An Accidental Tragedy (25 page)

A reminder of those days came in the person of Pierre de Bocosel, Sieur de Chastelard, who had accompanied her from France as a page to Damville, returning to France early in 1562, and had now rejoined her court as she travelled south from Aberdeen. He was twenty-two years old and a grandson of the Chevalier Bayard, who had died in 1524, a legend of heroic knighthood under Louis XII and Francis I. Chastelard claimed to have abandoned his wife in France out of love for Mary and when he delivered a letter from
Damville he also gave Mary what an informer described as ‘a book of his own making, written in metre, I know not what matter’. Chastelard was a minor adherent of the Pléiade and memories of her adored Ronsard came flooding back.

This was enough to trigger a torrent of unwisdom from Mary and she took Chastelard under her wing, giving him a sorrel gelding, which itself had been a gift from Lord Robert Stewart, and choosing him as her favoured dance partner, to Knox’s horror. Knox was never an eyewitness to this and Mary probably wanted no more than to learn the latest steps from fashionable France, but she was duly reported by the royal gossip-mongers as having kissed Chastelard on the neck. To the Scots nobility it seemed as if any foreign popinjay could claim the queen’s favours with more success than their efforts to drag her mind from her embroidery in her now rare Privy Council attendances.

On 13 February 1563 Mary was, for once, working late with Moray and Lethington, and her grooms of the chamber were making their routine search of the tapestries and cupboards in her bedchamber. To their total surprise Chastelard was discovered hiding under the bed and was promptly seized and ejected. Some reports have him in boots and spurs, which seems unlikely, but all agree that he was carrying his sword, so his purpose is unclear. He had no accomplices and no horses made ready, so if he was in riding dress ready to carry the queen away he was totally ill prepared; if his aim was seduction, why was he still fully dressed and armed, unless he was intending to rape Mary at swordpoint? The most likely explanation is that he had gone out of his mind, as had Arran, and had presumed that he would be welcomed into the royal bed.

After discussing the breach of security – where were her halberdiers? – the news was kept from Mary until the next morning, when she ordered Chastelard from the court which was en route for St Andrews. There, on the next night – St Valentine’s Day – he once again breached security in spite of his banishment and burst in on Mary, who was half undressed and on the point of getting into bed, attended by only two of her
gentlewomen. He begged her forgiveness and gave the feeble excuse that he had been ‘heavy for want of sleep’ and that Mary’s bedroom had been ‘the nearest place of refuge.’ The result was not forgiveness but hysterics, and the understandable screaming brought the Earl of Moray to the room at once. Mary besought him, ‘As you love me, slay Chastelard, and let him never speak word!’

Moray, thinking fast with a sword in his hand, hesitated. ‘Madam, I beseech your Grace, cause me not [to] take the blood of this man upon me. Your Grace has entreated him so familiarly before that you have offended all your nobility, and now if he be secretly slain at your own commandment, what shall the world judge of it? I shall bring him presently to the presence of justice, and let him suffer by law according to his deserving,’ he replied.

Mary went on, ‘Oh, you will never let him speak?’ ‘I shall do, madam, what in me lieth to save your honour.’ Chastelard was swiftly removed to St Andrews, tried, found guilty of treason and went to the executioner’s block on 22 February, eight days later. During his examination he confessed that he had ‘attempted that which by no persuasions he could attain to’ and as he laid his head on the block he recited Ronsard’s ‘Hymn to Death’ and his last words were ‘Adieu, the most beautiful and the most cruel princess of the world!’

The rumour mill went to work at once with a vengeance. Chastelard was thought to be a Huguenot and the Venetian ambassador to France was told that he was in the pay of a Mme de Courcelles, an ally of the new religion, and had been sent to blacken Mary’s name. If that was true, why did Mary want him kept silent? A confession of Huguenot perfidy would work in favour of the Guises and confessions to that end have always been all too brutally easy to obtain. Mary knew that she had overindulged his attendance and he misinterpreted the ‘familiar usage in a varlet’ to the point of madness. Four months previously, Mary had witnessed the bloody execution of Sir John Gordon as he proclaimed his love for her, and Arran was still chained to the
floor of his dungeon in Edinburgh Castle, raving of his passion for her. The death of another man driven to madness was too much and Mary did not want to hear his protestations, but since he had attempted the life of the sovereign she was duty-bound to watch his beheading. Mary Fleming slept in her royal mistress’s bedchamber from then on until Mary’s marriage to Darnley.

