Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mary (1515-1560)
MARY of Guise (1515–1560), queen of James V of Scotland [q. v.], and mother of Mary Queen of Scots [q. v.], was the eldest child of Claude, count, and afterwards (1527) duke, of Guise, second son of René II, duke of Lorraine, and Philippa of Gueldres; her mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, daughter of Francis de Bourbon, count of Vendôme (Forneron, Les Ducs de Guise et leur Époque). Born on 22 Nov. 1515 at Bar-le-Duc, Mary was, until the birth of her brother Francis, in 1519, the heir-presumptive of the rising house of Guise (Croze, Les Guises, les Valois, et Philippe II, i. 5–6). On 4 Aug. 1534 she was married to Louis of Orleans, second duke of Longueville and grand chamberlain of France, who was about twenty-three years old. The Duke of Guise settled eighty thousand livres tournois upon Mary, who received also from her husband a handsome jointure, including Chateaudun on the Loire. Here, and at his northern castles of Amiens and Rouen, their short but happy married life was passed, and here, on 30 Oct. 1535, Mary bore him a son, who was christened Francis. They were both present at the marriage of Magdalene, daughter of Francis I, to James V of Scotland [q. v.], on New-year's day 1537, but the Duke of Longueville died on 9 June following (Strickland, Queens of Scotland, i. 346). A posthumous son, born shortly after (4 Aug.), and named Louis, lived only four months.
On 10 July Magdalene, queen of James V, died, and soon afterwards James, who had probably seen Mary on his French visit, obtained a promise of her hand (State Papers, v. 112; Herkless, Cardinal Beaton, p. 130). Nevertheless, Henry VIII, on losing Jane Seymour in October, made ardent suit to Mary himself, and continued to urge his suit, not over-gently, both with Francis and Mary herself, even after her betrothal to James had been made public early in 1538 (Strickland, p. 350). Lords Maxwell and Erskine and Cardinal David Beaton [q. v.], however, came over to Paris and concluded the marriage treaty. She brought James as dower one hundred and fifty thousand livres, nearly half of which was the gift of the French king, Francis, who adopted her as his daughter. James bestowed upon her for life the handsome jointure of the counties of Fife, Strathearn, and Ross, with the palaces of Falkland, Stirling, and Dingwall, and the lordships of Galloway, Orkney, and the Isles (Teulet, Papiers d'État relatifs à l'Histoire d'Écosse, Bannatyne Club edit., i. 131–4). As they were both descended from the house of Gueldres, and Mary was nearly related to James's first wife, a dispensation for the marriage was procured from Pope Clement VII. It was celebrated on 9 May in Notre-Dame at Paris, Robert, fifth lord Maxwell [q. v.], acting as proxy for James (Bouillé, Hist. des Ducs de Guise, i. 123). Henry VIII ungraciously refused her permission to pass through England on her way to Scotland, and James sent a large fleet to escort her thither. She landed near Crail in Fife on 14 June (Knox, Works, ed. Laing, i. 61, but cf. Lesley, p. 155), and in the cathedral of St. Andrews James and she were finally married by Cardinal Beaton. The dowager-queen Margaret informed her brother Henry that the young queen bore herself very honourably to her, and would, she trusted, prove a wise princess (State Papers, v. 135). Mary seems, indeed, to have managed her vain and touchy mother-in-law with considerable tact, and it was reported to Cromwell that the young queen was ‘all papist and the old queen not much less’ (ib. p. 154). For nearly two years Mary was childless, and it was not until there was an assured prospect of an heir that she was crowned in February 1540 (ib. pp. 170-1). New regalia were used, made of gold raised from a mine at Crawfurdmuir by miners from Lorraine (Strickland, p. 381). On Friday, 22 May, James wrote to inform Henry of the birth of a prince (State Papers, v. 177). But the sudden death of this son James and also of another infant a few days old, christened Arthur or Robert, at the end of April 1541, left the queen 'very sickly and full of heaviness,' Rumours of poison were heard (ib. pp. 177, 188; Hamilton Papers, i. 73). In the summer of 1542 she had again hope of offspring, and went with James on foot (some say barefoot) to the chapel of Our Lady of Loretto at Musselburgh (Strickland, p. 402). But it was reported in England that James had a mistress at Tantallon, and set 'not much store by the queen' (Hamilton Papers, i. 329). Before the disaster at Solway Moss [see under James V of Scotland] she had 'taken her chamber' at Linlithgow, and the birth of a child, erroneously thought to be a son, was proclaimed in Jedburgh on 2 Dec. The child was Mary Queen of Scots (ib. pp. 323–4, 328, 333; cf. Mary Queen of Scots). The news of the death, at midnight on the 14th, of the unhappy James is said by Knox (i. 92) to have been brought to the mother by Beaton. Knox insinuates that she received the tidings with ill-concealed pleasure, and repeats the scandal heard in Edinburgh a few months later by Sadler of her alleged over-familiarity with Beaton, which had aroused the jealousy of James (Hamilton Papers, ii. 92). But the source of these stories is suspicious.
