MARY’S ARRIVAL in the land of her birth took her subjects somewhat by surprise. Her voyage lasted barely five days, almost a record for the crossing and up to a week less than anyone had expected. As soon as Villegagnon’s flotilla had entered the open waters of the North Sea after leaving the English Channel, the captain had ordered the two smaller and much faster galleys under his command to sail ahead, leaving the slower transport ships to follow at their own speed.
On Tuesday, August 19, 1561, at six o’clock on what by all accounts was an unusually damp and depressing morning, the galleys sailed up the Firth of Forth and anchored at the entrance to the harbor at Leith. A thick haar, or cold sea mist, cloaked the shore as they arrived, so the sailors were told to wait until it dispersed before tying up at the wooden pier. Mary disembarked shortly before ten, just as the sun was starting to pierce the haze. It ended an absence of thirteen years: she had left a Scots child and returned a French woman.
She washed and rested at a nearby house for an hour or so. Then she rode with her retinue up the steep hill from the port to the town of Edinburgh, and from there down the Canongate to Holyroodhouse, the most magnificent of the palaces of Scotland. The royal apartments were situated there, in the great fortified tower her father, James V, had constructed to eclipse the older buildings on the grounds of the ancient Abbey-Kirk.
It was hardly the homecoming of which Mary had dreamed. She had reached the shores of Scotland before anyone had thought it necessary to organize a welcome party, and her transport ships were left behind. One carrying her horses, including her favorite state palfrey, had been intercepted by an English naval patrol on suspicion of piracy and diverted to Tynemouth, where the horses were detained for a month before being allowed to proceed by land to Edinburgh. Mary was forced to make a lackluster entry into her capital without the familiar trappings of monarchy and on borrowed horses. She was unable to use her own saddles and bridles, which lay in her coffers on the slower chartered vessels.
Not everything was a disappointment. Although Leith was deserted when she arrived, Villegagnon had the galleys fire their guns, which quickly produced a crowd to watch the show. By evening the celebrations had started, and even John Knox had to admit that the people rejoiced with bonfires and music. A company of “honest musicians,” he noted with grim satisfaction, “gave their salutations at her chamber window.” They were, of course, his fellow Calvinists, who aroused rather different reactions among the members of Mary’s entourage. The Catholic Pierre de Bourdeille, who traveled in her suite, complained that when the queen wished to go to bed, several hundred “knaves of the town” congregated under her window, playing fiddles and other stringed instruments and singing psalms “so badly and out of tune that nothing could be worse.”
On August 31, almost a fortnight after Mary’s return, the provost of Edinburgh finally got his act together. For the queen and her retinue, including her Guise relations, he mounted a civic banquet in Cardinal Beaton’s old mansion. The next day, Villegagnon set sail again for home, accompanied by those of Mary’s escorts who did not wish to stay longer in Scotland than their official duties required.
When Mary first walked through the largely empty rooms of the royal apartments at Holyrood, she must have felt excitement at taking up her role as queen. She had been trained for such a moment since birth. There would have been sadness too, because these rooms had been unoccupied since her mother’s death the year before. The furniture had been stored away, and Mary’s own had not yet arrived.
Holyrood was unfamiliar to her. She had never seen it as a child. Now that she had arrived there, she would instantly have noticed that her father’s architectural plan was in the French style. The James V tower in which she lived was modeled on the Francis I tower of the château of Chambord, where she had stayed many times. The new west front of the palace with its great expanses of glazing and ornamental carvings was most likely an imitation of the famous terrace at Chambord. It had been built in honor of Madeleine, Francis I’s daughter and James V’s first wife. Then, when she died and James married again, the vast gardens were laid out by Mary’s mother after the patterns she knew so well from her many visits to St.-Germain, Fontainebleau, Amboise and Blois.
Mary found herself to be in more congenial surroundings than she might have expected. She would have noticed very little change in her food and daily routine, because she had brought a skeleton domestic staff with her from France, including valets de chambre, ushers, chefs, pantry staff, a tailor, chaplains, doctors and an apothecary. She kept up her French establishment throughout her reign in Scotland, paying for it out of her revenues as dowager queen of France, and it steadily grew to be more than 170 strong.
