Sunday, 24 January 2021

Marriage and the succession

Mary, Queen of Scots
by François Clouet
Public domain


The European context and Mary, Queen of Scots

The domestic politics of the 1560s centred on the succession to the throne, Elizabeth’s matrimonial problems, the European political and religious situation, and the Scottish question, all of which were inter-linked. John Guy, Tudor England (1990), p. 268

Mid-sixteenth-century Europe was in the grip of two lethal conflicts: an ideological war between revived Catholicism and radical Protestantism, and the continuing Habsburg (the Holy Roman Empire and Spain) and Valois (France) struggle for supremacy. England was a small, vulnerable country with an uncertain succession.

For Catholics, Mary, Queen of Scots, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, was the rightful Queen. Since 1548, when she was five, she had been living in France and was a pawn of French politics. On 24 April 1558, she and the Dauphin François were married in Notre Dame.  

When Queen Mary Tudor died in 1558, Mary asserted her claim to the throne against Elizabeth by quartering the arms of England on her shield, a gesture the English regarded as extremely provocative. 

On 10 July 1559, Henri II died following a jousting accident and François became king. Mary was now Queen of Scotland and France and at the same time asserting a claim to the English throne. Her prestige and her importance had never been higher. She was a serious rival to Elizabeth.



The succession problem

The obvious answer to the English succession problem was for Elizabeth to marry. If she died before having a child, this could provoke a succession crisis. Her possible heirs were Mary, Queen of Scots, Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox and Lady Katherine Grey and her two sisters. As none of these commanded overwhelming support, the country risked a civil war. 

Elizabeth's long-term intentions are extremely ambiguous. There is no evidence that she had an emotional dislike of marriage, and/or was unable to bear children, but judging from her statements early in the reign, she was certainly considering the benefits of remaining single. Her options were difficult. The marriage of a reigning queen always posed problems. If she chose one of her subjects, it caused faction fighting among the nobility; if a foreigner, she risked putting her country under the control of a foreign power.

In February 1559, the House of Commons petitioned her to marry.
She told a delegation from the Speaker and others that it was her wish never to marry’ and to remain in ‘this kind of life in which I yet live’. If God did incline her ‘heart to another kind of life’, she would never marry against her subjects’ interest; ‘therefore put that clean out of your heads’; if she never married, an heir would be chosen ‘in convenient time’. 


And in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen having lived such a time lived and died a virgin. 

This reply was less ambiguous than some of her later answers, and possibly the Council refused to hear what they did not wish to know. No one believed what she told them.


Suitors

There were plenty of candidates, including two kings, two archdukes, five dukes and two earls. Elizabeth welcomed this attention because every suitor was a further validation of her right to the throne. It was also flattering to have so many powerful men pretending to be in love with her!

The most assiduous of her suitors was Eric XIV of Sweden. He sent Elizabeth his portrait as well as ships full of gifts including  piebald horses and bullion. 

Another candidate was her former brother-in-law, Philip II of Spain. He would have been a useful counter to the French-dominated Mary, Queen of Scots, but he was unpopular in England, and the Spaniards were not sure they could trust Elizabeth.


The Dudley scandal

The situation was complicated by Elizabeth’s obvious partiality for her childhood friend, Lord Robert Dudley, the son of the executed Duke of Northumberland. She had made him Master of the Horse with a salary of £1,500 pa.  


Lord Robert Dudley,
later Earl of Leicester
Public domain.

On 8 September 1560, Dudley’s wife, Amy Robsart died, supposedly of a fall, at Cumnor Place, Oxfordshire. The jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure, but many people suspected murder. The scandal was intense, and early May 1561 Elizabeth came to see that the marriage to Dudley was impossible. 


Mary in Scotland

François II died on 5 December 1560. From being Queen of France, Mary was now, at the age of eighteen, a childless widow, with the Regent, Catherine de’ Medici cool towards her.


Mary, Queen of Scots en deuil blanc
François Clouet
Public domain.

