Marie Stuart in France: Women who shaped the early life of the Queen of Scots

by Linda Root

In spite of the volumes written about  Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, even the most accomplished historians leave perplexing questions about the queen’s personal relationships with the women who shared her youth.  Ironically, the end of her life at age forty-four mirrored its beginning.  She spent her first five years of childhood being moved from one sanctuary to another, just ahead of Edward Seymour’s army in the operation known in history as The Rough Wooing, when Henry VIII sought to kidnap her to enforce a marriage contract with his son.  During the last two decades of her life,  she was forced from one rural estate to another at the will of the English Queen.  In neither case was she empowered to select her surroundings or her friends. The Inchmahome Priory of her early childhood was not that different from Fotheringhay where she died.  Marie Stuart's personal freedoms were determined by the English.

THE FOUR MARIES:

During her early childhood, Marie Stuart’s playmates and companions were four little girls selected by the little queen’s mother, the Scottish Dowager,  Marie de Guise. 
They were daughters of the Dowager’s ladies in waiting, most of whom were French. Many notable historians assert all of the Four Maries other than Flemyng had French mothers, but that is inaccurate.  Livingston’s mother was Lady Agnes Douglas. The other exception in the predominantly French household of Marie de Guise was Princess Janet Stewart, Lady Flemyng, an illegitimate sibling of Marie’s father James V, who died when the queen was six days old. At the time of their selection, they became part of the queen’s movable household.  They and their families joined the nomadic existence of the queen while her mother negotiated her daughter's exodus to France. 

The queen's final Scottish refuge during the Rough Wooing was Dumbarton Castle,  on a rocky crag where the Firth of Clyde empties into the Irish Sea. From there, she sailed from Scotland on a French flagship in the midst of violent storms. The queen's fraternal aunt Lady Flemyng served as her governess. Lords Seton and Livingston accompanied the queen to France as her co-guardians.  

The Four Maries were seasick during most of the voyage.  They were Marie Flemyng (Flamie), Marie Livingston (Lusty),  and the two staunch Catholics with French mothers,  Marie Seton (Seton) and Marie Beaton (Beton). All were between ages five and six,  and all four were named Marie. Although numerous sources assert Livingston’s given name was Mary, surviving documents show she signed her names on court documents and is referred to in the queen’s will as Marie.  The will, of course, was signed by the testatrix as 'Marie R'. During her lifetime, there was no such person as Mary Queen of Scots.  According to modern Marian historian Jane Lewis, the English insistence on calling the Scottish Queen  'Mary'  is a manifestation of the national tendency to lay claim to a queen who brought the Stuart dynasty to England. It is from Marie Stuart that all English monarchs descend through the female line of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, Marie Stuart's granddaughter, the Winter Queen. 

Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia - The Winter Queen

How much information we are given about the four little girls who were Marie Stuart's conscripted playmates depends on who is writing the history.  As long ago as when I was in college, and first became interested in the Queen of Scots, I realized insofar as primary sources are concerned, there are two separate queens with very different stories, depending upon the religion of the author.  As to the Four Maries, numerous historians regard Marie Flemyng as the chief among them and the only one with the courage to call the queen to account when she was over-bearing.  Those who write of her after she married the statesman Maitland of Lethington color her as a devil or an angel, depending on their view of Maitland's politics. Marie Livingston was the first to marry. Writers with a Catholic bias would canonize Marie Seton if they could. And even though she was the niece of a murdered Catholic Cardinal, Marie Beaton was not as morally upright as her best friend Seton. She later earned the queen's disfavor by establishing an unspecified relationship with the English ambassador. 

In any case, once they arrived in France in 1548, the Four Maries were culled from the queen’s entourage and sent to Poissy while Marie Stuart was ensconced in the Royal Nursery at Saint Germain en Laye, separating her from the Scottish influence of her Four Maries.  The excuse given was to force the Queen to speak nothing but French, which makes no sense since her governess Lady Flemyng’s French was marginal. 

Nevertheless, King Henri Valois sent glowing praises to the Scottish Dowager about the governess, no doubt referring to talents other than linguistic.  Within three years, she was sent home in disfavor, having given birth to a bastard son of the King of France, conceived while the Royal Mistress Diane de Poitiers was home at her estate nursing a broken ankle.  It was one occasion when Queen Consort Catherine d’Medici and Royal Mistress, Diane d’ Poitiers joined forces and brought the governess’s pregnancy to the attention of Marie de Guise, who was more outraged than either of them.
 Lady Flemyng’s conduct was a smudge on her daughter’s reputation. The king did not get to vote when his wife and his mistress sent Lady Flemyng packing for her home in Biggar. Her best friend the Dowager did not speak to Lady Flemyng until the Dowager was on her deathbed, but it was Janet who was the chief mourner at her funeral and who accompanied her casket to Rheims for interment.

Even before Lady Flemyng was sent home in disgrace,  her Scottish influence over her royal ward had been challenged by the Dowager Duchess of Guise, Antoinette de Bourbon, who had wanted a French governess at the outset and had been overruled by her daughter, Marie de Guise. Antoinette instigated the dismissal of the Four Maries from the Queen’s household and supported the king and queen when they sent most of the Scottish suite home.  The only Scots Lady Flemying had been able to retain were a cook and a physician.

During the years of the queen’s separation from her Four Maries, she formed four notable relationships with females. The first was with her nursery playmate and new best friend, Princess Elisabeth. Marie often chose the astute royal mistress Diane de Potier for a mentor, favoring her over her future mother-in-law Queen Catherine d'Medici.  Her relationship with the Queen Consort was not always warm and friendly.  The formidable Duchess of Aumale, soon to become Duchess of Guise, Anne d’ Este, was the fourth.  Marie Stuart was being groomed to become the Queen of France. Her success in the role required her to behave like a French princess, not a Scottish queen.  

Although historians often cast the dismissal of her playmates in a harsh light, Poissy was only a few miles from Saint Germain.  The Four Maries often visited the palace on weekends and holidays. They had not been exiled to an austere convent in a backwater location. The convent school at Saint Louis Priory provided a high-quality liberal education to its aristocratic students. Even religious policies were flexible to a degree. Marie Livingston, whose family embraced the new learning, was encouraged but not forced to attend Mass. By the time the Four Maries reached puberty, they were well educated and highly polished French girls, ready to be integrated into the life at the French court.  Nevertheless, their place in the life of the Queen had been taken by the Princesses Elisabeth and Claud, and their brother Francois, the Dauphin. 

By the time she was eleven, the Queen of Scots might well have been homesick for her mother, but there is no reason to think she missed or even remembered the land of which she was sovereign.  

Of the four female relationships formed during her early years in France, three were among those with whom she corresponded in the months before her execution.  Diane de Poitiers was dead, but her elegance and style left a lasting impression on the queen, who like Diane, knew her stage craft.  She did not wear a crimson petticoat to her execution by accident.  She knew it was the color of martyrdom. 

