Mary Queen of Scots (16 page)

Because of her French upbringing, it is appropriate in judging Mary’s personal rule to examine a schedule Catherine recommended to Charles IX that was based on his father’s routine. After the morning
lever
, he met for an hour or two with the
conseil des affaires
, a small advisory body, to hear despatches requiring his attention. At 10:00 a.m. he attended mass and by 11:00 a.m. had dined. Then, twice weekly he held audiences for an hour or two; at that same time the
conseil privé
, his
larger council, convened, but he needed to attend it only occasionally.
In the afternoons when unengaged in these affairs, he enjoyed free time, although at 3:00 p.m. on two or three days, he entertained his nobility with sports and other exercises. Every evening he supped with his family and twice weekly gave a ball.
¹

This document not only informs about Mary’s understanding of how French kings obtained counsel but also offers evidence that is useful in highlighting the diversity of early modern royal routines.
Unlike France, England had only one small advisory council, called the privy council, the meetings of which its queens regnant, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, rarely attended. When Philip II was resident in England, he met with his wife’s privy council, pointing out that this was a masculine task. Scotland also had only one small advisory council, the privy council, sometimes called the secret council.

During Mary’s personal rule, she did not substitute French governmental practices for Scottish ones. To be sure, her household continued to be largely Catholic and French, although containing some Italian members, but her realm was already familiar with French culture; her father’s court, especially after his marriages, has been described as Franco-Scots. Her mother Mary of Guise had also served as her regent from 1554 to 1560.

Like their French counterparts, Scottish rulers were more visible and accessible to their subjects than English rulers. Beginning in Henry VII’s reign, Tudor monarchs routinely withdrew at mealtime to their privy chamber, its staff carefully monitoring those approaching the royal presence. Neither the French nor the Scottish court developed a department equivalent to the English privy chamber. Like the Valois kings, Mary dined daily in open court. She also conducted much of her business in her bedchamber, conferring with her council and even ambassadors while resting in bed. In contrast to her mainly French household, she filled governmental offices, including the privy council, mostly with Protestant Scotsmen.

No agenda comparable to the above French royal schedule exists for Scotland, but two extant documents are revealing about its monarchs’
activities.
²
The first is a poem in the
Bannatyne Manuscript
, an invaluable collection of late medieval Scottish poetry, which confirms that rulers should entertain their nobility with sports and games. In January 1560 Makgill, clerk register, and Bellenden, justice clerk, composed
the second manuscript, the
Discours Particulier D’Écosse
, which Mary of Guise sent to French officials, who were considering a charge of treason against Châtelherault after he joined the Congregation. Besides treason law, the document details crown revenue and the legal system.

Whether or not Mary was aware of these documents, she gained a practical understanding of royal procedures from observing her father-in-law’s and husband’s habits. Indeed, when her mother notified her in France that Huntly was petitioning for the reversion of an office, Mary responded that Henry always waited until possessors died before designating their successors. Even so she did not require a routine for council meetings echoing French custom.

In 1561 her privy councilors agreed to meet daily from 8:00–10:00
a.m. and from 1:00–3:00 p.m. in the council chamber unless she summoned them to her. They decided that six of their noble members should reside at court, but it was difficult for so many to be present especially during the summertime; on 10 August 1562, for example, only one was in attendance. To remedy this problem, eight councilors amended the procedures on the 15th, naming three slates of four noblemen to alternate staying at court for two-month periods. Their meeting times were rescheduled to 8:00–11:00 a.m. and 2:00–5:00
p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Unfortunately, the privy council register is incomplete; in 1563, for example, it contains one meeting for April and none for May. Nevertheless, it seems likely that noble participation remained erratic in Scotland as it did in other realms, partly because the men understood they could gain more from personal attendance on the monarch than sitting for long periods at the council table.
³

Although the guidelines did not address Mary’s presence in the council chamber, historians have concluded that she was an unsuccessful ruler partly because she appeared at only a few of the meetings listed in the register. A comparison of her record to her son James VI’s, who is usually judged a competent Scottish ruler, casts serious doubts on the register’s use as negative evidence for her governance. From 1585 for several years when he was about her age, his attendance at the sessions printed in the register was not much greater than hers. Only in the 1590s did he meet with his council regularly.

