13

A Marriage of Convenience

English policy towards Mary was beginning to fall apart. Elizabeth was losing her nerve. On 23 September 1564, she had written to Cecil, then ill at home, to ask for his advice. It was the scrappiest, most faltering note she ever wrote. Typically it was in Latin, the language into which she retreated when lost for words:

I am in such a labyrinth that I do not know how I shall be able to reply to the Queen of Scots after so long a delay. I am at a loss to know how to satisfy her, and have no idea as to what I now ought to say.

Cecil filed it away with the cryptic comment: ‘The Q[ueen] writing to me being sick.’

The Dudley marriage plan had been a disaster. No one had even bothered to ask Lord Robert for his opinion, and he himself had no desire whatever to marry Mary and live in Scotland. He was dropping frantic hints and doing everything within the bounds of discretion to evade the nomination, which, since he could hardly refuse to marry Mary if asked to do so pointblank by Elizabeth, meant finding an alternative husband. In Dudley’s mind, the ideal surrogate was the English-born and supposedly loyal Darnley, whose candidacy he and his close friends supported.

One of Dudley’s mentors was Throckmorton. Although a staunch Protestant, he did not agree with Cecil’s reading of the threat Mary posed to Elizabeth’s security. He had been arguing since before she left France that she should be recognized as the heir apparent to the English throne on condition she allied permanently with England.

Throckmorton lobbied for Darnley to get Dudley off the hook. By the end of December, Cecil could write of ‘a device’ to steer Elizabeth in this direction. She had, he believed, ‘no disposition thereto’; but she proved him wrong. She was far from always matching up to her image as a politically astute ruler whose decisions came from the head and not the heart. That, of course, was the Protestant stereotype. As Knox had proclaimed, Elizabeth ruled from the head and Mary from the heart, because in his eyes a Protestant Queen was an ‘exceptional’ personality able to overcome the frailty of her gender, whereas Catholic Queens were not.

But over the winter of 1564–5, Elizabeth ruled from the heart, allowing her emotions to dictate policy. Although she had herself named Dudley as her preferred suitor for Mary, she now pulled back, because if he really went to Scotland, she would lose the only man she had ever loved to a rival – for it seemed to her in her jaundiced state after the Berwick conference that Mary was actively seeking to steal Dudley from her!

At the start of February 1565, Darnley was given a passport to visit his father. For a few days, but just long enough to allow him to cross the border. Elizabeth decided it would, after all, be better if he and not Dudley married Mary. Mary had only to sit back and wait for him to arrive. When he was safely in Scotland, she had Elizabeth exactly where she wanted her.

No longer did anyone suppose after this that Mary would marry Dudley. Just this was certain: she did intend to remarry. The pace quickened during a visit to St Andrews in early February. Randolph had accompanied her, and she chatted with him after supper, sitting beside the fire.

‘Not to marry,’ she said, ‘you know it cannot be for me. To defer it long, many incommodities ensue.’ She had made up her mind. But she also had regrets. She gently chided the ambassador that it could all have been so different if Elizabeth had lived up to her own rhetoric and treated her in a womanly, sisterly way.

‘How much better were it’, she said, ‘that we being two Queens so near of kin, neighbours and living in one Isle, should be friends and live together like sisters, than by strange means divide ourselves to the hurt of us both.’

Randolph protested Elizabeth’s friendship, but Mary knew the score. It was all just words. ‘To say that we may for all that live friends,’ she said, ‘we may say and promise what we will, but it will pass both our powers!’

Mary deplored the lost opportunity. Two women rulers, working together for the benefit of the British Isles, could have achieved ‘notable things’. Now there were too many obstacles, not least that of marriage.

It was the classic dilemma for women rulers. Should they marry and have children, fulfilling the expectations of their councillors and subjects and settling the succession in their countries? Or should they stay single and keep their independence? It was difficult enough, but Mary’s own choice had a further complication. Even if Elizabeth had already taken her decision not to marry, she refused to allow Mary to trump her in marriage. If her cousin married, then the duelling between them would get steadily worse.

Mary began to prepare herself. A marriage to Darnley must by now have been firmly in her sights. If a settlement could not be agreed with England, then should she not consider allying with the man whose hereditary rights, if united to hers, would make their dynastic claim invincible?