THE PRINCESS ELISABETH VALOIS:

Elisabeth Valois, school of Clouet

The Princess Elisabeth Valois:  One might develop a distorted impression of the relationship between the Queen of Scots and Henri and Catherine’s oldest daughter Elisabeth if they merely surveyed the queen’s correspondence without knowing the background in which they were written.  A portfolio of letters written by the Queen to her new best friend survives.  They were not components of a private communication between close friends, but letters produced in the classroom as a part of the curriculum.   They were designed as exercises in penmanship and self-expression, and would have been read by a language tutor and possibly by Queen Catherine or Diane de Poitiers, but they were not meant to be sent to the recipient.   While Elisabeth was a frequent addressee of the queen’s letters, she was not the only one. Sometimes Marie wrote to her little friend and future fiancé, the Dauphin Francois, who was also a student in the royal nursery, and adored Marie. 

The tone of the queen’s letters to Elisabeth is often pedantic, not unusual in an exchange between a girl of eleven to a friend almost two and a half years her junior.  The queen lectures Elisabeth as if she were a younger sister, and in many respects, she was. There was a difference in status of the girls.  Marie was an anointed queen, and thus took precedence in the protocols.  Marie also treated Francois very much as if he were a sickly younger brother. Throughout her life, she was drawn to nurse the needy. However, it is an error to paint her as always compassionate and kind to those who stood between her and her goals.

From a letter written circa 1553, when Marie Stuart was eleven:
"It is not enough, my beloved sister, that at the commencement of your studies you should invoke the help of God. For He wishes, besides, that you should work with all the force you possess. For, my dearest friend and sister, the ancients have said that the Gods do not give their blessings to idle folk, but sell them for labor. Farewell, and love me as I love you."

In another letter, eleven-year-old Marie Stuart writes to her younger friend Elisabeth as follows:
"I read, yesterday, one of (Aesop’s)Fables which is as profitable as it is agreeable. During the winter the ant was engaged in making a good meal of the grain which he had collected in the summer, when the grasshopper came to him, very hungry, and begged for something to eat. But the ant said, " What were you doing in the summer?" " Singing," was the answer. " If you sang in the summer, you may dance now in the winter," answered the ant. The fable signifies, dearest sister, that while we are young we should take pains to study learning and virtue, to guide us in later years."

The friendship between the two royal girls did not fade with the years, although they were separated in their teens when Elisabeth was sent to Spain to become the third queen of King Phillip after Mary Tudor died.  In a letter written to Elisabeth in later years, from one of her English prisons, the Queen of Scots writes:
"I do not know how to describe to you the pleasure which your kind and comforting letters have given me at a time so unfortunate for me; they seem sent from God for my consolation in the midst of all the troubles and adversities that surround me! I see well how much I am bound to bless God for our having been (fortunately for me) brought up together in friendship."

Some histories of the queen infer she received her education at the convent school at the Abbey of Saint Pierre les Dames du Rheims where her Aunt Renee de Guise was abbess. It is true that the queen visited her mother’s oldest sibling at the convent and spent some time there in the company of her aunt Renee, but she did not reside there for any protracted length of time. Her principal education was received at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and when she grew older, she moved with the court.  Her mother’s family,  however, participated in her care and education and as she approached the age of majority, assumed a principal role. . The family matriarch Antoinette d’Bourbon, the Dowager Duchess of Guise, was not shy in providing input. The image one receives of the young Marie Stuart was that of a serious student who aimed to please and who worked hard at her lessons and was obedient.


 Because Marie was already a sovereign, she sometimes found herself the object of power struggles in the nursery and at court.  She also was a pawn in the rising fortunes of the House of Guise. There is no question that the Dukes of Guise and their ecclesiastical siblings were intimidating.  Francois, Second Duke of Guise, and his brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine rivaled the king in both wealth and power. A major rift erupted when the Dauphin was given his establishment and withdrawn from the nursery.  At Antoinette Bourbon’s instigation, her sons Francois and Charles demanded the same treatment for their niece Queen Marie, who was a year older.  The problem was getting someone other than themselves to pay for it, preferably the Scottish parliament.  Financial accommodations were reached between Henri II and the Scots, and Marie Stuart moved into her own suite at Saint Germain,  One of her first acts was to free her Four Maries from their exile and restore them to her household. Another was to entertain her Uncle Charles at a lavish dinner.  By then, the adolescent queen had learned to assert herself.  She embarked upon a struggle with her formidable grandmother Antoinette to rid herself of the governess the Dowager Duchess of Guise had selected to replace Janet Stewart, Lady Flemyng.   Marie took her complaints directly to her mother in Scotland, and the governess was sacked, but not without first spreading tales inferring Marie Stuart was a spoiled, manipulative brat.  During the dispute over the governess, Marie maintained the woman’s abuses had caused her to take to her bed with severe pains in her side.  Whether real or feigned, the pains were a recurring device displayed by the queen throughout her life when she did not get her way. And of course, the governess was sent back from whence she came, a bitter woman who did not live long.

QUEEN CATHERINE d' MEDICI:

There is much truth to the governess’s accusation.  Marie was indeed manipulative, and her first great success was with her prospective father-in-law, the king.  When adolescent Marie and Queen Catherine disagreed,  Marie sometimes took her complaints directly to the king, who was enchanted by his little ward and often arbitrated in her favor.  There is no definitive point where relationships between Queen consort Catherine and the Queen of Scots are noted in the histories.  At the time of Marie’s arrival in France, Catherine d’Medici was herself an outsider, the Italienne.  The female personage of power and influence at the Valois Court was not the queen but the royal mistress, Diane dePoitiers.  It was she who convinced Henri to begin occasionally sleeping with his wife, in order to secure the dynasty.  Diane was the one who set the tone at court.  When in 1551 the Dowager of Scotland Marie de Guise came home to France for a visit, it was Diane she consulted on matters of protocol and wardrobe. But the Duchess of Valentinois was more than a fashion plate. She was one of the king’s principal advisers on such heady matters as international diplomacy and military affairs.

The Queen of Scots was friendly with the Duchess and considered her a mentor and friend.  At one point, some of Marie Stuart’s distractors suggested a painting by an unknown artist of two topless women in the bath produced late in the 16^th century was of Diane and the Queen of Scots, although it is far more likely of the French King Henry IV’s beloved mistress Madame d’Estrees and her sister. While Diane had frequently posed nude, there is no evidence the Queen of Scots did.  Also, Diane was forty-three years older than Marie, obviously not the case of the women in the painting.

 It is worthy of note that Catherine d’Medici had only been Queen of France a year when anointed Queen Marie Stuart arrived in France.  From the time of Catherine’s  marriage to Henri in 1533,  she had remained in the background. The marriage contract was negotiated while her uncle Clement VII was the pope, but he died shortly after the marriage.  The contract had been negotiated by Henri’s father Francois I, anticipating the political benefits he would reap by being an in-law of the Pope.  The marriage occurred at a time when Francois was competing with Charles V for the favor of the  Roman Church. For that reason, the bride’s dowry was hardly a factor in the negotiations.  With Clement’s death, Catherine was relegated to the background. She spent her energies staying in the good graces of the king’s mistress the Duchess of d’Etampes and her husband’s beloved Diane de Poitiers. At the time Henri succeeded his father, Catherine was far from an important force in French court politics, and the Queen of Scots apparently sensed her lack of popularity at the court.  There is no evidence of precisely when the queens displayed a mutual dislike of one another, but at some point while Marie was growing up, she referred to Queen Catherine as ‘the Florentine shopkeeper’s daughter.’ Her use of the demeaning label made its way to  Catherine, who did not forget the slight. 

