Schiller's "Maria Stuart" at Newman University

My sister and I went to an adaptation of Friedrich Schiller's romantic play, Maria Stuart (the source for Donizetti's opera) at Newman University Saturday night, March 5th. They used the title Mary, Queen of Scots. The director, Mark Manette, used the translation of Schiller's play by Joseph Melish, which includes this poignant scene of Mary, finally being comforted by a priest before her execution:

MARY. 

Melvil! Oh, yes, I understand you, Melvil! 

Here is no priest, no church, no sacrament; 

But the Redeemer says, "When two or three 

Are in my name assembled, I am with them," 

What consecrates the priest? Say, what ordains him 

To be the Lord's interpreter? a heart 

Devoid of guile, and a reproachless conduct. 

Well, then, though unordained, be you my priest; 

To you will I confide my last confession, 

And take my absolution from your lips. 

MELVIL.

 If then thy heart be with such zeal inflamed, 

I tell thee that for thine especial comfort, 

The Lord may work a miracle. 

Thou say'st Here is no priest, no church, no sacrament— 

Thou err'st—here is a priest—here is a God; 

A God descends to thee in real presence. 

[At these words he uncovers his head, and shows a host in a golden vessel.] 

I am a priest—to hear thy last confession, 

And to announce to thee the peace of God 

Upon thy way to death. I have received 

Upon my head the seven consecrations. 

I bring thee, from his Holiness, this host, 

Which, for thy use, himself has deigned to bless. 

MARY. 

Is then a heavenly happiness prepared 

To cheer me on the very verge of death? 

As an immortal one on golden clouds 

Descends, as once the angel from on high, 

Delivered the apostle from his fetters:— 

He scorns all bars, he scorns the soldier's sword, 

He steps undaunted through the bolted portals, 

And fills the dungeon with his native glory; 

Thus here the messenger of heaven appears 

When every earthly champion had deceived me. 

And you, my servant once, are now the servant 

Of the Most High, and his immortal Word! 

As before me your knees were wont to bend, 

Before you humbled, now I kiss the dust.

And she makes her Confession, not mentioning any involvement in the plots to kidnap, depose, or murder Elizabeth. Father Melvil presses her on this point and she denies have anything to do with such plots, while admitting that she requested aid from Catholic monarchs in Europe to secure her release from her captivity in England. So she ends up the moral victor in the play, regal, resolute, and composed, as she goes to the block.

Elizabeth's last scene, on other hand, depicts her as equivocating and irresolute, accusing others, like William Cecil, Lord Burleigh and Sir William Davison, her Secretary of State, of carrying out her wishes--she'd signed the death warrant--against her wishes. So she ends up left alone on the throne, with Leicester on the way to France (with Mary's heart?), and Shrewsbury, who had counselled mercy to Mary earlier in the play, calling her out for her duplicity and leaving her service:

ELIZABETH. (speaking to Burleigh)

And dared you then to execute the writ 

Thus hastily, nor wait to know my pleasure? 

Just was the sentence—we are free from blame 

Before the world; yet it behooved thee not 

To intercept our natural clemency. 

For this, my lord, I banish you my presence; 

And as this forward will was yours alone 

Bear you alone the curse of the misdeed! 

[To DAVISON.] 

For you, sir; who have traitorously o'erstepped 

The bounds of your commission, and betrayed 

A sacred pledge intrusted to your care, 

A more severe tribunal is prepared: 

Let him be straight conducted to the Tower, 

And capital arraignments filed against him. 

My honest Talbot, you alone have proved, 

'Mongst all my counsellors, an upright man: 

You shall henceforward be my guide—my friend. 

SHREWSBURY. 

Oh! banish not the truest of your friends; 

Nor cast those into prison, who for you 

Have acted; who for you are silent now. 

But suffer me, great queen, to give the seal, 

Which, these twelve years, I've borne unworthily, 

Back to your royal hands, and take my leave. 

ELIZABETH (surprised). 

No, Shrewsbury; you surely would not now 

Desert me? No; not now. 

SHREWSBURY. 

Pardon, I am 

Too old, and this right hand is growing too stiff 

To set the seal upon your later deeds. 

ELIZABETH. 

Will he forsake me, who has saved my life? 

SHREWSBURY. 

'Tis little I have done: I could not save 

Your nobler part. Live—govern happily! 

Your rival's dead! Henceforth you've nothing more 

To fear—henceforth to nothing pay regard.

Those last lines will soon prove false: King Philip of Spain will plan his great Armada against England after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. England and the weather will defeat his Armada, but Elizabeth still has something left to fear. She still fears dissent--both Catholic and Puritan--among her people; she still regrets that she will leave the throne upon her death with no heir of direct family succession and yet she lived her life without ever marrying and being the mother of her heir! 

Schiller depicts another example of that same kind of equivocation in her method of dealing with great issues: wanting one end while living and acting toward another end: wanting the threat that Mary of Scotland poses removed without accepting the responsibility for causing her removal (signing the warrant while not wanting it carried out); maintaining the security of her rule alone while preventing a smooth transition of the throne by never naming her successor or marrying to "produce" an heir of her own. 

Both Elizabeth and Mary rely upon plots and subterfuge to obtain their ends and both are aghast at what those plots require of them. Mary recoils from Mortimer's zeal when she discovers its source is his lust for her; Elizabeth recoils from sentencing Mary to death because she realizes the danger it poses to the idea of monarchy, undercutting her own claim to rule. 

But at the end of Schiller's play, Mary is at peace while Elizabeth is left frustrated and alone: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." (Henry IV, Part Two, Act 3; Scene 1). Mary may have lost her head, but she, the Catholic queen of Scotland, is Schiller's heroine, while Elizabeth, the Protestant queen of England, is his villain.

By the way: here's a 2009 review of a New York production of Schiller's Maria Stuarda from First Things. David P. Goldman reflects on how sympathetically the anti-Catholic Schiller portrays both Mortimer's conversion to Catholicism on the Continent and Mary's reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Communion. He offers excellent background on Schiller and his historical views.

Image Source (End of Act 5, Scene VII): Melvil giving Mary Holy Communion ("This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org")

Image Source (Public Domain): Portrait of Elizabeth I from 1586 to 1587, by Nicholas Hilliard.

One of Elizabeth I's Diplomats, Sir William Waad, RIP

Sir William Wade or Waad or Wadd died on October 21, 1623.

He was born in 1546 and by the age of 30 was serving his monarch as an ambassador on the Continent, according to the Dictionary of National Biography:

In July 1576 he was residing at Paris, and frequently supplied political information to Burghley, whose ‘servant’ he is described as being (cf. Lansd. MS. 23, art. 75). He claimed ‘familiar acquaintance’ with the celebrated French publicist, Jean Bodin, from whom he seems to have derived some of the news he forwarded to Burghley. In the autumn of 1576 Sir Amias Paulet [q. v.] took Wade to Blois (Cal. State Papers, For. 1575-7 passim). During the winter of 1578-9 he was in Italy, whence he forwarded to Burghley reports on its political condition. From Venice in April 1579 he sent the lord-treasurer fifty of the rarest kinds of seeds in Italy (Cal. Hatfield MSS. ii. 254). In May he was at Florence, and in February 1579-1580 he was residing at Strasbourg. 

