Renaissance Studies Vol. 9 No. 4

The enty of M a y Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561, and other ambiguities

PETER DAVIDSON

The purposes of this brief paper are, first, to give some account of the entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh on 6 September 1561, and secondly, to detail what appear to be some preemptive popular demonstrations by the people of the city, intended to give an interpretation in advance of the deliberately polyvalent imagery of the official entry. Thirdly, some brief consideration will be given to the festival for the baptism of her son, the future James VI, held at Stirling in 1566, again stressing its deliberate lack of an icono- graphically conveyed message, its refusal to make any statement either to the nobility of a country on the verge of religious civil war, or to the hostile English ambassador. In conclusion, this tradition of ambiguous Scottish court ceremonial will be traced to its final manifestation: the elusive and reticent Entertainment which William Drummond composed for the entry of Charles I into Edinburgh in 1633.

The difficulties attending the return in 1561 of the recently widowed Mary from France to Scotland are too well known to require any lengthy rehear- sal here. The tensions between the queen and her people centred on religion: Mary's Catholicism and her dose connection with the Catholic Valois placed her in direct opposition to a Scotland which, at least in the Lowlands, leaned heavily towards radical Calvinism. Even before Mary left France, Lord James Stewart, her half-brother, had advised her concerning this: 'Abuiff all things, madame, for the luif of God presse ne matters of religion, not for any man's advise on the earth." Equally significantly, from the north, the Catholic Earl of Huntly had offered to raise three northern shires to reduce the country to Catholic obedience, if the queen should choose to land at Aberdeen.'

The leader of the Reformers in Scotland, John Knox (who will be the third chief actor in the whole question of Mary's entry and its interpretation) was embattled even before the queen could give any indication of her future policies or attitudes:' '

The very face of heaven, the time of her arrival, did manifestly speak what comfort was brought unto this country with her, to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety. For, in the memory of man, that day of the year

' Michael Lynch, S c o f l a d A New Histmy (1991). 210.

' John Knox, The History of the Rcfmmation in Scotland, ed. William Croft Dickinson (1949). 11. 7. Lynch, 210.

0 I995 Socictv fm Rmnicsance S1die.s. Oxfmd IJniumitv h e s s

The entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561 417

was never seen a more dolorous face of the heaven than was at her ar- rival, which two days after did so continue; for besides the surface wet, and corruption of the air, the mist was so thick and so dark that scarce might any man espy the other the length of two pair of boots. The sun was not seen to shine two days before not two days after. That fore-warning gave God unto us; but alas the most part were blind.

In such an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and wariness between the queen and a substantial number of her subjects, it became inevitable that each side would scrutinize the other for the slightest hint regarding future policy. In this context, the whole question of the ceremonial entry into Edinburgh becomes the focus of mutual anxieties and hostilities. It is clear that the Pro- testant followers of Knox were watching the rapidly evolving iconography of the hastily constructed ceremonial, as closely as they were watching for religious indications from the chapel of Holyroodhouse.

It must be assumed that the first proposal for the central tableau of the entry had already been rejected by the time that the queen landed on 16 August. The original intention had been to present a direct challenge to the queen and her religion: that her ceremonial entry to her capital should culminate in a tableau of a priest in the act of the Elevation of the Host, and that this tableau should be burned in the queen’s presence. The scanty evidence surviving (which will be discussed at greater length below) would suggest that it was at the insistence of the Catholic Earl of Huntly that this was dropped and there was substituted a biblical tableau of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Numbers 16) swallowed up alive by the earth as punishment for rising against the priesthood of Moses and Aaron. This is a neatly ambi- guous image: it could be read by the protestant majority as displaying a scriptural instance of the fate of those who rose against the will of God and his ministers. The queen and the Catholics might possibly read it as an emblem of the punishment of rebels against hierarchy, both secular and religious. It seems likely, although the evidence is confused, that this tableau was offered without verbal explication. In Renaissance terms, it constitutes the pzctura of an emblem lacking its contexting and explicatory poesis.

In the light of this, the events of the queen’s first night in her capital require close scrutiny. The record of a serenade, partaking of the nature of a challenge, of popular forms of charivari, comes from the recollections of one of the French members of her entourage:’

Et qui pis est, le soh, ansi qu’elle se vouloit coucher, estant logee en bas en l’abbaye de 1’Ilenbourg (qui est certes un beau bastiment et ne tient rien du pays), vindrent soubs sa fenestre cinq ou six cents marauts de la ville luy donner l’aubade de meschans viollons et petits rebecz, dont il n’y en a faute en ce pays la; et se mirent a chanter des pseaumes tant ma1

‘ Owes completes de PioTc & Bourdeilk seigneur & Brantome, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1873), VII, 419.

