Mary, Queen of Scots (8 page)

In September, Lennox rode north. Considering his former reputation in Scotland, his reception by his Queen was exceptionally cordial. His rivals, the Hamiltons, were not pleased to see him, but on 27 September, at Mary’s behest, he and Chatelherault made a public and utterly insincere show of reconciliation. On 9 October, his restoration in blood was publicly proclaimed in Edinburgh, and it was confirmed by Parliament in December.
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Lennox managed to win over the Protestants by displaying a renewed interest in the reformed faith and by giving extravagant gifts to members of the Privy Council. He also began cultivating the Catholic nobility. In all these doings, he was preparing the ground for Mary’s marriage to his son, who, rumour said, would soon follow him to Scotland, along with Lady Lennox. Randolph reported that there was “a marvellous good liking of the young Lord,” and that it was “in all men’s mouths” that the Queen had decided to marry him.
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On 18 September, Mary had sent Sir James Melville to England to restore good relations with Elizabeth and secretly further Mary’s marriage plans. Melville noted that Elizabeth and Dudley were “inseparable” and concluded, quite incorrectly, that Elizabeth had had second thoughts about offering Dudley to Mary. Dudley himself sought him out and declared he had no wish to marry the Queen of Scots, and that the whole idea was a ploy of Cecil’s calculated to get rid of him. Elizabeth herself asked Melville if Mary had made up her mind about marrying Dudley, but he answered that such an important decision could not be made until there had been a meeting between the representatives of both monarchs; arrangements were to be made for such a conference to take place at Berwick.

Melville paid a visit to the Spanish embassy and made one last futile attempt to revive the idea of a marriage with Don Carlos, then wrote to Mary confirming that there was no hope of it. Melville also had “a secret charge” to see Lady Lennox in secret “to procure liberty for [Darnley] to go to Scotland, under the pretext of seeing the country and conveying his father back again to England.”
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The Countess welcomed Melville warmly and gave him expensive gifts for Mary, Moray and Maitland, “for she was in good hope that her son would speed better than [Dudley].”
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Melville was present when, on 28 September, “with great solemnity,” Elizabeth formally created Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester, a strategem calculated to make Mary “think the more of him.” It was on this occasion that Melville first saw Darnley, who, “as nearest Prince of the Blood, did bear the sword of honour” before the Queen. After the ceremony was over, Elizabeth asked Melville, “How do you like my new creation?” Melville was carefully diplomatic, but Elizabeth was shrewd and, pointing towards Darnley, said, “And yet ye like better of yonder long lad!” Melville replied, “No woman of spirit would make choice of such a man, that was liker a woman than a man, for he is very lusty [pleasing], beardless and lady-faced.” Later, Melville recorded that he had spoken disparagingly because “I had no will that the Queen of England should think I liked Lord Darnley or had any eye or dealing that way.” Elizabeth later told him that Darnley “was one of the two that she had in her head to offer our Queen, as born within the realm of England,” but Melville wisely did not rise to the bait.
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When Melville returned to Scotland, he may have carried with him the famous heart-shaped Lennox (or Darnley) Jewel, which was perhaps a gift from Lady Lennox to her husband, and may well have contained in its elaborate symbolism coded messages that could not be committed to paper. It used to be thought that this was a memorial ring made after the deaths of Darnley and Lennox, but its imagery is still not fully understood, and its style is that of the early 1560s.
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Its Scots legend, translated, reads, “Who hopes still constantly with patience shall obtain victory in their pretence [i.e., claim].”

Elizabeth, however, was apparently determined to push the Leicester marriage, offering the English succession as bait. In November, the English and Scottish commissioners met at Berwick, where it was made clear that the English Queen would “never willingly consent” to Mary marrying anyone other than Dudley. Moray and Maitland, angry that conditions should be attached to what they believed was Mary’s right, walked out of the meeting, then wrote to Cecil insisting that Elizabeth must declare Mary her heir before they would consent to their mistress marrying an Englishman. Elizabeth, predictably, ignored this demand, but still would not abandon the idea of a match between Leicester and Mary, and negotiations dragged futilely on for several more months.

