Behind the Palace Doors (8 page)

The reign of Elizabeth I was a triumph, a golden age in which the last Tudor monarch pursued policies of moderation and maintained relative peace within her kingdom. However, the queen’s own tranquility was shattered by her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who arrived in England as a fugitive from her own subjects and spent the next two decades as virtual prisoner there—all the while plotting against Elizabeth’s life
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She may have been Henry VIII’s daughter—“the lion’s cub,” as she called herself—but she was Anne Boleyn’s as well. And that made Queen Elizabeth I a bastard in the minds of Europe’s Catholic powers, who refused to recognize the validity of the late king’s second marriage. Mary, Queen of Scots, was among those monarchs who rejected her cousin Elizabeth’s right to rule, claiming the English crown for herself as Henry VIII’s nearest relative.
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Of course such blatant designs on her throne
were bound to arouse the wrath of Elizabeth, who, after years of danger and deprivation, held her sovereignty most dear. The result was an escalating conflict between the two queens that would have in the end devastating consequences for both of them.

By the time Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, when she was twenty-five, her cousin and future rival, Mary Stuart, had been queen of Scotland for nearly sixteen years—her entire life, really, since she inherited her father James V’s crown when she was just six days old. The young monarch had spent little time in her own kingdom, however, having been sent to France as a child of five to be raised there as the future bride of Henry II’s son, the dauphin Francis, whom she wed when she was fifteen. A year after her marriage, Mary became queen consort of France when her father-in-law was killed in a freak jousting accident and her husband succeeded him as Francis II.

It was while in France that Mary began to aggressively assert her claim to the English crown—a pretension encouraged first by Henry II and then by her maternal uncles from the powerful, fanatically Catholic House of Guise, who controlled Francis II. She had the audacity to incorporate the royal arms of England into her own coat of arms, which Elizabeth found galling enough. But even more egregious was Mary’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, which, among other provisions, called for the Scottish queen to relinquish her claim to the English throne and to acknowledge Elizabeth’s right to it.
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In retaliation for her younger cousin’s impudence, Elizabeth refused Mary’s request for safe passage through England as she
prepared to return to her native kingdom after the untimely death of Francis II in 1560.
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It was an intemperate response to what should have been a basic courtesy, and it reflected poorly on the English queen. Mary, in an interview with England’s ambassador to France, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, made the most of Elizabeth’s rudeness. “It will be thought very strange amongst all princes and countries that she should first animate my subjects against me,” Mary scolded, “and now being a widow to impeach me going into my own country.”

The Queen of Scots then concluded the interview with a melodramatic declaration: “I trust the wind will be so favorable that I shall not need to come on the coast of England … for if I do then … the Queen your mistress shall have me in her hands to do her will of me and if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my end, she may do her pleasure and make sacrifice of me.”

Elizabeth, however, was eager to put the unpleasantness of the safe-passage debacle behind her and extend her hand to her cousin and fellow sovereign. They were now neighbors, after all, and peace between them was far preferable to discord. Accordingly, Elizabeth wrote to Mary, asking her to accept her friendship and “bury all unkindness.” Past disagreement would be forgotten, she assured her, and the queens would “remain good friends and sisters,” since “you shall see we require nothing but justice, honor and reason.”

Mary seemed responsive to Elizabeth’s overtures, but there remained that pesky Treaty of Edinburgh lurking as a barrier to friendship. The Queen of Scots still refused to ratify it unless it was modified to at least designate her as Elizabeth’s heir. That, however, was not something the English queen was prepared to do. In fact, the idea of naming her successor was abhorrent to
her. She was well aware from her own experience as her sister’s heir how rebels and malcontents rallied in her name.

“I know the inconstancy of the people of England,” Elizabeth told Mary’s secretary of state William Maitland, “how they ever mislike the present government, and have their eyes fixed upon that person that is next to succeed.”

Mary’s Catholic faith, as well as her close proximity, would make her particularly dangerous as the designated heir to the Protestant Elizabeth. Therefore, the English queen remained adamant that “the succession of the crown is a matter I will not mell [meddle] in.”

