It was Mary’s heavy lowered eyelids, under their delicately arched brows, which gave a brooding almost sensual look to her face, a physical characteristic which was to increase with age. Otherwise her features were extraordinarily firm and regular. The drawing of Mary as dauphiness shows that by the time she was fifteen, the soft roundness of her childish face had formed into a perfect oval. Although her nose was long, it was not yet pronouncedly so, and the slight aquiline tendency is only just perceptible in the drawing (illustration 7). Her chin was well-modelled, her mouth, fashionably small, had a pretty curve; she had a beautiful high ‘bombée’ forehead, which the caps and veils of the time set off to perfection; and her ears, although large, were elegantly made, and seemed indeed specially designed to bear the lambent ear-rings of the time.
Above all, in her length, her small neat head, her grace, we may suppose that Mary Stuart resembled the contemporary Mannerist ideal. A small bronze bust of her in the Louvre, possibly by Germain Pilon, which is regarded as an authentic if not necessarily contemporary attempt at her features when queen of France, shows the lovely leaning head, the long almond-shaped eyes, and the beautiful disposition of head, neck and shoulder. How significantly she resembled the Mannerist figures of the time, the elongated figures and angular disposition of Primaticcio’s designs, the long and delicate forms, the tapering limbs, thin necks and small hands of the figures in the Galerie d’Etampes at Fontainebleau, or the sculptures of Jean Goujon. It was the same grace and elegance which her contemporaries admired in Mary Stuart, the type of beauty which they were already learning to admire in art, and could now appreciate in life, all the more satisfyingly because it was in the person of a princess. Nor must it be forgotten that to these physical attributes she added the essential human ingredient of charm, a charm so powerful that even Knox was openly afraid of its effects on her Scottish subjects – and perhaps, in his heart of hearts, also upon himself. It was the charm of Mary Stuart, that charm which is at once more dangerous and the most desirable of all human qualities, which put the finishing touches to her beauty in the eyes of her beholders.
Not only the appearance, but also the character of Mary Stuart made her admirably suited to be a princess of France in the age in which she lived. The years she spent in France represented the classical period when art and architecture flourished there; it was a time when there was a remarkable flowering in all intellectual fields as writers and artists began to free themselves from the tutelage of Italy. Nor only did Primaticcio and Serlio prosper, but individual figures appeared like Philibert de l’Orme whose art was not only classical but genuinely French. Philibert de l’Orme and Goujon, on the one hand, and Ronsard and the Pléiade on the other, created the first original and independent movements since the Renaissance first touched France. This culture was firmly centred round the court, the court at which Mary Stuart glittered, and the tributes paid to her by the poets of the time make it clear that she was the ideal star to be shining in the firmament at this particular moment. She loved their company: ‘Above all,’ wrote Brantôme, ‘she delighted in poetry and poets, and most of all in M. de Ronsard, M. du Bellay and M. de Maisonfleur, who had made such fine poems and elegies for her, which I have often seen her read to herself in France and Scotland, with tears in her eyes and sighs in her heart.’12 Mary was exactly the sort of beautiful woman, not precisely brilliant, but well-educated and charming, who inspired and stimulated poets by her presence to feats of homage, which were also able to take their place in the annals of literature. It was an admirable combination of artist and subject, of the sort which occurs throughout history; and Mary Stuart’s own verses, although of a simple and modest nature,* do at least illustrate her love and sympathy for the art of poetry.
The odes of Maisonfleur in praise of Mary Stuart have vanished from the eye; du Bellay, however, celebrated her personal attractions in several poems, including a sonnet in 1557, and a Latin poem celebrating her forthcoming marriage, in which he described heaven as endowing her with beauty of spirit and of face, together with royal grace and honour. With Ronsard the young queen enjoyed a genuine and long-lasting friendship: the fact that Ronsard had been in Scotland at the court of James v added a special poignancy to their relationship, since Ronsard understood the very different conditions of the island from which she had sprung, and to which she might one day return. In the first verses he dedicated to her, which appeared in 1556, he certainly reminded her of the fact, and how, since her arrival in France, he had served as her tutor in poetry, hailing her in lavish terms as ‘o belle et plus que belle et agréable Aurore’. It has been suggested that it was in response to a request from Mary that Ronsard published the first collected edition of his works in 1560;14 when she departed from France, he denounced the cruel fortune which had led Scotland to seize her. When Châtelard faced the executioner, according to Brantôme, he refused all other consolation except the hymns of Ronsard, which he had been asked by Ronsard to present to the Scottish queen. Four years after her departure, Ronsard sent Mary his newest volume by the French ambassador, and he boasted that he kept her portrait continually in front of him in his library.
