Mary Queen of Scots (22 page)

By tradition the mourning period of a queen of France lasted for forty days. The obsequies of the young king ended when his heart, enclosed in a leaden vase, was taken to the cathedral of Saint-Denis, outside Paris, traditional resting-place of the kings of France: here amid the numerous tombs the vase was placed on a pillar surrounded by sculptured flames, to symbolize that Francis as king had been as a pillar of flame in the Hebrew desert – a reference to his stand against the heretics. Immediately after the death of Francis, Mary, as we have seen, was prostrated by grief, and kept herself solitary; in any case visitors during the first fifteen days of her widowhood were limited by convention to those whose rank was considered sufficiently elevated to justify their entrance – the new King Charles
IX
, the king of Navarre, her uncles of Guise and the constable of Montmorency. For more personal consolation Mary depended on her grandmother Duchess Antoinette. However, once the first fortnight was over, and Mary’s storm of sorrow had abated, it was inevitable that she should consider her future in the world: more especially did the subject of her future come rapidly into prominence since ambassadors were permitted to visit her during the second period of her mourning, and whatever the private unhappiness of a girl of eighteen who had lost her husband, they at least were untroubled by such considerations and, like her uncles of Guise, eager to press on to the burning topic of her future.

There were two possible cornerstones on which such discussions could be founded: a theoretical second marriage, and Mary’s prospective return
to Scotland. The Scottish situation was, however, rendered extremely uncertain by the fact that any sort of royal government had been in virtual abeyance since the death of Mary of Guise: the country was now ruled by a Protestant régime containing both John Knox and the queen’s half-brother Lord James Stewart, under the titular leadership of Hamilton duke of Châtelherault. Mary was virtually an unknown quantity in Scotland at the time of Francis’s death, and what little was known of her was feared: she was regarded not only as a Catholic by a country newly Protestant, but also as a foreigner by reason of her French upbringing and marriage. It therefore seemed highly unlikely that Mary would be received back in Scotland unless some foreign army propelled her there; for this reason her return to Scotland was regarded as being bound up with and dependent on her second marriage. Consequently during the spring of 1561 it was this marriage which received the full force of diplomatic and courtly considerations.

The historian Froude, in a trenchant phrase, has accused Mary herself of speculating on her next choice of husband before her first husband’s body was cold.
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In fact the marriage of a queen was unavoidably a political issue in the sixteenth century; just as Mary’s first marriage had been fervently discussed from the very moment of her birth, when she was far too young to take any effective interest in the subject, so now it was natural that the subject of her second marriage, should obsess the conversation and correspondence of ambassadors and courtiers, to say nothing of her Guise relations, quite regardless of her own personal feelings. The English ambassador, Throckmorton, made the point with his usual clarity when he indicated to the Council three weeks after Francis’s death, on the occasion of his first interview with Mary: ‘Now that death had thus disposed of the late French king, whereby the Scottish queen is left a widow, one of the special things your lordships have to consider, and have an eye to, is the marriage of that Queen.’
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His letters are abundantly filled with rumours on this critical subject. A whole week before Francis’s death when Mary was immured in her husband’s sick-room, Throckmorton reported from Orleans that there were plenty of discourses to be heard already of the French queen’s second marriage and he cited the names of Don Carlos of Spain, Philip
II
’s heir, the Archduke Charles of Austria, and the earl of Arran, Châtelherault’s heir. After the death of Francis, besides the three front-runners already cited by Throckmorton, who continued to lead the field of gossip, an increasing number of other names were mentioned, including the kings of Denmark and Sweden, the young Lord Darnley, with his desirable inheritance of English royal blood, even the recently
widowed duke of Ferrera, who was thought to have a special affection for the Scottish queen. There was always the possibility, mentioned at the Spanish court, that Mary would eventually marry her own brother-in-law, Charles, with a papal dispensation: even the name of her own uncle, Grand Prior Francis of Guise, was canvassed. In short, by the time Mary emerged from her forty days of mourning, possible candidates could be said to include almost any currently unmarried male of roughly suitable age, whose own position could be held to benefit in any way that of the queen of Scots, either by establishing her own throne of Scotland, or by strengthening her claim to the throne of England, or even by re-establishing her on the throne of France.

