https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/mary-queen-of-scots
Welcome to Between The Stools on 12th February 2023, the true start of our history year. We’ll be mostly in the 16th C but will go back in time at least once and forward at least once; and we’ll mostly be in Britain but will cross the sea once in both directions.
Tonight’s vague advertised title was because I couldn’t decide, until I began writing this, whether Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey would be the focus. This week saw the anniversaries of the deaths of both – Jane’s being today – as well as Lord Darnley, and Katherine Howard. Katherine will feature in Lent as I take a wife of Henry VIII’s each week, but not in order; and I may speak more of Jane in July, when she had her nine days as queen. Darnley comes into Mary’s story, and it’s a story I already know well and would like to share, although I see some parallels with Jane: teenagers who came to the throne, whose ig-nobles hoped to puppeteer; set against a rival related queen of the opposite Christian faith; there is a Catholic Mary in both stories. Yet neither young woman was as malleable as they anticipated. And all the lives I mentioned today were cut short – three of them literally, as was at least one other woman and queen we will spend time on over the spring.
Before I launch into history, I would like to have a time for healing. I don’t know how much to say publicly online, but this last month, I am deeply grateful for the prayers and healing that I have received, internationally, and from so many different beliefs. Catholics got out their rosaries, Evangelicals bound in in the name of Jesus, and Pagans stirred their cauldrons…. thank you all. I wish to attest to the power of energy healing and natural remedies as well as the power of prayer. I literally have experienced miracles.
So now, I would like to pray for all of you. I will not interfere with free will and your life path, but I can guarantee that on some level, healing will take place
but that outcomes are nothing to do with God’s desertion or our deserving
God is willing and able and you are worthy
Prayers for you, a loved one, the world…. crisis can be a time to especially experience love
bind, loose… set up a wave of prayer
Reach out to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk
I would love us to be a praying community and a healing one
or if you’d like it to be known (put as little as you’d like) pop in a comment
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My view on history
My way into history was film, and a controversial one – 25 years old this year. As I knew little of history then, ignorance was literally bliss, but the 1998 Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett was a turning point in my life, for a serious love of film and history and further degrees followed.
I was intrigued that the filmmakers seemed to deliberately explode the myth and begin from the woman inside, rather than fit a story around the established facts. They queried what those facts were, especially regarding intimate matters. This immediately resonated, for aren’t the most private but interesting things not committed to paper – or soon put into a fire if they are? Did royal courtiers explore their feelings, let alone express them? With so much whispered behind closed doors, what could we really know?
Elizabeth will feature in September, her birthday month, but I will say now that this film that was slated by some history buffs and confounded academics. On watching the DVD director’s commentary, I learned that this film wasn’t meant to be a portrayal of the historical Queen Elizabeth I, but a story about larger themes fitted around her. Shekhar Kapur, an Indian, Hindu and kindred spirit as he too likes to wave his arms, said of his film: “It is operatic! It is about destiny, divinity and absolute power.”
I teach a course on History In Film, and it begins with that one and looks at others which treat their real life subjects in unusual ways. An activity I do at the beginning is to ask participants which order they would place the following in terms of historical reliability: a nonfiction tome by a history professor; a documentary featuring one of the same; a historical novel; a historical movie.
It might be tempting to put them in that order – happily, some do not. I want to suggest that there is no right order and that the above sequence can be reversed.
Academics can pepper their writing with ‘no doubt, and ‘surely’, creating facts by sleight of hand. If they give a reference, it’s often an end note, since it’s not expected that you’ll turn to the back, and even less that you’ll look the complicated source up. As with many Bible quoters, often the citation doesn’t support the point being made.
Of course, I am not dissing all academics as worthless or charlatans, just pointing out that much rests on a perception of authority and reliability. There is a crafted hierarchy, and a belief that a senior university position makes one’s assertions more credible than those of creators of novels and drama. But why should fiction and film be the poor relation in terms of veracity?
Documentary is not about presenting truth more than a movie – it just presents its own truth. Angles in both senses are chosen; an interview can be edited to create a different impression than the speaker intended. Mood and music, especially in modern documentaries, tells us who the makers want us to see as good or villain. Documentary is often patronising and repetitive.
