Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots E-Book

Margaret Swain

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Although a large body of needlework has always been attributed to Mary Queen of Scots, little attempt was made to authenticate these pieces or to explain how so energetic and impetuous a woman could have found pleasure in the meticulous craft of embroidery. This is the first comprehensive study of the Queen as a needlewoman describing all the works associated with her. For the first time every piece marked by her cipher or monogram is illustrated in full. A biographical outline provides the framework for understanding her work by setting it in the context of her unsettled and stormy life. It recounts the influence of her formative years in France and her absorption in needlework during the years of imprisonment. Many of the embroideries can be seen in British country houses and in Scottish collections. A significant work in the history of costume and textiles and sheds a new light on those little known aspects of Mary Queen of Scot's life. The first comprehensive study of the Queen of Scots as a needlewoman and how such an energetic and impetuous woman could have found pleasure in the meticulous craft of embroidery. Illustrated in full with 12 colour, 70 black & white photographs and 20 illustrations. Margaret Swain is an expert on the history of costume and textiles and was awarded an MBE for her work on embroidery and tapestries.

Leseprobe

The Book

The events of Mary Stuart’s stormy life have provided a dramatic and recurring topic for literature of all kinds. However, although it is also well-known that a large body of needlework attributed to her exists, little attempt has been made to authenticate these pieces or to explain how such an energetic and impetuous woman could have found pleasure in the meticulous craft of embroidery.

This is the first comprehensive study of the Queen of Scots as a needlewoman, describing all the works associated with her, and for the first time every piece marked by her cipher or monogram is illustrated in full. As an understanding of her work is impossible without some reference to her public life, for those unfamiliar with it a brief biographical outline provides a framework for the main content of the book.

The author, an expert on the history of costume and textiles, constructs a fascinating picture of the quality of life at court in Mary’s time. The formative years spent in France, where elegance was reflected in all aspects of day to day living, from the sumptuous hangings and elaborate dress to the delicately embroidered personal linen, were to give her a taste for rich materials that was to remain with her throughout her unsettled life. Here she also learnt to look for ideas and designs for embroidery in the popular emblem books.

Mary may have learnt at court that needlework was an essential accomplishment for a woman, but the main interest in the pieces she produced lies in their deeply personal significance. The ‘devising of works’ became an absorbing pastime in the years of imprisonment, and she found release from her sense of injustice in the symbols she embroidered on them.

This is not only a significant work in the history of costume and textiles, but sheds a new and interesting light on those aspects of Mary’s life about which little is known.

The Author

MARGARET SWAIN grew up in Lancashire and was taught to embroider by her Grandmother even before she learned to read. She later trained as a nurse in London, married and after the war moved with her family to Edinburgh. While pursuing her strong interest in history she recognised the high quality of Scottish historical needlework, then little known, so she researched it, travelling widely, writing and working tirelessly to bring it to a wider audience. She lived in Edinburgh until her death in 2002.

She also researched more widely into the history of textiles, with a particular interest in the social factors causing a certain type of needlework to be made at a given period, and published many articles on the historical background of textiles in Apollo, The Connoisseur, Country Life, The Times, Furniture History, Costume, and Embroidery.

Her books include The Flowerers (1955), Historical Needlework (1970), Figures on Fabric (1980), Ayrshire and other Whitework (1982), Scottish Embroidery: Medieval to Modern (1986), Embroidered Stuart Pictures (1990) and Embroidered Georgian Pictures (1994). She advised and worked with institutions at home and abroad, from Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, organized exhibitions of needlework and costume and was a popular lecturer. In 1981 she received an honorary MA from Edinburgh University, and in 1989 an MBE for her work on embroidery and tapestries.

A Review

‘It is rare to find an embroidery book that combines all the excitement and drama of an historical novel with detailed information on techniques, materials and pattern sources, but that is what makes Margaret Swain’s book . . . . such compelling reading.’

Thomasina Beck in Needlecraft No 107

The Needlework of

MARY

Queen of Scots

Margaret Swain

RUTH BEAN

First published (hardbound) 1973 by Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Inc.

