My Heart is My Own Read online

  JOHN GUY

  ‘My Heart is My Own’

  The Life of Mary Queen of Scots

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Illustrations

  Genealogical tables

  Maps

  Prologue

  1. The First Year

  2. The Rough Wooings

  3. Arrival in France

  4. Adolescence

  5. Education

  6. A Dynastic Marriage

  7. Betrayed Queen

  8. Return to Scotland

  9. Into the Labyrinth

  10. A Meeting Between Sisters

  11. A Search for a Husband

  12. ‘My Heart is My Own’

  13. A Marriage of Convenience

  14. Enter Bothwell

  15. A Marriage in Trouble

  16. Assassination One

  17. Reconciliation

  18. Plot and Counter-Plot

  19. Assassination Two

  20. A Love Match?

  21. Dénouement in Scotland

  22. Mary’s Story

  23. Bothwell’s Story

  24. The Lords’ Story

  25. The Casket Letters I

  26. The Casket Letters II

  27. Captive Queen

  28. An Axe or an Act?

  29. Nemesis

  30. The Final Hours

  Epilogue

  Illustrations

  Bibliography

  Notes and References

  Chronology

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Guy is an award-winning historian, an accomplished broadcaster and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. His previous books include My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, winner of the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award; the highly acclaimed dual biography A Daughter's Love: Thomas and Margaret More; a history, Tudor England, which has sold over 250,000 copies worldwide; and, most recently, the biography Thomas Becket.

  John Guy has presented and contributed to numerous documentaries for BBC2 and Channel 4, including Timewatch, as well as appearing frequently on BBC Radio’s flagship culture programmes such as Start the Week and In Our Time, and writing for the Sunday Times, Guardian, Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, BBC History Magazine and History Today.

  Illustrations

  Linlithgow Palace from Theatrum Scotiae, London, 1718 ‘Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library’

  Mary of Guise © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

  Henry VIII © National Portrait Gallery, London

  Antoinette of Bourbon © Musée Nationale de la Renaissance, Ecouen

  Edward VI as a baby with a rattle by Holbein © National Gallery of Art, Washington / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Francis II aged eight © Musée Condé, Chantilly / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Elizabeth de Valois 1559, by François Clouet © Musée Condé, Chantilly

  Mary, aged nine © Musée Condé, Chantilly / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Mary Stuart aged 15 shortly before her wedding © National Portrait Gallery, London

  The death of Henry II © Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Double portrait of Mary and Francis II from the Book of Hours belonging to Catherine de Medici © Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

  Catherine de Medici after François Clouet © Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

  Mary’s first letter to a foreign ruler, sent to Mary Tudor in January 1554 ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  Coronation of Francis II © Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Mary in white widow’s dress, oil on panel after Clouet © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Sir Nicholas Throckmorton © National Portrait Gallery, London

  James Stuart, Earl of Moray ‘from a Scottish private collection’

  James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton by an unknown artist © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

  William Cecil’s monument ‘by courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury’

  Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine by François Clouet © The British Museum

  John Knox haranguing Mary, woodcut engraving © The British Museum / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Engraving of Holyrood House after J. Gordon ‘from a private collection’

  The ‘Sieve’ portrait of Elizabeth I © Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena

  Henry, Lord Darnley by Hans Eworth © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Henry, Lord Darnley by an unknown artist © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery The Lennox Jewel from The Royal Collection © 2003, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Mary’s letter to Elizabeth, 28 August 1565 ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’ Miniature of Bothwell by an unknown artist © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

  Mary Queen of Scots with hat and feather © National Portrait Gallery, London

  The first page of the Long Glasgow Letter (Casket Letter 2) ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  Casket Letter 5 ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  Placard of the Mermaid and the Hare ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  Darnley’s murder at Kirk o’Field ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  Mary’s surrender at Carberry Hill ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  Mary’s letter to Throckmorton from her tower at Lochleven Castle ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  A miniature of Mary by Nicholas Hilliard © Victoria & Albert Museum, London / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Bess of Hardwick by Rowland Lockey © National Trust Photo Library

  ‘The Phoenix’ from the Oxburgh Hangings ‘Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London’

  ‘A Catte’ from the Oxburgh Hangings from The Royal Collection © 2003, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

  Sir Francis Walsingham by John de Critz © National Portrait Gallery, London

  Ciphers used by Mary ‘Courtesy of The National Archives, London’

  The Trial of Mary Queen of Scots © The British Library

  The Execution of Mary at Fotheringhay Castle © The Scottish National Portrait Gallery

  THE TUDORS AND STUARTS

  THE STUARTS AND THE ENGLISH SUCCESSION

  THE GUISE FAMILY

  SCOTLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

  CENTRAL SCOTLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

  FRANCE UNDER HENRY II (showing the principal places connected to Mary Quenn of Scots)

  Prologue

  Around eight o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, 8 February 1587, when it was light enough to see without candles, Sir Thomas Andrews, Sheriff of the county of Northamptonshire, knocked on a door. The place was Fotheringhay Castle, about seventy-five miles from London. All that remains there now beneath the weeds is the raised earthen rampart of the inner bailey and a truncated mound or ‘motte’ on the site of the keep, a few hundred yards from the village beside a sluggish stretch of the River Nene.