418 Peter Davddson

chantez et si ma1 accordez, que rien plus. He! quelle musique et quel repos pour sa nuictl

The singing of metrical psalms in itself would register unequivocally with the queen’s French entourage as a specifically protestant demonstration. If it is possible to be more specific as to which psalms the crowd sang, it may be possible to see a definate poesis or commentary offered to the silent emblem which was being planned as the centrepiece of the official entry.

There is an overwhelmingly likely candidate in the hundred and twenty- fourth psalm. Scots metrical words were in existence by 1560, with an associated (and finely singable) tune which exists in three near-contemporary part settings.’.There are two pieces of evidence which support the likelihood that this was the psalm which the crowd (spontaneously or under direction) chose. One is that it appears that at least two decades later it had become the anthem of militant Scottish Calvinism: when the banished Calvinist John Durie returned to Edinburgh in 1582 it was with this psalm that the crowd greeted him.‘

As he is coming to Edinburgh there met him at the Gallowgreen 200, but ere he came to the Netherbow their number increased to 400, but they were no sooner entered but they increased to 600 or 700, and within short space the whole street was replenished even to Saint Geilis Kirk; the number was esteemed to be 2,000. At the Netherbow they took up the 124 Psalme, ‘Now Israel may say’.

(It has been noted that this 1582 anti-adventus carefully follows the route by which monarchs traditionally entered the capital.) The other piece of evidence must lie for the moment in the realm of speculation. If the sixteenth- century Scottish comedy of Philotus (the date and purpose of which has long been debated) was composed for the marriage celebrations of Mary’s second marriage to Darnley in 1565, as has recently been suggested,’ then a number of elements in the play would appear to be irenic and conciliatory allusions to the divisions which had marked the opening years of Mary’s reign in Scotland. Amongst these is the concluding and resolving dialogue of the united lovers which is full of echoes and citations of this very psalm. If the context proposed for the drama is correct, the suggestion that this psalm was associated with those divisions gains considerable weight.

At this point it is necessary to give the text as it existed in Scotland in the 1560s. When the tableau of Korah, Dathan and Abiram is considered as part of the description of Mary’s entry below, it can be seen how the deliverance of Israel celebrated in the psalm fits the biblical events of the tableau exactly, as well as functioning as a continuation of the popular radical

’ Masic of Scotland 1500-1700, ed. Kenneth Elliott and Helena Merrie Shire, Musica Britannica

‘ Caldenvood, Histmy, m, 226; quoted by Lynch, 231. ’ Dr James Reid.Baxter, private communication.

XV, 2nd edn (1964), 138-9.

The entry of Mury Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561 419

metaphor by which the Scots were a people chosen of God like the Israelites. The further possibility suggests itself that the Edinburgh crowd in 1561 could hardly have avoided reading some of the phrases of the psalm as reflections of the oppressions of the Scots Calvinists initiated in the previous genera tion by Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary Stewart, and supported by her Valois relations.’

Nou Israel may say and that truly, Gif that the Lord had not our cause maintyned, Gyf that the Lord had not our rycht sustained, Whan all the warld against us furiously Maid their uprairs and sayd we should all dee.

Now lang ago they hid devourt us all And swallowit quick for aucht that we could deem, Sic was the rage as we micht wee1 esteem And as the fluds with michty force they fall Sae had they now our life een brocht tae thrall.

The raging streams maist proud and rairing noise Had lang ago owerwhalmed us in the deip But lou’d be Code wha dis us safely keip Frae bluidy wrath and thair maist cruel1 voice Whilk as a prey tae ate us wald rejoice.

Carrying forward the strong possibility that these words were being spon- taneously (or deliberately) appropriated by the Edinburgh mob to articulate their own perceptions of the situation, the events which took place between this rough serenade and the entry are quickly described. On Sunday, 24 August Mary confirmed the worst fears of her opponents by hearing Mass at Holyrood. Lord James Stewart had to guard the door to allow the service to proceed undisturbed. Obviously, in response to this declaration, Knox and his followers moved towards a policy of direct confrontation. The p r o gramme of the entry had been amended to remove the tableau of the priest destroyed by fire, which would have brought about such a confrontation swiftly and publicly. Knox had to resort to pulpit denunciation, in a sermon delivered on Sunday, 31 August, in the course of which it is possible to see shadows of a p0esi.s offered to the picturu which must by then have been ready to greet the queen. Knox’s reference to ‘armed enemies’ shadows those who supported Korah, Dathan and Abiram, as well as attempting to induce popular fears of military interference from France: ‘The next Sunday, John Knox, inveighing against idolatry, showed what terrible plagues God had taken upon realms and nations for the same; and added “That one Mass (there was no more suffered at the first) was more fearful to him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm”.”

