Mary Stuart Read online

  When, quite exceptionally, a clear and logical idea comes to light up the political arena, it is invariably ruined by the idiotic way men have of putting it into execution. At the start the suggestion of this marriage seemed to strike the precise note that was required to establish harmony. The Scottish lords, whose pockets were quickly and amply filled with moneys from England, gladly agreed to the proposal. But Henry VIII was astute enough not to be satisfied with a mere piece of parchment. Too often had he suffered from the double-dealing and greed of these honourable gentlemen not to know that such shifty wights can never be bound by a treaty, and that should a higher bidder present himself—should, let us say, the French King offer his son and heir as aspirant for Mary’s hand—they would snap their fingers at the first proposal in order to reap what advantage they might from the second. He therefore demanded of the negotiators that Mary should immediately be sent to England. But if the Tudors were suspicious of the Stuarts, the latter wholeheartedly reciprocated the sentiment. The Queen Mother, in especial, opposed the treaty. A Guise and a strict Catholic, she had no wish to see her daughter brought up by heretics. Moreover, in the treaty itself she was not slow to detect a trap which might prove highly injurious to her child’s welfare. In a clause that had been kept secret Henry VIII bribed the Scottish nobles to agree that if the little girl died before her majority the whole of her rights and ownership in the Scottish crown should pass to him. The clause was undoubtedly suspect, especially when associated with the fact that its inventor had already done away with two wives. What more natural than to suppose that a child might die prematurely and not altogether by natural means in order that he might come into the heritage the sooner? Mary of Guise, in her role of prudent and loving mother, rejected the proposal of sending her infant daughter to London. Thereupon the proxy wooing was upon the verge of being converted into a war, for Henry VIII, overbearing as was his wont, dispatched his troops across the border that they might seize the coveted prize by force of arms. The army orders disclose the brutality of those days: “It is His Majesty’s will that all be laid waste with fire and sword. Burn Edinburgh and raze the city to the ground, as soon as you have seized whatever is worth taking. Plunder Holyrood and as many towns and villages as you can; ravage, burn and destroy Leith; and the same whithersoever you go, exterminating men, women and children without mercy, wherever resistance is shown.” At the decisive hour, however, mother and child were safely conducted to Stirling and placed within the shelter of its fortified castle. Henry VIII had to rest content with a treaty wherein Scotland was committed to send Mary to England on the day she reached the tenth year of her life—again she was treated as an object of chaffering and purchase.

  Now all was happily settled. Another crown had fallen into the cradle of the Scottish infant Queen. By her future marriage with young Edward of England the kingdoms of Scotland and England would become united. But politics has always been a science of contradiction. It is forever in conflict with simple, natural, sensible solutions; difficulties are its greatest joy, and it feels thoroughly in its element when dissension is abroad. The Catholic party soon set to work intriguing against the compact, wondering whether it would not be preferable to barter the girl elsewhere and offer her as a bride for the French King’s son; and, by the time Henry VIII came to die, there was scant inclination anywhere to hold to the bond. Protector Somerset, acting on behalf of Edward, who was still in his minority, demanded that the child bride should be sent to London. Since Scotland refused to obey, an English army was dispatched over the border. This was the only language the Scottish lords properly understood. On 10th September 1547, at the Battle, or, rather, the massacre, of Pinkie, the Scots were crushed, leaving more than ten thousand dead on the field. Mary Stuart was not yet five years old when blood in gallons flowed in her cause.

  Scotland now lay open to any incursion England chose to make. But there was nothing left worth the plundering; the countryside was empty, was cleaned out. One single treasure remained so far as the House of Tudor was concerned: a little girl in whose person was incorporated a crown and the rights this crown commanded. It was essential, therefore, to place the treasure where covetous hands could not reach it. To the despair of the English spies the child suddenly vanished from Stirling Castle. None, not even those in the Queen Mother’s confidence, knew whither Mary had been spirited away. The hiding place was admirably chosen. One night, in the custody of a trustworthy servant, the girl had been smuggled into the Priory of Inchmahome. This is situated on a speck of an island in the Lake of Menteith, “dans le pays des sauvages”—in the land of the savages—as the French envoy reports, very remote from the world of men. Not even a path led to this romantic spot. The precious freight was conveyed to its destination in a boat. Here the child dwelt, hidden and removed from the turmoil of events, while over lands and seas diplomacy continued to weave the tissue of her fate.