The plight of these three men tells us more than the florid tributes to her beauty by her French courtiers and poets. Mary Stewart was clearly very beautiful and equipped with an attractive charm beyond any of her contemporaries. Diane de Poitiers had skilfully used this charm to ensure that she was eulogised as a divine beauty. This gave her influence and power. Mary’s natural beauty had been honed by Diane into a sometimes-fatal allure, but Mary never managed to take the next step necessary to use her attractiveness as a basis for power in a man’s world. In fact, she had little in the way of policy nor any concrete ambitions beyond enjoying her courtly life. Her duties as a queen were to ensure the safety and wellbeing of her subjects and to protect and enhance the state of her kingdom, but she had no deep-seated ambition to do any of these. Her Privy Council attended to political matters on her behalf, she was guided by Moray and Lethington, and, with the stupid exception of her loss of face with Knox, she avoided any confrontations. Lethington, however, appointed Ruthven to the Privy Council, to the displeasure of Moray, who accused Ruthven of sorcery, a charge believed by many.

In April, Mary tried again to mend fences with Knox. She was staying at the castle of Lochleven, which is on an island in the middle of the loch, and is in some respects an idyllic setting, the loch being the habitat of its own delicious species of trout. For Knox it meant a thirty-mile ride followed by a boat trip to meet Mary in time for her supper. Knox was not offered any food, and, instead, she pleaded with him to lessen the strictures against Catholics in view of some recent arrests, but Knox reminded her that the extirpation of the Catholic faith was the law of Scotland and that, without such a law, the people might well act on their
own behalf. She, at once, asked, ‘Will you allow that they take the law into their own hands?’ Knox told her that true justice was God-given and temporal powers had no monopoly on it. Her response was to retire for her supper. Since it was now dark, Knox was left to stay for the night only to be summoned to meet Mary, who was ‘hawking’ on the mainland, at half-past five. The meeting took place on horseback with Mary now trying her charm on the ill-fed and sleep-deprived cleric. She merely gossiped about her nobility and asked Knox to use his influence in the marital squabbles of the Earl of Argyll. Knox promised he would try and rode back to Edinburgh, leaving both sides as far apart as ever.

Her sense of isolation had already been increased when on 15 March she was told of the death of the Duc de Guise; ‘our fair faces at the court are greatly impaired. The queen herself marvellous sad, her ladies shedding tears like showers of rain.’ Mary’s uncle had been attempting to lift the Huguenot siege of Orléans when, in February, he was shot by Jean de Poltrot, a Huguenot assassin. Under torture Poltrot implicated Coligny – he would have named anyone he had been asked to – and the Guises now set out for revenge. The duke’s death and the resultant loss of power for the Guises did relieve some of the pressure on Catherine, who was now free to negotiate the Peace of Amboise. This treaty once again allowed some limited freedom of worship to the Huguenots, and, for the moment, both sides drew breath.

Mary’s reaction to the news of her uncle’s death was, once the immediate tears had dried, to indulge in physical exercise, and she moved constantly around the country hawking and hunting. The Duc de Guise had, after all, been her surrogate father, guiding all her political decisions, and his death severed a major link with France for her. Mary was still only twenty years of age and already she was losing her family. Her husband, who had been her childhood friend and had lived under her undoubtedly loving protection, was already dead, as was her mother, now buried in France. Her uncles had returned to France, no longer
available at her elbow with advice, and now one of them had died. On 19 April she poured out her despair to Randolph, telling him how destitute she was of friends and how she could see no end to her sorrow. Randolph, remembering his post as an ambassador, reminded her that she would find no better friend than Elizabeth.

Another blow would fall soon – the death of another uncle – but for the moment this was kept from the queen. The gloom in Mary’s household was temporarily dissipated when Randolph delivered a letter from Elizabeth. Mary was hunting at the time and, to the displeasure of the Maries as well as of the other hunters, called the hunt to a stop while she read it then and there. The letter – of condolence – caused her to weep, this time for joy at the comfort she felt from her cousin’s words of sympathy, and she ‘incontinent putteth it into her bosom next unto her skin’. This was in full view of the now-stationary hunt. Mary was making a public demonstration of her love for Elizabeth, since she could be sure that Cecil would have at least one informer among her close servants. Whether her love was true or false was of no importance; it was only the public demonstration that was of significance.

