Heretic Queen (10 page)

It is little wonder that Elizabeth and her councillors remained ever vigilant of Philip's actions and seemed, at the very least, to give the appearance of cooperating with him whenever they could without compromising England's position at home or abroad.

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Yet France remained
England's main preoccupation. With thirty-five thousand French troops on the borders of Scotland and the Protestant Lords of the Congregation in open revolt against Mary of Guise, Elizabeth was urged to act rather than seek a diplomatic solution. Time had finally run out. The Scots had sent the young William Maitland of Lethington, secretary of Scotland, to meet with Cecil as they acknowledged “how far everyone of them is bound to him [Cecil] for the great favours shown in the furtherance of this their common cause which they have in hands, as also some of them in particular for the benefits received at his hands.”
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The same day, Cecil received a missive from his envoys that the Scots Lords were at Linlithgow, vowing to “retain their soldiers in wages, and to levy more men to be revenged on the French. It is like they will send for money from the writers [Sadler and Croftes] which they think not good to deny them, and yet would thereupon know the Queen's pleasure.”
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What could Elizabeth do? The only thing standing between England and a French invasion from Scotland was the Protestant Lords of the Congregation. Elizabeth had written to the Scots to remain in “quietness” a week earlier, but news on November 10 also told of more skirmishes and even greater preparations for war. Mary of Guise had taken up residence at Edinburgh Castle and wrote to Elizabeth reminding her “of a former letter requesting that no aid should be afforded to the subjects of Scotland” as they were rebellious, which hinted that she knew Elizabeth had provided them with money.
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Not only had Mary Stuart and her husband, Francis II, quartered the arms of England, but their Guise family advisers in France had sent a dangerous number of French mercenaries to Elizabeth's northern borders ostensibly to quell the Scottish Protestant Lords of the Congregation. To boot, it was costing her a fortune to defend England's borders with her army at Berwick. She had been queen for just over a year and was again facing the same enemy with whom she had made peace only nine months earlier. The relationship with France could, at best, be described as an uneasy truce.

By the end of November, Elizabeth had maneuvered enough behind the scenes to write boldly to Mary of Guise that “respecting the conservation of amity between the two realms … she thinks … her doings shall be always constant and agreeable … For her mind to peace, she affirms that she is as well inclined to keep it as she ever was, and will be most sorry to see any occasion given her by the Dowager to the contrary.”
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On receipt of Elizabeth's provocative letter, Mary of Guise, awaiting overdue succor from her brothers in France, made for Edinburgh's port of Leith. Meanwhile, the court of Francis and Mary traveled to Blois for their first resplendent Christmas as king and queen of France. The queen mother, Catherine de' Medici, was on her way to the Spanish border, accompanying her young dark-eyed daughter Elisabeth to meet her groom, Philip of Spain. Elizabeth's general, the Duke of Norfolk, readied the Army of the North for battle against the French at Berwick. Unsurprisingly, all the while, Elizabeth fumed in London about the senselessness and expense of war.

No one, not even the Duke of Norfolk as commander, had been prepared for the first English stealth naval attack. His instructions to William Winter, a colorful rapscallion adventurer who would later be knighted for his derring-do, were clear: “He [Winter] shall aid the Queen's said friends and annoy their enemies, specially the French, without giving any desperate adventure; and this he must seem to do of his own head as if he had no commission of the Queen or of the Duke of Norfolk.”
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Winter's tactics on the icy December seas were a masterstroke of seamanship. He drove back the French ships filled to the gunnels with victuals and soldiers all the way to the Spanish Netherlands for shelter. As the French crew and soldiers clambered ashore, they were robbed by waiting pirates. By New Year's Day 1560, Winter had sailed into the Firth of Forth at Leith, cutting off the French army at Fife. The French abandoned their weapons, many fleeing for their lives.

