Mary Queen of Scots (45 page)
Read Mary Queen of Scots Online
Authors: Antonia Fraser
The best summary of the points of difference between Mary and her husband is provided in the memoirs of Lord Herries: Mary believed ‘all the honour and majesty he had came from her: that she had made choice of him for her husband by her own affection only, and against the will of many of the nobility’. Darnley, on the other hand, was complacently convinced that ‘the marriage was done with the consent of the nobility who thought him worthy of the place; that the whole kingdom had their eyes upon him; they would follow and serve him upon the fields, where it was a shame a woman should command’. And as the memoirs added: ‘These conceits [were] being continuously buzzed in the young man’s head.’
31
It was, however, quite one thing for Mary to get on badly with her husband, and for Darnley’s young head to buzz, and quite another for this disagreement to be put to savage use by Mary’s enemies. Darnley by himself was powerless, whatever his posturings. Darnley as the tool of Mary’s opponents could have a cutting edge. For it was a regrettable fact that by the beginning of 1566 there were quite a number of Scottish nobles who
were inclining to put themselves in the category of the queen’s enemies. Their disputes with the queen had quite different origins from those of Darnley, and formed very different patterns. But the combination of two forces of disaffection was capable of proving very dangerous for Mary – and fatal for her servant David Riccio.
*
An unpublished letter in the Register House, Edinburgh, from Mary to John Spens, her advocate, on a legal matter, dated from Stirling on 9 April, contains a passionately scribbled postscript in the queen’s own hand, in which she directs the advocate to find out more concerning certain ‘secret gatherings’ said to be held in the evenings in Edinburgh between Knox and Gavin Hamilton: ‘I pray you endeavour to learn what is done or said and inform me thereof, using all the diligence you can, but take good care that no one learns that I have written anything to you on this matter….’
7
†
But Mary was wrong in supposing that the dispensation had already been granted. The dispensation was granted in Rome some time after 1 September and before 25 September; it arrived in Scotland several weeks after that – but was not of course published, since the marriage had already taken place on the assumption of its existence, and to publish its actual date would have been embarrassing to the queen.
8
Unless Mary and Darnley went through a further marriage ceremony after the date of its granting (of which there is no record) their marriage was technically invalid.
‡
The title of Lord Darnley was a courtesy title, which he bore as the elder surviving son of the earl of Lennox, according to the English custom (in Scotland at this period Darnley would have been known as the master of Lennox). Darnley was created earl of Ross in May and duke of Albany in July, before being proclaimed as ‘King Henry’ by the queen. In the present work, however, which already contains three King Henrys – Henry VIII of England, and Henry II and III of France – he will still be referred to as Darnley for the sake of clarity. But it is important to realize that Darnley was universally referred to as ‘the king’ in Scotland at the time.
§
The correct spelling of his name: Rizzio seems to have originated from Rizio in the first printing of Knox’s
History
in 1644.
‖
The portrait usually given as that of Riccio, from which many engravings have been made, showing a soulful gentleman fingering a lute, with fine eyes, a chiselled mouth, a neat beard, certainly does not depict him as ugly; but it is an imaginary portrait, dating from the late seventeenth or eighteenth century, and has no connection with his true appearance.
a
He was credited with the composition of the music for seven Scottish songs –
The Lass of Patie’s Mill
,
Bessie Bell
,
The Bush Aboon Traquair
,
The Bonnie Boatman
,
And Thou were my Ain Thing
,
Auld Rob Morris
and
Down the Burn David
, in the 1725 edition of
Orpheus Caledonius
; later James Oswald attached his name to certain songs in the
Caledonian Companion
, and was accused of having done so for the sake of publicity. In fact the legend of Riccio the composer rests on tradition only, and as such can be neither proved nor disproved – although it seems infinitely more likely that a native Italian would be interested by, collect and play, rather than actually compose such characteristically Scottish melodies. See John Glen,
Early Scottish Melodies
, for a balanced discussion of the whole subject.
