CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Carnal Marriage

Nuptiae carnales a laetitia incipiunt et in luctu terminantur (Carnal marriages begin with happiness and end in strife)

Cecil’s comment on the marriage of Amy Robsart and Leicester

In March 1565 Darnley had been one possible candidate among the many from whom the queen of Scots might choose her consort. In April he became the one man she was determined to have beside her as husband. From Stirling she took a keen interest in the intrigues on the subject in Edinburgh. The faithful Maitland was promptly dispatched to London to acquaint Elizabeth with the news and, as it was hoped, win her approval – this sanction being doubly necessary because Darnley was not only a member of the English royal family through his Tudor descent, but also held to be an English subject. At this point Mary genuinely believed that she would receive this approval. Her confidence was easy to understand: Darnley had come north with the official blessing of England, and he was an English noble of the type whom Elizabeth had often observed that she wished Mary would marry. From hearsay Mary had reason to suppose that Darnley was one of Elizabeth’s own candidates, if the Leicester marriage failed. Maitland reached London on 15th April. But at this point the honeyed trap – as Darnley now turned out to be – was sprung. Mary to marry Darnley! Darnley, the great-grandson of Henry VII, with a claim of his own to the English throne! No indeed. Elizabeth, made newly aware of the disapproval of the Scottish Protestants for a Catholic bridegroom and anxious to dissociate herself from the project, now took the line that the whole idea of the marriage was preposterous, and represented a renewed attempt on Mary’s part to acquire the English throne for herself. In London Margaret, countess of Lennox, was first commanded to keep to her room and later sent to the Tower. Regardless of the fact that Lennox and Darnley had gone north with her express permission, Elizabeth exploded with anger and demanded their instant return. When neither paid any attention to her angry bulletins, Throckmorton was sent north to dissuade Mary from the disastrous, nay, menacing course of marrying Darnley.

Mary in Scotland was in no state to listen to the advice of even the sagest counsellor. Love was rampant in her heart for the first time, and she could hear no other voice except the dictates of her own passionate feelings. In the words of a poem of the period, it was a case of ‘O lusty May, with Flora Queen’ at the court of Scotland.¹ Randolph wrote back to Leicester in anguish of his ‘poor Queen whom ever before I esteemed so worthy, so wise, so honourable in all her doings’, now so altered by love that he could hardly recognize her. To Cecil he described a queen seized with love, ‘all care of common wealth set apart, to the utter contempt of her best subjects’.² Randolph was in a particular state of despair at the whole situation because it was being widely stated in Scotland that Darnley had been deliberately dispatched by Elizabeth to trap Mary into a mean marriage, and he only wished that there was not so much concrete evidence to back up these suspicions.

Darnley himself reacted predictably. In the same breath as he bewailed his once-honoured queen’s infatuation, Randolph reported that Darnley was now grown so proud that he was intolerable to all honest men, and already almost forgetful of his duty to Mary – she who had adventured so much for his sake. Darnley’s health had taken an unconscionably long time to recover, and even while on his sickbed he had struck the ageing duke of Châtelherault on his pate to avenge some fancied slight. By 21st May he had only been seen outside the four walls of his room once, and was still more or less confined to his bed. Well before Darnley’s final emergence Throckmorton managed to see Mary at Stirling and put to her as strongly as possible Queen Elizabeth’s dislike of what she considered to be a hasty manner of proceeding with Lord Darnley.

At this point Mary would surely have been wise to have taken serious thought. It was true that the approval of Philip II of Spain for the match was sought and won; Charles IX of France was approached through Castelnau and approved; her Guise relations were informed (although Mary’s beloved Anne of Guise must have been somewhat surprised by the development since only in September she had given it as her opinion that Mary’s innate pride was far too strong to permit her to wed a mere subject – ‘her heart was too great to debase it’).³ All these approvals were as nothing compared to the approval of Elizabeth, for after all Elizabeth could offer Mary what none of these other potentates had it in their power to extend – the reversion of her own throne. Over the question of Mary’s marriage, hypocritically as she might behave, maddeningly as she might procrastinate, Elizabeth was still in the position of paying the piper and therefore calling the tune. Only the rashest and most impetuous of women would have proceeded now on the same determined course without taking heed of Elizabeth’s declared disapproval – but this was what love had apparently made Mary Stuart. She and Throckmorton argued fruitlessly, while Mary tried to put her own point of view; finally Throckmorton concluded that the queen was so far committed in this matter with Lord Darnley, as it was irrevocable, and ‘that there was no point in exercising any persuasion and reasonable means any further’. Gloomily the courtier who had once so much admired Mary for her discretion in her first widowhood in France, and had wished that Elizabeth could behave more like her, concluded that she had been captivated, either by love or cunning, or rather, ‘to say truly, by boasting or folly’.⁴