DIANE d' POITIERS:

Diane dePoitiers, the Duchess of Valentinois, was not the trollop the Scottish Protestant Kirk made her out to be.  She had been a loyal and loving wife to her much older first husband, Louis de Breze, Seigneur d’Anet.  According to romantic legend, Henri II had been infatuated with Diane since he was a boy on his way to captivity in Spain,  and while that may be true,  whatever the adolescent Henri’s feelings for her might have been, she was an exemplary wife to Louis while he lived.  While the court of Henri’s father Francois I was licentious, Henri Valois was of a different ilk.  He and Diane were deeply devoted to one another, and the tone of their court was conservative. When sensuous dances such as the Volta became popular at court, they were favored by Queen Catherine, not the Duchess.  In some respects, she was more prudish than Catherine.

 Diane was 19 years the king’s senior, and her judgment was astute.  If she was unpopular with the Guises and its rivals in  the Montmorency faction, it was for her competence in maintaining the balance of power between them, not her status as a mistress.  She, not Catherine, held the ear as well as the heart of the king.  But, Catherine was an intelligent young woman whose life experiences had taught her to be cautious.  She knew better than to be confrontational in her dealings with Diane.  She was also circumspect about her relationship with her designated future daughter-in-law.  The Italian shopkeeper’s daughter was wise enough to avoid battles she could not win. Once she began giving birth to Henri’s children, she was content to bide her time.

ANNE d' ESTE, DUCHESS OF GUISE, DUCHESS OF NEMOURS:

When the Queen of Scots arrived in France, her grandfather Claud was Duke of Guise, the second son of the Duke of Lorraine, which had been an independent Duchy.   The House of Guise had brought Lorraine into the kingdom, and its scions were considered princes of France, claiming precedence over the Bourbon princes of the blood.   Until 1528, only princes of the ruling house were awarded the title of Duke. Thus, when Duke Claud’s daughter, the Scottish Dowager, began negotiations aimed at sending her daughter to France to escape a forced betrothal to Henry VIII’s son Prince Edward, there were political benefits in welcoming the Queen of Scots to France.  Although Henri Valois disagreed with his father’s position on many issues, bringing Marie Stuart to France under contract to become betrothed to his four-year-old son Francois was not among them.  The French crown was locked in armed conflicts with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the House of Guise contributed both its military might and incredible wealth to efforts to hold Charles at bay.  Marie had been in France for two years when Claud died at the Guise estate in Joinville where she had visited, but by the time of her arrival, the Duke had passed the leadership of the Guise faction to his sons Francois and Charles. 

Anne d'Este

Francois de Guise

In 1550, both the Duke and his brother John, Cardinal of Lorraine, died, leaving the new Duke of Guise Francois the most important of France’s generals, and his brother Charles, the most important European ecclesiastic behind the Pope, and the richest man in France.  Their mother, the redoubtable Antoinette deBourbon, Dowager Duchess of Guise, retained her position as the family matriarch,  but the new Duchess of Guise, Anne d’Este, was formidable in her own right, and a person of influence in the wife of her niece, the Queen of Scots.   Like Elisabeth Valois, Anne d’Este remained close to the Queen of Scots long after she returned to Scotland.

Of the women who influenced Marie Stuart’s early life, I find Anne d’Este the most enigmatic.  My debut novel sees her through the eyes of Janet Stewart, Lady Flemying’s daughter whom the French called La Flamina because her surname hinted at a Flemish heritage.   My protagonist did not like Anne and viewed her as a puppet of Antionette d’ Bourbon, a rather stiff-necked moralist who wore a hair shirt and a celice under plain, coarse clothes.  However, as she matured, Anne became a leader of the militant Catholic faction in the French Wars of Religion and the epitome of a woman who stepped far outside of the role of the typical aristocratic noblewoman of her day.  It is difficult to extract from the several versions of Anne e’Este to isolate the one who influenced the Queen of Scots during her years in France. 

The woman who succeeded Antoinette de Bourbon as Duchess of Guise was the daughter of the Duke of Ferrera, Ercole II, which gave her shared heritage with Queen Catherine d’ Medici. However, Anne was also the granddaughter of a King of France, and the niece of Francois I’s revered first wife Claud.  Her mother was Renee of France, one of the two daughters of the Valois king Louis XII, his only children to survive infancy.  The crown then passed to his relative Francois I, Henri II’s father. Thus, Anne e’Este and the French king were related.  She traveled from her father’s duchy to Saint Germain en Laye where she was married and never again set foot in Italy.  Her marriage to the son of the high-flying Duke of Guise was a political match of high value to both.  Whether out of genuine affection or a shared political ambition, the marriage was a strong one.  From the time of her marriage to Francois, who at the time was Duke of Aumale, Anne d’Este became an enthusiastic member of the House of Guise.  In 1550 when the old Duke died, she became Duchess of Guise, and with the aid of her mother-in-law Antoinette managed the vast wealth of the Guise while her husband became one of France’s most accomplished warrior princes.  She apparently shared her mother-in-law’s enthusiasm for removing the pre-pubescent Queen of Scots from the control of  Catherine and Diane.  She developed a friendly correspondence with her husband’s sister Marie de Guise, informing her that at the age of nine, the little queen was too advanced to be treated as a child.  She and her brother-in-law Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, were instrumental in convincing Mare de Guise to pursue the funding necessary to establish a separate household for the Queen of Scots.  

According to a very recent scholarly analysis by Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain, Cambridge Press, 2015, it was after the queen’s eleventh birthday when her sovereignty was established that her classical education actually began.  The strict regimen imposed by the hand-picked governess Madame Parois, as unpopular as it was with Marie, introduced the queen to a level of study of more substance and less glitter.  According to author Pollnitz, her education to that point, while impressive, was superficial, aimed more at showmanship than deep understanding. Contrary to the reports of other historians who compare her facility with Latin to Edward VI, Polnitz maintains the queen’s  performances were orchestrated by her tutors and were well rehearsed.  Her celebrated dissertation at the Louvre in 1554-or 1555 so gloriously applauded by the French scholar Brantome was more a recitation than an expository declamation. Nevertheless, Mary Stuart was educated well above the standard of most female royals of her day, no doubt with the encouragement of her aunt Anne, who had received an exemplary liberal education while growing up in Ferrera.

The success of her Guise relatives in giving the Queen of Scots her household paved the way for acknowledgment of her majority, a move that allowed her to appoint her own Regent.  Guided by her Guise relatives, Marie ousted the Regent James Hamilton, erstwhile Earl of Arran and Duke of Chatelherault, and replaced him with her mother.  It was a move popular in France, but not in Scotland, where the move was perceived as an assault against the Scottish Reformation and a reaffirmation of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France.  It was a victory for the Guises and the Royal House of Valois, but one for which Marie de Guise ultimately paid dearly. 

