Mary Queen of Scots (11 page)

After the queen regent’s death, Châtelherault and Lord James, along with William Maitland of Lethington, her secretary, as representatives of the Provisional Government, became the effective rulers of Scotland. In July, the month after her demise, French and English commissioners negotiated the Treaty of Edinburgh, requiring Mary to cease bearing English arms, providing for the withdrawal from Scotland of all foreign troops, authorizing the calling of a Scottish parliament, and establishing procedures for appointing a government that would basically leave the Congregation in control of the realm. When in November the treaty was finally presented to Mary and Francis for their approval, they refused to ratify it, mainly from concerns that its language might be interpreted to deny her English succession rights. In the meantime, all troops had departed Scotland, except for 120 Frenchmen.
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In August without Francis’s and Mary’s authorization, the Provisional Government had summoned a parliament, known as the Reformation Parliament because of its religious enactments. It abolished the mass and papal authority and established a reformed Confession of Faith, although it left untouched the Catholic clergy’s jurisdiction within their benefices. The estates then proposed to Elizabeth that she wed Arran to consolidate the Anglo-Scottish alliance and to set up the possibility of a British monarchy if Mary died without heirs.

LAST MONTHS OF FRANCIS’S REIGN

While these setbacks were occurring in Scotland, religious and political discord continued in France. Even before the Conjuration in early 1560, Francis’s government had adopted a more moderate stance, promising in the Édict of Amboise, for example, to pardon all religious prisoners who were not pastors or conspirators. Despite these conciliatory measures, the Huguenots continued their demonstrations.

Having acquired a bodyguard, Francis accepted his advisers’ recommendation to convene a Council of Notables on 21 August in his mother’s chamber at Fontainebleau, to discuss the problems he had inherited. In attendance were Catherine, Mary, Guise, the cardinal of Lorraine, the princes of the blood, and other royal officials. The absence of Navarre and Condé fueled further suspicions about the latter’s involvement in the Conjuration. On the 23rd, Montmorency’s Protestant nephew, Coligny, argued unsuccessfully for the establishment of two equal churches, Catholic and Huguenot. Before adjourning on the 26th, the council recommended summoning the Estates General and convening an assembly of the Gallican Church. More convinced than ever of Condé’s guilt, the cardinal of Lorraine had him arrested on 30 October at Orléans where Francis and Mary made their entries on the 18th, amidst heightened security measures because of Huguenot disturbances in neighboring towns.

At Orléans Francis became ill, and although on Sunday, 17 November, Catherine kept him in bed, his condition worsened. For three weeks he suffered crippling headaches and drainage from an infected middle ear; when the drainage ceased, it caused excruciating pains in his jaws and teeth and a swelling behind his ear. During his illness his wife and mother remained at his bedside, witnessing his death on 5 December after Lorraine administered the last rites. He left a grieving widow, his crown to his ten-year-old brother, and a reprieve for Condé, whom Catherine ultimately freed.

Custom required that the widow of a French king dress in white mourning clothes,
en deuil blanc
, and spend 40 days in a darkened room, hung with black cloths and lighted only by a few candles. On 6 December before entering seclusion attended by her grandmother, Mary surrendered the crown jewels to Catherine. The grief she reportedly displayed was surely genuine. Throughout their marriage, Francis and she related to each other as they had from childhood. That interaction resulted in the development of sincere emotional ties, and no observer ever questioned their mutual esteem.
²⁰
Michele Surian, the Venetian ambassador to France, who was not a Guise client, reported in early December that all pitied the young, beautiful, and graceful widow, who was full of tears because she lost a beloved husband, was deprived of France, and possessed small hope of recovering Scotland, her patrimony and dowry. A month later after condoling with her, he informed his government that although overwhelmed with grief, she expressed thanks in a few sorrowful words.
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In the mourning room social precedence prevailed. For the first 15 days, only the king, his brothers, Navarre, her Guise uncles, and Montmorency could enter. Four or five days later the bishops and the elder knights of the Order of St Michael could pay their respects. The younger knights, except for the married one, were denied admission, as their presence was considered inappropriate because of her youth. Afterwards, ambassadors were permitted to condole with her. Speculation was already rife about her next husband, and in late December Lorraine proposed to Thomas Perrenot, seigneur de Chantonnay, the Spanish ambassador, that she wed Philip’s heir, Don Carlos. Although other names were mentioned, the queen dowager ultimately concluded that her honor was best served by marrying another prince.

