Mary Queen of Scots E-Book

Marjorie Bowen

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

MARY STEWART was born at Linlithgow on December 8th, the Festival of the Immaculate Conception, 1542, sole heiress of one of the most splendid families, and one of the greatest misfortunes in Europe. The Crown of Scotland had been in the possession of the family of Stewart for more than two hundred years, for it came with the marriage of Margery, daughter of Robert Bruce, to Walter Stewart in 1315. All of the monarchs of this family had been notable men, expressing in their persons and their actions the highest ideals of the times in which they lived. Nearly all of them had suffered violent deaths.
JAMES I, the graceful and elegant author of “The King’s Quair,” and by some considered the ablest of the Scottish sovereigns, was brutally murdered by a conspiracy of his nobles in February, 1446.

Leseprobe

MARJORIE BOWEN

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTSDAUGHTER OF DEBATE

1934

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385740214

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Note to Second Edition

Part I. France. 1542- 1561. “In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish; but the harvest shall be removed in the day of inheritance and there shall be deadly sorrow.” — The Book of Isaiah.

Part II. Scotland. 1561- 1567. “When thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thyself with ornaments of gold, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life… “For I heard a voice as of a woman in travail…saying Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.” — The Prophet Jeremiah.

Part III. England. 1567- 1587. “Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint…Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water.” — The Book of Isaiah.

Postlude

Appendix: The Incription on Mary’s Tomb at Westminster

FOREWORD

THE writers who select the first Mary Stewart as their subject usually seem impelled to offer some apology for dealing yet once more with a figure so familiar to readers of history, fiction, and legend.

It may, however, be reasonably argued that the story of this beautiful and unfortunate woman has become one of the immortal stories of the world, which will continue for many centuries yet to inspire historians, romantics, and poets to a retelling, and attract many thousands of readers into a rereading.

This tale can no more be staled by repetition than that of the Siege of Troy. It has become part of the common material of every writer, as the visit of the Three Kings, the departure of Adonis on his fatal hunt, and the rescue of Andromeda by Perseus were subjects enjoyed in common by all the painters of the Renaissance, and reproduced in numberless variations ranging from masterpieces of the highest inspirational merit to the hack work of copyists.

It is not likely that the most diligent of historians will ever discover further vital information relating to the history of Mary Queen of Scots. The most laborious researches have been made into every detail of her career and into the careers of those most intimately associated with her, and it would appear that the final result has been, some while since, yielded.

Anyone interested in this poignant episode of our history may, without undue fatigue, study the contemporary documents on which all judgments must be founded and come to his own conclusions as to the right or wrong of the case. No historian, however well equipped in knowledge, penetration, and impartiality, can do more than offer his opinion of this subject which is so obscure and so mysterious. It is the historian’s profession to chronicle facts; if he be a scientific historian he may scarcely, even, draw deductions from them, and his accurate volume will contain nothing but those carefully sifted collections of these same facts which, unrelated and often contradictory, appear to the lay reader to bear curiously little resemblance to a whole truth.

Yet, once the historian begins to sort and to arrange his facts, to endeavour to correlate them by the light of his own intuition and experience, too often by the light of his own emotions and prejudices, he must cease to be an historian and begin to invade the realms of poetry and fiction. Or, if he be not sober-minded but if he be partisan in spirit, the realms of polemic and special pleading.

So it seems that this business of writing of the past is attended by especial difficulties and that he who shall succeed at such a task must be especially gifted and especially fortunate, in his choice of a subject, in the manner of his approach, and in the final shape which he gives his work.

Kings and queens, heroines and heroes, those who used to be named the great and the famous, have for some time fallen out of favour in official history. The tendency has long been to deal more or less entirely with the histories of people, not those of their rulers or counsellors, with the cause and effect of those large movements which brought about those startling and dramatic climaxes which were formerly ascribed to individual character and effort.

Moved by something the same spirit modern biographers, discarding the one-time methods which displayed a personality in formal and stately fashion, stressing his virtues, glossing over his weaknesses, and giving considerable importance to all his public acts while glancing only with decorous reserve at the incidents of his private life, now go to the other extreme and, in selecting subjects for their books, merely choose butts for their wit. They delight to show their particular great man not only as not a hero to his valet but as not a hero to anyone else.

This attitude has in it, obviously, much of essential truth. No human being can be definitely a hero or a heroine on every occasion and in every circumstance. But, an insistence on this fact, which might, with a little humour, be taken for granted, distorts the picture which the author is creating in his feverish search for the exact and humiliating truth.

It is doubtful whether this method of caustic, mocking biography is really much relished by most of us. We may, for a while, be amused to learn that the man whom we have seen always taught to regard as more than life-size was, in many important aspects, a veritable pigmy, but our mirth is inclined to be dry and hollow. We are all of us vicariously humiliated in the degradation of the hero who must, in order to have attained the position from which his last biographer has carefully dragged him, have at one time or another represented a national idea or some achievement admired by all humanity, and who has therefore been the object of the secret emulation and applause of all of us.

The game has also proved too easy to be long popular—the amateur and the hack have brought into disrepute a school of writing which was inaugurated by the brilliant talent of distinguished men of letters. There is already a reaction in favour of the heroic element in humanity. But, as both the stone figure on the pedestal clothed in official robes, and the tattered scarecrow who for a while took his place, seem out of fashion, how shall those of us who feel impelled to evoke some portion of the past, go about our task? Psycho-analysis, so much run after a few years ago, and containing as it does a great deal of essential truth, has been staled by abuse. Having lost its novelty it has become boring. Dissect any given soul as you will the vital elements of its composition are as likely to escape you as if you confined yourself to a merely surface treatment.