This left Mary of Guise bereft of reinforcements and victuals. She was fighting two enemies—her own people and the English—and had been denied relief from her brothers and daughter in France. Posturing against international criticism, Elizabeth set about justifying herself to both Spain and France for her preemptive strike against the Scots regent. To Philip, she sent an ambassador to Margaret of Parma in the Low Countries. Margaret feigned not to understand what all the fuss was about. After all, hadn't Elizabeth continued to bear the title of queen of France, defunct for over a century? What did it matter if Mary called herself queen of England? Where Margaret was perspicacious was in her assessment of the queen regent's plight: She had “no garrisons, no money, no troops.” Furthermore, though Elizabeth had now written to Philip asking him to remain neutral, it was England's queen who had begun hostilities without having previously written to let him know her intentions. Nonetheless, Margaret reasoned, it might be best to tell the French that they would make Philip “jealous” if they occupied England.
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Incredibly, by the time
Philip had received Margaret's letter, the dour Spanish king was utterly besotted by his new bride, declaring his complete happiness at long last. Yet unbeknown to Philip, Elizabeth, or Margaret of Parma, the teenaged femme fatale was receiving weekly instructions from her mother. Catherine de' Medici hoped to transform Spanish foreign policy in France's favor and one day oust her daughter-in-law's Guise uncles from their preeminent position behind the throne. Philip did promise to protect France, yet events would soon outpace any action Philip might have wished to take.

In the chill of that February 1560, rumors began to fly of a secret plot against the Guise family in France. Seemingly, the French Protestants wanted to lash out at the grave injustices and hostility of the administration led by the cardinal of Guise. In fact, it was whispered that the French Protestants wanted to seize the cardinal and his brother, put them on trial before a kangaroo court, and liberate the young king and queen from their nefarious influence. Catherine de' Medici herself could not have written a better script.

The only problem was, who could lead such an insurrection against the omnipotent Guise brothers? The king of Navarre, Antoine, was seemingly unable or unwilling to decide which side of the fence he was on, despite being a Protestant and the Bourbon heir to the French throne after Catherine de' Medici's three sons.
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So the rebels turned to Antoine's younger brother Louis de Condé as their putative leader.

Of course, Condé could not be seen to rebel personally against the House of Guise, so he in turn intrusted the role of leader to a local nobleman, the Seigneur de la Renaudie. Condé could not have made a worse choice. La Renaudie held a grudge against the Guise brothers and had, in fact, once been a client of theirs. He had converted to Calvinism in Geneva after fleeing the employ of the Guise, but even John Calvin wanted nothing to do with him. Nonetheless, La Renaudie met with the plotters at the port of Hugues on the evening of February 1, 1560, and it was agreed that their leader would secretly send out five hundred agents to recruit mercenaries.
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Even Queen Elizabeth was approached for money and arms. The date for the insurrection was set for March 16, some six weeks later.

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With one of the
worst-kept secrets of its day whispered on every street corner, it is little wonder that the plot failed. When the English Catholics teaching in Louvain heard of it, a letter was hastily penned to the cardinal of Lorraine, Louis of Guise. La Renaudie boasted what he intended to do to a Paris lawyer. A German prince wrote to the bishop of Arras about the audacious plot. Everyone, it seemed, had this fabulous secret he was simply dying to tell. In the event, it was La Renaudie's Paris lawyer, fearful of being implicated, who revealed the ringleader's identity. Still, La Renaudie was a small fry, and it did not suit the cardinal of Guise to expose some harebrained scheme hatched by a local Frenchman. No, instead it should be a grand plot on a grand scale. The cardinal would establish the rumor that this plot was the doing of the heretic English queen. Of course, Catherine de' Medici became alarmed, writing to her daughter, “We have been warned that from all directions men are marching towards Blois.”
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Three weeks after this first “Huguenot” meeting, the cardinal of Guise ordered the king, the queen, and their entire court to be removed to the medieval Angevin stronghold at Amboise. The spectacular château, built in the thirteenth century, rises steeply above the town just at a bend in the Loire River, jutting out on a high promontory. Amboise was where Francis's grandfather had been born and where Leonardo da Vinci had died. Catherine's children had spent much of their childhood here, as it was deemed impenetrable. It seemed a perfect place to avert disaster.

