Mary Stuart Read online

  Maitland of Lethington, Mary’s secretary of state, next only to her half-brother in importance at her court, was also a Protestant. To begin with, nevertheless, he was on her side. Maitland was extremely able, had a supple and cultivated mind, and was (as Elizabeth called him) “the flower of the wits of Scotland”. He had not, like James Stuart, a masterful pride, nor any keen love for power. It was diplomacy that interested him, the confused and confusing intricacies of politics, the art of combination. He took artistic pleasure in these, which mattered more to him than rigid principles, creed and country, the Queen and the Scottish realm. He was personally attached to his sovereign, and Mary Fleming, one of the four Marys, became his wife. To Mary Stuart herself he was neither positively loyal nor positively disloyal. He would serve her as long as chance favoured her, and abandon her in times of peril. From him, as from a weathercock, she could judge whether the wind was fair or foul. A typical politician, he would devote himself, not to her, but to bettering his own fortunes.

  Thus, on her return home, Mary Stuart could find no thoroughly dependable friend, whether she sought to right or to left, in the city or among the members of her own household. She had to be content with the services of a James Stuart or a Maitland, to allow herself to be guided by them, and to make the best terms with them. On the other hand, from the moment of her landing, John Knox made no secret of his merciless antagonism. He was the great demagogic leader in religious affairs, the organiser and master of the Scottish Kirk, the most popular preacher in Edinburgh. The struggle with him was one of life or death.

  For the shape Calvinism had assumed under John Knox’s inspiration was no longer a purely reformative renovation of the Church, but a brand-new doctrinal system, a kind of superlative Protestantism. Domineering and authoritarian, Knox, the zealot, claimed that even kings must slavishly obey his theocratic laws. Mary Stuart, since she was of a mild and yielding disposition, might have come to a compromise with a High Church, with a Lutheran Church or with any other less virulent form of Reformation. But Calvinism was so dictatorial a faith that from the outset it rendered any kind of mutual understanding impracticable. Even Elizabeth, who favoured Knox because he was her rival’s enemy, detested him for his arrogance. Much more vexatious, of course, were the zealot’s bluster and harshness to Mary, who was in close contact with them, and had so recently returned from the freedom and cheerfulness of France. Nothing could have been more revolting to Mary’s joyous and voluptuous nature and to her delight in the Muses than the austere severity, the hatred of everything that made life pleasant, the iconoclastic antagonism to the arts, the dislike of merriment and laughter, incorporated in the Genevese doctrines; nothing more repulsive than the stubborn treatment of jollity and beauty as sin, than the bigotry which aimed at overthrowing all that she held dear, which banned good spirits and urbane manners and customs, music, poetry and dancing, and which cast a still gloomier mantle over a land already condemned by nature to gloom and sadness.

  Under Master John’s aegis, the Kirk in Edinburgh assumed a hard, Old Testament character, for Knox was one of the most iron-willed, most zealous, most mercilessly fanatical of reformers, exceeding even his master, Calvin, in venom and intolerance. He had taken orders as a Roman Catholic priest, and had in the sequel hurled himself with the full ardour of his disputatious soul into the ranks of the reformers, becoming a pupil of George Wishart, who was burnt alive for heresy during the regency of Mary of Guise, at the instigation of Cardinal Beaton. The flames which destroyed his teacher were henceforward to consume Knox’s own heart. As one of the leaders in the rebellion against the Queen-Regent, he was made a prisoner of the French forces and consigned to the galleys. For eighteen months he remained chained to his forced labour, and some of the iron of his chains bit into his soul. On being released through the intervention of Edward VI, he sought out Calvin, from whom he learnt the power enchased in the spoken word, from whom he likewise learnt to hate everything that was bright, cheerful and Hellenic. Within a few years of his return to Scotland his genius for violence enabled him to force acceptance of the Reformation upon lords and commons.

