Tudor Queens of England (31 page)

I dined at Partrige’s (the Keeper) house with my lady Jane … she sitting at the bordes end … emongst our communication at dyner; this was to be noted … saythe she “The queens majesty is a mercyfull princes; I beseche God she may long continue, and sende his bountefull grace upon hir …

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They spoke of religion and Jane asked if the mass was set up again in London. Being told that it was so, she proceeded to comment on the recent conversion of the Duke of Northumberland, ‘who woulde have thought’, saide she, ‘that he would have done so’. She clearly had no sympathy with his predicament and proceeded to blame him bitterly for bringing ‘me and our stocke in most miserable callamytye’. As she wrote to the Queen in a letter not now surviving

‘… in truth I was deceived by the Duke and council, and ill-treated by my husband and his mother …’ She would, she declared, in spite of her youth, never seek to save her life by any such apostasy as Northumberland had been guilty of. She was yesterday’s woman but as such presented something of a problem to Mary, who was inclined to pardon her, as she confi ded to Simon Renard, the Imperial ambassador. Her father was indeed pardoned during November in a somewhat inexplicable act of clemency, considering the extent of his involvement. However, she had pretended to the throne, and the proprieties had to be observed. Consequently on 13 November she was tried at the Guildhall, along with her husband and the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘The lady Jane was in a blacke gowne of cloth, tourned down, the cappe lined with fese velvet … a blacke velvet booke hanging befor

e hir …’19

They were all, of course, condemned to die. Nevertheless, it is likely that she would have been pardoned eventually if it had not been for her father’s reckless involvement in the Wyatt rebellion in January 1554. This was a dangerous protest against the Queen’s plan to marry Philip of Spain, but once it had collapsed the government chose to represent it as an attempt to rescue and restore Jane to the throne. There was no desire to admit that Philip would be so unpopular, and Jane was expendable. Consequently, on 12 February she and her wretched young husband were executed as a sacrifi ce to expediency. The Queen sent the persuasive John Feckenham, the Dean of St Paul’s, in an attempt to convert her to the old faith. They parted with mutual respect but without agreement. It was her powerful religious faith that enabled her to die with assurance:

‘Good people’ she said, ‘I am come hether to die, and by a lawe I am condemned to the same. The facte, in dede, against the queens highnesse was unlawfull, and the consenting thereto by me, but touching the procurement and desire thereof … I doo wash my handes in innocencie …

She then repeated the Misere, ‘and so ended’.

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Because of her place in Protestant hagiography this scene has been often described and was a favourite with the kitsch Victorian painters of historical 164

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scenes but it was an unnecessary tragedy, which brought Queen Mary no ultimate advantage. She would probably have done better to release Jane into the obscurity of a failed aristocratic marriage.

Mary of Scotland was a completely different kind of animal. None of the problematic and arbitrary thinking that had been required to create Jane’s claim was necessary in her case. She represented the clear principle of undisputed legitimacy. Very little is known about her early years when her realm was in the hands of Regents and her person in the care of her mother, Mary of Guise, except that she was crowned as an infant on 9 September 1543. One thing, however, is very clear: Henry VIII wanted her as a wife for his own son, Prince Edward. There were several reasons for this but the most important was an imperial ambition to gain control over the neighbouring kingdom. Had this marriage taken effect, Mary would have been Queen Consort in England, and would have been expected to live there, while Edward would have held the Crown Matrimonial of Scotland, and would have governed the kingdom (with his wife’s consent, of course) through his own appointed agents. Any child of the marriage would have had an equal claim to both countries and when the Crowns were so unifi ed the greater political and fi nancial weight of England would have guaranteed it the role of senior partner. It was this medium-and long-term threat to their independence which turned the Scots against the marriage and although they were in no position to resist after the defeat at Solway Moss, the parliament nevertheless repudiated the subsequent Treaty of Greenwich and never recognized the betrothal of the children. Henry was very angry at what he saw as a betrayal and, despite his primary concern over war with France, kept up an erratic and totally ineffective military pressure upon Scotland. These campaigns, known collectively as ‘the rough wooing’, served to alienate those in Scotland who had at fi rst been in favour of the union and led to a marked increase in French, and Catholic infl uence north of the border.