This edition published in 1986 in Great Britain by Ruth Bean Publishers, an imprint of The Crowood Press Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire, SN8 2HR

This e-book first published in 2014

www.crowood.com

This impression 2013

Copyright © Margaret Swain 1986, 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN 978 1 84797 678 9

Contents

Author’s Note

FRANCE

1 Childhood

2 The Queen-Dauphiness

3 Needlework in France

4 Ladies’ ‘works’

SCOTLAND

5 The Queen of Scots

6 Lochleven

7 The Queen’s movables

8 Little flowers on canvas

ENGLAND

9 The Daughter of Debate

10 The thread is cut

11 The Chartley inventory

12 The Oxburgh hangings

13 Envoi

Further Reading

Index

Calendar

1542

8 December

Birth of Mary Stuart, daughter of James V of Scotland and Marie de Guise.

14 December

Death of James V. Mary succeeded to the throne of Scotland.

1543

9 September

Coronation of the infant Queen of Scots.

1548

7 August

Mary sent to France to be brought up with the children of the French King, Henry II.

1558

24 April

Marriage of Mary and Francis, Dauphin of France.

17 November

Elizabeth succeeded to the throne of England.

1559

10 July

Death of Henry II. The Dauphin became Francis II of France and Mary became Queen of France.

1560

11 June

Death of Marie de Guise, Regent of Scotland.

11 August

The Scottish parliament established the reformed Protestant religion in Scotland.

5 December

Death of Francis II, succeeded by his young brother Charles IX.

1561

19 August

Mary returned to Scotland.

1562

August – September

Mary visited Inverness and Aberdeen. Rebellion of the Earl of Huntly and his son.

1565

29 July

Mary married Henry, Lord Darnley as her second husband.

1566

9 March

Murder of Mary’s secretary, David Rizzio.

19 June

Birth of Mary’s son, James, later James VI of Scotland and 1 of England.

1567

10 February

Murder of Darnley.

15 May

Mary married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell as her third husband.

15 June

Battle of Carberry Hill. Mary taken prisoner by her nobles. Bothwell outlawed and escaped to Denmark, where he later died in prison.

16 June

Mary imprisoned in the island of Lochleven.

29 July

The infant James crowned King of Scots, after Mary had signed an instrument of abdication. James Stewart, Earl of Moray became Regent.

1568

2 May

Mary escaped from Lochleven.

May

Mary’s supporters were defeated at the battle of Langside.

16 May

Mary fled to England, landing at Workington, Cumberland.

18 May

Mary lodged in Carlisle Castle, afterwards moved to Bolton Castle, Yorkshire.

1569

January

The Earl of Shrewsbury became the custodian of Mary, first at Tutbury Castle, then at Sheffield.

1570

Secret marriage plans between Mary and the Duke of Norfolk.

1572

Execution of the Duke of Norfolk for his part in the plot against Queen Elizabeth.

1584

Mary taken from the charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury.

1585

January

Imprisoned at Tutbury under Sir Amyas Paulet.

Autumn

Moved to Chartley Hall, Staffordshire.

1586

The Babington Plot.

September

Mary taken to Fotheringhay Castle.

15 October

Trial of Mary Queen of Scots.

1587

8 February

Execution of Mary at Fotheringhay.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE NEEDLEWORK of Mary Stuart has never been completely illustrated since the hangings at Oxburgh Hall were first described by Francis de Zulueta in the illuminating monograph published in 1923, and now out of print. In this book all the known pieces which bear her cipher or monogram are reproduced, as well as others attributed to her.

MY THANKS are especially due to Mr. Donald King, Keeper, and to Miss Santina Levey, Research Assistant, of the Department of Textiles, the Victoria and Albert Museum, who kindly arranged for the photography of the panels of the Oxburgh hangings, some of them specially for this book. I must also thank Mr. John Nevinson for the generous loan of his notes on the Oxburgh and Hardwick embroideries, Lady Bedingfeld and Mrs. Hartcup, who received me so hospitably at Oxburgh Hall, and Mr. R. E. Hutchison, Keeper, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, for his advice on the choice of portraits. I am deeply grateful to Mrs. A. M. Leach for the lacis and black work diagrams, to Mrs. Dorothy Sim for the loan of her thesis Mary, Queen of Scots, her surviving needlework, and for the charts of Mary’s cipher and the Hardwick design, and to Barrie & Jenkins for the use of the stitch diagrams from my book Historical Needlework.