  John Knox is perhaps the most finished example of the religious fanatic. He was of harder metal than Luther, who was not free from occasional gleams of jovial humour, and he was yet more rigid than Savonarola, because he lacked the Italian’s brilliancy and faculty for mystically illuminated discourse. Though he was fundamentally honest and straightforward, the blinkers that he wore made him one of those cruel and narrow-minded persons for whom only their own truth is true, only their own virtue virtuous, only their own Christianity Christian. To differ from him was criminal; to refuse compliance with every letter of his demands was to show oneself to be Satan’s spawn. Knox had the dour courage of the self-possessed (in the demoniacal sense of the word), the passion of the ecstatic bigot and the detestable pride of the self-righteous. His acerbity was also tinged by a dangerous pleasure in its exercise, while his impatience manifested a gloomily voluptuous joy in his own infallibility. Jehovah-like, with flowing beard, Hebrew prophet in complete perfection, he took his stand Sunday after Sunday in the pulpit of St Giles’, thundering invectives and maledictions against those who differed from him in the minutest of details. A born killjoy, he railed against the “Devil’s brood” of the happy-go-lucky, of those who did not serve God precisely in the way which seemed best to him. This cold-hearted fanatic knew no other gratification than the triumph of his dogmas, no other justice than the victory of his cause. He frankly rejoiced if a Catholic, or any other whom he regarded as a heretic, was slain or humiliated. Publicly would he thank God when the assassin’s dagger had swept an adversary of the Kirk out of the way. To him it was self-evident that God must have willed and furthered the deed. He vociferated his rejoicings from the pulpit when the news came that pus had burst through one of poor little Francis II’s eardrums, and that the French King was at the point of death. When Mary of Guise died, he did not hesitate to pray for the death of Mary Queen of Scots: “God, for his great mercy’s sake, rid us from the rest of the Guisian brood. Amen, amen.” In his sermons, there was no trace of the suavity and divine goodness characteristic of the Gospels; his discourses swished like a scourge. His God was the vengeful, bloody and inexorable Yahweh of the Old Testament, which, with its barbarous threats, was for him the real Bible. References to Moab, Amalek, all the enemies of the People of Israel who must be annihilated with fire and sword, were continually in his mouth as he voiced threats against the enemies of the true faith—by which he meant his own. When he volleyed abuse at Queen Jezebel, the congregation knew that it was another queen he had in mind. Calvinism, with Knox as its chief exponent, loured over Scotland like a thunderstorm that at any moment might burst.

  No compromise is possible with a person thus impeccable and incorruptible, a man whose only thought is to command and who expects instant and unreflecting obedience. Attempts to placate him or smooth him down could only intensify his exactions, make him harsher and more scornful. Always those who regard themselves as God’s doughtiest warriors are the unkindliest men in the world. Believing themselves the vehicles of heavenly messages, they have their ears closed to whatever is humane.

  A bare week sufficed to make Mary Stuart aware of the presence of so fanatical an opponent. Before her return she had promised her subjects absolute freedom of belief—a promise which to a woman of her tolerant disposition demanded no sacrifices on her part. In addition she had recognised the law which prohibited any public celebration of the Mass in Scotland. This was a painful concession to John Knox and his followers, but one they insisted upon winning, for, as the divine once said, “one Mass is more fearful to me than if ten thousand armed enemies were to land and suppress the whole religion.” But Mary was a devout Catholic, a daughter of the Guises, and she insisted upon practising her own religion in the privacy of her chapel whenever and however she pleased. Not stopping to reflect upon the possible consequences, the Scottish parliament granted her request. But on the first Sunday after her arrival, when the preparations for celebrating Mass in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood had been made, an excited crowd gathered round the entries, and when the Queen’s almoner was carrying the candles to light upon the altar, he was waylaid and the candles were wrenched from his hands and smashed. A loud murmur arose which reduced itself to a demand that the “idolatrous priest” should be slain; more and more excited grew the cries against this “Satan worship”; at any moment it seemed that the Queen’s private chapel might be stormed by the mob. Lord James Stuart, however, saved the situation. Although himself a staunch champion of the Kirk, he confronted the fanatical rout and defended the main entry while the Queen was engaged in her devotions. After saying Mass in fear and trembling, the unhappy priest was brought safely back to his quarters. Open revolt was thus avoided, and the Queen’s authority had been kept intact, though with difficulty. But the gay festivities that had been organised to greet her arrival, the “joyousities” as Knox mockingly called them, were broken off, much to his grim delight. The young and romantic Queen was made to feel how genuine and strong were the antagonisms extant in the realm she had come over the seas to rule.

