Reference is seldom made to the Queen's Marys, the four Maids of Honour
whose romantic attachment to their royal mistress and namesake, the
ill-fated Queen of Scots, has thrown such a halo of popularity and
sympathy about their memory, without calling forth the well-known lines:
Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she'll hae but three;
There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beton,
And Marie Carmichael and me.
To those who are acquainted with the whole of the ballad, which records
the sad fate of the guilty Mary Hamilton, it must have occurred that
there is a striking incongruity between the traditional loyalty of the
Queen's Marys and the alleged execution of one of their number, on the
denunciation of the offended Queen herself, for the murder of an
illegitimate child, the reputed offspring of a criminal intrigue with
Darnley. Yet a closer investigation of the facts assumed in the ballad
leads to a discovery more unexpected than even this. It establishes,
beyond the possibility of a doubt, that, of the four family-names given
in the stanza as those of the four Marys, two only are authentic. Mary
Carmichael and Mary Hamilton herself are mere poetical myths. Not only
does no mention of them occur in any of the lists still extant of the
Queen's personal attendants, but there also exist documents of all
kinds, from serious historical narrative and authoritative charter to
gossiping correspondence and polished epigram, to prove that the
colleagues of Mary Beton and Mary Seton were Mary Fleming and Mary
Livingston. How the apocryphal names have found their way into the
ballad, or how the ballad itself has come to be connected with the Maids
of Honour, cannot be determined. There is, however, in Knox's _History
of the Reformation_, a passage which has been looked upon as furnishing
a possible foundation of truth to the whole fiction. It is that in which
he records the commission and the punishment of a crime similar to that
for which Mary Hamilton is represented as about to die on the gallows.
"In the very time of the General Assembly there comes to public
knowledge a haynous murther, committed in the Court; yea, not far from
the queen's lap: for a French woman, that served in the queen's chamber,
had played the whore with the queen's own apothecary. The woman
conceived and bare a child, whom with common consent, the father and
mother murthered; yet were the cries of a new-borne childe hearde,
searche was made, the childe and the mother were both apprehended, and
so was the man and the woman condemned to be hanged in the publicke
street of Edinburgh. The punishment was suitable, because the crime was
haynous."[50] Between this historical fact--for the authenticity of
which we have also the testimony of Randolph[51]--and the ballad, which
substitutes Darnley and one of the Maids of Honour for the queen's
apothecary and a nameless waiting-woman, the connection is not very
close. Indeed, there is but one point on which both accounts are in
agreement, though that, it is true, is an important one. The unnatural
mother whose crime, with its condign punishment, is mentioned by the
historian, was, he says, a French woman. The Mary Hamilton of the
ballad, in spite of a name which certainly does not point to a foreign
origin, is also made to come from over the seas:
I charge ye all, ye mariners,
When ye sail ower the faem;
Let neither my father nor my mother get wit
But that I'm coming hame.
* * * * *
O, little did my mother ken,
The day she cradled me,
The lands I was to travel in,
Or the death I was to dee.
It does not, however, come within the scope of the present paper to
examine more closely into the ballad of Mary Hamilton. It suffices to
have made it clear that, whatever be their origin, the well-known verses
have no historical worth or significance, and no real claim to the title
of "The Queen's Marie" prefixed to them in the _Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border_.[52] Except for the purpose of correcting the
erroneous, but general belief, which has been propagated by the singular
and altogether unwarranted mention of the "Four Marys", and the
introduction of the names of two of them in the oft-quoted stanza, there
would, in reality, be no necessity for any allusion to the popular poem
in a sketch of the career of the fair Maids of Honour, whose touching
fidelity through good and evil fortune has won for them a greater share
of interest than is enjoyed by any of the subordinate characters in the
great historical drama of which their royal mistress is the central
figure.