In the following April he was employed on some delicate mission in Paris by Sir Henry Cobham. The suggestion in the Cal. State Papers, Venetian, that he was ambassador to Spain and Portugal in 1579 is misdated. In 1580 he received instructions as ambassador to Portugal (Sloane MS. 1442, f. 114). In 1581 he seems to have returned to England, and entered the service of Sir Francis Walsingham as secretary, and in 1583 he became one of the clerks to the privy council (Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1611-18, p.198). In April of that year he was sent to Vienna to discuss the differences between the Hanse Towns and English merchants abroad, and in July he accompanied Lord Willoughby on his embassy to Denmark to invest the king with the insignia of the Garter, and to negotiate an agreement on mercantile affairs (Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth, i. 24, 31). 

He undertook a couple of delicate and dangerous missions, to Spain and France:

In January 1583-4 he was sent to Madrid to explain the expulsion from England of the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza. He arrived in March, but Philip II refused all his requests for an interview, and ordered him out of Spain, with an intimation that he was fortunate to escape free (Cotton. MS. Vesp. C. vii. f.392; Cal. State Papers, Simancas, 1580-6, pp. 516, 520-1; Birch, i. 45, 48; Froude, xi. 414, 422). . . .

In March [1584-5] Waad was despatched to Paris to demand the surrender of the conspirator Thomas Morgan [accused in the Throckmorton Plot] (1543-1606?) [q. v.] Henry III was willing to consider the request but the catholic league [sic] and the Guises were violently opposed to it, and even instructed the Duc d’Aumale to waylay Waad and rescue Morgan on their way to the coast. Waad, however, convinced that he could not secure Morgan, contented himself with obtaining a promise that he should be detained in prison in France, but Aumale nevertheless attacked the envoy near Amiens, and inflicted on him a severe beating as an answer to his demand for the extradition of a catholic from France.

Waad also became involved in the ongoing issue of Mary, the former Queen of Scotland, being in England as a focus of Catholic plots:

He was back in England on 12 April, and with his return diplomatic relations between England and Spain ceased. In the same month Waad was sent to Mary Stuart to induce her to come to terns with Elizabeth, and his account of the interview is printed by Froude (Hist. xi. 448-51). In February 1584-5 he was appointed to accompany Nau to the court of James VI, but was stopped at the last minute (Cal. State Papers, Simancas, 1580-6, p. 533). . . .

In August 1585 Waad accompanied William Davison [q. v.] to the Low Countries to negotiate an alliance with the States-General. A year later he took a prominent part in arranging the seizure of Mary Stuart’s papers which implicated her in the Babington plot. He himself went down to Chartley in August 1586, and, while Mary was decoyed away on a hunting expedition, arrested her secretaries Nau and Curle, and having ransacked her cabinent [sic] , carried back a valuable collection of papers to London (ib. 1580-6, pp. 625-6; Amyas Poulet, Letter-Books, pp. 288 sqq.; Froude, xii. 160 sqq.) For this important service he was paid thirty pounds (Acts P. C. 1586-7, p. 211). In the following February he was again sent to France to explain the execution of Mary Stuart, to demand the recall of De l’Aubespine, the French ambassador, on the ground of his dependence on the league and complicity in Stafford’s plot [see Stafford, William, 1554-1612], and to justify Elizabeth’s detention of French shipping. For some time he was denied audience, the recall of the French ambassador was refused, but more success attended his endeavour to arrange the dispute about detention of French shipping in England and English shipping in France (Cal. State Papers, Venetian, 1581-91, pp. 475, 477, 483, 492, 517, 527, 533). He returned to England in June.

That was the end of Waad's diplomatic career. He became a member of Parliament but:

He was, however, mainly occupied with his duties as clerk of the privy council, and especially in tracking treasonable practices and examining jesuits [sic] and recusants. His zeal in these pursuits gained him the reputation of being the chief persecutor of the catholics [sic] (ib. Dom. 1601-1603, p. 199; cf. Lansd, MSS. 63, 66, 145, 148, 153; Law, The Archpriest Controversy, i. 84, 85, 155, 208, 212, 215, 226; Foley, Records, vol. iv. passim). As early as September 1584 he had, when Walsingham’s secretary, gained great credit by piecing together and deciphering the fragments of the treasonable document which Father William Crichton [q. v.] had torn up on his capture; a portrait of Waad thus engaged is given in Bishop Carleton’s ‘Thankfull Remembrance,’ 1624 (the story, sometimes described as ridiculous, is undoubtedly true; see Mr. T. G. Law in English Hist. Review, viii. 698). From this time Waad was frequently engaged in bringing to light plots against the queen’s life among them being that of Dr. Roderigo Lopez [q. v.] in 1594, of which Waad drew up a narrative, extant at the record office (State Papers, Dom. Vol. ccxlviii. art. 7), and Essex’s rebellion in 1601 (see Carleton, Thankfull Remembrance; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1591-1603, passim).

Waad continued in royal service during the reign of James I and was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London at least by 1605 because he questioned those accused in the Gunpowder Plot, including Guy Fawkes and Thomas Wintour. He was also involved in the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh and supervised the imprisonment of Lady Arbella Stuart.

Waad was removed from his post at the Tower in 1613, evidently through the efforts of Frances Howard, the Countess of Somerset, so she could arrange the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, who had been arrested through the efforts of Robert Carr, the Earl of Somerset (King James I's favorite). Waad was too good a Lieutenant to let poisoned tarts pass into Overbury's cell. The Lieutenant of the Tower who replaced him, Sir Gervase Helwys, would be found guilty of being an accessory to Overbury's murder and was executed on Tower Hill on November 20, 1615. Frances Howard pled guilty to the murder and was sentenced to death, but King James commuted her sentence--and Robert Carr's--to imprisonment in the Tower and exile from Court. 

Waad had retired from public life and died in his bed at home, Battles Hall in Manuden, Essex on October 21, 1623 and is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's the Virgin in Manuden, with a memorial in the church.

May 19 in the Lives of Four Queens

On May 19, 1499, the 13-year old Princess Catherine of Aragon was married to the 12-year old Prince of Wales, Arthur Tudor by proxy.

On May 19, 1536, former Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded for adultery, treason, incest.

On May 19, 1568, Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the house arrest of the former Queen of Scotland, her cousin Mary Stuart Valois Stuart Bothwell.

What a coincidence that three such momentous events occurred on the same date in the month of May!

Arthur and Catherine would not meet in England until November 4, 1501 and were married in person on November 14 in Old St. Paul's Cathedral. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales set off for Ludlow Castle to preside over the Council of Wales and the Marches, residing at the Castle Lodge. They both became ill and Arthur died on April 2, 1502, while Catherine recovered.

