Mary Queen of Scots by Retha Warnicke Read Free Book Online

and Livingston. Her spiritual advisers were her almoner, John Erskine, prior of Inchmahome, and Alexander Scott, canon of the chapel royal of Stirling and parson of Balmaclellan.
    After Arran rejected his reformist stance, Henry encouraged his col-laborators in Scotland to support anti-papal behavior, hoping to promote a religious understanding between the two realms that would result in the reinstatement of the Treaties of Greenwich. One Scotsman pressing for reform was John Knox, a tutor of Alexander, son of John Cockburn of Ormiston. Knox condemned Cardinal Beaton’s crusade against heresy and his decision in March 1546 to burn the charismatic reformer, George Wishart, a Cambridge alumnus and probably an English agent.
    In retaliation for his execution, some Fife men, disguised as stone-masons, invaded the castle at St Andrews in May 1546 and assassinated Beaton. Others, including Knox, who were associated with Wishart, joined the murderers, known as the Castilians. With some limited English aid, they controlled the castle until July 1547 when a French fleet forced their surrender. Their conquerors sent some Castilians of high social rank to French prisons but employed others as galley slaves, including Knox and James Balfour.
    Some months following the castle’s surrender, the second phase of the Rough Wooing commenced. After Edward’s accession in January 1547, his uncle, Somerset, the Lord Protector, decided to use force to complete his nephew’s marriage to Mary. In September after he defeated the Scots at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh near Musselburgh, Mary of Guise transferred her daughter to the priory of Inchmahome, which lies on an island in the Lake of Menteith. Their short residence led to the growth of many legends, among them that the little queen planted a garden there, but she was much too young for this achievement and was back at Stirling by early October. After William, Lord Grey of Wilton, and Lennox led armies into Scotland in February 1548, Grey to the east and Lennox to the west, the queen mother had her child removed on the 29th to Dumbarton, the most important strategic castle in western Scotland. The English captured several fortifications, built two new forts, and created an area regarded as their pale that centered on Haddington, which lay 18 miles from Edinburgh.
    Having requested assistance from Henry II, the successor of Francis I in 1547, Arran and Mary of Guise agreed on 7 July that the queen should wed Francis the dauphin, who was born 19 January 1544. Arran had earlier pledged that in return for a French duchy and a marriage for his namesake son with Frances, the elder daughter of Louis of Bourbon, duke of Montpensier, he would seek parliamentary consent for Mary’s union with the dauphin, her removal to France, and French control of certain Scottish fortifications. Clearly interested in this alliance because Mary was also a claimant to the English throne, Henry II promised Arran full authority in Scotland during her minority and support for his accession in the event of her death without children.
    These were substantial concessions, as Henry subsequently granted Arran the dukedom of Châtelherault with an annual income of 12,000 livres. Although his son, referred to hereafter as the earl of Arran, moved to France, he failed to win Montpensier’s daughter. In March during these negotiations, Mary contracted a case of measles, which because of its rumored severity may have been rubella. Her illness raised concerns about the Scottish succession, since measles had a high mortality rate among children in the early modern period, but by the 23rd the crisis was over.
    Meeting in tents erected near the Abbey of Haddington in July, parliament approved Mary’s French marriage and residence and the employment of Henry II’s forces to expel the English invaders, thereby transforming Scotland into a French protectorate. Although French fleets had provided occasional assistance to the queen