Unfortunately False Report and Discord were in the end never destined to be consigned to the prison of Extreme Oblivion at the instance of Prudence and Temperance. At the very last minute, with that element of unhappy fatality which never seems far absent from the story of Mary Stuart, the meeting had to be put off – through no lack of keenness on the part of Elizabeth, or the objections of the English Council, but owing to the explosive situation in the rest of Europe. It was to be France, the country for which Mary felt such poignant affection, the country she still secretly thought of as her native land, whose chaotic affairs proved a sudden stumbling-block in the way of the long-desired meeting. On 1st March, 1562 the duke of Guise ordered his followers to fire on a Protestant prayer-meeting at Vassy; the next month Catholics and Huguenots in France were at war with each other. The natural sympathies of Mary would have been supposed to lie with her Guise uncles and the Catholics; the natural sympathies of Elizabeth with the Huguenots. It was a point Throckmorton made from France, when he instantly urged Elizabeth to back the Huguenots, as Spain was likely to intervene on behalf of the Catholics. But although Mary might weep, torn between anxiety for her uncles and fear for her English negotiations, throughout the summer she had not allowed her sympathies with France to override her political designs on England. Elizabeth answered her Council personally when they tried to use the urgency of the French situation to dissuade her from meeting the half-French Catholic queen of Scotland at such a juncture. Cecil continued to hope very practically that the interview might at least lead to a number of benefits for England – the confirmation of the Treaty of Edinburgh, the breaking off of the Franco-Scottish alliance, or even the conversion of Mary from the ‘Roman Religion’.29 On 25th June peace was agreed in France and on 6th July Elizabeth finally settled that she should set out for the meeting as arranged. On 8th July Cecil prepared a safe-conduct for Mary. But on 12th July the French peace collapsed, the war was renewed; Elizabeth had to admit that it was no longer possible for her to set out for the distant north of England with civil strife raging so closely just across the Channel, in which at any moment England might have to intervene, if Spain did likewise.
Mary first heard the news of the sudden débâcle of her plans from Maitland. She took refuge in a violent flood of tears, and kept to her bed for the rest of the day, nursing the cruel and unexpected disappointment. The next day she received Elizabeth’s envoy, Sir Henry Sidney, who had been dispatched to Scotland on 15th July to acquaint her with the course of events. Sir Henry brought with him a more consoling piece of intelligence: Elizabeth offered to plan the interview for the next year, 1563, between 20th May and 31st August, at York, Pomfret, Nottingham, or some other place nominated by Mary. Mary allowed herself to be comforted by the thought that the meeting was only postponed, not cancelled, and her spirits revived. After all, her personal energy and enthusiasm, aided by the skills of Maitland, had been within an ace of achieving this great diplomatic coup, and only circumstances, not Elizabeth’s own intentions, had prevented it. With the natural optimism of her nature, she convinced herself that in the mirror of the future, that dark and cloudy surface, she could see reflected the image of success, only a year away. Little did she know that this image was merely an illusion – that the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary, which has been so often fabled by poets and dramatists, the possible consequences of which are incalculable, but must surely have been immensely favourable to Mary, was destined never to take place.
* The chapel in which Mary had her Mass said was the private chapel royal, to be distinguished from the church attached to the abbey of Holyrood; this became known as the chapel royal in the reign of Charles II, but at this date was used as the parish church of the Canongate.
* There is hardly a single example of a minister being appointed to a benefice before the autumn of 1566.