This orientation was confi rmed when Edward’s Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset, launched a new campaign, in accordance, he claimed, with his late master’s wishes, in September 1547. The French were apparently taken by surprise, and the Scots suffered another heavy defeat at Pinkie Cleugh near Musselborough. Realizing that he lacked the resources for a systematic conquest and unable to force the regency government to the negotiating table, Somerset dispersed his victorious army into some two dozen garrisons, from Dundee in the north-east to Dumfries in the south-west. This turned out to be useless. The garrisons could not be supplied or reinforced and were under constant guerrilla pressure, being abandoned or falling into enemy hands steadily over the following year. Scotland’s plight also belatedly stirred Henry II into action,

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and on 19 June 1548 a force of 10,000 French troops landed in the Firth of Forth. In August the Franco-Scottish treaty of Haddington not only tilted the military balance decisively in Scotland’s favour but also killed off the treaty of Greenwich by betrothing the 5-year old Mary to the Dauphin, Francis. The same month she was smuggled out of Ayr, landing at Roscoff on 13 June and was received with open arms at the French Court. For the next ten years she was to be cosseted, educated and trained to be a French princess and sometime Queen Consort. She was not, apparently, even taught to write in English (or Scots), and certainly felt closer to her Guise kindred than to anyone in Scotland. Meanwhile her northern realm continued to be run by regents, culminating in the Queen Mother in 1554, and became increasingly disrupted by aristocratic and religious feuds. Although much infl uenced by events in England, Scotland had its own band of indigenous reformers who, in 1547 and 1548, had learned to their bitter cost the folly of looking south of the border for support. From their point of view, however, the total failure of English policy in Scotland and its virtual withdrawal by the autumn of 1549, had its own advantages. No longer thought of as being English agents, and seeking their inspiration instead directly from Geneva and Zurich, between 1550 and 1558, the Scottish Protestants made huge strides. On a level playing fi eld, the French were no more popular in Scotland than were the English, and after 1548 they were there, while the English were not. By 1558 the Protestant Lords of the Congregation of Jesus Christ were in full rebellion against the Regent and her French backers.

Meanwhile Mary had grown up tall and beautiful. An accomplished linguist, dancer, needlewoman and horsewoman, she had been given only the most perfunctory instruction as to how to run her problematic norther

n kingdom.21

It seems to have been assumed that she would remain in France, and govern Scotland through agents. On 24 April 1558, Francis and Mary were married and both Mary as Queen and Francis as King Consort swore to uphold the laws and liberties of Scotland. At the same time Francis guaranteed that, in the event of Mary dying childless, he would not press any claim to the Scottish throne but would let it come to the next inheritors by Scots law. This was disingenuous, not to say dishonest, because three weeks before her wedding Mary had signed another instrument whereby, in the event of her dying without issue, she assigned the Crown of Scotland – and any claim which she had to the Crown of England

– to the King of France. In the event, both instruments were dead letters because Francis died fi rst, but their existence amply justifi es the suspicion with which Mary was always regarded in offi cial circles in England. When Queen Mary Tudor died on 17 November, Francis and his consort promptly added the arms and title of England to their achievement. The claim was explicit, but low key and 166

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Henry II was not anxious to exploit it. When the Franco-Spanish-English war was brought to an end at Cateau Cambrecis in April 1559 he made no diffi culty about negotiating with Elizabeth as Queen of England. When Henry died, however, in a tournament accident following the signing of the treaty, his son, now Francis II, did not scruple to use the titles of all three kingdoms, irrespective of the fact that so far nobody in England had canvassed his wife’s claim at all. Meanwhile the political situation in Scotland was deadlocked. Mary of Guise, with only minimal French support, was not strong enough to suppress the rebels, while they, plagued with internal quarrels, lacked the muscle or support for a complete victory. The English, having now committed themselves to the Protestant side in any future European confl ict, regarded this situation with anxiety. When one of the rebel groups approached the English council for support, the response, although cautious, was positive. William Cecil persuaded Elizabeth to intervene and the Queen in turn was at great pains to distance herself from the father’s imperialist claims.

