Mary Queen of Scots (84 page)

It was true that James subsequently turned on Buchanan for his libels on his mother; he called the Regent Moray that ‘bastard who unnaturally rebelled and procured the ruin of his own sovereign and sister’; in 1584 he obtained the condemnation of Buchanan’s writing in Parliament. Much later he counselled his own son against reading ‘the infamous invectives’ of Buchanan and Knox.
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But the point remained that enough had been done in early childhood to rob James of any natural feeling at all, let alone for his mother. Intellectually he could replace Buchanan’s false picture of Mary with one he chose to believe was the true one. But he could never replace in his heart the inborn love of son for mother, since this flickering newly-lighted flame had been extinguished shortly after his birth by Mary’s enemies.

James, like Mary herself, had been brought up to believe himself to be a ruling monarch, despite the fact that his mother was still alive. In appearance he had grown up to be a wizened creature with sad eyes, in stature very unlike his tall and god-like parents. Fontenay, who visited him at Mary’s instigation in 1584, was impressed by James’s intelligence: he found him to have a retentive memory, to be full of penetrating questions and
able to conduct a good argument; yet he had three faults which Fontenay listed – over-confidence or an inability to estimate his own poverty and insignificance, and indiscreet love of favourites, and a tendency to pursue pleasure rather than politics which too easily allowed others to seize the reins of the realm.
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In 1580 Father Robert Abercromby, a Jesuit on a mission to Scotland, gave his own opinion on James: he found the king to be deep in Calvinism, simply because he had known no other religion discussed since adolescence.
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None of this added up to much possibility of genuine sympathy with Mary; this was not the tender charming boy of Mary’s imagination who would make every effort to release his mother from the nightmare of her captivity. Like many people who have had an unhappy and unaffectionate childhood, and withdrew into their own thoughts for security, James was already a practised deceiver by the time he reached his teens. Elizabeth’s comment when she heard of the execution of Morton in 1581 probably contained far more important guidance for Mary on the subject of James’s character than any of the more optimistic comments to which Mary herself listened: ‘That false Scotch urchin!’ exclaimed Elizabeth ‘What can be expected from the double dealing of such an urchin as this!’
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Mary’s picture of her son and of their relations was very different: she had after all carried this child in her womb through manifold dangers and difficulties, and he was her only child – ‘One like the lioness’ as the motto proudly proclaimed which she had embroidered on her hangings. She had few other objects on which to lavish her affections. The years in which James had grown up from unconscious babyhood to near adulthood had been spent by Mary cut off in captivity; her memories of her child kept green in her heart. Her will of 1577 in which she formally expressed the wish that her son should marry a Spanish princess and embrace the Catholic faith was only one example of how out of touch she had become with her son’s true development. In 1561 when Mary returned to Scotland, one of her problems had been that having been brought up in France she had insufficient understanding of the working of the Scots mind: now from 1581 onwards, in the course of Mary’s schemes for unity with James, her difficulty was not being able to follow the complexities of her son’s mind after thirteen years of captivity.

Quite apart from this obstacle to their accord, Mary’s position as queen of Scots threatened that of her son as king. Mary had revoked the abdication she made under duress at Lochleven, during her few days of liberty before Langside in May 1568. In her own mind, therefore, and those of her supporters, especially the Catholic powers abroad, she was still the true
queen of the country: James despite his coronation at the age of thirteen months, and the government in his name which had existed ever since, was usurper. This was Mary’s real hold over her son in 1580, rather than the natural ties of affection. There were advantages to James in having his
de facto
kingship recognized as
de jure
: not only would his position with France and Spain be improved, but also his position in the English succession might also be better secured. When James grew up, his letters to his mother struck an uneasy compromise: he addressed her as the queen of Scots, but signed himself James R. It was under these circumstances that, early in 1581, Mary outlined her own plan for ‘Association’ – or the joint rule of mother and son – through a Guise emissary: a scheme which naturally involved the restoration of Mary to Scotland.