The condemnatory studies of Mary’s rule have overlooked Randolph’s references to her habit of seeking her councilors’ advice.
Although her motivations and the rationale behind her comments frequently eluded him, he usually knew her whereabouts and sometimes the nature of her business. He observed that she often attended part of the council meetings and sewed while listening to the discussions. She may have learned this practice from observing Catherine, who embroidered every afternoon while heeding conversations around her. A non-threatening female activity, it afforded her opportunities to hear as well as to conceal her reaction to others’ opinions.

The register’s inadequacies become more obvious when searching in it for the specific meetings Randolph identified. In late 1561 he named five occasions when Mary sat with her council that are missing from the register. On 22 October he reported that he was with her and the councilors in the council chamber, but the register lacks an entry for that date. Subsequently, he referred to other unrecorded gatherings.

When absent, she could have been disposing of more pressing business. On 17 February 1566 she informed Sir Robert Melville, her English ambassador and the brother of James, that she had just pardoned John Johnston, an Edinburgh lawyer, for delivering funds the previous summer from Randolph to Lady Moray for the use of her husband, who was organizing a rebellion to protest Mary’s wedding to Darnley. Since Randolph was conferring with the council during her audience with Johnston, Mary continued, she was able immediately to remind him of Elizabeth’s promise not to aid her rebels and to banish him from her realm.
⁴
Randolph’s meeting with the council is missing from the register.

Sir Thomas Craig, a Protestant and the crown advocate in Mary’s reign as well as the justice depute for the justice general in criminal cases, praised both his queen’s and Elizabeth’s interactions with their councilors. In a treatise defending James’s accession as king of England, which was written before 1603 but not published until the eighteenth century, Craig reminisced about Mary:

I have often heard the most serene Princess Mary queen of Scotland, discourse so appositely and rationally in all affairs which were brought before the privy council, that she was admired by all; and when most of the councillors were silent; being astonished, or straight declared themselves of her opinion, she rebuked them sharply, and exhorted them to speak freely, as becomes unprejudiced councillors, against her opinion,
that the best reasons only might overrule their determinations: And truly her reasonings were so strong and clear, that she could turn the hearers to what side she pleased...;

He further complimented her understanding of equity and justice:

She had not studied Law, and yet by the natural light of her judgment, when she reasoned of matters of equity and justice, she oft times had the advantage of the ablest Lawyers, her other discourses and actions were suitable to her great judgment, No word ever dropped from her mouth that was not exactly weighed and pondered. As for her liberality and other virtues, they were well known.
⁵

Best known for claiming a common origin for Scottish and English feudal law in
Jus Feudale
, Craig was the only Scottish legal expert to gain a European audience. Recent academic historians, such as Jenny Wormald, who denounced Mary’s personal rule, and John Guy, who admired her governance skills but failed to discuss her council attendance, have ignored the importance of Craig’s comments.
⁶

Another of Mary’s royal responsibilities was the convening of legislative and advisory bodies: altogether she held five parliaments or conventions in six years.
⁷
On 26 May 1563 wearing her crown and royal robes, she processed into the parliament house to open her first parliament, the most important of her personal rule. With an attendance of 78, it was also slightly larger than the usual 50–60
membership. Before her marched Châtelherault with the crown, Argyll with the scepter, and Moray with the sword. In honoring these noblemen, she confirmed publicly her practice of relying on the advice of Protestants. After delivering an oration, she attended daily the debates of the lords of articles, the parliamentary steering committee preparing the legislation for the full body’s approval. She also witnessed the condemnations of Huntly, his corpse displayed in a coffin, the exiled Sutherland, and 11 others. By touching bills with her scepter, she assented to several laws, among them, declaring it a capital crime to practice witchcraft, sorcery, or necromancy and to commit adultery, and ordering the confiscation of the property of individuals bringing false coins into the realm.

