Mary Queen of Scots (41 page)

This sort of riddle was all very well, but it was now nearly two years since Mary had started her second serious round of marriage negotiations, and still the English party were taking refuge in saws and sayings and making no definite commitment. In short, Mary was no nearer getting either a husband or the succession to the English throne, although she had been a childless widow over four years, as a result of which there was still no direct heir to the Scottish throne closer than the Hamiltons. Under the circumstances, the impatience of the Scottish party who wrote to Cecil of his ‘many obscure words and dark sentences’ is understandable; Maitland and Moray pointed out to him quite plainly that if Elizabeth would not establish ‘the succession of her crown’ it would be quite impossible for them to induce Mary to marry an Englishman, and she would then make her own choice.
¹⁴
Yet still no promise came. Not only that, but the next emanation from England – the appearance of young Lord Darnley himself mysteriously granted permission to travel to Scotland in early February 1564 – cast serious doubt over the whole straight-forwardness of the English point of view.

It was an interesting enigma why Darnley, young, eligible and handsome, with the royal blood of England and Scotland in his veins, should be suddenly allowed to return to Scotland at this very moment, by permission of Queen Elizabeth. The name of Darnley had always played a minor part in any discussion of Mary’s possible suitors because of his position in both the Tudor and Stuart family tree, and because he was roughly the right age to be Mary’s bridegroom. The match had certainly always been in the mind of Darnley’s ambitious striving mother Margaret, countess of Lennox, and it was not for nothing that she had sent him hotfoot to France to condole with Mary on the death of Francis.
‡
In September 1564 the earl of Lennox, who had long been banished from Scotland for trying to capture Dumbarton Castle in 1544 with English troops, was allowed to return to Scotland ostensibly to look to his estates. None other than Queen Elizabeth herself pleaded with Queen Mary to receive him. According to Melville, Elizabeth’s motive in thus smoothing Lennox’s way was quite definitely to promote the Darnley marriage: Elizabeth told Melville Darnley was one of the two that she had in her head to offer unto the queen, as born within the realm of England.
¹⁶
In the course of the ceremony by which Leicester was invested with his titles, Elizabeth also teased Melville that he would prefer to see Darnley, who was standing by, as a husband for his queen rather than Leicester. The presence of her husband in the rival camp did not dim the ardour of Margaret Lennox in forwarding the claims of her son: the Lennox Jewel, for example, once thought to commemorate Lennox’s death in 1571, is now thought on grounds of style to date from this earlier period, and in any case contains no memorial details of Lennox’s life, such as might be expected in a commemorative piece. Margaret Lennox certainly took advantage of the return of Melville to Scotland to send jewels to her husband in 1564: she may have taken the opportunity to create an elaborately emblematic
objet d’art
, whose complicated symbolism would convey messages to her husband on the subject of her matrimonial schemes, too dangerous to commit to paper.
§
When Mary wrote to Elizabeth in December 1564 asking that Darnley might be allowed to come north to join his father, neither Elizabeth nor her advisers can have been in any doubts that Darnley was now a strongly fancied runner in the Scottish queen’s matrimonial stakes. The Spanish contendent had recently vanished from the race, and in view of Elizabeth’s behaviour Leicester was still not a certain starter: the odds on Darnley, who was Catholic, semi-royal, and apparently approved of by Elizabeth, now dramatically shortened.

It was popularly believed at the time by the Scots that Elizabeth herself had launched Darnley, in order to trap Mary into a demeaning marriage, although, as Randolph indicated in his letter of 12 February, it seems to have been Leicester and Cecil who combined together to get the boy his licence to come north.
¹⁷
Elizabeth’s part seems to have been a passive one: having an extraordinary inability to make up her mind on matters of emotion, she probably did not know herself whether she desired the marriage of the beloved Leicester and Mary. This inability nearly always turned out fortunately for her, since it allowed others to take the action, and in doing so, it was they who made the mistakes. In this particular case, it is likely that Leicester and Cecil, encouraged by indecisive passivity of Elizabeth, launched Darnley as a sort of Trojan horse into the Scottish queen’s kingdom. Queen Mary could not fail to be interested in such an obvious candidate for marriage: as Melville put it, she might prefer Darnley ‘being present’ to Leicester ‘who was absent’; and of Leicester and Cecil it was of course Leicester who had a further personal motive to embroil the negotiations – he may well have been anxious not to have them concluded while Elizabeth herself still remained unmarried. Elizabeth later told de Silva that it was Leicester who had refused to consent to the match, and thus wrecked it.
¹⁸
The Scots, who were becoming obstreperous in their desire for some sort of concrete result, would become confused between Leicester and Darnley. Mary herself would dither between the two claimants and continue to remain unwed. The English therefore would be able to continue in that policy of masterly inactivity which best suited their own interests over the marriage of the Scottish queen; as for Elizabeth, she could continue to use the unmarried and therefore uncommitted state of Mary as an argument for not recognizing her place in the English succession. This seems to have been the tortuous reasoning of the English at the beginning of February when Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, left London, by specific permission of the English queen.

