Back in the day: A look at the key advisers to a young, widowed Mary, Queen of Scots

His widow was devastated. In the space of six months Mary had lost her mother, Marie de Guise, and the husband that by all accounts she dearly loved. Had there been a child of the marriage, Mary could have stayed in France and perhaps become regent but instead that role went to Catherine de Medici, mother of Francois and his successor, his 10-year-old brother Charles IX.

We should not feel too sorry for Mary, because in a secret pact before her marriage – a sort of royal pre-nuptial game of thrones – she had agreed that should she die without issue, the Crown of Scotland would pass to the Dauphin, as Francois then was.

The people of France and Scotland had already been granted dual citizenship and, under this agreement, the two thrones would be united. Nobody had asked the Scottish Parliament.

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Mary was also recognised by Catholics, and indeed some Protestants, as a potential claimant to the throne of England, so she also assigned that claim to King Henri II, only for him to die in a jousting accident. A lance being wielded by a captain of the Garde Ecossaise, Gabriel Montgomery, splintered and pierced the king’s eye and brain, causing his death 11 days later on July 10, 1559. Montgomery is a fascinating character in his own right and I will write about him in a future Back In The Day column.

Catherine de Medici was not Mary’s biggest fan – she is said to have been jealous of Mary’s youth and beauty. Although the young widow could have had her pick of suitors with the King of Sweden and the crown prince of Spain both said to be very keen to wed her, Mary decided to accept the Scottish Parliament’s invitation to return home and take up her personal rule of the country.

Now a series of men would be the powers behind her throne, and it would be Mary’s tragedy that she would be caught up in the constant double dealings by men that went on around her.

Mary was returning to a country which was changing utterly. The Scottish Reformation is usually incorrectly seen as a simple transformation brought about in the summer of 1560 when, firstly, the Treaty of Edinburgh – also called the Treaty of Leith – ended the proxy war between the Catholic French and Protestant English and removed both of their forces from Scotland.

Secondly, the Scottish Parliament decided to back the moves by the Protestant Lords of the Congregation to remove the papacy and its adherents from any authority in Scotland, ban the celebration of mass and adopt the Confession of Faith which had been written under the supervision of John Knox.

After Mary returned via Leith to Edinburgh amidst great public rejoicing in August 1561, practically one of her first actions was to lay out her plans for religious tolerance.

Although a devout Catholic, she realised that the Protestant Reformation was a fait accompli. She attended mass at Holyrood and only the intervention of Lord James Stewart, her half-brother, stopped a mob from slaughtering the priests who were due to lead the service.

Lord James Stewart was the illegitimate half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots

Mary would later go on to hold several “disputations” with Knox, but he was never a power behind her throne, more accurately a power before her throne as he personally harangued the Queen of Scots who he considered to be the latest incarnation of the “Monstrous Regiment” of powerful women.

Lord James Stewart really was a power behind the throne. He was the illegitimate son of King James V and his mistress Lady Margaret Erskine, the wife of Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven, and had been born in 1531 – maddeningly, as with so many Scottish figures from that era, we do not know the exact date.

He stayed close to his father, who gave him an income from church lands, and seems to have been educated more in militaristic terms than scholarly ones.

After James V died and Mary came to the throne as an infant, there was some talk of him becoming regent in place of the Earl of Arran. Marie de Guise took that role, however, and Lord James seems to have been content to serve under her at first, even leading a raid into England.

In 1558, he attended his half-sister Mary’s wedding to the Dauphin in Paris but the following year saw him emerge as one of the leaders of the Lords of the Congregation. He is said to have personally removed images from Catholic institutions in Perth after Knox preached his famous sermon there.

It was Lord James who had arranged the return of Mary, and while in no way hindering the progress of the Reformation, he did assure the Queen that she could attend mass in private – hence his actions at Holyrood.

Knox wasn’t having it and preached a vicious sermon at St Giles’ the following Sunday: “One mass is more fearful than 10,000 armed enemies landing in any part of the realm.”

John Knox

Lord James was joined by a remarkable politician and lawyer in advising Mary at this point. William Maitland of Lethington was the son of a judge Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, who would live to the age of 90 and survived his son. Maitland is usually known as Secretary Lethington because his brother Sir John Maitland of Thirlestane followed in his footsteps and also became Secretary of State – we’ll meet Thirlestane again when I write about the reign of James VI.

Lethington is one of the most fascinating characters in Scottish history because his time in authority was one of the most turbulent eras that Scotland had ever seen.