Despite having refused to ratify the Reformation acts of 1560,
Mary’s support for the Protestant settlement and her failure to advance Catholicism beyond retaining mass privately at court, had gained her the trust of moderate reformers. These strategies had enabled her to avoid an unwanted confrontation at this, her first parliament, with the extremists who had expected her to confirm the Reformation acts.
Even her half brother Moray would have needed to call upon the moderates she had conciliated had he attempted to impose the Kirk’s agenda at this parliament. By avoiding religious enactments in 1563, Mary kept her ability to promote compromise and maintain the viability of her personal worship at court.

It is possible that she summoned Knox to Lochleven, where she held court in April, with this future parliament in mind. The interview was the only one of the four with him that did not respond to an attack of his on her or her faith. It was also the only one occurring on two consecutive days. Her stated reason for seeing him shortly after the 11th, Easter Sunday, was to request he persuade his people not to penalize Catholics for following their religious beliefs. She was especially concerned about numerous priests imprisoned for celebrating Easter mass.
As anyone could easily have predicted, Knox demanded the punishment of all lawbreakers.

The next morning in a more conciliatory mood, she promised to punish all who celebrated or attended mass except at court. At that time, she also discussed with him the marital problems of the earl of Argyll and his countess, her illegitimate half sister. Perhaps, she created the opportunity for this interview, just a few weeks before the opening of parliament, to pledge her support for the Reformation acts to one of her loudest critics, who would reveal her comments to his Protestant friends. Certainly, Knox claimed that she subsequently incarcerated John Hamilton, archbishop of St Andrews, the illegitimate brother of Châtelherault, and 47 other priests for saying mass outside her court because of the scheduled parliamentary meeting.

Knox, himself, chose to take advantage of the legislative session to preach against her and her faith, possibly on 30 May, the last Sunday before parliament was dissolved. In his sermon before most of the lords, he warned that if she married an infidel, a favorite name of his for a Catholic, she would endanger Scottish Protestantism. When summoning him to Holyrood, Mary must have felt particular annoyance since she had just promised him in April to support the Reformation
acts and since he seemed to be attempting to generate parliamentary opposition to Catholicism. To her tearful questioning of what business he had referring to her marriage, he retorted that he was one of her subjects. In similar circumstances Elizabeth insisted on enforcing the sedition statute passed in her sister Mary’s reign against John Stubbs, who lost his right hand for publishing a treatise opposing her marriage to a French prince. The difference in the two queen’s reactions indicates not only that England’s monarchy was more powerful than Scotland’s but also that Knox held a more influential leadership position among Scottish Protestants than Stubbs among English Puritans.

A later dispute in 1563 concerning Holyrood’s Catholic services led to another confrontation between Mary and Knox. In August Patrick Cranstoun and Andrew Armstrong were arrested for entering the palace on the 15th in her absence to identify Edinburgh citizens attending mass. The incarceration of the two men prompted Knox on 8 October to summon his brothers in the faith to Edinburgh on the 24th, when their trial was scheduled, to advance the glory of God, the safety of their imprisoned colleagues, their own security, and even the preservation of the Kirk. In December the privy councilors summoned him to a meeting in the presence of the queen for which his reminiscences are the only transcript, as the register lacks references to it. They asked whether he had convoked his brothers to raise a riot or for religious purposes. If the latter goal were intended, as he claimed, he had not committed treason. To Mary’s complaint that he accused her of cruelty, he replied he had only charged with cruelty the wicked Papists who caused her to have the men incarcerated without reason. After he departed, the councilors voted against accusing him of treason, greatly displeasing Lethington and others, whom Knox denounced as court flatterers. The queen then passed to her private chambers, but Lethington presently decided to request her return for another tally, which only reaffirmed the earlier decision. That two votes were taken, which overrode the opinion of Lethington and apparently the queen, indicates that the Scottish councilors had considerably more influence than their English counterparts. As noted earlier, Elizabeth rarely attended council meetings, usually relying on the more flexible practice of discussions with one advisor or two or three of them at a time to frame public policy.