’ Elliott and Shire, 138-9. ’ Knox, 11. 12.

420 Peter Davidson

Knox’s brief and partial account of Mary’s entry into Edinburgh (the date of which is variously given as the second and sixth of October, but the sixth appears more likely) may serve to introduce a more extended reconstruc- tion of the event. It is signficant that Knox chose to distance himself from an event which had become, in his view, insufficiently confrontational:”

Great preparations were made for her entry in the town. In farces, in mask- ing, and in other prodigalities, fain would fools have counterfeited France. Whatsoever might set forth her glory, that she heard, and gladly beheld. The keys were delivered unto her by a pretty boy, descending as it were from a cloud. The verses of her own praise she heard, and smiled. But when the Bible was presented, and the praise thereof declared, she began to frown: for shame she could not refuse it. But she did no better, for immediately she gave it to the most pestilent Papist within the realm, to wit, to Arthur Erskine.

No official account of the event was published, unsurprisingly , given the unease which surrounded it on all sides. Contemporary accounts in the jour- nals of various individuals are confused and contradictory, some of them clearly relying on reports of what was originally intended, rather than of what was actually performed. The accounts of the provost and baillies of Edinburgh are not particularly informative, focusing on the raising of money to pay for the entry, and arrangements for clearing the streets, rather than on the entry itself. It is not insignificant that a part of the pageant, the guard before what is called the ‘cairt triumphant’ (a cart containing the ‘propine’, or official present to the queen), is left to the people to order for themselves as regards costume and personnel: ‘and siclike that the young men of the toun devise for thame selffis sum brawf abulyement of taffate or vther silk and mak the convoy before the cairt triumphant’.’’

The accounts which survive display, in essence, a confusion as to what appears to have taken place, as opposed to what was originally intended. I would argue that the fact that accounts differ most visibly around the cen- tral allegorical tableau suggests not only that a number of spectators simply failed to follow the whole course of the entry, but that the popular apprehen- sion of the entry was fixed by the events described above as well as by knowledge of its original allegorical programme. Although the central iconography had been altered at the last minute into something at least am- biguous, the popular apprehension of the entry was of a piece of explicitly anti-Catholic and anti-French intentions.

The chief account, gathered with the other evidence by Mill in her M e d i m d Pluys in Scotland, comes from the anonymous A diurnal1 of remarkable occur= rents that have passed within the kingdom of Scotland since the death of King Jams

lo Ibid. 21. I ’ The evidence for what actually took place, as well as extracts from the town council records,

are gathered by A. S. Mill, Mediccual Phys in Scothad (1927). 188-91.

The entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561 42 1

the Fourth till theyear MDLXXV, compiled in Edinburgh, 1557-75, published by the Bannatyne Club in 1833, and found on pages 67-9 of that edition. Supplementary accounts, most of them very brief, are drawn from the Manuscript History of Johnson, in the Advocates’ Library; the Historical Memoirs of John, seventh Lord Herries (an eighteenth-century copy of a lost manuscript of 1656), published by the Bannatyne Club in 1836, and the reports of the English ambassador, Randolph, to his master Cecil.’*

The shape of the entry as a whole is a mixture of medieval, popular sur- vival with a more urgent contemporary attempt to place the concerns of the people of Edinburgh before the queen through the medium of Renaissance allegory.

Approaching Edinburgh from the Castle, Mary was met by a company of fifty young men of the town dressed as moors, who formed a guard of honour. Sixteen substantial citizens carried a canopy over her. She was followed by the ‘cairt triumphant’ containing the gift or ‘propine’. At the Butter Tron was an arch of timber, with heraldic achievements, with children singing in its superstructure. A machine in the form of a cloud (Randolph has ‘a globe’) disclosed a child who presented the queen with the keys of the town. The diurnal1 adds that it was here that the queen was presented with a Bible and a Psalter (Knox’s account of her reaction has already been given) and also ‘he deliverit a h a to hir hienes thre writtingis, the tennour thairof is vncer- tane. That being done, the barne ascendit in the cloud, and the said clud stekit . . .I1’ At the Tolbooth was a pageant showing Love, Justice and Policy seated beneath the governance of Fortune. Herries mentions ‘many devyces and musick’ but no record survives of these. The crux of the entry is the pageant at the Salt Tron. Here the accounts are at their most c~ntradictory:’~

This being done, our souerane ladie come to the salt trone, quhair thair wes sum spekaris; and eftir ane little speitche [other accounts have a ‘space’ here] thaj brunt vpoun the skaffet maid at the said trone, the maner of ane sacrifice;.and swa that being done, she depairtit to the nether bow, quhair thair wes ane vther skaffet maid, havand ane dragoun in the samyn, with some speiches; and eftir that the dragoun was brynt, and the quenis grace hard ane psalme song, hir hienes past to hir abbay of Halyrudhous; and thair the barineis quhilk was in the cairt with the propyne maid some speitche concernyng the putting away of the mess, and thaireftir sang ane psalme.

