Mary Queen of Scots (37 page)

Answering Mary’s question about whether he thought she might try to escape, Somer opined that it was natural for prisoners to seek freedom. She disagreed for her “heart” was so great that she would “rather die in this captivity with honor, than run away with shame.” If the treaty of association provided for her liberation, however, she wanted to visit her son but only for a short time because she could not “abide” the sight of her old enemies. Unless Elizabeth granted her an allowance enabling her to reside in England, she would live off her dower in France where she would have nothing more to do with governance and would remain unmarried for she had a son who was a man. Her goal was to end her days in freedom.
¹

The return home from France of a young Scotsman, Patrick, master of Gray, the future sixth Lord Gray, raised Mary’s expectations about the treaty of association. After residing as a Catholic refugee in France and gaining the friendship of Beaton and Guise, Gray escorted the late duke of Lennox’s young heir Ludovick to Scotland in November 1583. Successfully ingratiating himself with James, who was then seventeen, Gray ostensibly became James Stewart, earl of Arran’s confederate while secretly working against his authority.

In the summer of 1584 when Mary sent Fontenay to Scotland again to explore James’s feelings about the treaty, her representative reassured her of her son’s support and also revealed he had forged a letter from France to indicate to James and Gray that Philip and Henry approved of the association. In a postscript to Nau, however, Fontenay questioned Gray’s dependability and related some troubling comments about James’s attitude toward Mary. He had noted, he explained to his brother-in-law, that while James expressed filial and dutiful love for his mother, he seemed uninterested in her personally, never inquiring about her health, about her treatment as a captive, about her servants, or about her recreation.

When learning that James was planning to dispatch Gray on a mission to England that autumn, Mary also named him as her envoy to negotiate the treaty of association and instructed him to assure Elizabeth that no differences of opinion existed between her and her son and that they were both committed to the joint-rule of Scotland that it would establish. She also complained about the mismanagement of her French finances, noting Beaton had not forwarded the 10,000 crowns for James or the 12,000 crowns for the maintenance of his guard that she requested. The 6,000 crowns he had received, she related, came from Spain.

With orders to counter the Shrewsbury slanders and to monitor Gray’s negotiations, Nau reached London in mid-November following the Scotsman’s arrival in late October. Nau’s first task was accomplished some two weeks later when Lady Shrewsbury and her sons swore before Elizabeth and her councilors that they knew Mary was chaste, that they never heard of her having a child in England, that the rumors concerning her affair with the earl were false, and that they had not spread them.

Meanwhile, Gray was maintaining an independent course in English negotiations. His instructions from James Stewart, earl of Arran, did not refer to the association, and English councilors soon discovered that Gray would not insist on including Mary in the proceedings. He proposed an Anglo-Scottish defensive and offensive league that left James in sole command of Scotland. When Mary wrote to Gray that her son should recognize his obligations to her by accepting her joint-rule with him, the envoy’s reply that his instructions did not include that issue came as an unpleasant surprise to her. He promised to correspond with James about it and to inform her of his response.

She was so eager to gain the greater freedom that the proposed treaty with her son seemed to promise, that in late November she sent word to Elizabeth that she would agree to further concessions: she would renounce her right to the English crown and deny the validity of the papal bull in so far as it was interpreted in her favor. She also pledged to refrain from entering into any agreement that might endanger England and pledged not to leave the realm without Elizabeth’s license.

After discovering Gray’s betrayal, Mary futilely requested Elizabeth’s permission to send Nau to meet with James and pleaded for a less stringent confinement. Emphasizing that her health required regular exercise, Mary asked to go eight to ten miles beyond Chartley and for additional horses so that her guards could ride with her to enable her to move at a faster pace. Because of her chronic illness, the symptoms of which were then mainly a weakness or swelling in her right arm and hand and in her left foot and leg, which had become shorter than her right leg, she also petitioned for more servants to assist her. She could no longer turn herself over in bed.