Much weight is put on sources from archives, but this is a particular method of doing history, rather like the hypothetico-deductive method has become for science. Whereas they are useful, archival documents are limited proof, because they are often formal sources and as angled as the writer’s nib. I can think of at least two British queens whose chief sources were written by their enemies by people born after their deaths. We’ll meet one in Holy Week.
All history tellers need to fill in the gaps, and writers with their imaginations and understanding of people and plot are well placed to do so, perhaps even more so than academics. Writers and filmmakers can be more modest and open about their inventions.
That’s not to say that I don’t groan and growl in theatres, and don’t care about sources.
I am aware of the canon of knowledge, the changing accepted consensus by the keepers of knowledge and how academics make their name from changing that from time to time. The relationship between popular culture and university is a complex one, as noted by Thomas Betteridge.
I believe there is truth beyond empirical evidence, and that like Shekhar Kapur’s film, that a person can have both lived, and have ‘operatic’ themes that are larger than their physical existence. I concluded that the greatest truths are not those that can be held in white gloves.
My last degree was spent analysing popular sources on three 16th century British queens, and I hope to bring to you this year some of that material – the thesis that they wouldn’t let me write.
I could say much more on all that, and shall over the coming twelvemonth, but I would like to briefly explain Tudor England before popping north of the border for tonight’s main subject.
The Tudor dynasty began with Henry, grandson of a Welshman, who took the throne of England in battle in 1485. That House was perpetually aware that others had at least as good a claim, and that ensuring the smooth succession of a male line – for the crown is passed by birthright – would prevent the loss of that crown and chaos. Thus this ruling family, who are often portrayed as perhaps England’s most famous and most successful, lived in fear.
The theme of the male heir ran through their 118 years, in each generation. Yet it was an unprecedented era of queens, not seen again for over two centuries. Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, is known as the Red Queen (I love that line at the end of the Philippa Gregory adaptation when she says to her wayward husband on his knees: “Stay where you are! I am Margaret Regina!”). There is Elizabeth, Catherines x3, Janes x2, Annes x2, and Maries x3. Not since Empress Maude in 12th Century had England had a woman rule alone. [Yes, I’m aware that Matilda is contentious]. But by the mid 1500s, they were doing so on both sides of the border.
All I will say about that border for now at that time is that whereas Wales no longer was self governing, Scotland was a separate kingdom with its own royal house, the Stewarts.
I shall play some brief music as we approach that border. It is the music that I listened to as I moved to Scotland, reading Reay Tannahill’s Fatal Majesty, seeing the cathedral cities of England pass and the hills begin; then the rocky coastline of the moving border, and then the mini mountain of Arthur’s Seat at the foot of one of Mary’s palaces in Edinburgh, before coming to rest by Castle Hill. I imagined Mary on her ship from France as an eighteen year old, away for over a dozen years, approaching the Firth of Forth and then embarking at the port of Leith, a little early. This is the music to the Visit Scotland adverts at the time.
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I shan’t attempt Mary’s story – it is feature length of itself. I don’t want to spoil it by condensing it. It is complex, both because of its large cast and many intrigues, but also because: what can I say for certain, without conjecture or preference?
What I do wish to do is cast a spiritual eye over her world.
Returning to Mary’s Scottish homecoming in 1561: I can empathise with someone who in quick succession loses several important people at once – Mary’s father in law, then husband, then mother died. She was the queen of France, but now wondered if she still had a role there, or should return to where she was born?
Perhaps you too can relate; maybe you have even fled your home or country. A special welcome to any who have, and my love and prayers to any to whom the experience or its affects is current.
Two Mays ago, I spoke of the Joan of Arc Wound, or JAW wound. (I have learned that wounds are not just physical lacerations; healing the non-physical is often key to the other kind).
What is the MQS wound?
Mary never knew her father, James V of Scotland; at hearing the news of her arrival on Dec 8th 1542, he is said to have uttered, “It cam wi’ a lass and it’ll gang wi’ a lass.” His House, whose name is derived from the High Stewards, had begun with a female, and he expected that it would end with this new bairn. Heart broken over a recent lost battle – or was it the friend who led and fled? – James turned his face to the wall and died. Mary was six days old. She was in a different palace. Her Mum, Marie de Guise, wasn’t even told straight away that she had lost her husband.