The first historical and authoritative mention of the four Marys is from
the pen of one who was personally and intimately acquainted with
them--John Leslie, Bishop of Ross. It occurs in his description of the
departure of the infant Mary Stuart from the small harbour at the foot
of the beetling, castle-crowned rock of Dumbarton, on that memorable
voyage which so nearly resembled a flight. "All things being reddy for
the jornay," writes the chronicler, in his quaint northern idiom, "the
Quene being as than betuix fyve and sax yearis of aige, wes delivered
to the quene dowarier hir moder, and wes embarqued in the Kingis awin
gallay, and with her the Lord Erskyn and Lord Levingstoun quha had bene
hir keparis, and the Lady Fleming her fadir sister, with sindre
gentilwemen and nobill mennis sonnes and dochteres, almoist of hir awin
age; of the quhilkes thair wes four in speciall, of whom everie one of
thame buir the samin name of Marie, being of four syndre honorable
houses, to wyt, Fleming, Levingstoun, Seton and Betoun of Creich; quho
remainit all foure with the Quene in France, during her residens thair,
and returned agane in Scotland with her Majestie in the yeir of our Lord
I^{m}V^{c}lxi yeris."[53] Of the education and early training of the
four Marys, as companions and playmates of the youthful queen, we have
no special record. The deficiency is one which our knowledge of the wild
doings of the gayest court of the age makes it easy to supply. For the
Scottish maidens, as for their mistress, intercourse with the frivolous
company that gathered about Catherine de' Medici was but indifferent
preparation for the serious business of life. Looking back on "those
French years", doubtless they too, like her, "only seemed to see--
A light of swords and singing, only hear
Laughter of love and lovely stress of lutes,
And in between the passion of them borne
Sound of swords crossing ever, as of feet
Dancing, and life and death still equally
Blithe and bright-eyed from battle."
Brantôme, to whom we are indebted for so much personal description of
Mary Stuart, and so many intimate details concerning her character,
tastes, and acquirements, is less communicative with respect to her
four fair attendants. He merely mentions them amongst the court
beauties as "Mesdamoiselles de Flammin, de Ceton, Beton, Leviston,
escoissaises".[54] He makes no allusion to them in the pathetic
description of the young queen's departure from her "sweet France" on
the fateful 24th of August, a date which subsequent events were destined
to mark with a fearful stain of blood, in the family to which she was
allied. Yet, doubtless they, too, were gazing with tearful eyes at the
receding shore, blessing the calm which retarded their course, trembling
with vague fears as their voyage began amidst the cries of drowning men,
and half wishing that the English ships of the jealous Elizabeth might
prevent them from reaching their dreary destination. That they were with
their royal namesake, we know. Leslie, who, with Brantôme and the
unfortunate Chastelard, accompanied the idol of France to her
unsympathetic northern home, again makes special note of "the four
maidis of honour quha passit with hir Hienes in France, of her awin
aige, bering the name everie ane of Marie, as is befoir mencioned".
During the first years of Mary Stuart's stay in her capital, the four
maids of honour played conspicuous parts in all the amusements and
festivities of the court, and were amongst those who incurred the
censure of the austere Reformers for introducing into Holyrood the
"balling, and dancing, and banquetting"[55] of Amboise and Fontainbleau.
Were our information about the masques acted at the Scottish Court less
scanty, we should, doubtless, often find the names of the four Marys
amongst the performers. Who more fit than they to figure in the first
masque represented at Holyrood, in October, 1561, at the Queen's
farewell banquet to her uncle, the Grand Prior of the Knights of St.
John, and to take their places amongst the Muses who marched in
procession before the throne, reciting Buchanan's flattering verses in
praise of the lettered court of the Queen of Scots?
Banished by War, to thee we take our flight,
Who still dost worship at the Muses' shrine,
And, solaced by thy presence, day and night,
Nor murmur at our exile, nor repine.