She certainly meant to do something. To damp down speculation that she intended to marry a Catholic, she reissued her proclamation of 1561 confirming the religious status quo. She also sent away her confidential secretary and decipherer, Raulet. He was a Guise retainer, the only person other than Mary to have a key to the black box containing her secret papers. She replaced him with David Rizzio, the young Piedmontese valet and musician, who had arrived in the suite of the ambassador of the Duke of Savoy and stayed on as a bass in Mary’s choir.

By sending Raulet home to France, Mary signalled her concern over security. She intended to prevent copies of her private letters reaching her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine. For some unknown reason, Raulet had fallen under suspicion. A month later, when he was preparing to board his ship at Leith, his trunk was seized with all his books and papers.

Mary first met Darnley in the depths of winter. The date was Saturday, 17 February 1565; the place Wemyss, a tiny coastal village in Fife. Randolph wrote from Edinburgh to advise Dudley that his surrogate had safely arrived. Sir James Melville, an eyewitness, reported that Mary ‘took well’ with Darnley, saying that ‘he was the lustiest and best proportioned lang [i.e. tall] man that she had seen’.

Had there been an instant physical attraction? Darnley flattered himself that it was so. He lodged in the same house as Mary for two nights, then went to greet his father, Lennox, at Dunkeld. On arriving there, his first thought was to write a letter of thanks to Dudley, whom he offered to ‘satisfy as if he were his own brother’.

After lodging for five nights at Dunkeld, Darnley returned in time to cross the Firth of Forth on the same ferry as Mary. On the 26th, he decided to make a grand gesture. He attended Knox’s sermon at St Giles Kirk in Edinburgh, dining afterwards with Moray and Randolph, who went there every week. In the evening at Holyrood, he danced a galliard with Mary. All eyes were watching them, but it was impossible to judge her reaction. Whatever was going through her mind, she kept her thoughts to herself.

The weather took a sudden turn for the worse. Violent snowstorms were followed by a frost of such intensity, nothing had been seen like it since the winter of Mary’s birth. By the first week of March, the pathways in the Lowlands were still closed. Darnley, however, was flourishing. Since travel was out of the question, the court settled down to a series of lavish banquets and masques. Darnley attended them all, and his courtly manners were ‘very well liked’. As Randolph briefed Cecil, he ‘governs himself that there is great praise of him’.

Mary as yet paid Darnley no unusual attention, which is why Randolph could praise him. She treated him courteously, but no more. She was still biding her time. She had asked Randolph to give her a final answer about Elizabeth’s intentions. By 15 March, she was getting irritable and impatient, asking him every day when a reply was likely to be received.

Elizabeth’s answer was ready on the 5th, but because of the snowdrifts it only reached Edinburgh on the 14th. When Randolph opened the packet, he knew there would be trouble. It took him two days to pluck up courage to deliver the message. Elizabeth had dug in her heels. Where Mary’s dynastic claim was concerned, ‘nothing shall be done until her Majesty [Elizabeth] shall be married, or shall notify her determination never to marry’.

This was truly a bombshell. It repudiated everything on which the Anglo-Scottish amity had depended and made a mockery of Mary’s policy of conciliation towards Elizabeth. When the English Queen had claimed the right of veto over Mary’s marriage and named Dudley as the most favoured suitor for her hand, it was clearly understood that compliance would be rewarded by recognition as Elizabeth’s heir. Now the goalposts had been moved and everything hinged on Elizabeth’s decision on her own marriage, something that would most likely never happen.

Mary listened in silence, then became angry, claiming Elizabeth had played a game of cheat and retreat. She had misled her and made her waste her time. ‘To answer me with nothing’, she said, ‘I find great fault and fear it shall turn to her discredit more than my loss.’ ‘I would that I might have been most bound to my sister your mistress; seeing that cannot be, I will not fail in any good offices towards her, but to rely or trust much from henceforth in her for that matter I will not.’

She then walked out and went hunting. Randolph tried to soothe Moray, who was ‘almost stark mad’ with rage. Mary, he believed, would strike out on her own and Scotland would be in danger. For this, he was the ‘sorrowfullest’ man alive. Maitland, to whom Randolph went next, was equally exasperated, although – always more thoughtful and insightful – he had privately expected a setback.

