An Accidental Tragedy (62 page)

In fact there was no co-ordinated reaction in Scotland. The Borderers took Mary’s death as a justification to recommence raiding and diplomatic ties were broken for a time by ‘the fury of the people’. James himself seemed grief-stricken enough in public, but ‘He said that night to some few that were beside him, “Now I am sole King.” ’ Courtiers also reported, ‘The king never moved his countenance at the rehearsal of his mother’s execution, nor leaves his pastime and is hunting more than before.’ There was undoubtedly bitterness in Scotland and James was rebuked for cowardice and foolishness when he merely called for general mourning instead of military intervention; rumours abounded of levies being called up with armed men massing for an invasion of England. But James was very careful of the league of friendship between himself and Elizabeth and he knew very well that all he had to do was wait peacefully and the throne of England would be his. Formally he gave as his excuse for inactivity that he was ‘unable to revenge the heinous murder committed against my dearest mother’. In the past he had been too young and ‘at all times bygone detained in captivity’, then, released from the grip of the rebel nobility, he had lacked money and finally, with regard to ‘the divers factions of spiritual and temporal estates, every one regarding himself, and not one me’ he could not unify Scotland behind him. He had written to Elizabeth with an ineffectual plea for mercy in which he did not stress Mary’s innocence, but merely asked for Elizabeth’s forgiveness. At twenty-one years old, he was already growing into his nickname of ‘the wisest fool in Christendom’.

A year later Jane Kennedy returned to Scotland and gave James a graphic account of the events she had witnessed in Fotheringhay’s Great Hall, which made him ‘very sad and
pensive’. In May 1588 Elizabeth even proposed that they ‘drink a large draught at the river of Lethe’ and, at least as a matter of contention between them, the event could be forgotten. Paulet had finally allowed Mary’s letters to be delivered and Mendoza corresponded with Philip II as to his claim to the English crown – since it was clear that James would not cloud his own future by embracing Catholicism. In fact, Mary’s final will did not contain the clause disinheriting James, and Philip, therefore, had no claim.

Thus in Scotland, England, France and Spain only a charade of outrage was being acted out. Elizabeth claimed she had never intended her cousin’s execution and had publicly punished the courtiers she blamed for the deed. In Europe, while the Guise family undoubtedly felt personal loss, a burden was lifted from Catholic consciences as Mary Stewart no longer existed as a wronged Catholic queen to be liberated and avenged. But the body of Mary Stewart still lay, unburied, in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle. Walsingham’s instructions for a temporary burial in the parish church had been ignored, but even Elizabeth realised that some more permanent arrangement had to be made, and at the end of July she issued instructions for Mary’s burial. Alive, Mary had been a Catholic threat, but dead she was an exiled queen and cousin to Elizabeth and therefore fully entitled to all the pomp of a state funeral. Also, the lavish ceremony might go some way toward easing Elizabeth’s conscience.

At ten in the evening on 30 July 1587, Sir William Dethick, Garter King at Arms, set out from Fotheringhay by torchlight with five heralds and an escort of forty horses to accompany the coffin which was now in a royal coach pulled by four horses. The coach was converted into a hearse by being covered in black velvet, ‘richly set forth with escutcheons of the arms of Scotland and little pennons’ around it. The cortège moved at walking pace and, immediately behind the heralds, walked Melville, Bourgoing and four of Mary’s household. The remainder of her household had now been brought from Chartley and were lodged at Fotheringhay. The funeral party reached the bridge over
the River Nene outside Peterborough at two in the morning, where it was met by the Bishop of Peterborough, the dean and chapter of the cathedral and the Clarenceaux herald. At the cathedral itself was a reception party of ‘choristers and singing men’ and inside was a freshly prepared grave in an aisle opposite to the grave of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife. She had died at nearby Kimbolton twenty-one years previously and the cathedral sexton, the 81-year-old Robert Scarlet, could now proudly claim that he had dug the graves of two queens. The huge double coffin, weighing nearly a metric tonne, was lowered into the grave, which was then bricked up.

The following day the participants in what was to be a royal funeral arrived to lodge overnight at the bishop’s palace, where the hall had a chair of state with Elizabeth’s arms. She was not present but was represented by the Countess of Bedford.

