Mary Queen of Scots (34 page)

Since the Letters were published in various translations in the 1570s and since the transcriptions of them made in 1568 remained in England, the destruction of the original manuscripts, if they were not in French, would seem to be more important to the agenda of Mary’s enemies than it would be to that of her friends. Without them her sympathizers could not prove definitively that she was defamed. It is not even clear that any of Mary’s commissioners ever saw the alleged originals in England. They were not present when Moray introduced the documents into the inquiry, and Leslie failed to note in his
Defence
that one of them was dated. Meanwhile, the publications of them in the various translations, other than their original versions, continued to taint Mary’s reputation for centuries. Surely, if the Casket Letters were actually written in French, they would have had an important enough monetary value for Morton’s heir to attempt to preserve or even to market them. Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne Boleyn still survive, after all, at the Vatican. But this, of course, is mere speculation.

After John Bateman, Shrewsbury’s secretary, delivered Buchanan’s denunciatory work to Mary, already in possession of Leslie’s favorable treatise, she blamed Cecil for sending it to her. Some of her contemporaries claimed that the public attacks of critics, like Buchanan, whether true or false, irreparably damaged her reputation. When the 64-year-old Buchanan, whom Mary denounced as an atheist, became James’s tutor in 1570, the outraged queen protested her enemy’s appointment to her young son’s household.

HOUSEHOLD MATTERS

In the years following the forced reduction in 1571 of Mary’s own household to 16 individuals, some of its members had to be replaced because of deaths. In the summer of 1575 Claude Nau, a Guise client, assumed the office of French secretary, formerly held by the late Pierre Raulet, who had in 1568 rejoined the captive queen’s staff.
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In 1577 the master of her household, Andrew Beaton, the archbishop’s brother, died while returning from a mission to the continent to obtain the release from a vow of celibacy for his betrothed, Mary Seton. Andrew had actually succeeded his deceased older brother, John, to this office in 1570. When Seton expressed concerns about marrying Andrew, a younger son of inferior lineage, the queen had reassured her that she would enhance his status before their wedding.

Other members departed because of illness or old age. In 1583 Seton’s poor health prompted her to retire to the abbey of St Pierre at Rheims. Even before her departure, Mary had longed for the company of her former Scottish dames of honor and had requested unsuccessfully that either Livingston’s or Lethington’s widow rejoin her household.

Another of Mary’s pressing concerns was obtaining a resident Catholic priest. When she asked specifically for a cleric to administer to her spiritual needs, Shrewsbury inevitably responded negatively. She complained bitterly to English officials about her lack of a priest, pointing out that even foreign ambassadors were permitted to observe the Catholic faith at their embassies. Until Leslie’s imprisonment and Winzet’s dismissal in 1571, she had, of course, been able to rely on them for spiritual guidance. In fact, Leslie did continue to send her his published treatises.
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By 1578 long bereft of a priest, she was requesting Edmund Augier for prayers to say on solemn days and at times of great necessity. Finally, in late 1581 or early 1582, some ten years after Winzet’s departure, Henri de Samerie alias Henry de la Rue, a Jesuit priest, joined her household disguised as a physician. Departing after eight or nine months, he returned for brief periods in the summers of 1583 and 1584.

Even without a cleric, she continued to participate in some traditional religious services. At the annual Maundy, celebrating Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet, a ceremony Elizabeth also observed, Mary gave to some poor women, the number equaling her age, one and one-half yards of woolen cloth, two yards of linen cloth, and 13 pence in coin. In addition, she bestowed six pence to the elderly in the nearby town. Since an English farm laborer in the 1560s might hope to earn £3 a year, these were generous offerings.

Besides seeking to continue some religious traditions and to employ appropriate staff, she also attempted to acquire clothes suitable for her royal status and fine items for her chambers. In 1574 she requested that Archbishop Beaton forward patterns of dresses of cloth-of-gold and silver and of silk like those worn at the French court. She also required some Italian headdresses, veils, and ribbons as well as a crown of gold and silver, similar to ones formerly created for her. In 1576 Mauvissière asked Walsingham’s permission to send Mary four boxes of wearing apparel and clothes and two boxes of preserves that had arrived for her. Moreover, she ordered a bed and six great candlesticks in 1577 and some gold articles for tokens and New Year’s gifts for her servants in 1579.