To admit the potency of these arguments is to leave oneself without defence. The truth, then, always escapes; it is no more to be discovered than the gold of El Dorado. We none of us even know the truth about ourselves: how then can we hope to know it about another human being, and about one who has been dead, perhaps several hundred years? Why should we write at all on a subject of which we must of necessity know so little? The answer can only lie largely in the perversity of human nature—we desire to attempt the impossible. We hear from our earliest childhood of a certain subject or a certain character until we become fascinated, perhaps obsessed. Although reason tells us that everything is known and everything has been said on this matter, yet we long to re-arrange these familiar materials according to our own sense of design or of decoration, to make our own deductions from bare facts, to re-tell, by the light of our own experience, these experiences with which everyone is familiar.

We think that perhaps there is something which has not yet been said and that we can say it. In brief, we wish to paint our own pictures of the familiar scene, to give these legendary creatures faces of our own fashioning, to draw our own design on their robes. We wish to present once again Venus and Adonis in a fresh glade with trees of our own choice overhead, and flowers of our own affections underfoot.

We long to write our own love stories, though people have been writing them since the world began, and most of them are likely to be better preserving than our own. It is a desire akin to the yearning to grow our own roses and lilies, though the most modest florist’s shop for a few shillings can sell us better than those which are the product of our utmost care.

It is in this spirit and with the utmost diffidence that the following study of Mary Queen of Scots has been written. There is little need for it and less excuse for it, but the author was impelled to write yet one more version of this ancient story. It does not claim the dignity of a history nor of an official biography, though a conscientious study of all the facts available to one who cannot indulge in original research work, has gone to the completing of this study.

It has not been composed in any spirit of partisanship, nor with any idea of propaganda. The author has no personal feeling about any of the causes which convulsed Europe in the latter half of the sixteenth century. This book, then, which can only hope to make a modest claim on the attention of the general reader, and is not intended for the student or the specialist, sets out to be a portrait, broad in outline, but detailed in background and appointments, of a woman whose life and death are as exciting and uncommon as any in history.

This volume is not of sufficient pretensions to warrant the inclusion of any attempt at a bibliography of the subject. A glance at the catalogue of any large library will show at once the bewildering number of works which have been devoted to Mary Stewart. Not only has her career exhausted all the resources of the historian, it has been adorned by the verses of excellent poets and the fiction of accomplished novelists. Anyone who, taking up this book, desires to know more of Mary Queen of Scots, or wishes to read an account of her from another pen, will have no difficulty in finding where to make his choice, or even in, as already noted, studying for himself those original and contemporary documents on which all history, poetry, and fiction relating to this subject must, of a necessity, be founded.

For the same reason the book has not been much burdened with notes, but the reader may rest assured that when any statement is given as an undoubted fact the writer makes this statement on the authority of a reliable historian and the latest research. The dates are mostly old style; always so on documents and letters before 1582.[*] Where they have been taken from later sources it has not always been possible to discover if O.S. or N.S. is meant. Some dates, notably that of the Darnley marriage, remain doubtful. The spelling follows modern English usage.

[* Gregory XIII’s reform of the Julian calendar was adopted in 1582 by most Roman Catholics but not accepted all over Europe until mid-eighteenth century.]

In some parts of Queen Mary’s story there cannot be any question of facts—all becomes speculation. Here the present author, like all other authors meddling with this fascinating tale, has been forced to rely upon logical deductions from circumstance and character, and as such logical deductions the various suppositions and surmises are given. But there has been no twisting of known facts, no manoeuvring of circumstances to fit any preconceived ideas, no half-truths employed, and where previous workers have found it possible, among a confusion of conflicting evidence, to arrive at a definite conclusion this has been stated. Where the author’s own opinion is advanced it is given as having the value of a personal opinion and nothing more. There are no fictitious conversations, meditations, nor descriptions of imaginary scenes. The reader may rely on it that nothing set forth here is the invention of the author.

While, however, not venturing upon the arduous task of compiling a bibliography, nor of that scarcely less complicated labour of giving all the sources from which the following study was compiled, the author feels compelled to mention a few modern books of distinguished merit essential to any study of Mary Queen of Scots. The insoluble mystery of the Casket Letters is not likely to be ever dealt with more clearly and effectively than in “The Casket Letters and Mary Queen of Scots” by T. F. Henderson (Edinburgh, 1889). Much as this subject has been debated, no important discovery has been made and no definite conclusion come to since the publication of this book, which is written with notable clarity and impartiality.

“The Mystery of Mary Stewart” by Andrew Lang (London, 1901), is intensely interesting, both as closely argued history and as vividly written literature. The author says in his preface the object of his book was to show how the whole problem was affected by the discovery of the Lennox papers, which were here used for the first time.

In two excellent volumes: “Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth” (1914) and, “The Downfall of Mary Stewart” (1921), Mr. Frank Mumby has collected most of the important contemporary letters dealing with the fortunes of the two Queens; these take the story up to Von Raumer’s “Mary and Elizabeth” (1836). The three volumes together give an admirable selection from the bulky archives of the period.

The best known study and the most conspicuous by its literary ability written by a woman on Mary Queen of Scots, is that by Agnes Strickland.[*] It is marred, however, by partiality, and Miss Strickland lacked much of the material that has since been discovered.

[* “Lives of the Queens of Scotland” by Agnes Strickland. V. 3—7—1852—8.]

Sir John Skelton’s “Life of Maitland of Lethington,” that by Mr. Hosack on the Casket Letters, the romantic “Life” by Chalmers, published in 1818, which inspired Sir Walter Scott to write his study of Mary in “The Abbot,” the Dispatches of the Spanish Ambassador, translated and edited by Major Martin Hume, 1894, are all outstanding books among the voluminous literature on the subject. The Babington Conspiracy has been dealt with exhaustively and impartially by John Hungerford Pollen, S.J., in “Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Conspiracy;” the other works of Father Pollen on this subject are justly celebrated.

Those famous and established historians, Hume, Robertson, Lang, Mignet, and Froude have each given his version of the story of Mary Queen of Scots. None of these, however, affected to write without prejudice. Their methods have been largely outdated and they did not have the information available which has been ready to the hands of later historians. The “Memoirs” of Claude Nau have been carefully edited by Father Stevenson.