One thing she discovered to be different was the climate. Scotland was neither Paris nor the Loire Valley. The summer heat lacked the searing intensity of the Paris basin or the Touraine; the winter cold was far more severe than in Picardy or Normandy. Spring came six weeks later, and autumn a month or so earlier.
Her escorts remarked on the poverty of the Scottish people. Bourdeille, with his tendency to exaggerate, predicted it would be easy for Mary to dazzle those who were so poor: the very sight of their penury, he said, had brought tears of sorrow to her eyes when she had first arrived. And Cecil, forever keen to gather news of her reception, heard that “the poverty of her subjects greatly advanceth whatsoever she intendeth.”
This was not the whole story. There were more beggars in France than in Scotland. The difference was less the humble, hand-to-mouth existence of the Lowland tenant farmers and Highland cottagers than the absence of a strong urban bourgeoisie outside Edinburgh. The towns and burghs were so small as to be almost inconspicuous. What was really noticeable was the extreme contrast between the cottages and huts of the rural masses and the castles and tower houses of the nobles and lairds—the gulf between rich and poor. Rumors of Mary’s vast collections of dresses, diamonds, pearls and jeweled embroideries, her gold and silver plate, her furniture and tapestries, had preceded her return. It was the sheer glamour of a Scottish queen who could rival anything seen at the ruling courts of Europe that most likely overawed her less well-off subjects rather than her wealth as such.
Soon Mary felt sufficiently confident in her new home to stage a triumphal entry into Edinburgh. She wanted to compensate for the lack of spectacle she felt had detracted from her arrival. The entrée royale was a core element of the cult of monarchy in France, and she decided it was now the best way to introduce herself to her people.
At eleven o’clock on the morning of September 2, she left Holyrood by a back way, skirting around the town on the north side and reentering through a specially made opening in the town wall. She then rode in state up the hill to the castle flanked by her leading nobility. When they entered the great hall of the castle, a state banquet was served at which Mary was the host and civic dignitaries the guests of honor. As she left, the guns of the citadel thundered a salute.
This completed the formalities of the entrée. There followed civic pageants laid on by the Edinburgh town council to welcome her home. When Mary rode down Castle Hill, she was met by fifty young townsmen dressed up as “Moors,” clad in yellow taffeta with black hats and masks and bedecked with jeweled rings and gold chains. A procession was formed in which the nobles and “Moors” led the way, after which came Mary, flanked by civic officials who bore a purple canopy aloft above her head. “Moors” and “Turks” were the favorites of the crowds at spectacles of this sort, and companies of “Moors” had appeared in processions designed to honor Mary of Guise when she was regent. The town council had enough of their costumes already in stock, and decided to use what was available.
The procession advanced in stages. When Mary reached the Lawnmarket, she was treated to the first in a series of pageants and moral allegories. A triumphal arch had been built out of wood and painted in rich colors. From a gallery above the arch, a choir of children sang “in the most heavenly wise,” and as Mary passed underneath, a mechanical globe constructed to look like a cloud opened, from which emerged a “bonny bairn” who descended on a rope as if he were an angel. He first handed the keys of the town to Mary, then presented her with a Bible and a psalter, bound in fine purple velvet. After handing her the books, he recited some verses:
Welcome our sovereign, welcome our native queen,
Welcome to us your subjects great and small,
Welcome I say even from the very spleen
To Edinburgh your city principal.
Whereof your people with heart both one and all,
Doth here offer to your excellency
Two proper volumes in memorial,
As gifts most worthy for a godly prince . . .
Mary had kept up her Scots, so understood every word. She willingly accepted the gifts, but when the recitation began, she frowned and with some panache passed them to Arthur Erskine, the captain of her guard, who stood nearby. He was a diehard Catholic who had served her in France as her butler. She knew at once that the presentation was more than it seemed: the phrase “godly prince” was code for a Protestant one, and to the Huguenots and other Calvinists, the Bible and psalter symbolized their sermons and psalm-singing. Mary realized that she was being petitioned to adopt a Calvinist religious policy, and she decided to move on.