In 1575 as some individuals had requested portraits of her, she instructed Beaton to send her four set in gold. Two years later, Nau noted that an artist, who was not identified, was painting her portrait. In all only 50 images of her are extant, a small number when contrasted to the 250 images of Elizabeth. In France the master artist, Francis Clouet, had painted Mary: his rendition of her in white mourning,
en deuil blanc
, is the most well known of her early portraits, and a number of copies were derived from it. The surviving Scottish images are limited to engravings on medals and coins or sketches in crude drawings. It is not known when she sat for the exquisite English miniaturist, Nicholas Hilliard. As he was in France until at least August 1578, he was not the artist painting her in 1577, and it is possible that he rendered her miniatures from French models, although his work has the appearance of having been taken from life. The famous Sheffield types, the original of which is reportedly at Hardwick Hall, are standard Jacobean portraits. Among other extant English images of her are drawings of her execution and memorials in martyrologies.

In addition to obtaining portraits and other items from France, Mary attempted to recover her jewels from Scotland. While serving as regent, Moray seized many precious items, including a huge diamond called the Great Harry given to her by Henry II as a wedding present. Having learned Moray was selling off her jewels, Mary petitioned Elizabeth to prevent him from disposing of them. In 1568 Elizabeth did ask him to refrain from marketing them, a somewhat disingenuous request since she had recently obtained from him the magnificent set of large pearls Catherine gave to Mary as a wedding present and ultimately collected a rather extensive inventory of the gems. When Moray died in 1570, his widow refused to surrender the remaining jewels, even seeking Burghley’s protection against anyone who might attempt to recover them. After succeeding Moray as regent, Lennox gathered an assortment of Mary’s gems from her friends by threatening their imprisonment unless they relinquished them. Following the fall in 1573 of Edinburgh Castle, the depository of Mary’s other jewels, Morton, then her son’s regent, collected them and ignored her request for those dating from her French marriage. A confiscated letter by Grange to Mary, which was written two days before his death, probably assisted Morton in obtaining them. It declared Grange’s devotion to her and revealed where all her jewels were kept. Morton later also acquired the ones Lady Moray still retained.

FRENCH DOWER INCOME

The repossession of her jewels would have been a welcome boon to Mary, helping to offset the loss of dower funds her French servants and relatives had been siphoning off. Without naming a particular individual, she claimed in 1574 that someone was forging her documents to seize her funds illegally. The shortages caused great concerns. She relied on this income to pay her household wages, to support the defense of her castles until 1573, to provide pensions for those leaving her service and for Catholic refugees, and to take care of her personal needs.

While in Scotland she never obtained the total amount due her, but her English captivity compounded the collection woes. From her prisons, she had difficulties communicating with her French council, which was convened by Archbishop Beaton as chancellor until 1573 when he reluctantly relinquished this office to Gilles, sieur du Verger, President of Tours. It was only in 1573, five years after Mary reached England, that Elizabeth permitted her to confer with a French advisor. Du Verger visited with her then and again in 1577. Sometimes Mary’s councilors ignored her long-distance instructions; she often criticized, for example, the uncooperative attitude of her treasurer, René Dolu, sieur d’Ivoi in Berry, who traveled to England in 1576 but failed to obtain permission to consult with her. Two years later, she complained to Mauvissière about the denial of her recent request for the visit of one of her treasury commissioners. In 1581 Mary blamed her problems on the lack of good management in France and on Elizabeth’s refusal to allow her staff access to her. That year she replaced Dolu with Anthony Arnault, sieur de Chérelles, whose brother Jean was employed at the French embassy.

In late 1582 Elizabeth permitted Mary to meet with two of her French councilors who happened to be Nau’s brothers-in-law. En route to Scotland in September 1582 to confer with King James, Albert Fontenay, secretary of her council, stopped by to discuss his mission with her. Jean de Champhuan, sieur du Ruisseau, her chancellor, also met with her at that time to audit the dower accounts. Since Elizabeth began accurately to suspect that du Ruisseau was discussing the plans of Henry, third duke of Guise, to liberate his cousin, Mary, the English queen instructed Shrewsbury to delay momentarily du Ruisseau’s departure. After returning to the English court in October, he elicited permission for Mary to consult annually with a French advisor, a promise that was apparently kept in 1583 but retracted thereafter, according to Mary’s complaint in September 1585.