Slowly Catherine became convinced that it was not Elizabeth behind the plot but rather the enemies of the current French regime. She insisted that Admiral Gaspard de Coligny—a Protestant—be brought in to provide the young king and queen with advice, and perhaps also act in extremis as a hostage. Meanwhile the cardinal sent out scouts to comb the countryside for the insurgents. Catherine, looking more to protect her son than anything else, redoubled her efforts to placate the French rebels, eventually resulting in the Edict of Amboise. This gave an amnesty for all past religious crimes but failed to offer religious freedom. Some religious dissenters were released from prison, but no one came forward with further information against the rebels or proof that Elizabeth had been involved.

The next weeks passed in a nerve-racking calm. Some foreign informant warned that the leader of the insurgents was “a great prince.” Catherine now suspected Louis de Condé, who had suddenly arrived to join the beleaguered court. Condé's Protestant sympathies were known to everyone, making him the most likely ringleader. In a truly Machiavellian maneuver, Catherine appointed Condé to be her son's chief bodyguard, thus forcing the unlucky prince to remain at the castle by the king's side and unable to instruct his rebels when to strike. It had the other added benefit of seeming to convey great honor on Condé while effectively holding him prisoner.

For the next ten days—between March 6 and 16—a number of rebels and insurgents were captured in the woods surrounding Amboise. Then finally, the captain of the guard came to confess to the queen mother that his role had been to seal off the king's apartments to separate Charles from the Guises. La Renaudie wasn't discovered until March 19, again in the woods surrounding Amboise. He was killed by a single shot, summarily executed. The so-called Tumult of Amboise, allegedly financed by Elizabeth, was over before it had begun.

Not, however, for Francis, Duke of Guise. Summary justice would be meted out. Any rebel found would be killed on the spot. Shooting was reserved only for rebels of “standing.” Their followers would be bound and sewn into sacks before being dumped into the Loire River to drown. Still others were hung from high in the towers of the château in full view of the town. Before long, the battlements, acting as makeshift gibbets, became heavily festooned with body parts for all to see.

Condé witnessed the carnage and smelled the decaying bodies on the wind. When a large crowd gathered in one of the château's courtyards, Condé sat with the royal family as they watched fifty-two nobles executed by decapitation on the block. Francis of Guise directed the gruesome proceedings on horseback, unflinchingly enjoying himself. He ordered the condemned to sing psalms while they awaited their fate. Unable to avert her gaze, Catherine remained erect and transfixed. Condé's only comment seems to have been “If the French know how to mount a rebellion, they also know how to die.”
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Mary Queen of Scots
and France was at Amboise during the bloodletting, yet her whereabouts are not recorded. She had a healthy dislike for carnage, and chances are she excused herself from the “entertainment” on the grounds of ill health. Still, with a large body count and her uncles directly implicated in the bloodbath, Mary cannot have failed to know about the events.

It was against this background that Mary received word of the death of her beloved mother at Leith. By the time Admiral Coligny had undertaken an enquiry into why these “Huguenots” had rebelled, peace between Scotland and England was agreed. The Treaty of Edinburgh provided for the withdrawal of all but a minimal French force in Scotland, bringing France's active role in Scottish politics to an abrupt end. Mary and Francis were to abandon quartering the English arms, though Francis—and later Mary—refused to give in. To do so would be to admit that Mary was not the legal heir to Elizabeth's throne, they claimed.

Within months, two deaths and a pregnancy further changed the course of English and French history. On September 8, Robert Dudley's long-suffering wife, Amy, was found dead in suspicious circumstances at the foot of the stairs in their Cumnor home near Oxford. Dudley was immediately exiled from court, awaiting the outcome of the legal inquiry. Only Cecil—Dudley's longtime adversary—extended the hand of friendship, which Dudley grabbed on to willingly. Whether it was an accident, suicide, or even murder, we shall never know for certain, but Amy's death of a broken neck was highly significant in English affairs. Despite Elizabeth's evident affection and love for Lord Robert, even she recognized that this “stain” on his character could never be erased. Dudley had become unmarriageable. Cecil would write the English ambassador Throckmorton that he was certain that the queen would never be disposed to marry.