In the crisis of Scottish affairs produced by Solway Moss and the death of James, Beaton, as head of the catholic and anti-English party, had a strong common interest with the French queen-dowager. But they were unable to prevent the nomination as governor or regent, on 22 Dec, in accordance with constitutional precedent, of the next heir to the crown after the infant princess, James Hamilton, earl of Arran [q. v.], who favoured religious reform and an understanding with England, Reports that the Duke of Guise was on his way to assume 'thole regiment of Scotland' in the name of his niece led Arran, moreover, to arrest the cardinal (ib. i. 398). A parliament which assembled on 12 March 1543 confirmed Arran's regency and accepted Henry's offer of a marriage between Edward and the child Mary (Tytler, v. 267–71; Acta Parl. Scot. ii. 411). When Sir Ralph Sadler, the English envoy, arrived in Edinburgh (Hamilton Papers, i. 464), he approached the queen-dowager, who professed to desire the English marriage and the removal of her daughter to England, on the ground that Arran wanted to marry her to his son. She also suggested that if the cardinal were released he would forward Henry's view (ib. i. 497). Beaton, who was soon virtually at liberty, caused Arran disquietude by proposing to marry the queen-dowager to Francis I's emissary, Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox, whom some maintained to be heir-presumptive, on the ground that Arran was illegitimate. On 23 July 1543 the cardinal and his supporters, at the head of a large force, carried off the two queens from surveillance at Linlithgow to the freedom of Stirling (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 28). Henry VIII ordered Sadler to procure the separation of the mother from the daughter (Knox, Works, i. 108; Hamilton Papers, i. 633–43), but public feeling in Scotland was with the cardinal's party, and Arran, on 4 Sept., reconciled himself with Beaton.
When the young queen was crowned at Stirling on 9 Sept., a new council of sixteen was created to 'direct and order' the governor, and the queen-dowager, who was rumoured to have at first desired to place her jointure lands in its hands and depart for France, was appointed principal member (ib. ii. 40, 45, 56). Arriving in Edinburgh on the night of 17 Sept., she summoned Sadler on the 19th before the council, to discuss with her and her colleagues the situation with regard to England. On 28 Sept. she went to St. Andrews with the cardinal and Patrick Hepburn, third earl of Bothwell [q. v.], and remained there some time, 'whereof,' says Sadler, 'the people speak largely, remembering her over-much familiarity with Beaton in the lifetime of the late king ' (ib. pp. 81, 92). The arrival on 6 Oct. of the French ambassador, De la Brosse, accompanied by a papal legate, to offer renewed alliance and immediate assistance against the designs of England, greatly strengthened the hands of the cardinal and queen-dowager against Henry (ib. p. 92; Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 28). The parliament which met on 3 Dec. 1543 accepted the French offers. Henry replied with a declaration of war, on the arrival of which Mary made a pilgrimage on foot to her favourite shrine of Our Lady of Loretto at Musselburgh, 'to pray for peace among her lords and with the realm of England' (State Papers, v. 350; Strickland, ii. 64).
There can be no doubt that Mary had by this time formed the design of marrying her daughter into France. But such a marriage was certain to be opposed by Arran, who intended her for his son, and by Beaton, who saw that a close connection with France would probably transfer the guidance of affairs to the able dowager. In order to secure her object, therefore, she must bring about a change of government. The failure of the governor and the cardinal to prevent the Earl of Hertford from burning Edinburgh and other towns in May 1544 afforded the desired opportunity. She secured the support of the Douglases, and a coalition of the nobles at Stirling called upon the governor to share his authority with the queen-dowager, 'who could bring them the support of the French king,' and as he gave no answer 'discharged him of his authority' on 10 June, in favour of Mary, subject to the ratification of a parliament to be held at the end of July (State Papers, v. 391 ; Hamilton Papers, ii. 409, 432, 740). Arran and Beaton prevented the meeting of the parliament which was to have 'discharged the governor,' and a parliament summoned by Arran to Edinburgh on 5 Nov. declared the Stirling revolution and Mary's summons of a parliament to Stirling for 12 Nov. of no effect.
