Mary Queen of Scots (36 page)

Although Mary had demonstrated an interest in her son’s welfare, sending him gifts, inquiring about his health, and worrying that Morton might inflict physical harm upon him, she remained unwilling to concede her crown to him. In 1579 she had dispatched Nau to him with her letters, but as she directed them to her son rather than to the king, Morton had refused her secretary’s request for a royal audience. Nau succeeded in communicating with her allies, who reassured him that James understood his filial duty. Mary remained concerned about her son’s well-being during Morton’s regency and informed Archbishop Beaton that she wanted Philip to send forces to Ireland, which could then cross over to Scotland and remove James to Spain.

In 1581 Mary attempted to take advantage of Lennox’s rise to power to reopen negotiations for her association with her son as joint ruler of Scotland. This association would resolve the Catholic princes’ problem of how to address James, would relieve her of having to accept the validity of her abdication, and would offer her an opportunity to seek more favorable living conditions perhaps even her freedom. In 1581 Mary obtained Henry III’s and Catherine’s approval for her joint rule with James, and Cecil even discussed French support for it with Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador. Subsequently, Henry continued to instruct his English diplomats to press for Mary’s association with James and to petition Elizabeth for her liberty.

In November Elizabeth sent Robert Beale, a clerk of the council, to discuss with Mary the treaty of association with her son. Although her illness complicated the negotiations, Beale obtained Mary’s promise to recognize Elizabeth as the rightful English monarch and to refrain from negotiating with foreign powers or English rebels. Further talks were delayed because of political developments in Scotland.

In August 1582 some nobles led by the earl of Gowrie kidnapped James in what became known as the Ruthven Raid, imprisoned the duke of Lennox, and then in December forced his retirement to France. In June of the next year after James escaped the raiders at St Andrews, James Stewart of Bothwellmuir, the second son of Andrew, second Lord Ochiltree, a Protestant who had competed with Lennox for the king’s favor, assumed great influence in the government. As a descendant of the first earl of Arran by his first wife, Stewart had claimed the earldom of Arran in 1581 on the basis that the deceased Châtelherault and his heirs sprang from an irregular marriage.

THE THROCKMORTON PLOT

Meanwhile, Mary had been considering more than one method for escaping imprisonment. The delays in arranging the joint rule with James troubled her. Although Elizabeth permitted the negotiations to resume in 1583, sending Beale to Mary in April and again with Mildmay in June, the English queen decided to cancel them in August in response to the on-going political developments in Scotland. Mary’s second option for liberation which she had pursued since 1582 was to obtain aid from Lennox. That year the duke sent two priests, William Crichton and William Holt to Guise, Allen, Persons, Philip, and Gregory with plans for an invasion of Scotland with forces that would move south to liberate Mary. Guise greatly offended Paget and Morgan by failing to include them in a Paris meeting about this conspiracy in 1582, and their bitter protests revealed a serious split among the English Catholic exiles. The complaint of the overlooked pair that politics was a task for lay people not priests was supported by Mendoza, who agreed that priests could not be trusted to take part in enterprises such as this.

After Lennox’s death in 1583, England rather than Scotland became the focus of the enterprise amidst rumors that Philip, whose fourth wife, Anne of Austria, died in 1580, might wed Mary. Attempting to reconcile the English exiles, Guise invited Paget and Morgan to discussions with Allen and Persons concerning attempts to free Mary. While a Spanish army of 20,000 would invade Lancashire to raise the Catholic north and liberate her, Guise would lead a force of 5,000 to Sussex to link up with allies there to overthrow Elizabeth. Although these plots were unrealistic as events later showed, Mary clung to them as they seemed to offer some hope of gaining her freedom.

To aid his two accomplices in England, Mendoza and Francis Throckmorton, a wealthy gentleman who served as Mary’s secret messenger, the duke of Guise sent Paget to confer with various interested conspirators. In September at Petworth, the Sussex home of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland, the brother of the executed earl, Paget met with Northumberland, Lord Paget, his brother, and others concerning possible invasion ports and the likelihood of a supportive Catholic uprising.