Darnley’s recovery did nothing to dim the queen’s love. Now she was so infatuated that many began to suggest that Darnley had actually bewitched her, looking for a supernatural explanation of her great love when a natural one was only too obvious. At the beginning of June Randolph moaned again to Leicester that Mary and Darnley were still exchanging great tokens of love every day, and Mary seemed to have laid aside all shame in her behaviour. He even suggested that passion had caused the queen to lose her looks somewhat – but perhaps he merely meant that her dignity had been laid aside in favour of the reckless glowing aspect of a woman in love.⁵ Darnley’s pride waxed with the queen’s affection: to show his virility, he launched out characteristically with blows towards those who he knew would not dare to retaliate. On the day in May on which he was created earl of Ross, he drew his dagger on the wretched justice clerk who brought him the message, because he was not also made duke of Albany as he had expected. It was the typical gesture of the spoilt and vindictive child. By the beginning of July, Darnley was held in such general contempt that even those who had been his chief friends could no longer find words to defend him. Randolph made the gloomy, but as it proved singularly accurate, prophecy: ‘I know not, but it is greatly to be feared that he can have no long life among these people.’

The truth was that even if Darnley had spoke with the tongues of men and of angels, Mary Stuart would have had sufficient problems in persuading her court to accept him as her bridegroom. In the course of the summer Darnley wooed Mary with a light and courtly love poem:⁶

If langour makes men light
I am for evermore
In joy, both even and morrow …
The turtle-dove for her mate
More dolour may not endure
Than I do for her sake …

If such felicitous pleadings recalled to Mary pleasantly the far-off days of the French court, her advisers were singularly unimpressed by them. To the Scots now around the queen, whatever Darnley’s poetic talent, his arrogant nature was merely the final disaster in a long train of possible disadvantages. Firstly there was the attitude of England, crystallized in the discussion of the English Privy Council on 4th June, where the two great perils of Mary’s marriage were laid down as firstly the plain intention of Mary by such a match to occupy Elizabeth’s throne now rather than later, and secondly ‘the increase and credit of the Romish religion in England’. The avowed hostility of England was naturally fuel to the smouldering flames of Scottish hostility: Moray, for example, had viewed the match with great gloom from the start, since he had little desire to see the rival Lennoxes raised up, and his own credit and influence with his sister, built up over four years, debased. Added to which, Darnley had made it clear that he regarded Moray’s spreading dominions in Scotland as surprisingly and disagreeably extensive, and even passed unpleasant remarks on the subject to Moray’s brother, Lord Robert Stewart, an unwise choice of confidant.

Moray withdrew from the court at the beginning of April, on the ostensible excuse that he did not wish to witness the popish ceremonies at Easter. The whole benefit of his advice and approval which Mary had enjoyed for so long was thus removed from her, at one swoop, as Moray now proceeded to indulge in a series of confused but hostile manoeuvres, whose intention was to demonstrate his opposition to Darnley, without breaking into open rebellion, until he should be assured of English support for his cause. But there were other Scottish nobles, quite apart from Moray, who had ancient, feudal or hereditary reasons for disliking and fearing the Lennoxes: to many Scots Darnley seemed to combine the disadvantages of both the subject and the royal prince as a husband. The Hamilton faction was newly united with Knox in their disapproval of the marriage.*Even the Maries were said to be against the match – and to be out of credit with the queen in consequence. The only name mentioned as encouraging it was that of David Riccio, the queen’s new secretary for her French correspondence, and Darnley’s boon companion.

All the while Mary was caught fast in the tangled bonds of passion. So vehement did her love seem, and so overweening the pride of Darnley, that it was even rumoured that they had been secretly married in early July. It is very probable that the queen had gone through some betrothal ceremony with Darnley at the beginning of May, in the very first ecstasies of love, betrothals then resembling marriages in the sense that much greater liberties were allowed between the betrothed pair. But an actual secret marriage is rendered unlikely by the fact that Mary deliberately and impetuously married Darnley before the arrival of the papal dispensation from Rome. The dispensation was necessary because they were step-first cousins, and Mary was acting on the presumption that the dispensation had already been granted in Rome even if it had not yet arrived in Scotland. She was certainly in no mood for hole-in-the-corner ceremonies.* On 22nd July Darnley was at last given the coveted title of duke of Albany. On 29th July the heralds proclaimed that Darnley (or Prince Henry as he was termed) should henceforth be named and styled ‘King of this our Kingdom’. This was Mary’s ultimate proud pursuit of her own desires, since rightly she should have asked Parliament to give Darnley the coveted title of king. By bestowing it herself, she was pledging her full authority in the cause of her future husband. Finally, on Sunday morning 29th July, between five and six o’clock in the morning, a radiant Mary was conveyed to the chapel royal at Holyrood, on the arm of her future father-in-law the earl of Lennox, and the earl of Argyll, there to await her chosen consort, once the young Lord Darnley, now King Henry of Scotland.