From France, Germany, indeed from every European country as well as from America, has come books on the subject of Mary Queen of Scots. But, as Andrew Lang remarked, “though every inch of the ground has been inspected as if by detectives on the scene of a recent murder, there are points as yet unseized even by German scholars, and it may be that some acute and fortunate historian will yet discover some piece of evidence which will supersede everything that has been already written about this most unfortunate of Queens.” Several excellent modern biographies by famous authors will come at once to the minds of interested readers.

Most of the old Scots verse, etc., quoted, is from the enchanting Anthology “News from Scotland” by the Hon. Eleanor Brougham (1926).

The description of Bothwell’s supposed mummy is from the account by M. Jusserand, given in Appendix A to “The Mystery of Mary Stewart” by Andrew Lang, 1901.

Among the most attractive of recent biographies is the enchanting study by Eric Linklater and the brilliant work by Sir Edward Parry.

A rare book is the Life of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, by Professor Frederik Schiern, first published in 1863, translated from the Danish by the Rev. David Berry and published in Edinburgh in 1880. This contains details of Mary’s third husband seldom or never to be found in English works.

It seems necessary to add a few sentences on the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, and those of the personages most intimately concerned in her life and reign, for this is a point of considerable importance. When dealing with a character who lived before the days when portrait painting was employed, one always feels that one is dealing with only a half-glimpsed figure, however many indisputable facts or literary studies may be to hand. A single glance at an authentic portrait is often worth pages of description, and many a conspicuous personage of the past remains dim and uncertain in the mind because it is impossible to ascertain what he looked like when he moved among his fellows.

It is easy to form a mental picture of Mary Stewart. In “The Portraits of Mary Queen of Scots” by Lionel Cust (1903), reproductions of all the authentic portraits of the Queen and many of those which were long popularly but falsely supposed to be true likenesses are given. The genuine portraits are not numerous. Sir George Scharf and Mr. Lionel Cust after exhaustive researches in France, England and Scotland found that the only important indisputable portraits are these: The little drawing in red and black crayon of Mary, taken when nine years old, and another (this in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) of Mary as Dauphine of France, probably taken at the time of her marriage in 1558, when she was aged fifteen years and four months, then the drawing by “Janet,” or François Clouet, (possibly Jehan â Court?) drawn from life when Mary was a young girl, and the famous “Deuil Blanc” of the young Queen in widow’s dress taken immediately after the death of her first husband, François II, in 1561, when Mary was eighteen. From this exquisite drawing, which is also in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, numerous portraits in oils have been derived, two versions being in the Royal collection.

Although there are many interesting portraits of Mary extant which may or may not be genuine, or may or may not be authentic copies of lost originals, the next undoubted portrait of importance, according to these authorities, was taken many years later, during the captivity in Sheffield Castle. It is strongly believed to have been painted from life during the Queen’s residence under the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury; it is now in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Hardwicke Hall. It is signed P. Oudry and is a poor piece of work, probably the effort of a journeyman painter or embroiderer.

It was copied again and again, every detail of attire being reproduced with a reverent fidelity, which shows that Mary’s contemporaries and her immediate descendants regarded the portrait as authentic. It is possible, however, that it may have been a copy of a miniature taken from life. The “Morton” portrait, formerly regarded as a copy of this, is much superior and may be the original version.

After this there is nothing except the posthumous monument erected in Westminster Abbey by James I in 1603 and finished in 1609, the work of Cornelius Cure, master mason to the King, and his son, William Cure, painted and gilded by James Marney. The face of the figure on this tomb is supposed to have been modelled from a death mask and contains most of the salient characteristics notable in the authentic portraits. Several medals and the profiles on coins, including the exceedingly beautiful example by Primavera, help us to reconstruct the person of Mary Queen of Scots.

It is as notable as regrettable that there is no portrait of her extant in the heyday of her beauty and power when she was reigning Queen of Scotland. We see her as a child of nine years old, as a bride of fifteen and a widow of eighteen, and then there is no other likeness of her until she appears as a widowed captive, one who has lost everything but life, and who is nearly forty years of age. After that there is only the death mask or the face drawn from paintings or memory, as in the memorial pictures, the most important of which is that ordered by Elizabeth Curle, sister of Mary’s secretary, Gilbert Curle.

In “The Stewarts, being outlines of the personal history of the family,” Mr. Foster reproduces a gorgeous portrait (that in the possession of the Earl of Leven and Melville), painted with great fire and skill, which he claims to be that of Mary when in Scotland during her brief reign. It is tempting to believe that he is right—the face appears to be that of Mary Stewart. She is extremely richly dressed, and is shown without the widow’s cap with which she is too often associated. It seems, however, doubtful whether there were in Scotland at that period any painters capable of producing so finished and elegant a work of art, though it may be plausibly supposed that she brought her Court painter with her—the Jehan à Court who may have made the lovely “Deuil Blanc.”

Andrew Lang, in “Portraits and Jewels of Mary Queen of Scots,” sponsors this picture, which he believed represented Mary about 1559-1560. He identified the jewels worn in the portrait with entries in Mary’s inventories. This book gives a slightly different list of “authentic” portraits, including, besides the three French pencil drawings, the elegant wax medallion in the Breslau Museum of Mary at seventeen, the exquisite “Virtutis Amore” belonging to the Duke of Portland, 1559-1560, and a miniature in a reliquary, circa 1584. After a prolonged and careful study of the above mentioned pictures (a description of which will be found in the text of the present volume), it is possible to build up a portrait of Mary sufficiently accurate and lively for us to revisualize her at every period of her career. There are, besides the drawings, paintings and the wax relief, several medals that help to throw light on the personality of the Queen, and a contemporary caricature of Mary as a mermaid that is supposed to give some idea of her fascination.

All these portraits are reproduced either in Mr. Cust’s book or in that of Andrew Lang.