The procession advanced toward St. Giles Kirk along the High Street. When it reached the Tolbooth, the scene of state trials and Parliament’s usual meeting place, a dumb show was performed in which a group of young virgins—their parts played by boys—represented Fortitude, Justice, Temperance and Prudence. These virtues were extolled by a narrator as those that a ruler should have, which was uncontroversial, as this pageant, unlike the previous one, was based on classical literature and was an almost identical repeat of one previously put on for Mary’s mother.
Mary stopped next at the High Cross fountain, where a third pageant was enacted. It, too, was accompanied by a commentary, but this time the words were inaudible. Unruly crowds were gathered there, because wine instead of water gushed from the fountain’s spouts. Almost nothing could be heard above the noise of breaking glass and drunken revelry. Mary acknowledged the cheers of the drinkers and quickly moved on again.
Farther down the High Street at the Salt Tron, one of several public weigh-houses where commodities sold in the market could be put on the official scales, a fourth tableau was in preparation. Choreographed by the Calvinists in a threatening way to show a Catholic priest burned at the altar in the act of elevating the host, it was stopped by the Earl of Huntly, who carried the sword of state at the front of the procession and got there well ahead of Mary. In its place, a revised scene was hastily improvised in which effigies of three Israelites were burned for defying Moses, which satisfied the Protestants but also delighted the Catholics, who took it as an allegory against blasphemy.
A fifth and final tableau was staged at the Netherbow Port, the gatehouse at the end of the High Street, which marked the eastern boundary of the old town and the point where the Canongate and the court sector began. Here, after a speech, a dragon made of canvas and papier-mâché was set on fire and a psalm sung while it blazed. This was an apocalyptic theme: the dragon was perhaps an allusion to the pope as antichrist, and it is unlikely that Mary approved.
On arriving at Holyrood, some children who had followed Mary in a cart sang a psalm and chanted yet another attack on the Mass. The provost and civic leaders then produced a coffer packed with gilt plate, which they humbly presented to their queen. She thanked them graciously, studiously ignoring the chanting, after which the procession dispersed and everyone went home.
It had been a stiff, decidedly awkward celebration, an expression of genuine joy and delight on the part of the vast majority of the nobles and people at their queen’s return, but also a blatant attempt by a Calvinist minority to dictate her religious policy.
Mary reacted prudently. She could see things in perspective. The Calvinists claimed the Mass was “terrible in all men’s eyes.” But this was hyperbole. “All men” were not Protestant. The religious divisions in Scotland were no different from those elsewhere in Europe. Mary could judge this from her knowledge of the Huguenots in France. The challenge was to manage things in a way that averted a religious war. Outside Edinburgh and the towns, Protestantism was far from entrenched. Many remnants of the old Catholic system survived as if nothing had ever disrupted it. In Edinburgh, it was easy to find the Mass celebrated openly at Easter: the official Reformation had gone too fast for most people. At other times of the year, Catholics still heard Mass in their own houses and even their local churches, especially in the remoter areas of the country.
As to the former Lords of the Congregation, only Châtelherault and his son Arran had staged a boycott of Mary’s entrée on religious grounds. The ordinary people of Edinburgh had greeted her warmly as the first adult reigning ruler of Scotland for twenty years. They were not put off by her Catholicism. The Calvinists might dominate the town council, but were of infinitesimal size in relation to the overall population of Scotland. And even the Edinburgh Calvinists had welcomed Mary, if ambiguously. That in itself was something of a triumph. It was certainly against the wishes of their leader John Knox, who had dismissed the day’s proceedings as verging on idolatry. “Fain,” he wrote, “would fools have counterfeited France.”
Mary decided to confront Knox, nipping the threat in the bud. She reckoned that with Lord James and his allies by her side, it was the Calvinists and not a majority of the lords who were most likely to try and oppose her. She was beginning to work out the values and honor systems of the Scottish nobles, which she knew from their treatment of her mother stemmed in most cases from ambition and opportunism more than from religious principle, but which they justified to themselves as protecting Scottish national interests. Lord James was shrewder than most of the nobles, and he was no friend of Knox. If anything, he agreed with his sister’s opinion of him.
