An Accidental Tragedy (7 page)

On 27 August 1547 Somerset arrived at Berwick with a fresh army to finish what he had failed to do over two years previously – ‘to bring to good effect the most godly purpose of the marriage . . . to make her, being now but Queen of thy realm, as Queen of
both realms’. What was not stated, but which was implicit, was that while Mary might very well become Queen of England, Edward would certainly become King of Scotland.

Somerset had learned that his previous slash-and-burn methods had achieved nothing, so on this invasion he used different tactics. He advanced steadily up the east coast, building temporary forts as he went and supplying his army from the sea, where a fleet followed his advances. For almost a fortnight the campaign was largely bloodless. Then, on 10 September 1547, he reached the village of Pinkie, some seven miles from Edinburgh and within range of the guns on his ships. There, a surprise awaited him.

The Scots were well aware of his advance and had, for once, drawn themselves up in an organised position on a hill overlooking the River Esk. There were three divisions under Angus and Huntly, but Arran was in the centre, in overall charge. His uncertainty in what should have been an invulnerable defensive position is indicated by the fact that on the night before the battle, presuming defeat, he dictated his will and begged the French to protect his children. All he had to do was wait, since if Somerset tried to cross the river he could easily be cut down. Instead Arran stupidly ordered Angus to cross the river and attack. Strongly protesting that it was a disastrous move, Angus did so and managed to make a foothold on the eastern bank of the Esk. He weathered a vigorous cavalry counter-attack from Somerset but was eventually forced to fall back towards the Highland levies under Argyll. ‘At this instant the Highlanders, who, unable to resist their plundering propensities, were dispersed over the field stripping the slain, mistook this retrograde movement for a flight and, seized with a sudden panic, began to run off in all directions.’ Now the ships in the Forth began to bombard the fleeing Highlanders, who had no idea where the fire was coming from – they did not expect to be attacked by ships – and promptly left the field altogether. The English pressed home their counterattack and Angus’s line broke, now fleeing into Huntly’s troops, who took them for advancing Englishmen and opened fire
on them at point-blank range. Arran galloped for Edinburgh as fast as his horse would carry him. Over 10,000 Scots lay dead, and from Pinkie to Edinburgh ‘for the space of five miles the ground was strowed [sic] with dead bodies’. Thus in Scottish memory 10 September 1547 lives on as ‘Black Saturday’. The road to Edinburgh was open and, turning for the capital, Huntly remarked, ‘I hold well with the marriage but I like not the wooing.’

The Norroy King of Arms, Edward VI’s herald, was instructed to tell the Scottish council, ‘God has shown his power in giving his grace the late victory. Enjoin the queen and council to deliver the young queen to the Protector to be suitably nourished and brought up with her husband as Queen of England as he promises to do on his honour, failing which he will use all means to bring it about by force.’

Marie’s first instinct on hearing the news was for the safety of Mary, who now might very easily be carried as a captive to England. Lord Erskine, who, with Lord Livingstone, was one of the queen’s guardians, was put in charge and the royal nursery was hastily packed up. No doubt the child Mary thought the sudden commotion was all a great game, but it was deadly serious. Erskine’s family had, for fifty years, been commendators of the abbey of Inchmahome – laymen governing ecclesiastical benefices and receiving their incomes from the foundation. The abbey lay fourteen miles north-west of Stirling, and Mary was removed there while the guns of Stirling Castle guarded the road. Even if an approach could have been made, the abbey was on a tiny island in the middle of the Lake of Menteith so that only light defences were necessary. Although Mary was now being drawn further into the edges of the Highlands and separated from her mother, it was an idyllic place, with the small abbey buildings surrounded by trees giving onto grassland that stretched down to the water. It was Mary’s first experience of an enforced exile on a Scottish lake-island and, accompanied by her personal court with four girl companions her own age, there were games among the autumn trees at the lakeside, making her exile far from unpleasant. Her second isle-bound exile would not be so agreeable.

Somerset did not set about a siege of Edinburgh Castle but, leaving a token force at Broughty Castle outside Dundee, returned to England in October at the end of the campaigning season. Marie had her daughter restored to her side at Stirling and the little queen’s three-week-long exile was over.

