Mary Queen of Scots (35 page)

In mid-1571 she vomited blood and developed a fever. That December, a physician reported that her disease originated from the drying up of the melancholic humour and had worsened because she lacked outdoor exercise. He observed a swelling in her left side, frequent discharges from the brain, a great disability in the stomach that disturbed her sleep, and constant vomiting. Over the years these symptoms continued to plague her, Lady Shrewsbury noting in 1578, for example, that Mary blamed her chronic weakness and ailments on lack of exercise. She also suffered other maladies, a head full of rheum and swollen eyes in 1572, the tertian fever and a catarrh in the face in 1575, and a very bad dry cough in 1579. Another chronic problem afflicted her in 1581, a weakness in her legs that interfered with her walking and required her attendants to carry her in a chair. Despite the severity of her attacks, her captors occasionally questioned whether she was as sick as she claimed.

In February 1577 her illness prompted her to draw up a will, which survives in draft form only. In it, she referred to the dangers that might befall her in captivity, perhaps her fear of being poisoned. Attempting to protect herself from this problem, she had the preparation of her food monitored closely and had ordered a unicorn’s horn and a half-pound of mithridate both of which were regarded as poison antidotes. In her will she went on to request burial with Francis and to bequeath her rights to the Scottish and English crowns to her son if he converted to Catholicism. Otherwise, she granted them to Philip II or to a member of his family. In 1576 she had exchanged gifts with Philip: he sent her a ruby ring and she gave him a book of gold. Although she did not specify the member of his family who might inherit her rights, she may have meant Don John of Austria, whom rumors had repeatedly said she might wed. Finally, she named Henry III and the dukes of Lorraine, Guise, and Mayenne as her son’s protectors.
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Despite the physicians’ claims that the exercise, such as hunting, that delighted her would improve her health, Elizabeth and her council forbade her horseback riding after discovering the Ridolfi plot. Mary sorely missed outdoor sports not just for relieving her illness but also for helping her to pass the time. In late 1572 Shrewsbury eased the rules enough to permit her to walk on the castle leads or in its vicinity but only under close guard. He was relieved to discover in February 1575 after an earthquake damaged her bedchamber that the problem was not the frightened queen’s possible escape but her falling down. In February and May 1581 Mary explained to Elizabeth that to recover her health she needed to exercise on horseback or to be allowed to ride because she could no longer walk. Finally in late 1581, Elizabeth agreed to alter the restrictions enough to permit her prisoner to ride in a coach two or three miles out of Sheffield Park, as long as Shrewsbury was careful to prevent strangers from approaching her. In January 1582 he reported that she was so weakened by sickness that she had not yet taken advantage of this new privilege.

Mary’s chronic ill health led Elizabeth to grant permission for her to receive medical treatments at Shrewsbury’s Buxton baths, where by 1572 he had erected a square mansion with four stories, a battlemented roof, a great chamber, and 40 bedchambers.
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It stood between St Anne’s Well and three ancient hot baths with water of 82 degrees fahrenheit. Some of the evidence about Mary’s visits is obscure, but she was certainly at Buxton an average of five or six weeks about seven times between 1573 and 1584. Some writers have claimed that she met both Leicester and Burghley at the baths, but she explained to Mauvissière in 1580 that she had less liberty there than at any other English mansion and that during her stay, all other clients were refused admission. That same year, Shrewsbury noted that during her residence she left the hall only one evening to take the air under close guard. From the beginning of his custodianship, Shrewsbury had to promise to meet his own friends in places other than the houses where she was in residence. The belief that she became acquainted with Leicester at Buxton may stem from the misreading of letters referring to his visits there. In one in 1577 Nau mentioned that he had personally returned from the baths; probably Mary sent him to confer with Leicester, who had recently arrived there.
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After discovering the Ridolfi plot, Elizabeth and her privy councilors attempted to restrict Mary’s interaction with her English subjects, even Shrewsbury’s children. In February 1578, for example, when Elizabeth momentarily considered transferring her prisoner to Huntington’s custody from concerns that she could no longer trust Shrewsbury, she issued specific instructions for the move to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Huntington’s seat in Leicestershire. In a draft letter to Shrewsbury and Sir Henry Neville, who were to act as Mary’s escorts on the journey, Elizabeth required them to utilize private houses but warned them against permitting the owners to see her.