It is far from certain that this account is reliable, even if the anonymous author did succeed in following, or reconstructing, the whole course of the entry. What seems most likely (particularly given his constant association

I’ Full details of these sources, and the documents in full, in Mill, 189-91. ’’ Ibid. 190. I‘ Ibid. 191.

422 Peter Davidson

of speeches and psalm-singing) is that he is to a certain extent deconstruc- ting and reconstructing the event in the light of Edinburgh opinion as to the meaning of the pageants. Herries appears to be reconstructing the event again from intention^:'^

Upon the top of this pageant, there was a speech made tending to abolishing of the mass, and in token that it was alreaddie banished the kingdome, there was the shape of a priest in his ornaments reddie to say mass, made of wode, which was brought forth, in sight of all, and presentlie throwen in a fyre made upon the scaffold.

The English ambassador is more specific, more circumstantial and more con- vincing?

There, for the terrible sygnifications of the vengeance of God upon idolatrie [It seems possible that he had heard Knox’s sermon of the preceding Sunday, or at least accounts of it.] ther were burnt Coron; Nathan [sic] and Abiron, in the time of their sacrifice. Thei were mynded to have had a priest burnt at the altar, at the elevation. The Earl of Huntly stayed that pagient.

Johnson offered a confused footnote to the actions of the day, suggesting that Mary had indeed read the pageant of Korah, Dathn and Abiram as an attack on her religion: ‘scho . . . thanked thame of all thair proceiding, saveand onlie for burneing the sacrifice quhilk micht (as hir grace said) weill anneauch done’. [A later hand interpolates ‘haif being undon’.]”

To summarize, the substitution of an ambiguous spectacle for an overt challenge, even within an entry which is clearly Protestant in its tone and intentions, would appear to set a precedent for Scottish royal pageantry throughout the difficult years of the early modern period: the employment of the deliberately polyvalent image. It is not without significance that it could be argued that popular apprehension of the intentions of the entry was un- equivocal and that such episodes as Knox’s sermon and the psalmsinging at Holyrood form part of a popular continuum of interpretation of the event, and willingness, as in the 1682 demonstrations, to appropriate them.

The baptism festivals for James VI held at Stirling on 17-19 December 1566 are equally elusive in their imagery, but were this time directly generated by Mary’s court and addressed to the nobility and to the foreign ambassadors. Intervening history is of some significance: an uneasy compromise between Protestant and Catholic had been reached after very considerable difficulties in the first years of Mary’s reign. The Calvinists around Knox were, however, entrenched in their hostility. Many courtiers had returned to the semi-public practice of Catholicism, chief amongst them the queen’s husband, Darnley,

I’ Ibid 191. IM. 191.

I’ Ibid 191.

The entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561 423

who had, with a notable lack of tact, publicly aserted that he had restored the Mass to Scotland. By the time of James’s baptism, however, an uneasy truce prevailed between Calvinist and Catholic magnates. Mary was careful both to excuse the Calvinist nobility from attendance at the Catholic service and to ensure that both factions played an equally honourable part in the court ceremonial surrounding the event.

The birth of a son also worsened the already strained relations with England, at a time when the English succession, and Mary’s semi-dormant claim to the English throne, were still contentious issues. It is not without significance that eventually the train of the English ambassador chose to take offence at the blandly allegorical service of the christening banquet, look- ing to find negative reference to themselves and to their ambassador’s position with regard to the succession.

