Mary Queen of Scots (32 page)

Despite these setbacks, articles for the proposed meeting were agreed on, and duly ratified by Elizabeth. In the articles, York was suggested as the best venue, and the dates mentioned were between 20 August and 20 September. Later, Sheffield House, which was to feature again in the years of Mary’s captivity, was put forward as a possible site, before Nottingham was fixed upon in the preliminary arrangements. Maitland optimistically termed Elizabeth to be ‘earnest bent’ on the project; on 10 June she wrote a letter to this effect to Mary, which pleased the Scottish queen so much that she placed it sentimentally in her bosom, next to her skin. When Maitland returned to Mary in Scotland with the good news, he brought with him Elizabeth’s portrait. Mary, with typical female curiosity, asked Randolph whether the likeness was a good one, to which Randolph replied that soon she would be able to judge for herself. Mary exclaimed that this was what she most desired – she hoped that they would strike such deep accord at the meeting, that afterwards the most painful thing which could happen to either of them would be that they had to take leave of each other.
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In London the prospect of the encounter was considered sufficiently certain for the actual masques to be devised which were to entertain the two queens, the chosen allegorical theme being the punishment of False Report and Discord by Jupiter at the request of Prudence and Temperance. The detailed and long-winded plans for the masques – three nights of them – were vetted personally by Cecil and much courtly care was exercised in the delicate task of balancing the allegorical compliments to both royal ladies.
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Unfortunately False Report and Discord were in the end never destined to be consigned to the prison of Extreme Oblivion at the instance of Prudence and Temperance. At the very last minute, with that element of unhappy fatality which never seems far absent from the story of Mary Stuart, the meeting had to be put off – through no lack of keenness on the part of Elizabeth, or the objections of the English Council, but owing to the explosive situation in the rest of Europe. It was to be France, the country for which Mary felt such poignant affection, the country she still
secretly thought of as her native land, whose chaotic affairs proved a sudden stumbling-block in the way of the long-desired meeting. On 1 March 1562 the duke of Guise ordered his followers to fire on a Protestant prayer-meeting at Vassy; the next month Catholics and Huguenots in France were at war with each other. The natural sympathies of Mary would have been supposed to lie with her Guise uncles and the Catholics; the natural sympathies of Elizabeth with the Huguenots. It was a point Throckmorton made from France, when he instantly urged Elizabeth to back the Huguenots, as Spain was likely to intervene on behalf of the Catholics. But although Mary might weep, torn between anxiety for her uncles and fear for her English negotiations, throughout the summer she had not allowed her sympathies with France to override her political designs on England. Elizabeth answered her Council personally when they tried to use the urgency of the French situation to dissuade her from meeting the half-French Catholic queen of Scotland at such a juncture. Cecil continued to hope very practically that the interview might at least lead to a number of benefits for England – the confirmation of the Treaty of Edinburgh, the breaking off of the Franco-Scottish alliance, or even the conversion of Mary from the ‘Roman Religion’.
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On 25 June peace was agreed in France and on 6 July Elizabeth finally settled that she should set out for the meeting as arranged. On 8 July Cecil prepared a safe-conduct for Mary. But on 12 July the French peace collapsed, the war was renewed; Elizabeth had to admit that it was no longer possible for her to set out for the distant north of England with civil strife raging so closely just across the Channel, in which at any moment England might have to intervene, if Spain did likewise.

Mary first heard the news of the sudden débâcle of her plans from Maitland. She took refuge in a violent flood of tears, and kept to her bed for the rest of the day, nursing the cruel and unexpected disappointment. The next day she received Elizabeth’s envoy, Sir Henry Sidney, who had been despatched to Scotland on 15 July to acquaint her with the course of events. Sir Henry brought with him a more consoling piece of intelligence: Elizabeth offered to plan the interview for the next year, 1563, between 20 May and 31 August, at York, Pomfret, Nottingham, or some other place nominated by Mary. Mary allowed herself to be comforted by the thought that the meeting was only postponed, not cancelled, and her spirits revived. After all, her personal energy and enthusiasm, aided by the skill of Maitland, had been within an ace of achieving this great diplomatic coup, and only circumstances, not Elizabeth’s own intentions had prevented it. With the natural optimism of her nature, she convinced herself that in
the mirror of the future, that dark and cloudy surface, she could see reflected the image of success, only a year away. Little did she know that this image was merely an illusion – that the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, which has been so often fabled by poets and dramatists, the possible consequences of which are incalculable, but must surely have been immensely favourable to Mary, was destined never to take place.

10 Governor Good and Gracious

While Mary negotiated for the throne of distant England, the boisterous spirits of her Scottish nobles presented her with certain very different problems at home, involving not only the public peace but her own physical safety. While Lord James, whom Mary considered to be her natural protector, was away on the borders dispensing justice, there was a sudden alarm that Châtelherault’s eldest son, the eccentric earl of Arran, intended to abduct the queen. Although the court sprang to the alarm, it subsequently turned out that rumours of the plot had originated in a chance remark of Arran’s; in fact that the only true stability that the nervous and highly-strung man showed in his wavering career was in his neurotic fixation on his cousin Mary. The next crisis had more substance to it. A mutual hatred existed between James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, and the Hamiltons, and Bothwell decided to win the favours of an Edinburgh girl Alison Craik (‘a good handsome wench’ said Randolph)
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in order to practise a crude revenge on Arran ‘whose whore the said Alison was suspected to have been’. Bothwell, Mary’s half-brother Lord John Stewart and her Uncle René of Elboeuf (who lingered on in Scotland after the departure of her other Guise relations) gained entry to the house of Alison’s step-father, an Edinburgh merchant, on the first night wearing masks; the second night, they were denied admittance, either because Alison did not choose to betray Arran with his political enemies or because she simply did not care to repeat the experience. Whereupon Elboeuf and Bothwell forced their way in. The result was an uproar. The Church Assembly presented a horrified petition to the queen and the Protestants seized the opportunity to suggest that such conduct was typical of a Catholic degenerate like Elboeuf. Mary herself had a prudish horror of such bawdy behaviour:
it ill accorded with her own refined interpretation of court life, and she administered a stern rebuke to Elboeuf and Bothwell.