Mary’s interest in going to Buxton baths was for medicinal reasons not for recreation or cleanliness. Early modern Europeans rarely bathed to remove dirt and sweat because they feared that when the hot water opened up their pores, evil vapors would enter their bodies. In 1580 Shrewsbury learned, for example, that after Elizabeth’s physicians prescribed a bath for her, she had caught a cold and was ill for two days. Instead of bathing, individuals changed their linen, which absorbed their sweat, rubbed away bodily odors with perfume, and washed their face and hands with cold water for civility, not for cleanliness. Mary chose to use wine rather than perfume for washing. Concerns even existed about how to treat dirty hair. In 1542 the duchess of Guise recommended that her daughter, who was pregnant with the future Scottish queen regnant, either wash her hair once a month or cut it short because greasy hair would cause her to catch a cold. The duchess confided that she cut hers every six weeks. In captivity Mary’s hair turned completely gray before she was 40 years old. Thereafter, she seems to have kept it cut short and to have worn wigs.

For the medicinal baths that became popular in the mid-sixteenth century, physicians instituted a special regimentation. They recommended that their patients bathe between May and September, the sunniest months, and advised them to rest two or three days after reaching their destinations before beginning their treatments, which optimally should continue for at least a fortnight. For protection from the water’s adverse effects, patients exercised, were purged, and said a set prayer before bathing, usually in the mornings and again in the evenings for two or three hours. Following immersion, they sweated in their beds with the aid of two bladders of hot water.

Beginning in 1572, Mary repeatedly petitioned to visit Buxton, since she had long believed bathing lessened the severity of her symptoms. She had probably ordered the construction of the bathhouse that still stands near Holyrood Palace, and she had also arranged for Henry’s medicinal bath shortly before his death. The waters, she claimed, eased her side ache and her rheumatism while other topical aids, such as rubbing ointments, which she ordered in 1575, for example, were ineffective. Even when she injured her back in a fall from her horse at the start of her 24-mile ride to Buxton in July 1580, she insisted on continuing the journey. Following her last visit in July 1584, she confided to Mauvissière that she had recovered the use of her hand and that the water had soothed her nerves and dried up the harmful bodily fluids she suffered for lack of exercise. Before leaving, she wrote with a diamond on the window pane:

Buxtona, quae calidae celebraris nomine Lymphae

Forte mihi post hac non adeunda, Vale

(Buxton, which is celebrated because of your tepid waters

Perhaps I shall never visit again, farewell.)
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POSSIBLE MARRIAGE TO DON JOHN

In 1574 after returning from Buxton, she corresponded with Archbishop Beaton about rumors that she might wed Archduke Charles, Leicester, or perhaps Don John, whom her allies especially favored because of his tremendous naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Although 15,000 Christians perished, Turkish deaths numbered some 30,000 and 113 of their galleys were destroyed while another 117 were captured. It was the “biggest battle of the sixteenth century.”
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In October 1574 Nicholas Ormanetto, papal nuncio to Spain, proposed to Ptolemy Galli, cardinal of Como, two other candidates besides Don John: the duke of Anjou and Alençon and the recently widowed duke of Savoy. Ormanetto favored Don John because he was well suited to rule England as Mary’s husband and to assume the regency of the Netherlands, where William the Silent, prince of Orange, with English aid was challenging Spanish rule. Ormanetto warned that Mary should be married before her English accession, since otherwise she might act independently in selecting her husband. Catholics abroad believed that her governance of England, if she were assisted by an appropriate Catholic husband, would result in the pacification of the Netherlands and the conversion of Britain to Catholicism.

In her surviving correspondence, Mary made infrequent, noncommittal references to marrying Don John, a reticence that is striking when compared to her enthusiasm about the Norfolk match. An intriguing aspect about the possibility of her union to Don John was her decision in 1575 to seek an annulment of her third marriage. If she had a bridegroom in mind, it was likely Don John, who arrived in the Low Countries as their governor-general in 1577. Although Mary suffered from a chronic illness that caused her to draft a will, from time to time her health improved enough for her to contemplate marriage, which she viewed as a vehicle to win her freedom from the English captivity that she believed contributed greatly to her sickness.

