Mary of Guise

• 1. Introduction

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  Mary of Guise died on the 11th of June 1560 in Edinburgh Castle. She was the daughter of a French duke and the mother of a Scottish queen. For the previous six years she had governed Scotland as regent, on behalf of a daughter living in France. An English army was besieging Edinburgh's port of Leith when she died, and French troops were defending it. Her body lay for months in a chapel inside the castle, wrapped in lead. When it was finally carried out, her attendants chose midnight and worked in secret. That departure captures something essential about her position: a French Catholic governing a kingdom pulling toward Protestant reform, under relentless pressure from England. What she made of that position, and what it cost her, is what this documentary examines.

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• 2. The House of Guise

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  Mary was born at Bar-le-Duc in Lorraine on the 22nd of November 1515. Her father, Claude, Duke of Guise, headed a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine and was among the most powerful noblemen in France. Her mother, Antoinette of Bourbon, was herself the daughter of Francis, Count of Vendome, and Marie de Luxembourg. Mary was the eldest of twelve children. Among her siblings were Francis, Duke of Guise; Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine; and Louis I, Cardinal of Guise. At five years old, she stood as godmother to her younger sister Louise. Not long afterward, she joined her grandmother Philippa of Guelders at the convent of the Poor Clares in Pont-a-Mousson. She grew to a height of five feet eleven inches, exceptional by the standards of her era. Her mother noted that she was prone to bad colds. Around the age of 14, her uncle Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, visited the convent with his wife Rene of Bourbon. Impressed by their niece's qualities and bearing, they removed her from the convent and prepared her for the French court. In 1531, she made her debut at the wedding of King Francis I and Eleanor of Austria, forming friendships with the king's daughters Madeleine and Margaret. Three years later, in August 1534, Mary made her first marriage at the Louvre Palace in Paris.

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• 3. The Duke of Longueville

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  Louis II d'Orleans, Duke of Longueville, held the office of Grand Chamberlain of France. The match had been arranged by King Francis I, and it turned out to be a happy union. On the 30th of October 1535, Mary gave birth to their first son, Francis. Then, on the 9th of June 1537, Louis died at Rouen, leaving her pregnant and widowed at 21. For the rest of her life, she kept the last letter he had sent her. In it, he described his illness and explained his absence. She called him her bon mari et ami, her good husband and friend. That letter can still be seen at the National Library of Scotland. A second son, named Louis after his father, was born on the 4th of August 1537, but died very young. The elder Francis survived and wrote to his mother after she moved to Scotland. On the 22nd of March 1545, he sent her a piece of string to show how tall he had grown. On the 2nd of July 1546, he sent his portrait. Within months of Louis's death, the widowed Duchess of Longueville became the focus of rival marriage proposals from two competing kings.

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• 4. Two Suitors

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  In December 1537, Henry VIII of England told the French ambassador Castillon that he was big in person and had need of a big wife. The widow he had in mind was Mary of Guise. James V of Scotland had reached the same conclusion. A 17th-century writer, William Drummond of Hawthornden, recorded that James had noticed Mary when he visited France, placing her second in his affections after Madeleine of Valois. When Madeleine died of tuberculosis, James needed a second French bride to sustain the alliance against England. Cardinal David Beaton traveled to France to handle the negotiations. Writing from Lyon on the 22nd of October 1537, Beaton told James that Mary was stark, meaning strong, well complexioned, and fit to travel. He reported that her father was marvellous desirous of the expedition and wanted it settled quickly. Mary received the news with shock and alarm. She did not want to leave France, her family, or the life she had known. Her mother found the proposed contract marvellously strange, because the king had included Mary's son's inheritance in the dowry. The contract, finalized in January 1538, offered James a dowry of 150,000 livres, as generous as if Mary had been born a princess of France. Francis I preferred James's suit over Henry's. Henry had been refused. Mary reportedly answered his offer with a remark about Anne Boleyn: she might be a big woman, but she had a very little neck. Anne had joked before her execution that the headsman would find her easy to dispatch because she had a little neck. Persuaded at last, Mary agreed. The proxy wedding took place on the 9th of May 1538, in the Sainte Chapelle at the Chateau de Chateaudun. Lord Maxwell arrived from Scotland with a diamond ring and stood in for the absent king. Some two thousand Scottish lords and barons crossed the sea to be present. In June 1538, she sailed from Le Havre for Scotland, leaving behind her three-year-old son Francis, Duke of Longueville.