Darnley was on the borders of Scotland by 10 February, and at Dunbar the next day, from whence he went on to Haddington, finally reaching Edinburgh on 13 February. Here he spent three days, in the course of which he was most warmly received by Elizabeth’s envoy Randolph, who lent him his own horses, as Darnley’s had not arrived. Darnley was entertained by Lord Robert Stewart at Holyrood where, according to Randolph, his pleasant social manner made an agreeable impression. Mary was away hunting in Fife. Here on Saturday 17 February, at the house of the Laird of Wemyss, the first meeting for four years between the ill-starred couple took place. The young man whom Mary saw before her was eminently handsome. Although Melville had assured Queen Elizabeth that he found him almost too effeminate – ‘beardless and lady-faced’ were the words he used – this was more evidence of Melville’s wish to please Elizabeth, than of Darnley’s lack of attraction.
¹⁹
The contemporary portraits by Eworth, standing with his younger brother, or painted alone three-quarter length, show that Darnley at the age of eighteen
‖
was nothing if not outwardly good-looking. In these portraits Darnley appears at first sight like a young god, with his golden hair, his perfectly shaped face with its short straight nose, the neat oval chin, and above all the magnificent legs stretching forth endlessly in their black hose. But on closer inspection the god appears to be more Pan than Apollo: there is something faun-like about his pointed ears, the beautiful slanting hazel eyes with their unreadable expression, and even a hint of cruelty in the exquisitely formed mouth with its full rosy lips. It was Darnley’s height which was considered at the time to be his main physical characteristic – had not Elizabeth called him ‘yon long lad’ when she pointed him out to Melville? – and he was fortunate in being slender with it, or as Melville put it, ‘long and small, even and straight’. His elegant physique could hardly fail to commend itself to Mary for two reasons. Firstly, beautiful as she was, Mary was nevertheless tall enough to tower over most of her previous companions, including her first husband Francis. The psychological implications of this height can only be guessed at, but as Darnley was certainly well over six feet one inch
^a
Mary for once could feel herself not only overtopped at dancing, but also physically protected by her admirer if she so wished; as a novel sensation it could hardly have failed to be pleasant. Secondly, as Mary was also a woman of strong aesthetic instincts, she would tend to appreciate the effeminate beauty of a Darnley more than the masculine vigour of some of her Scottish nobles.

The handsome youth had been well-trained in all the arts considered suitable for a gentleman – or princeling – of the period; he could ride a horse, hunt, dance gracefully and play the lute extremely well. In this respect he took after his father Mathew, earl of Lennox, who had been one of the most gallant figures at the Scottish court before his English marriage. The aim of his ambitious mother had been to make his courtly ways as winning as his outward appearance. To his internal qualities she had unfortunately paid less regard. It was true that his education was in the impressive mould of royalty at the time of the Renaissance: when he was only eight he was accomplished enough to send a letter to Queen Mary Tudor in which he asked her to accept ‘a little plot of my own penning’ which he termed Utopia Nova. He is traditionally supposed to have translated the works of Valerius Maximus into English. Better attested is the fact that he wrote some pleasant poems, a talent he must have inherited from his mother, herself a poetess;
²¹
the subjects Darnley chose for his verses included fittingly enough a long address ‘to the Queen’ on how to treat her subjects, in which he adjured her somewhat priggishly:

But whatever the veneer of education lovingly applied to his surface, it had in no sense left Darnley an intellectual. Throughout his short life he showed remarkably little interest in any matters of the mind, and a single-minded concern for the pursuit of pleasure. The truth was that Darnley was thoroughly spoilt: he was the product of a striving mother and a doting father, and even the most rigorous education would probably have left little impact on a personality which from his earliest years had been encouraged to regard himself as the important centre round which the world revolved.