When Mary left Randolph, she ‘wept her fill’. Later, he tried to see her again, but she ignored him and retired to her privy chamber. He returned to Maitland and Moray, urging them not to act too hastily, but they cut him off, one saying, ‘The die is cast.’

Next day, Mary rode to Leith sands where she watched Darnley and his companions ‘running at the ring’. She approached Randolph, and ‘with the tears standing in her eyes’ declared her love for her ‘sister Queen’ to whom she said she owed ‘such obedience as to her own dear mother’. It was as big a compliment as Mary could be expected to pay, but far from being the prelude to a fresh attempt at conciliation, it marked the start of Mary’s move to break free. She ended the conversation by requesting a diplomatic passport for Maitland. She was sending him through England on an urgent mission to France. Randolph saw the danger, but utterly failed to dissuade her. No one except Mary knew the purpose of Maitland’s mission, but Randolph inferred that he was to consult her family about her marriage plans.

Elizabeth’s policy was in disarray. She had miscalculated the impact of her message. It had caused a rift that seemed to be the more final in that it had apparently closed off the gap that had existed between Cecil’s position and her own. Whereas Cecil always wished to impose religious preconditions on the settlement of the succession, Elizabeth had been less dogmatic, keeping religion and politics apart and preferring Mary’s claim to that of the disgraced Lady Catherine Grey. But if a settlement were put on indefinite hold, the effect of such distinctions would be immaterial.

Beyond this lay a more pressing danger. The return of Lennox and Darnley to Scotland had triggered a realignment of the noble factions. Moray, Argyll, and Chaˆtelherault took the first step, signing a bond offering each other mutual support and promising to oppose a Catholic marriage. They cloaked their spite in claims about religion, but really they suspected Lennox of plotting to make his son King and so oust them from power.

Lennox had not been slow to look for allies. He had reintegrated himself in Scotland with remarkable speed. His supporters included the Earls of Atholl and Caithness, Lords Seton, Ruthven, Home, and others. The first three were Catholics, the rest Protestants. What united them was not religion, but ambition. Atholl saw an opportunity to displace Argyll from his pre-eminence in the Highlands, and all were keen to oust Moray and annex his lands. There would be rich pickings for the Lennoxes and their friends if Darnley married the Queen. Already Darnley was known to have consulted a map of Scotland, when he was heard to say loudly that Moray’s estates were far too extensive for his needs.

If, therefore, one effect of Elizabeth’s message was to strengthen Mary’s resolve to seek a marriage that would take her closer to the English succession, the other was the resurgence of factionalism. Everything was once again on a knife edge. Moray realized this, and when Randolph tried to speak to him, he shooed him away. ‘The Devil take you,’ he said. ‘Our Queen does nothing but weep and write!’

On 31 March, Randolph wrote candidly to his friend Sir Henry Sidney. He put the blame on Dudley for not taking more interest in Mary, whom he had not even met. She had grown into a woman of ‘perfect beauty’. ‘How many countries, realms, cities and towns’, he suddenly waxed lyrical, ‘have been destroyed’ to satisfy the lusts of men for such women; and yet Dudley, who had been offered a kingdom and the opportunity to lie with Mary ‘in his naked arms’, had spurned both, causing Darnley to arrive.

Randolph’s apprehension was justified. By the first week in April, Mary and Darnley were in the early stages of a courtship. They were staying at Stirling Castle, where they spent most of their time together. Mary even showed him off as her partner in a game of billiards played for high stakes against Randolph and Mary Beaton. It was neatly arranged, as it was an open secret that Randolph and Beaton, one of the four Maries, were lovers. And so it seemed to everyone watching that two young couples were playing against each other.

It had been settled that, whoever won, the women would share the kitty. When Randolph and Beaton emerged the victors, Darnley was seen to present Mary with a ring and a valuable brooch set with two agates.