Since returning to Scotland from Geneva, Knox had been the minister at St. Giles Kirk, the most influential pulpit in the country, where he preached against the pope and the Mass every Sunday for two or three hours at a time. He spoke in the language of prophecy and saw himself as a latter-day Jeremiah. A clash with Mary was inevitable. Lord James was unable to restrain him, since Knox was still smarting from the slight he felt he had received when Mary’s half-brother had ignored his demands that she be required to conform to the wishes of the reformed Kirk when discussing the conditions of her return.
Matters came to a head on Mary’s very first Sunday at Holyrood. While she was hearing Mass in her private chapel, a fracas erupted in the courtyard outside as Patrick, Master of Lindsay, the eldest son of Knox’s ally Lord Lindsay, brought his friends to heckle, shouting for the “idolatrous” priest to be killed. To protect Mary, Lord James stood sentry at the door, but the servant who carried the altar furniture was severely jostled, his candles snatched and “trodden in the mire.”
Next day, Mary issued a proclamation declaring her resolve, on the advice of her councilors, to make a final order for “pacifying” the differences between Catholics and Protestants, which she hoped “would be to the contentment of the whole.” Meanwhile, “in case any tumult or sedition be raised,” she would preserve the status quo. No one should attempt to alter the state of religion “which Her Majesty found publicly and universally standing” upon her arrival. In addition, no one was to harass or molest her servants or any member of her retinue, whether Scots or French, “for any cause whatsoever.”
Arran lodged a protest. He complained that Mary’s subordinates were being allowed to avail themselves of a concession granted solely to her. If any members of her household attended Mass in her chapel, he held that they had committed “idolatry,” an offense “more abominable and odious in the sight of God” than murder or assassination.
Mary ignored this bluster, summoning Knox, the main author of the campaign against “idolatry,” to justify himself. It was a risky strategy, but she had been practicing her debating skills on Throckmorton.
Knox arrived on September 4, when Mary received him attended by Lord James. She cut straight to what she believed to be the point. This had little to do with theology and everything to do with armed political resistance. She was well aware that while in exile at Geneva, Knox had written The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, a diatribe against female rulers, published in 1558.
The gist was that “idolatrous” rulers—whether male or female, but especially if female—could be overthrown by force. Knox had asserted that female monarchy was “repugnant” to God and Scripture, and a woman ruler was “a monster in nature.” The Old Testament, he claimed, provided the necessary precedents, notably Queens Jezebel and Athalia, both victims of legitimate regicide.
A year after publishing the First Blast, Knox had applied his theory to Scotland. He argued that the regent, Mary of Guise, and even the Queen of Scots herself, could lawfully be deposed by the nobles. So far, his dilemma had been Saint Paul’s defense of authority: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13:1). Knox was honest enough not to ignore this text, but found it tricky to negate. He at last circumvented it by noting that the word “powers” was in the plural and therefore had to mean more than just the ruler (or “superior power”) alone. He claimed that since multiple powers were intended, then the nobility (whom he designated as the “inferior power”) had to be included as well as the ruler. Both “powers” were legitimate and both “ordained of God.” In which case, concluded Knox, the nobles (or “inferior power”) could resist and, when necessary, depose the ruler in a godly cause, because by resisting an “idolatrous” ruler and demolishing “the altars of Baal,” they were in fact “obeying” God’s ordinances and “fulfilling” the Ten Commandments.
Knox had made a conceptual leap, turning him from a theologian into a resistance theorist. Mary began the interview by accusing him of inciting her subjects to armed revolt. To this he answered that all he had done was to profess the faith of Jesus Christ.
“You think then,” said Mary, “that I have no just authority?”
“Please Your Majesty,” protested Knox, “learned men in all ages have had their judgments free.” He claimed the right to hold his opinions, adding, “If the realm finds no inconvenience from the rule of a woman, that which they approve shall I not further disallow . . . but shall be as well content to live under Your Grace as St. Paul was to live under Nero.”
Mary was stung to be compared to the Roman emperor most berated for his tyranny. She demanded an explanation from Knox, who tried to limit the damage by claiming the First Blast had been directed against one particular queen, Mary Tudor of England. She had been a special case, because by repealing the Protestant legislation of her brother Edward VI, she had broken what Knox regarded as the “covenant” made between the English nation and God, and so could be deposed.