As a character there was very little to commend him despite or more probably because of all the maternal solicitude which had been expended on him – on his first arrival in Scotland Randolph did not want ‘a little cold’ which he was suffering from, to get to the ears of Lady Lennox, lest she should be alarmed.
²²
Apart from being spoilt, he was headstrong and ambitious; but he was ambitious only in so far as his mind could hold any concept for long enough to pursue it, since above all he desired the palm and not the race. It was the outward manifestations of power, the crown, the sceptre and the orb, which appealed to him: the realities of its practice made no appeal to his indolent and pleasure-loving temperament. Vanity was by far the strongest motive which animated him. It was vanity which made him seek out evil companions, such as the profligate Lord Robert Stewart, even from the first moment of his arrival in Edinburgh, and seek solace in the admiration of low company. If the pursuit of pleasure led him inevitably on to fresh excitements, and thus to more vicious enjoyments as simpler pleasures failed, it was his vanity which brought about his quick touchy temper, and his fatally boastful nature; finally, his vanity was the fatal flaw which made Darnley incapable of assessing any person or situation at its true worth, since he could not help relating everything back to his own self-esteem. The kindest judgement made about him was that of the cardinal of Lorraine –
‘un gentil huteaudeau
’
²³
(an agreeable
nincompoop) – but such lightweight figures had a way of becoming dangerous if they were inserted into serious situations.

None of this was apparent to Mary Queen of Scots at her first meeting with her cousin in Scotland, at Wemyss Castle. She merely saw and admired his charming exterior, which, like a delightful red shiny apple ready for the eating, gave no hint of the maggots which lay inside. Her reaction was instantaneously romantic: she told Melville that ‘he was the properest and best proportioned long man that ever she had seen…,’
²⁴
Although the long man went on to see his father Lennox who was at Dunkeld with his kinsman Lord Atholl, he was back at the queen’s side on the following Saturday, in order to cross over the queen’s ferry with her towards the south. From now on, he was scarcely allowed to be away from her side. On Monday Darnley listened to Knox preach, dined with Moray and Randolph, and finally at Moray’s instance danced a galliard with Mary – the tall graceful young couple looked so suitable together that at this point Randolph reported: ‘A great number wish him well – others doubt him, and deeply consider what is fit for the state of their country, than, as he is called “a fair jolly young man”.’
²⁵
Yet the tide was running very strongly in favour of the fair jolly young man – more especially since in mid-March Randolph was finally instructed to tell Mary that the Leicester marriage would definitely not be exchanged for her succession rights. Mary was deeply depressed by the news, and wept bitter tears: but it had the inevitable effect of focusing her attention still more strongly on Darnley now physically present by her side, as Elizabeth and her advisers must surely have anticipated when they sent the final crushing message.

In the meantime marriage was in the air of Mary’s little Scottish circle. During the previous autumn Mary’s secretary Maitland had begun to court the dazzling Mary Fleming, he being a recently widowed man of forty, and she a girl of twenty-two. Maitland was clearly fascinated by her radiant youth and vitality, although Kirkcaldy scornfully described her as being about as suitable for him ‘as I am to be pope’.
²⁶
Maitland’s passion became an open subject for discussion at the court, and in February Maitland confessed to Cecil that his passion brought him at least one ‘merry hour’ out of the four and twenty, whatever the troublesome affairs of the kingdom, even advising Cecil himself to turn to such amorous sport for relaxation since ‘those that be in love, be ever set upon a merry pin’.
²⁷
Randolph was scornful over Maitland’s infatuation which he described in withering terms, but Randolph himself, a forty-five-year-old bachelor who observed the gambolling of the Maries with gallant approval, was himself an unsuccessful admirer of Mary Beaton, and his account was
probably tinged with jealousy. In the end it was not the acknowledged
belle
Mary Fleming who was to be the first Marie to wed, but, as we have seen, her energetic agile companion, Mary Livingstone, who chose as her bridegroom a younger son of Lord Sempill. The marriage took place on Shrove Tuesday, 6 March 1565. The queen was not only party to the marriage contract and gave the bride a dowry of £500 a year in land, but also paid for the wedding gown and bridal banquet, as was her custom with her favourite ladies. As the first of the Maries to marry, the wedding of Mary Livingstone naturally attracted a great deal of attention, and the French and English ambassadors give many details of the impending ceremonies for two months before hand (the detailed preparations certainly give the lie to Knox’s suggestion of a hurried ceremony). Randolph described Sempill as ‘a happy Englishman’ for winning the estimable Mary Livingstone as a bride. Mary Stuart’s own views on the subject were best expressed by the French ambassador in his report to Catherine de Medicis: ‘She has begun to marry off her Maries, and says that she wishes she herself were of the band.’
²⁸