At eight o’clock the next day the countess was escorted by the gentlemen ushers under a canopy of purple velvet and processed in royal state to the Great Hall of the bishop’s palace, which now had a wax effigy of Mary, fully dressed. The use of a wax effigy was normal since royal funerals were often held some time after death and the embalming techniques of the day were not totally effective. In Mary’s case the corpse had lain undisturbed for five months, the weather was very hot and decomposition was probably far advanced. The funeral procession now formed with heralds, peers, peeresses, knights and ladies in mourning. About 240 people surrounded the effigy as they entered the cathedral, which was draped in black up to six or seven yards in height. Every second pillar was draped with shields, some with Mary’s arms, some with François II’s or Darnley’s, their arms impaled on Scotland’s. The choir was also hung with black. Mary’s household was allowed to attend, although the Catholic servants withdrew after the procession and waited in the cloister. Melville and Barbara Mowbray, as Protestants, remained. De Préau was allowed to attend ‘with a golden crucifix about his neck, which he did wear openly, and being told that the people murmured and disliked it, he said he would do it though he died
for it’. There is no record of Paulet attending and he was presumably glad to be totally freed from his duties. The effigy was laid on a catafalque, some twenty feet square and towering above the altar, which was covered in black baize with heraldic arms. On top of the coffin ‘was set two escutcheons of the Scottish arms, cut out in paste board, gilded, and an imperial crown gilded and cut out in paste board’. Dean Fletcher had stage-managed the impressive ceremony, but a sermon of astonishing blandness was given by the Bishop of Lincoln. Lord Bedford then laid a coat of mail, a helm, a sword and a shield before the altar, which were afterwards hung above the tomb. The heralds broke their staves into the tomb and the procession returned to the bishop’s palace for lunch. ‘The servants of the dead queen were in a separate room mingling many tears with their food and drink.’ Overall, it was a ceremony lavish enough to have pleased Mary’s Valois preferences, and for Elizabeth it meant an end to her relationships with her troublesome cousin. It had cost Elizabeth £321.

There was no inscription over the grave until Adam Blackwood, a servant of Mary, made a pilgrimage to Peterborough and erected an epitaph. The original was in Latin, but, translated it reads:

Mary, Queen of Scots, daughter of a king, widow of the King of France, cousin and next heir to the Queen of England, endowed with royal virtues and a royal mind (the right of Princes being oftentimes in vain implored) by barbarous and tyrannical cruelty, the ornament of our age, and truly Royal light is extinguished. By the same unrighteous judgement both Mary Queen of Scots with natural death, and all surviving kings (now made common persons) are punished with civil death. A strange and unusual kind of monument this is, wherin the living are included with the dead; for with the Sacred ashes of this blessed Mary, know that the Majesty of all Kings and Princes lieth here violated and prostrated. And because
regal secrecy doth enough and more admonish kings of their duty – traveller, I say no more.

This was swiftly taken down.

The remaining servants were released two months later. Bourgoing was allowed to return to France and given service at the court of Henri III, presumably when he delivered Mary’s last letter. Gourion went to Mendoza and gave him the diamond ring destined for Philip II, who in turn fulfilled Mary’s request, and paid her servants’ wages. Elizabeth Curle joined Barbara Mowbray in exile and they were buried together in St Andrew’s Church in Antwerp. Jane Kennedy returned to Scotland where she married Andrew Melville, and became part of James VI’s court. Jane was sent as part of the mission to Denmark in 1589 to fetch the Princess Anne as James’s queen and, sadly, got no further than the Firth of Forth; crossing from Burntisland to Edinburgh, her boat capsized and she drowned.

Fotheringhay Castle was abandoned to suffer the fate of all such deserted buildings. Dressed and cut stone is expensive and local farmers and builders used the castle as a convenient and free stone quarry. By the end of the eighteenth century almost nothing remained.

Mary’s tomb in Peterborough remained undisturbed until on 14 August 1603, five months after his accession to the throne of England as James VI and I, the new king sent Dethick, Garter King at Arms, back to Peterborough with ‘a rich pall of velvet’ to be erected over his mother’s grave. Sermons in her memory were to be said by the bishop and his omnipresent dean.