The project naturally commended itself vividly to Mary, who had suggested it: once more she envisaged the prison gates opening and her own return to her throne. James himself was sufficiently attracted by the idea of the recognition of the Catholic powers at least to write a pleasant letter in return. The key to the whole project in James’s mind was of course the attitude of Elizabeth: English approval was still in the reign of James, as it had been in the reign of Mary, very much a factor of Scottish politics: the same considerations of an English alliance, English subsidies, the shared Protestant religion, and the involvement of the Scottish monarchy in the English royal succession, still obtained. In 1581 the emergence of James’s first favourite, his cousin Esmé Stuart whom he created duke of Lennox, in alliance with the bold swashbuckling Captain James Stewart,
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led to the downfall of the pro-English regent, Morton. Morton was tried and executed for the murder of Darnley (who, like Banquo’s ghost, seemed to play a much more effective part in Scottish politics once he was dead than when he was alive). Mary had never forgiven Morton, and exalted over his death from her prison – ‘of whose execution I am most glad’, she wrote firmly.
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The new duke of Lennox did not long enjoy the power which this denouement gave to him; in August 1582 a palace revolution in the shape of the kidnapping of the king’s person by the Ruthven family, headed by the earl of Gowrie, placed the government of Scotland once more in pro-English hands. Esmé Stuart, duke of Lennox, retired to France after the raid of Ruthven and there died. A year later, however, James eluded his captors, and power was once more in the hands of the apparently anti-English Arran (James Stewart). James therefore professed himself to the Guises ready to entertain the notion of the Association, at the sacrifice of Elizabeth’s favour. Arran’s position was further strengthened when an unsuccessful attempt to unseat him on the part of pro-English lords including Mar and some Hamiltons, in the spring of 1584, ended with their flight to England, as Moray had once fled after the Chaseabout Raid in 1565; there was a further parallel – these lords had expected English aid in the project but had not received it.

James might be prepared to toy with the idea of the Association – since it temporarily fitted with his plans – but Mary herself was enthusiastic on the subject; into her service in this cause she now enlisted Patrick, master of Gray. Gray, a young man of Lucifer-like beauty, had also all the mingled potentialities of talent and treachery of the former archangel within his breast. In France Gray had entered the service of Mary’s ambassador, James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow, and on being received into the inner circle of Mary’s supporters in Paris, had become extremely friendly with the Guises; the esteem in which he was held in these circles may be judged by the fact that he was presented with silver plate to the value of five or six thousand crowns. Gray had paid one visit to Scotland, either with Esmé Stuart, or after the fall of Morton, during which his ostensibly Catholic faith had wavered, and he had promised to renounce it in favour of the reformed religion. His second visit occurred in November 1583, when he brought back Esmé Stuart’s young son, at James’s request, to be brought up at the Scottish court. Although entrusted by Mary to represent her counsels at the Scottish court, and push forward the notion of the association, Gray quickly appreciated that it would be far more profitable personally to ally himself with the son, a king on a throne, than the mother, a prisoner without a kingdom. He became the friend and confidant of Arran, and from here reached the ear of James himself. From the first, Gray was in possession of enough of Mary’s secrets, and those of her little clique of supporters in France, to be able to betray both parties to James whenever he wished to convince him anew that, in a case of mother versus son, it would always be the son whom he would serve. Yet Mary, under the illusion that Gray was her emissary, continued to trust him to work for her, as she continued to believe in the affections of James.