Notre Dame du Paris

After Marie  Stuart’s marriage to Francois II in April 1558 when she became the Dauphiness, it seemed apparent she would someday become Queen of France.  Her training shifted to what was appropriate for a queen consort. For elegance and taste, she would have looked to Anne e’Este as well as Diane de Poitiers. She had already estranged herself from Catherine by insisting on wearing white at her wedding, which Catherine considered the color of mourning.  The austerity of the Dowager Antoinette de Bourbon was ill-suited to a nominated Queen of France. Thus,  Anne Este emerged as an ideal mentor.

For all of her love of elegance, Anne d’Este was an exemplary wife to Francois.  She never appeared in public without the Duke, or if he was on a military campaign, without his brother the Cardinal as her escort.  While the Queen of Scot’s enemies in Scotland later tried to cast the Duchess as a loose woman who had engaged in an affair with her second husband, the Duke of Nemours while Francois still lived, there is no credible evidence that Anne was anything but a loyal and loving wife, one of the several victims of the poison pens of Marie Stuart’s enemies Buchanan and Randolph, and the polemics of John Knox. When Francois d’ Guise was assassinated in 1563, Anne d’Este is said to have supervised the execution of the man who shot him, standing watch while his extremities were tied to bent saplings,  which when released tore him limb from limb.  Some stories have her cutting the rope herself.

Throughout her life, the Queen of Scots and her Guise family remained close, at times to Marie Stuart’s detriment.  During her years of detention in England, she looked to Anne’s sons to launch a rescue, and she stayed close to her aunt.  Among their preserved  correspondence,  at the eve of Marie Stuart’s period of personal rule, letters were exchanged regarding Anne’s remarriage to the handsome and younger Jacques de Savoy, Duke of Nemours,  at a time when the Queen was imprisoned at Loch Leven.  The Queen of Scots sent Anne d’Este wishes for the happiness Marie would never realize. It was Anne’s second successful marriage. She presented Nemours with three more children to match the seven survivors of her union with Francois de Guise.  She also supervised diplomatic exchanges between Nemours, France and the independent  Duchy of Savoy.

Henri IV as Mars (PD Art)

Anne d’Este remained a political force to be reckoned with after her second husband died. The last of Catherine d’Medici’s sons to rule France, Henri III, had her two older Guise sons murdered, and Anne arrested, although she was soon released. While there is a lack of conclusive evidence, Anne is a prime suspect in Henri III’s assassination the following year. After personally supervising the resistance in Paris to the armies of the Huguenot heir to the throne, Henri of Navarre during the Wars of Religion, when Henri IV submitted to a mass and recanted his Protestant faith, Anne persuaded her sons to  acknowledge him as King of France.  When he divorced his flamboyant wife Marguerite of Valois (Queen Margot), the Dowager Duchess of Guise and Nemours, a consummate survivor, became superintendent of his bride Maria d’ Medici’s  household.  When Anne d’Este died, her heart was buried at Joinville with Francois and her Guise children, and her body was sent to Annecy to be buried with her second husband and his family.  She would have been a good role model for the Queen of Scots, whom she outlived by twenty years.  She was refined and educated, flexible when warranted, and hard of heart when required.  

CONCLUSION:

Execution of the Queen of Scots, {{PD Art}}

During the last days of her life, the Queen of Scots still looked to France for her salvation. Her last letter was written to Charles IX, King of France, Catherine’s son. It was Anne’s son Henri, third Duke of Guise whom she had expected to lead a military expedition to England to save her, unfortunately at a time when the Guises had problems of their own. She petitioned Elizabeth to allow her to retire to the Guise controlled convent of Saint Pierre les Dames du Rheims where her Aunt Renee was the abbess, and where the last of the Four Maries to leave her service, Marie Seton, had gone to spend her final years. Elizabeth refused. Ironically, the Queen of Scots,  who was happiest as Queen of France,  is buried in Westminster Abbey in a country she never ruled, across the aisle from the Queen of England, who signed her death warrant.  Even in death, she did not choose her own company.

Thank you for joining me in this brief look at the women in Marie Stuart's France. ~ Linda Root

Linda Root is the author of six historical novels set in the late 16th and early seventeenth century, The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, (2011) and The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots (2013), both large historicals, and the Legacy of the Queen of Scots Suite consisting of four books to date and the fifth coming in early 2016.  Visit her author’s page: She also writes historical fantasy under the name J.D. Root.  Root is a former major crimes prosecutor living in the high desert above Palm Springs with husband Chris and two Alaskan malamutes Maxx and Maya.  Visit her author page on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0053DIGM8

April 24 1558 - April 24 1567: The Nine Year Descent of the Queen of Scots

by Linda Root

APRIL 24^th IS MY BIRTHDAY. IT IS ALSO THE DATE OF THE QUEEN OF SCOTS’ MAGNIFICENT DEBUT ON THE WORLD STAGE, AND THE DATE OF HER MOST CONTROVERSIAL MISADVENTURE.  COME SHARE IT WITH ME:

April 24, 1558 – Notre Dame d’ Paris

Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame
(Cathedral depicted as circa 1600)
Wikimedia Public Domain

There was no butter or chocolate available for purchase anywhere near Paris. The city had long been sold out of silks, brocades, and Belgium lace. Aristocratic women who had failed to plan ahead were savaging their draperies because there was no other velvet to be had. No French king or heir apparent had been married at Notre Dame d' Paris  in living memory. The parents of the groom,  Henri II and his consort Catherine d' Medici,  had been married in Marseilles, and his father Francis I, at Saint Germain en Laye. None of Louis XII’s three wedding masses had been celebrated in the City of Light.  Although the betrothal had not become official until the week before, the prenuptial agreement had been solemnized at Stirling in Scotland when the bride-to- be was not yet five and the absentee bridegroom, barely four. The forthcoming wedding gave Parisians a long-awaited cause to celebrate.

1558 was a grand year for a French royal wedding. The bride’s uncle Francois, Duke of Guise had expelled the English from the Pas de Calais. Francois had abrogated the embarrassment of Agincourt.  On the other side of the coin, the English waged a successful siege of  St. Quentin, trapping  Francois' rival Duke Anne de Montmorency inside the city. Montmorency's detention cleared the way for the Duke of Guise  to act as Master of Ceremonies at his niece's wedding.

The mistress of the ceremony was indeed the bride. Sixteen-year-old Marie Stuart had been the anointed Queen of Scots since six days old and was comfortable in the limelight. She had lived in France since she was five and was already a  celebrated beauty and a crowd pleaser. In every respect other than being born of a Scottish King, she was a French girl. If you have read this in my other posts, I cannot emphasize it too much.  Portrayals of the Queen of Scots glossing over her French childhood (i.e., Reign) do a disservice to their audience.

It is regrettable there are no paintings of the wedding at Notre Dame. We are left to contemporary reports of bystanders and our imaginations. In all accounts, it was a public spectacle of unprecedented grandeur. The ceremony was orchestrated to allow ordinary citizens of Paris  a view of the procession and much of the ceremony. Duke Francois was a perfect host, tossing large sums of money to the assembled crowd amid cries of ‘Largesse, Largesse.’