When Darnley then fell sick, Mary nursed him herself. She sent him food from her table and visited him at almost all hours, sometimes after midnight – a bold thing for her to do. He was ‘very evil at ease’, and for his comfort and convenience was lodged in the royal apartments in the castle, an extraordinary honour, where he remained for over a month. He succumbed first to a cold and then to skin eruptions. His symptoms were a measles-like rash, ‘marvellous thick’, accompanied by ‘sharp pangs, his pains holding him in his stomach and his head’ – almost certainly the onset of syphilis caught in England.

When Maitland reached London purportedly on his way to France, the true nature of his mission was clear. He delivered an ultimatum demanding Elizabeth’s consent to Mary’s marriage to Darnley. The result was chaos and confusion.

On 23 April, a frantic Elizabeth signed letters recalling Lennox and Darnley to the English court, only to countermand them at the very last moment. Instead, Throckmorton was to be sent to Edinburgh. His first instructions were issued on the 24th, ordering him to explain to Mary how much her proposed marriage was ‘misliked’, but a week later they were replaced by others advising her to marry Dudley or else choose another English nobleman. If Mary agreed to this, a string of concessions would be offered. Only if Dudley were chosen, however, would Elizabeth ever agree to have Mary’s title to the English succession ‘either published, endorsed or enquired of’.

Cecil was a worried man. On 1 May, the first of a series of extended debates was held by the Privy Council to decide how best to ‘disallow’ Mary’s marriage to Darnley.

After two years of bandying words, Mary felt she had nothing to lose. She had already more or less decided to bypass England. She was more cautious about burning her bridges to the Continent. She first wrote to Spain. In reply, the Duke of Alba, answering on behalf of Philip II, reassured her that ‘no alliance would be more advantageous to her for assuring the success of her claims and the quiet of her country than one with the Lennox family’.

Mary then approached Castelnau to see if he could secure French backing, a delicate request given her poor standing with her former mother-in-law. But to his surprise, Catherine de Medici agreed. Her response – that Darnley was at least preferable to Don Carlos or the Archduke Charles because such a marriage would encourage a return to the ‘auld alliance’ – was strictly a non sequitur. What she really meant was that it would strengthen her own bargaining position with Elizabeth, who would need to rely even more on a French entente if the amity with Scotland collapsed.

Catherine was singularly duplicitous. Castelnau was ordered to inform Elizabeth that France opposed the Darnley marriage, with the result that much confusion and resentment resulted from what shortly became a pantomime of ambassadors rushing to and fro between three capitals trying to work out who had said what to whom and when.

This worked to Mary’s advantage, however, as it left her free to deal with the domestic opposition to her marriage. When Moray, summoned to appear before his sister in Darnley’s sick-room, refused to sign a document pledging his support, claiming that her marriage was too hasty and that ‘he misliked’ it ‘because he feared that the Lord Darnley would be an enemy to true religion’, he was forced to withdraw from the court in disgrace.

Mary sought to isolate Moray. Cautious support for her marriage ran across the religious divide, and there were other factors working in her favour. One was so incongruous, it was almost whimsical. Maitland was in love with Mary Fleming, the chief of the four Maries. His wife had died, and he wanted to marry a woman eighteen years younger than himself. It was a difficult courtship: the running joke was that Maitland was as well suited to Fleming as a Calvinist was to be Pope.

Maitland’s wedding was delayed for almost two years, but, as Randolph knew, if Mary wanted to marry Darnley, then Maitland would support her ‘from the love he bears to Mary Fleming’. There was nothing Fleming would not do for Mary, and she had Maitland wrapped around her little finger. It is true that his loyalty was severely tested, but in the end he was (as the English ambassador saw it) ‘blinded to further and prosecute this marriage’.

The key factor in Mary’s favour was that Morton had attached himself to Darnley. So far, he had been closely allied to Moray, taking a prominent position as the head of the Douglas clan. But as a Douglas, he was the Countess of Lennox’s cousin. His defection from Moray was finally triggered when the Countess surrendered her claim to the contested estates of the Earl of Angus, Morton’s nephew, for whom he was acting as guardian. This was the equivalent for Morton of a lottery win as he could now strip his nephew’s estates for his own profit. He had previously asked Mary to confirm his claim when he had sent his cousin Archibald to visit her before she left France. She was unwilling to act then, claiming it was a family dispute. The issue had smouldered, but now Morton was bought off.