When we have considered all these portraits and got them, as it were “by heart,” we shall have a tolerable conception of what this famous woman looked like, even though it be that her greatest charms were those of the most transient nature, that cannot be preserved on canvas nor in words. But what of the woman herself? The soul behind the smooth features?

Mary Stewart belongs not only to history, but to legend and romance. Every historical character, like every country, has its legends—something neither true nor false, but a reflection or a shadow, as intangible as the mirrored image of a flower in a sheet of water, or in a pane of glass, yet full of a subtle truth and of an endless enchantment.

If we wish to play with the legend, to beguile ourselves with the romance it were better for us to ignore historians, to leave unread the chronicles and facts, lest we be disillusioned, perhaps shocked or disgusted. This gracious and lovely figure who has inspired so many poets, who has been to so many people “La Princesse Lontaine,” the lady of Tripoli for whom Rudel must search, and for whom, when he finds her, he must die, was, despite all these charming fantasies, a figure of historical importance.

She represented the last hope of the ancient Church in Scotland. She was used as a pawn in a futile attempt to annex Scotland to France; she was, for many years, a most vital figure in the bitterly disputed Succession to the English Crown, and in conclusion, she was the mother of the man who founded a new English dynasty. She was, during her lifetime, not only the rallying point of all the intriguers and malcontents of her own Faith, but after her death she was regarded as a martyr to this Faith, and her canonization was mooted at the Vatican.

She became, to very many, almost as soon as the axe fell at Fotherinhay, a symbolic figure—a woman, foully betrayed, deeply wronged, treacherously persecuted and slandered, who died with unblemished dignity and courage for her Faith. On the other hand, she was to those who were not of her religious persuasion “one of a monstrous regiment of women” as John Knox said in a too-famous phrase, “a Delilah, a poor, silly Jezebel,” as another contemporary writer named her—a scarlet woman—wanton, shameless, who justly paid the penalty for manifold and heartless follies. To others she was more than this—a lost creature stained by a monstrous crime, an adulteress, a murderess, a liar, forsworn, cruel, treacherous, false to the heart’s core.

Others again, while admitting, albeit reluctantly, her essential guilt endeavour to give her the dignity of an overwhelming passion—that rage of love which was the urge behind Clytemnestra’s crime and the frantic shame of Phaedra.

These severe but pitying critics of Queen Mary allow her a certain grandeur. She was, they argue, splendid, even honourable in her native character, but so driven by circumstance and emotion as to become a very fury. Then again to others who have but a vague and untidy idea, familiar as her name may be to them, of the actual events of her life and the actual details known of her character, she is a merely symbolic figure, faint and lovely as one of the half-fairy ladies out of the ancient minstrelsy of her native country. She is not to these a queen, but the Queen, for ever beautiful, for ever crowned, melancholy and wronged, the lady whom every page and stainless knight must love, although her love be fatal, whom every youth must hope to serve, though her service will bring nothing but death.

Her exquisite face is half hidden by a veil of finest lawn, her perfect hands hold lightly a Crucifix or a string of holy beads, her eyes are turned heavenwards, when she glances towards the earth it is in modest sorrow or gentle disdain. Her secret heart is inscrutable—she leans for ever from a mullioned window or on a terrace or balcony twined with roses, she touches a lute or listens to the singing of one of her bright girls. She is always dignified, disturbed by neither passion nor regret; a long captivity borne with unblemished heroism is concluded by an atrocious death, only redeemed from the utmost horror by the dignity and beauty of her acceptance of her bitter fate.

Many pictures, poems and novels have upheld this view of Mary Stewart. This is her legend, though there are some who a little vary the dim, romantic figure which they see as that of a noble woman hungry for true love, always betrayed by false love, always searching for the ideal lover and for ever ruined by the basest of men.

Let us endeavour in the space and with the abilities at our command to see if we can find the truth of this long dead Mary Stewart, the woman who certainly did not know that she was going to be either saint, martyr, or heroine, who could not have been aware of her own legend.

What was she like as she lived and moved in France, Scotland, and England three hundred and fifty years ago? Is it possible to so reconstruct her life, her actions, her likeness that the reader may, for himself, judge of what she was? This task seems difficult, if not impossible, but there may be some interest in the attempt.

M.B.

RICHMOND, SURREY. October, 1933.

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

The reception accorded to this biographical study has justified a second edition in which the author has taken the opportunity to amend some minor errors and misprints, and to express more clearly some points which seemed obscure. The basic facts on which the author’s reading of Queen Mary’s character is founded have not been disputed. Omitted from the books recommended for serious study of Mary Queen of Scots in the preface to the first edition was Mary, Queen of Scots, by D. Hay Fleming, London, 1899.

M.B. May, 1934.

PART I. FRANCE. 1542-1561.

“In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish; but the harvest shall be removed in the day of inheritance and there shall be deadly sorrow.” —The Book of the Prophet Isaiah.

MARY STEWART was born at Linlithgow on December 8th, the Festival of the Immaculate Conception, 1542, sole heiress of one of the most splendid families, and one of the greatest misfortunes in Europe. The Crown of Scotland had been in the possession of the family of Stewart for more than two hundred years, for it came with the marriage of Margery, daughter of Robert Bruce, to Walter Stewart in 1315. All of the monarchs of this family had been notable men, expressing in their persons and their actions the highest ideals of the times in which they lived. Nearly all of them had suffered violent deaths.

JAMES I, the graceful and elegant author of “The King’s Quair,” and by some considered the ablest of the Scottish sovereigns, was brutally murdered by a conspiracy of his nobles in February, 1446.

The result of this crime was a long Regency. The English Queen, Jane Beaufort, heroine of the famous poem, acting as guardian for her child, while able men ruled Scotland. The second James, killed by the bursting of a cannon while he was laying siege to the Castle of Roxburgh (the Scottish King having espoused the Yorkist cause in the Wars of the Roses), left the country in a distracted state and under the rule of a child of seven years of age—James III, whose guardian was his mother, Mary of Guelders.

