Mary Queen of Scots (9 page)

From 1556 when Mary was thirteen, reports of her sickness became more frequent and serious. On 8 August at Fontainebleau during a hot summer, she contracted a painful fever for which her physicians ordered the usual blood-letting, a treatment that surely did more to weaken her condition than to improve it. Lorraine, who was with the king at Anet, a château belonging to Valentinois, assured his sister that Catherine had remained constantly with Mary during her attack. Since women of all ranks were expected to oversee the medical needs of their close relatives, Lorraine, who hurried to Mary’s bedside, was gratified but not surprised at Catherine’s solicitude. She happened to be at the nursery because she was recovering from her difficult delivery on 24 June of twin girls: one was still-born and the other died on 17 August. Lorraine also reported that after Mary’s first feverish bout ended, she had three more attacks and that the doctors predicted at least seven in all. To escape the heat he removed her to Meudon for the curative effects of its air. Recalling her earlier eating disorder, he also noted that she had indigestion in August after consuming too much melon. The fevers endured intermittently into the autumn, but by October she was convalescing at the Hôtel of Guise in Paris and receiving visits from Henry and Catherine. In November for two or three weeks, she suffered from an ague, probably a form of malaria.

Eight months later in July 1557 when she was fourteen, Lorraine reported to Guise that Mary had recovered from a recent attack of smallpox. In Scotland in 1562 after learning that Elizabeth had contracted the disease, Mary related to her that the late Jean Fernel, the king’s court physician, had protected her face from the usual scarring with some lotion but had not revealed its recipe to her.

During the next few years, Mary’s illnesses elicited further comments. From March through June 1559 diplomats observed that she looked ill, pale, and green. In May she appeared short breathed and swooned two or three times and in June was allowed to drink some wine from the church altar after almost fainting. Later that month she swooned again. Her ill health returned in August and September when she became sick after eating, swooned, and was revived with spirits. In November she appeared pale and ill again. The next month, after improving enough to go horseback riding near Blois, she suffered minor injuries when a tree limb knocked her off her horse. Then in January 1560 she developed a fever and had attacks that were called fits, perhaps a recurrence of the swooning.

SEPARATE HOUSEHOLD AND REGAL MAJORITY

By 1556 when these illnesses commenced, Mary resided in a separate household. Lorraine began recommending this arrangement in February 1553 when he learned that Henry was preparing a separate establishment for Francis but that Catherine intended to retain her daughters with her until they married. Since Henry also planned for Francis and Mary to leave the nursery after Lent and reside at court, Catherine’s decision meant that Mary must share her quarters. Opposing this plan, Lorraine advised his sister to fund her daughter’s independent establishment. Having compiled a list of candidates, he wished not only to appoint attendants loyal to him but also to use the existence of her own apartments to pressure his sister into seeking recognition of Mary’s regal majority. In setting up the household, he warned her mother to include nothing mean or superfluous, as Mary had such high spirits she visibly disapproved all unworthy treatment.

In late December 1553 at the end of her daughter’s 11th year, Mary of Guise funded her separate household. On New Year’s Day Mary celebrated the occasion by entertaining Lorraine at supper in her quarters. Possessing her own rooms, including a presence chamber, also meant that she could hold audiences, as in February 1555, when she received some Scotsmen whom she welcomed as her countrymen. Her accounts for the year 1556–57, signed by her and Lorraine, indicate 58,000 livres were allotted for her maintenance, 25,000 from Scotland’s revenue and the remainder from her mother’s assets. On the list of her more than 100 servants can be found the names of the four Maries.
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During a long discussion in August 1553 with Henry Cleuten, seigneur d’Oysel, Henry II’s lieutenant general of Scotland and the queen dowager’s close advisor, Lorraine argued that his niece should assume her regal authority at the end of her 11th rather than 12th year, as was usual in her realm. He believed that her governor Châtelherault could not be trusted and bore her great ill-will. In December 1553 the
Parlement
of Paris decreed Mary was of perfect age. The following April the Scottish estates confirmed her majority and, responding to her request, appointed her mother as regent amidst protests that this action treated Châtelherault unfairly. Mary later explained that the nine months she spent in her mother’s womb were counted to make her 12 years old that spring. As a further sign of her adulthood, on Easter Day 1554 at Meudon in the presence of her grandmother and Lorraine, she received her first communion, utilizing personal ceremonial vessels, perhaps a precaution against poisoning.

