Rebellious Catholics V

James Hepburn, 4th Earl
of Bothwell

We have been looking at the Saga of Mary, Queen of Scots—a figure whom Catholic mythology has converted into a saintly woman and a martyr for the faith when in fact she was a woman of somewhat compromised morals and ambition for the death of the Queen of England in hopes of stealing her throne.  If you check the previous two posts, you will find that Mary inherited the throne of Scotland as a six-day-old infant, but was raised in France to be Queen there.  She was widowed while still in her teens and returned to Scotland where she was caught between the Protestant and Catholic parties attempting to dominate Scots politics.  She was freed from the trap of a second and unhappy marriage to a rather slimy and ambitious rake by the assassination of her husband—to which she may (or may not) have been party.  And now, as we pick up the story, she is about to be married a third time—to the prime suspect in her husband’s murder.  But first he has to be rid of his new wife so he can abduct, rape, and marry the Queen.  Yes rape.  Or maybe not quite.  And so back to our story. 

About a year after her marriage to Bothwell, Lady Jean Godorn began divorce proceedings against him, alleging his adultery with one of her servants, a Bessie Crawford.  Bothwell’s friends, not his enemies, were urging her to divorce him and providing the evidence she needed to prosecute her case. Bothwell himself wanted out of the marriage—for reasons we shall soon see—and Lady Jean seems to have been happy to be rid of him.  The Protestant Court Consistory—the equivalent of a Catholic Tribunal—granted the divorce.  A Catholic annulment was also obtained from Archbishop Hamilton of St. Andrews on the grounds that the proper dispensations needed because Bothwell and Lady Jean were related had not been obtained.  What is strange in this decree is that Archbishop Hamilton himself had issued the dispensations before the marriage.  (An annulment was necessary because at the time the marriage of a Catholic [Lady Jean in this instance] before a Protestant minister was not automatically invalid as it would be today.)  What is strange about this divorce and subsequent annulment is that it all seems “arranged” in such a way as to leave Bothwell free to marry someone else.  Hmm, I wonder who.  Lady Jean for her part seemed content to be done with the marriage and, in fact, it was her brother George who supervised the process of freeing Bothwell from the entanglement. 

Of course there was still the matter of Bothwell’s being suspect in the death of Darnley.  He was brought to trial in April 1567.  He made a public show of his arrival at court with an entourage of his retainers along with leading peers of the realm and after a process of only seven hours was acquitted of the murder.   Several days later, an assembly of Lords Spiritual (bishops) and Lords Temporal (Peers of the Realm) presented a petition to Bothwell to hand to the Queen beseeching her to marry a Scotsman and not a foreign husband.     Hmmm, I wonder whom they all had in mind?  

On April 24^th Bothwell, with an armed escort of 800 followers, kidnapped Mary (who seems willingly to have accompanied him) and took her to his castle at Dunbar where he raped her.  (I told you this guy was slime, but before you make a judgment about him, read on.)  Rape required that he marry the Queen—who many argue was a willing “victim” so as to provide reasons to justify the marriage.  (Bizarre as it is to us, among the genteel classes of the time, marriage to the perpetrator was the way to restore a woman’s “honor” after rape, providing that the rapist was a “gentleman” and not a commoner.  Arranged rapes were often used to require marriages that otherwise would have been difficult to justify.)   Two weeks later, Mary named Bothwell Duke of Orkney and married him on May 15, 1567 in a Protestant ceremony in Holyroodhouse Palace. This marriage took place twelve days after his divorce from Lady Jean Gordon was granted—an indication that the whole affair was being orchestrated to allow for the Mary/Bothwell match.   Many of the Scots who were convinced that Bothwell had been Darnley’s murderer were outraged at the Queen’s marriage to him and rose in rebellion.  At Carberry Hill, Mary’s army dwindled away and Mary was arrested by the rebels; Bothwell fled.  Mary was confined at Loch Leven castle where she was forced to abdicate in favor of her son James  (who then became James VI of Scotland and would eventually succeed Elizabeth as James I of England).  Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was named Regent for the child-king.