Then Henry VII decided to keep her (and her dowry) in England, so from 1502 to 1509 protracted marriage negotiations took place between Henry and Ferdinand of Aragon, her father (her mother Isabella of Castile died in 1504). Henry VII's wife and queen, the former Elizabeth, Princess of York died in 1503 and he thought of marrying Catherine himself. It was finally decided that she would marry Henry, the Duke of York, and Henry VII applied for a dispensation from the Pope, Julius II, with Catherine testifying that she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage, so there were no issues of affinity. Nevertheless, she was held almost as a prisoner in Durham House, London, the impoverished guest of the Bishop of Durham. When Henry VII died, Henry VIII married her on June 11, 1509 and she was crowned and anointed with him later that month on the 24th. She remained Queen until May 23, 1533 when Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared her marriage to Henry VIII null and void. She had been in exile from the Court since 1531 and would die in her final place of residence, Kimbolton Castle, on January 7, 1536 (after being moved six times in four years!) Henry VIII titled her the Dowager Princess of Wales; she accepted no title but Queen and true wife of the king. Although her last letter to Henry VIII is contested, authorities agree that this text expresses Catherine's attitude toward her husband and their daughter Mary and her rightful status as his wife and queen:

My most dear lord, king and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Katharine the Quene

Another former wife and queen of Henry VIII at the time of her death (as Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII agreed), Anne Boleyn of course was the woman who had replaced Catherine of Aragon. She and Henry had been married on November 14, 1532 (secretly) and that marriage declared valid by Cranmer several days after he'd declared Henry's marriage to Catherine null and void, on May 28, 1533. She was crowned on June 1, 1533--and was pregnant at the time with the hoped-for male heir, it was believed--in a sumptuous ceremony and celebration. She delivered a girl, however, on September 7, 1533 (named Elizabeth) and after two miscarriages, had failed to provide Henry VIII with the son for whom he had turned the world upside down (separating the Catholic Christians of England from the universal Catholic Church and the papacy, executing good men and true, making his daughter Mary a bastard, and changing the worship and devotions of Catholics in England, among other actions).

Catherine of Aragon having died on January 7, 1536, Anne and Henry had felt more secure, although there's a lot of debate about their reactions, public and private, to the news. Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London on May 2, 1536; Cranmer declared her marriage to Henry VIII null and void on May 14; she was tried and found guilty of adultery, treason, and incest (with her brother George) on May 15 and beheaded with a sword within the Tower precincts on May 19. Her last words:

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.

With her head on the block, she repeated these words several times: "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul." One stroke of the sword and she was beheaded and then buried in St. Peter ad Vincula (where two of the good men and true mentioned above, Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More had been buried a year before).

Mary, Queen of Scots, who had claimed her right to the throne of England as the queen consort of France before returning home to Scotland, had been forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son (James VI) on July 24, 1567 while being held in Loch Leven Castle. She escaped from that castle on May 2, 1568 and after defeat at the Battle of Langside on May 13, fled to England on May 16. Mary was soon under house arrest on May 19, held first at Carlisle Castle and then at Bolton Castle. Inquiry into her role in the death of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley in 1567, led to no conviction or finding of guilt, but she was imprisoned for the rest of her life, held in some comfort and at tremendous, unremunerated cost by her hosts, the Shrewsburys at their various estates, and then moved to Fotheringay Castle under close confinement on September 26, 1586 for trial (complicity with the Babington plot) and subsequent execution on February 7, 1587. Her last words, like Anne Boleyn's, were also repeated several times:  "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum" (Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit" Luke 23:46) and unlike Anne Boleyn, she was not decollated with one stroke of a fine French sword--the first blow hit the back of her head.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Catherine of Aragon (Juan de Flandres)

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Anne Boleyn in the Tower (Edouard Cibot)

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Mary, Queen of Scots in Captivity (Nicholas Hilliard)

The Marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland

Image Credit: the Ruins of the Holyrood Abbey Church 

(CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

On August 8, 1503, Margaret Tudor, Henry VII's eldest child, and King James IV of Scotland were married in Holyrood Abbey's church. History Today describes the preparations and the wedding:

Margaret’s train on the journey north by York, Durham, Newcastle and Berwick was headed by the Earl of Surrey, with his Countess as the princess’s chaperone. John Young, Somerset Herald, was sent along to make an official record. The ladies rode on palfreys or were drawn on litters, escorted by gentlemen, squires and pages, with trumpeters, drummers and minstrels. The party crossed the border into Scotland on August 1st, 1503, to be greeted by the Archbishop of Glasgow and a thousand Scottish lords and gentlemen ‘in rich jewels and massy chains’. At Dalkeith Castle on August 3rd, King James himself, in a crimson velvet jacket, rode in with a train of horsemen. Margaret curtsied deeply and he bowed low and they kissed in greeting. They talked together privately and sat together at supper and afterwards he played to her on the clavichord and the lute. Two nights later she played for him.

On Monday August 7th, they made a state entry into Edinburgh, both of them in cloth of gold trimmed with black velvet or black fur. To tremendous cheers and the clangour of bells they rode in on one horse, with Margaret riding pillion behind the King, escorted by two hundred knights and pausing to witness numerous pageants. The union of the thistle and the rose was celebrated next morning in the chapel of Holyrood-house. Margaret wore a gown trimmed in crimson and the Countess of Surrey bore her train, while James was magnificent in white damask with crimson satin sleeves. After the marriage ceremony conducted by the archbishops of Glasgow and York there was a nuptial mass and a short coronation ritual, with the King’s arm round his new queen’s waist much of the time. There followed a splendid feast of fifty or sixty dishes including roast crane and roast swan, and then dancing and supper until finally at last ‘the King had the Queen apart and they went together’. Edinburgh blazed with bonfires that night.

More about Margaret Tudor, who would bear James IV six children and serve as Regent for their only surviving child named James (the second son born given that name), after the king was killed at the battle of Flodden Field in 1513, here.

Holyrood Abbey has a fascinating history. It was an abbey of Augustinian Canons founded by King David I in the twelfth century. During the Scottish Reformation, a mob destroyed the altars and plundered the church and the abbey was suppressed. The abbey was restored for the coronation of Charles I in Scotland, rebuilt further during the reign of Charles II, and as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, it was truly a royal abbey and church and is much associated with Mary, Queen of Scots:

From the middle of the fifteenth century the abbey was the usual residence of the Scottish kings, and James V spent considerable sums on its repair and enlargement. In 1547 the conventual buildings, as well as the choir, lady chapel, and transepts of the church were destroyed by the commissioners of the English Protector Somerset, and twenty years later Knox's"rascal multitude" sacked the interior of the church. Queen Mary's second and third marriages took place at Holyrood, as well as other tragic events of her reign. From the Reformation to the Restoration little was done to Holyrood, but about 1670 the adjoining palace was practically rebuilt by Charles II. His Catholic successor, James II, ordered the nave of the church to be restored for Catholic worship, and as a chapel for the Knights of the Thistle; but he had to abandon his kingdom a year later. The nave roof was vaulted in stone in 1758, but fell in shortly afterwards, and all that remains of the once famous abbey church is now the ruined and roofless nave, of the purest Early English architecture, with some remains of the earlier Norman work.

Felix Mendelssohn was inspired by his visit to Holyrood Abbey's ruins to compose his third symphony, The Scottish Symphony. This website transcribes his impressions of the ruins:

It is clear from Mendelssohn’s letters even before their tour that he intended to write a symphony based on his Scottish experiences and the opening of the work came to him on the evening of 31st July 1829 when "In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved; a little room is shown there with a winding staircase leading up to the door; up this way they came and found Rizzio in that little room, pulled him out, and three rooms off there is a dark corner, where they murdered him. The chapel close to it is now roofless; grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything around is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony."

When I listen to the symphony thinking of Mary, Queen of Scots' life and adventures, joys and sorrows, controversies and sad end, it creates the most dramatic images in my mind. The same would apply to Margaret Tudor, married, widowed, remarried, etc!