The torrent of speculation made it inevitable that Mary herself would have to express some sort of personal predilection on the two subjects of re-marriage and Scotland, once she returned to the ways of ordinary life – unless, of course, she was content to leave her affairs and her future in the hands of her uncles as she had done in the past. This, however, she did not seem especially inclined to do, or at any rate, not to the extent which she had suffered herself to be guided during her time as dauphiness and queen of France. It has been suggested that the Guises lost interest in their niece once she no longer occupied the throne from which she could advance their interests: but the evidence of Mary’s widowhood in France shows that on the contrary, it was she who attempted to stretch her political wings, and to struggle free as a butterfly from the chrysalis in which the Guises had lovingly contained her. As she was careful to tell Throckmorton just before her departure for Scotland, her uncles did not advise her on Scottish matters ‘being of the affairs of France’.
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Yet in the negotiations for a second marriage, the cardinal showed himself as anxious as ever to guide his niece. It was Mary the widow who was making the first efforts to think for herself, in a way which impressed all those around her.

In the first instance she evidently used the period of her mourning for a serious consideration of her future problems once her first collapse had given way to a more philosophical mood of resignation. Throckmorton visited her on 31 December, and his account of the interview shows us the first glimpse of the new Mary Stuart. There is no question but that the young queen made an excellent impression upon the English ambassador.
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He wrote back to England that no great account had been made of the queen during her husband’s lifetime, seeing that she had been ‘under band of marriage and subjection to her husband (who carried the burden and care of all her matters)’, and there had thus been no great opportunity to get to know her. But, he continued, since her husband’s death she had
shown, and continued to do so, that she was ‘both a great wisdom for her years, modesty, and also of great judgment in the wise handling herself and her matters, which, increasing with her years, cannot but turn greatly to her commendation, reputation, honour and great benefit of her and her country’. Mary further impressed Throckmorton by professing herself ready to be guided by suitable advisers; ‘And for my part,’ continued Throckmorton, ‘I see her behaviour to be such, and her wisdom and kingly modesty so great, in that she thinketh herself not too wise, but is content to be ruled by good counsel and wise men (which is a great virtue in a Prince or Princess, and which argueth a great judgment and wisdom in her).’

Throckmorton’s last comment was of course not only intended to apprise the English Council as to the true nature of the Scottish queen with whom they had to deal: it was also intended as an acid reference to the somewhat less wise and modest conduct of their own Queen Elizabeth. The later reputations of Elizabeth and Mary have somewhat obscured the fact that in the early 1560s, when they were both young women, it was Elizabeth who was considered headstrong, extravagant and stubborn, whereas Mary was generally rated to be modest, intelligent and anxious to do her best as a ruler by taking wise advice. One contemporary described Elizabeth’s court at this period as a by-word for frivolity: ‘Nothing is treated earnestly, and though all things go wrong they jest, and he who invents most ways of wasting time is regarded as one worthy of honour.’
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Only a few months before, in September 1560, Amy Robsart, wife of the English queen’s favourite, Robert Dudley, had been found dead in mysterious circumstances. The scandal, which invites comparison with the Scottish court tragedy of Kirk o’Field, although it had a different outcome, was not allayed by Elizabeth’s continued association with Dudley and profuse rumours throughout the following winter that she intended to marry him now that he was free. Throckmorton himself was so terrified that his hair stood on end at the very thought, and he declared that he would not wish to live should that day ever come. How different was the conduct of the young queen of Scots, and how infinitely more becoming! It was no coincidence that Throckmorton chose to write to Dudley in the same vein, praising Mary’s youthful discretion.
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Mary’s forty days of mourning were officially ended when she attended a memorial service for Francis in the convent of Grey Friars at Orleans on 18 January. She now withdrew from the strict seclusion of her first
deuil
to a palace a few leagues outside the town of Orleans, which she occupied
with her grandmother. By this date Mary had already written to Scotland a moderate temporizing letter, by which she broke the news of Francis’s death formally to the Scottish Estates, and assured them that she intended to forget past troubles and differences; she went on to express her desire to return to Scotland as soon as possible, in token of which she asked for royal accounts since the death of her mother, and demanded from the Estates a list of candidates to fill the roles of treasurer and controller in Scotland.
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The gentle, positively placating tone of this letter was thoroughly in tune with what Mary had also told Throckmorton on the subject of Scotland – that she wished to return home as soon as possible, and hoped it would be at the request and suit of her subjects.