It is sad to record that even Ronsard, despite these high-flown sentiments, occasionally deserted Mary’s shrine. In July 1656 he published a verse collection Elégies, Mascarades et Bergeries; although Bergeries is dedicated to the queen of Scotland, the first two portions are dedicated to the queen of England, and contain a quatrain suggesting that Queen Elizabeth rivalled in beauty the queen of Scotland, being two brilliant suns contained within the same island. For this outburst, he received a fine diamond from the queen of England. He may perhaps be forgiven for this temporary disloyalty for the beauty of his sonnet to Mary in captivity: he wrote that nothing now remained to him except the sorrow which unceasingly recalled to his heart the memory of his fair princess, and harangued with anger the queen who had imprisoned her – ‘Royne, qui enfermez une Royne si rare’. It was probably for this pledge of ancient loyalties, romantically renewed, that Mary’s secretary sent Ronsard 2000 crowns and Mary herself responded:
Ronsard, si ton bon cueur de gentille nature
Tement pour le respect dun peu de nouriture
Quen tes plus jeunes ans tu as resceu d’un Roy
De ton Rooy alie et de sa mesme loy …*
Her friendship with Ronsard illustrates how fully Mary enjoyed the pleasures of the French court to which she was so well suited. As Castelnau de Mauvissière, an experienced diplomat and man of the world, noted in his memoirs, she turned herself so completely into a French woman that she seemed not only the most beautiful of all her sex, but also the most delightful, both in her speech and in her demeanour.
There was only one small cloud in this summer’s sky – and still no bigger than a man’s hand. The exquisite fifteen-year-old queen-dauphiness who danced and hawked and hunted her way through the changing routine of the court’s pleasures, was able to pursue these pastimes more by the light of will-power than that of robust physical strength. The warning signs of ill-health which had existed during her adolescence had not been successfully brushed away. Her beauty was touched, and possibly enhanced, by a certain fragility. In the spring of 1559, Sir John Mason wrote complacently to Cecil: ‘The Queen of Scots is very sick, and men fear she will not long continue.’ He added the pious hope: ‘God take her to Him so soon as may please Him.’ In May, the English ambassador, Throckmorton, mentioned that the queen-dauphiness had been ill again, and when on 24th May the English envoys were conducted before the queen, Throckmorton pronounced a grave opinion: ‘Assuredly, Sir, the Scottish Queen in my opinion looked very ill on it, very pale and green, and withal short breathed, and it is whispered here among them that she cannot live long.’16 In June 1559, she was twice reported as swooning: once she had to be given wine at the altar, and on the second occasion the Spanish ambassador said he had heard that she was suffering from an unspecified but incurable malady. The following autumn Mundt wrote to Elizabeth i
n London that Mary was ‘in a consumption …’17 Yet whatever the young queen-dauphiness suffered from at this stage, it is clear that despite her pallor, her dizzy spells and her short breath, Mary also brought to her life an intense nervous energy which enabled her to lead an enormously active life when she was not actually suffering. A dangerous accident while out hunting in December 1559 when she was swept off her horse by a bough showed both her reckless courage and the straits to which it could lead her. This combination of a weak physique and overriding will was one which she shared, to some degree, with her husband Francis: it must have led to a bond between them.*
In September 1558 the first sour note was struck in the political existence of the dauphiness. On their way home to Scotland, the ranks of the nine Scottish commissioners who had come to France to arrange the marriage contract were suddenly struck by illness, as a result of which four of them died in one night, and James Stewart himself fell ill, although he recovered. In a letter to her mother of 16th September, Mary spoke of this decimation as being God’s will,19 but at the time another more sinister explanation was advanced. Knox murmured of poison, either Italian or French, as did Herries and Buchanan, and even Leslie noticed ‘through suspicion of venom, many wondered’.20 It was suggested that the brothers of the queen-regent, the Guises, had determined to poison the commissioners because they had discovered something about the secret treaties which signed away the birthright of Scotland. It is true that it was vital to the Guises’ plans that the secret of the treaties should be preserved; on the other hand, almost every sudden death in this century was attributed to poison, on principle, by the commentators: if there was anything to the suspicions at all, it was curious that when the remaining commissioners presented themselves to the Scottish Parliament in November, they suggested no further inquiry into the matter, and put no obstacle in the way of the crown matrimonial being granted to Francis.