She sent several dispatches to James pleading for a clarification of his intentions unaware that his councilors were advising him to reject the treaty with her. In January 1585 his privy council concluded in his presence that the association would disadvantage him and his realm. In March James accepted this advice, and in May English and Scottish commissioners began negotiations for the Treaty of Berwick that was finally ratified in July 1586. This defensive and offensive Anglo-Scottish league that excluded Mary ended all hopes of her restitution and resulted in his becoming Elizabeth’s pensioner. By 1602 he had received from her £58,500. Initially, Mary characterized her son as a usurper of her crown but eventually blamed traitors around him, especially Gray, for his betrayal. She also assumed inaccurately that Walsingham had corrupted Gray with hints of English aid in ruining James, earl of Arran, who had served as Scotland’s lieutenant general since February 1585. Elizabeth’s agreement to release Arran’s enemies, the Ruthven raiders, who had been banished to England, did, however, contribute to Arran’s loss of power in late 1585.

ENTERPRISES

While seeking the association, Mary promised Elizabeth to eschew agreements unfavorable to England, but as usual she kept her options open. In October 1584 the same month that Gray reached London, she requested Allen to expedite Guise’s enterprise. The invaders should not, she confided, worry about her well-being, as she could not give her life for a better cause than the liberation of the oppressed of the Catholic Church.
²
Upon learning that Walsingham had gained custody of Father Crichton, who was captured in September on his way to Scotland, bearing evidence about the enterprise, she sent him denials that she ever had any contact with the priest. As Walsingham was still obtaining information from his spies in the French embassy, he knew she was a party to that conspiracy.

Events were underway in France that caused the enterprise’s leadership to shift from Guise to Philip and his regent in the Netherlands, Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma. Six months after the death in June 1584 of Henry III’s brother and heir, the duke of Anjou and Alençon, Philip and Guise signed a secret treaty at Joinville to prevent Henry of Navarre, the heir presumptive who was a Protestant, from succeeding the childless Henry III as king of France. Civil war broke out in the spring of 1585, distracting the Guises from the enterprise.

At this time Mary still distrusted Beaton. In January 1585 seemingly contradicting her charge to Allen the previous November to promote the enterprise, she instructed the archbishop to refrain from all political activities. She had resolved, she explained, to use peaceful means to obtain her liberation. Undoubtedly, she meant to deceive him. Diplomatic rumors claimed that if Beaton were informed about the enterprise, he would reveal it to Henry III, who was a supporter of Mary’s association with James but was not a party to the Guise schemes for invading England. Earlier in a letter of February 1583 to Mendoza, Mary even accused the allegedly ambitious archbishop of attempting to obstruct the duke’s plans.

Besides encouraging her suspicions about Beaton, Morgan became involved in intrigues with a fellow Welshman, Dr William Parry, who toured the continent in 1582 with a license to travel for three years. As one of Walsingham’s spies, Parry sought to debate with various Catholic exiles whether or not assassinating Elizabeth was justified. Allen and Persons avoided him but Morgan allegedly approved the scheme. While Parry may have had an authentic Catholic conversion, he could also have been a double agent.

Back in England in 1584 he not only reported on Catholic conspiracies to Elizabeth but also conversed about assassinating her with Edmund Neville, a returned Catholic exile. Later that year, as a member of parliament, Parry gained notoriety by denouncing a bill that required Jesuits and seminary priests to leave England within 40 days or be treated as traitors. In February 1585 Walsingham learned about Neville’s and Parry’s earlier conversations and ordered the doctor’s arrest. He discovered in Parry’s possession a letter from Cardinal Galli, relating that Pope Gregory granted the “Indulgence and remission” of his sins that he requested for completing his “service and benefit public,” presumably Elizabeth’s assassination.
³

Parry was convicted and executed although he denied his guilt and identified Morgan as the author of the plot. Elizabeth demanded Morgan’s extradition from France, but Henry placed him under house arrest on 9 March and had him transferred to the Bastille five days later. It is unlikely that Mary was involved in the Parry conspiracy. When Mauvissière sent her a copy of the cardinal’s letter, she responded that the doctor was unknown to her. Since Parry’s plot contained no specific plans for her liberation, she was probably stating the truth to Mauvissière, even though she deemed him a blunderer because he rejected her warning that someone in his household was leaking information.
⁴