  But in the sixteenth century the place was bustling with life. Fotheringhay was a royal manor. Richard III had been born at the castle in 1452. Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, who had slain Richard at the battle of Bosworth, gave the estate as a dowry to his wife Elizabeth of York, and Henry VIII granted it to his first bride, Catherine of Aragon, who extensively refurbished the castle. In 1558, Elizabeth I inherited the property when she succeeded to the throne on the death of her elder sister, Mary Tudor.

  Despite its royal associations, nothing had prepared Fotheringhay, or indeed the British Isles, for what was about to happen there. Andrews was in attendance on two of E
ngland’s highest ranking noblemen, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and Henry Grey, Earl of Kent. The door at which he knocked was the outer door of the privy chamber of Mary Queen of Scots, Dowager Queen of France, and for almost nineteen years Elizabeth’s prisoner in England.

  The door opened to reveal Mary on her knees, praying with her bedchamber servants. Andrews informed her that the time was at hand, and she looked up and said she was ready. She rose, and her gentlewomen stood aside.

  She was still aged only forty-four. Born and brought up to be a queen, she walked confidently through the doorway as if she were once more processing to a court festival. Almost six feet tall, she had always looked the part. She had been fêted since her childhood in France for her beauty and allure. ‘Charmante’ and ‘la plus parfaite’ were the adjectives most commonly applied to her singular blend of celebrity. Not just physically mesmerizing with her well-proportioned face, neck, arms, and waist, she had an unusual warmth of character with the ability to strike up an instant rapport. Always high-spirited and vivacious, she could be unreservedly generous and amiable. She had a razor-sharp wit and was a natural conversationalist. Gregarious as well as glamorous, she could be genial to the point of informality as long as her ‘grandeur’ was respected. Many contemporaries remarked on her almost magical ability to create the impression that the person she was talking to was the only one whose opinion really mattered to her.

  As a result of premature ageing caused by the inertia and lack of exercise of which she had so bitterly complained during her long captivity, her beauty was on the wane. Her features had thickened and she had rounded shoulders and a slight stoop. Her face, once legendary for its soft white skin and immaculate, marble-like complexion, had filled out and become double-chinned. But captivity had not altered everything. Her small, deepset hazel eyes darted as restlessly as ever, and her ringlets of auburn hair seemed as lustrous.

  Mary had been awake for most of the night and had carefully prepared herself. This was to be her grandest performance, her greatest triumph; she had considered every detail.

  Her clothes set the tone. She appeared to be dressed entirely in black apart from a white linen veil. Lace-edged and as delicate as gauze, it flowed down from her hair over her shoulders to her feet in the French style. Fastened to the top of the veil was a small white cambric cap. It just touched the tip of her forehead and was also edged with lace, leaving room for her curls to creep out at the sides. Her gown of thick black satin reached almost to the ground where it was attached to her train. Trimmed with gold embroidery and sable, it was peppered with acorn buttons of jet trimmed with pearl.

  A closer look revealed an outer bodice of crimson velvet and an underskirt of embroidered black satin, both visible where the gown was fashionably cut away. To bedeck it, Mary wore long, richly embroidered slashed sleeves in the Italian style, under which could be seen uncut inner sleeves of purple velvet. Her shoes were of the finest Spanish suede. Later, it would be observed that she wore sky-blue stockings embroidered with silver thread and held up by green silk garters, these on top of soft white stockings that she used to protect her skin from chafing.

  She carried a crucifix of ivory in one hand and a Latin prayer book in the other. A string of rosary beads with a golden cross hung from a girdle at her waist. Around her neck lay a silver or gold chain on which hung a pendant, a medallion bearing the image of Christ as the ‘Lamb of God’.

  Led by Andrews and followed by the two Earls, Mary walked along the corridor and into a larger room, where her household was waiting to greet her and bid her farewell. An eyewitness (perhaps the Earl of Kent himself) wrote that she exhorted her servants to fear God and live in obedience. She kissed her women servants and gave her hand to her menservants to kiss. She asked them not to grieve for her, but ‘to rejoice and pray for her’. One of them afterwards reported that she showed no fear and even smiled.

  Mary then descended the stairs towards the great hall on the ground floor. Her legs were so swollen and inflamed by rheumatism, she leaned for support on the arms of two soldiers. When the procession reached the ante-room to the hall, they encountered Andrew Melville, her steward, who knelt and, fighting back the tears, cried out, ‘Madam, it will be the sorrowfullest message that I ever carried, when I shall report that my Queen and dear mistress is dead.’

  Mary answered, also weeping, ‘You ought to rejoice rather than weep for that the end of Mary Stuart’s troubles is now come.’ ‘Carry this message’, she continued, ‘and tell my friends that I die a true woman to my religion, and like a true Scottish woman and a true French woman.’