St. Philip Howard's Maternal Grandfather

Henry FitzAlan, grandfather of St. Philip Howard, was born on April 23, 1512. He was the 12th Earl of Arundel and the last FitzAlan to hold that title, which upon his death on February 24, 1580, was inherited by Philip through his mother, Mary FitzAlan, Henry's third daughter, who had married Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk. FitzAlan served Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I to various degrees of success and failure, sometimes in grave danger, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry:

He was one of the twelve counsellors nominated in Henry VIII.’s will to assist the executors, but he had little power during the protectorship of Somerset or the ascendancy of Warwick (afterwards duke of Northumberland), and in 1550 by the latter’s device he was accused of embezzlement, removed from the council, confined to his house, and fined £12,000—£8000 of this sum being afterwards remitted and the charges never being proved. Subsequently he allied himself with Somerset, and was implicated in 1551 in the latter’s plot against Northumberland, being imprisoned in the Tower in November. On the 3rd of December 1552, though he had never been brought to trial, he signed a submission and confession before the privy council, and was liberated after having been again heavily fined. As Edward’s reign drew to its close, Arundel’s support was desired by Northumberland to further his designs on the throne for his family, and he was accordingly reinstated in the council and discharged of his fine. In June 1553 he opposed Edward’s “device” for the succession, which passed over his sisters Mary and Elizabeth as illegitimate, and left the crown to the children of the duchess of Suffolk, and alone of the council refused the “engagement” to support it, though he signed the letters patent. On the death of Edward (July 6, 1553) he ostensibly joined in furthering the duke’s plans, but secretly took measures to destroy them, and according to some accounts sent a letter to Mary the same evening informing her of Edward’s death and advising her to retreat to a place of security. Meanwhile he continued to attend the meetings of the council, signed the letter to Mary declaring her illegitimacy and Lady Jane Grey’s right to the throne, accompanied Northumberland to announce to Jane her accession, and urged Northumberland to leave London and place himself at the head of the forces to attack Mary, wishing him God-speed on his departure. In Northumberland’s absence, he gained over his fellow-councillors, and having succeeded with them in getting out of the Tower, called an assembly of the corporation and chief men of the city, denounced Northumberland, and had Mary proclaimed queen, subsequently riding off to join her with the Great Seal at Framlingham. On the 20th of July he secured Northumberland at Cambridge, and returned in triumph with Mary to London on the 3rd of August, riding before her with the sword of state. 

Rewarded for his assistance:

He was now made a privy councillor and lord steward, and was granted several favours and privileges, acting as high constable at the coronation, and obtaining the right to create sixty knights. He took a prominent part in various public acts of the reign, was a commissioner to treat for the queen’s marriage, presided at the trial of the duke of Suffolk, assisted in suppressing Wyatt’s rebellion in 1554, was despatched on foreign missions, and in September 1555 accompanied Philip to Brussels. The same year he received, together with other persons, a charter under the name of the Merchant Adventurers of England, for the discovery of unknown lands, and was made high steward of Oxford University, being chosen chancellor in 1559, but resigning his office in the same year. In 1557, on the prospect of the war with France, he was appointed lieutenant-general of the forces for the defence of the country, and in 1558 attended the conference at the abbey of Cercamp for the negotiation of a peace. He returned to England on the death of Mary in November 1558, and is described to Philip II. at that time as “going about in high glee, very smart” and with hopes of marrying the queen, but as “flighty” and of “small ability.”

Things did not go smoothly for him under Elizabeth I because he was a staunch Catholic:

He was reinstated in all his offices by Elizabeth, served as high constable at her coronation, and was visited several times by the queen at Nonsuch in Surrey. As a Roman Catholic he violently opposed the arrest of his co-religionists and the war with Scotland, and in 1560 came to blows with Lord Clinton in the queen’s presence on a dispute arising on those questions. He incurred the queen’s displeasure in 1562 by holding a meeting at his house during her illness to consider the question of the succession and promote the claims of Lady Catherine Grey. In 1564, being suspected of intrigues against the government, he was dismissed from the lord-stewardship and confined to his house, but was restored to favour in December. In March 1566 he went to Padua, but being summoned back by the queen he returned to London accompanied by a large cavalcade on the 17th of April 1567. Next year he served on the commission of inquiry into the charges against Mary, queen of Scots. 

He got involved in Norfolk's plots to become Mary, Queen of Scots' fourth husband (even though the Earl of Bothwell, imprisoned in Denmark, was still alive), and worked with Philip II of Spain to overthrow Elizabeth:

Subsequently he furthered the marriage of Mary with the duke of Norfolk, his son-in-law, together with the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion and government, and deposition of Elizabeth, in collusion with Spain. He made use of the incident in 1568, of the seizure of treasure at Southampton intended for Philip, as a means of effecting Cecil’s overthrow, and urged upon the Spanish government the stoppage of trade. He is described in 1569 to Philip as having “good intentions,” “whilst benefiting himself as he was very needy.” In January he alarmed Elizabeth by communicating to her a supposed Spanish project for aiding Mary and replacing her on her throne, and put before the queen in writing his own objections to the adoption of extreme measures against her. In June he received with Norfolk and Lumley 6000 crowns from Philip. In September, on the discovery of Norfolk’s plot, he was arrested, but not having committed himself sufficiently to incur the charge of treason in the northern rebellion he escaped punishment, was released in March 1570, and was recalled by Leicester to the council with the aim of embarrassing Cecil. He again renewed his treasonable intrigues, which were at length to some extent exposed by the discovery of the Ridolfi plot in September 1571. He was once more arrested, and not liberated till December 1572 after Norfolk’s execution.

He is fortunate to have died in bed after being nursed by his eldest daughter, Jane Lumley, Baroness Lumley at Arundel Castle, before she predeceased him in 1578. He was buried in the chapel. His son and heir Henry had died in 1556; Jane and John Lumley, Baron Lumley had no children; and Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk and his son-in-law having been executed on June 2, 1572, Philip Howard became the 13th Earl of Arundel. Sometimes Henry is designated the 19th Earl of Arundel and Philip the 20th.

The Protestant Throckmorton

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton died on February 12, 1571; he was a survivor of the Tudor succession, restored to favor under Mary I in spite of his initial support of Lady Jane Grey--who was executed on February 12 in 1554--and suspicion of his involvement in the Wyatt Rebellion. According to the Dictionary of National Biography:

diplomatist, born in 1515, was fourth of the eight sons of Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton, Warwickshire. His grandfather, Sir Robert Throckmorton (son of Thomas, and grandson of Sir John Throckmorton [q. v.]), was a privy councillor under Henry VII, and died in 1519 while on a pilgrimage to Palestine. His mother was Katharine, daughter of Sir Nicholas, lord Vaux of Harrowden, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, lord Fitzhugh, and widow of Sir William Parr, K.G. She was thus aunt by marriage to Queen Catherine Parr, and Sir Nicholas claimed the queen as his first cousin. His father, Sir George, incurred, owing to some local topic of dispute, the ill-will of Cromwell, whose manor of Oversley adjoined that of Coughton. Early in 1540 Cromwell contrived to have his neighbour imprisoned on a charge of denying Henry VIII's supremacy, but Lady Throckmorton's niece, Catherine Parr, used her influence with the king to procure Sir George's release. Sir George was one of the chief witnesses against Cromwell at his trial, which took place in the same year, and was consulted by Henry VIII in the course of the proceedings. After Cromwell's fall Sir George purchased Cromwell's forfeited manor of Oversley. He was sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1526 and 1546, and built the great gatehouse at Coughton. He died soon after Queen Mary's accession. Sir Robert Throckmorton (d. 1570), Sir George's eldest son and successor in the Coughton estate, was succeeded by his son Thomas (d. 1614), who, as a staunch catholic, suffered much persecution and loss of property during Elizabeth's reign. Thomas Throckmorton's grandson Robert was a devoted royalist, and was created a baronet on 1 Sept. 1642. The baronetcy is still held by a descendant.