I have received welcome help and advice from many, especially the Very Rev. J. Brennan, Rector of Blairs College, Aberdeen, Miss Pamela Clabburn, of Strangers Hall Museum, Norwich, Mr. C. P. Finlayson, the Department of Manuscripts, the University Library, Edinburgh, Dr. Georg Garde, Copenhagen, Mr. Stuart Maxwell, the National Museum of Scottish Antiquities, Mr. Revel Oddy, the Royal Scottish Museum, and Mr. Francis W. Steer, Librarian to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk. To all these, and to the owners who so courteously allowed their embroideries to be used as illustrations, my thanks are offered, and to my husband, who, as always, encouraged and supported me in the writing of this book.

List of plates

Bold type indicates colour

Plate number

Frontispiece. The Sheffield Portrait

1Signature of Mary when young

2Emblem Non inferiora secutus

3Engraving. Mary Queen of Scots

4Engraving. Francis II King of France

5Panel. Europa. The Metropolitan Museum

6Woodcut. Europa and the Bull

7Panel. Europa. Hardwick Hall

8George, 5th Lord Seton

9Madame de Canaples

10 Marie de Guise

11 Panel of lacis

12 Detail of lacis panel

13 Design for lacis by Vinciolo

14 Part of an orphrey

15 The Earl of Moray

16 The ‘Mary Ryal’

17 The Lochleven hanging

18 The Linlithgow hanging

19 The Arniston panel, detail

20 Valance. Daniel rescued from the lions

21 Chasuble at Blairs College, Aberdeen

22 Detail of chasuble

23 Flowers on canvas. Traquair

24 Bed hanging. Scone Palace

25 Detail of bed hanging

26 The Shrewsbury hanging

27 Woodcut. The Bird of Paradise

28 Emblem Ingenii largitor

29 Woodcut. The Monkfish

30 Panel. A SEA MOONKE

31 Panel. THE HOBREAU

32 Woodcut. The Hobreau

33 Panel. SHOFLER

34 Woodcut. Pelicanus

35 Panel. PHENIX

36 Panel. A CATTE

37 Panel. DELPHINE

38 Panel. POOLE SNYTE

39 Woodcut. The Ostrich

40 Panel. THE ESTRICHE

41 The Cavendish panel

42 The Norfolk panel

43 Woodcut. The Cat

44 Woodcut. The Dolphin

45 Hanging. LUCRETIA. Hardwick Hall

46 Detail of hanging

47 Red satin skirt

48 Cushion cover with emblems. Hardwick Hall

49 Panel. Armillary sphere and emblems

50 Panel of lacis

51 Cushion cover with emblems. Hardwick Hall

52 King’s Room, Oxburgh Hall

53 Panel. PHESANT

54 Octagon panel. MARIE STVART

55 The Marian hanging

56 The Cavendish hanging

57 The Shrewsbury hanging

58 Panel. LYONE

59 Woodcut. The lion

60 Panel. AN UNICORNE

61 Octagon panel. Palm Tree and Tortoise

62 Octagon panel. ELIZABETH MARY

63 Octagon panel. Pulchriori detur

64 Panel. ONCE

65 Woodcut. Pheasant

66 Panel. BUTTERFLIES

67 Panel. THE CANKER

68 Panel. GLEADE

69 Woodcut. The Toucan

70 Valance. Beaver and Genette

71 Woodcut. The Beaver

72 Panel. JUPITER

73 Woodcut. Elephant

74 Panel. ELEPHANT

75 Panel. A BOATE FISHE

76 Woodcut. Echinops

77 Woodcut. Reindeer and milkmaid

78 Panel. Reindeer and milkmaid

79 Woodcut. Snails

80 Panel. SNEILES

81 Woodcut. Monkey

82 Panel. AN EAPE

83 Panel. A BYRDE OF AMERICA

84 Octagon panel. Marigold turning to the sun

85 Panel. A BYRD OF AMERICA (Toucan)

86 Panel. A TURTLE DOVE

87 Panel. A TIGER

88 Child’s reins. Arundel Castle

89 Detail of child’s reins

FRONTISPIECE

The Sheffield Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, said to be painted by P. Oudry.

FRANCE

1 Childhood

She became Queen when she was only six days old. Her father, James V of Scotland, died suddenly (some say mysteriously) on December 14th, 1542, at the age of thirty, leaving as his only legitimate heir the baby girl. Mary was the third child born to James and Marie de Guise, James’s second wife. Two sons had died in infancy, and the birth of a female child, followed so rapidly by the death of the King, was regarded as a great disaster in Scotland. In the words of John Knox ‘all men lamented that the realm was left without a male to succeed’.