Marie realised that Scotland’s only chance of survival lay now in a formal alliance with France, and the French ambassador, Henri Cleutin, Sieur d’Oysel, sailed for France in late November with ‘certain points which neither the Queen Dowager nor the Governor would commit to any but him’, which were firm terms for a marriage between Mary and the Dauphin. Somerset realised that if he delayed any longer there would be French reinforcements in Scotland; at the end of February, he pre-empted this by launching a first incursion under Lord Grey of Wilton, who reached Haddington. Here he left a holding garrison which was joined in April by a greater force in order to occupy Haddington fully and establish it as a base for the future occupation of the Lowlands. Arran moved to besiege the town while rumours flew that he was intending to seek terms from Grey and join the English. True to form, Arran certainly intended to be on the winning side, but it was proving difficult for him to make a choice, after which he would switch his allegiance with no conflict of conscience.

The worsening situation made it clear that Mary had to be moved again and this time the intention was plain: she went to the castle of Dumbarton, situated above the best available harbour for a flight to France. The effect of these hasty removals from her mother on the four-year-old Mary is unknown, but in March of 1548 she fell ill. Inevitably the rumours flew that she was about to die, thus leaving Somerset with no reason to continue the campaign, and Henri II with no future Dauphine. In the event, Mary was simply running through the normal illnesses of childhood: she had already suffered chickenpox and was now in the grip of measles, though in the sixteenth century either one could have been fatal. However, she survived, and the savage courting dance of the two combatants continued.

With news of the French commitment came a touching letter to Mary from her eleven-year-old half-brother François, Duc de Longueville, in which he told her how he was every day practising to be at ease in armour and was learning how to tilt on horseback. As soon as he became proficient in fighting, he wrote, he intended to come and defend his half-sister against those who wanted to harm her. Less charmingly, but more practically, Henri II had now made up Arran’s vacillating mind by offering his son, James Hamilton, a marriage to the daughter of the Duc de Montpensier, and promising to create a French duchy for Arran himself when the marriage treaty was agreed.

Then on 21 June 1548 a message was sent to the Earl of Shrewsbury: ‘There be French galleys and other ships of France at Leith and have landed 5 or 6 thousand men which be Italians or Gascons . . . and they make very great brags and their saying is that they will come to Haddington. But I think it is too hot for them, they will be busy.’ In command was the Sieur d’Essé and his companion Jean de Beaugué, who had a very low regard for the Scots forces. In company with Marie, who had arrived in person, the French now set about a vigorous siege of Haddington. While this was more than occupying the English, Marie presided at a tented parliament held outside the town on 7 July. Their business was simple. In exchange for driving the English out of Scotland, Mary would be betrothed to François, the Dauphin, while Henri promised that the independence of Scotland would be guaranteed as it had been in the past. Marie could no longer take the risk of defending Scotland with the incompetent Arran in charge and gladly signed the treaty. Once the seals were attached, Arran became the Duc de Châtelherault with a pension of 12,000 livres annually. This was roughly seventy-five times the annual earnings of a typical English doctor or schoolmaster, and did not take account of rents from the duchy which might well double that amount.

French ships were sent to Dumbarton by a roundabout route, and the French commander, de Beaugué, met Mary and her court for the first time:

There are a large number of virtuous and brave French gentlemen who are established as the guard for the Queen, who only allow access to her when guaranteed in writing by the Queen Dowager, one of the wisest Princesses on earth. Having the agreement of the Princes and great lords of the kingdom that the Queen be conveyed to France, to be educated beside the Queen, [Henri II] has given orders that Villegaignon leaves harbour, with four galleys, which will sail from France between the German sea and the Pethealantique sea [Pentland Firth] past the Orkneys, a journey never before undertaken by galleys. At Dumbarton the Queen will embark on the galley
Reale
with Monseigneur Brézé, who has hastened from the king, to accompany this Princess, aged between five and six years, one of the most perfect creatures one could hope for on all the earth.