Another phrase used by Mary in the same letter to her mother showed that the realities of the French international situation were beginning to come home to her: she described how the French court were all ‘hoping for a peace, but this is still so uncertain, that I shall say nothing to you about it, except that they say the peace should not be arranged by prisoners like the Constable and the Marshal Saint-André’. The summer of 1558 had indeed been occupied with the general European desire for a peace settlement. Henry listened the more eagerly to the counsels of the peace party in France, not only because of the desperate state of his finances, but also because he was anxious to secure the return of his favourite, the constable, from captivity. The Guises, on the other hand, were far from anxious for a peace with England and Spain by which they feared that France would surrender many of her conquests abroad, and the rival Montmorency would triumph at home, and as Mary Stuart stressed to her mother, they felt it unworthy that a prisoner like the constable should have so much say in a peace settlement, whose main provision seemed to be to secure his return to France. Even when the negotiations for peace were begun at Cercamp, the open rivalry between Guises and Montmorencys was a feature of the French king’s entourage, Diane de Poitiers having by now thrown in her lot firmly with the Montmorencys. The negotiations at Cercamp did not culminate in peace until the April of the next year, when the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis was finally signed.
In the interval, an event occurred of profound importance in the history of Mary Stuart. On 17th November, 1558 Mary Tudor, queen of England, died leaving no children. Her throne was inherited by her half-sister Elizabeth, an unmarried woman of twenty-five. Until such time as Elizabeth herself should marry and beget heirs, Mary was thus the next heiress to the English throne, by virtue of her descent from her great-grandfather Henry VII of England.* But the actual situation was more complicated than this simple statement reveals. Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn; as Henry’s divorce from his first wife Catharine of Aragon had never been recognized by the Catholic Church, so Henry’s marriage to Anne was considered void by Catholic standards, and so Elizabeth herself was held by strict Catholic standards to be illegitimate and thus incapable of inheriting the English throne. By this process of reasoning, Mary Stuart should rightly have inherited the throne of Mary Tudor. The actions of Henry VIII himself did not help to clear up the confusion: in 1536 the English Parliament itself had debarred Elizabeth from the succession as illegitimate, and the Act which restored her to the succession in 1544 did not remove the stain of bastardy. Yet by the will of Henry VIII the throne was also debarred from going to a foreigner – which by English standards also ousted Mary herself from the succession. The troubles over this will, and Mary’s claim to have her place in the English succession after Elizabeth, lay in the future. At the moment of Mary Tudor’s death, the troubles were all the other way about, and involved Elizabeth’s right to be queen in the first place.
