The Life of Mary Queen of Scots
by John Guy
(Fourth Estate, 2004)
Well, I love this book and before I go into why, I just wanted to say it; and to say what a relief it was to find a book I could write that about. I was beginning to think I was being too hard on Mary’s biographers.
But on to this book.
‘In My End Is My Beginning’ became Mary’s motto, and John Guy begins at the end of Mary’s life, with her execution. It is immediately obvious that this will be an easy read, written in a novelistic style; but it is equally obvious that it won’t be a superficial or novelistic view of Mary’s life.
This prologue also shows an understanding of Anglo-Scottish politics that is often missing in biographies of Mary. When Guy states that ‘William Cecil was her antagonist’ and ‘Cecil’s overwhelming ambition was to remould the British Isles into a single Protestant community. He had little room for an independent Scotland’ it becomes gratifyingly obvious that this isn’t going to be yet another Anglocentric ‘it was all her own fault for having sex’ hatchet-jobs.
Guy hasn’t fallen for the propaganda surrounding Mary that usually passes for history. He’s seen that beneath the image of the spoiled and petted Princess lies ‘a charismatic young ruler who relished power and, for a time, managed to hold together a fatally unstable country’. Equally, he recognises that the version of Mary as an innocent victim is also flawed. His aim is ‘to see her as a whole woman whose choices added up and whose decisions made sense’: that in itself being heresy amongst a certain type of Tudor scholar.
Guy has gone back to source material and made up his own mind rather than being overly influenced by other authors. These sources are cited at the end of the book where he lists which sources contributed to his understanding of each area of Mary’s life. This relates to the strength of this book, which is the way he interprets her life and the facts of the politics surrounding it. To reach the conclusions he comes to, you would have to read all of the references he cites. And he patently *has* read all those references himself, something not always obvious in more high-profile biographers.
In Mary’s response to demands for the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, we see the first signs of her diplomacy and Queenliness - she certainly was ‘Elizabeth’s equal in the art of political evasion’. Guy goes on to nail the lie that Mary knew nothing of Scotland upon her return. As well as her mother's letters and advice, Mary could draw upon the experience of advisors with recent experience of Scotland, appointed when she became dowager Queen of France. These included Seigneur d’Oysel, who ‘knew more about noble factionalism and the habits and idiosyncrasies of the individual Lords’ than any other than a native Scot.
This is just the first of many illusions he shatters. Think Mary was uneducated? That Moray and Knox got on? That Mary married Darnley for love? That she left Bothwell a mermaid brooch? Then read this book.
One of the biggest false impressions he corrects is that of Mary being obsessed with the English crown to the detriment of her Scottish one. As he realises, ‘her dynastic claim and her prestige in Scotland were connected, because as long as Knox and his supporters were writing to Cecil in England and colluding with him behind her back, her authority was undermined.’ Whereas if Elizabeth legitimised her by naming her as heir, then Mary’s subjects could not appeal to England against her. After all, it was questionable that she would outlive Elizabeth anyway.
And then, not before time, he sounds the death knell for that most enduring of myths; that of Mary ruling from the heart and Elizabeth from the head. It’s all down to that prudish misogynist, John Knox who had some mad ideas about female Catholic rulers. He believed they must have set reason aside, since otherwise they would have seen the error of their ways and converted to Protestantism. Since they hadn’t, then they must be ruled by their hearts, like other "idolatresses" such as Jezebel. To Knox then, Catholicism in a woman was equated with unbridled sexual lust. Guy so rightly notes that ‘In reality, no impartial witness of Elizabeth’s cavorting late at night in her bedroom with Lord Robert Dudley while his wife was still alive could have compared her favourably with Mary at that stage.’
Guy’s rejection of the stereotype means that he doesn’t have any script to stick to when describing Mary’s actions. Her decisiveness in dealing with Moray’s rebellion after her marriage, her clear-headed plot to escape imprisonment after the murder of Riccio, and her deft handling of the factions within Scotland during the majority of her reign are part of her nature, and not, for once, aberrations in an otherwise flighty and capricious character.