Elizabeth believed that a face-to-face meeting with Mary would get them beyond the impasse over the succession issue. The Queen of Scots was delighted by the idea. Not only was she intensely curious about her cousin (as Elizabeth was about Mary), but she was convinced that her celebrated charm would win over the English queen as it had so many others.

William Maitland was not so sure. According to the English ambassador in Scotland, Thomas Randolph, Maitland feared his young queen would be out of her depth in any negotiations with the wily Elizabeth, for “he finds no such maturity of judgment and ripeness of experience in high matters in his mistress, as in the Queen’s Majesty, in whom both nature and time have wrought much more than in many of greater years.”

Despite Maitland’s reservations, Mary was ecstatic over the prospect of seeing Elizabeth in person. “I see my sovereign so transported with affection, that she respects nothing so she may meet with her cousin,” Maitland reported ruefully, “and needs no persuasion, but is a great deal more earnestly bent on it than her counselors dare advise her.”

Elizabeth’s counselors were no more enthusiastic about a meeting than Mary’s were. France was on the brink of a religious civil war prompted by the aggression of Mary’s ultra-Catholic uncle (and Elizabeth’s sworn enemy), the Duke of
Guise, toward the nation’s Protestant or Huguenot minority, and it was felt that the queen’s attention should be focused on helping her fellow religious across the Channel. Elizabeth disagreed. Unless the situation in France broke down irretrievably, she would meet her cousin as planned.

The two queens exchanged expensive gifts in anticipation of their summit in the north of England. Mary sent Elizabeth a ring with a diamond shaped like a heart, saying “that above all things I desire to see my good sister and next that we may live like good sisters together.” Elizabeth, for her part, sent Mary a huge, rocklike diamond.

Plans for the encounter were well under way when Elizabeth received the news that peace efforts in France had failed and the nation was now embroiled in a savage religious war. With the Duke of Guise poised to seize control of the kingdom, there could be no question now of Elizabeth leaving London. The meeting would have to be canceled. When Mary received the queen’s decision “it drove her into such a passion as she did keep her bed all that day,” reported Sir Henry Sidney, who had traveled to Scotland with the news. And though Elizabeth assured her cousin that they would meet at a more fortuitous time, they never did.

It was bad enough that Elizabeth still had to worry about a neighboring queen with designs on her throne. Worse, however, would be a
married
queen, with a husband powerful enough to enforce her claims. And the widowed Mary was giving every indication that she was ready to wed again. Such a desire was lost on Elizabeth, who, despite all the pressure for her to marry and produce an heir, was absolutely determined to remain single.
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(Thus she became known as the Virgin Queen.)

The Queen of Scots tried to reassure her cousin that her intentions were nonthreatening. “I shall be guided by your wishes,” she wrote soothingly, “and shall be careful not to marry any man of so high a rank that my position, my well-beloved sister, will overshadow yours.” Meanwhile, though, Mary was in negotiations with Philip II of Spain (Elizabeth’s former brother-in-law) to marry his son Don Carlos. Sure, the prince was a lunatic, with a streak of the sadist in him, but he had the power of Catholic Spain behind him.

Aware of the Scottish queen’s machinations, Elizabeth made an inspired—some said outrageous—offer to Mary. The queen told Maitland “that if his mistress would take her advice and wished to marry safely and happily, she would give her a husband who would ensure both … one who had implanted so many graces that if she [Elizabeth] wished to marry him she would prefer him to all the princes of the world.” And that husband would be Robert Dudley, one of Elizabeth’s favorite courtiers, who was also whispered to be her lover.
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In fact,
many believed Dudley had killed his wife, Amy, so that he might marry the queen.
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It was a brilliant proposal as far as Elizabeth was concerned. She could reward her rejected suitor Dudley with a valuable consolation prize—the queen of Scotland—and at the same time ensure that Mary had a husband loyal to his English sovereign, one who could neutralize the Scottish queen’s ambitions.