* His biographer Sir John Skelton could, however, find no contemporary sources for this saying.17
CHAPTER TEN
Governor Good and Gracious
Be governor both good and gracious
Be loyal and loving to thy lieges all
Lord Darnley to Mary Queen of Scots
While Mary negotiated for the throne of distant England, the boisterous spirits of her Scottish nobles presented her with certain very different problems at home, involving not only the public peace but her own physical safety. While Lord James, whom Mary considered to be her natural protector, was away on the borders dispensing justice, there was a sudden alarm that Châtelherault’s eldest son, the eccentric earl of Arran, intended to abduct the queen. Although the court sprang to the alarm, it subsequently turned out that rumours of the plot had originated in a chance remark of Arran’s; in fact the only true stability that the nervous and highly-strung man showed in his wavering career was in his neurotic fixation on his cousin Mary. The next crisis had more substance to it. A mutual hatred existed between James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, and the Hamiltons, and Bothwell decided to win the favours of an Edinburgh girl Alison Craik (‘a good handsome wench’ said Randolph)1 in order to practise a crude revenge on Arran ‘whose whore the said Alison was suspected to have been’. Bothwell, Mary’s half-brother Lord John Stewart and her Uncle René of Elboeuf (who lingered on in Scotland after the departure of her other Guise relations) gained entry to the house of Alison’s step-father, an Edinburgh merchant, on the first night wearing masks; the second night, they were denied admittance, either because Alison did not choose to betray Arran with his political enemies or because she simply did not care to repeat the experience. Whereupon Elboeuf and Bothwell forced their way in. The result was an uproar. The Church Assembly presented a horrified petition to the queen and the Protestants seized the opportunity to suggest that such conduct was typical of a Catholic degenerate like Elboeuf. Mary herself had a prudish horror of such bawdy behaviour. it ill accorded with her own refined interpretation of court life and she administered a stern rebuke to Elboeuf and Bothwell.
Undismayed by this rebuke, Bothwell and Lord John boldly threatened to repeat the offence the next night, and defied anyone to stop them. At this the Hamiltons took furious umbrage and assembled aggressively in the market-place armed with spears and jacks. It was now Bothwell’s turn to gather up a muster of his own adherents. At the prospect of what looked like being an ugly affray, the townsmen were summoned by the common bell, and Elboeuf’s Gallic spirits were so roused that he declared ten men would not be able to hold him back from the battle (but as he was within the royal gates of Holyrood, and the main action was centred between the Cross and the Salt Tron, in the city itself, the prospect of his intervention was somewhat limited). At the last minute it was Lord James, Argyll and Huntly, rushing down from the court, who managed to disperse the assailants. The whole incident illustrated the swift rough passions which ran so high in Mary’s nobles; in these disputes, animated by long-held family hatreds, the queen appeared in the role of an outsider.
The third incident once again involved Arran and Bothwell. At Christmas Mary had been unable to reconcile them, and Bothwell had been obliged to leave the court in the general interests of peace. Towards the end of March, these two contentious nobles were once more on amicable terms, largely as a result of the good offices of John Knox. No sooner had the reconciliation taken place than Arran went to Knox with a disreputable story about Bothwell.2 Bothwell, he said, had suggested to him that they should join together in a conspiracy, by which James and Maitland would be slain, and the queen herself abducted by force to Dumbarton Castle. After that, he, Bothwell, would share the rule of the kingdom with Arran. Not content with his revelation to Knox, Arran wrote a full account of the matter to Mary and James, who were then at Falkland, saying that Bothwell’s true motive in the matter was to bring about the ruin of the House of Hamilton by devious means. Arran’s sanity had long been a matter of common speculation and family concern; as Randolph put it, the earl was ‘so drowned in dreams and so feedeth himself with fantasies, that either men fear
that he will turn into some dangerous and incurable sickness or play some day some mad part that will bring him into mischief’.3 To his distracted father, it now seemed that he had finally opted for this latter alternative, and had well and truly involved himself in a most dangerous piece of mischief; Châtelherault forthwith shut up the wretched Arran. However, with the determination of lunacy, Arran managed to smuggle out a second letter in code to Randolph, which Randolph duly passed on to the queen.