  Mary Stuart’s reaction to the slight found vent in a storm of rage. Tears and harsh words welled up from within her to express the depth of her mortification. A clear ray of light was thus shed upon a character which hitherto had lacked precision. The spoilt darling of fate ever since birth, Mary had always shown the tender and gentle aspects of her nature, for she was fundamentally of a pliant and accommodating disposition. All who came in contact with her, from the highest court official down to the humblest maid, extolled her friendliness, her lack of arrogance, her affectionate and endearing ways. She won hearts because she never harshly or ha
ughtily reminded people of her majesty. But this gentleness was counterbalanced by an insuperable consciousness of what she really was, a consciousness that was latent so long as nothing came to disturb it, but which broke forth in violent storms of weeping and vituperation so soon as she met with contradiction or resistance. This wonderful woman was often known to forgive a personal affront, but a belittling of her queenly estate never.

  She was, therefore, determined not to pass over this initial outrage to her dignity as Scotland’s ruler. Such presumption must, in her view, be stamped upon from the first. Only too well did she know with whom she had to deal, never doubting for a moment that it was the bearded heretic preaching from his parochial pulpit who had incited the rabble against her. She would take the man personally to task, and that without delay. Mary Stuart, accustomed to instant obedience on the part of the subjects of a French monarch, all-powerful ruler by divine grace, never imagined for a moment that she would meet with contradiction from one of her own subjects, an ordinary burgher living in the capital of her realm. She was prepared for everything in the world but that anyone should openly and boldly venture to oppose her will. John Knox, however, was not only prepared to do so, but eager and joyfully prepared. “Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman frighten me?

  I have looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been afraid above measure.” His heart bounded within him as with rapid strides he made his way to the palace for this private colloquy. A fight—and in Knox’s opinion, such a fight was in God’s behalf—is the greatest delight the soul of a fanatic can experience. If God Almighty had given crowns to kings, He had endowed His priests and representatives here below with the gift of uttering fiery words and, in addition, the divine right of speaking them. His duty was to defend God’s reign upon earth; nor must he hesitate to use the flail of his wrath to chastise the insubordinate as of yore did Samuel and the judges described in Holy Writ. The scene that ensued was like one taken out of the Old Testament—regal pride confronted sacerdotal pride; it was not one woman fighting one man to gain the upper hand, but two age-old ideas which were engaged for the thousand thousandth time in bitter strife.

  Mary Stuart endeavoured to retain her usually unruffled sweetness and to be forbearing. Sincerely wishful to bring about an understanding, she concealed her mortification, for she had at heart to preserve peace in her realm. It was, therefore, with courteous words that she opened the conversation. John Knox, for his part, was resolved to be as implacable as he pleased and to show the “idolatress” that he was not inclined to bow down an inch before the mighty of this world. Silent and gloomy, not as accused but as accuser, he listened to the counts the Queen had against him. Among other items “she charged me with my book” (The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women) wherein he challenged a woman’s right to wield authority. This same work had got him into trouble with Elizabeth, the Protestant sovereign, before whose reproaches he had bowed his head with due meekness; now, in the encounter with his own “unpersuaded princess”, he obstinately maintained his privilege to express such opinions as he honestly held. As had been feared, his intolerance seemed bound to mar all, for gradually the conversation took a more caustic turn. Mary showed a “shrewdness beyond her years”, and there was no little acuteness in her reasoning. She asked him point-blank: “Think you that subjects … should resist their princes?” Instead of giving the negative answer she had expected, Knox, a born tactician, evaded the crucial point by lapsing into parable: “A father may be struck with a frenzy, in which he would slay his children. Now, madam, if the children arise, join together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands and keep him in prison till the frenzy be over, think you, madam, that the children do any harm? Even so is it with princes who would murder the children of God that are subject unto them …”

  The Queen was nonplussed by so bold an answer, feeling that by such provisos Knox, the theologian, was for countenancing a revolt against her just rights as sovereign. “Well then,” she retorted briskly, “I perceive that my subjects shall obey you and not me, and will do what they list, and not what I command, and so maun I be subject to them, and not they to me!” This was precisely what Knox had meant, but he was too cautious to say so outright, seeing that Lord James Stuart was present at the interview. Evasively he replied: “God forbid that ever I take upon me to command any to obey me, or set subjects at liberty to do what pleaseth them. My travail is that both princes and subjects may obey God … He craves of kings that they be as foster-fathers and queens as nursing mothers to his Church.” The Queen, sorely vexed by the reformer’s persistent ambiguity, made sharp rejoinder: “But ye are not the Church that I will nourish. I will defend the Church of Rome, for I think it is the true Church of God.”