Mary’s father had himself succeeded to the throne as an infant after his father James IV had been killed fighting against England at the battle of Flodden in 1513, and the kingdom had been torn then by the perpetual feuds of the most powerful families of Scotland, most of them related to the royal house of Stewart. The young king’s widowed mother, Margaret Tudor, had subsequently married one of the Scottish nobles, Archibald, Earl of Angus, who became Regent during the childhood of the King, and his extravagance and greed had caused bitter envy and strife. Now another infant – this time a girl – succeeded, with the inevitable power-struggle for the regency, while England was poised to invade and seize the country after the defeat of the Scottish army at the battle of Solway Moss – a defeat that some said had broken the heart of Mary’s father and caused his death.

Scotland and England were still two separate and independent kingdoms, although Henry VIII, King of England, the brother of Queen Margaret, regarded himself as overlord of the smaller realm of Scotland. Following the death of James V and the birth of a female successor, Henry proposed by the Treaty of Greenwich an end to the centuries-long warfare between Scotland and England. Henry had a son, the future Edward VI, then aged six, and it was suggested that the infant Queen of Scots should be brought up at the English court and become Edward’s bride, thus uniting the two kingdoms by marriage. The Scottish nobles, especially those receiving a subsidy from the English King, agreed, but the treaty was never put into effect.

Instead, the regency struggle continued all through the summer of 1542. The Protestant, pro-English party were overruled by a Catholic regency subsidised by French money. Mary was crowned at Stirling at the age of nine months, and Henry VIII resumed the warfare. He devastated the south of Scotland, and defeated yet another Scottish army at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh, a few miles from Edinburgh, in 1547.

It was this defeat that finally persuaded the Scots that any hope of withstanding the English lay in obtaining help from France. The French King, Henry II, agreed to send military assistance in January, 1548. In return the young Queen was to be sent to France and brought up at the French court as the future bride of his eldest son, the Dauphin Francis. The Queen’s mother, Marie de Guise, agreed readily. As the betrothed of Edward Tudor Mary would have been brought up a Protestant. As the bride of the future French King, Mary would be brought up a Catholic, under the care of her grand-mother, the Duchess Antoinette de Guise, and of her uncles, the Duke de Guise and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine. But the final parting with her small daughter was painful. On August 7th, 1548, Mary sailed from Scotland with her ladies, her gentlemen and her four Maries, the young girls of noble family, in galleys sent by the King of France. She landed in France after a stormy voyage six days later.

The French court at which she arrived had become under Francis I the most brilliant in Europe. His son, Henry II, who had sent the galleys for Mary, was as cultivated as his father, but lacked his gaiety and exuberance. He had inherited his father’s passion for hunting, and had a genuine affection for his children.

Henry’s wife, Catherine de Medici, had been orphaned at birth. She had been starved of affection as a child in Florence, where, as heiress of the Medicis, she had been regarded merely as a bargaining pawn. The only happy period of her singularly loveless childhood had been spent in a Florentine convent, where she had been placed for safety. Her marriage to Henry had been equally loveless. The uncrowned queen of the court was the legendary Diane de Poitiers, who had become the king’s mistress in her widowhood, even though twenty years older than the young prince. He remained devoted to her till the day of his death, by which time she was nearly sixty. She shared the King’s passion for hunting. Indeed her unfading beauty and superb health may have owed more to her habit of rising early to ride, than to the asses’ milk baths she is reputed to have enjoyed.

Queen Catherine accepted Henry’s devotion to Diane with dignity and hid her feelings. She had the additional anguish of having had to wait ten years for the birth of her first child. She then bore nine more delicate, highly strung children in rapid succession. When Mary arrived to share the royal nursery, the Dauphin Francis was four. Elizabeth, later to be the third wife of Philip II of Spain, was three, and Claude was a baby girl of just over a year. After Mary’s arrival there followed Charles (later Charles IX), born in 1550; Henry (III) in 1551; Francis, Duke of Alençon, in 1554; and the following year Marguerite (la Reine Margot who married Henry of Navarre). Catherine’s three other children died in infancy.