This king was murdered in the flower of his age after a fight with the rebels at Sauchieburn, near Stirling, in 1488, leaving the throne, which had descended directly from father to son for a hundred years, to James IV, then a youth of sixteen, who had been suspected of fomenting the rebellion.

This prince, the grandfather of Mary Stewart and the man from whom she appears to have inherited many of her distinguished qualities, was one of the most remarkable figures of his time. Like his father and grandfather he was of athletic make, tall, handsome, dark-complexioned, with ruddy brown hair, a winning address, cultured, polished, of an ardent, romantic disposition. He spoke six languages and caused the first printing press to be set up in Edinburgh in 1507. Pedro di Ayala, the Ambassador of Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain, was enthusiastic in his praises of the Scotch king, who also impressed the Dutch philosopher Erasmus with his remarkable force of intellect.

In one of his dispatches to his master (July 25th, 1498), the Spanish Ambassador to Scotland writes what amounts to a panegyric on James IV, which is extremely interesting as showing the ideal of those times as far as kingly and manly qualities went, and in giving us a glimpse of Scotland, the rude kingdom of the North, as seen through the eyes of a cultured and intelligent Spaniard.

“The King is of noble stature, neither tall nor short, and as handsome in complexion and shape as a man can be.

“He speaks Latin very well, and French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish. His own Scottish language is as different from English as Aragonese from Castilian. The King speaks besides the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland and on the islands. It is as different from Scottish as Biscayan is from Castilian. His knowledge of languages is wonderful.

“He is well read in the Bible and in some other devout books. He is a good historian; he has read many Latin and French histories, and has profited by them as he has a very good memory. He fears God and observes all the precepts of the Church; he does not eat meat on Wednesdays and Fridays; he would not ride on Sundays for any consideration, not even to Mass; he says all his prayers. Before transacting any business he hears two Masses. After Mass he has a cantata sung, during which he dispatches sometimes urgent business.

“He gives alms liberally, and is a severe judge, especially in the case of murderers. He has a great predilection for priests, and receives advice from them. Rarely, even in joking, a word escapes him that is not the truth. He prides himself much upon it and says it does not seem to him well for kings to swear their treaties as they do now—the oath of a king should be his royal word, as was the case in bygone days.

“He is neither prodigal nor avaricious, but liberal when occasion requires. He is courageous, even more so than a king should be. He is not a good captain because he begins to fight before he has given his orders. He is active and works hard. When he is not at war he hunts in the mountains.

“I tell Your Highnesses the truth when I say that God has worked a miracle in him, for I have never seen out of Spain a man so temperate in eating and drinking. Indeed, such a thing stems to be superhuman in these countries. It may be about a year since he gave up (so at least is so believed) his love-making, as well from fear of God as from fear of scandal in this world.

“He is thought very much of here. I can say with truth that he esteems himself as much as though he were lord of the world. He loves war so much that I fear, judging from the provocations he receives, the peace will not last long. War is profitable for him and for the country.”

The faults of this romantic character may be sensed even through the words of praise. James was arrogant, headstrong, had given scandal by youthful licentiousness, resented any attempts to curb his power, was led by the priests, and feeling, no doubt justly, superior to all who surrounded him, was determined to rely on his own inclinations and his own judgment.

He was, however, a most attractive prince, and bore, at least to a superficial eye, all the characteristics of a perfect knight of chivalry. He was fond of pageantry and splendour—his marriage with Margaret Tudor, “sweet, lusty, lovesome lady,” turned the whole of Edinburgh into the background for a pageant.

On this occasion the Black Friars presented the bridal pair with a bottle containing three drops of the blood of Christ. Other details of these sumptuous nuptials show us the Queen playing at cards, dancing with the Countess of Surrey, the King performing on the clarichords, and leaping on an impetuous courser without putting a foot in the stirrup.

Like most great princes of that day James IV was passionately fond of music. Italian and Moorish musicians clad in red and black followed him from place to place, and we have seen how Di Ayala noted his habit of transacting urgent business to the soothing sound of a cantata.

He used his almost unbounded influence for the improvement of his kingdom and for the establishment of culture. In his reign was founded the University of Aberdeen, confirmed by a Bull of the Sixth Alexander, Roderigo Borgia. The Papal Bull answering the King’s petition bears witness to the eagerness of James that “the city of old Aberdeen, in the northern islands and mountains, in those northerly parts of the kingdom (which are in some places separated from the rest of the realm by arms of the sea and very steep mountains) in which regions are men who are uncultivated, ignorant of letters and almost wild on account of the too great distance from seats of learning and the dangers of travelling, should enjoy the privileges of a University where the liberal Arts, Theology, Canon and Civil Law and Medicine might be studied.”*

[* Aberdeen University was founded 1477. There were already two other such seats of learning in Scotland: St. Andrews, 1411; Glasgow, 1451. Edinburgh University was founded 1583.]

* * * * *

This splendid prince, who seemed so fortunate and so successful, who was so popular, respected, and feared, was betrayed by the defects of his own temperament, his impatience of contradiction, his impetuous and headstrong obstinacy, and his fantastic sense of knightly honour, into engaging himself in a brawl with his brother-in-law, Henry VIII of England. Ill-feeling was induced by petty Border quarrellings, and this was inflamed to fury in the sensitive mind of James by the capture of two Scottish privateers by English men-of-war, and by a letter from Anne of Brittany sent with a ring and a glove entreating the Scottish king as a true and loyal knight to assist a lady in distress and to advance for her sake “three steps into England.”

Taking no heed of the lamentations of his English Queen and the warnings of his most experienced advisers, James mustered the battle array of his kingdom with the flower of the Scottish nobility and crossed the Tweed in August, 1513. A few days afterwards there was fought the battle of Flodden Field, in which the Scots lost eight to ten thousand men, very few of whom were common soldiers. It was said that there was not one Scotch family of any distinction which did not lose one or more member on the field of Flodden. The mutilated body of the King was found under piles of slain and brought by his English conquerors to rest in the monastery at Sheen in Surrey.