b
The six documents among the state papers in the Register House at Edinburgh dated from July 1565 to May 1566 signed by Queen Mary and Darnley after their marriage invariably show their signatures in this position; on at least two occasions, however, Darnley asserted himself by making his signature considerably larger than that of the queen.
c
In England signatures by wooden stamp were used from the reign of Henry VI onwards.
d
James was born on 19 June 1566. By the law of averages, he was therefore conceived on or about 19 September 1565. The circumstances of his birth might seem to suggest that he was premature, since his mother had endured such hardships during the pregnancy. But after the murder of Riccio, Mary specifically declared in her letter to Archbishop James Beaton of 2 April 1566,
27
that she had been nearly
seven
months pregnant at the time of the assassination (9 March 1566). Yet a calculation based on James’s birth shows that she was in fact only approaching
six
months pregnant. This seems to show that Mary in April believed her pregnancy to be more advanced than it was. It certainly disposes of the notion that James was premature, since by Mary’s calculations James was born late rather than early. One therefore returns to the most likely date of on or a little before 19 September 1565 for conception.
14 Our Most Special Servant‘Some of our subjects and council by their proceedings have declared manifestly what men they are … slain our most special servant in our own presence and thereafter held our proper person captive treasonably.’
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
to Queen Elizabeth of England, 15 March 1566
In January 1566 Mary Queen of Scots was in her own estimation riding high, with her courage unimpaired and her resolution only strengthened by the recent ordeal through which she had passed with such success; the future, bringing with it the prospect of the birth of an heir, looked bright to a woman whose nature combined spirit and optimism with tenderness. But there was no denying that the opposition which was building up against her both within and without Scotland had an ugly aspect to it: if she had appreciated its real extent, even Mary in her most buoyant mood might have experienced some unquiet moments while she speculated just how and when such thunder clouds would break into the fury of the storm. First of all there were set steadily against her those Protestant lords temporarily in exile, such as Moray; their primary desire was to return to Scotland, but their hostility to Mary was given a new edge when she threatened, in addition to banishment, to attaint them and declare their properties forfeited at the forthcoming session of Parliament, to be held in the spring.
Then there were the Kirk and Knox who feared to see Mary take advantage of her new strength since the defeat of Moray to advance the claims of the Catholic Church; this they also suspected she might try to accomplish at the coming parliamentary session. As it happens, the contemporary rumours that Mary was about to join a Catholic League with other foreign Catholic powers have been shown to be groundless – no record having been found of such a League, let alone Mary’s intended
participation in it
*
– and what plans if any Mary had for helping the Catholics at the forthcoming Parliament will never be known. At most she would probably have asked for toleration of the Mass for Scottish Catholics, rather than the rabid attacks to which the Mass and priests were subjected when detected; Mary was certainly modern enough in thought to wonder why the Catholics should not enjoy the free practice of their own religion, which she had so unquestioningly granted to the Protestants from the first moment of her arrival in Scotland. But of course Knox, like all those who have accomplished a revolution, was hysterically fearful to see its effects undone, and any ideas of mutual tolerance would have fallen on very deaf ears indeed. In January an emissary came from the new Pope Pius
V
, with an extremely friendly if somewhat over optimistic message for the queen on the subject of the recent revolt: ‘Most dear daughter – We have heard with the utmost joy that you and His Highness, your husband, have lately given a brilliant proof of your zeal by restoring the due worship of God throughout your whole realm. Truly, dearest daughter, you understand the duties of devout kings and queens …’ The Pope went on to encourage her to weed out completely ‘the thorns and tares of heretical depravity …’,
1
and promised all the help possible in this worthwhile task. Although Pius
V
seemed to have but little idea of the true state of affairs in Scotland, Mary was quite acute enough to send her own emissary, the bishop of Dunblane, for the second time to ask for a papal subsidy – since the Pope’s mention of ‘all the kind offices that paternal love can suggest’ certainly spelled financial aid to Mary, always extremely conscious of this problem.