It fell to Mary Beaton – the ‘hardiest and wisest’ of the Maries – to break the news of the death of François, the Grand Prior, in March 1563, and with these tidings, combined with those of the capture of the Cardinal of Lorraine by the Huguenot forces, the entire court went into a state of depression. ‘Here we have not a little ado . . . I never saw merrier hearts with heavier looks since I was born,’ wrote Randolph.

Mary’s unlikely offer to mediate between England and France was now, with the Peace of Amboise temporarily in force, unnecessary, but Lethington had other matters to attend to while in London and in France. Mary’s increasing feeling of solitude at last sharpened her resolve to settle one of the most important matters she had to deal with: her marriage.

Mary was a widowed queen with a private fortune and no children, and her choice of husband would cement a powerful
alliance. In particular, Mary carried with her everywhere the double infections of religion and politics, thus any alliance she made was inevitably going to antagonise the rest of Europe. Her normal method of ignoring any unpleasantness or difficulty would now no longer work, and she moved increasingly in an atmosphere of fevered rumour as the suitability of all the candidates who had been considered after the death of François was being reconsidered. Knox said, ‘The marriage of our queen was in every man’s mouth.’ Hints of Mary’s ambitions came from Moretta, the ambassador from Savoy, who told de Quadra, Bishop of Aquila and Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth, that Mary was determined ‘to marry very highly’ and that Don Carlos of Spain was a possible candidate. Lethington, who was in London, suggested to de Quadra, with skilful subtlety, that a marriage to Mary’s brother-in-law Charles IX of France was being considered. This suggestion gave Catherine de Medici apoplexy and she would have opposed the match with every fibre of her being, but Lethington’s ploy worked with de Quadra. The prospect of Mary marrying into the French royal family for a second time prompted Philip to send messages of support for a marriage to Don Carlos. Without any prompting, the Cardinal of Lorraine started negotiations with Archduke Charles of Austria, son of Emperor Ferdinand I. The archduke brought the Tyrol as a dowry but little else, and was ruled out on the grounds of poverty. Don Carlos, who, while dangerously disturbed, had not yet descended into complete madness, was still the leading contender. This alliance would have greatly strengthened Philip’s position as a threat to France or England, and the promise of Spanish arms in Scotland gave Cecil and Elizabeth nightmares. The Scots, who had recent experience of ‘friendly’ foreign armies on their soil, were equally hostile. Scotland was also a recently reformed Protestant nation with all the fervour of the convert and had no wish for a Catholic union, although the possible prospect of Mary sitting on a throne in Madrid, thus leaving Moray and Lethington free to govern the country themselves, was certainly appealing. The rumours of a marriage with Don Carlos reached
Knox, and in May 1563 he made his feelings known in a sermon to the nobility: ‘This I will say, my Lords – note the day and bear witness afterwards – whensoever the nobility of Scotland, professing the Lord Jesus, consent that an infidel (and all papists are infidels) shall be head to your sovereign, so far as in thee lieth, ye do banish Christ Jesus from this realm; ye bring God’s vengeance upon the country, a plague upon yourselves, and perchance small comfort to your sovereign.’ Knox admitted that this sermon managed to antagonise even his own supporters, and he was unsurprised to be summoned to Holyrood to meet with Mary, who was in a ‘vehement fume’.

Mary was in the full fury of a wronged Guise: ‘never prince was handled as she was . . . I offered you presence and audience whensover it pleased you to admonish me; and yet I cannot be quit of you. I vow to God, I shall be revenged!’ At this point her chamber boy was sent for more napkins to dry her tears as ‘the howling, beside womanly weeping, stayed her speech’. Knox told her that he was guided by God and was not master of himself, while Mary got quickly to the point. ‘What have you to do with my marriage?’ She repeated the question and, when Knox remained silent, then asked one question too many, ‘Or what are you within this commonwealth?’ Knox’s answer to this has been taken as a cornerstone of Scottish democracy: ‘A subject born within the same, Madam. And albeit I be neither Earl, Lord nor Baron within it, yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.’ This was too much altogether for Mary, who plunged into hysterical rage and was rendered unable to speak. John Erskine of Dun tried to calm her; Lord John of Coldingham offered his support but to no avail; and Knox was asked to withdraw and was eventually sent away.