Mary was now at the very height of European grandeur. The Queen of two powerful countries—and the heir-presumptive of a third,—in the flower of her age,—and, from her superior mental endowments, much more worshipped, even in France, than her husband, she affords at this period of her history as striking an example as can be found of the concentration of all the blessings of fortune in one person. She stood unluckily on too high and glorious a pinnacle to be able to retain her position long, consistent with the vices vitæ mortalium. Whilst she conducted herself with a prudence and propriety altogether remarkable, considering her youth and the susceptibility of her nature, she began to be regarded with suspicion at once by France, England, and Scotland. In France, she was obliged to bear the blame of many instances of bigotry and over-severity in the government of her uncles;—in England, Elizabeth took every opportunity to load with opprobrium a sister Queen, whose descent, birth, station, and accomplishments, were so much superior to her own;—in Scotland, the Reformers, inspired by James Stuart, who, with ulterior views of his own, was contented to act as the tool of Elizabeth, laboured to make it be believed that Mary was an uncompromising and narrow-minded Catholic.
In September 1559, Francis was solemnly crowned at Rheims; and during the remainder of the season, he and Mary, attended by their nobles, made various progresses through the country. In December, Francis, whose health was evidently giving way, went, by the advice of his physicians, to Blois, celebrated for the mildness of its climate. It affords a very vivid idea of the ignorant superstition of the French peasantry to learn, that on his journey thither, every village through which he passed was deserted. An absurd story had been circulated, and was universally believed, that the nature of Francis’s complaints were such, that they could only be cured by the royal patient bathing in the blood of young children. Francis himself, although probably not informed of the cause, observed with pain how he was every where shunned; and, notwithstanding the soothing tenderness of Mary, who accompanied him, is said to have exclaimed to the Cardinal Lorraine, “What have I done to be thus shunned and detested? They fly me; my people abhor me! It is not thus that the French used to receive their King.”[24]
Misfortunes, it is said, never come singly. Whilst Mary was performing the part of an affectionate nurse to her husband, she sustained an irretrievable loss in the death of her mother, the Scottish Regent, in June 1560; and in the December following, her husband, Francis, died at Orleans, in the 17th year of his age, and the 17th month of his reign.[25] Feeling that his exhausted constitution was sinking rapidly, and that his death was at hand, almost the last words he spoke were to testify his affection for Mary, and his sense of her virtues. He earnestly beseeched his mother to treat her as her own daughter, and his brother to look upon her as a sister. He was a prince, says Conæus, in whom, had he lived, more merit would probably have been discovered than most people suspected.[26] The whole face of things in France was by this event instantly changed again. Francis the Little, as he was contemptuously termed by the French, in opposition to his father Francis the Great, was succeeded by his younger brother, Charles IX. He being still a minor, his mother, Catharine, contrived to get herself appointed his guardian, and thus became once more Queen of France, the nobility, as Chalmers remarks, being more inclined to relish a real minority, than an imaginary majority. Catharine’s jealousy of Mary Stuart, of course extended itself, with greater justice, to her uncles of Guise. It was now their turn to make way for Montmorency; and the Cardinal of Lorraine, one of the most intriguing statesmen of the age, retired, in no very charitable mood of mind, to his archbishopric at Rheims, where, in a fit of spleen, he declared he would devote himself entirely to religion.
There is something exceedingly naïve and amusing in Sir James Melville’s account of this “gret changement.” “The Queen-mother,” says he, “was blyth of the death of King Francis, her son, because she had na guiding of him, but only the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal, his brother, by raisoun that the Queen, our maistress, was their sister’s dochter. Sa, the Queen-mother was content to be quit of the government of the house of Guise; and for their cause (sake) she had a great mislyking of our Queen.” Of Montmorency, who, as soon as he heard of the illness of Francis, commenced his journey towards the Court, he says,—“The Constable, also chargit to come to the court, looked for na less, and seamed to be seak, making little journees, caried in a horse-litter, drew time sae lang by the way, that the King, in the meantime, died. Then he lap on horsbak and cam freely to the Court and commandit, like a Constable, the men of war that gardit the Croun, by the Duke of Guise commandement, to pack them aff the toune. The Queen-mother was also very glaid of his coming, that by his autority and frendship with the King of Navarre, she mycht the better dryve the house of Guise to the door.” Of Mary, who, it may well be supposed, felt this change more than any one, Melville says,—“Our Queen also, seeing her friends in disgrace, and knawing hirself no to be weil liked, left the Court, and was a sorrowful widow when I took my leave at hir, in a gentilman’s house, four myle fra Orleans.” To this “gentilman’s house,” or chateau, in the neighbourhood of Orleans, Mary had retired to shed in private those tears, which the death of her husband called forth. In losing Francis, she had lost the playmate of her childhood, the husband of her youth, and what, by many women, would be considered as serious a loss as either, the rank and title of Queen of France. It was here, probably, that she composed those verses to the memory of her deceased husband, which her biographers have so frequently copied, and which are so full of gentle and unaffected feeling.
