Mary Queen of Scots (33 page)

The episode, with its mixture of pathos and brutality, has a twofold interest. Firstly it shows that the abduction of Mary’s person was a subject of comparatively common discussion – since it arose twice within the first six months of her arrival in Scotland – and certainly not a novel idea in April 1567 when it was finally achieved. It is true that there is absolutely no tenable evidence against Bothwell except the babblings of a lunatic: but it is just possible that there was something more sinister at the back of it all, and that Bothwell did make some chance remark to Arran, which acted on Arran’s mad passion for Mary, and set him off on the whole disastrous train of thought. One must bear in mind the possibility that Bothwell was at least toying with the idea of an abduction so early in the period of Mary’s personal rule. Secondly, the episode reveals how closely Mary’s lot was joined with that of Lord James. At this point, she was making no attempt to rule the Scottish nobles by balancing them against each other, now advancing one faction, now promoting another. On the contrary, she was clearly backing Lord James in whatever he chose to do. This policy would be perfectly satisfactory so long as the interests of Lord James and Queen Mary coincided; should they ever diverge, the queen might find that she would need the other strong nobles in the kingdom to support her, whom she was now allowing her half-brother to put down as he willed.

Shortly after her arrival Mary had chosen her Privy Council, the chief nobles of the kingdom, six of whom were to be in constant attendance on her, to help her despatch routine business. The Privy Council was vested with full executive powers, sat in the royal palace, and its members were traditionally chosen by the sovereign. However, the true direction of
affairs was firmly vested in the hands of Lord James and Maitland; Randolph described them as being above all others in credit with the queen, and contrasted their two techniques of dealing with her: Lord James treated her according to his nature in a homely and blunt fashion, whereas Maitland approached his young mistress more delicately and finely. The practice of having the six nobles in attendance soon lapsed. Since the Acts of the Privy Council had the same force as Acts of Parliament, it was on the Privy Council and its directors that the full administrative business devolved. The role played by Parliament in this period on the other hand was comparatively remote: this was more especially true since between Parliament and the sovereign stood a committee called the Lords of the Articles, to which was delegated its actual business. The Lords of the Articles were an expedient which had grown up out of the remissness of some members of Parliament in attending sessions, as well as the difficulties of prolonging their attendance. Parliament only assembled in practice to vote approval or disapproval of the acts presented to it for sanction by this committee.
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As the Lords of the Articles in their turn tended to be amenable to whatever ruler or strong faction was in power, it will be seen that the potential powers of the Scottish crown within the constitution at this period were widespread. The problem was the implementation of these powers in a backward country, rather than the nature of these powers themselves. There were some hopeful signs for the monarchy for the future: although the great magnates held the great offices of state, transmitted by a more or less hereditary title from father to son, there were other lesser posts such as advocate, justice-clerk, treasurer and secretary to be filled by the lesser gentry – the secretaryship for example was Maitland’s post; these positions could be personally attached to the sovereign. Against the strength of local justice administered by the lords could now be balanced the endless officials attached to civil and consistorial tribunals, belonging to the central legal order, at the head of which stood the supreme court. The lesser burgesses and lairds who were first called into life at the time of the Reformation Parliament would grow to challenge the great magnates: and the crown might expect to benefit from their challenge.

