An Accidental Tragedy (22 page)

On 1 November she celebrated All Hallows Day with a sung Mass, the music probably by Robert Carver, but afterwards a priest was beaten up and a repeat proclamation that Mary’s Mass was strictly private was expected. None, however, was forthcoming. A policy of political inactivity seemed to have taken over at Holyrood. Mary had now made her first tour of at least some of her country, had been greeted by the people of Edinburgh and was settling into her palace at Holyroodhouse. Hangings and carpets were being put in place and cooks were adapting to the needs of French tastes. Her horses were still in Berwick. Apart from the Marquis d’Elbeuf, her Guise uncles returned to France, the Duc d’Aumale taking the royal galleys while the Grand Prior and M. Damville travelled overland, both men carrying safe-conducts from Elizabeth.

Mary did manage to manipulate events to her own ends when on 16 November she awakened the palace by ‘taking a fray [fright] in her bed as if horsemen had been in the close and the palace had been closed about’. The alarm was raised and armed guards searched the grounds but nothing untoward was found and everyone returned to bed. Suspicion fell on Arran, who was now rumoured to be coming to Edinburgh with a body of his Hamilton kinsmen to seize the queen, although, again, no such event took place. The final result was that Mary now had a personal guard of twelve halberdiers, which she would shortly double. Randolph, properly suspicious, was of the opinion that Mary had engineered the entire affair.

A few nights later another fracas disturbed the sleep of Edinburgh’s inhabitants. Bothwell, d’Elbeuf and Lord John Stewart, Lord James’s brother, had been partying with one Alison Craik, ‘a good handsome wench’, and some of her female friends. Unfortunately Alison Craik was also known to be Arran’s ‘hoor’, and the pleasure-bound trio were met on their next visit with an armed gang of Hamiltons. D’Elbeuf ran to fetch a halberd, declaring that ten men could not restrain him from
the battle, the town guard was called out, and Randolph watched the riot from the safety of his lodging; ‘I thought it as much wisdom for me to behold them out of a window as to be of their company.’ The result of this fracas was that Bothwell went into another temporary exile from Edinburgh and Arran fell further from Mary’s favour.

A problem that would have to be faced was still occupying gossipy minds in Europe. Monsignor Commendone, a papal representative in Louvain, wrote to Cardinal Borromeo on 23 November, ‘The queen should quickly make up her mind to marry someone who could uproot heresy from that kingdom.’ The contemporary historian Marcus Merriman has commented, scathingly, ‘Mary was never as significant as a person as she was as a dynastic entity.’

Pope Pius IV wrote to Mary on 3 December with a reminder of her duty as a Catholic sovereign. ‘Persevere with the utmost constancy – remember how good Mary was,’ he counselled her, referring to the reign of Mary Tudor, during which more than 300 Protestants were burned to death. For the moment at least, Mary was content to postpone dealing with these problems; the court settled down to enjoy itself and Mary concentrated on doing what she knew best.

On Leith Sands, half of the male courtiers dressed as women while the others wore masks to ‘run at the ring’, a game in which mounted horsemen tried to spear a cloth ring suspended on a pole. Then, in complete contrast, shortly after, Mary ordered the court to wear mourning on the first anniversary of François II’s death. None of the Scottish nobles observed the order. During the Requiem Mass Mary herself approached the altar and offered up a large wax candle covered in black velvet. She was an enthusiastic participant in the more theatrical rituals of the Church, and on the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, or Candlemas, the queen carried more candles than all the rest of the court. On Maundy Thursday, during Easter Week, 1567, Mary duly appeared in a simple white apron and cap to wash the feet of twenty-four virgins – the number of years in her age. To perform this humble act of contrition Mary was attended by forty-six courtiers.

The Scottish nobility were taking a great interest in the redistribution of the incomes seized from the Catholic clergy, much of which was now in lay hands. It would be impossible for these funds to be reallocated without some pain, and in December a method had been devised which was, at least, less painful than other systems. No allocation had yet been made for the payment of ministers in the reformed system or for a subvention to the queen, and a system of ‘thirds’ was put in place whereby one third of the seized wealth was paid to Mary, while she, in turn, used half of these sums to pay the reformed clergy. Her direct income from customs was £2,155 Scots, her thirds varied wildly from £2,033 to £12,700 Scots and her French income, when it was paid, was £30,000 Scots. Knox was furious that she had been allowed any money at all from the public purse, while Lethington, on his mistress’s behalf, complained, ‘the Queen will not get at the year’s end enough to buy a new pair of shoes’. But for the first time the Scots had a sovereign who needed no direct taxation for her upkeep. Mary built no palaces and indulged in no foreign wars – she could not have afforded them without crippling taxes – but her domestic household remained nearly at Valois level at no great cost to the people of Scotland.