Perhaps because she had had to wait so long to become a mother Catherine was almost over-solicitous about her children’s health and welfare. The royal nursery was also supervised by Diane de Poitiers to an extent that seems surprising today. Diane it was who suggested changes in the nursery regime to the King, and even trained the royal nursemaids before they were appointed by Catherine. The position of king’s mistress was regarded with a more tolerant eye than it would be today. Certainly the upbringing of Diane’s own two daughters – one the child of her dead husband, the other the king’s child – was firmly conventional. Diane’s concern for and interest in all the royal children’s illnesses and education appeared natural and genuine, and this even extended to the little Queen of Scots.

Mary’s welfare was also closely supervised by her grandmother and her mother’s brothers, the Duke de Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, both figures of immense influence and power. They did not underestimate the importance of being able to control the education of their niece, who, as crowned monarch of an independent kingdom, was a very desirable match for the future King of France. She was taught to believe that her future lay in France as the bride of the Dauphin. Indeed the idea of training her to rule Scotland appeared a relatively trivial matter, and the possibility of her returning to her native land seems not to have been considered.

In spite of all this, Mary’s childhood at the French court seems to have been a very happy one. She shared a room at first with Elizabeth, the eldest Princess. Her four Maries, the young maids of honour who accompanied her – Mary Seton, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton and Mary Livingstone – were sent off to a Dominican convent school, no doubt to encourage the little Queen to converse in French rather than in her own Scots tongue, which was considered uncouth by the French.

Mary was an intelligent, attractive child, and did her best to please these influential grown-ups. The King responded to her charm, calling her the most perfect child, and ordained that, as a crowned Queen and the future wife of the Dauphin, she should take precedence over his daughters. She listened attentively to all that her uncles taught her, and began to write dutiful letters to her mother, signed ‘your humble and obedient daughter, Marie’, echoing their instructions. She also asked her mother to write to the Duchess de Valentinois (the title bestowed on Diane de Poitiers by the King) to thank her for her kindness to her little daughter. If she pertly referred to Catherine de Medici within her hearing as ‘a daughter of tradesmen’, she was doubtless merely echoing what she had heard around her. Catherine ignored this as she had ignored all the other slights she had received.

Plate 1

Signature of Mary when a young girl on a letter sent to her mother, Mary de Guise. All her life the Queen of Scots signed herself MARIE. (National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.)

The royal children had their own establishment with ladies and gentlemen, chaplains, nurses and servants, as well as cooks, laundresses and stablemen. The size of this household rose steadily with each new baby. Because sanitation was so primitive, it was periodically necessary to move the whole household from one castle to another so that adequate cleansing could be carried out. For a move on such a scale horses, food and fodder had to be commandeered at the villages en route. For the royal children, however, the progress from one establishment to the next was surely a delightful interlude. They took their dogs – Mary had terriers, ‘earth dogs’, sent from Scotland – as well as their birds, falcons and hawks, and their horses. Riding was a necessity: it was the quickest and sometimes the only way of getting from one place to another, in an age in which the only other transport was heavy carriages with cumber-some wheels lurching over unmade often rocky roads. Mary became a fearless rider. She delighted in the exercise, and pined for it when she was kept from the saddle.

She learned to speak fluent French. She also learned Italian, the language of Catherine de Medici, and Latin, the language of the Catholic church and the civilised West, as well as Spanish and a little Greek. She was tall with an attractive voice, red-gold hair and beautiful hands. She learned to sing, to dance, to play the lute, to sew and embroider. She wore the rich clothes that befitted her rank in a court where clothing was sumptuous. When she was nine, material was bought – crimson and violet velvet, crimson silk damask from Venice, red taffeta and black taffeta lined with white or yellow or green taffeta – to be made into dresses. These were worn with separate sleeves, fronts and head-dresses of white, blue or crimson satin. In addition her tailor, Nicolas de Moncel, made for her a dress of gold damask banded with crimson satin, the sleeves slit and stiffened with buckram. Another dress was of cloth of silver with a hem of green satin, edged with silver lace and lined with white taffeta. A pair of sleeves and a front of white satin were sewn with a hundred and twenty diamonds and rubies. A coif and sleeves of violet velvet were adorned with gold buttons enamelled in black and white, the colours of Diane de Poitiers, and decorated with her sign, the crescent moon, symbol of the goddess Diana.