For this wedding, however, there was to be no dazzling white marriage robe for Mary Stuart, whatever the romantic passion which inspired her: she wore on the contrary a great mourning gown of black, with a wide mourning hood attached to it, which apparently much resembled the costume which she had worn on the burial day of Francis. This was to indicate that she came to her new husband not as a young and virgin girl, but as a widow, a queen dowager of France. Having been led into the chapel, she remained there until her future husband was brought in by the same lords. They exchanged the vows of the marriage service according to the Catholic rite and three rings were put on Mary’s finger, the middle one a gleaming diamond. Darnley then left Mary alone to hear Mass, abandoning her with a kiss, and himself going straight to her chamber to await her. With the marriage completed, Mary was now at last by custom required to cast off her mourning garments, and signify that she was about to embark upon ‘a pleasanter life’. In Randolph’s words, after ‘some pretty refusal’⁹ which with some reason he believed was more for form’s sake than from any genuine reluctance to abandon her widowed state, she allowed everyone standing round to take out one pin; then, giving herself into the hands of her ladies, she changed out of her black clothes.

There then followed the usual dancing and festivities of a nuptial celebration; if they did not compare with the grandiose ceremonies which had accompanied Mary’s marriage to Francis, they were at least considered magnificent by Scottish standards, and seven years was perhaps long enough for the memories of such far-off grandeurs to have faded in Mary’s mind. There was a banquet for the full court of nobles, the sound of trumpets, largesse scattered among the crowd and money thrown about the palace in abundance. After the dinner there was some dancing, and a brief respite for recovery, before the supper, as magnificent as had been the dinner. Finally, as Randolph reported, ‘and so they go to bed’. It is to be hoped that Mary Stuart, who had sacrificed so much for this match, found at least this part of the ceremony to her satisfaction: there is no evidence to prove that she had anticipated the marriage ceremony and become Darnley’s mistress in the course of the summer, beyond the bawdy rumours of their enemies, who said that they had lain together at Seton. It is significant that Randolph, who had had every opportunity of observing the young couple throughout the summer, specifically advised the English Council to the contrary:¹⁰ ‘Suspicious men,’ he wrote, ‘or such as are given of all things to make the worse, would that it should be believed that they knew each other before that they came there [to bed]. I would not that your Lordships should so believe the likelihoods are so greatly to the contrary.’ Certainly the wildness of Mary’s infatuation seems to point to tormenting and unslaked physical feelings rather than the comparative satisfaction of a liaison. Throughout her four and a half years of widowhood, Mary Stuart had displayed a strong sense of her own ‘majesty’ where the attentions of young gallants were concerned; in the course of the last year she had seemed in addition obsessed by the subject of marriage. Darnley had long been one of those on her list of possible husbands. Therefore when she finally fell in love with him in the Easter of 1565, she had no reason to surrender herself to him outside the bonds of marriage, when there was the prospect of connubial bliss with him in the future.

Knox wrote of the prolonged rejoicing after the marriage ceremony: ‘During the space of three or four days, there was nothing but balling, and dancing, and banqueting.’¹¹ The pen of Buchanan, who owed feudal allegiance to the earl of Lennox, was pressed into service for the many masques which followed; in one Diana complained that the foremost of her bright band of five Maries had been taken from her by the envious powers of love and marriage, and in another the four remaining Maries offered oblations to the goddess of Health.¹² To many, the most significant ceremony which followed was that which took place the next day. On Monday, 30th July, Mary deliberately had the fact of Darnley’s new title of King Henry* announced once more by the heralds, with the further proclamation that henceforward all documents and proclamations would be signed by them jointly in the two names MARIE and HENRY, that is, ‘set forth in the names of both their Majesties as King and Queen of Scotland conjunctly’. At this news, there was a heavy ominous silence among the nobles of Scotland. Not one as much as said ‘Amen’. Only the happy doting father, Lennox, at seeing his darling thus glorified, cried aloud: ‘God save his Grace!’