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• 5. The Scottish Court

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  She landed at Crail in Fife six days after sailing from Le Havre. Her escort was three French galleys, commanded by Jacques de Fountaines, Sieur de Mormoulins. The king received her formally at St Andrews, where pageants and plays had been staged in her honor. James and Mary were married in person at St Andrews Cathedral on the 18th of June 1538. James's mother, Margaret Tudor, wrote to her brother Henry VIII that summer with measured praise. I trust she will prove a wise Princess, she wrote. I have been much in her company, and she bears herself very honourably to me. Mary made her ceremonial entry into Edinburgh on Saint Margaret's Day, the 16th of November. The Duchess of Guise sent masons, including Nicolas Roy, along with miners and an armourer. A French painter, Pierre Quesnel, was brought in to decorate the palaces. Her household included a dwarf named Jean, dressed in light-purple velvet, and a fool named Serat, who wore red and yellow with a green skirt. On the 24th of August 1539, James and Mary made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Adrian on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth. They sailed on three ships: the Unicorn, the Little Unicorn, and the Mary Willoughby. It was believed that a visit to the shrine could help a woman conceive, and Mary noted her pilgrimages carefully. She was crowned at Holyrood Abbey on the 22nd of February 1540. The jeweller John Mosman had made a new crown from Scottish gold, and her silver sceptre had been gilded. Thirty guns fired a salute from David's Tower. James, Duke of Rothesay, was born on the 22nd of May 1540. Robert, Duke of Albany, followed on the 12th of April 1541. Robert died on the 20th of April, aged nine days. James died on the 21st, at nearly one year old. Mary's mother Antoinette of Bourbon wrote from France that the couple was young and should hope for more children. She attributed the deaths in part to overfeeding and a change of wet nurse. A daughter, also named Mary, was born on the 8th of December 1542. James V died that same December, leaving an infant queen and a kingdom without an adult ruler.

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• 6. The Rough Wooing

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  James Hamilton, the 2nd Earl of Arran, was appointed regent of Scotland to govern on the infant queen's behalf. Henry VIII of England wanted the child to marry his son, Prince Edward, and that expectation led to the campaign known as the Rough Wooing. Mary of Guise was at Linlithgow Palace when Ralph Sadler, an English diplomat, came on the 22nd of March 1543 to see the infant queen for himself. Arran had been spreading rumors that the child was sickly. Guise showed Sadler the infant out of her swaddling clothes. Sadler wrote afterward that she was as goodly a child he had seen, and like to live. Guise used the meeting strategically. She reminded Sadler of Arran's plans for his own son to marry Princess Elizabeth. She also pressed him to help secure Cardinal Beaton's release from imprisonment. Guise told Sadler directly that Arran was a simple man whose whole intent she could easily read. In July 1543, she moved with the infant queen to Stirling Castle. After a Scottish defeat at the Battle of Pinkie in September 1547, French military support shifted the balance back toward Guise. She came to Haddington in July 1548 to observe the siege there. On the 9th of July, English cannon fire killed sixteen members of her entourage around her. She rewarded her gunner Andro Straitoun with one month's wages: four pounds Scots. The Scottish Parliament at Haddington Abbey resolved that month to send the young queen to France to be raised with the dauphin Francis, son of Henry II. The child sailed in August 1548. On Christmas Day 1549, Guise negotiated at Stirling Castle for more French artillery for the siege of Broughty Castle. On the 6th of February 1550, she watched from across the River Tay as French troops under Paul de Thermes assaulted the garrison. Two hundred and forty men were injured and fifty were killed. The garrison surrendered at midnight six days later. Guise wrote that the English had left nothing behind but the plague. Scotland was included in the Treaty of Boulogne, signed on the 24th of March 1550. She left Scotland on the 6th of September 1550 to visit her daughter and family in France. At Rouen on the 1st of October, they rode in a procession together, with soldiers behind them carrying banners depicting Scottish fortresses the French had defended. Her son Francis, Duke of Longueville, died at Amiens on the 22nd of September 1551 while she was returning home. In October 1551, she met Edward VI at Whitehall Palace. He gave her two horses and a diamond ring that had belonged to Catherine Parr. She returned to Scotland in November 1551, and Arran's regency had become a source of growing frustration that she was already working to end.