Immediately on the death of Mary Tudor, Henry II of France formally caused his daughter-in-law Mary Stuart to be proclaimed queen of England, Ireland and Scotland, and caused the king-dauphin and queen-dauphiness to assume the royal arms of England, in addition to those of France and Scotland. Up till the death of Queen Mary Tudor, England had been firmly allied to Spain, through Mary’s marriage to the Spanish king; Henry now hoped to redress the balance by making a French claim to English dominion. This eminently political action on the part of the French king was to be flung in Mary’s face for the rest of her life, down to the moment of her trial in England nearly thirty years later. Yet it seems certain that she had even less opportunity for judging the wisdom of her father-in-law’s behaviour on this occasion than over the matter of the secret treaties. ‘They have made the Queen-Dauphiness go into mourning for the late Queen of England,’ commented the Venetian ambassador, who was in no doubt as to where the initiative for these moves came from.21 At the time, the climate of French opinion was certainly such that Mary’s claims were considered no more than just: the French writers eagerly commented on the dauphiness’s English connection, and celebrated her accession to the triple crown in enthusiastic verse – as one of the Pléiade, Jean de Baïf, wrote, in a celebratory wedding song: ‘Without murder and war, France and Scotland will be with England united.’ Ronsard imagined that Jupiter had decreed that Mary should govern England for three months, Scotland for three and France for six. In another nuptial song, René Guillon described the match as the union of the white lily of France with the white rose of the Yorkists – an allusion to Mary’s Tudor descent.22
The letters of the English ambassador were full of details to illustrate the manner in which these infuriating pretensions were being upheld by the French king: at the wedding of the Princess Claude at the beginning of the next year, a feature of the proceedings was that the dauphin and dauphiness bore the arms of England quartered with those of France. The state entry to the town of Châtelherault in November 1559 was marked by a canopy of crimson damask carried over Mary’s head with the arms of England, France and Scotland emblazoned on it. A canopy of purple damask with the French arms only was carried over Francis (by now the king of France) and the arms were painted on the gates of the town in the same fashion.23 The English state papers show a definite preoccupation with the subject, understandable in view of the shaky English policy at the start of a new reign. But Melville also reported in his memoirs that the cardinal caused the arms of England to be engraved on the queen’s silver plate;24 a great seal was struck bearing the royal figures of Francis and Mary, the date 1559 and the inscription round it referring to Francis and Mary, king and queen of the French, Scottish, English and Irish. Even while the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis was being negotiated the cardinal and others made it their business to say that they doubted whether they should treat with any of England, save the dauphin and his wife.
The matter continued to be wrangled over after the accession of Francis. In February 1560 the government in London decided to point out to the French ambassador that although the English arms had first been borne
by Mary under Henry II, she had not stopped bearing them with his death. Throckmorton had a long interview with the cardinal when he argued over the matter, saying that despite Mary’s admittedly English descent, she ought not to use the arms without any difference. In March the Council told Throckmorton to point out to Mary that ‘her father, the King of Scots, being higher than she, never bare the same; nor by the laws of the land is she next heir’. To this the bishop of Valence, on behalf of the French king and queen, made the somewhat disingenuous counterpoint that ‘the bearing of the English arms by the French Queen, was thought in France to be done for the honour of Elizabeth and to show that the French queen was her [Elizabeth’s] cousin’.25
However, when peace was proclaimed between England, France and Scotland in 1560, Elizabeth herself consented to believe that Mary’s ‘injurious pretensions’ to the English throne sprang from the ‘ambitious desire of the principal members of the house of Guise’, rather than the wishes of either Francis, ‘by reason of his youth incapable of such an enterprise’, or the queen of Scots ‘who is likewise very young’.26 The explanation which satisfied the English queen two years later we may also accept as being the true one. Unfortunately, once political necessity dictated another course, it no longer satisfied either Queen Elizabeth or her advisers, and the subject of Mary’s pretensions to the English throne, made on her behalf by her father-in-law before she was sixteen years old, continued to haunt her for the rest of her career.
1559, which became a year of death at the French court, seemed destined at its outset to be a year of weddings. The marriage of Princess Claude to the young and handsome duke of Lorraine was celebrated with magnificence in February. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, finally signed in April between England and France on one side and France and Spain on the other, provided that all the French conquests in Italy made during the last eighty years should be surrendered, and made arrangements for two further royal weddings. Mme Marguerite, the long-unmarried sister of Henry II, was to wed the duke of Savoy; Princess Elisabeth at the age of fourteen faced the prospect of marriage to Philip of Spain, freed for matrimony once more by the death of Mary Tudor. Mary Stuart’s last summer as dauphiness was spent in planning for the double wedding of these two beloved companions of her childhood, to be celebrated with the full regal panoply to which the French court was so well suited. As the Venetian ambassador commented, nothing was discussed at the French court but handsome and costly apparel.27