  Meanwhile France had entered the lists, menacing and determined, resolved that Scotland should not become subject to England. Henry II, son of Francis I, sent a strong fleet to the northern realm and, through the lieutenant-general of the auxiliary army, sued the hand of Mary Stuart for his young son and heir, Francis. In a night-time, Mary’s destiny changed its course owing to the set of the political wind which swept in mighty war-engendering gusts over the Channel. Instead of becoming Queen of England the little daughter of the House of Stuart was now fated to become Queen of France. Hardly had the new and advantageous bargain been struck when, on 7th August 1548, the costly merchandise (Mary was then five years and eight months old) was shipped from Dumbarton for a French port. Once more she had been sold to an unknown bridegroom, and committed to a marriage which might have lasted for decades. Again, and not for the last time, alien hands were moulding her destiny.

  Trustfulness is a distinctive quality of childhood. What does a toddler of two, three, or even four years old know of war and of peace, of battles and of treaties? What can such words as England or France, Edward or Francis, mean to it? A fair-haired girl ran gleefully in and out of the dark or the brightly lit rooms of a palace, with four other girls of the same age at her heels. A charming thought had been allowed to blossom in the bleak atmosphere of a barbaric age. From the earliest days of her life Mary Stuart had been given four companions, all of them born at the same time as herself, chosen from among the most distinguished Scottish families, the lucky cloverleaf of the four Marys: Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingstone and Mary Seton. In early years these namesakes of the Queen were her gay playmates; later they were her classmates in a foreign land so that she did not feel her novel surroundings to be unbearably strange; still later they were to become her maids of honour. In a moment of unusual affection, they took a vow not to enter the married state before Mary herself had found a spouse. Even after three of them had forsaken the Queen in the days when misfortune befell her, the fourth of the Marys followed her mistress, clave to her in adversity, shared in her exile and her prisons, waited upon her when she died on the scaffold, and never left her until her body had been consigned to the grave. Thus, to the very end of her life, Mary was accompanied by a touch of childhood. But at the time she sailed for France as a small child, these sad and darkened days lay far ahead.

  At Holyrood or at Stirling, the palace and the castle rang with peals of laughter and the patter of small feet, as the five Marys ran from room to room, untiringly, from morning till nightfall. Little did they care for high estate, for dignities, for kingdoms; nothing did they know of the pride and danger encompassing a crown. One night, Mary the Queen was roused from her baby sleep, lifted from her crib; a boat was waiting in readiness on a lake that was hardly bigger than a pond; someone rowed her across, and they landed on an island. How quiet and pleasant the place! Inchmahome, the isle of peace. Strange men stooped to welcome her; some of these men were robed more like women, and had peaked hoods to their black gowns. They were gentle and kind, they sang beautifully in a high-ceilinged hall with stained-glass
windows. Mary soon grew accustomed to her new home. But all too soon another evening came when once more she was taken in a boat across the waters. Fate had decreed that Mary Stuart was constantly to be making such night flittings from one destiny to another. On this occasion she awoke to find herself on a ship with high masts and milk-white sails, surrounded by unknown, rugged soldiers and hirsute sailors. What need was there for Mary to be frightened? Everyone aboard was kind and friendly to her; her seventeen-year-old half-brother James was gently stroking her silky hair. This youngster was one of her father’s innumerable bastards, born in the decade before he married Mary of Guise. There, too, were the four Marys, her beloved playfellows. Delighted and happy in their novel environment, the five little girls frolicked about the vessel, dodging in and out among the cannons of the French man-of-war, laughing madly and joyously. Above these innocents, at the mast-head, was a man whose vigilance never relaxed. Anxiously he spied in every direction, for he knew that the English fleet was cruising about in those waters and only awaited an auspicious moment to pounce upon the precious freight and make her England’s Queen before she had been given a chance to become Queen of France. But what should she know of crowns and the ways of men, of trouble and danger, of England and France? The seas were blue, the people around her were amiable and strong, and the great vessel swam onward like some huge bird, speeding over the waves.