Du Ruisseau’s appointment to Mary’s French council actually represented a change in the nature of its membership. By the early 1580s, Catholic refugees from Britain had gained considerable influence over Mary’s French officers, who were mainly men of lesser social status than her earlier appointees. The institution had changed from an administrative unit with the goal of preserving and investing her funds into an arm of her household intent on coordinating political activities, a development that reflected her interest in utilizing her revenue for Catholic goals.

Two prominent refugees associated with her business affairs were Thomas Morgan and Charles Paget. In 1572 Shrewsbury had ordered the arrest of Thomas Morgan, a Welshman who had served as his secretary for three years, for aiding Mary’s secret correspondence and for warning her about court intrigues against her. Imprisoned for ten months at the Tower, he fled to Paris in 1575 and had gained the positions of cipher clerk for Archbishop Beaton and of receiver of her dower revenues by 1581. Paget, another Catholic exile and a brother of Thomas, third Lord Paget, became Morgan’s close ally and also won appointment as Beaton’s secretary. Morgan and Paget exchanged letters frequently with Nau and Gilbert Curle, Mary’s other secretary in England, and conspired successfully to undermine her trust in Beaton’s loyalty. In 1584 Paget complained to Mary, for example, that Beaton was attempting to discredit him and Morgan with Guise. That Mary’s relatives misused her dower income and rights was also worrisome. While depending on her uncle, Lorraine, to oversee her transactions, she complained bitterly about his disposition of her assets. In 1574 when he assured her that her affairs were managed with great integrity, she noted that he had given away several offices and seignorial rights and forbade her councilors to authorize his expenditures or grants without her approval. Even so after he died that December, she lamented to Beaton that God had taken away her father and her uncle at one stroke.

Although Henry III, her brother-in-law, was ostensibly her friend, he emerged as a formidable opponent. In 1576 Henry granted his brother the duke of Alençon, an augmented dukedom of Anjou that contained the county of Touraine, which formed part of her dower. She had no choice but to yield the property when Henry agreed to substitute estates of comparable value. Instead, he released to her only the county of Vermandois and later some estates in the villages of Senlis and Vitry. Her cousin, Catherine, countess of Montpensier, however, obtained claims to the estates in Senlis and Vitry and initiated a law-suit to protect her rights there. Mary became so strapped for funds that she had to borrow money from Norfolk’s son, Philip, earl of Arundel, and even Nau, her secretary. At her death the French government owed her about eight years of her annual dower revenue of 60,000 livres.

In 1584, furthermore, Henry sent an envoy, Sieur Maron, sénéschal of Poitou, to petition Mary on behalf of the royal favorite, Anne, duke of Joyeuse. When William Waad, clerk of the council, escorted Maron to Sheffield for a meeting with Mary, Shrewsbury initially prevented the knowledgeable Nau from participating in their discussions because Elizabeth’s instructions permitted the Frenchman access to her solely in Waad’s presence. After extended debate, Shrewsbury finally allowed Maron also to inform Nau about Joyeuse’s request but only in Mary’s and Waad’s hearing. The duke possessed property that owed her dower estates 30,000 crowns in fees and duties, which he wished her to waive. She granted Joyeuse’s petition, explaining that she did so with the hope that he would provide her with a better hearing at the French court than she presently possessed.

CHRONIC AILMENTS

While protecting her dower income and struggling with life in captivity, she continued to suffer her chronic illness, which, even if it were not porphyria, mirrored most of its symptoms. In May 1569 she complained about a new on-going problem that prevented her from writing: a weakness in her right hand that later extended to her arm, which she described as a rheumatic attack in 1585. In May 1569 about the time the weakness of her hand first appeared, she took pills the physicians prescribed to treat her spleen and developed symptoms, including convulsions, similar to those manifested at Jedburgh. The aches in her side and head and a weakness of her hand continued to trouble her until at least early 1570. Visiting her in December 1569, Leslie described her disease: she had a distillation from her head into her stomach that weakened her so that she could not eat; she often vomited phlegm. Also disturbing her was a great inflammation in her left side under her ribs, which spread so far in every direction that the physicians were unsure whether it began in the stomach, the spleen, or the womb. Having endured insomnia for 12 days, she alternated between pensiveness and hysteria. Her melancholy, he also reported, led her to pray to God for deliverance from this life rather than remain in so much anguish and misery.