Walsingham had meantime been building up a vast spy network while serving as a principal secretary; the queen had advanced him to this position after moving Burghley to the post of Lord High Treasurer. In November 1583 when Walsingham heard of the plot to invade England from his spies, he had Throckmorton arrested. Under intense interrogation including reportedly the employment of the rack, Throckmorton implicated both Mary and Mendoza in the enterprise. He was tried and convicted in May and executed in July. The following January Elizabeth demanded Mendoza’s expulsion and broke off diplomatic relations with Spain, thus depriving Mary of that embassy’s support. In addition, the crown imprisoned several prominent Catholics, including Northumberland and Lord Henry Howard, Norfolk’s brother and the accomplice of Mendoza since 1579. Some observers suspected that Lord Henry hoped to wed Mary who seemed to favor him. She addressed Lord Henry as her brother-in-law and his nephews, Norfolk’s offspring, as her children. In a letter to Mauvissière in early 1584 after lamenting Lord Henry’s and Throckmorton’s treatment, Mary warned the disbelieving ambassador about a mole in his embassy.

Actually, Walsingham not only employed a spy there from early 1583 to the end of 1585 but also received copies of 40 letters from Mauvissière’s clerk, Nicholas Leclerc, sieur de Courcelles. Disheartened by the discovery of the enterprise and by the delays in arranging the joint rule with James, Mary confessed to Burghley in March 1584 that the association was the only thing in the world that could comfort her and that her captivity had so depressed her she thought she could no longer bear it.

Subsequently in May and June, Waad and Beale reopened discussions with her at Sheffield about the association and obtained her pledge to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, to suspend all dealings with foreign powers, and to refrain from communicating with papists and Jesuits in England. Citing her ill health, she assured them that if granted more freedom, she would not try to escape. Her attempt to associate with James in the governance of Scotland eventually ended in failure but that occurred after Shrewsbury was no longer her custodian.

THE SHREWSBURYS’ MARITAL PROBLEMS

The earl’s marital difficulties with his countess caused him to request replacement as Mary’s guardian in 1584. An event that formed the backdrop to his domestic discord was the marriage his countess secretly arranged ten years earlier for her daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish, with Charles Stewart, fifth earl of Lennox, Mary’s brother-in-law. As the Scottish queen and her mother-in-law were reconciled, rumors circulated, which were probably untrue, that Mary promoted this match. The fears she shared with Lady Lennox that their enemy, Morton, might harm their beloved James had drawn them together. Lady Lennox assured her that she had been deceived about Mary’s complicity in her son Henry’s death and exchanged tokens with her, including a diamond ring that Mary proudly wore. When in the autumn 1575, the young countess gave birth to Arbella, Mary sent her infant niece a gift for which Lady Lennox wrote a letter of thanks, signing off as her loving mother and aunt.

As Arbella’s father died in 1576, followed by her grandmother Lennox in 1578 and her mother in 1582, she was left to the care of Lady Shrewsbury, her ambitious grandmother, who began to promote her native-born granddaughter as Elizabeth’s successor. Irate about her schemes, Mary accused Lady Shrewsbury in 1584 of even hoping to match Arbella with James.

By then the Shrewsburys, whose marital problems began in 1577, were living apart. One of her ladyship’s servants, Marmyon, described their quarrels as “civil wars,” called their house a “hell,” and revealed that the earl blamed his wife and him for passing on falsehoods that led Elizabeth to reduce his allowance for maintaining Mary.
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Lady Shrewsbury and her two sons, Charles and William Cavendish, also accused the earl of having had an affair with his Scottish prisoner that produced at least one child.

Horrified by these allegations, Mary complained about them in several letters to Mauvissière. She denounced as liars all who said she had a dishonorable relationship with Shrewsbury and speculated that her enemies meant to prevent her marriage to Philip and to defraud her and her son of their English succession rights. Swearing that there was nothing that she would not do to clear her honor, she explained that she hoped Elizabeth would retain Shrewsbury as her custodian, since replacing him might seem to confirm the gossip. Despite this controversy, Mary continued to maintain in her household Lady Shrewsbury’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, the child of Frances Cavendish and Sir Henry Pierrepont.