Cecil had commented on the ill-fated marriage of Leicester and Amy Robsart that Nuptiae carnales a laetitia incipiunt et in luctu terminantur – Carnal marriages begin with happiness and end in strife.¹³ Mary was allowed little enough time to enjoy the happiness of her own ‘carnal marriage’ before the first presages of strife were made apparent. Already, before her wedding, Moray had indulged in behaviour which was at best menacing, at worst plainly rebellious; he declined to attend the convention of the nobility called at Perth at the end of June on the grounds that he was ill, and lurked at Lochleven; from here he spread a rumour that the Lennox faction was planning to assassinate him. It was a time when rumours were spreading freely – the Lennox party in their turn suggested that Moray intended to kidnap Lennox and Darnley and ship them back to England, but the existence of this plot has never been concretely proved. Moray was also involved in more practical schemes: on 1st July he asked Randolph for a subsidy of £3000 from Elizabeth to support the Protestant religion in Scotland, and the English alliance. Furious with Mary for her choice of Darnley as a husband, Moray’s intention was to show that she was endangering the Protestant religion. But in her desire to win support for the Darnley marriage, Mary had on the contrary taken the trouble to court the favour of the reformers. Nor was Darnley himself, although now a professed Catholic, a shining example to the other members of his faith: in England he had acted as a Protestant, and once back in Scotland, he had happily listened to the sermon of John Knox in St Giles Church, as well as avoiding the nuptial Mass to his own wedding, which Mary had attended: Darnley’s faith appeared to have a chameleon quality about it, which enabled it to assume whatever colour seemed convenient at the time. Mary’s conciliatory attitude on the subject of religion showed up Moray’s rebellion for what it was – jealous disaffection springing from feudally inspired hatred of the Lennoxes, with religious overtones introduced for the sake of English subsidies, rather than a genuine revolt of conscience.

On 6th August Moray was put to the horn or outlawed, having refused to put in any appearance before his sister to explain his behaviour, despite promises of safe-conduct for himself and eighty of his followers. His two most powerful allies, Châtelherault and Argyll, were informed that they would be outlawed in their turn if they gave him any further assistance. Mary now acted with admirable promptness. The properties of Moray, Rothes and Kirkcaldy were seized on 14th August; on 22nd August Mary announced that she intended to march against the rebels, and ordered a muster of troops (to pay for which she pledged her jewels). In order that Moray’s rebellion should be seen for what it was – the foray of a rebellious noble rather than a religious crusade – Mary once more announced that no religious change was intended. Atholl was made lieutenant in the north, in order to hold Argyll at bay. On 26th August Mary rode out of Edinburgh towards the west of Scotland, with Darnley swaggering at her side in gilt armour: she was swearing revenge on Moray, but the vivid emotion brought such a sparkle into her spirits that in the course of the campaign even Knox’s narrative expressed admiration of her as she rode at the head of her troops: ‘Albeit the most part waxed weary, yet the Queen’s courage increased man-like, so much that she was ever with the foremost.’¹⁴

In her absence, Moray, Châtelherault, Glencairn and Rothes entered the city; but they discovered that there was little support for them there from Protestants and Catholics alike, Mary having by now made herself extremely popular with the ordinary people – who in the course of her four years in Scotland had seen no evidence that she intended to deprive them of the practice of their new religion, and their minds set at rest on this subject positively enjoyed the acquisition of a young and beautiful queen, who understood better how to reach the hearts of her humbler subjects than those of her nobility. Threatened by the guns of Edinburgh Castle, manned by Lord Erskine, now earl of Mar, Moray departed. In Glasgow, Mary decided to wait until her northern levies should reach her at Stirling at the end of September before finally attacking Moray. In the meantime she issued another proclamation promising a definite settlement of the religious question. Randolph heard that Mary was putting such enthusiasm into her cause that she frequently rode with a pistol at her saddle, outriding all her ladies and gentlemen except ‘one stout lady’.¹⁵

It was left for Moray and his associates to appeal endlessly for the help from England which they believed had been promised to them by Elizabeth, but by the end of September the most Moray had got out of Elizabeth was the promise of an asylum in England, if he should need it. Meanwhile the English Council dithered and finally came down against him. Early in October, Moray realized his cause was hopeless, and on 6th October fled across the border from the southwest of Scotland, as Mary prepared to attack him. In London he underwent the humiliating experience of being told by Elizabeth, in the course of a personal audience, duly witnessed by the French ambassador, that he had done very wrong in rebelling against Mary. Having publicly exculpated herself from the charge of abetting the Scottish rebels, Elizabeth, in a triumph of double-talk, said that she would intercede with Mary for the return of Moray. Moray now settled down at Newcastle, to brood on the possibility of more favourable developments in Scotland.