It will be seen in the civil government, as in the ecclesiastical structure, that the possibilities of the crown under Queen Mary were extensive, if the potentialities of her royal position were ever converted into actualities. But apart from the obvious disadvantage of the strength of the nobles, the crown had two other great weaknesses. It had no standing army – and bitterly had the Scottish nobles resented it when Mary of Guise tried
to establish such a thing; the crown, should it be involved in action necessitating war, had to depend on the locally raised hosts of other loyal nobles, with the consequent dangers of personal vendettas being involved in royal policy. Secondly, the financial resources of the Scottish crown were cripplingly restricted. Mary Stuart received an annual income of 40,000
livres
as her jointure as queen-dowager of France, although there were constant troubles over the payment and administration of this sum, which became acute during the years of her captivity. But the lands and properties of her father had been largely squandered by the expensive English wars during her minority.
†
Other royal lands had been apportioned to the nobles during Mary’s minority, although by the ancient law of minority of lesion, she would have a right to resume these on her twenty-fifth birthday, in six years’ time. The royal income therefore depended, apart from the lease on its own lands, on wardships of minors and heiresses, export dues derived from duties on trade at the burghs
‡
and ecclesiastical revenues. The entire income from the collectory of crown property amounted to about £18,000 Scots.
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Apart from her personal resources, the resources of the crown were meagre indeed and economic organization correspondingly backward. The method of collecting taxes in Scotland in the sixteenth century has been compared unfavourably with that of twelfth-century England, taxes being farmed out for collection to sheriffs whose offices had become hereditary. In any case, the only instance of national taxation during the six years of Mary’s personal rule was a levy of £12,000 for the baptism of Prince James. The total royal revenue in 1560 was around £40,000 Scots or about £10,000 sterling.
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Compared to this, that of Queen Elizabeth was £200,000, rising to £300,000 in the last ten years of her reign:
⁸
yet Elizabeth was always notoriously conscious of poverty. It is hardly surprising that in Scotland the treasurer’s deficit amounted to £33,000 in 1564, and was up to £61,000 in 1569.
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Indeed, Queen Mary would have been hard put to it to pay a standing army had she been endowed with one. In short, one problem Mary Queen of Scots faced throughout her personal rule was that of frustrating royal poverty. It was no wonder that the French memoir of 1558 on the state of the country dwelt vividly on the poverty of the Scottish monarchy, which it ascribed to the lack of a proper royal domain, and the absence of any means of imposing taxation. Mary, like her grandfather James
IV
, could fairly be described as ‘in want of nothing … but not able to put money into his strongboxes’.
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At the same time, during the second half of the sixteenth century prices were rising fast all over Europe due to the influx of silver from the New World. From this desperate need for money resulted the strange ‘treasure-hunter’s’ economics of the period
¹²
– the persistent searchings for gold and silver deposits, which unfortunately lay in Scotland only in small and scattered pockets and involved high working and transport costs. For much of her reign Mary was also too poor to issue a coinage, although this had been done yearly from 1529 to 1542. At the same time the Register of the Privy Council shows that it was the policy of Mary’s government to try and make French currency legal tender, and to discourage the entry of currency from England, which was made treasonable – although the English currency was getting a reputation for purity from the developing commerce with the Hanse towns and the Low Countries. Another economic expedient was developed when the government realized that considerable profit could be derived from the issue of a silver coinage, at a considerably greater face value than its true value in silver: ryals began to be issued with a nominal value of thirty, twenty and ten shillings, but costing much less to mint. Naturally, such debasements had the effect of only encouraging hoarding and speculation. During the period of Mary Stuart’s personal rule, it would be true to say that just as the crown suffered from straitened finances it was incapable of curing, so the country suffered from economic difficulties for which the government also could supply no certain remedy.