As for Nicholas, the fourth son, he was a Protestant:

Nicholas was chiefly brought up by his mother's brother-in-law, Lord Parr. In youth he served as page to the Duke of Richmond, and probably went to Paris with his master in 1532. With two brothers he joined the household of his family connection, Catherine Parr, soon after her marriage to Henry VIII in July 1543. Unlike other members of his family, he accepted the reformed faith of his mistress, and remained a sturdy protestant till his death. He and two brothers were present as sympathising spectators at the execution of Anne Askew, the protestant martyr, in 1546 (Narratives of the Reformation, Camden Soc. pp. 41–2).

Throckmorton entered public life as M.P. for Malden in 1545, and sat in the House of Commons almost continuously till 1567. The accession of Edward VI was favourable to his fortunes. With the king's religious sentiment he was in thorough sympathy, and Edward liked him personally. . . .

Although he was Protestant, he eventually sided with the Catholic Mary instead of the Protestant Jane:

Throckmorton's signature was appended to the letters patent of 7 June 1553 which limited the succession of the crown to Lady Jane Grey and her descendants (Chronicle of Queen Jane, p. 100). Immediately after Edward's death and Lady Jane's accession, Throckmorton's wife acted by way of deputy for Lady Jane as godmother of a son of Edward Underhill, the ‘Hot-Gospeller,’ at his christening in the Tower of London (19 July 1553); the boy was named Guilford after Lady Jane's husband (Narratives of the Reformation, p. 153). On the same day Mary was generally proclaimed queen. Throckmorton is reported to have been at the moment at Northampton, and when Sir Thomas Tresham formally declared for Mary there, he is said to have made a protest in Lady Jane's favour, which exposed him to personal risk at the townspeople's hands (Chron. of Queen Jane, p. 12). But Throckmorton's devotion to Lady Jane was more specious than real, and he had no intention of forfeiting the goodwill of her rival Mary. He was credited by his friends with having taken a step of the first importance to Mary's welfare on the very day of Edward VI's death by sending her London goldsmith to her at Hoddesdon to apprise her of the loss of her brother, and to warn her of the danger that threatened her if she fell into the clutches of the Duke of Northumberland (Legend of Throckmorton, vv. 111 et seq.; cf.Goodman's Life and Times, i. 117). On Mary's arrival in London she showed no resentment at Throckmorton's dalliance with Lady Jane's pretensions, and he sat as member for Old Sarum in her first parliament of October–December 1553.

But he was suspected of involvement in the Wyatt Plot and spent some time in the Tower of London, but was acquitted at trial by the jury! That's extraordinary in the history of treason trials, but he had defended himself well--and both he and the jury were still imprisoned after the verdict.

When Mary died and Elizabeth became queen, Throckmorton began diplomatic contacts with Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and Queen of France (briefly):

Elizabeth's accession to the throne opened to him a career of political activity. He was at once appointed chief butler and chamberlain of the exchequer, and was elected M.P. for Lyme Regis on 2 Jan. 1558–9. In the following May the more important office of ambassador to France was bestowed on him (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1547–80, p. 128). On 9 Jan. 1559–60 the queen signed instructions in which he was directed to protest against the assumption of the arms of England by Francis II, who had married Mary Queen of Scots on 24 April 1558, and had ascended the French throne on 10 July 1559 (Hatfield MSS. i. 165–7; State Papers, Foreign, 1559–60, No. 557). Francis died on 5 Dec. 1560, and Throckmorton was much occupied in the weeks that followed in seeking to induce Queen Mary to forego ‘the style and title of sovereign of England,’ and to postpone her assumption of her sovereignty in Scotland. Throckmorton had many audiences of her, and acknowledged her fascination. They corresponded on friendly terms, and despite differences in their religious and political opinions, he thenceforth did whatever he could to serve her, consistently with his duty to his country (cf. Labanoff, Lettres de Marie Stuart, i. 94, 128). He now succeeded in reconciling Elizabeth to the prospect of Queen Mary's settlement in Scotland. But he endeavoured to persuade Mary to tolerate protestantism among her subjects, and did not allow his personal regard for her to diminish his zeal for his own creed. The Venetian ambassador in France described him (3 July 1561) as ‘the most cruel adversary that the catholic religion has in England’ (Cal. Venetian State Papers, 1558–80, p. 333). He showed every mark of hostility to the Guises and of sympathy with the Huguenots, and urged Elizabeth to ally herself publicly and without delay with the Huguenots in France and the reformers in Scotland. Little heed was paid to his proposals.

As you read the rest of the biography, you might notice that Throckmorton was not always a successful diplomat. One problem he had was that Elizabeth I's directions were not always clear, and sometimes even contradictory. He fell out of her graces one last time over Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk's idea of marrying the deposed Mary, Queen of Scots:

Throckmorton thenceforth suffered acutely from a sense of disappointment. His health failed during 1568, but he maintained friendly relations with Cecil, to whom he wrote from Fulham on 2 Sept. 1568 that he proposed to kill a buck at Cecil's house at Mortlake. He had long favoured the proposal to wed Queen Mary to the Duke of Norfolk, and he was consequently suspected next year of sympathy with the rebellion of northern catholics in Queen Mary's behalf. In September 1569 he was imprisoned in Windsor Castle, but he was soon released and no further proceedings were taken against him. He died in London on 12 Feb. 1570–1. . . . Throckmorton was buried on the south side of the chancel in St. Catherine Cree Church in the city of London.

Image Credit at top: Throckmorton's monument in St. Katherine Cree. Note the bottom of the the portrait of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury above the tomb in this picture (he was Bishop of London when he consecrated the rebuilt church in 1631).

Chesterton on Mary, Queen of Scots and Don John of Austria

I have updated my Other Publications page to note that Gilbert!, the magazine published by the American Chesterton Society, has published the second part of my essay on G.K. Chesterton's great counter-factual exploration of how history would been different in Don John of Austria, the Hero of Lepanto, had followed through on his notion to rescue Mary, Queen of Scots and marry her!

In 1911, G.K. Chesterton published his narrative poem Lepanto. Don John of Austria, an illegitimate son of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, leads the fleet of the Holy League of Catholic countries against the invading Ottoman fleet. . . .

Twenty years later, Chesterton returned to his great hero and wrote an article offering a fascinating proposal of marriage: the world would be different today if Don John of Austria had rescued Mary, Queen of Scots and married her. Chesterton argues that it would have been a good match for both of them. Most counterfactuals about English Reformation history—The Alteration by Kingsley Amis for example—assume that a Catholic England would be a medieval, backward country (betraying great ignorance of the Middle Ages of course). Chesterton proposes that something great could have happened in Scotland and England—in Christendom, in Europe, and the whole world— “if Don John of Austria had married Mary Queen of Scots”.

It takes some imagination to follow his argument and some knowledge of English and Scottish history to understand his examples, but it’s a rewarding exercise nonetheless. As “an earnest and plodding student of the dry scientific details of history”, (104) Chesterton uses many historical examples, and the purpose of this article is to explain some of the more obscure.