In Scotland, however, the idea landed with a thud. “Is that conforming to her [Elizabeth’s] promise to use me as her sister?” the indignant Queen of Scots asked Thomas Randolph. “And do you think it may stand with my honor to marry a subject?” Don Carlos of Spain was the prize as far as Mary was concerned—certainly not the English queen’s insulting offer of her Master of the Horse, even if Elizabeth did try to sweeten his appeal somewhat by elevating Dudley to Earl of Leicester.

Elizabeth warned Mary that the Spanish match would cause her to “judge that no good is intended toward us,” but it was Philip II who finally scotched the proposed union with his imbecilic son, leaving the Scottish queen with few prospects but Dudley.

Though Elizabeth had earlier dangled the prospect of naming Mary her heir if she cooperated by marrying Dudley, it proved to be an illusionary enticement. Whenever Mary’s representatives sought tangible assurances that would secure their queen’s position, a key condition for Mary, Elizabeth always managed to wiggle away without making any promises. The stalemate drove the Queen of Scots to despair, and in a tearful outburst to the English ambassador she vented her feelings: “I accuse not your mistress, though she be loath to give unto me my desire in that which perchance any would be loath to do; but, so long a time to keep me in doubt, and now to answer me
with nothing, I will find great fault, and fear it shall turn to her discredit more than to my loss.”

The queen “wept her fill,” as Randolph reported, then she did something entirely unexpected: She took a husband of her own choice—a Catholic so close to the English throne that his claim combined with Mary’s made them a formidable pair indeed. He was the Scottish queen’s first cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley,
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a spoiled, grasping lightweight who happened to be incredibly handsome. Mary was smitten from the moment she met him. “Her Majesty took very well with him,” reported Sir James Melville, “and said that he was the properest and best-proportioned long man that ever she had seen.”

Nothing could dissuade the queen from her single-minded ambition to marry her cousin—not the objections of her own Protestant subjects, and certainly not those of the English queen. Mary made it quite clear that she was tired of Elizabeth’s “overlordship” and said that for too long she had been “trained with [Elizabeth’s] fair speeches and beguiled in her expectations.” Now she had found a man she loved, and insisted she would have him.

Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador, wrote despairingly of the Scottish queen’s headlong behavior. He actually liked and respected Mary but now found her “so altered with affection towards the Lord Darnley that she hath brought her honour in question, her estate in hazard, her country to be torn in pieces.… The Queen in her love is so transported.… What shall become of her, or what life with him she shall lead, that already takes so much upon him as to control and command her, I leave it to others to think.”

As it turned out, Mary’s marriage was an epic disaster. Not
only did it provoke rebellion in her kingdom, but Darnley himself was a crushing disappointment—behind his good looks was a swaggering weakling with a penchant for booze and brothels, who quickly earned Mary’s total contempt. “He could not be persuaded upon to yield the smallest thing to please her,” Randolph reported. “What shall become of him, I know not, but it is greatly to be feared that he can have no long life among this people.” Indeed, he would not.

Mary’s hatred of her husband culminated with his involvement in the brutal murder of her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, whose close relationship with the queen made Darnley insanely jealous. Less than a year later, Darnley was killed in his turn—assassinated, some said, with the queen’s complicity. Though Mary professed to be horrified by her husband’s violent demise, she did nothing to find or apprehend those responsible for it. Her cousin Elizabeth was appalled by her inaction.

“I cannot but tell you what all the world is thinking,” the English queen wrote. “Men say that, instead of seizing the murderers, you are looking through your fingers while they escape; that you will not punish those who have done you so great a service, as though the thing would never have taken place had not the doers of it been assured of impunity.”

Elizabeth went on to assure Mary that she did not believe the monstrous accusations and wished her cousin “all imaginable good, and all blessings which you yourself would wish for.” Thus, the queen continued, “for this very reason I exhort, I advise, I implore you deeply to consider of the matter—at once, if it be the nearest friend you have, to lay your hands upon the man who has been guilty of the crime—to let no interest, no persuasion, keep you from proving to everyone that you are a noble Princess and a loyal wife.”