Bothwell, for his part, fled to Denmark but instead of finding refuge was arrested by the Trondson family for having abandoned his wife, Anna Trondson. Remember her?  He was held in captivity until he would return her dowry.  His ship was confiscated in place of the debt but the King of Denmark kept him in prison to please Elizabeth of England who held him guilty for the murder of her cousin, Lord Darnley.  O what tangled webs we weave.  He died insane in 1578.  

Mary, for her part, was able to escape her confinement at Lock Leven.  She rallied an army but was defeated at Langside on Mayr 13, 1568 and fled south to England hoping—against all reason—to enlist Elizabeth’s help in regaining her throne.   Once across the border she was taken into protective custody at Carlisle. And here we will break the story once more, but you can see already that Mary was no saint.    

 

Rebellious Catholics IV

Mary, Queen of Scots

In the previous posting I had begun the story of Mary Queen of Scots, the exiled Queen of Scotland whom Elizabeth had executed in 1587.  Catholic historians have over the past century and a half tried to portray her as a saintly victim martyred for her faith when in fact while she was a devout Catholic she was a person of somewhat tangled morals who was beheaded for purely political reasons.  Elizabeth was not nearly the ogre and Mary not nearly the saint that Catholic writers have tried to portray them as.  History is always political and here the politics of religion has long been allowed to jumble the historical narrative for an agenda of apologetics 
Much had happened in Scotland during Mary’s absence.  The pro-English Protestant faction among the nobility had grown in strength and for several years had been all but in rebellion against Mary’s regent, her mother, Mary of Guise.  Mary of Guise herself had died only six months before her daughter was widowed and the Protestant party had used the power vacuum to consolidate their strength.  The Protestant faction was led by Mary’s illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, the son of James V and Lady Margaret Erskine.    The Calvinist reformer, John Knox, was the spiritual leader of the Protestant party and in 1558 had written a treatise “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” which was not directed solely at Mary’s Reign but also that of the late (Bloody) Mary of England and her sister, Elizabeth, the newly crowned English Monarch.  Knox claimed that Rule by women was an affront to God. (Today he would be made a Cardinal in grateful recognition for this insightful theological contribution.)   Knox now directed his preaching against Mary for her Catholic religious practices, for her dancing and gaming, and for her frivolous dress and lifestyle.  Knox was the leader among those who would give Calvinism a grim reputation—not that Calvinism itself didn’t flourish on cheerlessness even without Knox’s sourpuss preaching.     
Due to her education in the French Court, Mary was a fine athlete, a brilliant linguist, and an accomplished writer, but what had been neglected in Mary’s education in France was how to rule.  She was not bred to be Queen of Scotland but rather Queen consort of France and now she had no idea how to manage the complex politics of her kingdom.  She failed to play the Catholic and Protestant parties off against one another to her advantage but allowed herself to be dominated by her enemies.   She summoned Knox to remonstrate against him—he only mocked her by preaching at her when she tried to speak to him.  She charged him with treason; he was acquitted.  Mary tried to accommodate the Protestant faction and allowed them to dominate her privy-council.  She kept her Protestant half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as her chief counselor and ignored the Catholic lords.  The Catholic nobles, for their part, were angry that the Queen was so sympathetic to the Protestant cause and several of them rebelled against her in 1562.
Realizing that she lacked political astuteness, Mary sensed what she needed was a savvy husband to guide her.  The French proposed an Austrian but Mary refused.  Mary proposed a marriage to Don Carlos, the Spanish heir, but the Spaniards refused.  (Lucky too, as Don Carlos inherited his family’s gene for lunacy.)  Elizabeth suggested a Protestant old boyfriend of her own, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester but the proposed groom refused.  (Mary was not particularly interested anyway.)
By the way, does any of this sound like the stuff of which religious martyrs are made?  Hold on, it only gets worse.

Mary eventually married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley at Holyrood Palace on July 29, 1565.  Both parties were Catholic but they failed to get the necessary papal dispensations for marriage of close kin.  (They were cousins through multiple family intermarriages, but both were grand-children of Margaret Tudor, the wife of James IV and thus first-cousins.)

