The Queen’s taste in music had been cultivated from her earliest years. When almost an infant she had minstrels attached to her establishment. On her return to Scotland, she had a small band of about a dozen musicians—vocal and instrumental—whom she kept always near her person. Five of these were violars, or players on the viol;[78] three of them were players on the lute; one or two of them were organists, but the organs in the chapels at Stirling and Holyrood were the only ones which had been saved from the fury of the Reformers; and the rest were singers, who also acted as chalmer-chields, or valets-de-chambre. Mary could herself play upon the lute and virginals, and loved to hear concerted music upon all occasions. She even introduced into her religious worship a military band, in aid of the organ, consisting of trumpet, drum, fife, bagpipe, and tabor.
It was as one skilled in music that David Rizzio first recommended himself to Mary. He came to Edinburgh towards the end of the year 1561, in the train of the ambassador from Savoy. He was a Piedmontese by birth, and had received a good education. His father was a respectable professional musician in Turin, who, having a large family, had sent his two sons, David and Joseph, to push their own way in Nice, at the court of the Duke of Savoy. They were both noticed at that court, and were taken into the service of the Duke of Moretto, the ambassador already mentioned. The knowledge which David Rizzio possessed of music, says a French writer, was the least of his talents: He had a polished and ready wit, a lively imagination, full of pleasant fancies, soft and winning manners, abundance of courage, and still more assurance. “He was,” says Melville, “a merry fallow, and a guid musician.” He was, moreover, abundantly ugly, and past the meridian of life, as attested by all cotemporary writers of any authority. His brother, Joseph, is scarcely mentioned in history, though it appears that he also attached himself to Mary’s Court. At the time of David’s arrival, the Queen’s three pages, or sangsters, who used to sing trios for her, wanted a fourth as a bass. Rizzio was recommended, and he received the appointment, together with a salary of 80l. Being not only by far the most scientific musician in the Queen’s household, but likewise well acquainted both with French and Italian, Rizzio contrived to make himself generally useful. In 1564 he was appointed Mary’s French secretary, and in this situation he continued till his death.[79]
An amusing peep into the interior of both the Scots and English Courts, afforded by Sir James Melville, will form an appropriate conclusion to this chapter. Sir James returned from the Continent to Scotland in May 1564. He found the Queen at St Johnstone; and she, aware of his fidelity, requested him to give up thoughts of going back to France, where he had been promised preferment. “She was so affable,” says he, “so gracious and discreet, that she won great estimation, and the hearts of many both in England and Scotland, and mine among the rest; so that I thought her more worthy to be served for little profit, than any other prince in Europe for great commodity.” But Mary had too proud a spirit to submit to be served for nothing. She was by nature liberal almost to a fault. Out of her French dowry she settled upon Melville a pension of a thousand marks, and in addition, she begged him to accept of the heritage of the lands of Auchtermuchty, near Falkland. These he refused, as he was unwilling that she should dismember, on his account, her own personal property; but they were subsequently given to some one less scrupulous. Sir James was soon afterwards sent by Mary on an embassy to Elizabeth, principally for the sake of expediting some matters connected with Mary’s intended matrimonial arrangements.
The morning after his arrival in London, he was admitted to an audience by Elizabeth, whom he found pacing in an alley in her garden. The business upon which he came being arranged satisfactorily, Melville was favourably and familiarly treated by the English Queen. He remained at her Court nearly a fortnight, and conversed with her Majesty every day, sometimes thrice on the same day. Sir James, who was a shrewd observer, had thus an opportunity of remarking the many weaknesses and vanities which characterized Elizabeth. In allusion to her extreme love of power, he ventured to say to her, when she informed him she never intended to marry, “Madam, you need not tell me that; I know your stately stomach. You think, if you were married, you would be but Queen of England; and now you are King and Queen both; you may not suffer a commander.” Elizabeth was fortunately not offended at this freedom. She took Sir James, upon one occasion, into her bedchamber, and opened a little case, in which were several miniature pictures. The pretence was to show him a likeness of Mary, but her real object was, that he should observe in her possession a miniature of her favourite the Earl of Leicester, upon which she had written with her own hand, “My Lord’s picture.” When Melville made this discovery, Elizabeth affected a little amiable confusion. “I held the candle,” says Sir James, “and pressed to see my Lord’s picture; albeit she was loth to let me see it; at length, I by importunity obtained the sight thereof, and asked the same to carry home with me unto the Queen; which she refused, alleging she had but that one of his.” At another time, Elizabeth talked with Sir James of the different costumes of different countries. She told him she had dresses of many sorts; and she appeared in a new one every day during his continuance at Court. Sometimes she dressed after the English, sometimes after the French, and sometimes after the Italian fashion. She asked Sir James which he thought became her best. He said the Italian, “whilk pleasit her weel; for she delighted to show her golden coloured hair, wearing a kell and bonnet as they do in Italy. Her hair was redder than yellow, and apparently of nature.” Elizabeth herself seems to have been quite contented with its hue, for she very complacently asked Sir James, whether she or Mary had the finer hair? Sir James having replied as politely as possible, she proceeded to inquire which he considered the more beautiful? The ambassador quaintly answered, that the beauty of either was not her worst fault. This evasion would not serve; though Melville, for many sufficient reasons, was unwilling to say any thing more definite. He told her that she was the fairest queen in England, and Mary the fairest in Scotland. Still this was not enough. Sir James ventured, therefore, one step farther. “They were baith,” he said, “the fairest ladies of their courts, and that the Queen of England was whiter, but our Queen was very lusome.” Elizabeth next asked which of them was of highest stature? Sir James told her the Queen of Scots. “Then she said the Queen was over heigh, and that herself was neither over heigh nor over laigh. Then she askit what kind of exercises she used. I said, that as I was dispatchit out of Scotland, the Queen was but new come back from the Highland hunting; and that when she had leisure frae the affairs of her country, she read upon guid buiks the histories of divers countries; and sometimes would play upon the lute and virginals. She spearit gin she played weel; I said, raisonably for a Queen.”