So we see Mary dealing with the Chaseabout rebels and succeeding ‘because she had snatched the initiative. While Elizabeth dithered and English policy was in disarray, she had acted decisively.’ After the Riccio murder she escapes captivity because ‘she had learned that the way to deal with the Lords was to divide and rule’. And she is a mistress of diplomacy too. When desperately ill at Jedburgh, she was clear-thinking enough to leave "the special care and protection of our son" to Elizabeth: a masterstroke which would have kept him out of Darnley’s way whilst giving James unrivalled prospects for the succession, and flattering to Elizabeth at the same time. This flattery worked so well that Elizabeth planned to replace the unratified Treaty of Edinburgh with a new ‘Treaty of Perpetual Amity’. It would all have gone so smoothly, if only Darnley hadn't been around to spoil it by getting killed.
Whereas Mary is generally said to have been infatuated with Darnley, at least initially, Guy has her relationship with him turning sour even before the marriage. Whilst recognising that it was a dynastic triumph, he also thinks that this was all it was, and that ‘she had trapped herself, because even when she began to realise 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.’ Darnley had his own agenda and plotted (mostly behind Mary’s back) to return Scotland to Catholicism. Eventually ‘a massive contradiction arose in her policy. She was unwilling to be bullied by hr dissolute and conspiratorial husband, and yet she had become embroiled in his ‘enterprise’ to restore Catholicism.....because............she believed she could use [it] to achieve a final recognition of her dynastic claim’ to the English throne. Whilst Mary deftly treads the tightrope, all her decisions are leading to Darnley’s disaffection and involvement in intrigue against her.
If any book has influenced Guy, it would appear to be Martin Hume’s ‘The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots’. In the early part of the book this is all to the good, and Mary appears as the formidable politician that she was, but he follows Hume in thinking that Mary lost all rationality after Darnley’s murder. Yes, she was devastated, yes, she was frightened, but she didn’t lose her calculating mind. She had her own reasons for marrying Bothwell, for attempting to cover her back via the ‘abduction’ scenario, and ultimately for fleeing Scotland. The book’s only disappointment is that Guy never really approaches these reasons because to do so would cast doubt upon Mary’s innocence.
At least she doesn’t become hysterical. Weighing the detail on Mary’s illnesses, Guy feels, with much justification, that there is no way to tell whether Mary had porphyria, and agrees with McNalty that the evidence would seem instead to point to a gastric ulcer. Whilst he recognises that her illnesses were exacerbated by stress, as an ulcer would be, he doesn’t go down the ‘hysteria’ route so beloved of certain biographers.
Once she is safely locked away in England, Guy gets right back on track with Mary's character, deftly describing how Mary's 'sense of reality was ebbing away and intrigue became a substitute for activity.' Mary plotted as entertainment, not fully realising that what she did was real, and that other lives depended on her actions.
But whilst Guy has done a fine job in seeing through the myth of Mary, he hasn’t done the same for her third husband. In this book it is Bothwell who is the villain. It’s the usual ‘drunken boor out for his own ends’ thing. When Bothwell first appears in the book, Guy has Mary using him ‘as an irritant, both to England and to Moray.’ I agree he was certainly that, but was this really the only way he was invaluable to her? But to his credit he points out that far from ‘the abduction’ culminating in imprisonment and rape, Mary and Bothwell had separate rooms at Dunbar.
For Guy’s Mary is pure of heart, and an affair with Bothwell wouldn’t suit him one bit. He says that ‘Only if she were an adulteress and Bothwell was her lover is the case against her convincing.’ Now I don’t accept this assumption, but Guy does. So when Mary famously dashes to Hermitage and back in a day, all to see the injured Bothwell, well, it’s nothing anyone else wouldn’t have done. After all ‘forty miles was then considered a normal day’s riding...... fifty miles was above the norm but nothing out of the ordinary. Sixty miles was pushing it, but feasible in good weather.’ Yes, you can have good weather in October in Scotland. But anyone who has lived there will tell you to NEVER take it for granted that it will stay fine for a day; especially if you are a Queen, and a bit under the weather yourself.