  As Mary recovered her composure, her mood abruptly changed. She glanced back up the stairs and exclaimed that she was ‘evil attended’. She demanded ‘for womanhood’s sake’ that she might have her own servants to escort her. She harangued the Earls, who became fearful that she would cause an even bigger scene and have to be dragged violently into the great hall.

  Shrewsbury feebly claimed that he and Kent were simply following their orders. Hearing this, Mary bridled: ‘Far meaner persons than myself have not been denied so small a favour.’ ‘Madam,’ replied Kent, ‘it cannot well be granted, for that it is feared lest some of them would with speeches both trouble and grieve your Grace and disquiet the company … or seek to wipe their napkins in some of your blood, which were not convenient.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Mary, ‘I will give my word and promise for them that they shall not do any such thing.’ She could not stop herself adding, ‘You know that I am cousin to your Queen, and descended from the blood of Henry VII, a married Queen of France and the anointed Queen of Scotland.’

  The Earls huddled together, whispering inaudibly, then gave in to Mary, who was used to getting her own way. Her two favourite gentlewomen, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curle, and four of her gentlemen, including Melville, were allowed to join the procession. ‘Allons donc’, said Mary smiling again – ‘Now let us go’. She spoke in French because this and Lowland Scots were her native tongues; English she had only learnt with difficulty in her captivity.

  Her retinue now made ready, she strode purposefully into the great hall with Melville carrying her train. It was self-consciously a royal entry; Mary walked before the hundred or so spectators straight towards the focal point, a wooden stage that had been hastily constructed during the previous two days beside an open fireplace in which a great pile of logs blazed. She mounted the two steps that led up to the platform, and sat down on a low stool that was offered to her, after which the Earls seated themselves on her right while the Sheriff stood on her left.

  There was of course no throne. The stage was a scaffold two feet high and twelve feet square, shrouded with black cotton sheets that hung low over the sides to camouflage the rough joinery, with a rail eighteen inches high around three sides and the unenclosed fourth side in full view of the spectators in the lower end of the hall. There was a cushion for Mary to kneel on, this beside an execution block also swathed in black.

  Two masked men stood in readiness on the platform, one ‘Bull’, the headsman of the Tower of London, and his assistant. They were dressed in long black gowns with white aprons, their axe laid casually against the rail. In the lower end of the space, the knights and gentlemen of Northamptonshire and its neighbouring counties looked towards the stage flanked by a troop of soldiers, their view unrestricted because the platform had been set at exactly the right height. Outside in the courtyard beyond the passageway, at the main entrance to the great hall, a large crowd of another thousand or so waited for news.

  The Sheriff called for silence, after which Robert Beale, clerk of Elizabeth’s Privy Council and the man responsible for delivering the execution warrant to Fotheringhay, read it out. As he spoke – the warrant would have taken about ten minutes to read – Mary sat completely still. She showed no emotion, listening, as Robert Wingfield of Upton, Northamptonshire, who was within ten yards of her, reported, ‘with as small regard as if it had not concerned her at
all; and with as cheerful a countenance as if it had been a pardon’. Her nerve was to be tested, however, when Dr Richard Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, and at this stage of his career one of Elizabeth’s favourite preachers, stepped forward at the Earl of Shrewsbury’s signal.

  Fletcher, the father of the dramatist John Fletcher, who was Shakespeare’s collaborator in Henry VIII, had been brought in to deliver a set-piece ‘admonition’ to Mary that strictured her for her traitorous Catholicism, and to lead the assembly in prayers. He was one of Elizabeth’s chaplains in ordinary, renowned for his ‘comely person’ and ‘courtly speech’.

  But his ‘admonition’ backfired spectacularly; the attempted sermon – for that is all it was – was the greatest faux pas of his career. When the moment came, he started to stammer nervously. ‘Madam,’ he began, ‘the Queen’s most excellent majesty’; ‘Madam, the Queen’s most excellent majesty …’. Three times he stumbled, but when he started for the fourth, Mary cut him off. In a clear and unwavering voice, she said, ‘Mr Dean, I will not hear you. You have nothing to do with me, nor I with you.’

  Fletcher, somewhat abashed, countered, ‘I say nothing but that I will justify before the majesty of the mighty God.’ He was not at first willing to give way to her, believing that God would never abandon the just, but would minister to them through his angels. If Mary had been condemned to die, it was God’s work and the preacher would be called to account for his sermon only before God.

  Hearing this Mary got into her stride, as she always did in an argument. ‘I am settled,’ she retorted, ‘in the ancient Roman Catholic religion, and mind to spend my blood in defence of it.’

  Fletcher unwisely rejoindered, ‘Madam, change your opinion and repent you of your former wickedness, and settle your faith only in Jesus Christ, by him to be saved.’ This was not the way to speak to a Queen. Mary, visibly colouring, ordered him to be silent. There was an awkward pause. Then the Earls gave way. Fletcher was told to omit the sermon, which in a fit of pique he insisted be transcribed from his notes into a report of the day’s proceedings.