  On 13th August, the galleon dropped anchor in the small harbour of Roscoff near Brest. A boat was lowered, and conveyed the Queen to the landing place. Enchanted with her voyage by land and by sea, Mary sprang lightheartedly from the gangway onto French soil. She was not yet six years old; but with this landing, the Queen of Scotland left her childhood behind.

  Chapter Two

  Youth in France

  (1548–59)

  THE FRENCH COURT EXCELLED in the courtly accomplishments of the day, and was practised in the mysterious science of etiquette. Henry II, a prince of the House of Valois, knew what was proper to the reception of a dauphin’s bride. Before her arrival he issued a decree that “la reinette”, the little Queen of Scotland, was to be welcomed by every town and village through which she might pass with as much ceremony as if she had been his own daughter. In Nantes, therefore, Mary Stuart was received with almost overwhelming pomp. At the street corners there had been erected galleries adorned with classical emblems, goddesses, nymphs and sirens; to put the escort in a good humour, barrels of costly wine were broached; salvos of artillery and a firework display greeted the newcomer; furthermore, a Lilliputian bodyguard had been enrolled, consisting of one hundred and fifty youngsters under eight years of age, dressed in white uniforms, and marching in front of the child Queen, playing drums and fifes, armed with miniature pikes and halberds, shouting acclamations. Everywhere the same sort of reception had been prepared, so that it was through an uninterrupted series of festivities that Mary at length reached Saint-Germain. There she, not yet six years of age, had the first glimpse of her husband-to-be, four and a half years old, weakly, pale, rachitic, a boy whose poisoned blood foredoomed him to illness and premature death, and who now greeted his “bride” shyly. All the heartier, however, was the welcome accorded her by the other members of the royal family, who were greatly impressed by her youthful charm; and Henry II described her enthusiastically in a letter as “la plus parfayt enfant que je vys jamès”—the most perfect child I have ever seen.

  At that time, the French court was one of the most resplendent in the world. A gleam of dying chivalry illumined this transitional generation, which belonged in a certain measure to the gloomier period of the Middle Ages. Hardihood and courage were still displayed in the chase, in tilting at the ring, and in tourneys; the old harsh and virile spirit was manifested in adventure and in war; but more spiritual outlooks had already come into their own amid the ruling circles, and humanistic culture, which had before conquered the cloisters and the universities, was now supreme in the palaces of kings. From Italy the papal love of display, the joie de vivre of the Renaissance (a joy that was both mental and physical) and delight in the fine arts had made their triumphal entry into France; the result being, at this juncture, an almost unique welding of strength with beauty, of high spirits with recklessness—the supreme faculty of having no fear of death while loving life with the full passion of the senses. More naturally and more easily than anywhere else temperament was, among the French, associated with frivolity, Gallic chevalerie being extraordinarily akin to the classical culture of the Renaissance. It was expected of a French nobleman that he should be equally competent in full panoply to charge his adversary in the lists, and gracefully and correctly to tread the mazes of the dance; he must at one and the same time be a past master of the science of war, and proficient in the manners and practices of courts. The hand which could wield the broadsword in a life-or-death struggle must be able to strum the lute tunefully and to indite sonnets to a fair mistress. To be simultaneously strong and tender, rough and cultured, skilled in battle and skilled in the fine arts, was the ideal of the time. In the daylight hours, the King and his nobles, attended by a pack of baying hounds, hunted the stag or the boar, while spears were broken and lances splintered; but when night fell there assembled in the halls of the splendidly renovated palaces of the Louvre or of Saint-Germain, of Blois or Amboise, lords and ladies eager to participate in witty conversation. Poems were read aloud, musical instruments were played, madrigals were sung, and in masques the spirit of classical literature was revived. The presence of numerous lovely and tastefully dressed women, the work of such poets and painters as Ronsard, du Bellay and Clouet gave the French royal court a colour and a verve which found lavish expression in every form of art and of life. As elsewhere in Europe before the unhappy outbreak of the wars of religion, in the France of that epoch a wonderful surge of civilisation was in progress.