Where Guy is invaluable to a Bothwellophile is in tracing his movements between 1562 and 1565; although after dismissing Gore-Brown and Schiern as unreliable, he comes up with something bizarrely similar to pure Gore-Brown! And whatever Bothwell’s movements, we can be sure they were ‘strutting’ ones. Time to get the Thesaurus out?
And then we get this: ‘Bothwell’s [own] story is an anticlimax: its chief value it to confirm our impression of his self-serving duplicity.’ EEEEEEEEK! Compared to whom, Mr Guy? Compared to whom?? I just have to point out that Bothwell stands alone in serving Mary and her mother faithfully throughout her reign. He didn’t take bribes from England because he put Scotland first. He didn’t make a big deal about his Protestantism, but he refused to compromise it. All that makes him a gentleman of the highest order in my book. Have I got carried away yet?
His descriptions of the rest of Bothwell’s life are well-founded and thought through, though I think he makes too much of the substitution of Moray for Morton in ‘Les Affaires, Bothwell’s own account of his life. Bothwell has no reason to let Morton off the hook (even though admittedly, he certainly does want to demonise Moray, mostly because he *was* a demon), and he also makes other elementary mistakes such as placing the Riccio murder in Edinburgh Castle rather than Holyrood. It’s likely that these are undetected errors made by the secretary during dictation, or they may be a result of an impaired memory, possibly due to a head wound received from Jock o’ the Park. And even the best of historians makes mistakes - Guy himself follows Buchanan in mistaking Lady Reres for her relative Janet Beton, and has her as Bothwell’s discarded lover - unless he knows something I don’t (which for once is a probability rather than an unlikely possibility).
Structurally, after Carberry John Guy goes down the novel route of allowing all sides to have their say in their own words whilst we follow events in their lives. So we have Mary's Story, Bothwell's Story and the Lords' Story. We then come to the casket letters, which determine who we believe. Guy's deconstruction of the casket letters proves that, as evidence against Mary, they are pants.
One of Guy’s strengths is his all-round understanding of the politics of the time, well demonstrated in his exposition of French politics in relation to England, Spain, and the Guise family, an aspect usually ignored in Mary’s biographies. He notes that the Guises were religious moderates in the 1550s. They transformed themselves into fervent Catholics, crushing the Huguenots in support of Philip II, only because it suited them politically. ‘Only the Pope could make a definitive pronouncement on Elizabeth Tudor’s legitimacy, and so on Mary’s claim to the throne.’ He then looks forward to realise that ‘this metamorphosis influenced Mary after her flight to exile in England. She would re-invent herself in the 1580s as a good Catholic woman persecuted for her religion alone.’
His talent for encapsulating politics in a simple but novel way is illustrated in his description of the ongoing tension between Elizabeth and Cecil over Scotland. Cecil felt that Protestant interests should override dynastic considerations, and Elizabeth believed the opposite. Despite Elizabeth’s misgivings, Cecil’s policy was to attempt to turn Scotland into an English dependency. He didn’t see Mary as a pawn in the Guise game, but as a willing participant in a conspiracy to usurp the English throne.
He gives an excellent, clear and concise exposition of the reasons behind the Riccio murder, its execution and its consequences. Carberry Hill also comes alive in this book. He makes sense of the jumbled accounts and describes it far more vividly than has ever been done before. Yet considering how pivotal Kirk O’Field is in Mary’s life, Guy’s treatment of it is weak. There’s little to be excited about, and less that is new. His theory superficially fits, it seems plausible, but it’s a bit of a disappointment all the same. Toes the Moray line, as it were, by blaming Bothwell (un)fair and square.
Similarly, other areas that aren’t key to Guy’s own particular arguments are somewhat neglected in the book. The Gordons’ rebellion is over before it has begun, and appears to come out of nowhere. We also don’t get to hear about Moray forcing Mary to watch John Gordon’s execution; and the trial of Huntly’s dead body is remarkably low-key. This may be because he wants us to concur with his view that Mary turned away from Moray’s advice because his ‘middle way’ of dealing with England had failed, rather than because the way he dealt with the Gordons forced her to see that he was following his own agenda, and that his agenda was to weaken her position as Queen.