The bride entered the cathedral on the arm of the King. She wore her hair down, and her gown was white--both departures from tradition.  Queen consort Catherine de Medici had vehemently disapproved of the choice of white for the bridal gown, and the issue was taken to Henri II  to arbitrate.  He sided with his future daughter-in-law. The dress was so heavily encrusted with pearls and other precious jewels that its train was difficult for Marie’s attendants to manage. Celebrations went on for days. After-parties arranged to entertain  visiting Scottish dignitaries and foreign ambassadors continued for the better part of a year.

Duke of Guise, Clouet

The Paris  Aprils  1559—April 1560:  

Although the focus of European royalty was still on Paris in April of 1559, developments on the world stage occurred  which impacted Marie Stuart’s life. The most significant was the death of England’s Catholic Queen Mary Tudor; a sad childless woman married to Philip of Spain who had  the audacity to claim she  smelled bad. According to the Will of Henry VIII and the Act of Succession, the English crown passed to Elizabeth Tudor, the strong-willed Protestant daughter of Anne Boleyn. At this point, the Queen of Scots seriously miss-stepped: No doubt at the provocation of her Guise uncles, the Dauphiness began quartering the arms of England alongside those of Scotland and France. The Queen of Scots had unwittingly taken her first steps toward the block at Fotheringhay by questioning her cousin’s right to rule at a time when Elizabeth I was vulnerable. Her act displayed a foreboding political naiveté and a tendency to follow an agenda written by others.

Elizabeth Coronation portrait 1559

By her third wedding anniversary, the Queen of Scots was Queen consort of France due to a jousting accident claiming the life of her father-in-law.With frail, insipid Francois II as its King, France was in the control of the Duke of Guise and his  brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Two events occurred to mar the carefree lifestyle of the young King and Queen.  An ill-conceived Huguenot plot to free France of its ultra-Catholic  overlords culminated at Amboise in the Spring of 1560. Although it failed miserably, it exposed the religious divisions plaguing France. In summer, amidst political unrest terminating her regency, Marie’s mother Marie d Guise died at Stirling.

 The  worst was yet to come.  Within days of Marie Stuart’s eighteenth birthday, her childhood confidant and adoring husband Francois II died, apparently of a brain abscess.  The new widow spent her birthday in mourning interrupted when her mother-in-law sent  agents to recover the crown jewels. Her family’s efforts to arrange another European royal marriage were stifled by Catherine de Medici, who ruled France as regent for her young son Charles. If Marie were to be a queen, it would be as Queen of Scotland, an alternative she considered a last resort.

The Scottish years: By April 24, 1561, her third wedding anniversary, Marie Stuart had run out of options. Four months later she sailed into Leith Harbor to begin her personal rule as Queen of Scots.  Although gently bullied by her half-brother James Stewart and maligned by a Protestant clergy led by the irascible John Knox, the Queen of Scots was determined to make the best of it. She spent the first year of her personal rule negotiating a face to face meeting with Elizabeth. Her foreign minister William Maitland did his best to arrange a meeting in York, but  factions on each side of the border sabotaged it. Marie Stuart’s objective was to be named Elizabeth’s heir apparent, which created issues with English Protestants. Meanwhile, Marie continued to search for a suitable husband amongst European Catholic royalty, which did not sit well with either Elizabeth or the Scottish Kirk.

Marie Stuart as a widow, Clouet

There were high points in Marie Stuart’s early reign, notably when she followed the advice of her brother James,  whom she made Earl of Moray, and her foreign secretary  Maitland. With Moray as a comrade in arms, she waged a successful armed expedition against the powerful Catholic Earl of Huntly, which pleased her English cousin. Nevertheless at the end of 1563 she still had failed to come to  terms with her cousin to the south. A successful foreign policy and the establishment of a seaworthy Navy made Elizabeth Tudor a new power on the European stage. European royals were in no hurry to offend her by catering to her charming but less politically astute cousin's marital agenda.  By April 24^th, 1563, Marie was acutely aware of the need to secure her throne by producing an heir. Serious problems began when she ignored the advice of her brother and refused to give Elizabeth a right to nay say her choice of husbands, a prerequisite to being named her heir.

The situation developing was much more complicated than a rivalry of Queens. The same problem that was met head on in 2014 was a factor in 1563—the issue of Union. Many astute 16^th century Scots including Maitland, Morton, Moray and Kirkcaldy realized a prosperous and Protestant Scotland required peace along the Borders. A permanent end to the Border Wars was best obtained through a Union of the Crowns. Such a premise was utterly alien to the Queen, whose  world view and loyalties were with the French. To Marie Stuart and other Francophiles, the Auld Alliance was very real. However, to most Scots, the Border Wars were devastating to Scotland and often instigated by its Auld Ally when a diversionary bush war in Scotland was in the French interest.

The Scottish view of the monarchy was a second factor sealing Marie Stuart's doom. Early Stuart Royals were Divine Right Monarchs, but the Scottish aristocracy had a different view of what constituted a right to rule. There was a nascent Republicanism in Scottish thought long before Marie Stuart came on the scene. Scots, not God had the final word as to who should be a Scottish sovereign. None of this was part of Marie Stuart’s mindset. She believed the rhetoric calling Elizabeth a heretic and a bastard and that she, not Elizabeth, was England’s rightful Queen. Consequently, when her brother and other advisors told her to acquiesce to Elizabeth's nominee for a second husband, she balked.

Premier Marian historian John Guy states the Queen sealed her fate when she married her English cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Guy's arguments are sound, but the seed of doom was planted earlier when she quartered the arms of England along with her own. Elizabeth was so successful at recreating herself as Gloriana that it is easy to overlook how fragile her grasp on the English throne was when she ascended in 1558. Marie’s competing claim was more than an insult instigated by French Catholics. It was a genuine threat. Elizabeth’s bullying of Marie over her choice of husbands  was at the  least a subtle pay-back.

Darnley, Wiimedia Commonds PD Art

History makes such short shrift of Henry Stuart that it is easy to suspect he was Elizabeth's minister Cecil’s plant. At nineteen, he had a reputation as an arrogant, promiscuous, mollycoddled brat. Even Cecil, who was no fan of sending  Catholic Darnley to become Scottish consort, figured he would not last long. He expected  Moray to see right through Darnley and send him back. When Moray publicly declared Darnley a disaster in the making, his love-starved sister threw Moray out and married  Cousin Henry. Not all Scots disfavored the Darnley marriage. As Henry VII’s great grandchild, his claim to the English throne mirrored Marie’s without suffering the disability of her foreign birth. Anglophiles like Maitland viewed the marriage as a guarantee of Union under a Stuart succession should  Elizabeth die without issue.  But Darnley could not behave himself for long.  By winter, Marie's advisers sided with Moray and so did the unhappy, pregnant Queen. 