In October 1546 Beaton, when meditating a journey to France to obtain a larger force, took the precaution of binding the lords under their seals to marry the young queen to Arran's son, and desired to have her kept in his castle at St. Andrews during his absence (Tytler, v. 386). The queen-mother formed an opposition 'band' (ft.), but the disappearance of the cardinal from the scene, by his murder on 29 May 1546, removed her most formidable antagonist, and left her until her death the leading figure in Scotland.
The reunion of parties which followed Beaton's death turned chiefly to Mary's advantage. A new council to represent all parties was chosen, and George Gordon, fourth earl of Huntly [q. v.], a supporter of Mary, succeeded Beaton as chancellor. Circumstances favoured her policy of closer connection with France (ib. vi. 12). Somerset continued Henry VIII's attempt to force the English marriage upon the Scots. The new king of France, Henry II, was personally attached to the dowager, his adopted sister. In the crisis after Pinkie, when the English burnt Leith and occupied Hume Castle and Broughty Crag, Mary showed the courage and decision in which the governor was wanting, took steps to raise a new army, and transferred the little queen for greater safety to the priory of Inchmahome, on an island in the Lake of Menteith.
So perilous was the position of affairs that Mary had little difficulty in persuading the nobles to consent, in a convention at Stirling (8 Feb. 1548), to marry Mary to the dauphin and send her at once to France. André de Montalembert, sieur d'Esse, disembarked six thousand French troops at Leith on 10 June, and laid siege with Arran to Haddington, which the English had captured in April (Beaugé, Guerre d'Escosse; Brantôme, Vie des Hommes Illustres; Tytler, vi. 42–4). A parliament which met in the abbey outside the walls on 7 July gave its consent to the French marriage (Acta Parl. Scot. ii. 481–2). The queen-dowager, after an unfortunate reconnaissance on the 9th, when many of her suite were killed by a shower of chain and hail-shot from Haddington, and she 'swooned for sorrow,' proceeded to Dumbarton, whence she sent her daughter to France on 7 Aug. (Hamilton Papers, pp. 603, 617-18; Teulet, i. 188, 685).
Mary had now to pass through an anxious time. The siege of Haddington dragged on. The wretched people, impoverished by eight years of war and stricken by plague, suffered almost more from the ill-paid French troops than from the English. Mary wrote to her father and uncle, giving a moving picture of these sufferings, and hotly denouncing the frivolity and fraud of many of the French officers. She complained that she had lost all her popularity, would not have been safe in Edinburgh without a French guard, and, roused by alarms four or five times in a night, had got a 'gout or sciatica,' so that she could neither lie nor stand. She dared not withdraw to Stirling to recover her health, lest the French and Scots should fly at one another's throats. But before January 1550 she had been able to retire to Stirling, and the inclusion of Scotland in the peace of 24 March between England and France enabled her to pay a visit to France to see her children and arrange her future policy with Henry and the Guises (Michel, Les Écossais en France, i. 460). She embarked on a French squadron at Leith about 7 Sept., and landed on the 19th at Havre (Tytler, vi. 371 ; but cf. Michel, i. 472; Diurnal, p. 51 ; Lesley, p. 236 ; Register of the Privy Council, i. 198). At Rouen on the 25th she was received with much honour by the king, and ' almost worshipped as a goddess by the court for her services in Scotland '( Tytler, vi. 373). Passing through Paris she spent the winter with the court at Blois (Michel, i. 478; Lesley, pp. 236-7). Sir John Mason [q. v.], the English ambassador, reported uneasily that the Queen of Scots and her family bore the whole swing in the court, and that she desired the entire subversion of England, and was urging that assistance should be given to the Irish, whom she had already sought to stir up against England (Tytler, vi. 373–6; Strickland, ii. 94). In the summer of 1551 she accompanied Henry in his progress to Nantes and back to Fontainebleau (Lesley, p. 239). The question of the money necessary for Scottish purposes had not been easy to settle, and the treasury officials wished Scotland i were in a fish pool,' Leaving her followers in Paris, Mary paid a visit to her recently widowed mother at Joinville; her father had died in April. Her return to Scotland was delayed by reports that the emperor had sent a squadron to take her, and by the illness and death on 22 Sept., before he was sixteen, of her only surviving son by her first marriage, Francis, duke of Longueville, called 'Le Petit Duc' (Journal of Edward VI, ed. Clarendon Hist. Soc, p. 44; Forneron, Les Ducs de Guise). Leaving Dieppe late in October she was driven by a storm into Portsmouth, and sent word to Edward VI that she would take the benefit of the safe-conduct, which he had already given her, to go by land to see him. Arriving by easy stages at Hampton Court, on 31 Oct., she spent a week there and at the bishop's palace in the city, dining in state with the king at Westminster on 4 Nov. (ib. pp. 50-1; Machyn, Diary, p. 11). Knox (i. 243; cf. Strype, Eccles. Memorials, ii. 284) puts in her mouth somewhat hyperbolical praise of Edward. Leaving London on the 6th, she reached Scotland about the 24th (Tytler, vi. 377; cf. Diurnal, p. 51).