* * * * *

Another female Regency, another long minority faced the Scottish nation, already bowed by the disaster of Flodden, and torn by the contentions of the English and French factions, which were augmented by the marriage of the Queen Dowager, Margaret Tudor to the Earl of Angus.

As James V, who had not been two years old at the death of his father, grew up he revealed many of the affable and winning qualities which were already expected in the Stewarts. His manners were sympathetic, his person athletic and exceedingly handsome. Amid the tumult and confusion of the contending parties the figure of the young prince, accomplished, gracious, and good-humoured, stood out as an obvious object for popular admiration.

Despite his English mother, possibly even because of her and his experience of the meddling imperious character of this sister of Henry VIII, the young King leaned to the French faction, and was determined to seek a princess of the royal House of France for his wife.

He married first Magdalene, daughter of François I, but the young and consumptive princess died soon after her arrival in Scotland, and James V contracted a second marriage with Mary, daughter of the Duke of Guise and widow of the Duc de Longueville, by whom she had a son, the then reigning Duke.

The House of Guise (comprising the rulers of Lorraine) was, in the ability of its members, their conspicuous gifts of courage and bold statecraft, one of the most remarkable in Europe. But this alliance with a family, restless, intriguing, arrogant, not royal yet near the throne, and avid of regal honours, was not to prove fortunate for the House of Stewart.

* * * * *

The first throes of the Reformation, which were for so many years to convulse Europe, were already beginning to be felt in Scotland. James V was not credited with being an ardent supporter of the ancient Faith, and his uncle, Henry, VIII, tempted him frequently with alluring promises to declare his independence of the Papal See. The Scottish King found, however, that his main task was that of his predecessor, a struggle with the overgrown power of the turbulent nobility, and in this effort he required the help of the clergy. The priests so far gained an influence over James as to bring about a rupture with England, which culminated in the Scottish King’s refusal to meet his uncle at York in the autumn of 1541. Henry intended to kidnap his nephew and James suspected the plot.

Stung by this personal slight, as he termed it, the English King refused to listen to any attempt at a reconciliation and war was declared between England and Scotland in July, 1542. James rallied two armies to meet the Duke of Norfolk, who was invading his kingdom at the head of the English forces.

The first was so mutinous that the King was forced to disband it. The second expedition marched to Solway Moss where, discontented and rebellious, it fell into confusion and was easily defeated by a few hundred English borderers.

* * * * *

James V was at Falkland when the news of the shameful rout reached him. His mind had for long been forlorn and overcast, his body weakened by his continued anxiety and trouble and he was in no condition to withstand the shock of this disaster. He saw in Solway Moss a repetition of Flodden Field—a severer blow inflicted by the same hand. Personally brave, gay and brilliant in prosperity, he had not the resilience of spirit and the stern moral courage required to meet defeat; he was, besides, surrounded by traitors and “vexed by some unkindly medicine.” He sank into a deep melancholy which was increased by the news that his Queen, then at Linlithgow, had borne him a daughter; her sons had died at birth.

Referring to the Crown of Scotland which had come into his family with the marriage of Margery Bruce, he muttered: “It came with a lass (alas)! and it will go with a lass (alas)!” The unhappy prince, dying of a broken heart, could not have believed it possible that the family of Stewart, then represented by an infant girl under the guardianship of a woman, could continue to hold a kingdom distracted by internal conflict and tormented by the meddlings of foreign politicians.

His punning prophecy, if indeed he ever made it, was not, to the letter, fulfilled. If his daughter, as unhappy as himself, did lose the Crown of her ancestors, her son was to be King of Scotland from his tenderest age and in his manhood to rule over the entire island. Probably James V, when on his melancholy deathbed would have found nothing so astonishing as this glimpse into the future, which would have shown his grandson sitting on the throne of his implacable enemy, Henry VIII, who had harried both him and his father to their deaths.

* * * * *

Again Scotland was faced with a minority and a Regency. When Mary of Guise rose from childbed she found herself faced by what seemed a task not only bitter and difficult, but hopeless. She, a woman and a foreigner, had to contend with the intrigues of the ambitious, greedy, and insatiable nobles who had broken her husband’s heart, with the swell and turmoil of the divided Christian Church, with the ancient Faith battling bitterly with all its manifold resources against the crude violence of the new Faith, with the manifold plots and counterplots of unscrupulous foreign intriguers who thought to find their own advantage in fishing in the very troubled waters of Scotland.

Mary of Guise was a dauntless princess. We do not know if she regarded her charming husband with more than the vexed compassion commonly accorded by a high-spirited woman to a man whose character is not strong enough for his destiny, but at least, she accepted the heritage that he had left her with unfailing courage, and undertook to rule in the name of her infant daughter the kingdom that had admired, loved, rebelled against and murdered so many Stewart monarchs.

* * * * *

Mary Stewart was proclaimed Queen six days after her father’s death at Falkland. It was a bold gesture—one of confidence in the Divine Right of Kings, for, beyond what innate loyalty and chivalry she might evoke in Scottish hearts, the infant Queen had little on which she could rely in any effort to retain the precarious throne of her forefathers. The vexations and difficulties of the position of Mary of Guise were tediously increased by the fact that the descendants of Margaret Tudor by her second marriage with the Earl of Angus, the members of the great House of Hamilton (the head of whom afterwards bore the French title of Duke of Châtelherault) and the Earl of Lennox were claimants to the throne of Scotland. The last was, though the second in rank, the more formidable claimant as he chose to consider James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, as illegitimate (since Arran had been born after his father’s divorce), and possessed the more turbulent and forceful character. Nor had the tiresome confusion of the situation been improved by the afterfruits of the licentious life of James V; he had left six bastard children, legitimized by the Pope, who had given some of them Church benefices.

One of these, born of a long and passionate intrigue with the highborn Margaret, daughter of Lord Erskine, who was believed to have been the King’s true love and who had since married a Douglas, a member of one of the proudest families of the new nobility, was the Lord James Stewart, then too young to give any signs of his future ability. He had, in fact, inherited most of the talents of his father and grandfather, and possessed far more than their small share of prudence, judgment and discretion.