In January 1575 she appointed Leslie, who moved to Paris after his release from prison in 1574, as her ambassador to Gregory XIII. Before departing for Rome, Leslie initiated proceedings for her annulment. In April Leslie discussed these plans with Antonio Maria Salviati, the papal nuncio to France, and in August he witnessed depositions taken from several Scotsmen, some of whom were at Edinburgh in 1567. Leslie planned to transmit this evidence, establishing that Orkney was Jean Gordon’s husband and that at least one observer stated Mary colluded in his abduction of her, to Rome for Gregory’s final decision. Mary’s letter in October to Gregory, committing herself and all her business to him and requesting aid for herself, a devout Catholic oppressed with many failures, may have been an oblique reference to these hearings.
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Evidence that Gregory acted upon her petition has not survived, but subsequent events indicate he favored the annulment. In late 1575 Leslie traveled to Rome to confer with him about these depositions and to handle other business. There he met with several English Catholic exiles, including William Allen, the future cardinal, and Robert Persons, a Jesuit priest, who were framing an enterprise for two invasions of England, one in the south and one at Liverpool, which lay about a day and a half’s journey from Sheffield Castle. They planned to free Mary, place her on the English throne, and wed her to a Catholic prince of the pope’s choosing. Most English refugees, including Allen, favored Don John as her husband. With some reservations, Philip approved the scheme, although he demanded that Don John first pacify the Low Countries.

The next surviving evidence of Mary’s concern for Don John dates from 1577 when he was serving as regent of the Netherlands. In her letter to Archbishop Beaton in January, she reported that the English erroneously suspected her of communicating with the prince. Two months later she predicted that if Don John landed in England with or without her consent, her captors would treat her more harshly. That summer rumors spread in England that when Lord Seton left to visit a spa in the Netherlands, he actually went there to confer with Don John about marrying the Scottish queen. In November Mary implored Beaton to relay to her any information he might discover about Don John’s plans to invade England. By then Elizabeth had expelled Antonio de Guaras, the Spanish envoy, because he had secretly forwarded Mary’s letters abroad, perhaps to Don John, himself.

That Mary hoped the prince would invade England in 1577 is proved by her letter to Paget in 1586. In it, she wondered whether Sir Francis Drake’s raids on Spanish territory and Elizabeth’s aid to the Dutch rebels would finally cause Philip to attack England. It would have been better, she opined, if he had done so when Don John was regent, since France and Scotland were well disposed to help English Catholics at that time. She recalled Don John’s belief that the only way to appease the Netherlands was to have a friendly English ruler.
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His mission had ended with his death on 1 October 1578 from typhoid; rumors circulated that his demise greatly troubled Mary, who ate very little for two days after hearing about it.

DEATH OF ORKNEY, HER THIRD HUSBAND

That same year the duke of Orkney died at the Danish fortress of Dragsholm, which is located on an island some 58 miles west of Copenhagen. In George Buchanan’s
History of Scotland
in 1582, he stated publicly for the first time that the duke suffered from mental illness.
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It was rumored that as he lay dying, he confessed that he, along with Moray and Morton, were parties to the king’s murder but that Mary was not involved. Actually in 1576, two years before his demise, she had received information about this alleged confession. Having learned that it was written at Malmö and that several Danish dignitaries witnessed it, she instructed Beaton to determine if it were valid because if it were, it might be useful in combating her enemies’ accusations. Since her husband died at Dragsholm and some of the alleged witnesses were no longer alive in 1576, it seems likely that a friend attempting to aid her forged the document.

SCOTTISH POLITICS AND THE TREATY OF ASSOCIATION

In 1579 the year after Orkney’s demise, Esmé Stuart, sixth seigneur of Aubigny, moved from France to Scotland. Since the king’s grandmother and his aunt, Margaret, countess of Lennox, had died in 1578, Aubigny was hoping to secure the earldom of Lennox for himself. His father John was the brother of her husband, Matthew, earl of Lennox. The impressed 13-year-old James, whose minority had ended in March 1578, not only granted his 37-year-old cousin the earldom in early 1580 but also raised it to a dukedom the next year. With his assistance, James ordered the arrest of Morton for knowing about and concealing the murder of his father. The jury having found him guilty of treason and murder, Morton was executed on 2 June 1581. Under Lennox’s influence, the crown’s policy became pro-Guise and pro-Catholic.