So, a negative prediction from an absent father – but the lass who ended the Stewart line was 170 years away. The weak baby lived over 4 decades, and is perhaps Scotland’s best known and loved royal, and perhaps its best known historical character.
Immediately, Mary was coveted: around Europe, kingdoms who wished to annex small Scotland onto their own expansionist agendas eyed the newborn as marriage material for their princes. One such prince was their nearest neighbour: Henry VIII, the second Tudor monarch. He began attacks on Scotland, and it was feared that baby Mary might be taken by force. Thus she had an early Moses wound – being hidden from danger, often in island strongholds.
I wonder if Mary took on some of her mother’s wounds: a double widow who was separated from her son from a previous marriage, who had already lost three (two infants died suspiciously), far from the land of her birth – France – and now faced with hostile lords on the brink of a seachange, as well as blasts from below. Then Marie was separated from her 5 year old daughter, whom subsequently she visited once. Marie was betrayed by her advisors and this seemed to contribute to her death. Some of those wounds applied to Mary too.
For Mary, there was the lifelong notion that you were perceived as a threat, just because of who you are. A young, effectively foreign woman, Mary had a strong claim to the English throne and any Catholic uprising would focus on Mary, whether Mary wished for it or not.
Then there are the adult wounds of difference, persecution, of trust betrayed, and insincere love, as well as the losses of many important figures in her life. I suppose that’s enough wounds for most of us to have one in common. Mary’s faith was also a kind of wound, since she was now the outlawed minority.
I see two main themes come out of Mary’s story: religious tolerance, and ruling with the heart.
I will deal with the second first. Often Elizabeth and Mary are positioned as opposites, and depending on whose story is being primarily told – ie who the film or book is named after – will show one as hard, cold, capricious, and alone, or the cannier of the two, and Mary as either the foolish, too heart driven, ultimately plotting cousin, or the strong adorable victim. John Guy’s book, My Heart Is My Own, tries to avoid and correct those polarities, and his research underpinned the 2018 film with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. Or rather, the filmmakers optioned [ie bought the rights to adapt] his nonfiction work; involving a Cambridge professor was a way to gain historical kudos in the face of disbelief and controversy. But I too wish to avoid worn and untrue tropes, and instead posit what I saw in my first viewing of that film.
To me, the tragedy of Elizabeth and Mary is that they did not, and perhaps could not, genuinely connect as women and sisters. It’s often portrayed that Elizabeth became honorarily male in spirit; she cut out her heart and became untouchable in order to reign supreme. I understand that it was Elizabeth who changed her mind about meeting Mary, more than once. Mary reached out to Elizabeth – what stopped Eliza reaching back?
To me, there is no dichotomy between head and heart, and heart-ruling is not the shameful or poorer or too vulnerable way. I also believe in intuition. I believe that its value is being rediscovered in this new era, and it’s why two women who were also in a new era but ultimately chose to rule and relate in the old way is relevant. It is cautionary and instructive.
These women were roses surrounded by briars of ig-noble lords and advisors, forever changing and steering for their own ends. There is a divine masculine of course as much as feminine, but no-one in this story exemplified either – I would say that in Mary we see the closest depiction. The lords about her were ruthless, full of false flattery and game-playing. Friendship, love and marriage were all political terms; all rendered a commodity in mockery of their real meanings. I believe that whereas Mary was trapped by her lords, Elizabeth was also trapped into approving her cousin’s execution.
I wrote a short play on this at the time of Osama Bin Laden’s assassination, comparing the two; advisors circled the leader, pushing until they acquiesced. Was Elizabeth really tricked into signing Mary’s death warrant? I do lay much blame at Walsingham and Cecil’s doors, two of Elizabeth’s key advisors.
I see Mary Queen of Scots as a kind of Diana, Princess of Wales: tall, fair, beautiful, charming and who knew how to use clothes to make a statement. I see them both as attuned to reading people. She may also have been unwise at times, but I see Mary, like Diana, as pioneer of a different kind of leader that is very timely.
I have heard criticism of Mary’s need to be loved, as I have regarding Diana – both by their detractors. This should never be seen as a flaw or weakness. I see their capacity to love – if we can know this of Mary from the calendar of state papers and spies’ letters – as a gift and a strength.