At the time of his father’s death after Solway Moss he appeared to be safely disposed of in the Church, where he held the position of Prior of St. Andrews, but the shrewd judgment of Mary of Guise must have regarded him as well as Lennox and the Hamiltons as a potential danger.

* * * * *

Mary of Lorraine was a very tall, elegant woman of great dignity and reserve in her deportment. She has been described as great-hearted, just and noble; her manners were austere and there was never any stain on her reputation. Either naturally cold or proudly controlled she, twice widowed, beset by numerous temptations, in a conspicuous position, and surrounded by enemies, never was tainted by serious suspicion of scandal.

Henry VIII at once offered the hand of his son, the future Edward VI, to the infant Queen, the daughter of the man whom he had harried to his death.

James Hamilton, Earl of Arran (afterwards Duke of Châtelherault), who held, by right of his royal blood, the position of Governor of Scotland, and who disputed with David Beaton, the Cardinal-Archbishop of St. Andrews, the principal authority of the realm, was for the English marriage. Arran had joined the Reformation and stood well with Henry VIII, with whom he even negotiated the possible marriage of his own son with the Princess Elizabeth.

The Protestant Regent, however, was timid, irresolute, inexperienced, and incapable of holding his own. He was soon rivalled, if not displaced in all but nominal power by Cardinal Beaton, who had been an able minister under James V. This adroit churchman refused to be a tool of Henry VIII and supported the Queen Mother in her resistance to any attempts to secure the person of Mary under the excuse of educating her at the English Court as a bride for the King of England. Henry Tudor was not slow to conceive a deep hatred for the Scottish priest whom he could neither bribe nor threaten into obedience, and to plan his destruction as a prelude to the annexation, under more or less specious excuses, of the northern kingdom.

* * * * *

It is possible that Henry might have succeeded in his desires with regard to the marriage had not the insolence of his terms—i.e., the handing over of the Castles of Dumbarton, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Stirling, Dunbar, and Tantallon, the cancellation of all treaties with France, the pledge of the Regent to enter into no foreign league without his consent,—amounted to a demand for the complete subjugation of Scotland and an acknowledgment of his supremacy as overlord. Even his supporters could not get these terms through the council. One of them, Sir George Douglas, declared “—there is not so little a boy but he will hurl stones against any motion to give the government of this realm to the King of England.”

Mary of Guise and Cardinal Beaton found, therefore, no difficulty in refusing the English match, though they must have viewed with dismay Henry Tudor’s instant vengeance. When the Papal Nuncio to Scotland, Marco Grimani, wished to reach Edinburgh he was obliged to sail down the Loire to Nantes and gain the Scottish coast by skirting the west of Ireland because St. George’s Channel was full of the menace of Henry’s fleet, and this despite the Nuncio’s escort of eight French men-of-war.

Some of Grimani’s letters to Dandino, the Papal Nuncio to the Court of France, survive; they describe vividly the wretched state of Scotland during Mary’s infancy: “confusion, division, heresy, poverty,” the Queen Dowager all but a prisoner, Cardinal Beaton shut up in his castle of St. Andrews, Arran, the nominal Regent, or “Governor,” powerless.

The safe arrival of Grimani with munitions and artillery from France further inflamed the exasperated temper of Henry VIII, and he declared war on Scotland, 1543.

* * * * *

Mary of Lorraine had, naturally, and not only from affection for her native land, but because she had experienced the pride, power, ferocity and duplicity of the English monarch, already turned to France for support and assistance. Failing the three children of Henry VIII, Mary, Elizabeth, Edward and their issue, Mary Stewart was the next heiress to the throne of England. She was, therefore, from her birth, of immense importance in the eyes of political Europe. Her maternal relations were both impressed and flattered by her high pretensions. Five of these were men of extraordinary talents and force of character, boundless ambition, and an inexhaustible capacity for intrigue. They contrived to torment France for more than a quarter of a century, and almost subverted the throne of the Valois. They would undoubtedly have succeeded in doing this and in placing one of themselves upon the throne of St. Louis, had it not been for the staunch determination and implacable courage of the Italian Queen, Catherine de’ Medici.

* * * * *

Nine months after her father’s melancholy death, Mary Stewart had been crowned Queen of Scotland at Stirling by Cardinal Beaton, September 9th, 1543. While Mary of Guise with notable courage and intelligence was undertaking the formidable labour of guarding her daughter’s interests in Scotland, then affronting the English invasion, the infant Queen was sent to Inchmaholm, which, as it was a Priory on an island in the middle of the lovely lake of Menteith, was considered n safe refuge from the obvious perils of a country so lawless and so unsettled. Many attempts to abduct so valuable a prize were likely to be formed had they the least chance of success.

At Inchmaholm was a sanctuary arranged by nature and by man, where the young Queen was tenderly nurtured and jealously guarded. She had for companions children of her own age; among them were conspicuous four little girls, to be known afterwards to history and ballad as “The Queen’s Maries”—Mary Seton, Mary Beaton (or Betoun), Mary Livingstone and Mary Fleming. The proud fortress on the wide northern lake, often wrapped in mist, often beaten upon by wind and rain, must have been outwardly desolate. The thought of it has an air of sad enchantment and the setting of a fairy tale beyond the ruin of time. Comfort and luxury, however, surrounded the young Queen. Such gardens as it was possible to grow in the north, such flowers as would bloom in this windswept spot were set out for her delight. We hear of no illnesses nor childish troubles, the baby Queen was probably healthy and therefore lively. She suffered none of the gloom, severity, or wearisome state which has overshadowed the lives of so many royal children.

She must, then, from her earliest consciousness, have become accustomed to elegance, luxury, cheerful company, and all the symbols of the ancient religion.

