An Accidental Tragedy (48 page)

On 9 February Nicholas White, a messenger from Cecil to Moray, broke his northbound journey at Tutbury. He witnessed Mary attending a Church of England service with a book of Psalms in her hands. When invited to join her for a private conversation she admitted to him that her English was poor and she often used translations of the service. They discussed art, comparing carving, painting and needlework. White knew that she had a passion for needlework but they both agreed that painting was the most commendable of the arts. Mary told White that she embroidered in bad weather, although the recurring pain in her side made all kinds of activity difficult. White noticed that her chair of state carried an embroidery with the words
en ma fin est ma commencement
which was ‘a riddle he understands not’. Predictably, he thought ‘she is a goodly personage, an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish speech, a searching wit, clouded by mildness’, and he admired her raven-black hair, although Knollys told him that it was most probably false. Mary admitted that she felt Cecil to be her implacable foe. Clearly, Nicholas White joined the long list of men who fell under her charm. Even in her discomfort and despondency, Mary Stewart could still display the elegant politesse of her upbringing, although there were now fewer and fewer people on which to practise it.

Mary now had to accept that her circumstances had changed drastically. She was no longer merely a visitor in the realm of her cousin, waiting there while Elizabeth prepared the military support needed to drive Regent Moray from power in Scotland. Her personal court was now limited to thirty persons, although this rule was applied by Shrewsbury with great elasticity and she often had double that number in attendance. Shrewsbury also
maintained her stables – at his own personal cost – and he encouraged her embroidery parties with Bess, with Livingston and Seton in attendance. Masques and balls were now a thing of the past, and hunting and conversation filled her days. This was no longer the Valois-inspired court of Holyrood, but rather a ‘mimic court’: her cloth of gold and crimson chair stood on a dais beneath her cloth of state. Here Mary sat surrounded by her maids on their embroidered stools. She ate pre-tasted food off silver dishes, served to her by kneeling servants, and her bed had fresh linen sheets daily. Sir John Morton attended her as her personal priest and, in all, she was allowed all the ceremony that a queen was entitled to. She had no necessity to involve herself in politics apart from appointing Châtelherault, Huntly and Argyll as her lieutenants in Scotland. The only discordant note was struck by the fact that the increased household was stripping the countryside surrounding Tutbury of coal and wood, and on 20 April 1569, scarcely two and a half months after their arrival, the household moved to Shrewsbury’s house at Wingfield.

Mary still maintained a correspondence with France through the ambassador Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon, although her codes, established in March, were quickly broken and her letters read by Cecil. She asked Fénélon to congratulate Catherine de Medici on the victory of King Charles IX at the Battle of Jarnac when the Huguenot Condé, who had been captured, was assassinated. In fact, Coligny assumed command and withdrew the Huguenot forces without great loss. Mary’s praise for the murder of a Huguenot leader made unpleasant reading for Cecil and simply reinforced his view that she must be summarily dealt with as soon as possible. It was also to Fénélon that Mary complained, quite correctly, that Moray had imprisoned Châtelherault and Herries in Edinburgh Castle. When her much-delayed envoy, Sandy Bog, gave Mary the news of their imprisonment, she burst into tears and Bog was sent, with the Bishop of Ross, to London. Elizabeth feigned fury at these events, and Mary was alone in believing her theatrical protestations.

Elizabeth also spelt out her proposals for Mary’s return to
Scotland: ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, James’s education in England and Moray’s continued regency, all of which would be considered in July. It seems probable that Elizabeth would have been happy to see her uninvited guest return to Scotland, but in 1615 William Camden hinted at more personal reasons for Elizabeth wishing her cousin could find a more comfortable settlement. Camden believed that Elizabeth ‘found some conflict in her self, on the one side out of fear grown from an inveterate emulation, which among Princesses never dieth, and on the other side out of commiseration and compassion arising from often calling to mind of human compassion’. Thus he established the idea of Elizbeth’s reign as a
Via Media
.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My fortune has been so evil