Undismayed by this rebuke, Bothwell and Lord John boldly threatened to repeat the offence the next night, and defied anyone to stop them. At this the Hamiltons took furious umbrage and assembled aggressively in the market-place armed with spears and jacks. It was now Bothwell’s turn to gather up a muster of his own adherents. At the prospect of what looked like being an ugly affray, the townsmen were summoned by the common bell, and Elboeuf’s Gallic spirits were so roused that he declared ten men would not be able to hold him back from the battle (but as he was within the royal gates of Holyrood, and the main action was centred between the Cross and the Salt Tron, in the city itself, the prospect of his intervention was somewhat limited). At the last minute it was Lord James, Argyll and Huntly, rushing down from the court, who managed to disperse the assailants. The whole incident illustrated the swift rough passions which ran so high in Mary’s nobles; in these disputes, animated by long-held family hatreds, the queen appeared in the role of an outsider.

The third incident once again involved Arran and Bothwell. At Christmas Mary had been unable to reconcile them, and Bothwell had been obliged to leave the court in the general interests of peace. Towards the end of March, these two contentious nobles were once more on amicable terms, largely as a result of the good offices of John Knox. No sooner had the reconciliation taken place than Arran went to Knox with a disreputable story about Bothwell.
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Bothwell, he said, had suggested to him that they should join together in a conspiracy, by which James and Maitland would be slain, and the queen herself abducted by force to Dumbarton Castle. After that, he, Bothwell, would share the rule of the kingdom with Arran Not content with his revelation to Knox, Arran wrote a full account of the matter to Mary and James, who were then at Falkland, saying that Bothwell’s true motive in the matter was to bring about the ruin of the House of Hamilton by devious means. Arran’s sanity had long been a matter of common speculation and family concern; as Randolph put it, the earl was ‘so drowned in dreams and so feedeth himself with fantasies, that either men fear that he will turn into some dangerous and incurable sickness or play some day some mad part that will bring him into mischief’.
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To his distracted father, it now seemed that he had finally opted for this latter alternative, and had well and truly involved himself in a most dangerous piece of mischief; Châtelherault forthwith shut up the wretched Arran. However, with the determination of lunacy, Arran managed to smuggle
out a second letter in code to Randolph, which Randolph duly passed on to the queen.

Just as Queen Mary was digesting the news of the plot, which at best must have greatly perplexed her, at worst alarmed her for her own safety, Gavin Hamilton, Arran’s kinsman, panted up with the news that Mary must not credit anything that Arran might have written or would report, for it was all false. Lord James acted with despatch on Mary’s behalf: making short work of Hamilton’s excuses, and those of Bothwell, he had them both arrested on suspicion of conspiracy. Arran proved the more slippery to hold of the two: half-naked, he managed to escape out of his window from his confinement in his father’s castle, ‘with cords made out of the sheets of his bed’.
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He then made his way to the home of Kirkcaldy of the Grange at Stirling. Here he gave himself to the ravings of madness, howling and shrieking of devils and witches, and protesting that everyone wanted to kill him. His passion for Mary was transformed by his addled brain into a series of delusions, in which he believed himself to be her husband, and lying in her bed. From Stirling, he was brought to St Andrews, and kept in close confinement, until he was finally confronted with Bothwell, in the presence of Mary and the Privy Council. Here, obsessed by his fantasies, he charged Bothwell with high treason; Bothwell, characteristically, wanted the matter settled by single combat, but since this was obviously impossible under the circumstances, suggested a court of law. This suggestion was ignored. Instead Arran, still refusing to withdraw his accusations, was taken back to St Andrews and almost immediately to Edinburgh Castle, where he was put into the charge of James Stewart. It was certainly no age to be mad in: he does not seem to have been kindly treated, even by the low standards of the times towards lunatics, since Stewart was later ‘ill-bruited for the rigorous entertainment’ he gave to him. He never fully recovered his sanity; in 1564 he was described by Randolph as mad, jaundiced, lying eating little and desiring only solitude, suspicious of all around him. And in May 1566, he was liberated on a caution of £12,000, and was allowed to reside quietly with his mother.
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Although there was no proof of his guilt except the word of a madman, Bothwell was sternly treated. He was left to languish a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle without trial, Mary being persuaded by James that it would be highly politically embarrassing to bring the incident out into the open, since if Arran was shown to have born false witness, he would have to be executed, and he was too near the throne for this to be desirable. It was also put to Mary that Bothwell had been intriguing with the English. Mary had the keen dislike of ingratitude sometimes found in those who themselves have generous natures, and therefore particularly hate to feel themselves treated any differently by other people. She was annoyed that the man to whom she felt she had been so good, should show himself so false, and she quoted pointedly to Buchanan in Latin a maxim from Livy: ‘It is safer not to accuse an evil man, than to pardon him’. Châtelherault was in a pathetic state over the whole incident: Mary was moved to see the tears pouring down the old man’s cheeks like those of a child who had been beaten. Nevertheless he had to surrender the castle of Dumbarton, as the price for his supposed political treachery.