A principal object of her visit to France, according to Lesley (pp. 237-8), was to obtain the governor's post for herself. But the governor refused to lay down his power until the little queen should reach the age of twelve, when she would be able to dispose of it as she pleased. When the French chose to consider Mary as of age on entering her twelfth year, they induced her to transfer the regency to her mother, and the governor reluctantly yielded (Journal of Edward VI, p. 83; Teulet, i. 261; Knox, Works, i. 242 n.) In a parliament at Edinburgh on 12 April 1554 he resigned his authority on receiving security for his rights as second person and heir-presumptive; the queen-dowager took his place, and according to Knox (i. 242) 'a crowne was putt upon hir head, als semlye a sight (yf men had eis) as to putt a sadill upoun the back of ane unruly kow' (cf. Acta Parl. Scot. ii. 601).
Mary of Guise was devoted to the interests of her family, and was bent upon bringing the government of Scotland into line with the policy of her brothers the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. But at first circumstances dictated temporising and conciliatory courses. Their immediate object was to secure the conclusion of the marriage between the dauphin Francis and her daughter Mary. They had to reckon with the more or less open opposition of their rival, the Constable Montmorency, in France, and of Arran, now Duke of Chatelherault, and his brother, Archbishop Hamilton of St. Andrews in Scotland (Melville, pp. 72-3, 78). As the archbishop carried the prelates with him, Mary could not dispense with the support of Cassillis, Glencairn, and the other anti-clerical lords, and was obliged to temporise with their proteges the protestant preachers. They were not likely to protest when she virtually superseded the catholic Huntly [see Gordon, George, fourth Earl of Huntly] as chancellor by entrusting the seal to M. de Roubay, though the committal of other chief offices of state to Frenchmen and the confidence she placed in De Houbay and D'Oysel doubtless caused them more inquietude (Stevenson, Calendar of Foreign State Papers, 1668, vol. ii.) The first years of her regency conformed to the advice of the Duke of Guise in 1655, 'to deal in Scotland in a spirit of conciliation, introducing much gentleness and moderation into the administration of justice,' which she reformed with the advice of Henry Sinclair, dean of Glasgow, in a parliament at Edinburgh in the following June (Teulet, i. 721; Tytler, vi. 63). It was not until Philip of Spain in 1557 drew Mary of England into his war against France that the regent's French policy brought her into conflict with the Scots. Although she had exchanged assurances of inviolable amity with Queen Mary Tudor on her accession, and concluded a treaty with her in July 1557 (Thorpe, i. 104), she provoked a war with England in the late summer of that year. She had endeavoured some time before to substitute for the Scottish feudal forces an army paid by a sort of scutage, but she had failed in her efforts. Now the feudal force refused in September to invade England, and she was forced to dismiss it with angry tears (Lesley, p. 255; Tytler, vi. 66-7). With this recalcitrance was coupled the rapid and aggressive growth of protestantism. Knox, whom she nettled in 1555 by her contemptuous reception of his letter appealing to her to hear the word of God, was the real author of the bond or covenant of 3 Dec. 1557, in which Glencairn, Argyll and his eldest son Lord Lorne, Morton, and Erskine of Dun proclaimed open war upon the established religion. The conclusion of the marriage between her daughter and the dauphin on 24 April 1558 for the moment eased her position.