Please note that a subscription to Gilbert! is included in membership to the American Chesterton Society.

King James I's Grandfather, RIP

On September 4, 1571, King James I/VI's paternal grandfather died. His son Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, consort of Mary, Queen of Scots, had been murdered almost four and a half years earlier--this image depicts his younger son, Charles, himself, and his wife Margaret (Douglas), and young James VI (who was not even a year old when his father died) praying for the soul of Henry.

Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox was the 4th Earl of Lennox (sic), and leader of the Catholic nobility in Scotland. He was the son of John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Lennox. His grandson was James VI of Scotland.

The Lennox Stewart lands lay mostly north of the Clyde, but the family also had close connections with nobles from the west highlands and the Isles. Matthew´s younger brother Robert Stewart was nominated bishop of Caithness in 1541, though he was never consecrated. They had also gained renown in France; Lennox´s uncle Robert Stewart, seigneur d´Aubigny (c.1470–1544), had moved to France in the 1490s and there enjoyed a distinguished military career.

He had various marriage prospects:

Although Lennox had come to Scotland possibly with the prospect of marriage to Mary of Guise, by September Lennox had been offered the chance to marry Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Tudor and half-sister of the deceased James V. Meanwhile François I continued to regard him as an ambassador of France, and when the French king finally sent representatives (Jacques de la Brosse and Jules de Menage) to Scotland they were strictly instructed to liaise with Lennox and to place all their trust in him. Thus they went to Dumbarton in late September and unloaded the entire contents (weapons, powder, presents, and money) of their seven vessels into the castle´s keeping. Just how much was brought by them is not certain, but during their embassy they promised pensions of over 2500 crowns of the sun and their total costs came to 41,700 livres tournois. None of the money was ever seen again: Lennox was becoming a very rich and well-armed man. The money and supplies were not intended for the earl´s personal use, however, and by commandeering them he was weakening the French cause in Scotland, faced as it was by a party backed by England. Lennox´s reluctance to co-operate with potential allies in Scotland itself worked to the same effect. Presumably it was in the hope of retaining his loyalty that Mary of Guise proposed that he should marry her daughter, Queen Mary, on condition of his handing over the French money and supporting the Franco-Scottish alliance. It was not until November 1543 that the French appreciated how damaging to their cause his actions had become.

He finally arranged the marriage of his son to Mary:

He returned to Scotland upon Elizabeth I of England´s urging during the marriage negotiations of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1564. He quickly took up his position as the most powerful lord in the Glasgow area and was instrumental in the marriage of his son, Lord Darnley, to Mary. Whether Elizabeth had intended this (in order to eliminate the threat of a continental marriage), as is sometimes conjectured, remains doubtful. Elizabeth reacted with disapproval and had Lennox´s wife confined in the Tower of London. By August 1565, William Cecil had heard that Darnley´s insolence had driven Lennox from the Scottish court.

After Darnley was murdered early in 1567, Lennox was the most ardent pursuant of justice against the lords who had conspired in the murder. He also became the main witness against Mary.

In 1570, Lennox became regent for his grandson, James VI, but the queen´s party declared war against him. He was shot dead next year in a skirmish when the queen´s party attacked Stirling. The raid on Stirling on 4 September 1571 was led by the Earl of Huntly, Claude Hamilton, and the lairds of Buccleuch and Ferniehurst. Early reports said he was killed by his own side. William Kirkcaldy of Grange said the shot was fired by the queen´s party, and another account names David Bochinant as the assassin.

Tomorrow: Mary, Queen of Scots on the Radio

Yesterday, I recorded a discussion with Deal Hudson for his Church and Culture program on Ave Maria Radio:

Times: Saturday, 3:00-5:00 pm EST; Sunday, 7:00-9:00 am EST (my segment will air at 4:00 pm Saturday and 8:00 a.m. Sunday--EST)!

Church and Culture engages all aspects of our culture with the aim of discussing “cultural apologetics.” Culture is discussed from a Catholic perspective in order to provide opportunities for Catholics to introduce the faith to others through a book, a movie, a TV show, a piece of music, a political issue, or an artist, among other things. The Church speaks through culture, and while there is much in our culture to be avoided, there is much that can witness to the Catholic faith. On each program, Dr. Hudson interviews noted experts in their fields, providing insight and guidance in our evangelical engagement with the culture.

He and I discussed Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, the Scottish Reformation and the English Reformation--all in an hour!!

We will follow up with a general overview on the English Reformation in a few weeks.

Listen live here.

The Assassination of James Stewart, Earl of Moray

James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh and Woodhouselee shot James Stewart, Earl of Moray and Regent for James VI of Scotland on the 23rd of January, 1570 in Linlithgow, Scotland. This stained glass window (courtesy of Wikipedia commons) is in St. Giles Kirk/Cathedral and was financed by George Philip Stuart, the 14th earl of Moray as part of a Victorian restoration in the 1880s. It depicts the assassination of Stewart by Hamilton as he fired his brass match-lock carbine with a rifled barrel from the house of John Hamilton, the Archbishop of St. Andrews. James Hamilton went into exile, but the Hamilton family suffered for this crime. Archbishop Hamilton, who was great supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, was eventually hanged for being an accessory to murder. He was the illegitimate son of James Hamilton, the First Earl of Arran. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Placed in childhood with the Benedictines of Kilwinning, he acquired, through James V, the abbacy of Paisley, which he held from the age of fourteen till his death. It is doubtful whether he ever actually entered the order. After studying in Glasgow he entered the University of Paris. Then he received holy Orders, and returned to Scotland in 1543. His half-brother James, second Earl of Arran, being then regent during Mary Stuart's minority, Hamilton was speedily promoted to important offices of state, becoming privy seal, and later, high treasurer. Knox's "Historie" gives evidence of the hopes entertained by the reformers of winning him over, but he soon showed himself a strong partisan of Cardinal Beaton and the Catholic party, and was instrumental in overcoming the Protestant sympathy of Arran and reconciling him with the cardinal. In 1544 Hamilton was appointed Bishop of Dunkeld, and after the assassination of Beaton, succeeded that prelate not only as metropolitan, but also as the prominent opponent of nascent Protestantism. By the assembling of ecclesiastical councils in 1549, 1552 and 1559, the archbishop took an important part in the framing of statutes for the much-needed reformation of the clergy and religious instruction of the laity. When the packed parliament of 1560 voted the overthrow of Catholicism and the adoption of the Protestant "Confession of Faith", Hamilton was the leading dissentient. He has been accused of making too feeble a protest, but his correspondence with Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, then in Paris, shows that he regarded the matter as one of less serious import than events proved. When the Abbey of Paisley was wrecked by the reforming mob in that same year, Hamilton narrowly escaped with his life.