Her future was now very bleak. Her only realistic path was to return to Scotland, which she had left at the age of five. Elizabeth and her rival would be living on the same island. Would they ever meet?

Mary arrived in Edinburgh in August 1561. Her first Mass at Holyroodhouse was disrupted by protestors, though she was protected by her half-brother, Lord James Stewart.

Mary was desperate for Elizabeth to name her as her heir. But she refused Elizabeth’s condition: to ratify the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Edinburgh of 1560 (signed while Mary was still in France), which committed Scotland to Protestantism and abandoned Mary’s claim to the English throne. Matters between the two queens were deadlocked.


The succession again

The issue of the succession was raised again after Elizabeth contacted smallpox in October 1562. If she had died, there might have been a civil war between the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots and those of Katherine Grey.

In January 1563, both Lords and Commons raised again the question of her marriage. She responded with an obscure speech: she would not commit herself, but the idea that she would never marry was a ‘heresy’.

Her provisional strategy seems to have been to persuade Mary to marry and produce a Protestant heir.  In March 1564 she suggested that Mary marry Robert Dudley. This seems like a ludicrously insulting proposition, but from Elizabeth’s viewpoint, the candidacy was logical: by marrying Dudley, Mary would be subordinated to a Protestant male on whom Elizabeth could rely. In order to facilitate this, Elizabeth created him Earl of Leicester in September 1564. 

It is commonly said that Mary was insulted by the offer, but she told Elizabeth that she would consider Leicester if Elizabeth gave her a formal recognition of her rights in the succession. When Elizabeth refused, the negotiations were off. 

It seemed as if the only solution was for Elizabeth to marry. In May 1565 negotiations resumed for marriage to the Habsburg prince, the Archduke Charles. This would have given England a powerful ally against France, but religion was an insuperable obstacle.



The downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots

In January 1565, Elizabeth made a serious mistake when she allowed Lady Lennox’s son, Henry, Lord Darnley, to return to Scotland. He stood next to Mary in the English succession, and was neither a Protestant nor an orthodox Catholic. Elizabeth did not calculate that Mary would become infatuated with him. 

Mary married Darnley on 29 July 1565, and strengthened her claim to the English throne. The marriage caused a major breach between England and Scotland. The Countess of Lennox was sent to the Tower, and a watch was kept on the Scottish border.

On 19 June 1566, Mary gave birth to a son, James, the future James VI and I, further strengthening her claim to England. But she was in serious political and personal trouble. Her marriage was unravelling and she was desperate to get rid of Darnley. 

On the early morning of 10 February 1567, Darnley was murdered at Kirk o’ Field in Edinburgh. On 15 May, Mary married, with Protestant rites, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the man widely believed to be Darnley’s murderer. She claimed that she married him because he had raped her. The marriage scandalised Europe and promoted a revolt of the Scots nobility.

Mary’s reign was now doomed. She was defeated, imprisoned and forced to abdicate on 29 July – to Elizabeth’s fury. She escaped on 2 May 1568, but after two weeks of freedom she was defeated once more. On 16 May, she crossed the Solway Firth and landed at Workington. She was now on English soil -which she would never leave. 

She was held in Carlisle castle while Elizabeth debated what to do with her. At an emergency council meeting, Cecil argued for her to be sent back to Scotland. When Elizabeth refused, he said she ought to be investigated for Darnley’s murder. Cecil was determined to destroy Mary, Elizabeth to keep her safe. Who would win?


For Elizabeth, the playing out of this bloody melodrama was … a horror story. In only three years, an anointed queen had lost her crown as a result of two disastrous marriages: sex and violent death in terrifying iteration. … But if the queen of caution and delay had triumphed in this political rivalry over the queen of impulse and entitlement, Elizabeth’s vindication came at the price of a graphic reminder that her position as a lone female sovereign remained as convoluted as ever. Helen Castor, Elizabeth I. A Study in Insecurity.





No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

The last years

'The Ditchley Portrait', by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c. 1592 The queen stands upon England depicted on top of a globe. Publi...