This led to a most disastrous adventure. One evening the gentlewomen who were in attendance on Mary Stuart discovered Chastelard hiding in the Queen’s bedchamber. They did not suspect him of improper designs, merely looking upon the escapade as a practical joke not in very good taste. Laughing merrily, and with the pretence of being extremely angry, they chased the jackanapes from the room. Mary Stuart too took a lenient view of his misbehaviour. The prank was sedulously kept from the ears of Moray, however; and though the enormity of the crime was not to be denied, the question of meting out suitable punishment was soon dropped. This consideration was unfortunately not appreciated at its full value by the delinquent. For either the young spark was encouraged by such leniency to have another try, or his love for Mary was so violent as to rob him of any capacity for self-discipline he may hitherto have possessed. He secretly followed the Queen on her journey to Fife, and no one suspected his presence in her vicinity until, at bedtime, when Mary was already half-undressed, her attendants again discovered him in her bedchamber. Considerably alarmed, Mary uttered so wild a cry that it was heard all over the house. Moray, hastening from a neighbouring room, rushed in to see what could be amiss. Now every chance of forgiving and forgetting was out of the question. Certain chroniclers maintain that the Queen urged her brother forthwith to slay the presumptuous youth, but this does not seem likely. Moray, whose cool-headedness contrasted greatly with his sister’s passionate nature, quickly foresaw and shrewdly calculated the consequences. He realised at once that the slaying of a man in the Queen’s private apartment would besprinkle her with some of the blood. Circumstances such as these demanded the utmost publicity if Mary’s character was to be cleared and her virtue remain unsullied in the eyes of her people and of the world.
A few days later Chastelard was led to public execution. His audacity had been condemned as a crime, and his frivolity was deemed an “evil design” by those who sat in judgement upon him. With one voice they allotted him the severest penalty—execution. Even had she wished to deal clemently, the possibility of so doing had been taken out of Mary Stuart’s hands. The ambassadors had already sent in their reports of the matter, and censorious eyes at the French and English courts would watch her behaviour. A word in favour of the offender would instantly be interpreted as meaning that she too was culpable. She had to put a harder face upon the affair than she probably felt was demanded by the occasion, and thus leave the companion of so many cheerful and amusing hours in the lurch, without hope and without help in this his cruellest hour.
As became one who had been an intimate at the court of a queen of faery and romance, Chastelard perished with the radiance of romance about him. Refusing the comforts of priest and religion, he went to his death hand in hand with the poetic Muse, murmuring:
Mon malheur déplorable
Soit sur moy immortel.
(Let my sad misfortune make me immortal.) Straight as a wand, the troubadour bravely mounted the scaffold and, instead of singing psalms and saying prayers, he intoned his friend Ronsard’s celebrated Hymn to Death:
Je te salue, heureuse et profitable Mort,
Des extrêmes douleurs médecin et confort.
(I salute you, longed-for and benevolent Death, healer and alleviator of the most extreme pain.) His last words, uttered more as a sigh than as an accusation, were: “O cruelle dame.” Then he quietly submitted to the executioner’s ministrations. His death was like a ballad, like a beautiful poem.
But this unhappy Chastelard was no more than the first of the macabre procession of those who were to die for Mary Stuart. Many, how many, of Mary’s associates and adherents were to perish on the scaffold, caught up in the eddies of her fate. They came from all lands. As in Holbein’s celebrated Alphabet of the Dance of Death, they trailed along in the wake of a black and bony drummer; step by step, year after year, monarchs and regents, earls and other men of birth and station, priests and warriors, striplings and elders, all sacrificing themselves for her, all sacrificed for her who, though innocent, was yet guilty of their drear fate and had to atone for it with hers. Seldom has it been decreed that one woman should have so many deaths woven into the magic tapestry of her life. Like some dark magnet, she lured the men who came into contact with her to enter the spellbound circle of her personal doom. He who crossed her path, whether as friend or foe, was condemned to mischance and to violent death. No luck ever blessed him who hated Mary Stuart, and those who loved her were consigned to an even more terrible end.