The Abbey of Paisley is now a Church of Scotland church. Because he continued practicing the Catholic faith, saying Mass, etc, Hamilton was imprisoned in 1563, but Mary, Queen of Scots, had him released:

He baptized with solemn rites, in December, 1566, the infant prince James, afterwards James VI. The opposition of the Protestant party to the use of Catholic ceremonies, upon which Mary was determined, had delayed the baptism for six months. The queen having restored the archbishop's consistorial jurisdiction, which the parliament of 1560 had abolished, he took his seat in the assembly of 1567. In the troubles which beset the hapless Mary, Hamilton was the queen's constant supporter. After the ruin of her hopes at Langside, and her flight into England, which he had done his utmost to prevent, he was compelled to seek his own safety in Dumbarton Castle, but in 1571 that stronghold was cast down and Hamilton taken prisoner. He was carried to Stirling, and three days after his capture, was hanged there in his pontifical vestments on the common gibbet. No record remains of any formal trial; he was put to death on the strength of his previous forfeiture as a traitor on the fall of Mary. Though a man of wisdom and moderation, possessed of many sterling qualities, and a valiant champion of the Catholic cause, Hamilton was not free from grave irregularities in his private life, as records of legitimation of his natural children testify.

In spite of these "irregularities in his private life", and his lack of foresight into what was going to happen when Catholicism in Scotland was made illegal, the Catholic Encyclopedia entry concludes: 

Hamilton was a munificent benefactor to his cathedral city; he completed and endowed St. Mary's College, strengthened the castle, erected other buildings, and constructed as many as fourteen bridges in the neighbourhood. He was the last Catholic metropolitan of the pre-Reformation Church in Scotland.

He published two works defending the teachings of the Catholic Church, including Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism.

Belloc on Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots

Hollywood, just like Schiller and Donizetti, could not resist having Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots confront each other, although they never met. Hilaire Belloc, in his Characters of the Reformation, resists that temptation, but may have fallen into other ones. Anna Mitchell and I will start the New Year tomorrow morning with our continuing series of discussing his portraits of Reformation era figures on the Son Rise Morning Show. Listen live here a little after 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern.

Belloc highlights the changes in Elizabeth I's reputation and presents his own view, which is that she was more ruled than ruling:

The truth about Elizabeth is this. She was the puppet or figurehead of the group of new millionaires established upon the loot of religion begun in her father's time. They had at their head the unique genius of William Cecil, who, in spite of dangerous opposition, accomplished what might have seemed the impossible task of digging up the Catholic Faith by the roots from English soil, stamping out the Mass, and shepherding the younger generation of a reluctant people into a new religious mood. 

Throughout her life Elizabeth was thwarted in each political effort she made; she felt the check of her masters and especially Cecil as a horse feels the bridle. She never had her will in matters of State.

Belloc believes that Elizabeth suffered from great physical weakness and that she could not have become pregnant or delivered a child; therefore she remained unmarried.

He offers support for his view that she was unable to exert her political will:

As examples of the way in which she was "run" by those who were her masters, I will take four leading cases out of a very great number which might be quoted: 

1. She had personally given her Royal assurance to the Spanish Minister that the Spanish treasure ships bearing the pay for Alva's soldiers in the Netherlands, the ships which had taken refuge from pirates in English harbours, should be released and the money taken under safeguards to its proper destination. Cecil simply over-ruled her. He ordered the money to be kept and confiscated in spite of her, and his orders, not hers, were obeyed. 

2. Again, she desired to save Norfolk. Three separate times she interfered to prevent the execution. She was over- ruled. That unfortunate cousin of hers was put to death, but his blood is not upon her head; it is upon Cecil's. 

3. She tried to recall Drake just before the open declaration of war with Spain; no one thought of obeying her orders in the matter. 

4. The supreme example is the case of Mary, Queen of Scots. The murder — for it was a murder' — was accomplished against her will. Our official historians have perpetually repeated that her agony at hearing of Mary's death was feigned: that is, false. It was genuine. The signing of the warrant had indeed been wrung out of her, but that did not mean that the warrant would be put into execution. It was put into execution in spite of her, in order that she should be made responsible, willing or unwilling.

I think that Belloc ignores one of the main achievements that Father Marvin O'Connell noted about Elizabeth, and that was that she balanced her budget and did not have to depend upon Parliament for taxes or other stipends--at least, until she thought it was time to enter into war against Philip II in the Spanish Netherlands. Belloc also forgets that Elizabeth did have her way in at least one political sphere: the Church of England. She controlled the doctrine, the worship, and the vestments and order of the Church; she removed bishops at will; Belloc seems to think she harbored sympathy for Catholic doctrine and that's not likely. Furthermore, Elizabeth I did exert her will in the matter of her not marrying or naming a successor: "her masters" and/or Parliament were never able to change her mind on that matter and she had enough power to prevent them from forcing her.

When Belloc discusses Mary, Queen of Scots, he almost proves Elizabeth's point by highlighting how unfortunate Mary's marriages were:

When Mary landed in Scotland the religious revolution which, as we have seen, had made some little progress in England, though not much, which in Germany had swept everything into violent turmoil, and which in France was soon to bring about prolonged civil war, had in Scotland achieved a very great measure of success. Calvinism had become the enthusiastic creed of a minority, burning with zeal and determined to succeed. The majority were not similarly zealous for the defence of the Church, which in Scotland had become thoroughly corrupt; and the great Scottish nobles who had everything in their hands supported the religious revolution because it gave them the power to loot the Church and the monarchy wholesale. 

Into this anarchy Mary was plunged. For seven years her invincible courage still maintained her as Queen; but her temperament ruined what small chances she had of maintaining her position. We must remember in her favour that she was a woman of especial fascination which in a sense she exercises to this day; and that yet it was her misfortune to be married first to a sickly boy even younger than herself who died before she was eighteen and next by her own judgment and error to her cousin Darnley, a debauched and worthless character. She was accused, falsely, of having taken part in the murder of Darnley. The act was really that of the rebel Scotch nobles, but it was widely believed that she was guilty of it and still more widely believed (it is still a problem) that she was at any rate cognizant of what was in the wind. 

It was her temperament again that made her fall a victim to Bothwell, one of her own great nobles in Scotland, a masterly man to whom she succumbed. Though she was the representative of Catholicism she married him with Calvinistic rites, and as he was universally regarded as at least one of the murderers of her first husband the scandal was enormous. She was imprisoned, she escaped, she was defeated; and in 1568, her twenty-sixth year, she escaped, unarmed and without resources, over the border into England — trusting to the promised protection of Elizabeth. From that moment of course she was in Cecil's power.

That's why Chesterton highlights Don John of Austria's plan to marry the Queen of Scotland--with him, Chesterton says, she would at last have had a man more her equal in endurance, culture, spirit, and courage: "If ever there was a woman who was manifestly meant, destined, created, and as it were crying aloud to be carried off by Don John of Austria, or some such person, it was Mary Queen of Scots. If ever there was a woman who went to seed for want of meeting any sort of man who was anything like her equal, it was she."

Of both women, Belloc concludes, the legend has been so powerful that we had not--in his time--gotten to the truth. He feared that Elizabeth I would go from exaltation as the greatest queen ever to being deemed insignificant; he believed that Mary, Queen of Scots' life would always remain a mystery: "The whole story of this unfortunate woman remains and will remain full of unsolved problems. Mary Stuart will always be for some a martyr, for others a criminal, so long as the religious passions which centre round her name survive."

If you watched the 1971 movie I alluded to above, you might remember the theme song for Mary composed by John Barry: elegiac, melancholy, and romantic! Tune in tomorrow for more!