It was now that the attitude of Elizabeth became so vital to the future, if any, of this plan of the Association. On mature reflection it was only too easy for James to see that the return of a released Mary to Scotland would be at least a serious nuisance to his own position; they were of different religion, to say nothing of different generation; how much better to secure the benefit of the association, in the shape of Elizabeth’s favour and foreign approval, without the release of Mary. In an extreme case, it
would still benefit James more to have an alliance and subsidy from Elizabeth, than the official recognition of France. Yet such negotiations had to be conducted with enormous delicacy, since Elizabeth’s attitude could only be ascertained by secret probing, and in the meantime Mary had to be encouraged lest after all the Association might turn out to be advantageous to James. In the summer of 1584 it was Gray who was sent down to London to conduct these negotiations on behalf of the king. In the meantime not only was Mary specifically assured of James’s welcoming attitude towards her proposals by a letter from James himself in July, but she was also further informed that Gray’s mission was merely to treat with Elizabeth over the subject of the rebel lords who had fled to England.
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Mary had reluctantly to accept this story; from her prison there was little else she could do. Her own emissary Fontenay believed the season would never again be so favourable –
‘jamais si belle’
– to bring about the association since both James and the Scots were now inclined towards Mary.
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Nevertheless, in a series of letters written during October to Gray, and to Castelnau de Mauvissière, the French ambassador in London, she showed herself highly conscious of the dangers of her position should James ever try to negotiate separately; Mary, with the keen perception of the captive, saw that her only hope of eluding her prison was if James made her release one of his conditions of treating with Elizabeth. She emphasized to Gray the importance of not letting Elizabeth think that there were divisions between James and herself; furthermore Gray must demand Mary’s liberty as one of the conditions of an Anglo-Scottish
rapprochement.
Mary, still believing herself to be employing Gray, gave him a series of very explicit instructions as to how he was to negotiate while in London, and although her eventual destination after her release was left vague – either England or Scotland – the importance of the release was underlined.
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Yet from the first moment Gray arrived in London, it was immediately realized by the English that he would now serve the interests of James and Elizabeth rather than those of James and Mary: indeed, in view of the excellent knowledge Gray had acquired of Mary’s organization and her secrets while in her service, Elizabeth had acquired a valuable potential ally and Mary a dangerous potential traitor. In London Gray was given lodging by Sir Edward Hoby who had known him in France: Hoby, commenting to Cecil on Gray’s keen personal ambition, the desire for glory which ‘burnt in his stomach’, hinted that Gray had much secret information about Mary which he was prepared to impart: ‘he can speak and tell tales if he list ..’.
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In vain Mary underlined to Gray what those around her were in danger of overlooking but she herself would never forget, that her imprisonment
was illegal from the first moment, since she had not even been captured in war. Mary begged Gray to make Elizabeth realize that by liberating Mary she would be meriting the approval of James.
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But even as Mary wrote, it was being made clear to Elizabeth that in fact this was the very last thing that would merit James’s approval. While Mary pleaded pathetically with Gray to pay her a personal visit in her prison, such contacts being most suitable to make mother and son better acquainted, Gray was busy in London betraying the cause of the mother at the instigation of the son. On 28 November Nau drew up twenty-eight heads of proposals on the subject of the Association at Mary’s request:
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Mary announced herself ready to stay in England if necessary, prepared to allow an amnesty to be declared over all the wrongs she had suffered at the hands of the English, renounce the Pope’s bull of excommunication, and abandon forever her own pretensions to the English crown over those of Elizabeth. Although confident of French agreement to these proposals, she also offered to join an offensive league against France, so long as an English dowry was assured to her, equivalent to that she would have to abandon in France, in the event of the French not subscribing to the idea of the association. In Scotland she was also prepared to allow an amnesty, to agree that there should be no upset in the present state of the religion of the country; the only condition she made was that James should marry with Elizabeth’s knowledge and ‘good counsel’, and the only demand the immediate softening of her present harsh conditions of captivity. Such sweeping concessions on the part of Mary made it clear that, sixteen years after her first English imprisonment she had one aim in view, and one aim only, to which she was prepared to sacrifice all other considerations – her freedom, by any means at all.

On 8 December, her forty-second birthday, Mary wrote to Elizabeth still wistfully hoping for two hours’ personal talk with her, the talk which she still felt after all these years would settle everything between them; and with her birthday uppermost in her mind, she took the opportunity to hope that Elizabeth would live to enjoy in the future as many happy years as Mary had endured unhappy ones in the past. On 14 December Mary reminded Gray by letter that James was not the sole king of Scotland, and that Gray must at all costs prevent mother and son being driven apart by ‘evil counsellors’ since it was so important to Mary’s cause that James should show himself a ‘natural and obedient son’.
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As late as January Mary was still hoping that liberty for her on these new terms was just round the corner, and desired the French king and queen to write separately to James acknowledging the Association in order to bring her son into accord with her.
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Yet all the while Gray had successfully concluded his mission in
London on James’s behalf: he had indicated to Elizabeth that the release of Mary was not necessary to win James’s friendship, and he had learnt from Elizabeth also that her friendship could be won for James by a direct channel, without taking into account the claims, rights and certainly not the desires of the imprisoned queen of Scots. The Association was now doomed; it became stamped merely as the unrealistic scheme of a tiresome middle-aged woman in prison, to whom no further attention need be paid in this context.