He was educated at St Andrews and on the continent, and had a rapid rise to prominence under the Queen Regent Marie de Guise, whose service he entered in 1554.

Four years later he was made Secretary of State but after the Lords of the Congregation got their act together in 1559, Maitland joined them against Marie.

In that year the former regent, the Earl of Arran (Duke of Chatelherault), also joined the Reformation cause but was no longer welcome in royal circles.

Lord James Stewart was, however, and he and Lethington formed a strong partnership during the 1560s.

By the time of Mary’s return in 1561, the two men were the principal advisers to the Queen, and much of the credit for her quite deft manoeuvrings in the early part of her reign must go to Lord James and Sir Lethington.

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Most of her problems were to do with religion, but Lethington in particular was able to advise her on what might be called a middle way as he was opposed to Knox’s extremist views.

The Queen was accompanied by Lord James and Secretary Lethington on the several “Royal Progresses” she made in the first few months of her reign, allowing the public as far north as Aberdeenshire and as far south as the Borders to see their beautiful queen.

So pleased was Mary with her half-brother’s service that in January, 1562, she made him the Earl of Moray and Earl of Mar, although the latter title was later annulled.

Moray was very much in touch with the English authorities at that time while Lethington seems to have spent countless hours and written dozens of letters in an attempt to find a suitable husband for Mary.

In the autumn of 1562, a rebellion broke out in the north-east of the country, led by Lord George Gordon, the 4th Earl of Huntly. Ironically, Gordon was a Catholic who had refused to convert to Protestantism, but religion was not at the heart of his rebellion against his Catholic queen. Instead it was the perceived slight against him by the Queen, who had given the earldoms of Moray and Mar to Lord James even though Huntly thought they were part of his family’s titles.

Mary herself went north, intending to talk Huntly into a peaceful solution, and ended up staying in Aberdeen. Huntly set out with 700 men intent on capturing her. It was at this point that Moray proved himself a more than capable soldier.

On October 28, 1562, his army of around 2000 men entrapped Huntly and his force, which had been reduced to 500 by desertions, at Corrichie. He had chosen his battleground with care – it was marshy and cavalry were thus useless. According to Knox, Lethington rallied the troops with a Protestant prayer.

Despite initial success for Huntly, the royal army’s second line of infantry stood firm and then advanced in solid formation, their long pikes proving far superior to the swords of Huntly’s men. They soon broke and ran, with 120 of Huntly’s men lying dead on the Corrichie battlefield and about 150 captured.

One of those taken was the Earl of Huntly, who promptly died on the spot from what was then called an apoplexy, but which was most probably an aneurysm.

Huntly’s son and heir Sir John Gordon was also captured and duly executed for treason. Mary witnessing the beheading, which reduced her to tears. Huntly’s other son, George, succeeded to the title and we shall meet him again later in this series about powers behind the throne as he would become Lord Chancellor of Scotland.

Moray was now the most powerful man in Scotland, but he and Lethington were about to encounter a major problem in the persons of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the son of the 4th Earl of Lennox who we have encountered previously in this series, and Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Margaret Tudor who had been Queen Consort of James V and was the sister of Henry VIII.

Darnley thus had a claim to the throne of England and Scotland, and although raised a Catholic he had ceased to practise his religion but had not fully converted to Protestantism. Such vacillating should have warned the Scottish court, and the Earl of Moray was one of the first to take against him.

Despite his many efforts, Lethington had been unable to find a suitable husband for Queen Mary, even though Elizabeth of England had offered her own alleged lover, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester – it must be said he was no catch as the Earl had been suspected of murdering his wife so he could be free to marry Elizabeth.

All such machinations were swept away, however, when the 18-year-old Darnley arrived on the scene.

No doubt conscious of the pain of her own 16 years of exile in France, Queen Mary allowed the earl of Lennox to come back to Scotland in September, 1564. Darnley duly followed his father north and on February 17, 1565, he met the Queen.

She had actually met Darnley twice before in France, but now he had grown very tall and handsome and he made an immediate impression on Mary.

Probably one of his biggest qualities was his sheer height – Mary herself was exceptionally tall for a woman of that time at 5ft 11ins, but her relative Darnley was well over 6ft, and she was quite frankly dazzled by him.

In April, 1565, Darnley fell ill with measles and Mary nursed him day and night at Stirling Castle, completely falling for him. She was determined to marry him, and nobody was going to get in her way.