Mary Queen of Scots (20 page)

Previously, Knox had described Mary of Guise’s assumption of the regency with equal contempt – ‘A crown was put upon her head … as seemly a sight … as to put a saddle upon the back of an unruly cow.’
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But in fact Knox, as often when writing with his pen dipped in acid, did Mary Guise an injustice as a ruler. In an extraordinarily difficult situation, she had tried to do her best, and carry out the advice of her brother the duke of Guise – ‘To deal in Scotland in a spirit of conciliation, introducing much gentleness and moderation into the administration of justice.’ On occasions she was even prepared to carry out these counsels against the advice of her Guise brothers who had given it to her: as Regnier de la Planche himself admitted, Mary of Guise’s plans for Scotland had always included acting gently and slowly by the use of Parliament and it was the Guise males who rejected this course, saying that their sister might be a good woman, but she would wreck everything by her tender methods.
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In her introduction of French administrators Mary of Guise also genuinely believed she was benefiting the Scots, since she was frankly appalled at Scottish administrative methods. As for Scottish laws she wrote of them that they were the most unjust in the world, not so much in their provisions, as in the manner in which they were carried out, and when one considers the internal state of Scotland in the age in which she arrived there, particularly in areas like the borders, where administration was either nonexistent or archaic in the extreme, it is easy to understand how she derived this impression.

Despite her own sincere Catholicism, Mary of Guise also possessed sufficient balance and political acumen not to identify the reformed religion immediately and totally with the forces of darkness. In 1555 D’Oysel’s hopes for a good reception among the Scots were dashed by what he described as the totally selfish attitude of the nobility, who wanted each one to be their own petty tyrant. But it was not until the events of late 1557, when the nobility of Scotland refused to fight under her banner against England, that Mary of Guise herself gave way to feelings of angry distrust for these treacherous lords, Catholic and Protestant alike. Even in 1559, when Henry
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instructed that heresy was to be stamped out in Scotland, according to Melville, Mary of Guise still protested against her orders: although committed to a policy of French domination, on Mary’s behalf, by which she hoped to preserve Scotland for her daughter, Mary of Guise nevertheless attempted all along to implement this policy in the
most humane manner. The English certainly both feared and admired her intellectual qualities: Thomas Randolph wrote apprehensively of ‘the Dowager’s craft and subtleties’. Throckmorton admired her ‘queenly mind’, and over the peace negotiations wrote to Cecil for the love of God ‘to provide that she were rid from hence, for she hath the heart of a man of war’.
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When she was on her death-bed, Mary of Guise summoned the lords of the Congregation to her side, and in an affecting interview asked them to believe that she had genuinely favoured the weal of Scotland as well as that of France. Whether the lords believed her or not, we can at least accept her word that by her own lights she had done so.

The news of the death of Mary of Guise was known in France on 18 June, but was kept from her daughter until 28 June: with good reason, as it turned out, for Mary Stuart’s grief when she finally did receive the news was heart-rending, and she underwent one of the physical collapses which inordinate sorrow was apt to induce in her. Michiel, the Venetian ambassador, had already paid tribute to Mary’s devotion to her mother, saying that ‘she loved her mother incredibly, and much more than daughters usually love their mothers’. Now he reported: ‘The death of the Queen Regent of Scotland was concealed from the most Christian Queen [Mary Stuart] till the day before yesterday, when it was at length told her by the Cardinal of Lorraine; for which her Majesty showed and still shows such signs of grief, that during the greater part of yesterday she passed from one agony to another.’
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Nor were poor Mary of Guise’s earthly troubles entirely terminated by her death: for even her wretched dropsical corpse proved a source of dispute. A funeral oration was made for her in Notre Dame on 12 August, six weeks after her death, but it was not until October that her lead-lined coffin was allowed to be conveyed to France, because the Scottish preachers disapproved of the superstitious rites which they feared during her obsequies. In March 1561 her body was removed to Fécamp in Normandy and in July taken to Rheims, where it was finally buried in the church of the convent of St Pierre of which her sister Renée was abbess.