Just over ten years later James wrote again to the dean: ‘We have ordered that her said body remaining now interred in that our cathedral church of Peterborough shall be removed to Westminster.’ With a keen memory and a sharp mind for economy he insisted that the same velvet pall be used during the transfer. James had already overseen the construction of a marble effigy of Elizabeth in an aisle of the funeral chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. Henry VII had commissioned
the chapel for himself and his wife, Elizabeth of York, from the architect Robert Vertue, and it is dominated by the magnificent royal tomb by Torrigiano. Elizabeth Tudor had lain in an unmarked grave until James decided to honour her memory with a white marble effigy. Carved by Maximilian Colt and John de Criz, Elizabeth lies covered with pearls and other jewellery holding the sceptre of power and the orb of omnipotence.

Now James instructed William and Cornelius Cure to make the effigy for his mother Mary, who would lie in the opposite aisle. In contrast to the symbols of royal power held by Elizabeth, Mary Stewart lies with her hands together as if in prayer. Once again she has the widow’s peaked headdress and a royal cloak. Although the lion of Scotland is at her feet, it is an effigy more suited to an abbess than a royal queen. The monument is ‘of a grander scale as if to indicate the superiority of the mother to the predecessor, of the victim to the vanquisher.’

In September 1612, Mary’s body in its great lead coffin was finally transferred from Peterborough and re-interred in Westminster Abbey. All Mary’s detailed requests for burial in France among her family were ignored and she was now destined to lie in a Protestant abbey church only a few yards from her cousin Elizabeth. Mary’s hope that ‘a place will not be given to me near the kings your predecessors’ was in vain. However, to be fair, James may never have known that such a wish had been expressed.

Inevitably, Mary’s tomb became a focal point for Catholic worshippers and the predictable rumours of miracles began to spread. Some thirteen years later, the Catholic apologist William Dempster, who had never visited the tomb, wrote from Bologna that the place was ‘resplendent with miracles’. Ever since her solitary stay in the locked hall at Fotheringhay people had prayed for Mary’s intercession as near to her coffin as was possible, but worshippers offering similar prayers to her at Westminster were discouraged.

In 1750, Henry, Cardinal of York – brother to Mary’s direct descendant Bonnie Prince Charlie – sought her canonisation from Pope Benedict XIV. Although Benedict was known as the
‘Enlightenment’ Pope and Mary was found to have shown ‘magnanimity and charity’ at her death, therefore qualifying as a martyr, Rome found that her case could not be advanced without certain proof of her innocence in Darnley’s murder and adultery with Bothwell. Saints Peter, Paul, Augustine and Ignatius Loyola were all sinners forgiven by the Vatican and canonised, and therefore the Holy See’s refusal to grant the necessary forgiveness in Mary’s case cannot have been entirely on theological grounds. To grant such forgiveness it would have been necessary to accept Mary’s guilt; to dispense with its necessity would have been to accept her innocence. Either decision was fraught with political dangers.

In 1887, on the tercentenary of Mary’s death, Pope Leo XIII was approached, this time with a well-organised campaign led by no less than Queen Victoria, who was ‘enthusiastic in favour of her great ancestress and thankful she had no connection with Queen Elizabeth’. Mary’s canonisation was proposed to Rome along with forty other English martyrs. Cardinal Manning, with the recently-restored Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, William Smith, and supported by the English Jesuits, led a campaign of speeches and exhibitions, although England’s leading Catholic peer, the Duke of Norfolk, opposed the plea. The campaign faltered in 1892 with the deaths of Cardinal Manning and Archbishop Smith, with the result that by 1902, Mary was the sole candidate and the matter came to a halt. According to the Vatican ‘her file is still open’. A proposal to mark the 400th anniversary of her death in 1987 with her portrait on a postage stamp was also turned down.

Her burial site in Peterborough was despoiled, as was the tomb of Catherine of Aragon, by Cromwell’s men during the English Civil War and today the site is marked by banners presented to the cathedral by the Peterborough Caledonian Society.

Sadly, it cannot be said that Mary had found peace at last in Westminster Abbey. In February 1869 a search was being made among the royal tombs for the unmarked grave of James VI and I. Under the supervision of Giles Gilbert Scott and accompanied by
the master mason of the abbey, Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, opened the tomb. Dean Stanley said,

I was determined to make an entry by removing the stones on the south side of the southern aisle of the Chapel among which one was marked ‘way’. This led to an ample flight of stone steps leading obliquely under the Queen of Scots’ tomb. A startling, it may almost be said awful, scene presented itself. A vast pile of leaden coffins rose from the floor; some of full stature, the larger number varying from that of the full-grown child to the merest infant, confusedly heaped upon the others.