Mary Stuart (33 page)

But Elizabeth knew what she knew, and afterwards was able to say proudly: “
Ils m’ont cru si sotte, que je n’en sentirais rien
”
—
They think me so stupid that I know nothing
.
When, in one of her tantrums, she seized an eavesdropper at her court to give him a violent shaking, she soon shook all his secrets out of his sleeve. She took prompt and energetic measures. On 25th November 1568, the proceedings were transferred from York to the Painted Chamber at Westminster. Here, a few paces from her own palace, and immediately under her watching eyes, Lethington could not play his double game so easily as he had played it at York, two hundred miles away, and with fewer spies around him. Furthermore, Queen Elizabeth, now that she knew some of her commissioners to be untrustworthy, supplemented them by persons on whom she could absolutely rely, above all appointing her favourite Leicester. As soon as her hands were on the reins, the inquiry proceeded at a smart trot along the prescribed road. Moray, her sometime pensioner, was bluntly told “to defend himself”, this implying that he must not shrink from the “extremity of odious accusations”, but must produce his proofs of Mary’s adultery with Bothwell and must lay the Casket Letters on the table. Forgotten now was Elizabeth’s solemn pledge that nothing should be brought up “against the honour” of Mary Stuart. Still, the Scottish lords remained uneasy. They shilly-shallied, hesitated to produce the letters and restricted themselves to general charges. Since Elizabeth would have shown her bias too plainly by a blunt command that they should produce the letters, she had recourse to hypocrisy. Professing herself to be convinced of Mary’s innocence, she said that her one desire was to save her “good sister’s” honour, and that, to this end, it was essential for her to have evidence which would refute the “calumny”. She wanted the letters and the love poems to Bothwell to be exposed upon the conference table. It was necessary to her scheme that Mary Stuart should be hopelessly compromised.

Under this pressure the Scottish lords at length gave way. A little comedy of resistance was played, indeed, for Moray did not himself actually put the letters on the table, but merely showed them in his hand, and then allowed them to be “snatched” from his secretary. Elizabeth had triumphed. The documents were in open court. They were read aloud forthwith and, next day, were read aloud once more before the full assembly. The Scottish lords had long since sworn that the documents were genuine, but this previous oath did not suffice Elizabeth. As if foreseeing that in centuries to come the authenticity of the letters and sonnets would be disputed by the defenders of Mary Stuart’s honour, she insisted that their handwriting must be closely compared with that of the letters she had herself received from Mary. This comparison must be effected in full view of the conference. While it was taking place, Mary’s commissioners walked out of the room (is not this additional and strong evidence of the genuineness of the letters?), declaring, truly enough, that Elizabeth had broken her pledge to produce nothing which would be derogatory to the honour of Mary.

But what did law and right count for in these proceedings, where the person chiefly implicated was not allowed to participate, although her enemy, Lennox, could act as her accuser? Hardly had Mary’s commissioners withdrawn, when the other commissioners unanimously agreed that Elizabeth could not receive Mary Stuart until the Scottish Queen had been purged from the charges against her. Elizabeth thus reached her goal. At length she had been given the desired pretext for repelling the advances of the fugitive. Henceforward it would not be difficult to find an excuse for continuing to keep the Queen of Scots “in honourable custody”—a euphemism for imprisonment. One of those devoted to Elizabeth’s cause, Archbishop Parker, could jubilantly exclaim: “Now our good Queen has the wolf by the ears!”