A series of bizarre events plagued her pregnancy. First, Maitland convinced Darnley he had been cuckolded. Darnley in turn partnered with the Douglas faction and murdered the Queen's favorite David Rizzio in her presence. Finally, he double-crossed the Douglases and sided with the Queen, assisting in her escape. When the air cleared, Marie saw Darnley  as a danger to her unborn child. In spite of occasional public displays of domestic harmony that fooled no one, she and Darnley were estranged.  After the Prince’s christening in December 1566 which Darnley boycotted, he fled to his father Matthew Stuart’s Lennox earldom near Glasgow. From there he began to plot against his wife. He guessed the Douglases, Maitland, and the Queen's friend James Hepburn were planning to kill him. As modern political philosopher Henry Kissinger observed, even paranoid schizophrenics have enemies.
 .
Darnley was suffering from what is believed to have been tertiary syphilis and fell ill shortly after arriving in Glasgow. The queen traveled there to bring him back. One of history’s great mysteries centers on her motive. Was she delivering him into the lion’s den knowing he was marked for murder, or was she caging him in a velvet prison lest he kill her first?  It may have been a bit of both. On February 10, 1567, his lodgings at Kirk o' Field exploded, and he was found strangled in a nearby garden.

Wikimedea Commons, Drury Sketch of crime scene at Kirk o' Fields

April 24^th, 1567:

By the Spring of 1566-67, the widow had chosen a new shoulder on which to lean. James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell,  was a border firebrand whose most redeeming characteristic was his unwavering loyalty to both Marie de Guise during her regency and later, to the Queen. What part he played in Darnley's death is a topic for a tome, and I shall not explore it here.  He did not appear suddenly on the scene as Darnley had done two years earlier. The Earls of Bothwell were traditional powers in Scottish politics. Both Hepburn and his father were opposed to an alliance with England, although they were avid Protestants. Lord James was among a handful of men Marie trusted to reside in Edinburgh Castle during her lying-in prior to the birth of the Prince. He had never catered to Darnley and had been a secondary target in the Rizzio murder. Although he was a notorious womanizer, there is no credible evidence linking him and the queen sexually until Darnley's father Lennox  fueled the rumors.

When, then, did Bothwell become the Queen’s lover and more specifically, what happened between them on the 24^th of April, 1567? The issue is unresolved, but the clues are out there. Unfortunately, most of them address the Queen's behavior rather than exploring what was going on with Bothwell, although  he is the prime mover in the following events.  To that end, I offer a caveat: none of the actions of the parties can be judged by 21^st Century standards. With that in mind, the following facts suggest a different answer than expected. Mayhap the rape was genuine.

~~

James Hepburn was a sexually attractive man, as attested by the ease of his many conquests. From the sophisticated Norwegian heiress Anna Trondsen and the icy Lady Jean Gordon to the siren Janet Beaton, who raised his illegitimate son, the women who knew him took the risks that went along with a relationship.

The Wizard Lady of Buccleugh-Braxtome, Janet Beaton
Wikimeia Public Domain

Hepburn’s womanizing was well known.  Nevertheless, the new widow frequently conferred with Bothwell in the privacy of her chambers during her period of mourning after Darnley’s death.

The privy council and other leading Scots knew something was brewing between the Queen and Bothwell by early April. Bothwell hosted a dinner party either at Ainslee’s tavern or in his apartments at court, and his guests put their names to a bond presenting him to Marie as their nominee to become her third husband.

In contrast, the Queen was sexually inexperienced. Her marriage to Francois was likely unconsummated.  His testicles had not descended at the time of his death at age seventeen. Although she was schooled in the practices of courtly love and had flirted with the  poet Chatelard and entertained her secretary Rizzio in her chambers at all hours, there is no evidence she regarded her behavior as compromising. Obviously her relation with Darnley was sexually charged but of relatively brief duration. Weeks after the wedding he was back to the brothels and the Queen was at the gaming tables playing cards with Rizzio.

On the day after Bothwell’s dinner party, Hepburn and Maitland rode to Seton House to present the bond proposing a Hepburn marriage to the Queen. She rejected it on the grounds it might cast doubts upon her honor. Maitland had been recruited to accompany Hepburn to give the proposal credibility.  The two men were not friends. Bothwell never considered Marie might turn him down, or he would not have let a man he despised witness his humiliation.

A final point worthy of consideration concerns the prevalent mores. In 16th Century Scotland, carrying a reluctant female off and raping her was not an uncommon means to force marriage on a reluctant bride, even among aristocrats. Others had contemplated it with the Queen including John Gordon, and possibly his father Huntly, as well as James Hamilton 2nd Earl of Arran.

To innocent observers, Marie and Bothwell were  conducting business as usual the day after she rejected his proposal.  Bothwell had pressing business on the Borders. Marie traveled to Stirling Castle where she intended to relieve the Earl of Mar of the custody of her son. She planned to transfer his guardianship to Bothwell when she returned to Edinburgh.
But that is not what happened.

On April 24^th,  after having been refused the custody of her son by Mar, Marie headed back to Edinburgh with Maitland, Sir James Melville, two ladies and thirty retainers. Bothwell and an army of his Borderers waylaid the Queen's entourage at Foulmouth near a bridge over the Almond River. Marie ordered her escort to stand down. Bothwell and his men took control of the Queen, Maitland, and Melville and hauled them off to Dunbar. When they arrived, Bothwell allegedly raped the Queen and boasted to Maitland he had solved her honor problem.

When Melville was released to deliver a message from the Queen to her people excusing Hepburn’s conduct, the citizens of Edinburgh had armed themselves with broom handles, picks, and pitchforks.  When a contingent reached Dunbar, it was clear the Queen did not desire a rescue. A few days later she went to Hepburn’s family's estate at Hailes and  taught him the game of golf. When they returned to Edinburgh, the Queen was in Bothwell’s physical control and clearly in his thrall. The Queen of Scots had lost her credibility with her people.

In May, Marie Stuart married Bothwell in a Protestant ceremony that had her in tears. The ceremony was followed by a wedding breakfast to which the public was invited, but few came. On the 15^th of June, the pregnant Queen of Scots surrendered to the Protestant lairds at Carberry Hill on the condition Bothwell would go free. Within days, she was imprisoned at Loch Leven Castle in the custody of her brother Moray’s mother.  On July 24^th, 1567, she was forced to abdicate in favor of her son James whom she never saw again.

The battlefield at Carberry-Pd Wikimedia Commons

There are three versions of what occurred at Dunbar. One presumes Hepburn raped the Queen. Another suspects she surrendered her virtue willingly. A third claims the kidnapping was a well-planned farce. The  choice is ours to make.

~~

Linda Root is the author of The First Marie and the Queen of Scots and The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots in the Queen of Scots Suite (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Queen+of+Scots+Suite) and The Legacy of the Queen of Scots series including The Midwife’s Secret: The Mystery of the Hidden Princess; The Other Daughter: Midwife’s Secret II; 1603: The Queen’s Revenge, and In the Shadow of the Gallows(coming soon).( http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Legacy+of+the+Queen+of+Scots).

As J.D. Root, she has also published the first in her Daemons Ghosts & Guardian series, The Green Woman: A Scottish Fantasy. She lives in Yucca Valley, California with husband Chris, two Alaskan Malamutes, 20 hens and a chicken named Henry 8.

June 20th and the Discovery of the Casket Letters ~ Tainted Evidence

By Linda Root

In criminal prosecutions, dates are often significant, sometimes critical, and even dispositive of a case's outcome.  When  viewing  the last year of the reign of  Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots  through the eyes of an experienced  prosecutor,  June 20, 1567  becomes  a landmark date.  