Mary saw this as specious. She was discussing her mother and herself, not Mary Tudor. Moreover, the First Blast had attacked all women rulers without distinction. As she reminded Knox, ‘You speak of women in general,” proving she had actually read his book. She held her ground and demanded a plain answer. And she returned to her original question. “Think ye,” she said, “that subjects having power may resist their princes?”
Finally, Knox answered. “If princes exceed their bounds and do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but they may be resisted, even by power.” He compared rulers to parents and argued that children might lawfully form a confederation to overpower and disarm a father “stricken with a frenzy,” and “keep him in prison until his frenzy be overpast . . . It is even so, madam, with princes . . . their blind zeal is nothing but a very mad frenzy.” Far from being unlawful, it was a positive act of “obedience” to resist forcibly and imprison rulers who disobeyed God, “until that they be brought to a more sober mind.”
Mary was stunned by this speech, which was quite unlike anything she had heard in France. Not even Lord James, a man not normally at a loss for words, could break the silence. After a lengthy pause, she said, “Well then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me; and shall do what they like, and not what I command: and so must I be subject to them, and not they to me.”
When Knox departed, Mary wept in anger and frustration. She was on the defensive, wishing now that she had not issued the challenge. Yet she had kept her nerve. At least while Knox was in the room, she had shown no visible signs of weakness. In fact, his own impression of Mary was one she might well have taken as a compliment. As he told Cecil, to whom he could not resist sending a verbatim account, “her whole proceedings do declare that the cardinal’s lessons are so deeply printed in her heart that the substance and the quality are likely to perish together.” In other words, she had proved to be his equal in a quarrel!
The following week, Mary decided to make a royal progress to Stirling, and beyond to Perthshire and Fife. She wanted to see more of her country and her people, and to show herself to them. Far from being homesick for France, she seems to have felt that she had at last stepped into her proper place.
She stayed for two days at Linlithgow, her birthplace, before leaving for a nostalgic visit to Stirling, where her mother had spent so many years. Her sojourn there was brief but eventful. A candle on a table beside her pillow set her bed curtains alight in the middle of the night while she was asleep. Smoke filled the room, and she was lucky to escape before she was suffocated.
On Sunday, the issue of religion came again to the fore. Mary wished to attend a High Mass in the Chapel Royal, where as a baby she was crowned Queen of Scots. Her chaplains were making the arrangements when the Earl of Argyll and Lord James arrived and drove them away. Lord James was honoring his agreement with Mary, but to the letter. He had promised that she might hear Mass in her chapel at Holyrood. It was now clear he did not intend the concession to extend to any of her other palaces. He was hedging his bets after Mary’s clash with Knox, keeping the Protestants at bay by appearing to forbid his sister’s Masses, whereas in reality he was happy to allow them at Holyrood. That, of course, was still anathema to Knox, who wanted the Mass abolished completely. But it was acceptable to a majority of the other ex-Lords of the Congregation, including the most powerful of them, Argyll.
Mary’s next stop was Perth, where another triumphal entry was staged. But although she was acclaimed by the ordinary people and presented with a “heart of gold, full of gold” by the civic authorities, she was once again lobbied by the Calvinists, who had copied Edinburgh’s example. The tension was starting to build, and as she rode in the procession, she suddenly felt sick and had to go indoors to recover. The English ambassador, Thomas Randolph, who was accompanying her, described her illness as one of those “sudden passions” to which she was prone “after any great unkindness or grief of mind.”
Over the next four and a half years, Randolph got to know Mary extremely well, providing a wealth of information about her. His weekly (sometimes daily) reports to Cecil are invaluable; but he must be seen for what he was: a partisan witness. He was a close ally and former student in Paris of George Buchanan, the brilliant classicist and poet, who was also a Calvinist, a republican and Mary’s later vilifier.
Randolph was also a protégé of Cecil, who had used him to smuggle men and bags of untraceable gold coins into Scotland during the revolt of 1559–60, which he did under the code name of “Barnabie.” He was then posted officially to Scotland, where he assisted the rebel lords and acted as their liaison with Cecil. He was the right man for the job, as he already knew Lord James and Knox, both of whom he had met in Paris. As a result, he understood the tensions between political pragmatism and religious conviction among the lords, barely disguising his own sympathies, which were closer to those of Knox.