Mary was actually four years and seven months old, so the old soldier de Beaugué was deceived by her already impressive stature. Since she was travelling not as a fugitive or into enforced exile but as a sovereign queen visiting her husband-to-be, there was nothing furtive about Mary’s departure. She now had her own court, which would accompany her to France. The lords Livingstone and Erskine were her guardians and accompanied Lord James Stewart, her eldest half-brother, as well as Robert and John Stewart, two younger half-brothers. All three were the illegitimate sons of James V. Lord James’s mother was Margaret Erskine, who may well have been the model for Dame Sensualitie in David Lindsay’s
Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis.
Acting as the female chamberlain of this miniature court, and also illegitimate, being a daughter of James IV and the Countess of Bothwell, was Lady Fleming, a vigorous widow whose husband, Malcolm, had been killed at Pinkie ten months previously. She was not mourning him conspicuously. Janet Sinclair, Mary’s former nurse, was now her governess. Including various ladies’ maids and menservants, the royal suite numbered some thirty people.

It also included four personal companions of Mary’s own age,
the ‘Four Maries’. These girls had been Mary’s companions at Inchmahome and were all of noble birth – Mary Fleming could even claim royal blood as a granddaughter of James IV. Mary Seton, accompanied by her brother, the young Lord Seton, was the daughter of Marie Pieris, a maid-of-honour to Marie de Guise, and became Mary’s personal hairdresser for most of her life. Mary Beaton, whose love of romantic literature would equal Mary’s own, was related to the assassinated Cardinal Beaton, while Mary Livingston, an enthusiast for dancing and riding, was the daughter of one of Mary’s guardians. The queen’s personal maids-of-honour were always known as ‘Marie’ in Scotland, the word deriving from the Icelandic ‘Maer’ or virgin, although how the word came into the Scots tongue is obscure. In any case, these four girls were also actually called Mary.

All five girls, one distinctly taller than the others, were dressed with the full formality of their rank as miniature adults – a portrait of Mary as a child shows her capped and corseted with no concession to her youth. On 29 July 1548 the five-strong infant entourage, in long formal dresses and with their little heads held high, walked down a gangplank and onto the
Reale
, Henri II’s personal galley. Mary had bidden a tearful farewell to her mother, but she probably did not realise the full import of what was happening. Like all royal children she was more accustomed to the company of her nurses and governesses than her mother, so often preoccupied with state business.

Artus de Maillé, Sieur de Brézé, a member of the Guise faction and a relative of Diane de Poitiers, Henri’s mistress, had been sent by the king as the royal representative and escort. He kept Marie well informed with letters sent whenever the ship made landfall, and on 31 July he wrote, ‘the queen your daughter fares as well and is, thank God, as cheerful as you have seen her for a long time’. In his next letter he assured Marie, ‘the queen fares exceedingly well and has not yet been ill on the sea’; then, on 3 August, he informed her that that ‘in spite of very strong winds which tossed the galley most severely, the queen has never been ill. This makes me think she will suffer little on the open sea.’ De
Brézé’s ease of communication and anticipation of ‘the open sea’ is made clear on 6 August when their ship had only travelled as far as Lamlash on the Isle of Arran, eighty miles from Dumbarton. Lady Fleming, in particular, was impatient at the lack of progress and demanded to be put ashore until the weather improved. Villegaignon, who was a professional sailor and observed no niceties towards imperious ladies, told her that she had two options. She could either stay on board or drown. Better weather did arrive and now gave them a quicker journey, although off the coast of Cornwall de Brézé reported, ‘[the] weather was wondrous wild with the biggest waves I ever saw in my life’. Heavy seas smashed the ship’s rudder but the crew, being the most expert in France, replaced it, and on 15 August, after a voyage of seventeen days, the royal party landed at Roscoff in Brittany. Mary, de Brézé wrote, ‘prospers as well as ever you saw her. She has been less ill upon the sea than any one of her company so that she made fun those that were.’ We must presume that her green, vomiting ladies forgave her, although her two guardians, the lords Erskine and Livingstone, took some days to recover. The royal party then travelled down the headland to St Pol-de-Léon, where an official welcoming party was waiting for them. Mary Stewart had arrived in the country of which she would, one day, be queen.

PART II