With this “temporary conclusion”, the necessary preliminaries had been achieved for the slaughter of Mary’s reputation. Now the axe of judgement might be wielded. She could be declared a murderess, could be handed over to Scotland, where John Knox would have no mercy on her. At this juncture, however, Elizabeth held her hand, and the blow did not fall. Always when a final resolve was needed, whether for good or for evil, this enigmatic woman lacked courage. Was she stirred by one of those generous and humane impulses which were common enough in her? Was she ashamed at having broken her royal word to safeguard Mary Stuart’s honour? Was she moved by diplomatic considerations? Or are we to suppose, as was usually the case in her unfathomable temperament, that she was prompted by mixed motives? Anyhow, Elizabeth refrained from using the opportunity of ridding herself of her adversary once and for all. Instead of having a speedy and severe sentence passed, she postponed the final decision in order to negotiate with Mary. Substantially, what Elizabeth wanted was to be freed from the troubles caused her by this defiant, ambitious, unyielding, self-reliant and courageous woman—to humiliate Mary, to draw her teeth and cut her claws. Elizabeth proposed, therefore, that, before a final judgement was passed, Mary should be given an opportunity for protesting against the documents and, under the rose, the Queen of Scotland was informed that if she consented to abdicate she would be acquitted, could remain free in England, and be supplied with a pension. At the same time, since she must hear the crack of the whip as well as be tempted by a lump of sugar, Mary was told there was considerable chance of a public condemnation, and Knollys, the confidential agent of the English court, reported that he had frightened her as much as he could. Elizabeth loved to combine or alternate caresses with punishment.

But Mary Stuart was not to be either intimidated or decoyed. As soon as danger became imminent, she rallied her forces. She refused to examine the documents. Recognising too late that she had been inveigled into a trap, she reiterated her old contention that it was not possible for her to put herself upon the same footing with her subjects. Her royal word that the accusation and the documents were false must count for more than any proof or contention. She refused to purchase by abdication an acquittal from a court whose jurisdiction she did not recognise. Resolutely she declared that she would not hear another word about the possibility of renouncing her crown. “I will die rather than agree, and the last words of my life shall be those of a Queen of Scotland.”

The attempt at intimidation had miscarried; Elizabeth’s half-heartedness was faced by Mary’s stalwart determination. Again the English Queen hesitated, and did not venture upon open condemnation. As so often happened, Elizabeth shrank from the final goal of her own will. When the definitive sentence came, it was not annihilating, as had been designed, but perfidious like the whole affair. On 10th January 1569, the Westminster Conference announced that nothing had been adduced against Moray and his faction which “might impair their honour or allegiance”. These words explicitly condoned the rebellion of the Scottish lords. As to Mary, the decision of the conference was ambiguous. The commissioners announced that nothing had “bene sufficiently proven or shown by the Scottish lords against the Queen their sovereign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or take any evil opinion of her good sister for anything yet seen.” Superficially considered, this might be regarded as an exculpation. The proofs of Mary’s guilt were insufficient. But the last clause had a sting in its tail. It implied that various things had been adduced of a highly suspicious and injurious nature, but not enough to convince so good a queen as Elizabeth. The sting was more than Cecil needed for his purposes. Henceforward a heavy cloud of suspicion would rest over Mary Stuart, and a “sufficient” ground had been discovered for keeping the defenceless woman in prison. For the moment Elizabeth had conquered.

But she had gained a Pyrrhic victory. So long as she kept Mary Stuart prisoner, there were two queens in the realm of England, and while both lived the land would never know quiet. Injustice always leads to disorder; that which is done too craftily is done badly. By robbing Mary Stuart of her freedom, Elizabeth Tudor robbed herself of her own. By treating Mary as an enemy, she gave Mary the right to be one; Elizabeth’s breaking her word gave Mary the right to break her word; every lie on the English Queen’s part justified another lie on the part of the Queen of Scotland. Year after year Elizabeth would have to pay for not having followed her first and most natural instincts. Too late would she realise that magnanimity would have been a better policy. If, after the brief ceremonial of a cool reception, Elizabeth had left Mary free to go whithersoever she pleased, Mary’s life thenceforward would have been like a stream whose waters run to waste in the sands of the desert. To whom could the woman thus contemptuously dismissed have turned for refuge? Neither judge nor poet would have intervened any longer on her behalf. Tainted by the breath of scandal, humiliated by Elizabeth’s generosity, she would have wandered aimlessly from court to court. Moray would have made it impossible for her to return to Scotland; neither in France nor in Spain would she have been received, an unwelcome guest, with any great show of respect. Her temperament being what it was, she would probably have become involved in new love affairs, unless she had followed Bothwell to Denmark. Her name would have counted for little in history; or, at most, she would have been mentioned derogatorily as a queen who had married the murderer of her husband. It was Elizabeth’s injustice which saved Mary from this obscure and pitiable fate. By trying to debase Mary, Elizabeth lifted her onto a higher plane and equipped her with the halo of martyrdom. As the shamefully deceived, as the unjustly imprisoned, as a romantically touching figure, as the innocent victim of a cruel use of force, she has been justified by history as against her unjust cousin. Nothing has done so much to make Mary Stuart a centre of undying legend, and nothing has done so much to detract from Elizabeth’s moral greatness, as the English Queen’s failure to be generous in this decisive hour.