Mary, however, was at this time a personage of too much importance in the politics and affairs of Europe, to be left long unmolested to the indulgence of that sincere, but commonly temporary, sorrow of a widow of eighteen. New suitors were even now beginning to form hopes of an alliance with her; and two of the earliest in the field were, Don Carlos of Spain, and the King of Navarre. But Mary was determined to listen to no proposals of a matrimonial nature, till she had arranged the plan of her future life. France was no longer for her the country it had once been. Her affectionate father-in-law Henry, and her amiable, though weak, husband Francis, both of whom commanded for her the first rank in the State, were dead; her mother would never visit her more, for her tomb had already been erected at Rheims, and her proud uncles had been banished from the Court. Mary had too high a spirit, and knew her own superiority too well, to brook for a moment the haughty control of Catharine de Medicis. She felt that not all the blood of all the merchants of Italy, could ever elevate the Queen-Dowager to an equality with one who, as it is said she herself once expressed it, drew her descent from a centinary line of Kings. Catharine felt this painfully, and the more so, that when Mary once more made her appearance at Court, she perceived, in the words of Miss Benger, that “the charms of her conversation, her graceful address, her captivating accomplishments, had raised the woman above the Queen.”
In the mean time, by the Reformed party in Scotland, the news of the death of Francis was received with any thing but sorrow. Knox declared triumphantly that “his glory had perished, and that the pride of his stubborn heart had vanished into smoke.” The Lord James, her natural brother, was immediately deputed by the Congregation to proceed to France, to ascertain whether the Queen intended returning to her native country, and if she did, to influence her as much as possible in favour of the true gospel and its friends. Nor were the Catholics inactive at this critical juncture. A meeting was held, at which were present the Archbishop of St Andrews, the Bishops of Aberdeen, Murray, and Ross, the Earls of Huntly, Athol, Crawfurd, and Sutherland, and many other persons of distinction, by whom it was determined to send as their ambassador to Mary, John Lesly, afterwards Bishop of Ross, and one of the Queen’s staunchest friends, both during her life and after it. He was of course instructed to give her a very different account of the state of matters from that which the Lord James would do. He was to speak to her of the power and influence of the Catholic party; and to contrast their fidelity both to her and to her mother, with the rebellious proceedings of those who supported the covenant.
The Lord James went by the way of England, and Lesly sailed from Aberdeen for Holland. Both made good speed; and Lesly arrived at Vitry in Champagne, where Mary was then residing, only one day before the Prior of St Andrews. He lost no time in gaining admission to the Queen; and though there is little doubt that his views were more sincere and honourable than those of her brother, it is at the same time very questionable whether the advice he gave her was judicious; and it is probably fortunate that Mary’s good sense and moderation led her to reject it. Lesly commenced with cautioning her against the crafty speeches which he knew the Lord James was about to make to her, assuring her that his principal object was to insinuate himself into her good graces, to obtain the chief management of affairs, and crush effectually the old religion. The Prior, Lesly assured her, was not so warm in the cause of the Reformers, from any conviction of its truth, as from his wish to make it a stepping-stone for his own ambition. For these reasons, he advised her to bring with her to Scotland an armed force, and to land at Aberdeen, or some northern port, where the Earl of Huntly and her other friends would join her with a numerous army, at the head of which she might advance towards Edinburgh, and defeat at once the machinations of her enemies. The Queen, in reply to all this, merely desired that Lesly should remain with her till she returned to Scotland, commanding him to write, in the mean time, to the Lords and Prelates who sent him, to inform them of her favourable sentiments towards them, and of her intention to come speedily home.[27]
The day after Lesly’s audience, Mary’s old friend the Lord James (for it will be remembered, that thirteen years before he had come to France with her, and he had in the interval paid her one or two visits) obtained an interview with his sister. He had every desire to retain the favourable place which he flattered himself he held in her estimation; and, though so rigid a Reformer among his Scottish friends, his conscience does not seem to have prevented him from paying all the court he could to his Catholic Sovereign. In the course of his conversation with her, he carefully avoided every subject which might have been disagreeable to Mary. He beseeched her to believe, that she would not find the remotest occasion for any foreign troops in Scotland, as the whole nation was prepared faithfully to obey her. This assurance was true, as it turned out; but it is not quite certain whether the Prior of St Andrews was thinking, at the time, so much of its truth, as of its being convenient, for various reasons, that Mary should have no standing force, at her command, in her own kingdom. Mary gave to her brother the same general sort of answer that she had previously given to Lesly. At the same time, she was secretly disposed to attribute greater weight to his arguments, and treat him with higher consideration, for a reason which Melville furnishes. It appears that the French noblemen, who, on the conclusion of peace with England had returned from Scotland, had all assured her, that she would find it most for her interest to associate in her councils the leaders of the Reformers,—particularly the Prior himself,—the Earl of Argyle, who had married her natural sister, the Lady Jane Stuart,—and Maitland of Lethington.
It is worthy of notice, that, affairs of state having been discussed, the Prior ventured to speak a word or two for his own interest. He requested that the Earldom of Murray might be conferred on him, and the Queen promised to attend to his request on her return to Scotland. Having thus prudently discharged his commission, the Lord James took his leave, visiting Elizabeth on his way home, as he had already done before passing over into France. About the same time, many of the Scotch nobility, in anticipation of her speedy return, came to pay their duty to the Queen, and, among them, was the celebrated Earl of Bothwell.[28]