Knox insinuates that Mary, having nothing further to fear from Archbishop Hamilton and the kirkmen, no longer thought it necessary to protect the protestants from the prelates, or to keep her promises of some definite toleration in which he had at one time thought her sincere ( Works, i. 298, 315). It is certain that in March 1559 Henry II sent Mary of Guise instructions to suppress heresy in Scotland. She ordered daily attendance at mass, and summoned the principal preachers to appear before the council at Stirling (ib. p. 813). On the other hand, Melville, a confidant of the Constable Montmorency, represents her as remonstrating against the orders which she carried out (Melville, p. 77; Michel de Castelnau in Jebb's Collection, ii. 446). But when reminded of her promises to the protestants she is said to have answered that princes could not be tied down to their promises, and that the ministers should be banished though they preached as truly as St. Paul (Spotiswood, p. 121). A conflict with Knox and his followers ensued [see Knox, John]. They occupied Perth, and destroyed the monasteries there, including the Charterhouse with the royal tombs. This act Mary treated as open rebellion (Works, i. 324). Huntly promised her assistance, and she advanced upon Perth ; but Argyll, one of the protestant leaders, negotiated an agreement on 29 May, by which the reformers agreed to disperse on receiving a promise that no French troops should be introduced into Perth, and that a parliament should settle the religious question (Stevenson, i. 822). But the agreement was broken almost as soon as made, the congregation 'reformed' Fife, accused the regent of evading the compact by introducing a Scottish garrison paid with French money into Perth, and soon gathered in such numbers that the regent's commanders avoided a battle at Coupar Moor on 1 3 June by agreeing to evacuate Fife (ib. pp. 843, 868). The lords of the congregation at St. Andrews were already secretly contemplating seeking assistance from Elizabeth (ib. p. 848). On 29 June they entered Edinburgh in great force, the regent retiring to Dunbar {ib. p. 893). But the catholic gentry of the Merse and Teviotdale rallied round her, and she forced her French officers to march upon Edinburgh (Thorpe, i. 114 ; Teulet, i. 326). The lords of the congregation, unable to keep their forces together, or to count upon immediate help from England, consented on 23 July to evacuate Edinburgh, assurances of mutual religious toleration until 10 Jan. following being exchanged (Stevenson, i. 1052).
But both parties more or less secretly prepared for the renewal of the contest. The Guises, who after July ruled France in the name of the new king, Francis II, promised to send their brother, the Marquis d'Elbœuf, with a large force to relieve Mary, 'who was not like to live long,' as soon as their difficulties at home would permit (ib. i. 1349). Meanwhile they sent her a few men and two ambassadors, De la Brosse and Nicholas de Pelleve, bishop of Amiens, who were to try and assuage the Scottish troubles (ib. p. 1399 ; Teulet, i. 344 sqq.) On their arrival about the beginning of September she began to fortify Leith, not feeling secure in Edinburgh. She had intelligence that the protestants had never ceased communication with Cecil, who on 10 Sept. smuggled Arran into Scotland (Stevenson, i. 1357). Chatelherault at once joined his son and the lords of the congregation at Hamilton, and on the 19th signed their protest against the French occupation and fortification of Leith (ib. i. 1342, 1365). The regent replied that it was as lawful for her daughter to fortify in her own realm as for him to build at Hamilton Sib. i. 1377). The arrival of Arran and deletion of Chatelherault was a severe blow to her, but Bothwell and Seaton still held by her, and Huntly and Morton remained neutral (ib. ii. 45, 175; Teulet, i. 355). Accusations of a settled design on her part to subvert the liberties of Scotland and of intended usurpation on the part of Chatelherault and Arran were exchanged and denied. On Wednesday, 18 Oct., the lords occupied Edinburgh, and she retired into Leith (Stevenson, ii. 42, 97, 102). Next day they called upon her to evacuate Leith, in a letter which she described in her reply of the 21st as appearing to come from a prince to his subjects (ib. ii. 94, 107). She expressed herself ready for concord if they would obey their superiors. On the same day ' the nobility and commons of the protestants of the church of Scotland ' suspended her from the regency, chose a council of thirteen, and ordered the siege of Leith (ib. ii. Ill, 116, 120). But they could not keep their men together; the English help, in spite of their entreaties, was still confined to money; and Both well's capture of one of the subsidies on 31 Oct. exposed their connection with England, and so dismayed them that the garrison of Leith made two successful sallies, and on 6 Nov. the congregation evacuated Edinburgh (ib. ii. 183, 211). Mary, as Sadler acknowledged, ' used no extremity ' in Edinburgh, and was disposed, it was thought, to admit the lords to grace if they would put away the intriguers Balnaves and Lethington (ib. ii. 272).