  Blow swiftly followed upon blow. The point had been reached where understanding between a zealous Catholic and a fanatical Protestant, one who “ruleth the roost” and of whom “all men stand in fear”, was impossible. With the rough manners begotten of unceasing controversy and polemic, he retorted: “Your will, madam, is no reason; neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ.” And when Mary rebuked him for the use of such words, and pleaded conscience, Master John retaliated provocatively: “Conscience, madam, requires knowledge, and I fear that right knowledge ye have none.” Thus the first interview, instead of bringing reconciliation, only served to make the antagonism between the two more pronounced. “In communication with her I espied such craft as I have not found in such age. Since, hath the court been dead to me and I to it.” Mary had been made to realise that there were limits to her royal power. With head erect, Knox left the audience chamber, proud and pleased at having defied majesty. The young Queen, on the contrary, felt discomfited, knowing that her overtures had received a rebuff. She recognised her own impotence, and gave way to her bitterness of soul in a passion of tears. Nor were these the last she was to weep. Soon she was forced to recognise that power was not a thing inherited once and for all, but had to be fought for in persistent struggle and amid constantly renewed humiliations.

  Chapter Five

  The Stone Begins to Roll

  (1561–3)

  FOR THREE YEARS AFTER SHE ASSUMED the reins of government Mary’s life was fairly quiet and uneventful. Fate had decreed from the outset that the great happenings of her life were to be concentrated into swift, short episodes, and it is this peculiarity which has always made such appeal to the dramatic instincts of playwrights. Lord James Stuart, now Earl of Moray, and Maitland of Lethington were the real rulers, while Mary acted as figurehead, and this division of forces proved of the utmost advantage to all concerned. Both Moray and Lethington governed wisely and prudently. Mary, too, admirably played the part assigned her. Endowed by nature with beauty and charm, a mistress of the arts of chivalry, virile in her audacity, intrepid as a horsewoman, dextrous in archery and pall-mall, an ardent lover of fowling and the chase, she won all hearts by the grace of her appearance. The commonalty of Edinburgh gazed fondly and proudly on this daughter of the Stuarts when, of a morning, she rode forth with a falcon perched upon her uplifted wrist, surrounded by her gaily dressed court, and returning each salutation with a friendly and joyous smile. Something limpid, something cheerful, something touching and romantic, a ray of youth and beauty, had come like sunshine into this austere and gloomy land with the advent of its girlish Queen. A nation’s love is quickly captured by a ruler who is both young and handsome. The lords were more beguiled by what was manly in her composition; she would gallop for hours at a stretch without showing undue fatigue, far in advance of her followers. Just as her gentleness and her kindhearted ways were backed by a latent and invincible pride, so did the lithe, slim, soft, thistledown body, though feminine in its curves, mask a frame of iron, incapable of weariness. No exercise seemed too hard for her endurance; and once, as she rode in a foray, the swordsmen beside her overheard their lady wishing she were a man “to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields.” When Moray marched against the clan of the Huntlys in the north, she declared it her will to go with him, sword at her side and pistols in her belt. She gloried in risk and adventure, and whatever she undertook to do she entered into with her whole soul and body, brought to it all the passion her resolute nature was capable of feeling. But in spite of her manlike courage, her huntsman’s simplicity, her warlike valiance and hardihood, when closeted in the apartments of her palace she showed herself a ruler both astute and cool-headed; in the midst of her gay court she would be the gayest of the party, pleasant and familiar in her small world. In her juvenile person the ideals of her epoch seemed to be conjoined—courage with lightheartedness, strength with gentleness. A last ray of the setting sun from the days of troubadour and knight illuminated the misty chill of this northern clime as Mary moved sprightly and gay among its shadows made all the deeper by the gloomy teachings of the Reformation.