It is difficult to explain Moray’s conduct in terms of statesmanship: not only was Mary not threatening the Protestant religion at the end of July, but it was actually his rebellion which enabled Mary to send an emissary to Rome in September asking for a papal subsidy to assist her in the conflict. Mary had understandably been experiencing some difficulty in the past two years in convincing the Pope that she truly had the cause of Scottish Catholicism at heart. Yet papal money continued to be a golden lure as was papal approval to one who might at any moment need foreign Catholic support: now Moray’s rebellion, so publicly stated to be in the cause of Protestantism, presented the Scottish queen with a perfect opportunity to present herself in Rome as a champion of the Catholic faith. But the truth was that Moray, in his revolt, was no more championing Protestantism than Mary was championing Catholicism by attacking him. The composition of their respective parties shows how strongly feudal and family alliances still acted in Scottish politics.

Moray had Châtelherault on his side, because the Hamiltons were perennially opposed to the Lennox Stewarts, who contested their claim to be the next heirs to the Scottish throne; Mary in turn reacted to Moray’s revolt by pardoning young Lord Gordon, Huntly’s son, who was released from ward and restored to his father’s title on 3rd August, for the very good reason that the Huntlys were now the sworn enemies of Moray. Even Bothwell was now allowed back into royal favour because his enmity against the Hamiltons could be relied on keeping him loyal to the queen: the crude insults which he was said to have bestowed on Mary after her escape to France (she was the ‘cardinal’s whore’, and she and Elizabeth between them did not add up to one honest woman)¹⁶ were conveniently forgotten in the need to suppress Moray. The presence of the keen Protestant and traditional Hamilton ally, Argyll, on the opposing side meant that Atholl could be relied on to act against him on Mary’s side to preserve the balance of power in the north of Scotland. Indeed during the Chaseabout Raid, Argyll took the opportunity to despoil Lennox and Atholl, which he considered evidently a more important task than supporting Moray against the queen. Lastly the ‘slow and greedy’ earl of Morton, head of the Douglas clan, supported the queen, because Lennox’s wife Margaret had been a Douglas, and Darnley was thus ‘mother’s kin’ to the Douglases.

The Chaseabout Raid, as Moray’s abortive rebellion was called, marked a significant change in Mary’s attitude to her Scottish nobles, which may not have been politically wise, but whose genesis was certainly easy to trace. She certainly did not despair of the Scottish people – indeed her experiences during the raid only confirmed her in her prognostication to Throck-morton when still in France, that she would manage to appeal to ‘the common people’ of Scotland. But in the course of four years, her two major subjects had both revolted against her, in the interests of their own power, as it seemed to her. She had defeated them both, married the man of her choice, and had been able to reestablish herself as a champion of the Scottish Catholic cause abroad, without in fact making as yet any significant concessions to the Catholics in Scotland – in short, she was riding high. None of these experiences had taught her to trust her own nobility at any point where her interest might conflict with theirs: she therefore took the natural step of relying more and more on those who had no mighty Scottish lands and clans to back them up, no family feuds to sway them, and who did not belong to the spider’s web of Scottish family relationships. In her newly important relations with the papacy, her vast correspondence with her French relations, and even with Spain, Mary began to make use of a sort of middle-class secretariat. These rising stars were not even lairds as Maitland had been but, in Randolph’s term, ‘crafty vile strangers’¹⁷ – although Mary saw them as loyal and discreet servants. It was a move which was passionately resented by the nobles who saw themselves about to be edged out of the centre of a stage they had occupied so tempestuously and for so long.

Randolph, in his discussion of the subject, mentioned two Italians, Davy and Francisco (Francisco de Busso), and an Englishman called Fowler. Others who were complained of were Sebastian Danelourt and the Scottish lawyer James Balfour. In his criticism of Mary, Moray had mentioned that she relied on such men, rather than take what he chose to term ‘the wholesome advice and counsel’ of her barons. Of these men, Davy or David Riccio* was the most interesting character. He had first arrived in Scotland in 1561 in the train of the ambassador from Savoy, and he came of a good but impoverished Savoyard family; he was of course a Catholic, although no evidence has ever been found in the Vatican to confirm the suggestion of his enemies that he was at any time a papal agent. He was now aged about thirty-five; but otherwise the only fact on which everyone agreed about this cuckoo in the royal nest – which appears in every contemporary record whether of friend or foe – was that Riccio seemed extremely ugly by the standards of the time,† his face being considered ‘illfavoured’ and his stature small and hunched. Although he had a Latin love of fine clothing – after his death an extravagant peacock’s wardrobe was discovered – Buchanan commented spitefully ‘indeed his appearance disfigured his elegance’.¹⁸ Riccio also seems to have been avaricious, since a cache of £2000 was discovered among his effects, which would have been difficult to amass out of his yearly pay of £80 and lends colour to the accusations of his enemies that he took bribes. Riccio, however, first came into Mary’s service on a more spiritual level.