Only to outward seeming, therefore, was the Chastelard affair a chance matter, an episode or an interlude. Though she did not yet realise as much, it disclosed itself as the law of her being that she would always have to pay when she allowed herself to be lighthearted, easygoing, and trustful. Destiny had willed that, from the outset, she must be in the limelight, must remain Queen and never be anything more than Queen, a public character, a pawn in the world’s great game of chess. What at first had seemed a signal mark of favour, her early crowning, her birth into the highest rank, was really a curse. The Chastelard affair was merely an initial warning. Having spent her childhood under conditions which deprived her of childhood, during the brief interval before she gave her body to a second man or a third, before her life was, for purposes of state, to become coupled with that of another, she had tried for a few months to be young and carefree—to enjoy, only to enjoy. But harsh hands were speedily to pluck her out of this merry sport. Rendered uneasy by the incident, Moray, parliament, the Scottish lords, urged her to wed without delay. She must choose a husband, not the man after her heart, but the one whose acceptance as consort would redound most to the power and safety of her realm. Negotiations were opened or speeded up, for the responsible persons in her entourage had become alarmed lest this heedless young woman might commit some folly which would shatter her reputation. Chaffering in the marriage market was resumed; Mary Stuart was forced back into the evil circle of politics within which she was imprisoned for almost the whole of her life. Whenever she tried to escape from the chill environment, to break down the barriers and relish for a moment, for a breathing space, a warm life of her own, she would do irreparable harm to others and to her personal fortunes.
Chapter Six
Political Marriage Mart
(1563–5)
ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND and Mary of Scotland were probably the most courted damsels of their day. Whoever in Europe happened to be heir to a throne, or king and unwedded, sent an official wooer to these unmated queens. The Houses of Habsburg and Bourbon, Philip II of Spain, his son Don Carlos, the Archduke of Austria, together with the Kings of Sweden and of Denmark, old men and young, dotards and striplings, became aspirants for one or the other of these two fair hands. Never had the political marriage market been so glutted with suitors. The reason was a good one, for by wedding a lady of royal birth and lineage, who was in addition Queen in her own right, a man might extend his power and his lands in a perfectly legitimate manner. For, during the heyday of absolutist rule, it was easier to build up a nicely rounded-off kingdom by way of marriage than through war. By such means had France become a united whole; Spain, a worldwide empire; the dominion of the Habsburgs, an enlarged and consolidated realm. Unexpectedly now England and Scotland, the last precious and unannexed crown-jewels of Europe, offered themselves as alluring prizes. Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart were unwedded. Whoever could win either southern or northern Britain by a lucky conjugal deal would become winner in the game of world politics and, concomitantly with success in the struggle of the nations, would gain a prize helping to decide the great religious issues of the epoch.
This was an important point at the time; for if either queen were to wed a Catholic, the British Isles, influenced by the religious faith of such a royal consort, would load the scales in favour of Rome, so that the struggle raging between Protestantism and the old belief might very well be settled to the advantage of the ecclesia universalis. Thus the mad chase that presently ensued was of far wider i
mport than a mere pleasant opportunity for securing conjugal bliss; the future of the western world was at stake.
For the two young queens, however, it was in addition a matter which concerned them personally to the end of their days, since a decision one way or the other would necessarily seal their fate. Should one of the ladies make a better match than the other, the balance of power would turn in her favour and her rival’s throne lose in value and prestige. An appearance of friendship between Elizabeth and Mary was possible only so long as both were single; the former must remain Queen of England and Ireland, while the latter must remain Queen of Scotland and the Isles, if an equable poise were to be maintained. In the event of the scales being loaded to the profit of one or the other, the successful princess would become the more powerful of the two, and thus she would become the victor. The two queens pitted pride against pride, neither wishing to yield ground to the other. A life-or-death struggle, therefore, took place between them, and death alone was able to unravel the terrible entanglement.
