James Stuart was a man of strong character. The fierce resolution of his royal ancestors, their pride, and their sense of mastery were continually at work in the hidden recesses of his being. In shrewdness and determination, no less than in clarity of thought, he was head and shoulders above the rufflers who comprised the bulk of the Scottish nobility. His aims were far-reaching, his plans the fruit of profound political thought. No less able than his sister, he, a man of thirty, was enormously in advance of her, thanks to cool-headedness and masculine experience. He looked down upon her as no more than a sportive child who might go on playing so long as her games did not disturb his circles. A man fully grown, he was not, like his sister, a prey to violent, neurotic or romantic impulses; he was not a heroic ruler, but he had the virtue of patience, which gives better assurance of success than can passionate impetus.
Nothing bears stronger witness to a statesman’s political ability and clear-mindedness than his refusal to strive after the unattainable. In Lord James Stuart’s case the unattainable was the kingly crown, since he had been born out of lawful wedlock. He knew only too well that the title “James VI” would never be his, and from the outset he renounced any pretensions he might have to ascending the throne of Scotland. But this initial abnegation made his position, as effective ruler over the realm, all the more secure. Giving up any idea of being invested with the insignia of power or of assuming the title of King, he could henceforward wield real power unmolested. As quite a young man he saw to it that he was well furnished with that tangible form of power: wealth. His father had left him handsomely provided for; he never lost countenance when the question of a gift was raised; he made good use of the wars to fill his pockets, and when the monasteries were dissolved, he saw to it that he was always present at the distribution of the prize morsels. Nor was he reluctant to accept subsidies from Elizabeth. When Mary got back to Scotland, it did not take her long to discover that her half-brother was the wealthiest and most powerful man in the realm, so secure that none could oust him from his position, so mighty that he would constitute one of the most solid pillars of her dominion if she acquiesced in his remaining at the helm, and would be her most dangerous enemy if she ran counter to his will.
Mary Stuart, in her wisdom and necessity, chose to place him on a footing of friendship. Wishing above all to secure her own dominion, she was keen-sighted enough to give him, for the time being, whatever he coveted, and fed his insatiable cupidity for riches and power. It was Mary’s good fortune that her brother’s hands were both strong and supple, for he knew when to hold firm and when to give way. True statesman that he was, James Stuart chose a middle course in his undertakings—a Protestant but no iconoclast, a Scottish patriot and yet keeping in Elizabeth’s good graces, ostensibly a friend of his peers but well aware of the exact minute when they needed to be threatened with the mailed fist, a cool-headed, clear-sighted, calculating individual, with no unruly nerves, incapable of being blinded by the glitter of power, and content only when wielding power.
A personage of such outstanding qualities was an inestimable boon to Mary Stuart so long as he remained in her faction, and a colossal danger so soon as he should become her adversary. Bound to her by the ties of blood, our cheerfully egoistical Stuart had every reason to maintain his sister’s authority so long as it suited his personal interests, for were a Hamilton or a Gordon to step into her shoes he would never be given such a free hand and such unlimited influence over administrative affairs. He could look on calmly while she was ceremoniously presented with crown and sceptre, for real government was in his safe-keeping. But if she should ever try to rule in her own right, if she should ever question his authority, then one form of Stuart pride would rise in revolt against the other form of Stuart pride, and no enmity is more to be dreaded than when similar is confronted with similar, and when both make use of the same weapons against one another.
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 haughtily 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.