This marriage infuriated Elizabeth as any child proceeding from the union would have a double claim to the English throne given that as descendants of Margaret Tudor both Mary and Darnley themselves had prime claims.  Moreover, Darnley not only held a Scots title of nobility but an English one and Elizabeth was aggrieved that he had not sought her permission to marry as he was her subject.   Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Moray was also angry as were the Protestant nobles at the Queen having a Catholic consort, and they went into rebellion with Moray as their leader, but after several defeats by Catholic forces Moray fled to England and Elizabeth’s protection.  

Mary and Darnley had a son, James, who would become James VI of Scotland and eventually James I of England—the fellow we had written about in the gunpowder plot (see posting for December 27 2012).  Darnley was not a good choice for a husband.  He wanted to be not merely consort to the Queen Regnant but to be given the “Crown Matrimonial” which would make him co-ruler with his wife and King in his own right should he outlive her.  Mary refused and he grew angry and sullen.  Darnley was not a faithful husband (which was far from uncommon in those days among the upper classes, not that our age is known for marital fidelity) and there are hints that he may have been abusive to Mary.   He was also jealous of Mary’s secretary, David Rizzo.  There were rumors swirling around that Rizzo, not Darnley, was the father of Mary’s child and while these rumors remain unproven they cannot be totally dismissed.  Darnley and some of the Protestant party brutally murdered Rizzo in the presence of Mary who almost miscarried as a result of the trauma.  The Earl of Moray returned at this point and was reconciled to his sister.

The Murder of Rizzo sealed the demise of the Mary/Darnley marriage.  They separated and Mary sought counsel from her advisors as to what she should to terminate the marriage but there seems to have suddenly been a change of plans, indeed a change of the Queen’s heart.  Darnley was summoned back to Edinburgh and given a house in the Kirk o’ Field—a former Abbey—in which to recuperate from health problems—possibly syphilis or the result of poison.  Mary visited him there daily and it seemed they were to reconcile.  Then early in the morning hours of February 10, 1567,  Mary having left the house only hours before  to attend a wedding of a member of her household, an explosion racked the house.    Darnley’s body was found in the garden.  He had not been killed in the explosion and there were no signs of physical violence or strangulation.  He had apparently been smothered, a most curious death.  A variety of people were suspected of involvement in the murder including Mary, her-illegitimate half-brother the Earl of Moray, the Earl of Morton, and James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell.  Now here is where it gets a bit sleazy.

If ever there was an unsavory politician, it was Bothwell.  (As there have been many an unsavory politician, you imagine just how sleazy Bothwell must have been to stand out in such company.)  Bothwell was Lord High Admiral of the Scots Navy and in this capacity he met and married Anna Trondson, the daughter of a Norwegian/Danish Admiral. (Norway at the time was part of the Kingdom of  Denmark.)  Anna travelled with her husband to Flanders and when he had gone through all his money, he forced her to sell her possessions to support his gambling and riotous living.  He then sent her home to get more money from her family, but when the family heard of his abusive behavior towards her they did not permit her to return to him.  Without obtaining any divorce from Anna, Bothwell then married Lady Jean Gordon in a Protestant service.  Lady Jean was Catholic, but Bothwell refused to marry according to Catholic rites.  Mary of Scots was enthusiastic about this match and hosted the wedding at Holyrood Palace.  She also provided cloth of silver for Lady Jean’s wedding gown.  Now here is where things become very murky, but the story will continue in the next posting.