In fact, Moray remains a strangely undeveloped and shadowy figure throughout the book, again maybe because he doesn’t fit easily into Guy’s personal picture of events. This leaves him with Riccio’s murder and Kirk O’Field being treated as entirely separate events, rather than two further attempts by Moray at usurping Mary’s throne. Maitland, bizarrely, becomes the prime mover in the Riccio plot, and Bothwell and his unlikely ally Morton take the blame for Kirk O’ Field, for reasons which become obscure if one discounts the propaganda surrounding Bothwell and allows his actions to speak for themselves. This is bizarre in that another of Guy’s strengths is his description of the propaganda of the time and his explanations of it. His coverage of the symbolism of the ‘Mermaid and Hare’ placard is unrivalled, as is his analysis of the Lords’ propaganda during their rebellion culminating at Carberry Hill.
Moray aside, Guy is a master of briefly and accurately describing the Scottish personalities of the time. Arran’s vacillation and greed; Mary of Guise’s intelligence and diplomatic skills; Lennox’s over-inflated aspirations; Patrick Hepburn’s reckless attempts to marry money and power; Knox’s journey from galley-slave to king’s tutor: all are portrayed in a way that brings them to life rather than leaving the reader cold and confused.
Cardinal Beaton in particular receives much more favourable treatment than we have come to expect, being described as a stabilising influence in Scotland. Once this is pointed out it is easy to see that his death did indeed lead to a shift of opinion and power to a more pro-France point of view once the Earl of Huntly replaced him as Chancellor.
This method of putting flesh on dead people’s bones continues in his descriptions of English players in Scottish affairs. This has the advantage of allowing the reader to understand the opinions of ambassadors and reporters and the points of view of their dispatches.
Maybe because of this skill, parts of the book appear to be more detailed than other biographies - or maybe I was just understanding more fully. The Rough Wooing, Mary’s departure for France, Mary’s clashes with Madame Parois, the Christopher Rokesby business, the relationship between the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife; all these fall into this category.
However many books on Mary Queen of Scots you have read, you will still find this book a worthwhile addition to your shelf. From the start Guy includes little titbits of information that even long-time Mariophiles will find new to them. For instance, we immediately learn that Mary’s native languages were Lowland Scots and French. Well that’s one long-running e-mail discussion resolved, then! He also shows that despite all its other inaccuracies ‘Gunpowder, Treason and Plot’ had it dead right to depict Mary astride a horse - ‘a habit for which Mary would be greeted with suspicion in Scotland’. And his knowledge of symbolism comes into its own in the descriptions of Mary's embroideries.
Another unfamiliar anecdote tells that the nickname of Mary’s ‘four Maries’, her bosom companions, came from Mary herself. She was apparently referring to a Catholic devotional manual for Catholics called the ‘three Maries’ in France.
We also learn fascinating historical details that usually remain obscure. Did you know that Francois I kept the Mona Lisa in his bathroom? Or that when travelling, royal and aristocratic women carried water in their luggage whereas men would drink local wine or beer? Me neither. But it explains why the women didn’t get the lethal flux which afflicted the men at Ancenis.
By the end of the book we have arrived at the reign of James I and VI. Mary's emotions went up and down with the variations in her long-distance relationship with her son until that relationship broke down altogether. Upon his ascension to the throne he appears reconciled to his dead mother, allowing Camden to finish his history which savages Buchanan's 'pants on fire' accounts of Mary's reign, and having Mary's remains moved to Westminster Abbey.
Guy reflects that Cecil planned Mary's fall two years before she returned to Scotland; that Elizabeth refused a face-to-face meeting because she feared that in person she would be overshadowed by the Scottish Queen; that by falling in love with Bothwell, Mary made her worst mistake. In death Mary triumphed over it all. And even Bothwell gets an honourable mention as an unlikely Scottish Nationalist.
There are things I could quibble with, there are opinions I don’t share, but overall I love this book. And I really must congratulate John Guy on saying something I was always too chicken to say - that the ‘Craigmillar Bond’ never existed. THANK YOU!
If he’s available, can someone tell John Guy I want to have his babies?