This is, make no mistake about it, a definitive biography. I’ve always been of the party that rubbished the idea of a definitive account of somebody’s life, arguing that every biographer brings something of his or herself to the subject and that the result is, at best, a fascinating hybrid. John Guy’s book has changed my mind. It makes all previous lives of this unlucky queen redundant. Bringing new evidence to the fore, Guy shows that while Mary was undeniably vain, manipulative and headstrong, she was also shrewd, courageous and fiercely committed to the near-impossible task of ruling a quarrelsome country opposed to the idea of a female ruler.

She was six days old when her father, James V of Scotland, died. Her mother, Mary of Guise, bestowed her own striking height, delicate features and auburn hair on the little girl, together with her pride and fearlessness. Mary of Guise, who thought nothing of scrambling up castle walls on a ladder to inspect the stonework, was always conscious that, beyond her widowed role as Scotland’s regent, she belonged to France’s most powerful and ambitious family. Where others might have thought it enough that little Mary’s betrothal to the French dauphin, Francis, would make her a future queen of two countries, the Guises never let the child forget that she could also claim the English throne. Splendid pageants devised to welcome Mary of Guise on a rare visit to her small daughter in France, where Mary lived from the age of five, reminded both mother and child of this dazzling future.

There has never been any doubt that one of the future queen’s most virulent enemies was her half-brother, James Stuart, later Earl of Moray. In 1558, together with a group of rebel lords, Moray deposed Mary of Guise as Scotland’s regent and endorsed Elizabeth’s right to be crowned as England’s new queen. Two years later, Mary lost both her mother and her young French husband, now Francis II. Returning to rule Scotland the following year, she put her faith in religious toleration (mass was still often held in local churches and private homes) and careful diplomacy. Used to the splendid trappings of the French court, she introduced an unfamiliar aura of glamour. Her personal possessions, including 100 tapestries, 45 ornate beds, a gilded throne, a coach the like of which had never been seen north of the border and a dazzling personal wardrobe, impressed her subjects, but not their religious leaders.

Moray loathed his half-sister because she stood between him and the throne. John Knox, the Protestant reformer and misogynist author of A Monstrous Regiment of Women, loathed her because she was Catholic and a female ruler. Elizabeth, as a Protestant, escaped Knox’s venom; Mary embodied his vision of Catholic queens as sex-mad idol worshippers. Knox had no problem with Elizabeth’s midnight romps with her favourite courtier, Robert Dudley; when Mary’s plans to marry Don Carlos of Spain became known, Knox flew at her, accusing her of seeking to destroy her country. When a would-be assassin hid under Mary’s bed with a sword, Knox ignored the weapon and saw more evidence of a lustful queen. Moray, not surprisingly, found Knox a valuable ally.

The most dangerous of the young queen’s enemies by far was Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s most influential advisor and an ardent Protestant. Earlier biographers have not ignored the part played by Cecil in Mary’s downfall, but the depth of his hostility and the lengths to which he was prepared to go have never been recognised. Re-examining familiar documents and uncovering some which have not been studied for more than 100 years, Guy shows Cecil as one of the great machinators of all time. Elizabeth, almost as much as Mary, was a pawn in his strategy for the defence of an English, Protestant monarchy that would control the unruly Scots. When Mary’s ambitious second husband, Lord Darnley, plotted with her brother to assassinate her secretary, Rizzio, Cecil knew what was afoot. He did nothing. When Darnley himself was murdered, Cecil was quick to let Elizabeth know that Mary had approved the deed and that the murderer was her lover, Bothwell. Guy’s account leaves no doubts about Mary’s innocence — or Bothwell’s complicity.

The woman revealed by Guy is impressively astute and skilled at diplomacy; nevertheless, she made some bad mistakes. No state funeral for Darnley, and letting herself be seen in public with Bothwell, a married man who was widely believed to have killed her husband — these were grave errors of judgment on Mary’s part. Her fate was sealed when she married Bothwell and, pregnant with his child, refused to hand him over to her rebel lords. Ordered to abdicate or have her throat cut, she might still have been reinstated by a shocked Elizabeth, had Cecil not been in cahoots with the rebels.

Guy’s most valuable and original research shows that the famous Casket Letters, doctored by the rebel lords, were largely taken from originals written by Mary to Darnley and reshaped as love-letters to Bothwell. Cecil, who knew the truth, nodded them through, while adding his own occasional corrections to increase their air of authenticity. Shortly before Mary’s trial, after years of captivity in England, Cecil arranged for a friend to publish an attack on her. Titled A Detection of the Doings of Mary Queen of Scots, it included the first publication of the damaging Casket Letters. The book helped seal her fate.

This is no hagiography. Mary was rightly convicted of having approved a scheme — the Babington plot — to kill Elizabeth. While unwilling to sign a death warrant that would damage her own iconic status, Elizabeth herself wanted Mary to be killed in secret. Neither queen emerges untarnished from a biography that reads as thrillingly as a detective story, and is rich in detail and authorative in its analysis. Guy deserves a wide readership: I hope he gets it.

Buried twice

After Mary’s execution, left, in 1587, her body lay in a lead coffin for six months while arguments raged about what to do. Eventually, she was given a state funeral at Peterborough cathedral. Twenty-five years later, she was carried in solemn procession to London and reburied, by her son James I, in Westminster Abbey.

Read on... websites:

www.marie-stuart.co.uk
Official site of Marie Stuart Society

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