Mary’s love for her mother spurred her forward in her knowledge of Scottish politics; her appreciation of French and English politics was spurred on by her own increasing estimation of her position as queen of France and heiress – or rightful possessor – of the English throne. A few days after Henry
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’s death, Throckmorton commented that everything was being done by the queen of Scotland, who took a great interest in all matters around her. Mary was also acute enough to send for an inventory of the crown jewels, many of which had passed into the hands of Diane de Poitiers, immediately after the death of her father-in-law, with a view to acquiring what were now her rightful property as queen of France. Throckmorton’s view of Mary Stuart has a particular interest. As English ambassador he had a definite motive for noting the twists and turns of her character as it developed: not only did she claim the English crown for her own, but she was also more plausibly the heiress to the throne. Life was uncertain, and Elizabeth was childless and unmarried; if Mary did not actually acquire the English throne by force, she might easily do so by inheritance. It thus behoved Throckmorton to keep a watchful eye on the nature and qualities of this young girl, whom the random chance of fate might one day establish as his own mistress.

It is significant that the Mary Stuart of Throckmorton’s despatches is a more intelligent and mature girl than the beautiful wilful delicate creature of, for example, the Venetian ambassador’s reports to his own Italian court. Mary showed a hint of imperiousness in her words to Throckmorton concerning her refusal, with Francis, to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. ‘My subjects in Scotland do their duty in nothing,’ she told him, ‘nor have they performed their part in one thing that belongeth to them. I am their Queen and so they call me, but they use me not so…. They must be taught to know their duties.’
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Earlier when Throckmorton was taken to have an interview with the royalties in February 1560 the preponderance of the conversation was had with the Queen Mother Catherine, but at the end of the interview when Catherine made an observation to the effect that she wished to be on good terms with Elizabeth, Mary did intervene. ‘ “Yes,” she said, “the Queen my good sister may be assured to have a better neighbour of me being her cousin, than of the rebels, and so I pray you signify.” ’
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The point may not have been a good one in terms of power politics – since Elizabeth might well prefer rebels across the border to an active young queen, however friendly, however cousinly – but it was one worth making from Mary’s point of view, and shows that her political intelligence was beginning to emerge from the cocoon of the cardinal’s tutelage.

The cardinal had been the instructor of her youth: but as queen of France, Mary had a new mentor in the art of politics – her mother-in-law Catherine de Medicis. It was no coincidence that Throckmorton had found the two queens sitting beside each other in February 1560. The records show that during the seventeen months in which Francis
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reigned as king of France, Queen Catherine and Queen Mary were constantly in each
other’s company, and in fact Queen Catherine, far from being excluded from the source of power by the death of her husband, formed a royal triumvirate at the top of the pyramid of the court; as the mother on whom the king depended emotionally, and as the queen dowager who had authorized the Guises to assume power, she was now of infinitely more account in the counsels of the kingdom than she had been during the reign of Henry
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. There has been much speculation concerning the relations of Catherine de Medicis and Mary Stuart: it has been suggested that Catherine disliked her daughter-in-law so intensely that she was finally capable of poisoning her son Francis, in order to bring to an end Mary Stuart’s reign as queen of France. A great deal has been made of the story that Mary openly despised Catherine for her lowly birth, and described her contemptuously as nothing but the daughter of a merchant, the story resting on the word of the Cardinal de Santa Croce, the papal nuncio in France.
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Whether or not Mary, with the imprudence of youth, made this highly unwise remark, it is certainly easy enough to imagine that an unattractive older woman should be jealous of an exceptionally attractive younger one, with the additional complications of a throne to exacerbate their feelings, quite apart from the traditionally trying relationship of mother and daughter-in-law. Yet the fact is that whatever her private feelings, outwardly Catherine exhibited positively maternal kindness towards Mary during her period as queen of France, and gave Mary no reason to suppose that she was anything but most amicably inclined towards her.