MARRIAGE ARRANGEMENTS

When Henry arranged his heir’s marriage with Mary in 1548, her uncles’ enemies, led by Montmorency, opposed the match and continued to agitate against it. In October 1557 during France’s war with Spain and England, Montmorency lost some of his political clout when the Spanish defeated his army at St Quentin and captured him and his nephew, Gaspard de Châtillon, seigneur de Coligny, admiral of France. Fearing a Paris invasion, Henry named Guise lieutenant general and recalled him from the Italian front. That winter Guise besieged Calais, an English possession for 220 years, and won acclaim as a great hero by conquering it in early January.

Meanwhile, Henry asked the Scottish parliament to send representatives to the French court to negotiate a marriage contract between Francis and her. In March 1558 nine Scottish commissioners reached Fontainebleau and obtained authorization to proceed with the arrangements from Mary and her grandmother, the dowager duchess of Guise acting on behalf of her daughter, the Scottish queen regent. One of the commissioners was Mary’s half brother, Lord James, who had returned home after accompanying her to France and had recently converted to Protestantism. Probably at the commissioners’ behest, Mary promised on 15 April to maintain Scottish laws and liberties. On the 19th Francis joined her as she reiterated this pledge and granted the additional concession that if she died without issue the Scottish heir presumptive would succeed. On that same day the commissioners signed the contract, providing for Mary’s and Francis’s eldest son to become king of France and Scotland, but if they had only daughters, for their eldest daughter to become queen of Scotland but not of France, where the female succession was forbidden. The contract also offered Francis the crown matrimonial and title of king of Scotland. If he died, she would receive a dower of 60,000 livres and the choice of living in France or Scotland but would have to obtain the consent of the French and Scottish governments before remarrying. On 30 April, six days after their wedding, Francis and Mary repeated their promises of the 19th, and Francis made a similar declaration in June.

On 4 April, 11 days before Mary and Francis began making these official pledges, she endorsed three secret documents stipulating that if she died childless, Scotland would descend to Henry II and his heirs and pledging to him one million crowns from Scotland’s revenues to pay for its defense against the English and for her education. Finally, Mary voided all the future demands of the estates that were prejudicial to these concessions.

As Henry had been acting as Scotland’s ruler not its protector since 1548 and had insisted on the appointment of a French regent in 1554, surely no major European leader would have been surprised to learn of the existence of these documents. Indeed, in November 1548 Jean de St Mauris, the imperial ambassador in France, referred to Henry as the king of Scotland. His wish to draw upon that realm’s funds was surely a response to the ongoing expense of his occupation forces there, since by 1550 the costs had already amounted to some two million livres.

Even so Mary behaved with duplicity in approving secret documents that negated the later official ones. Some scholars have contended that at the age of 15 she was too young to understand the meaning of her behavior, but others have more correctly maintained that she was following the advice of Henry and the relatives she trusted. Like most other monarchs, she viewed her realm as a private estate, which she could dispose of as she deemed necessary. Later in a 1577 draft will and in a 1586 secret communication with Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in France, she specified that if her son James VI refused to convert to Catholicism, she would cede her English succession rights to Philip of Spain.

When arranging marriages with queens regnant, early modern rulers sought to create prenuptial documents justifying their retention of their bride’s realms if they died childless. In 1554 Philip signed a secret document, absolving himself from observing some restrictions in his marriage contract with Mary Tudor, which he later publicly approved. The clauses to which he objected denied him a claim to her throne if she died without issue and rejected English support for Spain’s war against France. Even in initial courtship discussions, the succession issue could be raised. In 1559, Emperor Ferdinand I asked Elizabeth I of England to promise in the proposed marriage treaty with his son, Archduke Charles of Styria, that he would inherit England if she died childless.

