Mary Queen of Scots (17 page)

Because Knox did not witness the dispute, whether Mary and
Lethington were as offended as he claimed cannot be confirmed. Craig’s statements about her influence with the councilors were probably too favorable, but Knox’s negative account was surely exaggerated. It is more likely that she and the councilors reached the consensus that official action against him would prove to be a divisive step, both religiously and politically. In practical terms it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, on the basis of this evidence to empanel an assize or jury that would actually convict a leading reformed preacher like Knox of treason. If a trial were held, even before the verdict was reached, the government would probably have had to deal with Protestant riots.

In March 1564, three months later, Randolph repeated rumors that the queen was aggrieved to learn that Knox, who was about 50, intended to marry 17-year-old Margaret Stewart, the daughter of Andrew, second Lord Ochiltree, because his bride was of Mary’s blood and name. It would be reasonable to assume that when Mary learned about it, regardless of her reaction to Knox’s proposed wedding, she also recalled her earlier audience with him concerning his public denunciation of her possible marriage to a Catholic.

Despite these troubles, Mary continued to address legislative and legal matters. In 1566, recognizing that Scotland’s laws needed to be made available in an accurate version, she assigned this task to a commission, whose members included Balfour, Leslie, and Edward Henryson. Their deliberations resulted in Henryson’s publication of the first complete edition of the acts of parliament, a milestone in the history and use of statutory law. It became known as the
Black Acts
because of the blackness of the type in which it was printed. A copy of the volume at the British Library, which was especially bound for Mary in dark brown calf, is one of only seven books that have survived from her library.
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Randolph’s dispatches reveal that Mary also took great interest in the courts of law adjudicating civil matters. In March 1563 by her council’s advice, she entered the Edinburgh Tolbooth to expedite the court of session’s disposition of poor people’s bills. She instructed the lords thereafter to hear cases three days a week, both mornings and afternoons, and enlarged their stipends accordingly. Her contemporaries expected royal women to have special concern for poor people’s problems, and Randolph later noted approvingly other occasions when she attended the session to hear their petitions. In 1563, furthermore, to replace the old ecclesiastical courts, she signed a charter erecting the commissary court of Edinburgh, which possessed original jurisdiction in questions of testaments, succession, and marital relations, and appellate authority over provincial commissariats.
Her decision with the council’s advice to collect one-third of the revenues of benefices has previously been cited. She also utilized her resources for charitable and patronage purposes: in 1563 funding five bursaries for poor students at the University of Glasgow and granting the property of Edinburgh’s Dominican friary to the burgh for the foundation of a poor hospital, in 1564 giving the temporalities of the Abbey of Crossraguel in Ayrshire to Buchanan and an annual pension for life to James White for the study of good letters, and in 1566 granting monastic revenue to the city of Glasgow to support its ministers.

An important Scottish criterion for rating the success of their monarchs was their willingness to be seen going on progresses and dispensing justice throughout the realm. Travel was extremely difficult and slow-going, the rough terrain and inadequate road system requiring individuals to ride on horseback. In her short personal rule Mary stayed with 82 hosts in all sections of Scotland, except the Northern Isles, the Hebrides, and the northwest Highlands. Riding sidesaddle on her horse, the mode she learned in France, she covered some 1,200
miles between August 1562 and September 1563, penetrating into the north, the south, and the west. In 54 days between July and September 1564, she traveled 460 miles, reaching Inverness for a second time, honoring her hosts by instructing her court to wear Highland dress; in early 1565 she journeyed into Fife as far as Balmerino Abbey and in the summer made her way to Dunkeld and Perth. In 1566 she held a justice ayre at Jedburgh. Most of the lords she visited on these journeys later supported her during the civil wars that were fought after her flight to England.

MARRIAGE PROPOSALS

Meanwhile in 1563 when Knox was warning Mary against marrying a Catholic, Lorraine was attempting to match her with Archduke
Charles, who, he believed, would assist her in governing Scotland. In early 1563 Lorraine left the Council at Trent to confer with Emperor Ferdinand at Innsbruck, but her uncle had small chance of success.
James Melville returned home in early 1564 claiming that Maximilian, the emperor’s heir, opposed his brother’s union with her.
Mary did not favor Charles because he lived in a remote country without adequate resources to advance her affairs. Although aware of her lack of interest, Lorraine was still assuring Pius IV in late 1564 that she would only be able to re-establish Catholicism if she married Charles.

