Tudor (55 page)

Cecil planned to follow the Bond of Association with a law that would bring a Grand Council into effect on Elizabeth's death with the power to choose her successor.
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Elizabeth put paid to this neo-republican scheme for the election of a monarch, but the Bond of Association remained, and left Mary terrified that if she stayed in England she would be killed, and sooner rather than later. Her only hope was that the son she had not seen since babyhood would come to her rescue. Mary had sent a man called Albert de Fontenay as her emissary to James in Scotland in August 1584 and so she had some idea of how much she could, or could not, rely on that.

Fontenay had been well received in Scotland and was even invited
to stay at Holyrood Palace, which, with its great stone courtyard and towers, bore a resemblance for the Frenchman to the chateau of Chambord. Fontenay found James, Elizabeth's closest male heir, to be ‘a young, old man'. Broad-shouldered and of average height, the eighteen-year-old dressed plainly and wore his reddish hair cropped short. His lower body had some weakness, possibly the result of childhood rickets, and Fontenay observed ‘his gait is bad, composed of erratic steps', ‘but he is in no wise delicate'. Indeed James was a mass of energy. Hunting gave this some release, and Fontenay learned he would often ride six hours in a day, ‘chasing all over the place with loosened rein'.
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Fontenay gained regular access to James, often hunting with him, and soon a detailed assessment of the king's character, appearance and abilities arrived in England addressed to Mary's secretary, Fontenay's brother-in-law, Claude Nau.

Apart from hunting, James had no time for the usual courtly pastimes. ‘He hates dancing and music in general', Fontenay reported. James also disapproved of elaborate courtly dress, and men with long hair, ‘not abiding above all ear-rings'. The lack of his mother's influence was obvious and James was ‘very rude and uncivil in speaking, eating, manners, games, and entertainment in the company of women'. On the other hand, Fontenay also found James highly intelligent. As a child he had had the brilliant humanist scholar George Buchanan as his principal tutor, and it showed.

‘For his age he is the most remarkable prince who ever lived', Fontenay remarked; ‘Three qualities of mind he possesses in perfection: he understands clearly, judges wisely and has a retentive memory. His questions are keen and penetrating and his replies are sound . . . He is well instructed in languages, science, and affairs of state, better, I dare say, than anyone else in his kingdom. In short he has a remarkable intelligence, as well as lofty and virtuous ideals and a high opinion of himself.'
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There were other areas, however, in which Fontenay perceived weaknesses of character. The first was James' provincial arrogance,
which made him ‘overconfident of his strength and scornful of other princes'. Second was his self-indulgence. Fontenay complained that James loved his male favourites recklessly. He was also lazy, avoiding administrative work. A final concern was that James appeared severely traumatised by the violence of his childhood. Fontenay felt that, ‘nourished in fear', James would never have the courage to stand up to the great lords.

James took the criticism Fontenay directed at him remarkably well, assuring the Frenchman that he worked very quickly when he did work, and ‘That nothing was done secretly by the lords that he did not know, by means of having spies at the doors of their rooms morning and evening, who came and reported everything to him'.
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But if James was canny, Fontenay was astute, and while James promised all sorts of help for his mother, Mary, Fontenay noted that ‘he has never enquired anything of the queen or of her health, or her treatment, her servants, her living, and eating, her recreation, or anything similar'.
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The truth was that Mary, Queen of Scots was a stranger to her son, and one of whom he had rarely heard a good word. For years James had been told that she had murdered his father. And whatever he believed, his principal concern was his own survival. His subjects, James later commented, were ‘a far more barbarous and stiff-necked people' than the English. His main objective was to inherit Elizabeth's crown and get the hell out of Scotland as soon as he could.

The following year, 1585, Mary discovered James had made an agreement with Elizabeth that made him a pensioner of the English crown and left her in prison; James' letters to Elizabeth even referred to the English queen as his ‘Madame and mother'. Bitter and afraid, Mary began to look urgently for some other means of escape from England. If her son would not help her, she believed, ‘In all of Christendom I shall find enough heirs with talons strong enough to grasp what I may put in their hand.'
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At the top of the list was Philip of Spain, a descendant of John of Gaunt, and whose bitter enmity Elizabeth
gained in August 1585, when she gave military aid to his Dutch Protestant rebels.

By early 1586 Philip was already planning an invasion of England. His objectives were to end English aid to Dutch rebel forces and also to halt the relentless attacks of English privateers against Spanish shipping with its cargoes of gold from his colonies in the Americas. But Philip did not wish his invasion to be seen merely as an act of Spanish conquest or punishment. As the husband of Elizabeth's sister Mary I, he had been the king of a Catholic England subsequently dismantled and then persecuted, almost to extinction. Philip wanted his invasion to be a religious crusade. For that he needed the backing of the energetic new Pope, Sixtus V, who was reluctant to give it.

Born in the papal states and now in his sixties, the Pope believed ‘The King of Spain's foreign policy is about his interests, not those of the church.'
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Philip was by now King of Portugal as well as Spain and Pope Sixtus complained he felt like a fly compared to an elephant, against the king on whose great empire the sun never set. He did not relish the prospect of Philip becoming more powerful still. Nevertheless, he had to consider the interests of England's Catholics whose priests were now being executed under a law that made it treasonous merely to be ordained abroad. The Pope decided to back Philip, on condition that after Philip's victory Mary, Queen of Scots, was given the English throne