Had Marioreybanks given us the names of those who took part in the
festivities which he describes as having taken place on the occasion of
Lord Fleming's marriage, can we doubt that the Marys would have been
found actively engaged in the open-air performance "in the Parke of
Holyroudhous, under Arthur's Seatt, at the end of the loche"?[56]
Indeed, it is not matter of mere conjecture, but of authentic historical
record, that on more than one occasion Buchanan did actually introduce
the Queen's namesakes amongst the dramatis personæ of the masques
which, as virtual laureate of the Scottish Court, he was called upon to
supply. The _Diurnal of Occurrents_ mentions that "upoun the ellevint
day of the said moneth (February) the King and Quene in lyik manner
bankettit the samin (French) Ambassatour; and at evin our Soveranis maid
the maskrie and mumschance, in the quhilk the Queenis Grace and all hir
Maries and ladies were all cled in men's apperell; and everie ane of
thame presentit ane quhingar, bravelie and maist artificiallie made and
embroiderit with gold, to the said Ambassatour and his gentilmen, everie
ane of thame according to his estate".[57] That this, moreover, was not
the first appearance of the fair performers we also know, for it was
they who bore the chief parts in the third masque acted during the
festivities which attended the Queen's marriage with Darnley; and it was
one of them, perhaps Mary Beton, the scholar of the court, who recited
the verses which Buchanan had introduced in allusion to their royal
mistress's recovery from some illness otherwise unrecorded in history:
Kind Goddess, Health, four Nymphs their voices raise
To welcome thy return and sing thy praise,
To beg as suppliants that thou wouldst deign
To smile benignly on their Queen again,
And make her royal breast thy hallowed shrine,
Where best and worthiest worship shall be thine.
That the four Nymphs mentioned in this, the only fragment of the masque
which has been preserved, were the four Marys, is explained by
Buchanan's commentator, Ruddiman: "Nymphas his vocat quatuor Mariæ Scotæ
corporis ministras, quæ etiam omnes Mariæ nominabantur". It is more than
probable, too, that the Marys were not merely spectators of the masque
which formed a part of the first day's amusements, and of which they
themselves were the subject-matter. It may still be read under the title
of "Pompa Deorum in Nuptiis Mariæ", in Buchanan's Latin poems. Diana
opens the masque, which is but a short mythological dialogue, with a
complaint to the ruler of Olympus that one of her five Marys--the Queen
herself is here included--has been taken from her by the envious arts of
Venus and of Juno:
Five Marys erst my boast and glory were,
Each one in youthful beauty passing fair;
Whilst these enhanced the splendour of my state
To all the gods I seemed too fortunate,
Till Venus, urged by Juno in her ire,
Stole one away and marred my comely quire,
Whereof the other four now grieve that they
Must, like the Pleiads, shine with lessened ray.
In the dialogue which follows, and in which five goddesses and five gods
take part, Apollo chimes in with a prophecy which was only partially
accomplished:
Fear not, Diana, cast away thy care,
And hear the tidings which I prescient bear;
Juno decrees thy Marys shall be wed,
And in all state to Hymen's altar led,
But each to fill its lessened ranks again,
Will add her offspring to thy beauteous train.
In his summing up, which, as may be imagined, is not very favourable to
the complainant, the Olympian judge also introduces a prettily turned
compliment to the Marys:
Five Marys erst were thine and each one meet
With goddesses in beauty to compete;
Each worthy of a god, if iron fate
Allowed the gods to choose a mortal mate.
The whole pageant closes with an epilogue spoken by the herald
Talthybius, who also foretells further defections from Diana's maidens:
Another marriage! Hear the joyful cry:
Another Mary joined in nuptial tie!
As was but natural, the Queen's favourite attendants possessed
considerable influence with their royal lady, and the sequel will show,
in the case of each of them, how eagerly their good offices were sought
after by courtiers and ambassadors anxious for the success of their
several suits and missions. In a letter which Randolph wrote to Cecil on
the 24th of October, 1564, and which, as applying to the Marys
collectively, may be quoted here, we are shown the haughty Lennox
himself condescending to make pretty presents to the maids with a view
to ingratiating himself with the mistress. "He presented also each of
the Marys with such pretty things as he thought fittest for them, such
good means he hath to win their hearts, and to make his way to further
effect."[58]