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• 7. The Regent of Scotland

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  On the 12th of April 1554, at a meeting of Parliament, Mary of Guise replaced James Hamilton as regent of Scotland. Celebrations included a play written by William Lauder and a procession called the Convoy of the Moors on the 10th of June. Edinburgh's burgh council gave her two silver gilt cups, bought from the merchants Alexander Park and Oglier Coqueil. The eleven-year-old Queen Mary sent congratulations from the Chateau de Meudon. She addressed her mother as la Royne, ma mere: the Queen, my mother. Frenchmen now held key positions in the Scottish administration. Yves de Rubay served as Master of Requests and Keeper of the Seals. Bartholomew de Villemore was Comptroller and Receiver-General of Revenue. The French ambassador Henri Cleutin remained Henry II's resident representative in Scotland. Cleutin was apparently well regarded; resentment attached to the other French appointments, fuelling tension with the Scottish nobility. Throughout her regency, Guise remained in close contact with her brothers in France. The Cardinal of Lorraine and Francis, Duke of Guise, both held senior positions in the French government, and Scotland and France operated as a combined diplomatic bloc. In July 1554, she traveled to Jedburgh to hold a Justice Ayre for a fortnight, hoping to settle the feud between the Scott and Kerr border families. She was escorted by armed horsemen under Cleutin's command. In the autumn, she paid for a ship, troops, and a cannon to help the Earl of Sutherland arrest Iye du Mackay, Lord Reay, who had caused trouble in Sutherland. She also employed an Italian military engineer from Siena, Lorenzo Pomarelli, throughout the course of her regency. In June 1555, Parliament abolished the offices of Deacon of the Crafts in burgh councils, a measure that stirred resentment. Guise traveled to Perth to meet with those who objected and then had the legislation repealed. The burgh craft incorporations rewarded her by contributing to a defense tax that funded fortifications at Inchkeith. In December 1556, an English envoy, Laurence Hussey, came to Edinburgh seeking her help. A Russian diplomat named Osep Gregorovitch Napea had lost his belongings in the wreck of the Edward Bonaventure, and Hussey was asking for her assistance. In 1557, a group of Scottish lords drew up a covenant pledging to maintain, set forth, and establish the most blessed Word of God and his Congregation. They would become known as the Lords of the Congregation.

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• 8. The Congregation and the Crown

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  The Beggars' Summons appeared in January 1559, threatening friars with eviction from their houses in favor of the poor. It was calculated to stir the anger of townspeople who had particular grievances against the friars. Guise summoned the Protestant preachers to appear before her at Stirling on the 10th of May. The men of Angus gathered in Dundee to accompany the preachers. On the 4th of May, they were joined by John Knox, who had recently arrived from France. Knox preached in Perth and Dundee. The crowds that followed him sacked religious houses, including the tomb of King James I in Perth. The regent marched on Perth. She was forced to withdraw and negotiate when a contingent arrived from the west at Cupar Muir. Two of her own ambassadors then abandoned her. The Earl of Argyll and Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray, were both professed Protestants in her service. Both joined the Lords of the Congregation at St Andrews, where Knox also arrived. Edinburgh fell to the reformers in July. Mary retreated to Dunbar. On the 25th of July 1559, the Lords of the Congregation signed the Articles of Leith at Leith Links, promising religious tolerance. The previous regent, the 2nd Earl of Arran, accepted leadership of the Lords in September. Guise was reinforced by professional French troops. Some established themselves at Kinghorn in Fife. When they destroyed Hallyards Castle, the house of William Kirkcaldy of Grange, Guise reportedly declared: Where is now John Knox's God? My God is now stronger than his, yea, even in Fife. By November 1559, the rebels had been driven back to Stirling. Guise was increasingly ill and had contemplated resigning the regency. An English fleet arrived in the Firth of Forth in January 1560, forcing the French to retreat within the walls of Leith. The Treaty of Berwick, signed in February 1560, committed England to join the Protestant Lords in expelling the French. The English ambassador in France, Nicholas Throckmorton, praised Guise for having the hart of a man of warre. The English bishop John Jewel described her as a woman with a man's courage. An English assault on Leith was repulsed with heavy losses. On the 12th of May 1560, some of the Lords came to Edinburgh Castle to dine with Mary and the keeper of the castle, Lord Erskine. She became seriously ill over the following days. On some days she could not speak. She made her will on the 8th of June. She died of dropsy. Even Knox had noted in May that her belly and her legs had begun to swell. An autopsy confirmed natural causes, and none of her contemporaries had suspected foul play. Mary herself had diagnosed her condition as dropsy in April 1560, when her legs began to swell badly. Her funeral was held at Fecamp in July 1561, attended by her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots. She was interred at the church of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames in Reims, where her sister Renee was abbess. A marble tomb was erected with a bronze statue of Mary in royal robes, holding a sceptre and the rod of justice in one hand. The tomb was destroyed during the French Revolution. The historian Rosalind K. Marshall described her as charming, highly intelligent, and hard-working, with a diplomatic manner and an ability to fight on regardless of hostility, disappointment, and ill health. She was, Marshall wrote, never merely a pawn of the French king. Her death made way for the Treaty of Edinburgh, in which France and England agreed to withdraw their troops from Scotland. Power passed to the pro-English Protestants she had spent her regency opposing. Of Mary's five children, only her daughter survived her.

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