Throckmorton arrived to see Mary at Stirling on 15 May while Darnley was still a convalescent. He had travelled to Scotland with Maitland, who had never intended to go to France. The talk of his mission there had been a blind.

Throckmorton found the gates of the castle shut firmly against him, and was obliged to seek lodgings in the town. When he finally obtained an audience with Mary, he handed her a letter from Elizabeth and a ‘Determination’ from Cecil: a formal document signed by a majority of the Privy Council advising her to put Darnley aside and marry either Dudley or another English nobleman. The document had an impressive list of signatories, but as Dudley was for some reason not among them, its impact was greatly reduced.

Mary was unimpressed. Throckmorton warned Cecil that she was ‘so far past in this matter with my Lord Darnley as it is irrevocable, and no place left to dissolve the same by persuasion and reasonable means’. In reality, she gave a spirited justification of herself. She pointed out that she had advised Elizabeth of her intention to marry as soon as she had made up her own mind. As her cousin had informed her that she might choose her own husband as long as she rejected anyone from the Continent in favour of an English nobleman, she felt she had acted honourably. In Darnley, she had lighted on both an English nobleman and Elizabeth’s ‘near kinsman’, a choice with which she could only suppose the English Queen would be delighted.

Mary did not waste time in negotiations with Throckmorton. Straight after the audience, she raised Darnley to a sufficient standing among the Scottish nobles so that she could marry him. She knighted him, created him a baron, and finally made him Earl of Ross, all on the same afternoon. He then created fourteen knights on his own account, but his true colours were glimpsed within a week. Mary had promised to make him Duke of Albany, a title reserved for Scottish royalty, but she deferred the ceremony because she wished to see how Elizabeth would react to her answer to Throckmorton. When Darnley learnt of the delay, he drew his dagger on Lord Ruthven, who had brought the message. He also threatened Châtelherault, even though the Duke had said (admittedly treacherously) he would support the marriage and signed a paper to that effect.

Darnley’s defects of character were beginning to emerge. He had managed to behave himself for three months, but was unable to keep it up. The prospect of marrying Mary had gone to his head. Spoilt as a child by his mother, he was over-confident, arrogant, and wilful. Far too handsome for his own good, he was a narcissist and a natural conspirator. Already he was described as ‘proud, disdainful and suspicious’. He was soon regularly getting drunk, and his sexual licence was suspected when he was found to be so intimate with David Rizzio, Mary’s new confidential secretary, ‘they would lie sometime in one bed together’.

But, as yet, these character defects were just specks on the horizon. The bulk of our information comes from Randolph, who was a hostile witness. His task was to prevent Mary’s marriage to Darnley, and so he found as many reasons as he could to discredit the man he saw as the greatest threat to England since Don Carlos.

By the third week of May, Mary believed she was in love with Darnley. She doted on him. Even Randolph had to admit it. But it was a brief infatuation, brought on by Darnley’s sexual attractiveness rather than true love.

By 3 June, the relationship was already turning sour. Mary’s marriage to Darnley would in the end become purely one of convenience. She had trapped herself, because even when she began to realize what Darnley was really like, she had no choice but to go ahead if she was to maintain her independence and not seem to be Elizabeth’s pawn.

If Randolph is to be believed, Darnley’s behaviour became so ‘intolerable’ that Mary suffered a severe attack of melancholy. She was not just depressed: her entire appearance changed. ‘Her majesty is laid aside,’ he confided to Dudley: ‘her wits not what they were, her beauty another than it was, her cheer and countenance changed into I wot not what.’ Mary had become ‘a woman more to be pitied than any that I ever saw’. The change was so sudden that necromancy was suspected.

And yet, on the very same day, Randolph could tell Cecil how Mary was excitedly keeping abreast of her French and Spanish diplomacy, and doing all she could to bind her Lords to herself ‘by gentle letters and fair words’. She was carefully building up support for her marriage.

A juggernaut had started to roll. Cecil convened the English Privy Council on the 4th to discuss Mary’s answer to Throckmorton. The debate lasted all day. The entire life story of the Queen of Scots was retold, from the treaty of Haddington and her marriage to the Dauphin, to Henry II’s claim that she was the heir to a triple monarchy, and with special reference to the blazoning of the heraldic arms of England on her escutcheons and the cries of her ushers to ‘Make way for the Queen of England!’ Nothing was omitted or allowed to be forgotten.