Just as Queen Mary was digesting the news of the plot, which at best must have greatly perplexed her, at worst alarmed her for her own safety, Gavin Hamilton, Arran’s kinsman, panted up with the news that Mary must not credit anything that Arran might have written or would report, for it was all false. Lord James acted with dispatch on Mary’s behalf: making short work of Hamilton’s excuses, and those of Bothwell, he had them both arrested on suspicion of conspiracy. Arran proved the more slippery to hold of the two: half-naked, he managed to escape out of his window from his confinement in his father’s castle, ‘with cords made out of the sheets of his bed’.4 He then made his way to the home of Kirkcaldy of the Grange at Stirling. Here he gave himself to the ravings of madness, howling and shrieking of devils and witches, and protesting that everyone wanted to kill him. His passion for Mary was transformed by his addled brain into a series of delusions, in which he believed himself to be her husband, and lying in her bed. From Stirling, he was brought to St Andrews, and kept in close confinement, until he was finally confronted with Bothwell, in the presence of Mary and the Privy Council. Here, obsessed by fantasies, he charged Bothwell with high treason; Bothwell, characteristically, wanted the matter settled by single combat, but since this was obviously impossible under the circumstances, suggested a court of law. This suggestion was ignored. Instead Arran, still refusing to withdraw his accusations, was taken back to St Andrews and almost immediately to Edinburgh Castle, where he was put into the charge of James Stewart. It was certainly no age to be mad in: he does not seem to have been kindly treated, even by the low standards of the times towards lunatics, since Stewart was later ‘ill-bruited for the rigorous entertainment’ he gave to him. He never fully recovered his sanity; in 1564 he was described by Randolph as mad, jaundiced, lying eating little and desiring only solitude, suspicious of all around him. And in May 1566, he was liberated on a caution of £12,000, and was allowed to reside quietly with his mother.*
Although there was no proof of his guilt except the word of a madman, Bothwell was sternly treated. He was left to languish a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle without trial, Mary being persuaded by James that it would be highly politically embarrassing to bring the incident out into the open, since if Arran was shown to have borne false witness, he would have to be executed, and he was too near the throne for this to be desirable. It was also put to Mary that Bothwell had been intriguing with the English. Mary had the keen dislike of ingratitude sometimes found in those who themselves have generous natures, and therefore particularly hate to feel themselves treated any differently by other people. She was annoyed that the man to whom she felt she had been so good should show himself so false, and she quoted pointedly to Buchanan in Latin a maxim from Livy: ‘It is safer not to accuse an evil man, than to pardon him’. Châtelherault was in a pathetic state over the whole incident: Mary was moved to see the tears pouring down the old man’s cheeks like those of a child who had been beaten. Nevertheless he had to surrender the castle of Dumbarton, as the price for his supposed political treachery.
The episode, with its mixture of pathos and brutality, has a twofold interest. Firstly it shows that the abduction of Mary’s person was a subject of comparatively common discussion – since it arose twice within the first six months of her arrival in Scotland – and certainly not a novel idea in April 1567 when it was finally achieved. It is true that there is absolutely no tenable evidence against Bothwell except the babblings of a lunatic, but it is just possible that there was something more sinister at the back of it all, and that Bothwell did make some chance remark to Arran, which acted on Arran’s mad passion for Mary, and set him off on the whole disastrous train of thought. One must bear in mind the possibility that Bothwell was at least toying with the idea of an abduction so early in the period of Mary’s personal rule. Secondly, the episode reveals how closely Mary’s lot was joined with that of Lord James. At this point, she was making no attempt to rule the Scottish nobles by balancing them against each other, now advancing one faction, now promoting another. On the contrary, she was clearly backing Lord James in whatever he chose to do. This policy would be perfectly satisfactory so long as the interests of Lord James and Queen Mary coincided; should they ever diverge, the queen might find that she would need the other strong nobles in the kingdom to support her, whom she was now allowing her half-brother to put down as he willed.