In the autumn of 1564, Elizabeth, at Mary’s request, issued Bothwell with a safe-conduct enabling him to journey to France. By November, the Earl was in Paris. His release came as unwelcome news to the Protestant Lords, and Maitland even bribed one John Wemyss to induce Bothwell’s servants to poison him, although the attempt failed. In a memorial dated 3 February 1565,
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Bothwell is listed amongst Lennox’s friends, so he presumably supported the Darnley marriage. By 10 February, Bothwell had been appointed Captain of the Scottish Guard in France. He later wrote, “I had received letters from the Queen of Scots for the French King and his Council, which made the request that I should enjoy such status and privileges as are granted to the nobility of my country according to the terms of an ancient treaty between France and Scotland.”
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Meanwhile, in Scotland, the Queen had a new favourite. In December, her French secretary, Pierre Raullet, was dismissed for accepting English bribes. He was replaced by an ambitious Italian, David Rizzio, one of the Queen’s musicians.

David Rizzio (or Riccio), was a native of Piedmont, and probably came of an ancient, patrician family. He had been born around 1533, and had come to Scotland in 1561 in the train of Robertino Solaro, Count Moretta, the Savoyard ambassador. The Queen was impressed with his fine bass voice and expertise on the lute, and persuaded him to remain at her court as part of a musical quartet formed by her
valets de chambre
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Melville called Rizzio “a merry fellow and a good musician,” which probably explains why Mary enjoyed his company. He was witty, discreet and well informed, yet physically ill favoured: his enemies described him as hideously ugly, and it seems he was small, dark, swarthy and in some way deformed. What counted with Mary, though, was his loyalty, and that was never in dispute.

According to Melville, Rizzio “was not very skilful in inditing French letters,” and consequently “advices given by the Queen of England were misconstrued,” so Mary was often obliged to write her replies “over again by her own hand.” Yet for all his shortcomings, Mary came to rely upon him heavily and to take him increasingly into her confidence. As a result, Rizzio grew ever more influential and ever more arrogant and greedy, although, according to Melville, “he had not the prudence how to manage the same rightly.”

As a “sly, crafty foreigner” and a Catholic, “Seigneur Davie,” as they disparagingly called him, was predictably hated by most of the nobility as an upstart interloper. They bitterly resented “the extraordinary favour” shown him by the Queen, and Moray and Maitland feared, correctly, that Rizzio would supplant them in the Queen’s counsels. Because the Italian was so ill qualified for the job he was employed to do, Knox and many Protestant Lords suspected him of being a papal spy, and Melville put it to Mary that he was “a known minion of the Pope,” which she did not deny, but the Vatican never acknowledged his existence, and there is no record of him in its archives. Whatever the truth of this, Mary had certainly displayed poor judgement in promoting Rizzio and in openly and tactlessly preferring him over the Lords, who felt that they themselves, by virtue of their birth and status, should have been her natural counsellors.

Early in December 1564, both Mary and Lady Lennox requested Elizabeth to give Darnley leave to go to Scotland to assist his father in the legal settlement of his estates; Lady Lennox assured the Queen that the Earl and his son would return to England within a month. Not believing this for a moment, and knowing that Darnley was really being sent north to earn the Queen of Scots’ approval, Elizabeth initially refused to grant this favour; she was, after all, still hoping that Mary would accept Leicester, and Mary was now doing nothing to disabuse her of the idea. In fact, she had almost convinced Elizabeth, Maitland and Randolph that she meant after all to marry Dudley.

Over the next few weeks, Cecil and Leicester did their utmost to persuade Elizabeth to change her mind and let Darnley go to Scotland.
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Cecil’s policy was “to hold the Queen [Mary] unmarried as long as he could”; Darnley would provide a temporary diversion to gain time, and Cecil had persuaded himself that the young man would not dare marry Mary without Elizabeth’s consent, especially as his mother would be remaining in England as a hostage for his good behaviour, and Darnley stood to lose everything he owned in England if he defaulted.
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In Cecil’s view, Darnley was a political lightweight and a weathercock where religion was concerned, and in any case would be a less dangerous husband for Mary than a foreign Catholic prince. Cecil was backed by Leicester, who had pressing reasons of his own for wanting Mary to marry Darnley, and did all he could to promote the match, pointing out that Darnley would not dare to place the Lennox lands in England in jeopardy by remaining in Scotland without licence.