The Stirling festival had three chief events: a night assault on a burning fort, undertaken by costumed soldiers; George Buchanan’s very short Latin entry (it is too simple to qualify as a masque) Pompae deomm wtzcorum; and a banquet served by various costumed figures. Michael Lynch, in a superb article in the Scottish Historical J o ~ r n Z , ’ ~ gives a full account of the festival and suggests its derivation from festivals held by Mary’s brother-in-law (and rejected suitor) Charles IX of France to mark his meeting with representatives of the court of Spain in 1565. This is true as regards the form of the spec- tacle, and true also in the consonance of much subsidiary detail. Where I would differ from Lynch is in advancing the contention that Mary’s fort is a vague, polyvalent image, and deliberately so, in sharp contrast to the fort in the Bayonne entertainment, where there was a clear allegorical schema. This conveyed the power of the Valois court (Charles’s nobility led the mock- assaults in their own persons); the establishment of peace after religious war (the fort was the fort of Bellona, goddess of war, the assaulting knights were allegorized as the forces of pacification); and the return of a golden age, prophesied by Merlin. (The fact that this aspect of Charles’s festival was ap- propriated in a Latin poem by Patrick Adamson on the Stirling festival pro- duces some confusion: there is no indication that any such schema was propounded in the course’of the festival itself. Indeed, had it been, with its consequent assertion that James would unite Scotland and England, the English embassy would have found much more immediate cause for offence than imagined slights in the conduct of the satyrs who brought in the banquet.)

There is no indication that the fort at the Stirling festival was invested with any allegorical identity, Further, it is clear that no member of the court took part in the mock-assault. The documents quoted by Lynch contain one detail which would tend, indeed, to deny that there was any allegorical programme.

I n Michael Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s triumph: the baptismal celebrations at Stirling in December 1566‘, Scot Hist R. 69 (1990), 1-21.

424 Peter Davidson

The accounts which he quotes in his article concern themselves mostly with the provision of padded costumes for those who were to take part in the mock-assault. There are to be wild-men clad in goat skins, further iden- tified as ‘hieland’ wild-men; moors; ‘lanskynichtis’, lamfesknechten, continental mercenary soldiers; unspecified ‘horsemen’ and de~i1s.I~ However, the con- tention which he advances in his Scotland A New History, that the fort represented the power of the monarchy assaulted by all the forces of destruc- tion and rebellion ranged in reality against it, seems highly speculative.*’ The accounts quoted in his article specify that all these costumed figures are to fight ‘within and without’ the fort. There is no suggestion that the fort is held by figures representing order and the power of the monarchy: what seems much more likely is an absence of signification, a generalized spectacle of fantastical figures of the common ‘others’ of late Renaissance Europe, fighting amidst fireworks and explosions in a spectacle meant to be viewed by night and at a distance.

It is equally difficult to draw any application or statement of policy from the brief Latin entry which George Buchanan provided for the festival. The Pompae akorum mticorum is as bland in content as it is supremely accom- plished and persuasive in its versification. Given the genre of Renaissance Latin panegyric to which it belongs, it is in fact remarkable for its complete absence of a political or triumphalist agenda. (Because of the inaccessibility of the original publication, a full text and translation are given as an appendix to this paper.)

Its action can be summarized thus: the satyrs address the infant James on the pleasures of the chase; the seanymphs praise the virtue of the queen; the river-nymphs address James on how they have rejoiced at his birth; the fauns congratulate the queen on the auspicious birth of a son; the moun- tain nymphs address James wishing that he may prefer the huntingreserves to the cities. No allegorical or political programme is offered, any more than it was offered by the mock-assault on the fort. It is perhaps unsurprising t h q the English embassy, keyed up to watch for allegorical political statements, picked a fight with the satyrs. I would suggest that they misheard the homage paid by the ‘rural legates’ to the cradle as homage paid by the ‘ambassadors’ to the cradle. The ambiguous phrase in Buchanan’s text is ‘legati honorant exteri cunabula’. ‘Legati’ is meant to mean no more than ‘the representatives of the woods’, that is, the satyrs, but it seems likely that the English embassy mis-heard in this a reference to the still-vexed question of the English succession.

In summary, I would suggest that the 1561 entry is remarkable for a last- minute attempt to render its incongraphy ambiguous, just as the 1566 festival is remarkable for its absence of an allegorical programme (the only statements

ID Ibid. 6-8. Lynch (1991), 216.

‘I Georgii Buchanani Scoti Poemata quae extant (Amsterdam, 1687), 387-8.

The entry of Mary Stezuart into Edinburgh, 1561 425

which it sought to make were made simply by the presence at the court of the rehabilitated protestant nobility). I would further suggest that this iconographic polyvalency had, by 1633, become through force of cir- cumstances something of a stock Scottish response to occasions designed for the expression of public consensus, when there was in fact no such con- sensus to express. The Entertainment which Drummond of Hawthornden wrote for the delayed arrival of Charles I in Edinburgh in 1633 addresses circumstances not unlike those of the 1561 entry: the Laudian king in direct opposition to his, by this stage, militantly Calvinist people.'' Drummond's solution is the deliberate avoidance of meaning, emblems without poesis, the generalized lumber of the late Renaissance floating without signification.

University of Warwick

'' The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthmndm, ed. L. E. Kastner (Edinburgh and London, 1913), 11, 111-36.