Rebellious Catholics III

Mary of Scotland at the time

she was widowed from King

Francis II of France in 1560

In my last posting I mentioned Mary, Queen of Scots, and various plots to assassinate Protestant Elizabeth and put Catholic Mary on the throne.   Mary is often portrayed by Catholic historians as a martyr for her faith when, in fact, her execution had nothing to do with her faith but rather the danger she posed to Elizabeth’s life and the continuation of Protestant government in England.  Mary is a very complex character and before we look at her religious views we need to understand her claim to the English throne and the danger this posed to Elizabeth.  Because Mary is such a complex character and her saga is so convoluted it will take several postings to tell this story, but I think we will see Mary is neither saint nor martyr though she herself tried, at the end of her life, to portray herself as such.  As a child in grade school and high school, hearing her story, I always wondered why the Church had not yet made a saint of her, but when I began to study history on the graduate level I came to see how history is not so much the story of what happened as much as it has become how the historians tell the story of what happened.   A professor of mine, the late Norman Cantor, wrote a book he titled Inventing the Middle Ages in which he displayed how much of what we take as history is in the telling rather than in the actual events.  While Mary, Queen of Scots, is an Early Modern (or Renaissance or Reformation, as however you wish to slice the cake) figure and not from the Middle Ages, I can think of no better example of this tendency to bias the story in the telling than the persona that nineteenth and early twentieth-century (i.e. pre-Vatican II romanticists) created from the facts, factoids, and shambles of the life of this 16^th century Queen.    Well, enough prologue: on to her story.     
Mary had become Queen Regnant of Scotland (that means Monarch in her own right, not simply Queen by marriage to a King) at the death of her Father, James V, when she was only six days old.  Of course a six-day old girl (or boy) is in no position to rule a country and Scotland was ruled by Regents who exercised the royal power in Mary’s name.   From her infancy there was a struggle to control the child and the country she rule.  Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of Saint Andrews and confidant of James V, produced a will in which the King named Beaton as regent, but this will was widely regarded as a forgery and was challenged by James Hamilton, Earl of Arran who also claimed to be the legitimate regent.  Arran had the support of the majority of the court and out maneuvered Beaton whom he had arrested and confined in the house of Lord Seton, but the Cardinal escaped.  Beaton, of course, was Catholic and Arran Protestant and each represented the interests of his co-religionists.  This Catholic-Protestant struggle would be a major theme in the life of Mary as each group tried to control her seeing as both in Scotland and England their fortunes depended on her fate.  To complicate matters,  as long as Mary had no children, Arran was next in line to the throne as there were no other legitimate-born Stuarts more closely related by blood.  Arran’s maternal grandmother, Mary of Scotland, was the daughter of James III.  So the infant queen was in the care of the Protestant earl.  This boded well for the Protestant party.  As a Protestant, Arran wanted to arrange a marriage for the young Queen to the young son of Henry VIII of England.  This would unite the crowns of the two kingdoms and insure the triumph of Protestantism.  However as Prince Edward was five and the child-Queen was less than a year old, it would be a long engagement. 
In fact, it wasn’t.  It was broken within the year in a very remarkable about-face.  Lord Arran suddenly reconciled with Beaton, converted to Catholicism, and was given the Duchy of Châtellerault by Henry II of France in return for arranging the marriage of Mary to the Dauphin (Crown Prince of France), the future Francis II.  When Mary was less than six years old she was sent to live in the French Court.  Arran remained in Scotland as regent until when in 1554 he surrendered the regency to Mary’s mother, the French princess Mary of Guise, widow to Scotland’s James V.  This put both Scotland and the young Queen firmly in Catholic hands.  Arran would later revert to Protestantism but that is not relevant to this story other than his unsuccessful attempts in 1560 to marry his son to the newly crowned Elizabeth of England or, after her being widowed from Francis, to Mary herself.  Nothing came of these attempts.
Mary meanwhile flourished in France.  She had a vivacious and charming personality that won over all except her mother-in-law to be, Catherine de Medici.  (No one wins a pissing contest with an Italian mother-in-law.)  Moreover Mary excelled in the sports appropriate to women (horsemanship, hunting, falconry), in the arts (music, poetry, needlework), and learned French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish in addition to her native Scots Gaelic and what English she had learned in Scotland.
Mary, for her part, made a will (equivalent to today’s pre-nup) leaving the Scots throne and her claims to the English Throne (she was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England and next in line after Elizabeth to the Throne of England) to the French Crown.  She married Francis at Notre Dame in Paris on April 24, 1558.  The marriage did not last long.  The king died two and a half years later at age 16.   Mary returned to Scotland nine months later.   This provides a natural break in Mary’s story and we will leave it here for our next posting.  To this point Mary is a vivacious young queen still in her teens who is Catholic by upbringing but not particularly pious beyond what is expected of a Queen in the ceremonies of her court.  In France she was in an environment where the Catholics still held the political power (though that would soon be challenged by the rise of Calvinism among the French urban middle classes), but returning to Scotland that would be very much reversed as there the Calvinists had been far more successful in gaining control of the situation.  But that is for next time.