Ugly as he might be, avaricious as he might be suspected to be, Riccio was generally conceded to be a fine musician. Music as we have seen was Mary’s private passion. Riccio entered Mary’s employ when she needed a bass singer to make up a quartet with the valet of her household. Although Riccio was clearly a talented performer, there is no concrete evidence to prove that he combined these talents with those of a composer.* Riccio, apart from his musical talent, was also an amusing conversationalist; to a queen who was in Melville’s phrase ‘of quick spirit, curious to know, and get intelligence of the estate of other countries and would be sometimes sad when she was solitary, and glad of the company of them that had travelled in other parts’,¹⁹ Riccio provided an agreeable opportunity to discuss the Europe they had both once known.

When Mary’s French secretary Raullet died at the end of 1564 Riccio was appointed in his place; this meant that he was nominally responsible for her French correspondence, as opposed to Maitland, who was her secretary of state and responsible for all her affairs. But by the autumn of 1565 Randolph was able to observe spitefully about Maitland that he had been sufficiently pushed out of the centre of affairs to have the leisure to make love – to his coy mistress, Mary Fleming.²⁰ Melville paints a picture of Riccio standing at the entrance to Mary’s chamber, smiling at the nobles as they went by, and being glowered on in return.²¹ Certainly Maitland, in terms of power politics, had reason to resent the advancement of Riccio, since it had led to his own decline. But to Mary the loyalty of Riccio at least was beyond reproach, and she had a natural horror of disloyalty, especially when it was accompanied by ingratitude. As Mary wrote to de Foix, the French ambassador in London, in November 1565, in a long letter pleading with him to get her mother-in-law Lady Lennox released from the Tower, the ingratitude of Moray seemed to her fantastic: here was a mere subject on whom she had showered honours and goods, trying to prevent her marrying whom she pleased. Again and again she reverted to the topic as she utterly refused to allow the release of Lady Lennox to be made conditional on her pardoning Moray and his fellow-rebels.²² In a memorandum on the reasons for her second marriage, she bitterly related how Moray had deliberately agreed to the idea of Darnley at first, in order to spite the pretensions of the Hamiltons, under the impression that he could scotch the match whenever he wished.²³

Mary had au fond an unhypocritical and undissembling nature: in this respect she was curiously unlike her contemporary queens, Elizabeth Tudor and Catherine de Médicis, who had after all been brought up from childhood in far harder schools of learning than the idolized young queen of Scotland. Although Mary enjoyed the prospect and motions of intrigue, and took a keen interest in letters, schemes and news, she lacked the disposition of the true intriguer: the born double-agent, by not knowing which interest he really wants to come out on top, except his own survival, is able to take advantage of every new twist of the situation and thus in the end always survive – both Elizabeth and Cecil had something of this temperament. Mary on the other hand was by nature frank and open, as she knew herself; she was also passionate, quick to love, quick to hate, easy to weep, easy to laugh. This meant inevitably that she had a love of being committed: she preferred action, whatever the cost, to inaction, whatever the gain. Her fluctuating health may well have played some part in this; it was infinitely easier for one of her nervous energies to galvanize herself to spring forward than to rally her strength for a debilitating period of waiting. But such tendencies marked Mary off from the real plotters. Her love of commitment meant that in turn she felt bitterly betrayed when those around her seemed to neglect her interests for their own, showing no equivalent commitment to her. Her fiercest hatreds were always reserved for those whom she had raised up and who now let her down – Moray was now in this category and Darnley was shortly to enter into it.

*

Unfortunately this July marriage, begun in the high summer of love, did not preserve its warmth into the cooler temperatures of autumn and winter. At first, as Melville said, Mary was so delighted with her new acquisition, Darnley, that she did him great honour herself, and willed everyone who desired her favour to do the like and wait upon him. But after the honeymoon was over – a honeymoon spent as it happened virtually on the field of battle, defending Darnley as a choice of husband – Mary was ready to return to the more serious business of ruling Scotland. In her work, she was only too happy to have Darnley beside her – for his signature, that of ‘King Henry’, was together with hers on every document, as she had promised, and even the summons to serve in the field at the time of rebellion was sent out jointly in their two names. It was true that Mary signed on the left (the position of honour because it was read first) and Darnley on the right* (unlike Francis who had occupied the left). But his signature was nevertheless always present with one exception – that of a safe-conduct to England; Elizabeth refused to accept it on grounds that she did not acknowledge Darnley as king but on the contrary as ‘a subject and an offender’, and after a debate in Council, Randolph did manage to get Darnley’s signature left off (‘notwithstanding all the former promises made to him’).²⁴ Apart from this single victory of expediency over principles, Mary throughout the autumn continued to bolster up the power of ‘King Henry’.