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OTHING ELUDES DESCRIPTION MORE
effectually than a vacuum, nothing can be more difficult to picture than monotony. Mary Stuart's imprisonment was such a prolonged non-existence, such an empty, starless night. With the decision of the Westminster Conference, the rhythm of her life had been definitively interrupted. Year followed year, as at sea wave follows wave, sometimes more eventful, sometimes more tranquil; never again would she be stirred to the depths in her solitude, whether by unqualified happiness or by unqualified torment. A destiny which had been so moving and so passionate became uneventful, and therefore doubly unsatisfying. Thus in a sort of piaffing trot passed her twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, thirtieth year. A new decade of her life opened, vacant and chill as the last had been at the close. Followed the thirty-first, the thirty-second, the thirty-third, the thirty-fourth, the thirty-fifth, the thirty-sixth, the thirty-seventh, the thirty-eighth, the thirty-ninth year. Merely to write the numbers is fatiguing. But to understand her cruel fate we have to dwell upon them, to understand the interminable duration of her spiritual agony; for each of these years had hundreds of days; each day had too many hours, and not one of these hours was irradiated by joy. Then came the fortieth year, and she was no longer a young woman, nor yet a strong one, but ageing, weary and out of health. Slowly there dragged themselves out the forty-first, the forty-second and the forty-third year, until at length death had compassion on her when her fellow mortals had none, and relieved her weary spirit from imprisonment.

There were many changes for her during these years, but only in minor and indifferent matters. Sometimes she was well, sometimes ill; sometimes she was hopeful and a hundred times she was disappointed; sometimes she was more harshly and at other times more clemently treated; occasionally Elizabeth would write her angry letters, to be followed by others that were kindly worded—but in general there was nothing but dull uniformity, a garland of colourless hours which slipped vacantly through her fingers. Outwardly her prison hours changed from time to time. Now she would be detained in Bolton Castle, now at Chatsworth or Sheffield or Tut-bury or Wakefield or Fotheringay. But only the names were different. They all had the same walls of impenetrable stone, and were really the same prison since they all deprived her of freedom. The monotonous procession of the days, the weeks and the months was marked by the circling of the sun, the moon and the stars. Night followed day and day followed night summing up the months and the years. Kingdoms passed and were renewed; kings rose and fell; women grew up, bore children and withered; beyond the coasts and the mountains the world continued in process of unceasing change. Only this one life was perpetually in the shadows, cut off from its roots, no longer bearing either blossom or fruit. Slowly, slowly, as if poisoned by impotent yearning, Mary Stuart watched the withering of her youth, the ticking-out of her life.

Paradoxically enough, the most cruel feature of this endless imprisonment was that, to outward seeming, it was never cruel. A self-reliant person can react against crude violence, can reply to humiliation by bitterness; always the mental stature can be increased by fierce resistance. Nothing but vacancy makes us absolutely impotent. Always the walls of a padded cell, against which the fists of the prisoner cannot even hurt themselves, are more unendurable than the hardest lock-up. No flogging, no abusive language, arouses so hopeless a frame of mind as the violation of freedom under the mask of obsequiousness and with devoted assurances of respect; no kind of scorn is more dreadful than that which assumes the form of politeness. This feigned consideration, not shown to the suffering human being, but to her rank, was the treatment to which Mary Stuart was unceasingly subjected. Always a respectful entourage of guardians, a masked watch, “honourable custody” by those who, hat in hand and with profound obeisances, followed hard upon her heels. Throughout these years never for a minute was Mary Stuart's queenship forgotten. She was granted all kinds of valueless conveniences and petty freedoms, while the most important thing in life was withheld—true liberty.