The possibility of Mary’s marriage to Norfolk had already been raised and was now being urged on her by the Bishop of Ross. Moray endorsed the possibility – once Mary was divorced from Bothwell – since it would put an end to rumours of foreign alliances. Norfolk was a 33-year-old widower of impeccable lineage, if somewhat dull and unromantic. To his mind, continuing to live as a single man was unacceptable and a marriage to the queen of Scotland would improve his standing within the aristocracy. For her part, Mary was willing to accept his suit if it meant an end to her captivity. She said, ‘My fortune has been so evil in the progress of my life, and specially in my marriages, as hardly I can be brought to have any mind to like of an husband.’ Her first marriage had been as the price of French support against England’s Rough Wooing, her second had been – she had thought – to please Elizabeth and her nobility, and her third had been as a result of what she claimed to be ravishment and capture. She had never met Norfolk, but the descriptions given to her by the Bishop of Ross were pleasing enough and the inevitable exchanges of jewels and portraits went ahead. The only person unaware of the proposal was Elizabeth, and even Cecil chose his moment with care before mentioning the idea of any sort of dynastic marriage.

In May Mary fell ill again and was prescribed pills for her spleen, but ‘fell several times into convulsions’, vomiting and experiencing a return of the illness that she suffered at Jedburgh, but the following day she had recovered enough to accost Shrewsbury at eleven o’clock at night, weeping, with complaints
that George Bartly, one of her servants, was being detained at Berwick.

Elizabeth, ever practical, sent two doctors – Caldwell and Francis – to attend on Mary, and Mary took the opportunity to thank her cousin through them, assuring them that ‘no physic was so good as that comfort [Elizabeth’s continuing love] in adversity’. Shrewsbury wrote that Mary ‘wished to God her [Elizabeth’s] true heart and meaning were known to her and that it might please Him she might see her; and therewith appeared her tears’. Even the indulgent Shrewsbury was coming to accept the fact that epic bouts of weeping were inevitable adjuncts to Mary’s behaviour.

The doctors pointed out that, in the next room to Mary’s bedchamber, even in comfortable Wingfield, was ‘a very unpleasant and fulsome savour, hurtful to her health’ and Shrewsbury arranged for Mary’s removal to Bess’s palatial house at Chatsworth, some eight miles away, so that Wingfield could be ‘sweetened’. Mary’s visit to Chatsworth was a short one and within the month she was back at Wingfield.

Mary had kept up her appeals for help from France or Spain and a communication from Philip II to his ambassador in London gives us a glimpse of some of the wild stratagems she proposed: ‘The Queen of Scots has not sufficient power over her son to be able to send him to Spain to be brought up.’ Had Mary suggested that she send James to Spain as a token of goodwill while Alva, Philip II’s general in the Netherlands, invaded England? To all prisoners the outside world quickly loses reality and what are really only hopeful fantasies seem to them possibilities.

On 28 July 1569 Moray held a convention at Perth at which Elizabeth’s proposals for Mary’s restoration were debated and, by forty votes to nine, were rejected. Mary would remain in England and Elizabeth would have to think of some way of dealing with her. Shrewsbury was now in great pain with gout, and the poor man was the recipient of a severe reprimand from Elizabeth for having left Wingfield in order to take the curative
waters at Buxton. He had left Mary in the care of the redoubtable Bess and pointed out that his house at Wingfield, with 240 inhabitants, ‘waxes unsavoury’. He suggested that Mary should be moved to Sheffield, where he had two houses, and she could then be shuttled between them without the need for long caravans proceeding across England. Elizabeth was determined that Mary should stay under the personal care of Shrewsbury – on 14 August he had been refused permission to visit the baths at Buxton seeking further treatment for his gout, so on 29 August Mary was removed to Sheffield with ‘no pomp or assembly of strangers’. Mary was now, more than ever, a millstone around George Talbot’s neck.