The other aspect regarding Mary QS is Religious Tolerance. It was very pertinent to her mother, Marie, who had to navigate a changing and divided realm, when her own beliefs were the opposite of the new tide. From what I’ve read – and it’s so hard to truly know – both women seem to have acted moderately and wisely, refusing the extreme persecutions of other nations.
Marie de Guise recognised that the unrest against old heresy laws and exclusive preaching licenses was less about zeal for reformation style religion, and more about using it as an excuse for personal power. I am ever more conscious that the church I left publicly 3 years ago is very much a political power, and that its establishment was as much about creating a rival to Rome as speaking out against it.
This is where I may allow myself a little rant in pastiche of Maries’ chief detractor, John Knox.
I find him obnoxious. I also realise that my own faith, even my own faith heritage, is not with his ilk, the Protestant church. I am Nonconformist, and see a parallel with those Catholics who were persecuted and unable to worship freely and take public office for a couple of centuries. Even if Knox’s tirades against the Catholic church were true – and I am certainly anti its HQ – is it ever right to harm and threaten people for practising their faith, and which is so close to your own? Why did Knox thunder that a single mass was more terrible than 10,000 armies? What really scared him about the Catholic way of communion? Why did he take such exception to ‘idols’ – the images and colour?
Can you ever justly tear down a wicked tyrannical rule by becoming that yourself?
As novelist Nigel Tranter puts it, in ch10 of Marie and Mary p78 (better still on p86)
‘Was their Creator not the God of love?’ Are these not our brothers and sisters in the Lord?
To make Catholics fear for their lives if caught saying Mass… to rise up with such violence against the churches….can this be the behaviour of holy people?
My forebears are said to have said that they wished for the right to believe and practice faith for all – and explicitly said so for ‘papists’, and for nonChristians. They also are against state interfering with belief, as I am, and an official national religion, or Bible translation.
I cannot say, of course, who does and doesn’t really know God and speak for him, but I do wonder about Mr Knox, considered a hero to many. Having read as much as I could bear of his sermons and tracts, and seen him dramatised several times (Liz Lochhead’s play is most interesting), this is my conclusion.
John Knox was a bully. He thought that his many words, aggressively delivered, made him irrefutable; but hard to debate with and having a good argument are not the same. Reformed preachers of old can be referred to as divines, but I see nothing divine about him. He used insults, like ‘earwig’ and more colourful ones that border on profanity. He picked obscure Bible characters, likening his enemies unto them. I note that although the Bible did have chapters and verses in his day (thanks to his mates in Geneva, who I’ll take on in October), that Knox didn’t make that many biblical references to back up his thundering rhetoric. He seemed to use attrition both on his congregations, his detractors, and in public assemblies.
Forgive if I speak wrongly, but I can think of some Bible verses for him: that he be mindful that Matthew 5:22 and Luke 17:1-2 do not apply. Hatred and death threats sound a lot like inciting others to sin to me. And which commandment does that break? What of the warnings against false teachers?
Knox seems like an employed agitator, so incendiary that you’ll be galvanised one way or the other. I wonder who he worked for. I am not sure that it was for the Holy Spirit.
Did he really believe that he was serving God? If so, it was in an immature way. If he took one of those spiritual quizzes: Are you an old soul? his result would be: No, a very young one, for absolute intolerance sounds like someone – whether or not you accept other lifetimes – who is not very evolved. It seems that Knox hasn’t understood the true nature of God – not that I’m claiming myself to be expert or flawless either. But his is the god that I think is the usurping god of the Old Testament, which Knox seems to like to quote more. Where is Love?
I agree that we are not bound to obey our earthly rulers if they are unjust; and unlike Mary and Elizabeth, I do not believe in the divine right to rule. But I have deep disregard – nay, repugnance, for his tract, First Blast of The Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. I think this was how I met John Knox – in a book by an evangelical feminist not yet able to embrace gay people, but who was clear that Knox and the so-called Church Fathers before him were absolute misogynists. And that their words still harm women.