Elizabeth, sedulous to maintain her prestige as a humane sovereign, was clever enough to avoid treating her adversary vengefully. She would take great care of her “good sister”! When Mary was out of health, anxious enquiries came from London; Elizabeth would offer the services of her own physician, would express a wish that the prisoner's food should be prepared by her own domestic staff. No evil tongues should whisper that she was trying to rid herself of an inconvenient rival by poison. No one should complain that she was keeping an anointed queen in a prison cell. All that had happened was that she had urgently begged her Scottish sister to live in some of her fine English country mansions or castles as a permanent guest! Certainly it would have been much more convenient and safer for Elizabeth to keep the unyielding woman in the Tower of London, a much less costly plan than the one she adopted. But, having a wider experience of the world than her ministers of state, who again and again recommended her to take this precaution, Elizabeth persisted in avoiding the odium she would have incurred by sending Mary to the Tower. Her cousin should be treated as a queen, while entangled in a noose of reverence and fettered with golden chains.

Penurious though she was, Elizabeth was able, in this instance, to overcome her avarice, with a grudging heart providing for the maintenance of her uninvited guest no less than fifty-two pounds a week throughout these nineteen years. Since, in addition, Mary received a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year from France, she was well supplied with funds. She could live like a sovereign ruler at whichever castle or manor was her residence for the time. She was allowed to install a royal canopy in her reception room, keeping queenly state, though a prisoner. She had a silver table service; her rooms were lit with costly wax candles in silver sconces; the floors were covered with Turkey carpets—a rare luxury at that time. So abundantly were her apartments furnished, that dozens of wagons drawn by four-horse teams were needed when she was removed from one mansion to another. For her personal service she had a number of ladies-in-waiting, tire women and chambermaids. In the best days there were fifty of them to make up her personal staff. A miniature court with major-domos, priests, physicians, secretaries, paymasters, chamberlains, keepers-of-the-wardrobe, tailors, dressmakers and cooks—whose numbers the frugal Queen of England desperately endeavoured to cut down, while Mary Stuart with no less tenacity defended herself against any invasion of her privileges.

But that no cruelly romantic imprisonment was designed for the Queen who had fallen from power was shown at the outset by the choice of George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, a great nobleman and true gentleman, as her guardian in chief. Down to June 1569, when Elizabeth appointed him to this post, he might reckon himself a fortunate man. He had great possessions in the northern and midland counties, nine castles of his own, so that he had lived quietly on his estates as a minor prince in the by-paths of history, remote from offices and dignities. Untroubled by political ambition, this serious-minded man had been well satisfied with life. His beard was grizzled, and he must have thought that nothing was likely to disturb his rest until Elizabeth unexpectedly forced upon him the distasteful task of keeping watch and ward over her ambitious rival, who had been embittered by ill treatment.

His predecessor, Sir Francis Knollys, drew a breath of relief on being informed that Shrewsbury was to supersede him in the perilous charge, and declared: “As sure as there is a God in heaven, I would rather endure any punishment than continue this occupation.” For it was an unthankful task, this “honourable custody”, whose rights and limits were extremely vague, so that it was one which required immense tact. Mary was at one and the same time a queen and not a queen; in name she was a guest, but in fact she was a prisoner. Thus, as a gentleman, Shrewsbury had to play the part of a polite host, but as a jailer in Elizabeth's confidence he had to restrict his “guest's” liberties in various disagreeable ways. He was the controller of her doings, and yet could present himself before her only when making obeisance; he must be strict, but under the mask of subserviency; he must entertain her, and yet perpetually watch her. As if the situation were not already enough complicated, it was further involved by the fact that Lady Shrewsbury had been the notorious Bess of Hardwick. She had buried three husbands. Talbot was her fourth, and she reduced him to despair by her unceasing gossip. She was a weathercock, too, intriguing, now against Elizabeth, now in her behalf, sometimes favourable and sometimes antagonistic to Mary Stuart. Poor Shrewsbury had a difficult time of it among these three women, being the loyal subject of one, married to the second and bound to the third by invisible bonds. For fifteen years he was not really the imprisoned Queen's guardian but her fellow prisoner and in his person once more was fulfilled the mysterious curse which made her bring misfortune to all whom she encountered upon her tragical path.