As a resident ambassador in Scotland, Randolph enjoyed the customary diplomatic privileges. He was licensed to attach himself to Mary’s court as it made its way from Stirling to Perth, from Perth to Dundee, and from Dundee across the River Tay on the ferry to Fife. After visiting St. Andrews for a week, Mary returned to Holyrood, where her first progress was judged a success. She had taken possession of her country despite the Calvinists’ taunts. It was a delicate balancing act, but there was a more compelling reason why her policy was succeeding.
Her concordat with Lord James was paying dividends. Four days after her entrée into Edinburgh, Mary named her first Privy Council. A cross section of the nobles, it included the territorial magnates such as Argyll, Châtelherault and the Earl of Huntly. Seven out of twelve were Protestants. And the heavyweights whom Mary placed in her inner cabinet were Lord James and his supporters Maitland and the Earl of Morton. They were the lords who had steered the council of twenty-four nobles after the overthrow of Mary’s mother. They had rebuilt their bridges to Mary before she left France, and were to play a decisive role in the tumultuous events of her reign.
When Mary arrived home, the trick was to engineer the transition of power. In 1559–60, the Reformation had combined with the innate factionalism of the lords to create a moment when the monarchy was suddenly vulnerable. When Mary’s mother was deposed as regent, the government of Scotland had ceased to be that of the queen and become that of the lords, to the point where Cecil’s clerk, filing letters from Scotland in his office in London, endorsed them “Letters from the States of Scotland.” The word “States” had strong republican connotations, and the council of twenty-four nobles was to all intents and purposes a quasi-republican institution.
Mary knew she had to restore the monarchy’s prestige. Her solution was to choose Lord James as her chief adviser, to preserve continuity, while subordinating him and his cronies to her authority as ministers and servants of the crown. This largely suited them, because their favored relationship to Mary enabled them to maintain their private power and factional interests exactly as before, at the same time indemnifying themselves against any possible reprisals for their part in the revolt against the regent.
Everyone was walking a tightrope. Mary’s success was not a foregone conclusion. A fortnight before she left Calais, reality had dawned on the lords. Their queen was coming home and their role was about to change from that of near-autonomous governors to servants of a woman ruler. It was Mary to whom they would now be accountable. For this reason, a quite different relationship toward England would be required, because everyone knew that Mary would never agree to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh.
Cecil had already vetoed Maitland’s earlier attempt to break the deadlock over the treaty and its surveillance clause. When Mary returned to Edinburgh by sea and not by land through England, the lords hoped that the issue of the treaty would fall by default. It did not. Lord James and his allies began to panic when Randolph showed them a letter from Cecil demanding his original terms. They felt they had made every effort to bridge the incompatible aims of Mary and Cecil, but had failed. Now “they need look to themselves, for their hazard is great.”
But there was time for a final effort. In what looks like a concerted campaign, Lord James tried his luck with Elizabeth, and Maitland with Cecil. Both wrote carefully drafted letters designed to alter English policy and turn it around.
To Elizabeth, Lord James sent an obsequious if highly perceptive letter, regretting Mary had ever “taken in head to pretend interest or claim title” to the English throne. It had been a fatal mistake, caused by the bad advice of her Guise family, but events had moved on. If only a “middle way” could be found, “then it is like we could have a perpetual quietness.” He reopened the case for a compromise: in exchange for renouncing her immediate dynastic claim, Mary should be “allured” by recognition as Elizabeth’s heir. If the English queen would agree, he would attempt to bring Mary “to some conformity.”
Cecil had already rejected this line, but that was while Mary was in France. Now that she was already on her way home, the matter was urgent, and it fell to Maitland to explain why. It would, he argued, be possible for Mary to divide and rule. Her arrival would transform her relationship with her subjects, many of whom would rally to a young and vivacious queen whose merest smiles and frowns would be enough to captivate them. Her Catholicism was unlikely to stop her, since Protestantism had yet to put down roots. She had the unconditional support of the Catholics, and it would be easy to win over many of the Protestants. The lords were unprepared for a fight. Too many were either “inconstant” or “covetous”: they could be manipulated or bought off. Maitland’s greatest fear was that Mary would pursue a Catholic policy. She was an “enemy to the Religion”; her return “shall not fail to raise wonderful tragedies.”