Existing as vivid evidence of her loathing for her former companion, is Mary’s unsent letter to Elizabeth, sometime called the Scandal Letter, probably written in late 1583, relating some rude comments of the countess and her two sons about Elizabeth. Mary reported that they described Elizabeth as vain and a lover of flattery. She also pointed out that in 1578 after Lady Shrewsbury predicted Elizabeth would succumb to the serious illness she was suffering, the countess even offered to help liberate Mary if the English queen died. Since throughout her captivity the fearful captive worried that some English guard might kill her at her cousin’s death, she had probably been grateful for this promise of freedom. Finally, Mary claimed the countess described Elizabeth as a physically deformed nymphomaniac, whose lovers included Leicester and Sir Christopher Hatton. It is not possible to determine whether Lady Shrewsbury made these comments or whether Mary was merely trying to impeach the countess’s honor to raise doubts about her and her sons’ defamation of her. That Mary never sent the letter probably means that she realized besmirching Lady Shrewsbury’s character would not clear her own name and that repeating the malicious gossip to Elizabeth might only incense her. Monarchs often did not, as she well knew, reward the bearer of bad news. The letter stands as evidence, however, of Mary’s outrage at being accused of illicit sexual relations with Shrewsbury. In 1586 she was still complaining to the French embassy about the countess’s wickedness.

Disillusioned by his role as Mary’s custodian, Shrewsbury sought permission in 1584 to discuss his financial and marital problems with Elizabeth personally. On 20 March the crown issued instructions for Sadler to replace Shrewsbury as her custodian and to move her to Wingfield. Among the orders was one permitting her to take air on foot or by coach but not to go far from the residence. Sir Henry Neville and Shrewsbury were to assist Sadler in moving her to Wingfield until Melbourne Castle in Derbyshire, her final destination, was ready to receive her. These provisional plans were not implemented and perhaps were not even communicated to Sadler and Neville. Five months later in August, the 77-year-old Sadler agreed to become her temporary guardian, expecting to relinquish the position upon Shrewsbury’s return or as soon as another keeper for Mary could be found. In preparing for Sadler’s arrival, Walsingham instructed Shrewsbury to transfer Mary to Wingfield because the elderly Sadler, who was used to fresh air in his own house, might suffer from the stuffiness of Sheffield where she was then in residence. Walsingham thus unwittingly validated Mary’s charges that her confinement was adversely affecting her health. Hoping to avoid the cost and trouble of that move, Shrewsbury responded that he would take her to the lodge where Sadler would “find as good and open air” as at any of his houses.
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On 25 August 1584 after a seven-day ride from Standen, his Hertfordshire home, Sadler reached Sheffield and learned the unwelcome news that Shrewsbury was bowing to orders and planning to remove Mary to Wingfield. The disappointed Sadler wrote Walsingham that he preferred remaining at Sheffield because it was more defensible than Wingfield and because he was too exhausted to resume traveling so soon. On 2 September after exchanging messages with Walsingham, Sadler decided to obey the initial instructions and assisted by John Somer, his deputy custodian who was also his son-in-law, he joined Shrewsbury in transferring Mary to Wingfield.

During the journey Mary conversed with Somer, whom she had met when he served as Throckmorton’s aide in France. After blaming her bad health on her captivity, she wondered whether she should rely on her son or Elizabeth for her liberation:

For if I should leave my son, who is to me more than anything in this world, and trust to the queen, my good sister’s favor, which I cannot get, I might so be without both; and then what should become of me?

When Somer asked her what diplomatic strategies Elizabeth should adopt, Mary recommended that she negotiate an offensive and defensive league with Scotland and comprehend France in it out of respect for the auld alliance. Since Scotland was too impoverished to maintain a monarch adequately, Elizabeth should grant a pension to James in return for which he would aid her in resolving England’s Irish problems. Following that island’s pacification, Elizabeth could stop promoting wars in France and the Spanish territories, and then, somewhat unrealistically Mary predicted, even her Guise relatives would become England’s friends.

She admitted when he turned to James’s future marriage that she was aware of suitable brides in the Catholic noble families of Florence and Lorraine and also in the Protestant royal family of Denmark. To his inquiry about a Spanish marriage, she responded that if James could have the Low Countries, it would be a good match, a sentiment that recalled her earlier efforts to marry the Spanish prince whom she hoped would be appointed regent there.