In December 1559 the English envoys reported that Catherine and Mary listened daily to a sermon in the chapel, or in their mutual dining-chamber. The interviews which ambassadors held with the royalties throughout this period generally found both queens together, with Mary sitting on Catherine’s right hand. Often Mary and Catherine would be installed in one palace while Francis was away hunting based on another. In April, Mary was deeply depressed by the bad news from Scotland and it was Catherine who took it upon herself to comfort her, just as the previous year Mary had taken to heart Catherine’s own grief over the death of Henry. When Throckmorton had an interview with Mary on 6 August, Catherine was present and Mary requested Throckmorton to speak to the queen mother first.
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Catherine was also present at the interview which Francis and Mary granted to Throckmorton on 15 September at Saint-Germain, and she was together with the young couple when Condé was arrested on 31 October. The natural trend of court life was to throw the two queens together in conditions of extreme intimacy, a state which appeared to be accepted by both women with perfect satisfaction.

Catherine had indeed been so sternly schooled in the previous reign in the art of maintaining friendly relations with those in positions of power that it would have been inconceivable for her to have displayed any sort of jealousy of Mary in public, while Francis remained on the throne. But to understand the true feelings of Catherine de Medicis towards Mary, it is necessary to appreciate that despite all her cunning, Queen Catherine was fundamentally not a political woman but a mother. The instincts of motherhood, gratified at long last after a hideous period of infertility, remained her strongest emotions. Thus she judged every situation from the point of view of how it might affect the welfare of her children; her desire for political strength sprang from her conviction that the more power she possessed, the more help she could give them. Mary, as ally or rival, was judged primarily from the point of view of Francis. While Francis lived, while Mary was his wife and as such a necessary adjunct to his life and happiness, Catherine would treat her with all the warmth and consideration which was her due; but once Francis was dead, once Mary was no longer the helpmeet of one child but a potential threat to the happiness of another, the picture was liable to be very different. As Regnier la Planche truly observed of Catherine after the death of Francis, when she finally became the official regent of France: for the past twenty-two years she had had plenty of leisure to consider the humours and fashions of the whole French court, so that she understood very well how to play her hand so as to win the game at last.
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Mary in her turn did not fail to be influenced by the personality of her mother-in-law. Not only did she imbibe a thoroughly dynastic approach to the business of being a queen, but from Catherine she learnt also that intrigue was a necessary, even enjoyable part of politics. These two thoroughly feminine lessons – that the considerations of the child or unborn child, the continuance of the dynasty, should be placed above all others, and that the most effective weapons in a queen’s hand were those of diplomatic intrigue – were impressed on Mary consciously or unconsciously during the seventeen months in which she virtually shared the throne of France with Catherine de Medicis. The second lesson did not fall on particularly fertile ground: Mary, unlike Catherine, was not by nature a talented or adept intriguer. Yet she was to become an enthusiastic one. The effect of Catherine’s early lessons can certainly be discerned in Mary’s later career in Scotland and England.

Despite the temporary victory of the Catholic party at Amboise, the internal situation in France remained riven with economic difficulty and religious
crisis. In France’s desperate financial situation, it was generally agreed by August, by Huguenots such as Coligny as well as Catholics such as the Guises, that the only hope lay in trying to establish some sort of civil unity. But it was easier to call for unity than to achieve it. Both sides had their own notions of what was necessary. At a meeting of the Grand Council, Coligny spoke out boldly in favour of the return of the Estates, and the diminution of the king’s guard, which he claimed was dividing Francis from his people. On 26 August, the Estates were convoked for the following December, and a date in January was chosen for a national synod of the French Church, provided the Pope should not have already announced an ecumenical council. But the lost tranquillity of France was not so easily restored. Still fearing for his life, Francis left Fontainebleau and went first to St Germain-en-Laye for safety, and then on to Orleans, which, with his wife and mother, he reached on 18 October. Here, surrounded by his army, he felt his person to be more secure, unaware that in his case the ravages of disease were more to be feared than the cold steel of the assassin. As the Spanish ambassador reported gloomily to his master that the religious situation in France was going from bad to worse,
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the prince of Condé decided to gamble on a personal appeal to King Francis, whom he trusted to wean from the side of the Guises by the magnetism of his own physical presence. His trust was misplaced. On Condé’s arrival in Orleans, Francis, on the instructions of the Guises, reproached him tearfully with his enterprises against the government. The prince of Condé was arrested, and on 26 November condemned to death.