  One who was to live at such a court, and above all one who might be expected in due time to rule there, must become adapted to the new cultural demands. He must strive to perfect himself in the arts and sciences, must develop his mind no less carefully than his body. It will be an everlasting glory of the movement we call humanism that its apostles insisted upon familiarity with the arts even among those whose mission it was to move in the highest circles. We can hardly think of any other period in history than the epoch then dawning, in which not only men of station, but noblewomen as well, were expected to be highly educated. Like Mary of England and her half-sister Elizabeth, Mary Stuart had to become familiar with Greek and Latin, and, in addition, with modern tongues, with French, Italian, English and Spanish. Having a clear intelligence and a ready wit coupled with an inherited delight in learning, these things came easily to the gifted child. When she was no more than thirteen (having been taught her Latin from Erasmus’ Colloquies) she recited, in the great gallery of the Louvre, before the assembled court and the foreign ambassadors, a Latin oration of her own composition, and did this so ably, with so much ease and grace, that her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine was able to write to Mary of Guise: “Your daughter is improving, and increasing day by day in stature, goodness, beauty, wisdom and worth. She is so perfect and accomplished in all things, honourable and virtuous, that like of her is not to be seen in this realm, whether among noble damsels, maidens of low degree, or in middle station. The King has taken so great a liking to her that he spends much of his time chatting with her, sometimes by the hour together, and she knows as well how to entertain him with pleasant and sensible subjects of conversation as if she were a woman of five-and-twenty.”

  In very truth Mary’s mental development was no less speedy than it was thorough. Soon she had acquired so perfect a command of French that she could venture to express herself in verse, vying with Ronsard and du Bellay in her answers to their adulatory poems. In days to come, when most sorely distressed, or when the fires of passion must find vent, she would by choice use the metrical form; and down to her last hour she remained true to poesy as the most loyal of her frie
nds. In the other arts she could express herself with extraordinarily good taste: she sang charmingly to the accompaniment of the lute; her dancing was acclaimed as bewitching; her embroideries were those of a hand gifted no less than trained; her dress was always discreet and becomingly chosen, since she had no love for the huge hooped skirts in which Elizabeth delighted to strut; her maidenly figure looked equally well whether she was clad in Highland dress or in silken robes of state. Tact and a fine discrimination were inseparable from her nature, and this daughter of the Stuarts would preserve even in her darkest hours, as the priceless heritage of her royal blood and courtly training, an exalted but nowise theatrical demeanour which will for all time endow her with a halo of romance. Even in matters of sport she was well-nigh the equal of the most skilful at this court where sport was a cult. An indefatigable horsewoman, an ardent huntress, agile at the game of pall-mall, tall, slender and graceful though she was, she knew nothing of fatigue. Bright and cheerful, carefree and joyous, she drained the delights of youth out of every goblet that offered, never guessing that this was to be the only happy period of her life. Mary Queen of Scots at the French court comes down to us as an unfading and unique picture. There is scarcely another woman in whom the chivalrous ideal of the French Renaissance found so entrancing and maidenly an expression as in this merry and ardent daughter of a royal race.

  She had barely left childhood when, as a maid in her teens and later as a woman, the poets of the day sang her praises. “In her fifteenth year her beauty began to radiate from her like the sun in a noontide sky,” wrote Brantôme. Du Bellay was even more passionate in his admiration:

  En votre esprit le ciel s’est surmonté.

  Nature et art ont en votre beauté

  Mis tout le beau dont la beauté s’assemble.