Dowager Queen of France, Mary Queen of Scots

With the death of her husband, Francis II, on December 5, 1560, Mary, the Queen of Scotland entered a period of mourning and seclusion--just in case she was pregnant with her late husband's heir. As this website points out, however, that was as unlikely as the supposed pregnancy at the beginning of the reign:

About a month after Henry [II]’s death, Mary started to believe that she was pregnant. Given the accepted view that Francis was sterile, it is hard to envisage that she genuinely thought this. If true, it would have placed her in an unassailable position as the mother of a Valois heir. She would be positioned behind the throne in the event of her husband’s early demise. Yet by September she realised this was a false alarm. Although the Guises must have been disappointed, they made light of it, pointing out that a sixteen-year-old king and his young bride had plenty of time to produce children.

Yet Catherine and the Guises had great concerns about Francis’s well-being. They will have been well aware of his sexual shortcomings, with such matters being common knowledge within the inner circle close to the Crown. He was also increasingly unwell. His face had become blotchy and his continuing running nose and dizziness were caused by an abscess developing behind his ear. He progressively deteriorated for about a year before he died, and Catherine positioned herself in the event of having to face the worst. Already an adept political intriguer, she remained at Mary’s side showing her maternal kindness, while almost imperceptibly weaning her from her uncles’ influence, loosening their grip on power. She eventually became the principal force in government, Regent in all but name. Yet she too faced criticism. Pamphlets were describing her as a whore with a leper for a son. . . .

In mid-November, after hunting near Orléans, Francis complained of a recurring dizziness and a buzzing in his ear. On the following Sunday, he collapsed in church and had a swelling ‘the size of a large nut’from an abscess behind his ear, causing stabbing pains in his head. When the doctors lanced it, puss was discharged through his mouth and nostrils, providing temporary relief, but he remained gravely ill. By late November, he was suffering seizures and was unable to move or speak. Mary and Catherine nursed him between them and sought divine aid by walking in procession with his brothers to nearby churches. The doctors bled him, purged him with enemas including rhubarb and considered boring through his scull to relieve the pressure. This was averted when the discharge appeared to stop, only to be followed by another substantial eruption of puss from his ear, nose and mouth, which made him delirious. On the morning of his death on 5 December 1560, he was completely debilitated and, after lying prostrate all day, died in the late evening. He had not reached his seventeenth birthday. The lingering hopes of the Guises were left in tatters. Catherine de Medici had no further need to cosset her daughter-in-law, and Mary had little choice but to return to her kingdom in Scotland.

Mary was returning to Scotland after living in France for 13 years. Her mother, Mary of Guise, had died on June 11, 1560, and Scotland was in the grip of John Knox's Reformation. Mary and the Catholics at her Court would be able to attend Mass and receive the Sacraments (there would be priests at Court obviously) but she agreed not to oppose the Reformation--thus she would go home, the Dowager Queen of France and Queen of Scotland.

Undoing the Whig Tradition: Mary, Queen of Scots

G.K. Chesterton wrote about our common images of Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth, Queen of England (in his day there was only one Elizabeth!) in an essay titled "The Slavery of the Mind" in The Thing--we read this essay last night for our Wichita branch of the American Chesterton Society:

I could give many other examples of what I mean by this imaginative bondage. It is to be found in the strange superstition of making sacred figures out of certain historical characters; who must not be moved from their stiff symbolic attitudes. Even their bad qualities are sacred. Much new light has lately been thrown on Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart. It is not only favourable to Mary but on the whole favourable to Elizabeth. It seems pretty certain that Mary did not plot to kill Darnley. It seems highly probable that Elizabeth did not plot to kill Mary. But many people are quite as tenderly attached to the idea of a merciless Elizabeth as to that of a murderous Mary. That a man devoted to Protestantism should rejoice that Elizabeth succeeded, that a man devoted to Catholicism should wish that Mary had succeeded--all that would be perfectly natural and rational. But Elizabeth was not Protestantism; and it ought not to disturb anybody to discover that she was hardly a Protestant. It ought to be even less gratification to her supporters to insist that she was a tyrant. But there is a sort of waxwork history, that cannot be happy unless Elizabeth has an axe and Mary a dagger. This sense of fixed and sacred figures ought to belong to a religion; but a historical speculation is not a religion.

On her blog, Tea at Trianon, Elena Maria Vidal (author of the forthcoming The Paradise Tree and other historical novels), cites an article that argues for a new view of Mary, Queen of Scots:

The image of Mary which comes down to us through the biased lens of Protestant history is a classic case of ‘blaming the victim.’ The Whig historians of the British Empire depicted her as weak-willed and excessively romantic – so hopeless, in fact, that she ‘deserved’ her fate.

The real Mary Stuart, however, appears to unbiased eyes as guileless and forthright, clearly possessed of intelligence and character sufficient to survive a life rife with calamity – and still to keep her wits and charm about her.

Daughter of King James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise of France, Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland at her father’s death. She was six days old. What followed were certainly her happiest years – her youth spent in the French court, educated by devoted French religious.

She was then married to the sickly Francis, son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, whom she treated with kindness. His death two years later followed that of her own mother; she was eighteen years old.

Grieving her losses, Mary nevertheless stalwartly acknowledged her royal obligations, and left her merry France for dismal Scotland. It was a country engulfed in religious turmoil, with significant political opposition entrenched against her. The stern Puritans who followed John Knox made much of her elegant French wardrobe; she was said to have arrived with more than 20 lavish black gowns, the height of French fashion.

Regardless of their politics, however, the Scots were inevitably struck by Mary’s beauty, charm, sweetness of character and gentleness of spirit. An eyewitness relates that “In one of the … processions Mary was moving along with the rest, through a crowd of spectators, and the light from her torch fell upon her features and upon her hair in such a manner as to make her appear more beautiful than usual. A woman, standing there, pressed up nearer to her to view her more closely, and, seeing how beautiful she was, asked her if she was not an ‘angel’.

Chesterton would agree! How does he do that--I read something on-line and he's already written about it, and I just then happen to be reading about what he said about it!

Coincidentally, May 16 in 1532 and 1568

On May 16, 1532, Sir Thomas More resigned as Chancellor of England, succeeded by Thomas Audley. More concluded that he could not influence Henry VIII anymore. He might have hoped for some peace and quiet, but Henry and Cromwell wanted his approval and benediction. More did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn; in 1533 and 1534 he was accused of first, accepting bribes, and second of supporting Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent. The first accusation was ridiculous and the second easily disposed of. Nevertheless, he ended up in the Tower of London in 1534 while the government continued to pressure him to take the Oaths of Supremacy and Succession. As he complained of chest pains before, his health deteriorated while in the Tower. 

On May 16, 1568, Mary Stuart, the deposed Queen of Scotland left that country after losing the Battle of Langside and escaped to England. She hoped for some support from Elizabeth Tudor to regain her throne. Instead, she was moved from castle to castle (Carlisle Castle, Bolton Castle, Tutbury, and Sheffield) under different degrees of comfort and activity while a trial was held to determine her guilt in her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley's death. The trial ended in a strange verdict and she was neither declared guilty or innocent. The only thing that was certain is that she was not going to return to Scotland as Queen. Mary was held under house arrest and became the focus of plots to remove Elizabeth from the throne of England. As she had been a very active person, riding and hunting, the enforced inactivity wore on her.

Both of them were finally brought to trial--Thomas More at Westminster Hall; Mary at Fotheringay Castle. Both St. Thomas More and Mary, Queen of Scots ended their lives kneeling before blocks of wood, waiting for the executioner's blow to fall--More on July 6, 1535 and Mary on February 8, 1587.