The fact that Queen Mary was so young offered Scotland a break from English attacks. It would have been considered unchivalrous had Henry VIII attempted to invade the country of a recently dead king, now under the rule of an infant queen. Instead, the English king decided on a policy of wooing Mary in the hope of arranging a marriage between her and his son Edward, thereby uniting the two nations under a Tudor ruler. He began his manoeuvring by releasing the Scottish nobles captured at Solway Moss, on the condition that they campaign in favour of a union with England.
However, after considering Henry’s offer, the Scottish court rejected it in favour of a marriage to Francis, the dauphin of France. Scotland was choosing to ally itself with a fellow Roman Catholic nation, a decision that pleased Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, whose own marriage with James V had been intended to cement the relationship between Scotland and France. Mary and Francis were still children, but the plan for the future was that they would eventually marry, and Francis would ascend the throne of France with Mary as his queen, thereby uniting Scotland and France. In the meantime, France would defend Scotland against any English onslaught.
The promise of protection was reassuring, particularly as Henry VIII had switched from diplomacy to intimidation in order to persuade the Scots that his own son was a more worthy groom for Mary Queen of Scots. His forces committed acts of piracy, destroyed crops, burned villages and attacked towns and cities along the border. The “rough wooing,” as it is known, continued even after Henry’s death in 1547. On the orders of his son, King Edward VI (the would-be suitor), the attacks culminated in the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, in which the Scottish army was crushed. As a result of this slaughter, it was decided that, for her own safety, Mary should leave for France, beyond the reach of the English threat, where she could prepare for her marriage to Francis. On August 7, 1548, at the age of six, she set sail for the port of Roscoff.
Mary’s first few years in the French court would be the most idyllic time of her life. She was surrounded by luxury and protected from harm, and she grew to love her future husband, the dauphin. At the age of sixteen they married, and the following year Francis and Mary became king and queen of France. Everything seemed set for her triumphant return to Scotland, until her husband, who had always suffered from poor health, fell gravely ill. An ear infection that he had nursed since he was a child had worsened, the inflammation spread toward his brain and an abscess began to develop. In 1560, within a year of being crowned, Francis was dead and Mary was widowed.
From this point onward, Mary’s life would be repeatedly struck by tragedy. She returned to Scotland in 1561, where she discovered a transformed nation. During her long absence Mary had confirmed her Catholic faith, while her Scottish subjects had increasingly moved toward the Protestant church. Mary tolerated the wishes of the majority and at first reigned with relative success, but in 1565 she married her cousin, Henry Stewart, the Earl of Darnley, an act that led to a spiral of decline. Darnley was a vicious and brutal man whose ruthless greed for power lost Mary the loyalty of the Scottish nobles. The following year Mary witnessed for herself the full horror of her husband’s barbaric nature when he murdered David Riccio, her secretary, in front of her. It became clear to everyone that for the sake of Scotland it was necessary to get rid of Darnley. Historians debate whether it was Mary or the Scottish nobles who instigated the plot, but on the night of February 9, 1567, Darnley’s house was blown up, and as he attempted to escape, he was strangled. The only good to come from the marriage was a son and heir, James.
Mary’s next marriage, to James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, was hardly more successful. By the summer of 1567, the Protestant Scottish nobles had become completely disillusioned with their Catholic queen, and they exiled Bothwell and imprisoned Mary, forcing her to give up the throne in favour of her fourteen-month-old son, James VI, while her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, acted as regent, ruling until the young king came of age. The next year, Mary escaped from her prison, gathered an army of six thousand royalists and made a final attempt to regain her crown. Her soldiers confronted the regent’s army at the small village of Langside, near Glasgow, and Mary witnessed the battle from a nearby hilltop. Although her troops were greater in number, they lacked discipline, and Mary watched as they were torn apart. When defeat was inevitable, she fled. Ideally she would have headed east to the coast and then on to France, but this would have meant crossing territory loyal to her half-brother, so instead she headed south to England, where she hoped that her cousin Queen Elizabeth I would provide refuge.
Mary had made a terrible misjudgement. Elizabeth offered Mary nothing more than another prison. The official reason for her arrest was in connection with the murder of Darnley, but the true reason was that Mary posed a threat to Elizabeth, because English Catholics considered Mary to be the true queen of England. Through her grandmother, Margaret Tudor, the elder sister of Henry VIII, Mary did indeed have a claim to the throne, but Henry’s last surviving offspring, Elizabeth I, would seem to have had a prior claim. However, according to Catholics, Elizabeth was illegitimate because she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife after he had divorced Catherine of Aragon in defiance of the Pope. English Catholics did not recognize Henry VIII’s divorce, they did not acknowledge his next marriage, to Anne Boleyn, and they certainly did not accept the resulting daughter, Elizabeth, as queen. Catholics saw Elizabeth as a “bastard usurper”.
Mary was imprisoned in a series of castles and manors. Although Elizabeth thought of her as one of the most dangerous figures in England, many Englishmen admitted that they admired her gracious manner, her obvious intelligence and her great beauty. William Cecil, Elizabeth’s Great Minister, commented on “her cunning and sugared entertainment of all men”, and Nicholas White, Cecil’s emissary, made a similar observation: “She hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scotch accent, and a searching wit, clouded with mildness.” But as each year passed, her appearance waned, her health deteriorated and she began to lose hope. Her jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, a Puritan, was immune to her charms, and treated her with increasing harshness.
By 1586, after eighteen years of imprisonment, she had lost all her privileges. She was confined to Chartley Hall in Staffordshire and was no longer allowed to take the waters at Buxton, which had previously helped to alleviate her frequent illnesses. On her last visit to Buxton she used a diamond to inscribe a message on a windowpane: “Buxton, whose warm waters have made thy name famous, perchance I shall visit thee no more – Farewell.” It appears that she suspected that she was about to lose what little freedom she had. Mary’s growing sorrow was worsened by the actions of her nineteen-year-old son, King James VI of Scotland. She had always hoped that one day she would escape and return to Scotland to share power with her son, whom she had not seen since he was one year old. However, James felt no such affection for his mother. He had been brought up by Mary’s enemies, who had taught James that his mother had murdered his father in order to marry her lover. James despised her and feared that if she returned, then she might seize his crown. His hatred towards Mary was demonstrated by the fact that he had no qualms in seeking a marriage with Elizabeth I, the woman responsible for his mother’s imprisonment (and who was also thirty years his senior). Elizabeth declined the offer.
Mary wrote to her son in an attempt to win him over, but her letters never reached the Scottish border. By this stage, Mary was more isolated then ever before: all her outgoing letters were confiscated, and any incoming correspondence was kept by her jailer. Mary’s morale was at its lowest, and it seemed that all hope was lost. It was under these severe and desperate circumstances that, on January 6, 1586, she received an astonishing package of letters.
The letters were from Mary’s supporters on the Continent, and they had been smuggled into her prison by Gilbert Gifford, a Catholic who had left England in 1577 and trained as a priest at the English College in Rome. Upon returning to England in 1585, apparently eager to serve Mary, he immediately approached the French embassy in London, where a pile of correspondence had accumulated. The embassy had known that if they forwarded the letters by the formal route, Mary would never see them. However, Gifford claimed that he could smuggle the letters into Chartley Hall, and sure enough, he lived up to his word. This delivery was the first of many, and Gifford began a career as a courier, not only passing messages to Mary but also collecting her replies. He had a rather cunning way of sneaking letters into Chartley