Cecil led the debates and wrote the minutes, explaining why Mary was so dangerous. By announcing her intention to remarry and settle the succession in Scotland, she would benefit from a surge of new support. A majority of Elizabeth’s subjects – he spoke repeatedly of ‘the people of England’ – favoured Mary. They would flock to a Queen who, unlike their own, was prepared to marry and have children. The sixteenth century was an age of gender stereotypes. By marrying, Mary would do what Cecil and every other male councillor and head of household wanted a female monarch to do. She would put a man at the head of the royal family. She would recreate a truly regal monarchy, and prove that it would be her heirs, not Elizabeth’s, who would finally unite the thrones of England and Scotland. The ‘people of England’, he said, whether Protestants or Catholics, would be so won over by this, they would be ‘drawn away from their allegiance’ to Elizabeth and transfer it to Mary.

It was a fascinating argument, opening for us a window into a lost world in which royal marriages had the power to alter people’s lives. Cecil was Mary’s most single-minded opponent. Any marriage that she contracted while Elizabeth was still unmarried posed a threat to England’s security. To speak of ‘drawing away’ the ‘allegiance’ of the people was uniquely resonant, as it was the language of the law of treason. Cecil implied that, if Mary married without Elizabeth’s consent, then this in itself was a hostile act.

No one challenged Cecil. In fact, some Privy Councillors argued that if Mary married Darnley, the threat was even greater than if she had allied herself to Don Carlos or the Archduke. Their fear was that Darnley, himself an English subject of royal blood, had the potential to raise an army in England in support of the Catholic cause and so begin a civil war.

With hindsight, it seems like a tremendous over-reaction, and yet this is what Cecil and his allies believed. Their starting-point was Throckmorton’s report, which had argued that Mary was so intent on marrying Darnley, ‘the matter is irrevocable otherwise than by violence’. The main purpose of the debate was to decide whether England was willing to go to war. Hence the meeting turned into a full-scale strategic review, ending with an action plan that included asking Elizabeth to look more favourably on the plight of Lady Catherine Grey.

Cecil gave Elizabeth a copy of these minutes. She was not usually disposed to listen to his fears about her ‘safety’, but this time she did. The Earl of Bedford, the most senior English border official and the Governor of Berwick-on-Tweed, was ordered to keep a strict watch and to assist Randolph in planting spies. The Countess of Lennox was sent to the Tower and the letters recalling Lennox and Darnley reissued. Randolph received them in his diplomatic bag on 2 July and delivered them at once. As he reported, their recipients were ‘marvellously abashed’.

When Mary heard that Lennox and Darnley were recalled, she burst into tears. Up until now, her weeping had tended to stem from disparate groups of emotions: grief at her bereavements, sadness or depression during her attacks of melancholy, anger and frustration with Knox or her factious nobles, or helplessness and self-pity at the betrayals of others. This time, she felt them all. A great storm of emotion overtook her, and she did nothing for a fortnight. Then, the skies cleared and she made her decision. She ordered Lennox and Darnley to remain in Scotland and defy Elizabeth.

This was the point of no return. Mary rallied herself and began to make the arrangements for her wedding. She had made her choice and would live with it. ‘I know’, she told Randolph, ‘that your mistress went about but to abuse me, and so was I warned out of England, France and other parts, and when I found it so indeed, I thought I would no longer stay upon her fair words, but being [as] free as she is, I would stand to my own choice.’

Just as Cecil had given the English Privy Council a lecture that went back to the treaty of Haddington, now Mary also harangued Randolph with the history of her diplomacy with Elizabeth, starting with her desire for a ‘fresh start’ and an exchange of portraits, continuing with her efforts to arrange a meeting between the Queens at York or Nottingham, and concluding with the innumerable zigzags and weasel words produced by English attempts to dictate her choice of husband.

It was now, she said, ‘too late’. What could have brought great mutual benefits had come to nothing. And it was entirely Elizabeth’s fault. ‘For if your mistress would have used me as I trusted she would have done, she can not have [had] a daughter of her own that would have been more obedient to her than I would have been.’

