Mary Stuart*
The Story. Courtship, for Mary, began in the cradle. At four months she made her first conquest. Henry VIII sought her tiny hand for his infant Prince. But England was Scotland's hereditary foe; France the friend of her traditions and of the religion of the Scottish court. Mary's betrothal to the French Dauphin (Francis
II) was accomplished, he being three, she five. François de Valois shy, timid, bilious weakling, married her at Notre Dame when she was 16. Brantôme says she was more beautiful than a goddess. Ronsard du Bellay and De Maisonfleur wrote poems for her, over which she wept. She wore blue velvet, embroidered with silver lilies. A year later François was King of France, and Mary's devoted slave; after a reign of 16 months she was a widow.
Upon her return to Scotland, Mary and her counselors formed ambitious plans for marrying her to Don Carlos, son of morose Philip of Spain, or to the Archduke of Austria, or into the royal family of France. Scotland was the backdoor to England. Queen Elizabeth was determined Mary should make no "mighty marriage," was fertile in expedients, threats, cajolery. Her Scottish Protestant counselors urged her to a decision as to Mary's marriage: "Remember how earnestly she is sought otherwyse; you see the lustiness of her boddie, you know what these thynges require . . . Loss of her time is our destruction." Elizabeth would only offer vague suggestions as to the English succession and renew her futile suggestion of Dudley, whom she had lovingly tickled under his ruff as he knelt before her to be made Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester.
When Elizabeth ordered Henry, Lord Darnley, back to England, hinting that she might marry him, Mary nursed him through the measles and married him herself. She was 23 years old. He was handsome, beardless—"a pretty stripling," reared by a fussily ambitious mother and a vain, weak father never to forget the contingency that if Elizabeth died childless he was heir to the English throne. Within a month Darnley had shown himself to be a selfish, inconstant, drunken roisterer, vicious and contemptible. A hired assassin could have murdered Rizzio, her Italian diplomatist, but to discredit Mary, Darnley was persuaded to have it done of his own will, at the very door of her chamber in Holyrood. "Well, ye have taken the last of me, and so, farewell," she cried to him when she recovered consciousness.
Darnley was with her when their baby (James VI) was born; thenceforth he was politically a cypher. Scottish coins bearing their joint effigy were recalled. Feigning reconciliation she tempted him from the security of his father's castle and a crowd of his own retainers. The poor fool was strangled at Kirk-o'-Field by Rizzio's murderers, whom he had betrayed and Mary had pardoned.