Yet Darnley was obviously not much interested in the process of government. He continued sulkily to demand the crown matrimonial (egged on by his father Lennox), and wished to spend more money than Mary, perpetually embarrassed in this respect as we have seen, could easily provide: the crown matrimonial, which Francis had enjoyed, could only be granted by Parliament, at the instance of Mary, but it would have ensured that Darnley’s power was equal with Mary’s while she lived, and continued after her death, if Darnley survived her. Darnley’s way of showing himself worthy for this high honour was a strange one: Knox’s Continuator summed it up neatly: ‘As for the King, he past his time in hunting and hawking and such other pleasures as were agreeable to his appetites, having in his company gentlemen willing to satisfy his will and affections.’²⁵Darnley’s continued love of the chase and sport in particular meant that governmental measures were often held up by his absence, since they demanded the joint signature. In the second half of November, when the queen was seriously ill with the recurring pain in her side, Darnley spent about nine days hunting in Fife: this was the occasion when an iron stamp or seal was made of his signature to prevent delays. Even Darnley’s partisan, Buchanan, admitted that Darnley raised no objection to the practice: the queen told Darnley that while he was busy hawking or hunting, matters of importance were unseasonably delayed, and ‘he consented to this proposal as he did not wish to offend her in anything …’²⁶ The seal was duly given into the custody of David Riccio. At all events, to those accustomed to the double signature at the end of a document a stamp of one of the signatures would hardly have been noticed.*

At the beginning of December, Mary went to the palace of Linlithgow to convalesce after her recent indisposition. Perhaps her illness had been exacerbated by other more fruitful symptoms: she must by now have been about two and a half months pregnant with the future James VI.† The birth of an heir – preferably male – was of vital importance to Mary’s plans; if she gave birth to a son, she would automatically be placed in a much stronger position with regard to the English succession than a mere childless queen. Randolph, in the manner of courtiers, watched the queen eagerly for signs of pregnancy, and was avid to pick up court gossip on the subject. By 31st October, he was reporting to London: ‘It is given out by some of her own that she is with child, it is argued upon tokens I know not what, annexed to the kind of them that are in that case.’ By 12th November Randolph wrote that it was now commonly said that ‘she is with child, and the nurse already chosen. There can be no doubt and she herself thinks so.’ Mary’s November illness temporarily persuaded Randolph that the rumours of pregnancy were false, especially as on 1st December, he reported her as being up once more, and ‘taking as much exercise as her body can endure’: although she herself believed she was pregnant, those around thought it to be ‘something worse’. However, when Mary set out for Linlithgow, it was not on horseback but on a litter, in Randolph’s words ‘being with child, as the rumour is again common among us’.²⁸ By 19th December Lady Lennox in the Tower in London knew the happy news of her impending grandchild and by the spring the queen’s pregnancy was an undeniable fact.

The prospect of motherhood – much as she must have desired it for dynastic reasons – did not increase Mary’s affection for Darnley. In view of the four-year gap in their ages, there may originally have been something quasi-maternal in Mary’s feeling for the beautiful young Darnley, which she was now able to satisfy more conventionally in the prospect of impending motherhood. It is significant that her confidant Leslie, in his Defence of her Honour, deliberately chose to refer later to her ‘very motherly care’ for her husband – ‘for besides all other respects, though they were not very different in years, she was to him not only a loyal Prince, a loving and dear wife, but a most careful and tender Mother withal’.²⁹ In addition ill-health was obviously causing her discomfort which may in turn have caused distaste for the more physical aspects of married love. Certainly her violent infatuation for Darnley had not survived the onsets of pregnancy, and she could after all no longer share the pleasures of hunting and hawking which both had once enjoyed so keenly. On 20th December, Bedford from Berwick reported that, ‘The Lord Darnley followeth his pastimes more than the Queen is content withal; what it will breed hereafter I cannot say, but in the meantime there is some misliking between them.’ On 25th December Randolph noted that ‘a while ago there was nothing but King and Queen, now the Queen’s husband is the common word. He was wont in all writings to be first named: now he is placed second.’ The relative placing of the two names Henry and Mary was at the heart of the mysterious matter of the silver ‘ryal’, a new denomination of coin introduced shortly after their marriage at a nominal value of thirty shillings. This ‘ryal’ showed the heads of Mary and Darnley facing each other on one side, and on the other in Latin a reference to their marriage – ‘Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder’. In December Randolph also reported that this coin had been withdrawn from circulation in Scotland, because the names of the royal pair were engraved on it in an unusual order as HENRICUS & MARIA D. GRA. R. & R. SCOTORUM. Randolph represented Mary as now regretting the prominence given to Darnley’s name, which for once preceded that of the queen.³⁰