Mary could not quite let go of the vocabulary of kinship and dependency that had coloured her relationship with Elizabeth since the death of Francis II. But she vigorously defended her right as a Queen and a woman to choose her own husband. This was not Elizabeth’s business, even if Mary had hoped that she might approve of her choice. ‘Let not her be offended with my marriage, no more than I am with hers,’ she said, ‘and for the rest I will abide such fortune as God will send me.’

Randolph then made a serious mistake. He suggested, almost as an afterthought, that Mary might do well to convert to Protestantism. Elizabeth might treat her better if she did so. Mary hit back instantly.

‘What would that do?’, she asked. ‘Peradventure,’ replied Randolph, it would ‘somewhat move her majesty to allow the sooner of your marriage.’

‘What!’, Mary exclaimed. ‘Would you that I should make merchandise of my religion, or frame myself to your ministers’ wills? It cannot be so.’

This suggestion was humiliating and degrading. It made Mary even more determined to do as she pleased.

‘You can never persuade me’, she almost spat out the words, ‘that I have failed to your mistress, but rather she to me; and some incommodity it will be as well for her to lose my amity as hers will be to me.’ With that, she got up and left.

On the morning of Sunday, 22 July 1565, the banns for Mary’s marriage were read in St Giles Kirk, and in the afternoon Darnley was created Duke of Albany. At nine o’clock on the following Saturday evening, heralds appeared at the Market Cross in Edinburgh to proclaim that the couple would be married the next day. When the celebrations were ended, Darnley would be made King of Scotland.

Darnley had himself insisted on this, even though it was usual to consult Parliament before royal titles were bestowed. The Privy Council had debated the proposal for much of the day. Even as Mary was fast winning the support of those Lords who were wavering over the marriage, Darnley was losing it by boasting that he cared more for the English Catholics than the Scottish Protestants, a typically insouciant and foolish remark that cancelled out the goodwill he had earned by attending Knox’s sermons.

Mary was unwise to yield to Darnley’s influence over the title. She acted naïvely and impulsively, and would have done better to insist that Parliament be asked, using it as an excuse to delay a decision until she could see whether he was going to be able to handle this sort of power.

But Darnley would not take no for an answer. The force of gender stereotypes had come into play. He was the man and Mary the woman, and for the moment she felt that she had to indulge him. She needed the wedding to go ahead if she were not to lose face. She even attended the Privy Council, talking round a sufficient number of Lords to win the vote. When the decision was finally agreed, the heralds had been kept waiting for over six hours to make their proclamation.

The wedding took place on Sunday the 29th. Shortly before six o’clock in the morning, Mary was led to the altar of her private chapel at Holyrood by the Earls of Lennox and Atholl. She wore her deuil blanc to signify that she was a widow, dressed exactly as when Throckmorton had described her after the death of Francis II.

When Darnley arrived, the wedding vows were exchanged and the bridegroom put three rings on the fingers of Mary’s right hand, the middle one set with a rich diamond and enamelled in red.fn1 They knelt for the prayers, after which Darnley abruptly left. He wished to avoid the charge of ‘idolatry’ and so went straight to the royal apartments, refusing to attend his own nuptial mass.

The service finished, Mary returned to her bedroom. She was elated and determined to make a success of the marriage in spite of Darnley’s behaviour. She particularly wanted the ceremony to be inclusive. All the nobles had been invited, and in a ritual staged to mark her passage from widowhood to wife, she allowed each of those attending to remove one of the pins holding her veil to her gown. Everyone except Darnley then left while Mary changed her clothes. As Randolph primly noted, they ‘went not to bed, to signify unto the world that it was no lust [that] moved them to marry, but only the necessity of her country, not long to leave it destitute of an heir’.

There followed great ‘cheer and dancing’; or as Knox sourly put it, ‘during the space of three or four days there was nothing but balling, dancing and banqueting’. Mary and Darnley walked in procession to a state banquet attended by their Lords. As they entered the great hall, the trumpets sounded; and in an echo of Mary’s wedding to the Dauphin at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, heralds cried out ‘Largesse’, showering money on the guests. The afternoon was spent in dancing and revelry, after which there was a second banquet to which others were invited. The dancing went on late into the night, ‘and so they go to bed’.