Five days earlier, however, Mary had been writing to ‘My Norfolk’, refusing his requests to command him, since she would rather show her wifely duty to him. Pamphlets were appearing with opinions on the marriage. ‘A discourse touching the pretended match between the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots’ stated, ‘The safety of our sovereign should depend upon a match between the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots, for that otherwise the marrying a foreign prince might grow to that strength, as our sovereign’s forces should not be able to countervail the same (a thing most dangerous considering her aspiring mind). If she falsify her faith, no pleading will serve, the sword must be the remedy.’ This was reputed to have been written by ‘one Sampson, a preacher’.

John Leslie, Bishop of Ross entered the debate publicly with ‘A Defence of Queen Mary’s Honour’. The printer, Alexander Harvey, claimed it was a joint work by the bishop, Herries and Boyd. It asserted that Mary was the lawful heir of Elizabeth, had had no involvement in Darnley’s murder and, astonishingly, that the English commissioners were convinced of her total innocence and the guilt of Moray and his supporters: ‘I say fie, and double fie, upon the impudence of these mischievous traitors . . . The nobles of England that were appointed to hear and examine all such matters as the rebels should lay against the Queen hath not only found the said queen innocent and guiltless of the death of
her husband, but do fully understand that her accusers were the very contrivers, devisers, practitioners and workers of the said murder.’

Given all this, the bishop claimed that Mary was free to marry Norfolk if she chose. The rumour of the proposed marriage came more clearly to Elizabeth’s ears ‘by means of the women of the court who do quickly smell out love matters’, and at Farnham in Surrey, the country seat of the Bishop of Winchester, while walking in a garden, Elizabeth warned Norfolk in a ‘nip’ bidding him ‘to beware upon what pillow he leaned his head’. Norfolk realised that he was liable to fall into deep disfavour and promptly answered, ‘What! Should I seek to marry her, being so wicked a woman, such a notorious adulteress and murderer? I love to sleep upon a safe pillow.’ Elizabeth commanded him to end the relationship and he, rather sulkily, retired from the court. The Scots ambassadors were instructed to tell Mary ‘to bear herself quietly, lest she saw ere long those on whom she most leaned hop headless’. The rumours persisted with pamphlets for and against Mary’s marriage flooding the streets.

Elizabeth was now in a spectacular Tudor rage and commanded Mary back to Tutbury under closer confinement, with the Earl of Huntingdon, whom Mary loathed, as an additional gaoler; the pretence was that Shrewsbury was ill, though, apart from the gout, he was in perfect health. Mary’s loathing of Huntingdon was based on his continued claim to a right of inheritance to the throne since he was descended from a daughter of the Duke of Clarence. This was the duke who was a brother of Edward IV and whom Shakespeare had fancifully described as being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine in 1478.

Mary and Huntingdon met on 21 September 1569, and he found her despairing of help from Elizabeth and once again threatening to seek help from ‘other princes’. Four days later Elizabeth ordered that Mary should not be allowed to leave the castle, that her servants should be reduced and that searches of her own, and her servants’, coffers should be made. Mary’s response four days later was a tragic complaint to Elizabeth. The
searches had been violently carried out by men armed with ‘pistolets’, her servants had been driven out of the house and she was now being held a close prisoner. She begged that Elizabeth might grant her an interview, send her back to Scotland, or to France, and, finally, that Elizabeth ‘put [her] to ransom’ and not let her ‘waste away in tears and vain regrets’. Elizabeth ensured Norfolk’s compliance by sending him into the Tower on 11 October, while John Leslie was confined by the Bishop of London.

On 9 November Mary once again fell ill – ‘Her colour and complexion is presently much decayed’ – and Shrewsbury sent anxious reports to London while he and Bess took turns in watching by the bedside. Mary had always made decisions after hearing the advice of her advisers, the Guise brothers, or Lethington and Moray. Now she had no advisers, was prevented from applying her charm to anyone with power, and had no idea what to do. She realised, although she never admitted it, that her flight to England had been a hideous mistake and, as her confinement became stricter and her household was reduced, her position as a prisoner became clearer and clearer. Mary’s current suitor, whom she had never sought, but had thoughtlessly encouraged – such flirtations were second nature to her – was now suffering royal disfavour in the Tower. Her only recourse was to illness and her body duly obliged.