While Lorraine’s priority was finding a Catholic husband to assist her in governing Scotland, Mary’s goal was to connect her realm and ultimately England to the Netherlands by marrying Don Carlos, whom she hoped his father would name as the regent at Brussels. The resulting composite monarchy had the potential of becoming even grander when he succeeded his father as Spain’s monarch. In June 1563
Philip agreed to commence secret marriage negotiations with her primarily to distract her from a French alliance. For about a year her envoys, including Pierre Raulet, her secretary for French affairs, discussed the match with Philip’s ambassadors in the Netherlands, England, and France, since he did not maintain a Scottish embassy.

In August 1564 Philip decided to end the discussions, using as his excuse Lorraine’s attempts to marry her to his cousin, the archduke, whom he was loath to offend. Worried that her uncle’s diplomacy might thwart her ambitions, she had shown Randolph a letter in March from Lorraine in which he denied seeking her alliance with Charles. Either his letter was forged, the more likely possibility, or he was being disingenuous. Other evidence indicates he pressed for this marriage. Mary also publicly complained about her uncle’s unkindness, knowing that her comments would circulate in the diplomatic rumor mill. Her tactics did not and, indeed, could not serve to change Philip’s decision about Don Carlos marrying her. The king did not intend to match anyone with his ill son, who behaved erratically even before he hit his head in a fall. In late 1567 Philip locked him in a chamber where he died a few months later.

Philip had worried needlessly about Mary’s selecting a French husband. Catherine opposed Mary’s alliance with both her son Charles and Don Carlos and dispatched Mauvissière in mid 1564 to offer another son, the duke of Anjou. Mary declined the proposal, explaining that
France was dear to her because she had been its queen, but she would not return to a position inferior to the one she previously held and risk the loss of Scotland. She also confirmed to Mauvissière her interest in Don Carlos especially if he should move to the Netherlands.

In 1563 concerned that Mary might wed Don Carlos or the archduke, Elizabeth intervened in the negotiations. She instructed Randolph to warn Mary against selecting either candidate and to offer her any English nobleman, but if she must marry abroad, she should choose someone below princely rank. After Mary repeated this message to Argyll, he asked if the queen of England had become a man, meaning that no English person, except Elizabeth, was worthy of his queen.
When they speculated about which candidate was meant, Randolph noted that none guessed Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s master of the horse, some suggested his brother, Ambrose, earl of Warwick, but most named Darnley. Randolph also predicted that she would not debase herself by marrying anyone of a lesser rank than hers.

In March 1564 following further instructions, he revealed to Mary that Elizabeth was recommending Dudley to her. When she asked why it stood with her honor to accept him, Randolph responded that the match might bring England to her. Many Scots opposed her selecting someone of Dudley’s inferior lineage, but it is true that when Jane Grey attempted to become queen in 1553, she was married to his brother, Guildford.

To make Dudley more acceptable to Mary, Elizabeth ennobled him as the earl of Leicester. James Melville witnessed the ceremony in September 1564 and recalled in his memoirs without criticism that she lightly touched the earl’s neck, an intimate gesture that was not part of the usual protocol. Interpreting this behavior as a spontaneous display of her feelings, some writers have argued that Elizabeth was insincere in offering Dudley to Mary. If they are correct, the public behavior the ambassador observed not only revealed Elizabeth’s deceit but also constituted an insult to Scotland and its queen. Considering the nature of court etiquette, this gesture was more likely a deliberate act to convey visually to Melville that Elizabeth’s esteem for Dudley, if Mary accepted his suit, would ensure amicable relations between their realms. Almost always a breach of protocol was not the result of spontaneous behavior.