On 15 January 1561 having changed from white into black mourning clothes, 18-year-old Mary emerged from seclusion to attend a memorial service for Francis at the Grey Friars’ Church. Shortly thereafter she moved with her grandmother to a private residence and ordered the erection of an elegant marble pillar in the Cathedral of St Croix at Orléans where, according to custom, his heart was buried apart from his body, which was interred at St Denis. The bodies of prominent individuals, especially monarchs, were often buried in two places, providing pilgrimage renown and, therefore, honor to the interment sites.

Later in Scotland Mary continued dressing in black in honor of Francis’s memory until after her marriage to Darnley in 1565. On the day before the first anniversary of his death, she had a dirge said for him at Holyrood chapel and in a solemn procession the next day she presented a huge wax candle draped in black velvet. Sometimes mourners scheduled for their deceased loved ones ceremonies one month after their demise, which were called the month’s mind, but more often they held the services on the first anniversary of their death.

While adjusting emotionally to widowhood at Orléans, Mary began making plans for returning home. On 18 January she wrote to Elizabeth for a passport for four commissioners to travel through England to Scotland with a letter for the parliamentary estates, informing them of her decision. Her letter to the estates was conciliatory; she
sent them promises of immunity and requested they dispatch a representative of the Provisional Government to finalize the arrangements for her personal rule. In the event storms interrupted her voyage home, she also hoped to obtain Elizabeth’s permission to journey through her realm or at least to seek shelter in an English harbor. Unless absolutely necessary, travelers did not venture on to the North Sea before summertime and even then the weather could be challenging.

Throckmorton visited Mary in seclusion on 31 December, but for his queen’s official condolences to her, he awaited the arrival in France of the earl of Bedford, Elizabeth’s special envoy. Between 16 and 19
February, Bedford met with Mary three times at Fontainebleau, where she had accompanied the court on the 3rd, to tender Elizabeth’s condolences, to blame her French marriage for her realm’s disturbances, and to request she ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. Looking sorrowful, according to Throckmorton who accompanied Bedford, she replied that she could make no decisions concerning the treaty without her estates’ advice. This was an appropriate response, since the prevailing wisdom was that British queens regnant should seek and follow their male councilors’ recommendations.

Soon after Francis’s demise, rumors began to circulate about her remarriage;
¹
among the proposed candidates were Charles IX, Eric XIV of Sweden, Frederick II of Denmark, William of Nassau, prince of Orange, Don Carlos, Archduke Charles of Austria, Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, Albert III, duke of Bavaria, Don John of Austria, her uncle, Francis, Grand Prior of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in France, and the earl of Arran. Philip’s decision to send Don Juan Manrique to condole with her in late January fueled reports that a Spanish marriage was imminent. To all inquiries she responded that previous agreements required her to obtain the estates’ consent before remarrying.
Throckmorton believed she valued her honor so highly that she would select only someone who would enhance her rank and reputation.