Placed in the chronology of events occurring in Scotland during that regime- shattering summer, the emergence of damning evidence against the queen five days after her surrender at Carberry Hill casts  more doubt on the men who produced it than on the guilt or innocence  of the queen whom they claimed  had been complicit in her husband’s murder. The tribunal which investigated the charges against the queen was hardly impartial and her accusers were the true principals in the very crime of which she was charged. It all began on June 20 in the course of a most unlikely dinner attended by two men who openly disliked one another, each of whom probably ate with a table knife in one hand and a sgian dubh hidden in the other.



According to Morton,  June 20, 1567   is the day that the infamous 'Casket Letters' were dropped into his lap, a most fortuitous windfall for the prosecution's case, although the evidence alleged to have surfaced on that important day was not presented to the Scottish Parliament when it indicted the queen the following December, never presented in its original form to the tribunal that heard the case against her at York and Westminster in 1568,  and early in the independent reign of her son and successor James VI the evidence mysteriously disappeared.  Of utmost importance, while discovery of the evidence was leaked to Cecil and the French via hint and innuendo, the actual evidence was not disclosed while the queen was still in Scotland and public sentiment was so critical to the Regent's cause, and it was never shown to the queen.

Morton was Marie Stuart's bitter enemy, the man who orchestrated the murder of her friend and confidante David Rizzio so that it occurred in the heavily pregnant queen’s presence, and who was instrumental in changing the terms of her surrender at Carberry from house arrest at Holyrood to close confinement in the dismal island fortress at Loch Leven.

On June 20, five days after the knight Sir William Kirkcaldy delivered the queen into his clutches, Morton and Maitland were settled in for a supposedly friendly dinner when they were interrupted with astonishing news.

There had been an incursion into Edinburgh Castle by a trio of men aligned with the  queen's third husband, her-co suspect Bothwell, and one of them, James Dalgleish, had been discovered with evidence in his possession. At least that was the story Morton brokered to the English sixteen months later when the queen's brother, the Scottish Regent Moray placed Morton’s sworn declaration in evidence before the assembled tribunal at York.  It is what happened in the intervening month that makes Morton's averments suspicious.

Kikcaldy at Carberry by Russ Root

There are several different views as to how this most unlikely discovery  surfaced and whether Morton's words are credible.

The first red flag is the dinner itself, because Morton and Maitland were not friends. What bound them together, if anything was the fact that each had the goods on the other.  But since the two of them were running Scotland until the queen's half-brother Moray returned from wherever he had gone to stay clear of the fracas that followed his sister's marriage to Bothwell, I concede that perhaps they did have matters to discuss. Moray was due to return in a matter of days, and Morton and Maitland needed to have their ducks lined up. 

At that point, while the surrender of the queen  had been accepted by the common folk, who had been shocked by her behavior with Bothwell, there were already grumblings coming from the Knight Kirkcaldy of Grange, who had procured the queen's surrender on very specific terms and was of the opinion that her harsh treatment left his honor tarnished. Kirkcaldy had served in France with King Henri Valois in a setting where chivalry was the watchword and a man's honor was everything.

Russ Root from The Last Knight

The entire campaign the lairds had waged had been launched on the premise that they were merely attempting to free their befuddled queen from Bothwell's thrall. With Bothwell in flight and essentially neutralized, there was no good reason for the queen to be locked up at Loch Leven with Morton's kin as her jailers if freeing her from Bothwell's influence was the objective. That could have been achieved in a house arrest at Holyrood or Edinburgh Castle, which is what she had been promised.

Kirkcaldy was beginning to think he had been duped.  Thus, three days after spiriting her off to the Douglas stronghold at Loch Leven in the dead of night with little more than the clothes on her back, Morton and Maitland would have been highly motivated to uncover evidence of her direct participation in her husband Darnley's murder, and the letters produced in facsimile at York the following year did just that.

Power players such as Elizabeth Tudor and Catherine de Medici's and her sons, and especially Philip II of Spain  were not impressed with the idea of locking up an anointed sovereign on grounds as flimsy as having entered into an unpopular marriage. The Scottish lairds desperately needed a stronger case—one which directly implicated the queen in her second husband Henry Darnley’s murder. Their discovery was an all too convenient surprise.

The discovery of documents that had allegedly been left by Bothwell in his apartments in Edinburgh Castle presents another red flag issue, for at the time, Edinburgh Castle was under the control of Sir James Balfour, and if anyone knew the truth about the events of 1566 and 67, it was Balfour, who was as inconstant as the shifting winds from off the Firth and blew both ways.  Contemporaries called him 'the most corrupt man of his age,’ (Robertson’s Hist. vol. ii. p. 354,).

The Balfour Armoral

He first appears as a principal in the events leading to consort Darnley's murder in the autumn of 1566 at Craigmiller where the plot to kill the queen's offensive husband was formalized, right under her nose and possibly at her bidding.  It is Balfour who allegedly did the drafting and supervised the signing of the mysterious document known as the Craigmillar Bond, which conveniently disappeared in all of its alleged versions and causes some historians to speculate that perhaps it never existed, at least not in the format alluded to by rival  historians.

But the few undisputed facts about Craigmillar suggest  that indeed a meeting was held there and its results reduced to writing, and that the queen's new champion Bothwell was the person who recruited his friend Balfour to act as scribe.  Balfour was probably not present at the early discussions, but he must  have been at Craigmillar or nearby, and it was at Bothwell's instigation that he was let into the loop. 

Which begs the question, if he was Bothwell's boon friend and henchman, why did the lairds leave him in possession of Edinburgh Castle during the rebellion when the castle was so large a prize? The answer, it seems, was that they had already turned him.   And if that is true, that also begs the second question of why they would trust him once their backs were turned?

Another undisputed fact is that after the queen married Bothwell on May 15, she and her new husband believed that if matters deteriorated they could always ride up Castle Hill and deal with their enemies from the safety of Scotland’s most  impenetrable fortress.  However, when the time came for the excursion up the hill, either Maitland or his emissary James Melville had been there first, because as a result of  secret negotiations with Maitland acting as a clandestine agent  of  the rebel lords, Balfour refused to let the queen and her consort Bothwell enter.  Perhaps his continuing governorship of the castle had been the bribe that kept the gates of the castle locked.

Balfour's refusal of entry was not an act without risk. Historically, the Queen of Scots had not dealt kindly with those who denied her access to her castles.  In 1562 after she had been denied entry into a royal  castle on her march north, she had its captain  hung from the battlements. Such an act was considered treason. Balfour’s  open act of defiance  might have inspired trust in Morton to a limited degree if that had been the end of it.  But it was not.  

When the queen and Bothwell fled the city and took refuge in Borthwick Castle, Balfour sent a message warning them that an army was hot on their heels. Balfour was a man who played the odds but also hedged his bets. If Morton was aware of Balfour’s double-dealing, and it is hard to believe he was not, his continued reliance on Balfour's loyalty was misplaced, unless of course, he and Maitland had agreed to overlook it, knowing that Balfour could be bought.