In March 1585 parliament passed the Act for the Safety of the Queen’s Person, which was based on the Bond of Association that Burghley and Walsingham drafted the previous October in reaction to William the Silent’s assassination in July, as well as to Throckmorton’s conspiracy. The bond obligated its endorsers to respond to a murderous attack on Elizabeth by killing not only the perpetrators but also the claimants to the throne and their heirs for whom the traitors acted. Thousands of Englishmen subscribed, swearing to avenge all assassination attempts against her. The major differences between the bond and the statute were that the latter exempted the claimants’ heirs, unless they were involved, and authorized a state trial rather than a private assassination. This was the statute by which Mary would be tried and executed.

When informed about the bond, she realized that she was the intended claimant and denounced it as a conspiracy fomented by her public enemies to obtain pardons for murdering her under the pretext of preserving their queen’s life. Mary, herself, endorsed it in January 1585, officially repudiating attacks against Elizabeth. In a letter dated in March, Mary assured Elizabeth that she had nothing to do with Parry’s schemes and predicted that if her cousin’s life were taken, the new associates (signatories of the bond) would assassinate her. Another concern of Mary’s was that as a prisoner she would be extremely vulnerable to attack in the event of Elizabeth’s death whether by natural causes or foul play. This concern gained momentum after Sir Amyas Paulet took charge of her in April 1585; she feared that when Elizabeth died, her new custodian or another bond signatory would kill their prisoner before she could escape from captivity. Indeed, Guillaume de l’Aubespine, baron of Châteauneuf-sur-cher, Mauvissière’s successor, later confirmed that Mary’s would-be liberators well understood that they must free her first before attacking Elizabeth. Otherwise, Paulet or his agent would kill her.
⁵
Meanwhile, Mary’s friends on the continent, like her agent, Sir Francis Englefield in Spain, were claiming that Elizabeth and her councilors were secretly working to take her life.

REMOVAL TO TUTBURY AND PAULET’S CUSTODIANSHIP

By the time Paulet succeeded Sadler as her custodian, Mary had changed residences. Shortly after arriving at Wingfield, Sadler commenced plans to remove her to Tutbury, where he could more easily monitor her communications. He and Somer not only needed to order repairs, such as window glazing, but also to furnish the royal castle. They could no longer utilize Shrewsbury’s household effects except for some plate he loaned to Mary. Besides supervising these arrangements, their concerns about the queen’s health and the decision to await Nau’s return from London delayed their departure until January 1585.

To furnish Tutbury Walsingham transferred to it Lord Paget’s confiscated belongings. Because some had been sold and those that arrived were fewer in quantity and of lesser quality than anticipated, Sadler and Somer had to request additional sheets, blankets, lined wall hangings, silver vessels, and floor coverings. They ordered these items well before the move, but Mary’s rooms were still inadequately furnished at her arrival. Two months after entering Tutbury, she lacked Turkish carpets to lay around her bed and under her seat in the dining chamber where the plaster floor although scattered with rushes was exceedingly cold. In April a shipment with plate and the hangings, which needed lining, did reach Tutbury, but without the three Turkish carpets for her bedchamber. Finally, as to her horses, which Shrewsbury had provided, Elizabeth would bear the charges for four coach horses and two geldings but not for the ten others Mary required.

Sadler seemed satisfied with her Tutbury accommodations: she had a fair dining chamber, 36 feet long, with a cabinet that had a chimney, and a bedchamber, 27 feet long, with two beds, a pallet, and a closet. In addition, she possessed a room for a close-stool and suitable servants’ quarters. Disagreeing with his assessment, Mary complained her lodgings consisted of two wretched small rooms and some closets that were suitable only for a close-stool. From the 16 members allowed in 1571, her household had increased to 48, half of them women and children some of whom were quite young. At least from late 1584 Mary had acquired the services of Camille de Préau, a Jesuit priest, probably without Sadler’s knowledge as to his true vocation. De Préau may have arrived secretly with Father Samerie the previous summer, intending to remain when his colleague departed.