CHANGING POWER AT COURT

Meanwhile after becoming Charles’s regent in December 1560, Catherine persuaded Navarre, who had a hereditary claim to that high office, to serve as lieutenant general. Consequently, Mary’s uncles lost
political authority, a change in their fortunes that surely explains her estrangement from Catherine. As recently as late 1559 Mary reported sympathetically to her mother that if Francis did not obey Catherine as well as he did, she would die and that would be disastrous for France.
During his short reign the two French queens dined at the same table and attended sermons together daily. Three months after his demise, however, Catherine had begun to suspect that Mary was operating as a spy for Lorraine, who had left court, and his brother, Guise. In a letter to Sébastien de l’Aubespine, bishop of Limoges, the French ambassador in Spain, she explained that Mary was as obsequious as ever but that she was undeceived about the true feelings of her daughter-in-law, who undoubtedly favored her Guise relatives.
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From December 1560 Catherine’s activities, focusing as they did on the future of her three small children whom she believed God had placed in her care, seem to have caused Mary concerns that she was neglecting the appropriate mourning for her deceased son. Apparently pleased that the French dynasty’s future was no longer tied to that of the Guise family, Catherine sought to perpetuate that separation, opposing Mary’s union with her son, Charles, and also with Don Carlos. Catherine especially hoped to prevent Guise influence spreading in Spain because her eldest daughter was its queen and because she had been attempting to marry her youngest daughter Margaret to the Spanish prince.

Rumors of the French queens’ estrangement must have circulated at court. In June 1563 almost two years after Mary’s departure for Scotland, Prospero Publicola Santacroce, cardinal bishop of Chessamos and the papal nuncio to France, claimed that Catherine developed a grudge against her daughter-in-law after overhearing her demeaning her, a de’ Medici, as a shopkeeper’s daughter. Since Santacroce had replaced Sebastian Gualtier, bishop of Viterbo, as papal nuncio in 1561, it is odd that he should have so belatedly reported this gossip.
Diplomats often repeated unconfirmed even stale rumors, as this surely was. Given Mary’s upbringing, it seems unlikely that she would have criticized her late husband’s mother within her hearing, and Catherine’s letter to Limoges confirms that she was not breaching court protocol.
Catherine’s appointment of Coligny to the
conseil des affaires
and her conciliatory religious policies led Guise to conspire against her authority. In April after forming a triumvirate with Jean d’Albon, Marshal St
André, and Montmorency, his former enemy, Guise sought Spanish aid to bolster the Gallic Church. While Philip felt obliged to support his mother-in-law’s regency, he felt sympathy for her opponents. He also disliked her policies, which many believed were encouraging the spread of Protestantism.

PREPARING TO RETURN TO SCOTLAND

On about 18 March Mary left for Rheims to celebrate Easter, breaking her trip at Paris on the 20th to inventory her possessions in preparation for returning home to Scotland. Surian explained that she departed Fontainebleau because she anticipated the Scottish envoy’s arrival to discuss her realm’s affairs. Diplomatic protocol was precise.
According to him, it was inappropriate for these deliberations to occur at the French court since Francis’s death officially ended his realm’s concern with Scottish business.
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Earlier, during his reign, English ambassadors conferred with him in his presence chamber about his kingdom’s affairs and with Mary in her presence chamber about her realm’s business.

After reaching Rheims on the 26th, Mary celebrated Easter at St Pierre with her Aunt Renée and then left on 10 April for Nancy via Joinville, intending to return later to Rheims for Charles’s coronation.
On the 14th while in transit with Lorraine, Guise, Aumale and other relatives, she encountered John Leslie, future bishop of Ross, at the village of Vitry-le-François in Champagne. Representing Catholic Scotsmen, most notably the earl of Huntly, the lord chancellor, Leslie suggested that she disembark at Aberdeen, meet up with the earl, who would gather a large army and overthrow the Protestants. Since Huntly had joined the Lords of the Congregation in April 1560, Mary distrusted him and refused this request. Unwilling to place herself under his control and to plunge Scotland into civil war, she was probably following her uncles’ advice to form at least a temporary alliance with the Protestant lords to facilitate her return.

The next day her half brother, Lord James, representing Scotland’s Provisional Government, caught up with her at St Dizier, 138 miles from Paris. In their discussions over a five-day period, she promised to uphold the Protestant settlement on the condition that she be allowed
to worship privately as a Catholic and pledged to seek the estates’ consent before marrying a foreign prince but still declined to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. Her refusal to permit him to accompany her to Nancy caused him to surmise that she was going there to pursue secret marriage negotiations. His concern that she was withholding important information from him is understandable since he, himself, was duplicitous. He did not inform her of his discussions with Cecil and Elizabeth
en route
to France.