A disgruntled Randolph, who had worked tirelessly for eighteen months to promote the Leicester marriage, and had apparently received certain information about Darnley, did not want the latter in Scotland, and warned Cecil on 14 December that Elizabeth would get the blame for “sending home so great a plague into this country.”
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But his remonstrances fell on deaf ears.

In late January, Elizabeth changed her mind and agreed to let Darnley go to Scotland. Her reasons for doing this have never been fully understood. She told the Spanish ambassador in London, Guzman de Silva, that it was because Leicester had refused point blank to marry Mary, and Darnley was the only viable alternative. Melville says it was because Elizabeth had been conned into believing that Mary would marry Leicester; perversely, she now feared losing him, and it was this that made her send Darnley north “in hope that he, being a handsome, lusty youth, should rather prevail, being present, than Leicester, who was absent.”
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Elizabeth knew, however, that a union between Mary and Darnley would pose a dynastic threat to her throne, yet she may have come to agree with Cecil that Darnley himself was less dangerous than she had feared. In fact, he might prove more of a liability to Mary than to Elizabeth, and so cause trouble in Scotland, in which case it would be to Elizabeth’s advantage to facilitate the marriage. Yet it would not be politic for her to be seen to encourage it, for she would have it appear that Mary had defied her wishes in rejecting Leicester, and could then use this as a pretext for denying Mary the English succession.

Had Elizabeth not wished Darnley to marry Mary, she would never have let him go to Scotland. The French diplomat, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de la Mauvissière, was adamant that Elizabeth had “cast her eyes on the young Lord Darnley to make a present of him to the Scottish Queen, and found means to persuade the Queen of Scots, by several powerful considerations, that there was not a marriage in Christendom which could bring her more certain advantages.” Later, Castelnau observed, “Her Majesty did not outwardly show the joy and pleasure which was in her heart when I told her that this marriage was advancing apace. On the contrary, she affected not to approve it: which thing, however, did rather hasten than retard it. And yet I am assured [that] she used all her efforts and spared nothing to get this marriage a-going.”
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De Silva also heard a rumour that the match had been arranged “with the concurrence of some of the great people here,”
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and Cecil himself told Paul de Foix, the French ambassador, in March, that the marriage of the Queen of Scots was an affair in the hands of his mistress.
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People in Scotland would tell Randolph that Elizabeth had sent Darnley on purpose to match their Queen “poorly and meanly,” while Mary herself later came to believe that Elizabeth had deliberately sent Darnley to her, knowing he might well ruin her.

Darnley was given leave of absence for three months, while Lennox’s licence was extended for the same period. On 3 February 1565, Darnley left for Scotland. Randolph was horrified to hear that he was on his way, for he had been convinced that his hard work for the Leicester marriage was about to bear fruit, and wrote angrily to Cecil of his fears that “one should come of whom there is so much spoken against. My whole care is to avoid the suspicion that the Queen’s Majesty [Elizabeth] was the mean and worker thereof.”

Meanwhile, an excited Lady Lennox, seeing the fulfilment of her ambitions within her grasp, was writing to Mary, urging her to take Darnley as her husband, and assuring her that he would be respectful, kind, companionable and utterly loyal. After being entertained at Berwick-upon-Tweed by the English Governor, Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, Darnley crossed the Scottish border on 10 February. The winter weather was particularly severe, but he pressed on to Dunbar, where he spent the night of 11 February, before proceeding to Haddington. On 12 February, he was entertained by Lord Seton at Seton Palace, then went on to Edinburgh the following day.
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Here, he spent three days as Randolph’s guest. As Cecil had instructed him, Randolph went out of his way to make him welcome and lent him horses. During this time, the Queen’s half-brother, Lord Robert Stewart, invited Darnley to dine at Holyrood Palace, and was very impressed with him. Darnley also visited his cousin, the Earl of Morton, and the Earl of Glencairn. Randolph reported that he had won good opinions: “His courteous dealing with all men deserves great praise, and is well spoken of.” However, he had caught “a little cold,” and did not want his mother informed, as she would be alarmed.
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