So, how did the documents that allegedly implicated the queen end up in Morton's hands?  Morton's formal declaration describes the event essentially as follows. He was dining with Maitland in Edinburgh when a man appeared with a message that three men in the service of the Earl of Bothwell had appeared at the castle to take  possession of certain of Bothwell's things that had been left behind in early June and to which, as stated above, he had been denied access. Balfour, acting in character, gave the men permission to enter Bothwell's quarters and carry off whatever they willed. Also in character, he sent his messenger to Morton, who interrupted his supper long enough to  summon a band of Douglases to hasten up the hill to check it out while he and Maitland continued their repast.

At some later point, Morton and Maitland were informed that only one of the three had been apprehended by Morton's kinsman Robert Douglas in Potters-Row near Edinburgh, and the unfortunate captive was Bothwell's servant George Dalgleish, who indeed had items of clothing and documents from the castle on his person. When the items were brought to Morton for his perusal, he and Maitland considered them to be of no special significance, mostly deeds and grants to properties Bothwell owned. But canny and efficient Morton was suspicious and ordered George Dagleish taken to the Tollbooth to be detained in proximity to the institution’s  well known collection of torture devices. and if necessary, subjected to a demonstration. 

Dalgleish was overcome with a need to disclose the entire story and thereafter, he led Morton's kinsman Sir Robert Douglas to his rooms in Potter-row and retrieved a silver casket from beneath his bed.  The small silver box was  delivered by Sir Robert or one of his servants to the Earl of Morton on  July 20, possibly again in Maitland's presence. But, alas!  It was locked  and Dalgleish had not provided a key.

The next installment of  the story begs the question of why a man like Morton, who had conducted himself on the battlefields of Corrichie and elsewhere with great audacity and cunning, who had been instrumental in the queen's secretary David Rizzio's grizzly murder, and who had offered himself in hand to-hand combat with the  border warrior Bothwell at Carberry less than a week before, would suddenly find himself intimidated by a simple lock on a little silver box at a time when  Bothwell was a fugitive and any clue to his whereabouts would have been a major breakthrough.



While it is true that he may not have had enough of a following to be a military threat, there is some evidence that Bothwell had a copy of another bond dealing with the murder of the king, this one signed at Whittinghame by Morton. It is disingenuous to think Morton would have waited till there were witnesses before he culled the contents of the casket so see what was  inside.  Nevertheless, his sworn statement declared that he waited until the following day to force the dainty little lock in a show witnessed by Maitland and staged for the entertainment of the Earls of Athol, Mar and Glencairn and numerous of the  barons.

His declaration does not mention why the items were apparently counted but not otherwise inspected or inventoried.   If the box Morton opened on June 21 contained the love poetry, steamy love letters and evidence of matricide Morton and Moray later claimed, would he not have been jumping up and down and shouting the 16^th Century Scottish equivalent of  Eureka?

According to Morton, the items were left secured and undisturbed in Morton's possession until September at which time they were passed to the custody of Marie's treacherous brother Moray after his sister's coerced abdication. Morton’s  self-serving declaration was read to the Commission at Westminster (which had been moved from York at the request of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth) on December 9, 1568.   Other documents offered in support of the integrity of the evidence--what modern law rules of evidence refer to as  'the chain’ -indicate quite clearly that the box contained twenty-one unspecified documents when it was opened. However, the record of the tribunal reveals that only eleven  items, eight of which were deemed significant,  were introduced, which, of course, begs the question of what happened to the remainder.

A complete analysis of the Casket Letters is far too comprehensive for a post, but books have been written either in support or in  defense of the allegation that the casket letters were the result of an artful bit of forgery and a clever cut and paste job. 

Maitland, his wife Marie Flemyng, and another of the Four Maries, Marie Beaton, Lady Boyne, are among the usual suspects.  Both Flemyng and Beaton had handwriting nearly indistinguishable from the queen's, and Maitland had the wit to pull it off.  It is interesting to note that in recreating a murder plot in which dates were crucial, the letters in their original form apparently were not dated, and some began without customary salutations, and contained awkward phrases unlike Marie Stuart's other writing, even when she was under stress.

The cut and paste theory  would explain how portions of twenty-one documents might have been combined to produce the eleven proffered,  especially when examining the especially damning letters #1 and #2, which contained Non sequiturs and strange inclusions and omissions that support the proposal that the Casket Letters are a fraud. They also disclosed a clumsy use of idiomatic French, and some rather poor verse unlikely to have been written by a woman who had been educated as a French girl and whose poetry instructor had been the famous Pierre Ronsard. None of the damning documents were presented at the indictment of the Queen before the Scottish Parliament in December, 1567, before Marie Stuart's escape from Loch Leven and unfortunate flight to England, although they were apparently discussed.  Indeed it makes one wonder if perhaps the ink was not yet dry.

Although claims of damning documents in the hand-writing of the queen had been leaked to the crowned heads of Europe as well as to Elizabeth and Cecil, the documents were never produced in their original form in any hearing, although there are claims that the chief judge of the tribunal at Norfolk read them.  He was apparently not all that impressed of the queen’s homicidal tendencies, because the next year he began a clandestine courtship of the alleged murderess, the first of several political missteps which eventually cost him his head.

It is also important to note that the queen's escape from Loch Leven in the early spring of 1568 was not engineered with intent to flee, but to prevail. Hers was the superior army in terms of raw numbers.  With Bothwell out of the picture, much of her popularity and mystique had been restored.  While at Carberry in early June 1567 her army was  cursed  by desertions, the force she led across Scotland in 1568 was growing as it marched.  It was the superior leadership of the Regent's army under Morton, Moray and Kirkcaldy that caused her formidable force to come off second best at Langside in 1568, and even that battle need not have been dispositive.

Russ Root "Defeat"

The queen acted in haste in fleeing to England rather than retreating to Dumbarton Castle, held for her  by Lord John Fleming.  That was what every single voice raised by her advisers had urged.  The great northern Catholic earls were headed there with experienced troops and might well have provided the leadership and military experience to change the ultimate outcome.  The Parliament which had condemned her a few months earlier had been a handpicked group of anti-Marians whose decision was never in doubt, but it did not reflect the rising tide of Marian support.  Her decision to flee was a product of her Stewart impetuousness, a fear of the harsh confinement she had tasted at Loch Leven and a misplaced trust in her cousin Good Queen Bess.

Dumbarton Castle

In spite of Elizabeth's   minister William Cecil's determination to besmirch the Queen of Scots, and the widespread rumors of condemning letters written in her own hand, the alleged contents of the casket apparently never surfaced in their original state, and were not even circulated in translation until the winter of 1568-69. One explanation for withholding such dynamic evidence is that the letters in the silver casket had not been manufactured yet.

Author's  Note:

It is noteworthy that in making her equivocal ruling that the case against her cousin Marie Stuart on the one hand, and the queen's charges against the rebellious lords on the other, had not been proved, Elizabeth Tudor apparently discounted the evidentiary value of the Casket Letters.  There is a strong possibility that the original French letters would not have withstood scrutiny by someone with Elizabeth's linguistic expertise.  She had always taken great pride is her knowledge of French.  Perhaps that is also why the contents of the casket disappeared during the early reign of King James VI.  In researching my debut novel The First Marie and the Queen of Scots,  I propound an interesting theory of who it was who assisted the Earl of Morton in the commission of one of history's greatest frauds, a question unlikely to be resolved without resort to fiction.