But at this very moment, Mary was also the willing participant in marriage negotiations with Don Carlos of Spain; it is evident that her attitude towards Scotland in the spring, despite her soft words to Throckmorton, was very much one of ‘wait and see’. Marriage to Don Carlos, heir to the great throne of Spanish empire, was an infinitely more glorious prospect than a highly speculative return to a distant kingdom. Mary Stuart had been trained to believe herself a worthy incumbent of thrones, and the Guises had encouraged her in this belief. Don Carlos was a Catholic and could be expected to be supported by Spanish troops. The Spanish marriage was Mary’s first choice for her future after Francis’s death, and the return to Scotland only assumed its full importance once the prospect of the Spanish marriage faded from the scene for the time being. As has been seen, while Francis lay
in extremis
, there had been rumours at the French court of the possibility of such a match. When the Spanish ambassador visited Mary in the second stage of her mourning, he was thought to have lingered an unconscionably long time ‘above an hour together’ – too long, thought Throckmorton, for a conventional visit of condolence. The cardinal told Chantonay that his niece only wished for a Spanish marriage. On 10 January Throckmorton reported that ‘the house of Guise use all means to bring to pass the marriage between the prince of Spain and the Queen of Scotland’. At the end of January Don Juan Manrique arrived at the French court, and according to the Venetian ambassador ‘went to visit the Queen of Scotland, with whom, in the presence of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, he held very confidential communications, and, I am assured that, besides his other concerns, Don Juan is also empowered to treat a marriage between her Majesty and the Prince of Spain’.
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Don Carlos himself had little to commend him personally as a husband, and indeed in many ways was merely a still feebler version of the wretched
Francis, without the advantage of having been well known to Mary in childhood. He was physically undersized, weighing less than five and a half stone. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, he had a marked speech impediment and was also an epileptic. At the time of Mary’s first widowhood, he was sixteen, a few months older than his young step-mother Elisabeth of Valois. At the age of seventeen he fell headlong down a staircase, supposedly pursuing a serving maid, and the resulting concussion did nothing to improve his mental state. He lay for a long time, blind and partially paralysed, until an Italian surgeon gave him partial relief by a trepanning operation to cut a triangular piece out of his skull. This relieved the paralysis, but left him in turn prone to fits of homicidal mania: he also subsequently developed a passionate attachment to his young step-mother and a corresponding hatred of his father, the king.
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There was certainly nothing in Don Carlos to inspire any flight of fancy in the mind of a young, recently widowed queen: it is interesting to note that at this stage in her career, Mary Stuart’s choice of husband was without hesitation one whose attractions were strictly political and dynastic. She thoroughly justified Throckmorton’s shrewd estimate of her character in this respect – so commendably different from that of his own wayward mistress Elizabeth – ‘As far as I can learn, she more esteemeth the continuation of her honour and to marry one that may uphold her to be great than she passeth to please her fancy by taking one that is accompanied with such small benefit or alliance, as thereby her estimation and fame is not increased’.
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