This account of Mary’s accomplishments piqued Elizabeth’s vanity, and determined her to give Melville some display of her own. Accordingly, next day one of the Lords in waiting took him to a quiet gallery, where, as if by chance, he might hear the Queen play upon the virginals. After listening a little, Melville perceived well enough that he might take the liberty of entering the chamber whence the music came. Elizabeth coquettishly left off as soon as she saw him, and, coming forward, tapped him with her hand, and affected to feel ashamed of being caught, declaring that she never played before company, but only when alone to keep off melancholy. Melville made her a flattering speech, protesting that the music he had heard was of so exquisite a kind, that it had irresistibly drawn him into the room. Elizabeth, who does not seem to have thought as people are usually supposed to do in polite society, that “comparisons are odious,” could not rest satisfied, without putting, as usual, the question, whether Mary or she played best? Melville gave the English Queen the palm. Being now in good humour, she resolved that Sir James should have a specimen of her learning, which it is well known degenerated too much into pedantry. She praised his French, asking if he could also speak Italian, which, she said, she herself spoke reasonably well. She spoke to him also in Dutch; but Sir James says it was not good. Afterwards, she insisted upon his seeing her dance; and when her performance was over, she put the old question, whether she or Mary danced best. Melville answered,—“The Queen dancit not so high and disposedly as she did.” Melville returned to Scotland, “convinced in his judgment,” as he says, “that in Elizabeth’s conduct there was neither plain-dealing nor upright meaning, but great dissimulation, emulation, and fear that Mary’s princely qualities should too soon chase her out, and displace her from the kingdom.”
Sir James, by way of contrast, concludes this subject with the following interesting account of Mary’s well-won popularity, prudence, modesty, and good sense. “The Queen’s Majesty, as I have said, after her returning out of France to Scotland, behaved herself so princely, so honourably and discreetly, that her reputation spread in all countries; and she was determined, and also inclined to continue in that kind of comeliness even to the end of her life, desiring to hold none in her company, but such as were of the best quality and conversation, abhorring all vices and vicious persons, whether they were men or women; and she requested me to assist her in giving her my good counsel how she might use the meetest means to advance her honest intention; and in case she, being yet young, might forget herself in any unseemly gesture or behaviour, that I would warn her thereof with my admonition, to forbear and reform the same. Which commission I refused altogether; saying, that her virtuous actions, her natural judgment, and the great experience she had learned in the company of so many notable princes in the Court of France, had instructed her so well, and made her so able, as to be an example to all her subjects and servants. But she would not have it so, but said she knew that she had committed divers errors upon no evil meaning, for lack of the admonition of loving friends, because that the most part of courtiers commonly flatter princes, to win their favour, and will not tell them the verity, fearing to tine their favour; and therefore she adjured me and commanded me to accept that charge, which I said was a ruinous commission, willing her to lay that burden upon her brother, my Lord of Murray, and the Secretary Lethington; but she said that she would not take it in so good a part of them as of me. I said, I feared it would cause me, with time, to tine her favour; but she said it appeared I had an evil opinion of her constancy and discretion, which opinion, she doubted not, but I would alter, after that I had essayed the occupation of that friendly and familiar charge. In the meantime, she made me familiar with all her most urgent affairs; but chiefly in her dealing with any foreign nation. She showed unto me all her letters, and them that she received from other princes; and willed me to write unto such princes as I had acquaintance of, and to some of their counsellors; wherein I forgot not to set out her virtues, and would show her again their answers, and such occurrences as passed at the time between countries, to her great contentment. For she was of a quick spirit, and anxious to know and to get intelligence of the state of other countries; and would be sometimes sad when she was solitary, and glad of the company of them that had travelled in foreign parts.”[80]
This testimony in Mary’s favour, from a cotemporary author of so much respectability, is worth volumes of ordinary panegyrick.