* * * * *

While she was thus safe in her water-surrounded fortress the wrath of the English King fell on Scotland. On the third of May, 1544, men-of-war cast anchor off Leith and the Earl of Hertford, the King’s brother-in-law (afterwards Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector), landed with an army of about sixteen thousand men and proceeded to put the inhabitants of Edinburgh to “fire and sword.” Henry’s savage instructions ran: “Sack, burn and slay…and extend like extremities and destructions to all towns and villages whereunto ye may reach conveniently.” These orders, which the English Privy Council considered “wise, manly, and discreet,” included special directions for the searching out of Cardinal Beaton and all his creatures, and the destruction of his town of St. Andrews. Hertford did his duty with cold-blooded efficiency, and after massacring all men, women and children within his reach, swept southward, where he wrought destruction along the coast, harrying and partially destroying Craigmillar Castle, Newbattle Abbey, Dalkeith, Leith, Haddington, Preston, and Dunbar, together with any Scots whom he could find.

During the whole of that and the following year (1544-1545), a succession of ferocious Border raids expressed the wrath of Henry. The rich and populous district between the Tweed and the Forth was turned into a hideous wilderness, the English generals, Wharton, Layton, and Evers, burnt, laid waste, and slaughtered without pause or pity.

* * * * *

The bitter hatred provoked by these atrocities found vent in the fierce fight at Ancrum Moor, where the “Souters of Selkirk” after their victory, counted eight hundred red crosses of St. George among the slain; among them were the bodies of Sir Brian Layton and Sir Ralph Evers, the detested English captains.

Thus Henry VIII, whose formidable career was nearly at an end, ravaged Scotland in revenge for the refusal of the hand of Mary for his son. The little Queen, perhaps for greater protection, for greater convenience or comfort, was taken to the rocky citadel of Dumbarton on the Clyde, which had been for several centuries one of the most important seaports in Scotland. Here, as at Inchmaholm, she was protected from all the disturbances and vicissitudes with which her guardians had to contend. She had her childish companions, her zealous guardians, her gardens, her sunny galleries, and all the elegance which the refined taste of her French mother could devise.

Mary of Guise, at bay before the English invasion, endeavouring to obtain help from the Pope, from Catholic Europe, had to face an appalling tragedy, perhaps engineered by Henry VIII, whose hatred had never ceased to pursue his courageous enemy, Cardinal Beaton. This priest was also loathed by the Reformers because of the energy with which he persecuted heresy, and the martyrdom of George Wishart (March 1st, 1546), served as a final pretext for one of those “murder bonds” too common in the history of Scotland.

Early in the morning of May 29th, 1546, a band of conspirators made themselves masters of the Castle of St. Andrews, dragged the old man from his bedchamber and, regardless of his entreaties, murdered him. After mutilating the body, clothing it in priestly vestments and hanging it over the Castle wall, the murderers took possession of the formidable fortress. A curious detail of this crime, related by John Knox, is that the murderers brought a portable grate of live fire with which to burn down the victim’s door.

It is impossible to judge how much of the inspiration of this murder was due to Henry Tudor and how much to the zeal of the Reformers, but it is certain that among the fanatic Protestants who were suspected of having a hand in the murder or of approving that action was John Knox, hereafter to be so prominent in the history of Mary Stewart, and who took up his residence with the murderers of the Cardinal when they fortified themselves in the Castle of St. Andrews and defied all authority. This association with murderers, Knox afterwards declared, was done under pressure—he had no other retreat.

This assassination of a Cardinal made a considerable stir in Europe; it was the first of the many political murders that were to mark the disastrous reign of Mary Stewart.

* * * * *

Lord Arran, nominal Regent of Scotland, made ineffectual attempts to bring the assassins to justice; the murder of Beaton was a sacrilege and neither Mass nor Matins could be said in Scotland until the Cardinal had been revenged. Henry VIII, as almost his last act of mischief, encouraged and aided the bandits ensconced in St. Andrews, which held out for a year, until the Queen Dowager, helped by the Guise brothers, succeeded in procuring the assistance of a French fleet of twenty-one galleys under the command of Admiral Leo Strozzi. Arran invaded the Castle by land and after a fierce resistance the garrison surrendered.

All the prisoners were not, curiously enough, executed, many were sent to work on the French galleys. Among them was the indomitable John Knox, who endured the misery of slavery with a ferocious patience and a zealous hope in the future.

* * * * *

In 1547 King Henry VIII died and was succeeded by his only son, Edward VI, whose Regent, Somerset, the young King’s uncle, continued the policy of the previous reign.

A few months later an Act was passed by the Privy Council of Scotland commanding the issue of a small coin which was to bear the image of the Queen. This little penny, made of base metal, is the earliest known attempt at a likeness of Mary Stewart. Such worn specimens of this Scotch penny as remain show only a crude representation of an infant face seen in full with bare neck and arched brows.

In this same year died François I, father of the frail Magdalene who had been the first wife of James V. He was succeeded by Henry II, who was married to Catherine, daughter of the great merchant princes of Florence—the Medici.

* * * * *

Negotiations for the English marriage were again renewed, but Somerset’s terms were little less harsh than those of Henry VIII, and preparations were made for a further appeal to arms. Among the English force of twenty-eight thousand which England mustered under the command of Somerset were two thousand Irish, “the wildest and most savage” that could be got, such as had been under the command of that unstable opportunist, Lord Lennox, in the former Border raids. On the other hand the Fiery Cross roused thirty thousand men to meet the invaders.

On the 4th September, 1547, the armies met at Pinkie Cleugh near Musselburgh. After a savage struggle of five hours the Scotch ranks broke; fourteen thousand were reported slain, many were drowned in the Esk, and the remnant was driven nearly to the gates of Edinburgh.

Lack of supplies and intrigues at home compelled Somerset to return to London and it was, therefore, impossible for him to follow up his victory.

The Queen Dowager was, however, faced by the prospect of another invasion on the western border led by Wharton and Matthew Stewart, Lord Lennox, who, disappointed of the Regency, had joined the English some while before.

* * * * *