Mary's great fear was that even if Philip's invasion were successful, she would be killed before anyone could rescue her. She realised she needed English help if she was going to survive and, in her desperation, she began to hope that she might be saved by a group of young Catholic courtiers who had contacted her and were plotting to kill Elizabeth. It did not seem a difficult task. Queen Elizabeth was well aware there were threats to her life, but she continued to walk abroad with her ladies and a few courtiers, acknowledging the displays of public affection from the crowds that would dash to see her whenever she appeared. ‘They are seeking to take my life, but it troubles me not',
Elizabeth commented, ‘He who is on high has defended me until this hour, and will keep me still, for in him do I trust.'
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The leader of the group of courtiers planning Elizabeth's death was one Anthony Babington. ‘Attractive in face and form, quick of intelligence, agreeable and facetious', the twenty-four-year-old was to prove a poor conspirator.
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A government spy had been placed amongst the traitors' ranks and the Privy Council knew at an early stage that Babington had contacted Mary. His letter to the Queen of Scots promised ‘the dispatch of the usurper' at the hands of ‘six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who, for the zeal they bear the Catholic cause and for your Majesty's service will undertake that tragical execution'.
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Fatally, in July 1586, Mary responded and in August her secretaries, Babington, and his fellow conspirators were arrested.

Elizabeth was determined to punish her would-be assassins in a manner that would act as a deterrent to others. In 1569, after the northern rebellion, she had ordered hundreds of hangings, one in each village that had taken part in the revolt led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. Nearly twenty years on there had been no further risings. Now she took a special interest in the details of the execution of Babington and his friends, asking the council that their agonies be made as extreme as possible, ‘for more terror'.
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In answer to her orders, it was ensured the prisoners were hanged for only a short time before being disembowelled and castrated while conscious and screaming on a huge public scaffold. Mary would die next.

The principal concern for Elizabeth and her Privy Council was James' potential reaction to his mother's execution. It was possible that he would break Scotland's new treaties with England and turn to Spain, or France, to avenge his mother's death. They tried to sound James out, but he did not grasp what was being asked, and merely let it be known that as far as he was concerned, Mary could be put in the Tower and her servants hanged; ‘The only thing he craves is her life.'
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This, he soon learned, was an offer that was not on the table.

To have his mother beheaded would be a dreadful humiliation for James and for Scotland. But James knew the English Parliament had debarred all those who were privy to plots against Elizabeth from the throne. If he defended Mary too vigorously he risked losing any chance he would ever be King of England. He convinced himself, however, that he could persuade Elizabeth it would not be in her interest to execute a fellow monarch.

The trial of Mary, Queen of Scots took place in October. She defended herself with skill and dignity, but the outcome was never in doubt. Parliament delivered the death sentence in December. On the 19th Mary wrote to Elizabeth only to beg ‘for the sake of Henry VII, your grandfather and mine, and by the honour and dignity we have both held, and of our sex in common', that her servants witness her end (so it would be known she died well), and that she be buried in France.
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James did now plead for her life, reminding Elizabeth pointedly how Mary was ‘alike in estate and sex to her', but he never threatened to break Scotland's treaties with England.

As James suspected, Elizabeth was indeed reluctant to bear the charge of regicide. In Europe, she feared, ‘it shall be spread that for the safety of her life, a maiden queen could be content to spill the blood even of her own kinswoman'. Worse, cutting off a monarch's head would sever the notion of a monarch as a sacred being forever. But with Philip preparing the great fleet of warships, which in Spanish was called an ‘Armada', for his invasion, and with English subjects prepared to murder her, Elizabeth judged that in preserving Mary, she would, as she told James, ‘cherish a sword to cut my own throat'. To avoid a judicial execution Elizabeth therefore tried to persuade Mary's jailors to murder their prisoner under the Bond of Association.

Mary's last prison at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire was the ancestral seat of the House of York, the murderers of the mad Henry VI, but also victims of regicide in the disappearance of Edward V, elder of the princes in the Tower. Elizabeth's servants proved less willing, however, than those of her ancestors to carry out
a murder on royal orders, leaving her obliged to pick up her pen and sign her cousin's death warrant. Still, she gave no orders for it to be sent. William Cecil did that on his own authority, as she must have trusted he would.

Elizabeth had instructed that Mary die in the privacy of the hall, rather than the cold and wet of Fotheringhay's courtyard. But Elizabeth ordered that the Queen of Scots be denied her request for her servants to accompany her. Elizabeth did not wish to risk the servants publicising Mary's death in a manner that would inspire pity for Mary and, by implication, condemnation of Elizabeth's actions. Mary got her way nonetheless, for when she insisted at the eleventh hour that ‘far meaner persons than myself have not been denied so small a favour', the men on the spot shamefacedly gave way.
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Mary entered the room where she was to die on 8 February 1587, with a smile, her servants walking behind her in a royal procession. The murdered Kings of England had been disposed of quietly. This, by contrast, was theatre, and Mary, who had been the star of so many spectacles as a queen, knew how to make the best of the stage she had been given. She had dressed herself as a religious martyr for the Catholic cause. She had a crucifix in her hand, a pair of rosaries hung from her girdle, and when her clothes were stripped she stood before the witnesses dressed in a petticoat, bodice and sleeves of tawny red: the liturgical colour of martyrdom.

Once Mary was blindfolded and her prayers said, she remained kneeling, erect. Never having attended an English execution she assumed she was to be beheaded with a sword, as was the tradition for the nobility in France. But Mary was to be butchered with an axe, ‘like those with which they cut wood', her doctor noted with disgust. The executioners, too crude to ask Mary to prostrate herself, roughly pushed her head down towards the hewn wooden block. Mary then lay flat, placing her hands under her chin on the wood as she began to pray: ‘
In te Domine confido, non confundar in aeternum
' (In you Lord is my trust, let me never be confounded). Mary's old jailor, George
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, present as Earl Marshall, raised the baton of his office to signal the execution, but dreading what was coming he looked away. He did not notice, therefore, as the headsman now did, that Mary's hands would be cut off with her head. His attendant grabbed her hands and wrenched them behind her back so her face pressed on the wood.