What did Mary Stuart do during these vacant and unmeaning years? She seemed to spend her time quietly and comfortably enough. Outwardly regarded, her daily round did not differ from that of other women of rank who lived year after year in a manor house or a castle. When she felt well enough, she would go out riding—hawking or hunting—surrounded by the inevitable “guard of honour”; or she would play pall-mall or some other outdoor game in order to keep herself, as far as possible, in good bodily condition. There was no lack of company. Visitors would come from neighbouring country mansions to pay their reverence to the interesting prisoner; for it must never be forgotten that, however powerless she might be at the moment, she was still the next heir to the English throne, and if anything untoward should happen to Elizabeth, Mary might reign in her stead. That was why far-seeing persons, Shrewsbury not excepted, thought it expedient to remain on good terms with her. Even Elizabeth's favourite and intimate friends, Sir Christopher Hatton and the Earl of Leicester, wishing to keep a foot in both camps, would, behind their patroness' back, send letters and greetings to her rival. Who could tell whether it might not be necessary, ere long, to bend the knee before her and to ask for some sinecure. In various ways, therefore, although kept in the wilds, Mary Stuart was continually in receipt of information as to what went on at the English court and in the wider world of Europe. Lady Shrews-bury told her a great deal about Elizabeth which this other Bess would have done better to keep to herself. Then, by various underground channels, news was continually flowing in from Rome. It must not be supposed that Mary Stuart's exile was that of a prisoner in a dungeon. She was not completely forsaken. On the long winter evenings music could help to pass the time agreeably.

Not now, of course, as in the days of Chastelard, did young poets sing madrigals to her. Banished for ever were the masques of Holyrood, and this impatient heart had no room left any longer for love and passion. The inclination for such adventures was ebbing with her youth. Of her more enthusiastic adherents there only remained with her Willie Douglas, who had helped her to escape from Lochleven, and among all the men who formed her little court (no more Bothwells or Rizzios, alas!) she prized above the rest the physician. For she was often ill, suffering from rheumatism and from an inexplicable pain in the side. Often her legs were so greatly swelled that she could scarcely move, could get relief only in hot springs; while from the lack of exercise the body which had been so slender gradually became flaccid and obese. Seldom now was her will tensed as of old. Gone for ever were the long day's gallops through the Scottish countryside, when she was journeying merrily from castle to castle.

The longer her seclusion lasted, the more did she take pleasure in domestic occupations. For hours she would sit, dressed in black like a nun, at her broidery frame, stitching with her lovely white hands those remarkable gold embroideries many of which have come down to us. At other times she would read her favourite books. There is no trustworthy record of her having had any love affairs during the nineteen years of her imprisonment—beyond the fugitive scheme for a marriage with the Duke of Norfolk. Since her tenderness could no longer flow out towards a Bothwell, or any other lover, it was directed more gently and with less exuberance to those creatures who never deceive us, domestic pets. Mary imported from France the gentlest and cleverest of all hounds, spaniels; she had an aviary and a dovecot; she personally cared for the flowers in the garden, and saw to it that the women of her suite should not suffer from want of anything; the ordinary cares of a housewife occupied her mind, now that she no longer felt the stirrings of passion. A casual observer, a passing guest who failed to look into the depths, might suppose that the ambition which had once shaken the world had died down in her, that all earthly desires had subsided. Frequently, in her flowing widow's weeds, the ageing woman went to hear Mass said; she kneeled devoutly on the prie-dieu in her chapel; sometimes, though rarely now, she still wrote verses in her prayer book or upon a loose sheet of paper. No longer did she pen ardent sonnets, but poems breathing piety or resignation, in which she repudiated longing for any other kingdom than the kingdom of heaven, hoped to become reconciled with God and man and with her own fate!

This, for instance:

(What am I, alas, and of what use my life? I am naught but a body without a heart, a vain shadow, a creature of misfortune, whose only future is one of living death.) Always she produced the impression of having abandoned thoughts of worldly power, of being one who quietly awaits the coming of that last grim visitor who can alone bring peace on earth.