This was not a meagre court in a broken-down palace, but a glittering presence. There were fireworks, equestrian displays, banquets and balls, with Knox decrying her ‘dancing of the purpose’, that is to say ‘lasciviously’ – ‘more like to the brothel than to the comeliness of honest women’. Randolph reported that he never found himself so happy and that the merry ladies were lusty and fair. Knox also objected to the balls continuing late into the night, but, since he never attended them and had probably never seen the decorum of minuets and pavanes, his vehement ranting is totally unjustified.

The Scottish weather may have occasionally limited, but not prevented, hawking and hunting, but indoors Mary had a range of diversions and played billiards and backgammon with her Maries. She also continued her Latin studies with the scholar and
poet George Buchanan. Whether she made any significant progress is not known. Holyrood filled with music, and Mary played both the lute and the virginals, although Sir James Melville of Halhill acknowledged that she was not as expert a musician as Elizabeth. Mary maintained a professional court orchestra and her courtiers played lutes and viols as well as singing as a choir. However, it was a choir which lacked a bass singer, and a young Piedmontese valet in the service of the Savoy ambassador joined Mary’s household to fill the gap. His name was David Rizzio.

All of Mary’s furniture had now arrived from England – the inventory shows 186 items – and Holyrood was transformed into a vibrant echo of the great Valois palaces. Situated neither on a river nor on a cliff top, its place in open parkland was ideal for a court that took such pleasure in outdoor activities. Inside, the palace was lavishly furnished with more than a hundred tapestries and thirty-six Turkey carpets. Significantly, Mary’s favourite tapestry was a set showing the French victory over Spain at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512, and this tapestry travelled with her wherever she went. Ten cloths of state decorated her thrones; there was even a crimson satin cloth to be used especially when the queen dined out of doors. To the end of her life her cloth of state carried the arms of Scotland and Lorraine. There were twelve embroidered bed covers, some worked with gold or silver thread, and twenty-four table covers, two of which were fourteen yards long. Even the cupboard linings were of damask.

For travel there was a litter covered with velvet and fringed with gold and silk, which was carried by mules. She had a coach as a novelty, although it was hardly ever used. During Mary’s stay in France there were only three coaches in the kingdom, belonging, predictably, to Henri, Diane and Catherine. However, by 1563 there was a petition to prevent the use of coaches in Paris since there were then so many of them that they blocked the narrow medieval streets. The traffic jam had arrived. For normal travel, the court preferred to ride on horseback.

All of this was under the control of Servais de Condé, Mary’s French chamberlain. Personally, she was served by her ladies of honour, three ladies of the bedchamber under Margaret Carwood, grooms, butlers, cooks, upholsterers, furriers and jewellers. Usually by Mary’s side was la Jardinière, one of her fools, whose piquant remarks were often as near to the truth as any Mary heard. Another favourite fool whom Mary had brought from France was simply known as Nicola la Folle, although poor Nicola was sadly forgotten when disaster struck, and two years after Mary had fled to England the poor lady was still haunting the corridors of Holyrood. Mercifully, the Earl of Lennox noticed her plight, gave Nicola a pension and arranged for her return to France.

Closest to Mary were her Maries, with Mary Seton still arranging the queen’s hair, often twice a day. In 1568 Sir Francis Knollys told Cecil that Mary Seton was ‘the finest busker, that is to say, dresser of a woman’s head of hair that is to be seen in any country’. Since the queen’s coiffure often had jewels entwined in it, Mary Seton was helped by Mary Livingston, who kept control of Mary’s jewellery. The inventory of jewellery had 180 entries including, touchingly, a cross of gold set with diamonds and rubies which Marie de Guise had pawned for cash to pay her soldiers during her war with the Lords of the Congregation. Mary redeemed her mother’s pledge for £1,000 Scots. Mary also possessed one of the finest collections of Scottish pearls. A hundred years earlier Aneas Sylvius, later Pope Pius II, had claimed that Scottish pearls were the best in Europe. In all, her jewels were valued at 490,914 Scots crowns, or £171,810 in English pounds sterling.