Randolph was invited to the second banquet, but was obliged to refuse. As Elizabeth’s ambassador he could do nothing that could be interpreted as recognizing the marriage. Already Elizabeth and Cecil were determined never to acknowledge Darnley as King or even as Mary’s husband. Mary understood this but so badly wanted Randolph to attend the banquet that she kept Mary Beaton, his mistress, away from him for a fortnight beforehand, promising that they could dance together if he attended; but to no avail.

On Monday at midday, heralds proclaimed Darnley’s title as King of Scotland. A dual monarchy was to be established in which sovereign power was to be ‘conjointly’ exercised by the King and Queen. The official style for all letters and state papers would be ‘Henry and Marie, King and Queen of Scotland’.

The proclamation was heard in a resentful silence. Of all the nobles, no one as much as said ‘Amen’, until the lone voice of Lennox cried out ‘God save his grace.’

The wedding had been on the most sumptuous scale, and yet the celebrations were largely hollow. At the first banquet, the royal couple had been served by Atholl and Morton, the only nobles to offer their unreserved support for the new King. No one else was willing to wait on Darnley or serve his food. Moray, Argyll, and Châtelherault had refused to attend. All three were in disgrace and levying their forces. They intended to rebel, to force Mary to separate herself from a man they feared would try to destroy them. They wrote to Cecil seeking troops and artillery, and sending a messenger to London to put their case. Next, they approached Randolph and the Earl of Bedford, appealing for money. Their demand was for £3000, exactly the amount Cecil had given them six years before when they had begun their revolt against Mary’s mother.

On 30 July, Elizabeth sent John Thomworth, a gentleman of her privy chamber, as a special ambassador to Scotland. He was to see Mary, while at all times ignoring Darnley, and remonstrate over her ‘very strange’ and ‘unneighbourly’ conduct. He was to tell her she was beguiled by ‘sinister advice’.

Elizabeth decided to put Mary straight. She was to know that ‘she forgets herself marvellously to raise up such factions as is understood among her nobility’. A civil war was in prospect, or so Elizabeth supposed. Mary should reconcile herself to Moray, a man ‘who has so well served her’.

But Mary was having none of it. Before Thomworth even reached Edinburgh, Moray was declared a rebel and an outlaw; and when the ambassador arrived, Mary gave him a lecture. A Queen, she said, had every right to marry without rendering an account to other princes. It had not been her practice ‘to enquire what order of government her good sister observed within her realm’, nor did she believe it was the custom of princes to interfere in the internal affairs of neighbouring states. Princes were ‘subject immediately to God, and to owe account or reckoning of their doings to none other’. No one should know that better than Elizabeth herself.

As to Moray, Mary advised Elizabeth ‘to meddle no further with private causes concerning him or any other subjects of Scotland’. She should follow this advice, unless she wished Mary to reciprocate by taking up the cause of her mother-in-law, the Countess of Lennox, whom Elizabeth had unworthily imprisoned.

Mary was undaunted. Whatever Darnley’s many failings, she believed she had the upper hand. Whether she had actually improved her position is arguable, but she had gained the confidence to act strongly. For the first time in their relationship, she, not Elizabeth, drew up an offer of terms. According to these, Mary and her husband would do nothing to enforce their immediate dynastic claim, nor to countenance English rebels. They would not ally with foreign princes against Elizabeth, nor seek to alter the religion, laws, or liberties of England. In return, they expected Elizabeth not to ally with foreign princes or Mary’s rebels, and in particular to settle the English succession by Act of Parliament in Mary and Darnley’s favour.

For the very first time in her life, Mary was setting the agenda and revelling in it. After a brief infatuation in which she had been sexually attracted to Darnley and for a moment believed she had found love, she had come to realize that her marriage was purely one of convenience. Darnley, she knew, was unpopular. But her own popularity could counter this, and as a married Queen with every likelihood of producing heirs, her position was more secure than at any time since her return from France. Only the jealous, perfidious Moray and his allies stood between her and a long and happy reign. And she intended to deal with them next.