Shortly after her arrival Mary had chosen her Privy Council, the chief nobles of the kingdom, six of whom were to be in constant attendance on her, to help her dispatch routine business. The Privy Council was vested with full executive powers, sat in the royal palace, and its members were traditionally chosen by the sovereign. However, the true direction of affairs was firmly vested in the hands of Lord James and Maitland; Randolph described them as being above all others in credit with the queen, and contrasted their two techniques of dealing with her: Lord James treated her according to his nature in a homely and blunt fashion, whereas Maitland approached his young mistress more delicately and finely. The practice of having the six nobles in attendance soon lapsed. Since the Acts of the Privy Council had the same force as Acts of Parliament, it was on the Privy Council and its directors that the full administrative business devolved. The role played by Parliament in this period on the other hand was comparatively remote: this was more especially true since between Parliament and the sovereign stood a committee called the Lords of the Articles, to which was delegated its actual business. The Lords of the Articles were an expedient which had grown up out of the remissness of some members of Parliament in attending sessions, as well as the difficulties of prolonging their attendance. Parliament only assembled in practice to vote approval or disapproval of the acts presented to it for sanction by this committee.5
As the Lords of the Articles in their turn tended to be amenable to whatever ruler or strong faction was in power, it will be seen that the potential powers of the Scottish crown within the constitution at this period were widespread. The problem was the implementation of these powers in a backward country, rather than the nature of these powers themselves. There were some hopeful signs for the monarchy for the future: although the great magnates held the great offices of state, transmitted by a more or less hereditary title from father to son, there were other lesser posts such as advocate, justice-clerk, treasurer and secretary to be filled by the lesser gentry – the secretaryship for example was Maitland’s post; these positions could be personally attached to the sovereign. Against the strength of local justice administered by the lords could now be balanced the endless officials attached to civil and consistorial tribunals, belonging to the central legal order, at the head of which stood the supreme court. The lesser burgesses and lairds who were first called into life at the time of the Reformation Parliament would grow to challenge the great magnates, and the crown might expect to benefit from their challenge.
It will be seen in the civil government, as in the ecclesiastical structure, that the possibilities of the crown under Queen Mary were extensive, if the potentialities of her royal position were ever converted into actualities. But apart from the obvious disadvantage of the strength of the nobles, the crown had two other great weaknesses. It had no standing army – and bitterly had the Scottish nobles resented it when Mary of Guise tried to establish such a thing; the crown, should it be involved in action necessitating war, had to depend on the locally raised hosts of other loyal nobles, with the consequent dangers of personal vendettas being involved in royal policy. Secondly, the financial resources of the Scottish
crown were cripplingly restricted. Mary Stuart received an annual income of 40,000 livres as her jointure as queen dowager of France, although there were constant troubles over the payment and administration of this sum, which became acute during the years of her captivity. But the lands and properties of her father had been largely squandered by the expensive English wars during her minority.* Other royal lands had been apportioned to the nobles during Mary’s minority, although by the ancient law of minority of lesion, she would have a right to resume these on her twenty-fifth birthday, in six years’ time. The royal income therefore depended, apart from the lease on its own lands, on wardships or minors and heiresses, export dues derived from duties on trade at the burghs † and ecclesiastical revenues. The entire income from the collectory of crown property amounted to about £18,000 Scots.7
Apart from her personal resources, the resources of the crown were meagre indeed and economic organization correspondingly backward. The method of collecting taxes in Scotland in the sixteenth century has been compared unfavourably with that of twelfth-century England, taxes being farmed out for collection to sheriffs whose offices had become hereditary. In any case, the only instance of national taxation during the six years of Mary’s personal rule was a levy of £12,000 for the baptism of Prince James. The total royal revenue in 1560 was around £40,000 Scots or about £10,000 sterling.8 Compared to this, that of Queen Elizabeth was £200,000, rising to £300,000 in the last ten years of her reign:9 yet Elizabeth was always notoriously conscious of poverty. It is hardly surprising that in Scotland the treasurer’s deficit amounted to £33,000 in 1564, and was up to £61,000 in 1569.10 Indeed, Queen Mary would have been hard put to it to pay a standing army had she been endowed with one. In short, one problem Mary Queen of Scots faced throughout her personal rule was that of frustrating royal poverty. It was no wonder that the French memoir of 1558 on the state of the country dwelt vividly on the poverty of the Scottish monarchy, which it ascribed to the lack of a proper royal domain, and the absence of any means of imposing taxation. Mary, like her grandfather James IV, could fairly be described as ‘in want of nothing … but not able to put money into his strongboxes’.11