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Historical Summary"I BELIEVE there will be a mad world." Thus prophetically wrote the English ambassador on hearing that a dazzling nineteen-year-old beauty, the passionate Queen of France, Mary Stuart, was planning to return to Scotland and take over the rule in person. The only daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise, Mary Queen of Scots was the complete woman. In the words of Swinburne, passion alone could shake the double fortress of her impregnable heart and her ever-active brain. Her nemesis was the reigning Queen of England, only child of Henry VIII by Anne Boleyn. As different from Mary as night from day, Elizabeth was masculine in mind and temperament. While the reputed impossibility of marriage made her free in flirtations, and her life, from her sixteenth to her fifty-sixth year, was marked by a parade of matrimonial schemes, not always distinguished by delicacy, the psychoanalysts would probably explain her extravagant use of the outward trappings of femininity as a kind of compensation for sexual frustration. It has been said that the most womanly thing recorded of Elizabeth was her cry when she heard that Mary had given birth to a son. Sit James Melville, a Scottish diplomat, gives a revealing account of Elizabeth’s reaction: "But so soon as the Secretary Cecil whispered in her ear the news of the Prince’s birth, all her mirth was laid aside for the night, all present marvelling whence proceeded such a change, and the queen did sit down putting her hand under her cheek, bursting out to some of the ladies, that the Queen of Scots was mother of a fair son, while she was but a barren stock." But the next day Elizabeth welcomed the Scottish ambassador with "a merry countenance" and informed him that "the good news had cured her of a fifteen-day heavy sickness!" Mary’s downfall started with her marriage to her cousin Darnley, who was next to Mary in the succession to Elizabeth’s throne. A year later the debauched coward was assassinated, and shortly thereafter Mary astounded the world by marrying her husband’s assassin, Lord Bothwell. Controversy still rages as to Mary’s complicity in the plot that led to Darnley’s death (the debatable "Casket Letters," if authentic, were incontrovertible proof that Mary was an accomplice in the murder). These shocking events kindled the embers of civil war. Mary was captured, forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James VI, escaped, attempted to raise rebellion, and fled across the border. She never again set foot in Scotland. Mary spent nineteen years as the prisoner of Elizabeth. Parliament considered the Scottish queen "dangerous to the public peace," and demanded her execution. Elizabeth resisted for years, not out of compassion, but because she dreaded the responsibility. She finally, however, put her signature to the warrant, and Mary received the stroke of death from the headsman on February 8, 1587. She met her death with unshaken fortitude. In 1564, Sir James Melville, a career diplomat, was sent by Mary as special emissary to reconcile Elizabeth to her marriage with Darnley. Elizabeth, then thirty-one years old, was piqued by womanly curiosity to learn how Mary compared in looks with her own regal person. The comparison, recorded in Melville’s Memoirs of My Own Life, was hardly flattering to Elizabeth, even though the shrewd Scotsman sugared the bitter pill most diplomatically.
Key QuoteVirgin Queen Elizabeth looks at Mary, Queen of Scots, and finds the competition too annoying.
James Melville’s
Glasgow
1751
Too Tall by a Head
[1564]
During nine days that I remained at the court it pleased her Majesty to confer with me every day, and sometimes thrice in a day, in the morning, after dinner, and after supper. Sometimes she would say that, seeing she could not meet with the queen [Mary], her good sister, to confer with her familiarly, she was resolved to open a good part of her inward mind to me, that I might show it again to the queen.
"I am resolved never to marry if I be not thereto necessitated by the queen, my sister’s, harsh behavior toward me."
"I know the truth of that, madam," said I. "You need not tell it me. Your Majesty thinks, if you were married, you would be but queen of England; and now you are both king and queen. I know your spirit cannot endure a commander."
She appeared to be so affectionate to the queen, her good sister, that she expressed a great desire to see her. Because the so much, by her, desired meeting could not be so hastily brought to pass, she appeared with great delight to look upon her Majesty’s picture.
She took me to her bed-chamber, and opened a little cabinet, wherein were diverse little pictures wrapt within paper, and their names written with her own hand upon the papers. Upon the first that she took up was written: "My Lord’s picture." I held the candle, and pressed to see the picture so named. She appeared loath to let me see it, yet my importunity prevailed for a sight thereof, and found it to be the Earl of Leicester’s picture. I desired that I might have it to carry home to my queen; which she refused, alleging that she had but one picture of his. I said: "Your Majesty hath here the original"; for I perceived him at the farthest part of the chamber, speaking with Secretary Cecil. Then she took out the queen’s picture, and kissed it; and I adventured to kiss her hand, for the great love therein evidenced to my mistress.
She showed me also a fair ruby, as
great as a tennis ball. I desired that she would either send it, or my Lord Leicester’s picture, as a token unto the queen. She said, if the queen would follow her counsel, that she would in process of time get all she had; that in the meantime she was resolved in a token to send her with me a fair diamond.
The queen, my mistress, had instructed me to leave matters of gravity sometimes and cast in merry purposes, lest otherwise I should be wearied, she being well informed of that queen’s natural temper. Therefore, in declaring my observations of the customs of Dutchland, Poland, and Italy, the busking of the women was not forgot, and what country weed I best thought becoming gentlewomen. The queen said that she had clothes of every sort; which every day thereafter, as long as I was there, she changed. One day she had the English weed, another the French, another the Italian, and so forth. She asked me which of them became her best. I answered, in my judgment, the Italian dress; which answer I found pleased her well, for she delighted to show her golden colored hair, wearing a caul1 and bonnet as they do in Italy.
Her hair was more reddish than yellow, curled in appearance naturally. She desired to know of me what color of hair was reputed best, and whether my queen’s hair or hers was best, and which of the two was fairest. I answered, the fairness of them both was not their worst faults. But she was earnest of me to declare which of them I judged fairest. I said she was the fairest queen in England and mine the fairest queen in Scotland. Yet she appeared earnest. I answered that they were both the fairest in their countries; that her Majesty was whiter, but my queen was very lovely.
She inquired which of them was of the higher stature. I said my queen.
"Then," saith she, "she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low."
Then she asked what kind of exercises she used. I answered that when I received my dispatch the queen was but lately come from the highland hunting; that when her more serious affairs permitted she was taken up with reading of histories; that she sometimes recreated herself in playing upon the lute and virginals. She asked if she played well. I said, reasonably, for a queen.
1A kind of hair net.
Chicago: James Melville, Memoirs of My Own Life, ed. James Melville’s in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed April 24, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=37HCQ39UVUT45FN.
MLA: Melville, James. Memoirs of My Own Life, edited by James Melville’s, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 24 Apr. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=37HCQ39UVUT45FN.
Harvard: Melville, J, Memoirs of My Own Life, ed. . cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 24 April 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=37HCQ39UVUT45FN.
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