*I think that the real issue is: the other Mary (Mother). Knox and his pals were afraid of females in the godhead. The Trinity is a belief derived from rather than explicit in Scripture, and the Holy Spirit is female. I have come to believe that the Trinity is a four leafed clover, one with a split leaf between the Red and Blue Mary. Knox perhaps was actually afraid of women and the power we have, what Hindus see as Shakti, the feminine force. There is both desire for and fear over our bodies, which we have been made to feel ashamed of. Mary seemed to be full bodied, and I’m glad. Knox seemed to be happy to wed much younger women and for a ‘helpmeet’, but saw them as intrinsically inferior. Yet his protesting too much suggests that he fears the opposite, and that women in top positions threatens his own.
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Last section: I want to be clear that Mary’s life was not prolonged as tragic victim of fate. We may look at such a story and be fearful for ourselves. Will we never escape this undesirable situation, and will it too be drawn out? In the 2018 film, Margot Robbie’s Elizabeth writes that she wishes she had killed Mary early on rather than make her wait and flounder all those years.
Yes, Mary Queen of Scots was captive for nearly 19 years, and allegedly aged considerably as this incarceration took its toll. But she not only kept her dignity as if she still were regnant in her own palaces…but I have a perspective on the purpose of those years in England.
On a purely factual, human level, Mary outlived all her Scottish detractors. She died in 1587:
listen to how and when these men met their ends:
-Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley Philandering and grasping husband blown up and strangled 1567
-Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, father of the above, post Mary regent, shot in a raid1571
-William Maitland of Lethington, secretary of state: gets the pillow (or suicide) in prison 1573
-James Douglas, the Earl of Morton dies on the guillotine he introduced – how Haman from the book of Esther (we’ll hear about Esther at Easter) for his part in killing Darnley 1581
-James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell dies in a Danish prison, insane (there’s two ways to see Bothwell, but if you see him as abducting, self serving rapist, it’s satisfying) 1578
-her half brother James, the Eel of Moray – takes a trip to Linlithgow; he doesnae return since he is assassinated cleverly in the high street 1570 [I wrongly said in the podcast that it was Annet House, which is no longer a museum]
–James Hamilton, Earl of Arran/ Duke of Châtellerault1575
Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll died suddenly in 1573 [Sept 12th]
George Gordon, Earl of Huntly 1562; his son collapsed whilst playing foorball1576
-John Knox, demagogue and hate spreader, respiratory disease 1572
-John Erskine Earl of Mar post Mary regent, James VI’s custodian, possibly poisoned 1572
-George Buchanan, who roused public opinion against her, 1582
There is also the matter of lifepath and spiritual maturity; we do not know even from the intimate letters, like Mary’s final one, which I have seen, what her faith journey was. I do not see her as a helpless victim of fate. Many see that it was Elizabeth who ‘lost’; certainly Eliza seems to have been distraught rather than triumphant at Mary’s death. Perhaps I might even say that martyrdom was part of her plan and raised her. She saw herself as a martyr, shocking those present with her red outfit. Shekhar Kapur, in his sequel to Elizabeth, directed Samantha Morton who played his Mary, that as she walked to the block – and there’ll be no details – that she was marrying God. I’m not sure I wish to support that, but to state that she was going to be with God and join Her, and that Mary consciously knew “En Ma Fin Git Ma Commencement”.
She has long outlived her earthly departure; not only did her supporters continue to rally for her during her life, but her death made her iconic in a way that her cousin did not achieve, because she died naturally. Mary Stuart is much loved still – there is an active, passionate society with international membership, and plays penned by Germans and operas by Italians.
I want to end with that thought again: that Mary was born on Mary’s day – the feast of the assumption, which gave her her name. I think that some of the divine mother’s qualities are seen in Mary Stuart, although she had to struggle against a country at a difficult time which was enmeshed in the opposite values, and that as a purer soul than some of those around her, she may have especially struggled with her environs. But she did engage in that struggle, and she endured, and has endured, and comes to us again now to offer a different way, with other pioneers of her ilk dotted through history to remind us
A brief closing prayer: heal the wounds of rejection, betrayal, hopelessness, and when we feel that we are not loved and cannot prevail. Thank you that we are in new times and can hope for new outcomes.
Our next service is on19th March: Mary Tudor – the one who died in Suffolk (and maybe the other too?)
Lent begins on 22nd Feb and there will be weekly reflections running up to Easter on 9th April, and a service on May 7th.
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 