Despite these gloomy considerations, for the first years of her life in Scotland Mary Stuart made a fair attempt to re-create the conditions of the French court and to enjoy the native resources of Scotland. Fortunately she had a natural appetite for pleasures of many different types, as well as being blessed with youthful high spirits and enthusiasm, which enabled her to create pastimes where she did not find them; in particular she had a positive mania for outdoor pursuits – all her life her physical constitution demanded a daily ration of fresh air and exercise if she was to feel herself well. Although later in her life, this was to mean that she suffered cruelly from the conditions of close confinement, it meant that
now she was well suited to the conditions of life in Scotland, where she was destined to spend nearly half her life in the saddle, progressing about her dominions. In the Scottish countryside she also had endless opportunities for the hawking and hunting which she loved as had her father James
V
, and later her father-in-law and husband. Falkland Palace in Fife was a favourite centre for royal sport, having been rebuilt for this purpose by James v, with new stables built in 1531, so that it occupied rather the same role as Balmoral Castle in the life of Queen Victoria as a holiday and hunting retreat. It was surrounded with parkland and to the north lay the Forest of Falkland. It was not left to chance that the royalties should enjoy good sport: roebucks and stags were actually brought in litters along with the court, from their last stopping place; they were then temporarily released for the chase. When the court moved on again to Edinburgh, the deer were rounded up, and brought on to be released once more in the royal park at Holyrood. Wild boar, to be hunted among the oaks of the forest, were specially imported from France. Hawks commanded good prices: James
IV
had paid £189 for a trained bird, Mary herself acquired hawks from as far as Orkney and Zetland, and in 1562 hawks were among the presents she sent to Elizabeth, £80 being paid for conveying them to London.

To Mary, a fearless rider who loved the excitement of the chase, not only hawking but deer-hunting was a popular pastime; anti-poaching laws had to be made to preserve the deer for the royal delectation, since on one occasion it was found that ‘the deer [were] so destroyed that our Sovereigns can get no pastime of hunting’ when they had repaired to a special piece of forest on purpose for the chase. Deer-hunting was far from being the solitary hardy stalking of modern times: the deer were actually beaten in to where the lords would be lying, their heads and antlers appearing over the hill ‘making a show like a wood’, as Taylor described it in his
Penniless Pilgrimage.
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It was a primitive sport by our standards, the cries of the men, with their arrows, javelins and clubs, mingling with the barking of the dogs, often Irish wolf-hounds, who were used to catch the beasts. In 1564 an especially magnificent deer-hunt was organized for Mary by the 4th earl of Atholl; Mary camped for the occasion on the shores of Loch Locky, on the east side of Beinn a Ghlo, on a spot now traditionally known as Tom nam Ban Righ, or the queen’s hillock. One of Queen Mary’s retainers described how 2,000 Highlanders (or ‘Wild Scots’ as he noted that they were called) were employed for two months to drive all the deer from the woods and hills of Atholl, Badenoch, Moray and all the counties about, into a special area – ‘As these Highlanders use a light
dress, and are very swift of foot, they went up and down so nimbly that … they brought together 2,000 red deer, besides roes and fallow deer.’ The queen and the other great men waited in the glen as the deer thundered towards them, led by one magnificent leader who thrilled Mary’s heart, until Atholl warned her that if this leader, either in fear or in rage, turned in their direction, the entire herd would follow and they might be stampeded. This did in fact happen to some of the Highlanders, when Mary let her dog loose on a wolf and the stag bolted; in spite of throwing themselves flat in the heather, two or three Highlanders were killed, and others injured.
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In his
History of Scotland
, Leslie emphasizes the importance of hunting to the Scots as a national pastime: in her enthusiasm for it, Mary certainly met with the full accord of her subjects. Archery – for which she would wear a velvet glove – also appealed to her, and she had butts set up in her private gardens at Holyrood, where one spring day she was surprised by Randolph shooting with the vigorously Protestant Master of Lindsay against Lord James and one of her ladies, showing that it was easier to be friendly with the turbulent Lindsay on the common basis of sports than on that of religion.
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She played at golf and pall-mall (croquet). With her penchant for fresh air, she loved to walk in the gardens surrounding her palaces, and frequently held audiences of her ambassadors there – Randolph even mentions one interview taking place in the garden of Holyrood in February. Here there were two gardens, a north and a south, into which Mary is said to have introduced on her own initiative a young sycamore from France, which was to become the parent of all the groves celebrated in Scottish songs. The other palaces of Linlithgow, Stirling and Falkland also had their gardens and parks, the gardens of Stirling lying far below the castle on the level ground, so that the butts could be surveyed from the castle walls.