These letters were carefully coordinated. While Maitland’s stated the problem, Lord James’s offered the solution. It is in this light that Mary’s policy must be judged, because on her arrival she chose the “middle way” proposed by Lord James. As soon as she had consulted him, she sent Maitland to London to renegotiate the treaty of Edinburgh in favor of a new accord that maintained the “amity” with England but on terms that were not humiliating to herself or the monarchy.
In seeking to renegotiate the treaty, Mary’s immediate dynastic claim was her bargaining chip. By renouncing it and recognizing Elizabeth as England’s rightful queen, she could obtain recognition as her heir in return. It would be an honorable exchange. A dynastic claim that was valid in Catholic eyes but almost meaningless without the support of the pope and Philip II would be bartered for something tangible. Who knew how long Elizabeth might live? The result, claimed a jubilant Maitland, who worked out the finer details, would be to bind Mary to a perpetual “amity” with England.
When Maitland reached London, he did not mince words. “I think,” he boldly confided to Elizabeth, “the treaty is so prejudicial to Her Majesty [of Scotland] that she will never confirm it.” It was “conceived in such form as Her Majesty is not in honor bound to do it.” He pointed out (somewhat hypocritically, since he had played a leading role in brokering the treaty) that it assumed Mary herself had authorized the negotiations when in fact she had not even been consulted. It was a point calculated to strike home with Elizabeth, who had never approved of Cecil’s clandestine operations over the treaty.
Elizabeth always made it her priority to defend the ideal of monarchy. She now relented, allowing that if Mary would appoint commissioners to review the treaty, she would do the same. A conference would then be convoked and its agenda prepared jointly by Maitland and Cecil, the two secretaries of state. At the time, the decision was a breakthrough. Elizabeth had offered to settle despite Cecil’s steadfast resolve that Mary should ratify the original treaty. It was a vindication of the policy of the “middle way” and of Mary’s choice of Lord James as her chief adviser.
When Mary returned to Scotland, she was still only eighteen and faced the consequences of decisions made in her absence by others. She needed advisers she could trust, men of proven ability who were able to keep noble factionalism in check. By her concordat with Lord James she could subordinate the lords to her authority, and by preserving the status quo in religion she could secure an enviable degree of stability. In short, she could catch her breath while she learned more about the land she was born to rule. She had refused to ratify the treaty because it was in flagrant derogation of her honor. With the amendments proposed by Lord James and Maitland, a line could be drawn under the episode.
Mary entered a labyrinth on her arrival in Scotland, but so far she had successfully found her way. On his return to Edinburgh, Maitland delivered what previously would have been thought unthinkable: a eulogy of Mary. “The queen my mistress,” he informed a mistrustful Cecil, “behaves herself so gently in every behalf as reasonably we can require. If anything be amiss, the fault is rather in ourselves.” He even swiped at Knox. “You know the vehemency of Mr. Knox’s spirit, which cannot be bridled, and yet doth sometimes utter such sentences as cannot easily be digested by a weak stomach. I would wish he should deal with her more gently, being a young princess unpersuaded.”
Before her arrival, Maitland had imagined Mary to be an ideological Catholic whose return “shall not fail to raise wonderful tragedies.” He now believed she “doth declare a wisdom far exceeding her age.” After Francis II’s death, the politics of the British Isles had been dictated by Cecil’s agenda. But when Elizabeth conceded that the treaty of Edinburgh was renegotiable, the spotlight fell on Mary. Her proposal of a “fresh start” made shortly before she left France no longer looked naive. Her charisma could yet become her winning card. The benefits were potentially huge. “Surely,” concluded Maitland’s accolade, “I see in her a good towardness, and think the queen your sovereign shall be able to do much with her in religion, if they once enter in a good familiarity.”
By the end of 1561, a solution to Scotland’s problems seemed closer than at any point since Henry VIII’s death. A young, beautiful and intelligent queen had returned to take up her throne, and within months was well on the road to success. The questions were: Would her charisma be enough, given the inequality between Scotland and England? And would Cecil still get in the way?