Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens - Jane Dunn

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cloak and a train of grey velvet. Neither did her jewels disappoint for on her head was a specially commissioned crown studded with gemstones (the canny Scots had refused to let their crown jewels leave Scotland) and round her throat was a grand diamond necklace. This diamond was most probably the ‘Great Harry’ which she had inherited from her grandmother, Margaret Tudor, to whom it had been given by her own father, Henry VII of England. The importance of her Tudor inheritance was embodied in this priceless jewel.

      Magnificence was the order of the day. Sublimely present, but far removed, Mary made her marriage vows elevated in front of the crowds pressing towards the great doors of Notre Dame. As a symbol of imperial munificence, inviting too perhaps a reciprocal generosity from heaven, the heralds took handfuls of gold and silver coins and threw them amongst the people crying, ‘Largesse! … largesse!’ So desperate was the rush that many were trampled, some fainted and others scrabbled and fought savagely for a salvaged ducat or sou. Fearing a riot, the largesse was prematurely dammed and the heralds’ moneybags stowed away. The young Queen Mary of Scotland and her even younger husband, now known as the King of Scotland, were shown again to the surging crowd.

      It was the first time Mary was to experience the hysteria of a crowd whose energies were focused wholly on herself. Although this time they were benign and wished her well, there was always something potentially terrifying in the sheer force and power of the mob, crying out, shoving each other, sweating, straining to touch her hand or grasp a passing fragment of her robe, to catch her eye and elicit some recognition or blessing.

      But the grandeur of French ceremony was aimed at distancing royalty, projecting them to god-like proportions, not just to their subjects but to themselves. It was an inflation that could only make the young dauphin and dauphine think of themselves as close to divine. The populace was excluded from the archbishop’s palace where the extravagant wedding banquet was held. On a day fraught with symbolism, and exhausting in its demands, Mary’s fifteen-year-old head was beginning to ache under the weight of her crown and she was permitted to relinquish it to the king’s gentleman of the bedchamber. Then once the feast was cleared away the ball began, with the king leading out his new daughter-in-law, taller than he was, altogether more regal in her mien and a notably graceful dancer.

      However, the highlight of the celebrations was yet to come with the removal of the wedding party and guests to the Palais de Justice for a series of fantastical pageants. Twenty-five wicker horses arrayed in cloth of gold, with the young Guise sons and Valois princes on their backs, entered pulling coaches filled with people dressed as pilgrims, singing in praise of God and the young bride and groom. A dozen bejewelled unicorns, the heraldic and mythical symbol of Scotland, more carriages filled with beautiful young women dressed as the Muses, and more celestial music all captured the imaginations of the glittering wedding guests.

      The pièce de résistance was kept for last as six gauzy ships, their sails filling with an artificial breeze, appeared to float across a painted, billowing sea. In each was a prince, brilliantly attired in gold and wearing a mask, with an empty throne beside him. As the ingenious fleet approached the great marble table at which the wedding party sat each masked prince disembarked to choose his princess and place her on his throne, to the evident pleasure of both the participants and the spectators. The smallest of them all approached one of the tallest of the young women, as the Dauphin François claimed his young dauphine. He and the young Queen of Scots sailed away in a make-believe ship to a fantasy land.

      These were purposefully extravagant fun and games, full of symbolism and self-indulgent conceit, and executed with peculiarly French stylishness and wit. The country had been brought close to bankruptcy by wars with England and Spain, and riven with religious and political factions. Such pomp was a necessary reassurance to themselves and assertion to their neighbours that the imperial greatness of France remained undimmed. But at heart it was a fairytale confection, an entertaining froth for the diversion of a complacent, self-regarding court. The focus of all this fuss was the fairytale princess herself, undeniably beautiful, intelligent and robust but disabled by the fantasy, and burdened with vain pride.

      Back in Scotland, the local poets saw the marriage as a union of equals. Sir Richard Maitland characterized the relationship as fraternal, ‘Scots and French now live in unity/As you were brothers born in one country … Defending other both by land and sea’.7 The celebrations too were inevitably a more muted and frugal affair. Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, regent since 1554, ordered the great cannon, nicknamed ‘Mons Meg’, to be fired from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. But then, with suitable economy, she dispatched a body of men to retrieve the monster shot so that it could be dusted down and used again. When France exacted a tax on the Scottish people to finance the nuptials of the queen who had left their shores as a small child, more than ten years before, there was some muttering. When France then came back for an even larger contribution, resentment became more entrenched. The independent-minded nobles and lairds had largely put up with the influx of French courtiers and advisers around Mary of Guise, particularly if a strong French presence threatened their old enemy England, but no true Scotsman could stomach any sense of their country being annexed in some unequal alliance.

      Monarchies when women or children inherited were notoriously susceptible to powerful factions and self-seeking ambitions amongst their subjects, and Scotland had had more than its fair share of premature royal deaths and restive noblemen. During Mary Stuart’s minority and absence in France, the reformed religion had flourished with little real curb under the eleven-year governorship of the indecisive Earl of Arran, followed by that of her own mother. Although Mary of Guise was not a natural persecutor of heretics, her family was the pre-eminent force in France and hardline in its Catholicism and antipathy to dissent. The court became thick with Frenchmen, some of whom held lucrative posts, most of whom seemed to the more impoverished and frugal Scots to be arrogant in their manner and wantonly extravagant in their tastes. French interests were seen by the Scots to be increasingly paramount in their increasingly partisan government.

      In France, the wedding celebrations lasted for days, in part aimed at bolstering the people’s support for their monarchy and in the process uniting some of the alarming and bitter rifts caused by the fiery advance of the reformed religion fuelled from Geneva. But the really important political union was transacted privately in the weeks before the public celebration. Nine Scottish commissioners braved the February storms to sail to France. They survived seasickness and shipwreck in order to be there in person to act on behalf of Scotland and her queen in the negotiations of the marriage treaty. Everything seemed to be generous and convivial enough. Scotland’s independence was assured; Francis would become King of Scotland alongside his queen; if they should have a son he would inherit both realms; if they only had a daughter she would inherit the crown of Scotland alone, being prohibited from claiming the French throne.

      However, in an act of gross duplicity by the king and his advisers, Mary was asked that same day, 4 April 1558, to sign

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