As stage-manager for this superb drama Dame History selected herself, and she chose for her star performers two women of outstanding talent and personality. Both Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor were exceptionally gifted for the parts they were allotted. Their energy and vitality were in crass contrast with the ineptitude of the other reigning monarchs of the period: Philip of Spain was monkish and bigoted; Charles IX of France was a mere boy, extremely weak and possessing queer tastes; Ferdinand of Austria was utterly insignificant—none of those kings attained the high stage of intellectual development which these women reached. Both were shrewd, though their shrewdness was often hampered by passion or by feminine caprice; both were inordinately ambitious; both, from earliest childhood, had been trained and educated for the great roles they were destined to play. Their outward decorum was exemplary, and they were cultured ladies, their minds having absorbed all the humanities of the day.
In addition to the mother tongue, they conversed fluently in Latin, French and Italian. Elizabeth, moreover, had a fair command of Greek. So far as the art of letter-writing was concerned, their style greatly excelled that of their best ministers in flexibility and freshness of expression, Elizabeth’s being more full of colour and more picturesque and metaphorical than that of Cecil, her secretary of state, whereas Mary’s was more polished and showed greater originality of thought and choice of words than that of Maitland of Lethington or Moray. The intelligent interest they took in the arts, the beautiful ordering of their courtly lives, have stood the test of centuries; Elizabeth had her Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, while Mary encouraged and admired Ronsard and du Bellay. But once having enumerated these manifold outward resemblances between the two women, we have to realise that the list is exhausted. Inwardly they were totally unlike. Their spiritual and temperamental contrast has at all times lured dramatic authors into the endeavour to portray them.
The aforesaid contrast made itself felt throughout their respective careers. It was one of circumstance as well as of character. Here is a first and notable difference—Elizabeth had a hard time of it at the opening of her life, whereas Mary’s closing years were heavy with disaster and shrouded in gloom. Mary Stuart rose to power and good fortune lightly, brilliantly and quickly like the morning star in a clear sky; a queen already in the cradle, when hardly more than a child she was anointed a second time as aspirant to a second throne. But her fall was as precipitate as her ascent. Her destiny became concentrated in three or four catastrophic happenings, genuine drama which has for ever made of her the quintessential heroine of tragedy. Elizabeth Tudor, on the other hand, rose to greatness slowly and with difficulty. Her career therefore takes, rather, an epic form. No spontaneous gifts were conceded her. As a child she was declared a bastard; she was confined to the Tower by her sister’s orders; she was threatened with execution; by cunning and precociously developed diplomatic arts, she succeeded in procuring a bare living for herself and at least a tolerant outlook on her mere existence as a human being. Whereas Mary had from the outset dignities and honours showered upon her, Elizabeth was compelled to fight her way upward and to mould her life for herself.
Two such fundamentally diverse characters were fated to lead their possessors in the long run down utterly divergent paths. At times these paths might intersect, might cross one another, but they could never pursue the same direction, so that the two women were prohibited from ever bearing one another company and becoming true friends. The contrasts between them bored deep down into essentials—one was born with a crown as she was born with her own hair; the other had slowly and patiently to work her way upward and was hard pressed to retain power when achieved. From these contrasted origins the queens as they passed from childhood to girlhood and thence to womanhood were compelled to cultivate their own, individual strength and qualities. Mary Stuart had versatility, attained her goal without effort, possessed a certain lighthearted frivolity of mind, and almost a surplus of self-confidence, so that she adventured much—and this made her great though it brought about her undoing. With head erect, and proudly, she stepped forward to meet what life had to offer, feeling her position to be impregnable. God Almighty had bestowed a throne upon her and no one could snatch the gift out of her hands. She was born to command, the rest of mankind had to obey; even if the whole world doubted her regal rights, she felt that these were ineradicably planted in her blood and bone. Life meant to dare much and to enjoy everything to the full, to go forth in search of a unique and passionate hazard. She would allow herself to be suggested into enthusiasms, thoughtlessly, quickly, and would make up her mind with the fiery intensity of a man affronted who seizes upon his sword. Just as, dauntless horsewoman that she was, she would urge her steed over hedges and ditches, risking life and limb, so in the sport of politics she imagined she could ride roughshod over every obstacle and difficulty. What Elizabeth looked upon as a carefully thought-out game of chess, a diplomatic issue demanding the utmost intellectual exertion, was for Mary a delightful entertainment, an enhancement of joy in life, a chivalric tourney. The Pope once said of her that she had a man’s soul in a woman’s body. Her daring frivolity and egotism—characteristics which make excellent material for poesy and ballad, and feed the tragic muse—doomed the young sovereign to an early fall.