Furthermore, Mary Stewart and her relatives viewed as untrustworthy the duke of Châtelherault, whom her secret documents, if implemented, would have deprived of his right to succeed her. In 1548 Henry attempted to win his loyalty by offering to match his son, Arran, with Montpensier’s daughter. Although Arran removed to France anticipating this union, Montpensier declined to approve this marriage for his child, as did the parents of three other potential brides the king proposed. Two of those ladies wed Mary’s relatives: Louise de Rieux, daughter of the count of Montford, to her uncle, Elboeuf, and Jean of Nemours, to her cousin, Vaudémont.

After Valentinois’s granddaughter, Bouillon, joined Mary’s household in 1557, she obtained the king’s consent for Arran to wed her. The duchess decided, however, to seal hers and Montmorency’s political reconciliation with a family alliance, matching Bouillon with his son, Henry, seigneur de Damville. In failing to find Arran a noble wife, Henry deeply offended the Hamiltons, already alienated by the duke’s loss of the regency. Besides assuming that they had the right to dispose of their realms, monarchs also occasionally acted as though they need not consult their inhabitants’ opinions about a change of rulers. Scottish kings had earlier displayed this behavior.

When James III married Margaret of Denmark in 1469, her father Christian I pledged his Shetland and Orkney estates for her dowry. Following Christian’s defaulting on her dowry, James annexed the territories without seeking their residents’ permission. The expressed wishes of local officials could also be ignored. In 1538 disregarding Anthony, duke of Lorraine’s claim to succeed the childless Charles of Egmond as duke of Guelders, William of Cleves accepted its estates’ invitation to govern the duchy. After expelling Cleves from that principality, Emperor Charles seized it for himself, ultimately transferring it to his son Philip.

It is noteworthy that Mary’s secret documents left Scottish laws and traditions intact. Structurally, in fact, many early modern realms were composite monarchies, ruling dependent territories that held positions similar to that of the French protectorate Mary had validated for Scotland. Many principalities, such as those the Habsburgs governed, continued to enjoy separate identities and local traditions. This pattern, which went out of fashion in the 1620s, made the transfer of lands from one ruler to another somewhat more palatable to their inhabitants.

The French kings’ ambitious Italian and Scottish campaigns indicate they hoped to create composite monarchies similar to those of the Habsburg rulers in Spain and the Empire. Despite charges that France had absorbed contiguous duchies, like Brittany, their inhabitants continued to speak regional dialects, possess their institutions, and enjoy their traditions. It was even more likely that under French rule a distant land like Scotland would continue to enjoy its local customs and laws. Even so, many Scots chaffed at the prospect of becoming permanently another Brittany under French rule.

To defend their independence, Catholic Scots, at least, could evoke the Declaration of Arbroath, their letter of 1320 to Pope John XXII, requesting assistance in maintaining their freedom from England. Some two hundred years later, however, their divisive politics hindered their goal of independence. The competition between the Châtelherault-Hamiltons and the Lennox-Stewarts meant that the family that scored a success with England, as Lennox had in 1544, would prompt the other one to turn to France. The earl of Cassilis’s boast that he was neither French nor English was understandable but somewhat unrealistic given the existence of these regal disputes.

MARRIAGE FESTIVITIES

On 19 April 1558 the day their marriage contract was signed, Mary and Francis were formally betrothed at the Louvre. Henry escorted her, and Anthony Bourbon, king of Navarre, accompanied Francis into the great hall where Lorraine conducted the official betrothal ceremony in which Francis and Mary, while holding hands, pledged their troth. They afterwards attended a banquet and then a ball, which Mary and Henry opened with the first dance. On the 23rd, the eve of the wedding, the royal family moved into the bishop’s palace near the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, the place appointed for the ceremony. It was to be the first marriage of a dauphin in the city for over 200 years.

On the pavement before Nôtre Dame was erected an observation platform to hold prominent officials, including the Scottish commissioners. In addition, a 12-feet-high gallery in the shape of an arch and decorated with green boughs connected the door of the bishop’s palace to the cathedral door before which stood a pavilion, adorned with fleurs-de-lis. At 11:00, to trumpet fanfare, Eustache du Bellay, bishop of Paris, accompanied by his cross-bearer and choir-boys carrying lighted tapers, opened the cathedral door. From the palace emerged Guise, the grand master for the occasion, and the Swiss Guard in charge of security. Mounting the platform Guise instructed the aristocracy not to crowd too closely and thereby obstruct the view of the other onlookers.