Before the end of the month (November 1559) Mary, whose health had long been failing, was seriously ill, and on 4 Dec. Francis and Mary issued a commission to the Marquis d'Elbœuf to act as their lieutenant-general in Scotland (ib. ii. 305, 368). But the opponents of the Guises caused delay ; and when in January 1660 D'Elbœuf set sail, he was driven back by a storm, and the prospect of a Huguenot rising detained him in France. On the 22nd an English fleet was in the Forth (ib. ii. 581, 600). On 27 Feb. the treaty of Berwick was concluded between England and the Scottish lords (ib. ii. 781). The Guises despatched Monti uc, bishop of Valence, to the Scots with offers which Mary, who had now somewhat recovered, stigmatised as 'shameful as well for the honour of God as the reputation of the king' (ib. ii. 844, 906). D Oysel had been obliged to evacuate Fife, from which he had driven the protestants, and, according to Knox (ii. 8), drawn from Mary the exclamation, ' Where is now John Knox his God? My God is now stronger than his, yea, even in Fyff ' (Stevenson, ii. 565, 711). When Lord Grey, at the end of March, led an English army to join in the siege of Leith, Lord Erskine, who had maintained an attitude of neutrality, gave the sick queen a refuge in the castle of Edinburgh (ib. ii. 915). Elizabeth desired peace, and would not have the castle besieged. Randolph, however, 'feared the dowager's long practice in craft and subtility,' and 'would not report what she had been heard to say of the queen's life and behaviour' (ib. ii. 957). Earlier in the year she had tried to discredit Chatelherault by forging a letter from him to the French king (ib. ii. 906). Elizabeth withdrew her veto on the siege of the castle when it was represented to her that the dowager by sending up and down continually did more harm than five hundred Frenchmen. The Bishop of Valence, after being delayed three weeks by Norfolk at Berwick, reached Edinburgh on 22 April 1560, and found Mary undismayed by her troubles (ib. ii. 1056; Teitlet, i. 574). He was empowered to offer the congregation such a reduction of the French force as would render it merely sufficient to garrison the strong places, but Mary insisted on terms which the lords would not accept, and the negotiations finally broke down on their refusal to renounce their league with England (ib. i. 592-5; Stevenson, ii. 1076). On the 29th she wrote that she was putting the castle in a state of defence, and was better in health, though still lame and far gone with a dropsy (ib. ii. 1093). She had been her own doctor and surgeon (ib. iii. 104). It would indeed have been a marvellous recovery if she had really, as asserted by Knox, who surpasses himself in the brutality of his reference to her sufferings, been able to see from the castle, at a distance of over two miles, the corpses hung along the wall of Leith after a successful sally on 7 May, and hopping in her joy had remarked, ' Yonder are the fairest tapestrie that ever I saw' (Knox, ii. 67). She again sought to engage the besiegers in negotiation, and wept over the misery of the country ; but the English commanders, who intercepted the letters in which she encouraged D'Oysel to hold out till the promised succour came from France, thought ' her blubbering was not for. nothing (Stevenson, iii. 97, 104). "Sot more than a week before her death she was ' promising the neutrals great mountains ' to abstain from the congregation until they saw what came of the Bishop of Valence's new mission (Haynes, Burghley State Papers, p. 321 ). Throckmorton urged Cecil for the love of God to ' provide that she were rid from thence, for she hath the heart of a man of war f (Stevenson, iii. 168). On 8 June, feeling herself dying, she had an affecting interview with the lords of the congregation, asked them to believe that she had favoured the weal of Scotland as well as of France, and besought them earnestly to acknowledge their duty to their queen, keep their ancient friendship with France, and arrange for the departure of both the French and English troops from the realm (ib. p. 172 ; Lesley, p. 289). She did not refuse to see the preacher Willock, and ' did openly confess that there was no salvation but by the death of Jesus Christ. But of the Mass we heard not her Confession, and some said she was anointed of the papistical manner ' (Knox, ii. 69). She died on 11 June 1560 before one o'clock in