RETURN TO SCOTLAND

ary's return to the country over which she had reigned in name since shortly after her birth, was lackluster. She was accustomed to the luxury and ceremony of the French court, and to its language and culture. She was half French, and if anywhere was home for her, it was France. But Catherine de'Medici was in control of France, and some stories tell of the older woman's bitter resentment of the young and charming Queen. Possibly it suited Catherine that Mary, who had been such a useful instrument to her Guise relatives, would go back whence she came.

From the first the omens were bad. As Mary boarded her ship, another vessel in the harbor capsized and its occupants were drowned. By a stroke of irony, the commander of Mary's little fleet was one of her future husbands, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, a man destined to shake the ship of the Scottish state, and contribute to the overthrow of its sovereign.

James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell

At Leith, where she stepped ashore, she found a cool welcome. She was unexpected, and was greeted only by a few fisherfolk. She lodged at an ordinarily town house, somewhat beneath her queenly dignity, while arrangements were made to carry her to Edinburgh. Those arrangements proved to consist of a horse that looked fit for nothing.
En-route, she made herself popular by pardoning a man who had been sentenced to death for frivolity on the Sabbath. But in doing so she confirmed the suspicions of the fanatical Protestant preacher, John Knox, that she was an enemy of his religion. Knox was a force to be reckoned with in Scotland. A former Catholic priest, now zealously anti-Catholic, and possessed of an unshakable conviction of his own righteousness and destiny, Knox could seem at times almost a caricature of a reformer. He was an enthralling preacher, although his time in the galleys from 1547 to 1549 had done nothing to sweeten his temper, or make him a jot more tolerant of his enemies. His enemies were the Lord's enemies; the Lord's enemies were evil. The Scotland to which Mary now returned was divided into factions in various ways - by family and clan, by geography, and perhaps most importantly, by religion. Such divisions made the political situation dangerous, and unstable. It would call for the coolest, boldest and practiced leadership

One man in Scotland who did posses these qualities in some degree was Mary's half-brother, James Stewart. He was one of James V's many bastards, and chafed at the circumstance of his birth, which deprived him of the crown and settled it upon the head of a slip of a girl. However, he concealed his ambitions for the time being, and presented himself to Mary as a loyal friend.

Holyrood House

James was a Protestant, which endeared him to his co-religionists. However, he was happy to let Mary celebrate Mass at Holyrood House, her palace in Edinburgh, and make for herself there a little oasis of French court culture. Even though he personally had to intervene to save the lives of her priests when an anti-Catholic mob went on the rampage, it suited him that his half-sister should make herself unpopular with the he Protestants.

ary in her innocence, thought it would be pleasant if all her subjects, Catholic and Protestant alike, could agree to live and let live; however, as yet she lacked the political acumen to judge how far it would be possible to pursue such a policy. Of the guile that was a necessary political tool, she then had little. She agreed to meet John Knox in the hope of arriving at understanding. It was a forlorn hope. Mary ended up compromising her regal status by letting Knox lecture her and evade her questions. Mary could not silence criticism of her court and herself. Her French, Catholic way of life went on, with such elegant amusements as a cross-dressing masque, which, no matter how innocent, put a stick into the hand of Knox and his followers with which to beat her. There was perhaps, no more licentiousness at Mary's court than in the household of many a Protestant nobleman, but what there was was eagerly seized on. So Mary's subjects came to hear of the scandal of a servant who had given birth to an illegitimate child, and then killed it. Father and mother were duly punished for their hideous crime. When a French poet hid twice in the Queen's bedchamber, apparently intending to make love to her, he too was punished: he was tried for treason and executed. If such severity was meant to prove Mary's probity, it failed to do so. To her foes it all merely confirmed that the court was a hellish place of lust and bloodshed.

John Knox

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