Now Elizabeth was a practical realist through and through; her knowledge of what was feasible amounted almost to genius. She won her victories by way of a shrewd utilisation of thoughts she had long digested in her mind, and by turning the vagaries of her rival to good account. With her clear, sharp and birdlike eyes—one needs but glance at her portraits to realise how bright and penetrating they were—she looked with mistrust upon the universe of men and things around her, for she recognised the dangers which beset her, and her heart was filled with fear. Early in life she had passed through the school of adversity, and had learnt caution and the art of moderation. Statesmanship could never be practised extempore—that she had been taught well—it needed prolonged calculation and immense patience. Nothing lay further from her purpose than the bold, the over-bold feeling of security which was a virtue in Mary, but a virtue that led to her ruin.
As a child Elizabeth had witnessed the rise and fall of Fortune’s wheel; she had seen how short a step was needed to bear a queen from throne to scaffold; she had seen that one day a person might be languishing in the Tower of London—that antechamber of so many deaths—and the next would be making a royal progress to Westminster. Power seemed to her a fluid substance in the hands of a ruler; it might slip unawares through the fingers, and a position of security would thereby be endangered. The crown and sceptre appeared to her made of fragile glass, and consequently she held them in her grasp with the utmost precaution and anxiety. Her whole life was filled with care and irresoluteness.
All the portraits of the Queen confirm the traditional descriptions of her aspect and character. None of them show her to have been lucid, free and proud, like a born ruler of men. She always looks timid an
d anxious, with strained eyes, as if watching and waiting for something untoward. We never see a smile of glad self-confidence on her lips. Simultaneously shy and vain, the wan countenance peeps forth from behind the make-up and from among the glittering jewels. We feel that whenever she was alone, having doffed her robes of state and wiped the rouge from her wasted cheeks, there could have been no royal dignity left—nothing but a poor, solitary, uneasy, prematurely aged woman, the tragical figure of one who, far from being competent to govern a world, was unable to master even her own urgent distresses.
The attitude she assumed lacked any vestige of the heroic, and her everlasting hesitation, postponement and want of determination robbed her of much of her queenly dignity. Nevertheless, Elizabeth’s indubitably great capacity for statesmanship lifted her to a higher plane than that of romantic heroism. Her power resided, not in venturesome plans and decisions, but, rather, in a tough and circumspect persistence for obtaining the utmost that was compatible with security, with scraping and pinching where state expenses were concerned, and in the cultivation of such virtues as are habitually ascribed to burgesses and housewives worthy of their salt. Her very faults—timidity, excess of caution—bore fruit in the political field.
Mary lived for herself; Elizabeth lived for her country, contemplating her position as ruler through the spectacles of a realist and looking upon it as a profession. Mary’s mind was stuffed with romance, and she accepted her queenly estate as a gift from God and as exacting no duties on her part. Both women were strong and both were weak, but their strength and their weakness assumed different aspects. Whereas Mary’s madly heroic self-confidence led her to her doom, Elizabeth’s weakness, her lack of decision, led her in the end to victory. For in the world of politics persistence invariably gains the day over undisciplined strength, carefully prepared plans triumph over improvisations, practical realism gets the better of unpractical romanticism.