. Maidand himself wrote to Mary promising to do all he could for her service. Scotland for Mary therefore was not a
pis aller
, but a hopeful venture, in which her Guise blood encouraged her to expect success.

Neither Moray nor Maitland was especially put out by the fact that Mary still declined to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh: not unnaturally they shared Mary’s view that it was a subject that could be best dealt with once she had returned to Scotland and could consult her Council. Throckmorton on the other hand was still desperately hoping to secure the ratification. He sent Somer to Nancy in April and to Rheims in May: both missions were fruitless. Now that Mary was returning to the French court, he begged her with renewed fervour to grant long-withheld ratification. At an audience of 18 June, Mary pointed out that her health was still too
frail for serious consideration of such matters, but she went on to say that since in any case she intended to return to Scotland very shortly, she would defer her answer until she had the advice of the Estates and nobles of her own realm. She told Throckmorton that she intended to embark shortly at Calais, and to this effect d’Oysel was being sent to Elizabeth with a message asking for a safe-conduct on her route back to Scotland.
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But when d’Oysel had his interview with Elizabeth on 13 July requesting a passport for Mary, the English queen at once asked him whether he had brought the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh with him. D’Oysel replied that he had no instructions on the subject. At this he was greeted by such hostility from Elizabeth – as well as a blank refusal to give the safe-conduct – that when Mary next spoke with Throckmorton she ironically suggested they should draw apart, in case he angered her by his speech, as she herself did not wish to be witnessed giving such a display of ‘choler and stomache’ as Elizabeth had shown to d’Oysel.
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Elizabeth’s behaviour smacks of childish pique rather than statecraft, and it was not well regarded at the time, even by her own ambassador. Throckmorton was frankly amazed at the refusal and said so to Cecil: in his opinion, the sooner Mary was plucked out of the tangled web of continental intrigue, into the comparative safety of distant Scotland, the better it would be for England. The Scots were appalled, since their avowed aim in the words of Maitland was to see both queens ‘as near friends, as they were tender cousins’, with a view to getting Elizabeth to recognize Mary as her heir; now here was one tender cousin treating the other in a way more likely to lead to distant enmity than near friendship. The Venetian ambassador, a more impartial judge of the situation, described the refusal as contrary to expectation and certainty, as well as being in opposition to the dictates of humanity.
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