The best summary of the points of difference between Mary and her husband is provided in the memoirs of Lord Herries: Mary believed ‘all the honour and majesty he had came from her: that she had made choice of him for her husband by her own affection only, and against the will of many of the nobility’. Darnley, on the other hand, was complacently convinced that ‘the marriage was done with the consent of the nobility who thought him worthy of the place; that the whole kingdom had their eyes upon him; they would follow and serve him upon the fields, where it was a shame a woman should command’. And as the memoirs added: ‘These conceits [were] being continuously buzzed in the young man’s head.’³¹ It was, however, quite one thing for Mary to get on badly with her husband, and for Darnley’s young head to buzz, and quite another for this disagreement to be put to savage use by Mary’s enemies. Darnley by himself was powerless, whatever his posturings. Darnley as the tool of Mary’s opponents could have a cutting edge. For it was a regrettable fact that by the beginning of 1566 there were quite a number of Scottish nobles who were inclining to put themselves in the category of the queen’s enemies. Their disputes with the queen had quite different origins from those of Darnley, and formed very different patterns. But the combination of two forces of disaffection was capable of proving very dangerous for Mary – and fatal for her servant David Riccio.

* An unpublished letter in the Register House, Edinburgh, from Mary to John Spens, her advocate, on a legal matter, dated from Stirling on 9th April, contains a passionately scribbled postscript in the queen’s own hand, in which she directs the advocate to find out more concerning certain ‘secret gatherings’ said to be held in the evenings in Edinburgh between Knox and Gavin Hamilton: ‘I pray you endeavour to learn what is done or said and inform me thereof, using all the diligence you can, but take good care that no one learns that I have written anything to you on this matter …’⁷

* But Mary was wrong in supposing that the dispensation had already been granted. The dispensation was granted in Rome some time after 1st September and before 25th September; it arrived in Scotland several weeks after that – but was not of course published, since the marriage had already taken place on the assumption of its existence, and to publish its actual date would have been embarrassing to the queen.⁸ Unless Mary and Darnley went through a further marriage ceremony after the date of its granting (of which there is no record) their marriage was technically invalid.

* The title of Lord Darnley was a courtesy title, which he bore as the elder surviving son of the earl of Lennox, according to the English custom (in Scotland at this period Darnley would have been known as the master of Lennox). Darnley was created earl of Ross in May and duke of Albany in July, before being proclaimed as ‘King Henry’ by the queen. In the present work, however, which already contains three King Henrys – Henry VIII of England, and Henry II and III of France – he will still be referred to as Darnley for the sake of clarity. But it is important to realize that Darnley was universally referred to as ‘the king’ in Scotland at the time.

* The correct spelling of his name. Rizzio seems to have originated from Rizio in the first printing of Knox’s History in 1644.

† The portrait usually given as that of Riccio, from which many engravings have been made, showing a soulful gentleman fingering a lute, with fine eyes, a chiselled mouth, a neat beard, certainly does not depict him as ugly; but it is an imaginary portrait, dating from the late seventeenth or eighteenth century, and has no connection with his true appearance.

* He was credited with the composition of the music for seven Scottish songs – The Lass of Patie’s Mill, Bessie Bell, The Bush Aboon Traquair, The Bonnie Boatman, And Thou were my Ain Thing, Auld Rob Morris and Down the Burn David, in the 1725 edition of Orpheus Caledonius; later James Oswald attached his name to certain songs in the Caledonian Companion, and was accused of having done so for the sake of publicity. In fact the legend of Riccio the composer rests on tradition only, and as such can be neither proved nor disproved – although it seems infinitely more likely that a native Italian would be interested by, collect and play rather than actually compose such characteristically Scottish melodies. See John Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, for a balanced discussion of the whole subject.

* The six documents among the state papers in the Register House at Edinburgh dated from July 1565 to May 1566 signed by Queen Mary and Darnley after their marriage invariably show their signatures in this position; on at least two occasions, however, Darnley asserted himself by making his signature considerably larger than that of the queen.

* In England signatures by wooden stamp were used from the reign of Henry VI onwards.

† James was born on 19th June 1566. By the law of averages, he was therefore conceived on or about 19th September 1565. The circumstances of his birth might seem to suggest that he was premature, since his mother had endured such hardships during the pregnancy. But after the murder of Riccio, Mary specifically declared in her letter to Archbishop James Beaton of 2nd April 1566,²⁷ that she had been nearly seven months pregnant at the time of the assassination (9th March 1566). Yet a calculation based on James’s birth shows that she was in fact only approaching six months pregnant. This seems to show that Mary in April believed her pregnancy to be more advanced than it was. It certainly disposes of the notion that James was premature, since by Mary’s calculations James was born late rather than early. One therefore returns to the most likely date of on or a little before 19th September 1565 for conception.