Added to these two groups were those other Protestant nobles within the confines of Scotland, such as Morton and Maitland, who hated to see Mary’s other ‘base-born’ advisers advanced to the detriment of their own position. It will be seen that Riccio, as chief representative of this despised and hated class, was the natural scapegoat for all the sections of the community opposed to the queen. He was also of course the obvious suspect on whom Darnley could pour his rage and jealousy against his wife – if such a jealousy could be focused on the hunched figure of the little Italian. It was now the work of Mary’s opponents at court to incite the foolish bombastic Darnley into such a state of frenzy that he might be persuaded to join in their own more serious enterprises. In order to do so it was necessary to present to Darnley that in the opinion of many Scottish nobles he, not Mary, would make the most suitable ruler of Scotland. This was the notion which was now ‘buzzed’ in Darnley’s excitable brain.
The extreme cynicism of such behaviour should not be overlooked – the Scottish nobles, including Moray, were now proposing a scheme which involved the coronation of Darnley, the very man against whose elevation they had rebelled in August. Darnley was still nominally a Catholic, and since Christmas 1565, when he ostentatiously went to Mass to score a point over his wife, he had been flaunting his faith in the face of his compatriots for some reason of his own. On the Feast of the Purification, he processed through the streets of Edinburgh with lighted tapers, a notably Catholic gesture; on another occasion he asked Lords Fleming, Livingstone and Lindsay whether they would be content to go to Mass with him ‘which they refusing, he gave them all evil words’.
2
Bedford reported that Darnley would have liked to have shut up the noblemen in their chambers and forced them to go to Mass. Yet this Catholicism was apparently of no account to the Protestant Lords Moray, Ochiltree, Boyd and Rothes now that their persons and properties were threatened by the oncoming session of Parliament: Darnley’ squalities and religion, so distasteful in July that he could not be tolerated as a royal consort, were in February apparently sufficiently worthy to make a candidate for supreme power, with the backing of the Protestant lords.
It was now plainly suggested to Darnley that his wife was Riccio’s mistress, and the waning of his own power was due to the machinations of the Italian. It was not difficult to arouse the jealousy of a man of Darnley’s vain temperament, and Darnley’s cousin Morton seems to have done much of the trouble-making. Mary, conscious of her innocence, added fuel to the flames by openly finding pleasure in Riccio’s counsels and his company. Could there have been any truth in the story? Neither Riccio’s age, height nor his ugliness would have been any certain bar against a woman finding him desirable, since attraction follows its own rules. It is true that Mary Stuart herself did not appear to find men of this sort appealing – Darnley, young, elegantly beautiful and outwardly romantic was the type she apparently admired; all we know of her relations with Riccio, including her behaviour at his death, seems to fit into the pattern of ruler and confidant, rather than mistress and lover. But what really militates against the possibility of Mary having had a love affair with David Riccio is the timing of it. Later the reproach was to be flung in the face of James
VI
that he was actually ‘Davy’s son’.
†
In January Randolph wrote dolefully to Leicester: ‘Woe is me for you, when Davy’s son shall be a King of England’,
3
but as this was only a few weeks before he was asked to leave Scotland by Mary, and as ever since her marriage to Darnley his reports on her behaviour had been openly laced with spite, too much attention should not be paid to the scandalous prophecy. In order for the accusation to be true the queen would have to have been indulging in a secret love affair with Riccio throughout that same summer in which she was so obviously infatuated with Darnley; she would then have had to conceive a child by Riccio less than two months after her marriage to Darnley, when to outward observers she was still deeply in love with her husband. It seems that the worst that Mary can be accused of, with Riccio, as with Châtelard, is a certain lack of prudence which was very much part of her character, rather than some more positive indiscretion.