Jewellers and dressmakers were always on hand, since dresses were often remade, jewellery reset or pearls restrung. In the case of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, this was sometimes done overnight so that each day a fresh Gloriana would emerge. In Mary’s case, her wardrobe inventory tells of 131 entries, with even her pet lapdogs having blue velvet collars.

The rooms in Holyrood were elaborately decorated. There
was a ballroom ‘glowing with heraldry’, and a dining-room draped in black velvet with embroidered table covers, some with gold fleurs-de-lis, for gold and silver plates and Venetian glass to glitter in the light from four gilt candle-holders.

Objets d’art stood on side tables. There was a priceless piece of amber carved into a life-size man’s head, along with busts of heroes and gods alongside the busts of a priest and a nun. It was a lavish Renaissance palace to stand beside any in Europe.

One of its greatest treasures was Mary’s own library, which replaced the royal library burned by the Earl of Hertford during the Rough Wooings. There were 240 works catalogued under ‘Greek, Latin and Modern Tongues’, although there were very few Greek works, with Latin and French dominating. The standard histories and commentaries on Scripture were in Latin, while Modern Tongues held a few works in Spanish and Italian. The bulk of the collection of Modern Tongues comprised works in French by Marot, whose songs Mary had listened to, and, inevitably, the poetry of du Bellay and Ronsard. Ronsard’s
First Book of Poems
had pride of place and there is no doubt that he was Mary’s favourite author. She once gave him a plate worth 2,000 crowns inscribed ‘A Ronsard l’Apollon des Français’. In prose there were two editions of
Amadis de Gaul
, Boccaccio’s
Decameron
, the
Heptameron
of Margaret of Navarre, Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso
– a continuation of the adventures of Roland – and Rabelais’s
Pantagruel
, but, oddly enough, no
Gargantua
. There were very few works in English – no Chaucer or Thomas More, only
The Rules of Chesse
, a Catechism and a copy of the Acts of Parliament of Mary Tudor. Peculiarly to us today, Mary did not possess a single copy of the Bible, but as a devout Catholic relied on prayer books, books of hours and lives of the saints.

The extent of this library has given Mary a reputation for great learning and devotion to study that may well be unfounded. After all, in our own day, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, was chatelaine of one of the finest libraries in private hands, but there is no evidence that she ever used it. Indeed, she is reputed
to have said, ‘I did read a book once, but I didn’t like it and never read another.’

Mary’s time spent with George Buchanan reading Livy seems to have been no more than an attempt to continue her schoolgirl studies. Buchanan was important to Mary, however, since he was the deviser of many of her court masques. These were much-loved fantasies, often based on the Classics. Courtiers took part and the masques were designed to astonish by stage effects as well as to idolise the sovereign. One, with the whole court including Mary herself dressed in black and white – as an echo of Diane – lasted for three days. Later masques featured shepherds, dressed in white damask and playing silver flutes, or Highlandmen in goatskins with their women in other animal skins. Mary’s ‘Highland’ dress consisted of a long black cloak embroidered with gold thread.

Mary was enjoying herself thoroughly. An example of the lavishness of court entertainment occurred in February 1562, when Lord James was married to Agnes Keith. There was a religious ceremony in St Giles with a sermon from Knox, after which the bridal party walked down the High Street to the palace – without Knox – where they were greeted by Mary. She created Lord James Earl of Mar and knighted twelve of his gentlemen, prior to a banquet which was followed by fireworks and a masque. On the following day the party moved to Cardinal Beaton’s old town residence in Blackfriars Wynd for another masque and banquet. The climax came on the third day when they returned to Holyrood for a last banquet and another masque. Mary drank her cousin Elizabeth’s health from a twenty-ounce gold cup which she then gave to Randolph, who reported in May that Mary’s court ‘did nothing but pass the time in feasts, banqueting, masquing and running at the ring’. By springtime the weather allowed for an outdoor masque half a mile from the palace, by St Margaret’s Loch under the romantic ruins of St Anthony’s chapel.