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The intelligence of this approach was quickly demonstrated and despite a spectacular military failure at the siege of Leith in 1560, by the summer the issue had been forced to a treaty. The French position had been fatally weakened by the fact that internal dissentions in France made it virtually impossible for Francis to send reinforcements and then, in June 1560, Mary of Guise had died. By the Treaty of Edinburgh, both English and French forces were withdrawn, and Scotland was left in the hands of the Protestant Lords, who wasted no time in establishing a reformed Kirk and a council of regency. The French troops duly went home but neither Francis nor Mary ever ratifi ed the treaty, despite the fact that it remained the
de facto
basis of Anglo-Scottish relations for the next 40 years. This non-ratifi cation continued to be a bone of contention between Mary and Elizabeth, at least until Mary was detained in England. In spite of the fact that the English were ignoring her, and she them, Mary’s fortunes were at their zenith in 1559–60, when she was 18. Thereafter it was downhill all the way.

The fi rst blow was the death of Francis II in December 1560. He had never been anything but a sickly youth and it is unlikely that his marriage with Mary was ever consummated. This not only left her childless, but deeply frustrated – a frustration that was to be refl ected in some highly irresponsible behaviour within a few years. It also left her without a role in France because the powerful Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, was bitterly opposed to the Guises. The second blow was consequently that her uncles, the Duke and Cardinal of Guise, became so preoccupied with the internal troubles of that kingdom that they had scant time or attention for their niece and began to press her to return to Scotland. They pointed out, rightly enough from their point of view, that that kingdom

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had much need of its Catholic ruler. Once the 40 days of her offi cial mourning were over, there was much talk of her remarriage, both Don Carlos, Philip II’s son and the Earl of Arran being mentioned, but Mary’s own thoughts were turning consistently to her northern kingdom, which had been without any sort of royal government since the death of her mother. She appeared to the English ambassador in Paris, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, to be a very competent and self-possessed young woman:

Since her husband’s death the Scottish Queen has showed … that she is both of great wisdom for her years, modesty, and also of great judgement … which increasing with her years, cannot but turn greatly to her commendation …

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Meanwhile, the Scots themselves were warming to the thought of her return, especially as she was beginning to acquire a reputation for fl exibility in matters of religion. It was Maitland of Lethington, who was keenly aware of the international dimension, and of Mary’s English claim, who urged that she be invited to return, so that that claim might benefi t Scotland rather than France. As early as January 1561 she had notifi ed an intention to return. The emissaries passed to and fro and by the beginning of August a deal had been struck. On 19 August her French galleys reached the port of Leith. And Mary, at the age of 19, returned to the country of her birth, which she had not seen for 13 years. Her deal had been with Lord James Stuart, her half brother, and had included an undertaking to ‘work along’ with the Protestant ascendancy. Within days she had issued a proclamation protecting that ascendancy, and established a council the leading members of which were Lord James and Maitland of Lethington.

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It was expected at fi rst that the Queen would be little more than a fi gurehead, but she soon began to demonstrate an unexpected intelligence and grasp of politics. Her willingness to work with a Protestant council had largely marginalized the fi ery John Knox and when she confronted him in a number of disputations, although his intransigence reduced her to tears, he gained no political advantage thereby. At fi rst, as Mary quickly realized, the Anglo-Scottish amity of 1560 was fundamental and she was happy to retain that for reasons of her own. Her eyes were fi xed on the English succession. This was not an immediate issue, because although she never withdrew her alternative claim, Elizabeth was a young woman not much older than herself. Mary’s intention was not to replace Elizabeth (least of all as a Catholic claimant), but to obtain an offi cial recognition of her position as heir should the Queen die childless. In this she made no progress at all. Elizabeth refused even to discuss the issue of the succession, and when she was seriously ill in 1562 it quickly transpired that Mary had no backing in the English Council.