the morning, while the English and French ambassadors were still discussing preliminaries at Newcastle (Stevenson, iii. 191, 206; Haynes, p. 325; Diurnal, pp.59, 276; Lodge, Illustrations, i. 329 ; cf. Stevenson, iii. 194 ; Knox, ii. 71). A funeral oration was pronounced at Notre-Dame on 12 Aug. by Claude d'Espence, which was printed at Paris in the next year. Her burial had been deferred until parliament should meet on 10 July, and it was ultimately settled that she shouid be buried in France. Knox says that because 'the preachers refused to allow superstitious rites she was lappit in a cope of lead until the 19 Oct., when she was carried to France' (ii. 160). But it would appear that it was not until March 1561 that the body was removed to Fecamp in Normandy, and in July taken thence to Rheims, where it was buried in the church of the nunnery of St. Peter, of which her sister Renée was abbess (Diurnal, p. 282; Lesley, De Rebus Gestis Scot. p. 569; Tytler, vi. 398). Her monument, with a full-length figure of the queen in bronze, was destroyed at the revolution (Anselme, Histoire Généalogique de la Maison Royale de France, iii. 492).
Mary of Guise was ‘of the largest stature of women,’ and considered handsome in her youth (Hamilton Papers, i. 630). There are portraits of her at Hampton Court, and in the collections of the Earl of Elgin at Broomhall in Fife, the Duke of Devonshire at Hardwicke Hall, and Earl Beauchamp at Madresfield Court. Four other portraits are enumerated in Way's ‘Catalogue of the Meeting of the Archæological Institute at Edinburgh in 1856’ (pp. 162, 200). Granger mentions several engraved portraits (Biog. Hist. i. 84).
Mary had her full share of the Guise gifts. Friends and foes alike bear testimony to her ability and her force of mind and will. Knox's venomous language reflects the fear in which the protestants stood of her, and Throckmorton could not withhold his admiration of ‘her queenly mind, in that she mislikes all such compositions but such as shall render the realm of Scotland subject absolutely to the queen her daughter’ (Stevenson, iii. 116). Committed to a French policy, with which, however, she may not have always agreed in every point, she sometimes showed real sympathy with her Scottish subjects.
The one relaxation from the cares of state which Mary seems to have allowed herself was to play ‘at the cartes,’ at which on one occasion she lost six thousand crowns to D'Essé, and then inducing him to risk it against her credit for a similar sum succeeded in winning it back (Strickland, ii. 65, 115, 210). She wrote French legibly, but spelt so badly that M. Teulet thought it necessary to translate her letters into modern French. She spoke Scots fluently but ungrammatically, using ‘me’ for ‘I.’
A little-known incident in her life is the government by France in her name of the principality of Orange for some years after the revolt there against William of Nassau (William the Silent) about 1548. Her cousin Anne, daughter of Antoine, duke of Lorraine, had been wife of the previous prince of Orange, René of Nassau (Freeman, Hist. Essays, iv. 92).
[Miss Strickland's life of Mary of Lorraine in her Queens of Scotland (vols. i–ii.) has the well-known merits and defects of her work. The principal original sources are the Hamilton Papers, vols. i–ii., ed. Bain; State Papers of Henry VIII; Thorpe's Calendar of Scottish State Papers; Stevenson's Calendar of State Papers for the Reign of Elizabeth, For. Ser., all published by the master of the rolls; Teulet's Papiers d'État d'Écosse and Inventaire Chronologique; Lesley's History; Melville's Memoirs; Knox's Works; Stevenson's Illustrations of Scottish History, and the Diurnal of Occurrents in the publications of the Bannatyne Club; the Acts of the Scottish Parliament, and the Register of the Scottish Privy Council; Sadler's State Papers, ed. Sir Walter Scott. For the French side of her history see also René de Bouillé's Histoire des Ducs de Guise; Forneron's Les Ducs de Guise et leur Époque, Paris, 1877; Brantôme's Vies des grands Hommes, Paris, 1787, and Lord Balcarres's Lettres de quelques hauts personnages adressées à la Reine d'Écosse, Marie de Guise, Edinburgh, 1834. Of the general histories, Tytler's is here by far the best.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.196
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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