The governments arranged for Bedford and Randolph to confer
about the marriage with Moray and Lethington at Berwick in November. There the Scotsmen’s hopes were dashed. Mary would only wed Leicester if Elizabeth promised legislation naming her the heir apparent, a commitment her cousin consistently refused to make. The petition of Elizabeth’s second parliament, requesting her to name a successor, may have fueled Mary’s resolve for statutory validation. One member, John Hales, the clerk of the Hanaper, wrote a controversial treatise,
A Declaration of the Succession of the Crown Imperial of England
, a copy of which Lethington obtained. In it, Hales validated the claims of Catherine Grey, whose succession rights were recognized in Henry VIII’s will, and argued that Elizabeth should legitimize her two sons.
He also denounced the pretensions of the foreign-born Mary, whose family rights Henry ignored, and claimed even if that king’s will were invalidated, Edward III’s statute of 1351, barring alien inheritance applied to the crown. When learning about the tract in 1564, Elizabeth ordered Hales imprisoned, although his ideas reflected the views of many parliamentary members as well as many privy councilors.

After parliament failed again in 1566 to persuade Elizabeth to marry or name a successor, Edmund Plowden, a lawyer of the Middle Temple, responded to Hales’s tract
in A Treatise
...
Proving the Queen of
Scots by her Birth is Not Disabled by the Law of England to Receive the Crown
of England.
In it, Plowden denied that Edward III’s statute, establishing exceptions to the common law ruling that aliens could not inherit in England, affected the royal succession. The statute exempted from the prohibition concerning alien inheritance both the children of English kings wherever and whenever they were born and the children of parents in allegiance to English monarchs who were born abroad. He argued that this inheritance rule and the statute were applicable to bodies natural but not to the crown, the body politic, and its succession.

In December 1564 as this debate was raging in England, the disappointed Moray and Lethington explained to Cecil that Mary would swear obedience for life to Leicester, becoming in a sense his slave or
“thrall” while Elizabeth needed only to confirm her cousin’s succession claims, a concession that would not adversely affect her during her lifetime. Mary may have guessed that Leicester was a reluctant suitor because he still hoped to wed his monarch, but she continued to pursue the marriage with him, hoping to obtain official confirmation of her English succession rights.
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ROYAL COURT

While this diplomacy was underway, Mary went on progresses and supervised court activities. In February 1564 her four Maries swore to remain single until she remarried. Although Livingston broke her vow when she wed John Sempill of Beltries in March 1565, the approving queen funded her dowry and wedding costs. Two other Maries took husbands only after her own remarriage, Beaton wedding Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne in 1566 and Fleming marrying Lethington in 1567.
Except for Fleming’s wedding that followed Calvinist tradition and was not celebrated with dancing, Buchanan composed masques to honor these occasions. Mary Seton, who joined her mistress in England in 1568, remained single.

Mary Stewart was the first Scottish monarch to use regularly the imperial title of majesty rather than grace, adopting, as were other contemporary monarchs, the style and protocol of the Holy Roman Emperor. She also observed traditional royal etiquette, which was especially visible in dining procedures. Here and at other courts, eating habits defined and authenticated social status. At the formal midday dinners, food from her table was passed downward to other tables following the hierarchical guidelines regulating seating. For example, at the table next to Mary’s sat nine ladies, including the four Maries, and at a more distant table sat 19 valets of the chamber, among them the French and English musicians and Riccio, who entered her court in 1561. Occasionally, Mary invited Randolph to her table not to privilege him personally but to honor his queen.
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The kind of food served varied, depending on the diners’ status. The queen and those seated nearest her in the chamber would have enjoyed the food usually provided in elite Scottish households. They would have consumed wine, ale, meats, and bread, but humble servants dining in other rooms partook only of bread and ale. The meats included beef, veal, mutton, poultry, seafood, and wild game that Mary took delight in hunting.
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The queen enjoyed outdoor and indoor entertainments. All her palaces possessed gardens in which she took walks and practiced archery, usually shooting at the butts (mounds on which targets were erected). In April 1562 Randolph observed her and Patrick, the future sixth Lord Lindsay of the Byres, competing against Moray and his wife
in this archery contest. As the roads were primitive, she mostly traveled on horseback. When Elizabeth granted her a license in 1561
to obtain six or eight geldings, Lethington responded that she needed at least 15 or 16.