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Authors: Roderick Graham
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ofHaddington. He was also rewarded by being made Admiral of Brittany.
Mary now travelled twelve miles inland to Morlaix, where she made a state entry on 20 August. This was her first experience of the French countryside, and, since in France she did not need the armed guards that surrounded her everywhere in Scotland, she was able to satisfy her youthful curiosity. She had been taught four or five useful words of greeting and thanks in French, but in any case French was a foreign tongue there. Brittany had only been absorbed into France fourteen years earlier and most people spoke only Breton.
The boundaries of the kingdom were much less extensive than those of today, especially on the east, where Savoy stretched westwards to include Nice. From there, the border ran northwards along the valley of the Meuse, putting Metz and Verdun into the Holy Roman Empire, before turning west to include Picardy, but not Artois, which was in the Netherlands and therefore also under the rule of Charles V. There was a population of about 18 million compared to Scotland’s 800,000, and, with its mild climate and fertile soil, its agriculture was the most prosperous in Europe – there had not been a crop failure for almost a century. The French chroniclers were romantic to a man, and in their reports it seemed that sunshine arrived with Mary and that bad weather only returned on her departure. Joachim du Bellay, a poet and aristocrat who had travelled from Scotland with her, constantly sang her praises in verse as, later, Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme, would do in prose. Du Bellay said that ‘when in her highland garb she resembled a goddess in masquerade’. It is hard to imagine what fantasy passed for Highland dress in a court totally unacquainted with the reality.
Mary’s journey was now across country to Nantes, where the royal party transferred to a barge to take them along the Loire. This should have been an idyllic journey, but at Ancenis, only a third of the way along the river, the young Lord Seton died of a ‘stomach flux’, probably as a result of food poisoning. Mary now had to comfort Seton’s sister, Mary, and attend her first funeralMass. The first link with her Scottish past was broken. She also had to say farewell to de Brézé, who left on royal orders, passing his duties over to Antoinette de Bourbon, Mary’s formidable grandmother.
Apart from her mother, Antoinette de Bourbon was the first scion of this ancient and powerful family that Mary had met. Antoinette was the wife of Claude, Duc de Guise, the son of René II de Lorraine and Philippa de Gueldres. Claude, whose two brothers were Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine, and Antoine, Duc de Lorraine, had, with Antoinette, nine children, all of whom were still alive. They were Mary’s uncles and aunts, and numbered amongst themselves two dukes, one marquis, two cardinals, one grand prior and two abbesses, as well as Mary’s mother, a queen regent. It was obviously vitally important that Mary make a good impression, and on 1 October 1548 Antoinette reported, ‘She is very pretty indeed, and as intelligent a child as you could see. She is brunette, with a clear complexion and I think that when she develops she will be a beautiful girl, for her complexion is fine and clear and her skin white. The lower part of her face is very well formed, the eyes are small and rather deep-set, the face is rather long. She is graceful and self-assured. To sum up, we may be very well pleased with her.’
Despite her good impression of her granddaughter, Antoinette de Bourbon did not find the Maries handsome or even clean, but she thought Lady Fleming was impressive. Excluding Marie de Guise, Antoinette, who lived to the age of eighty-nine, was the first of a long series of women Mary would meet who were powerful in their own right and who neither depended on their husband’s influence nor abandoned their femininity in the pursuit of personal power. At that moment,
Mary now travelled twelve miles inland to Morlaix, where she made a state entry on 20 August. This was her first experience of the French countryside, and, since in France she did not need the armed guards that surrounded her everywhere in Scotland, she was able to satisfy her youthful curiosity. She had been taught four or five useful words of greeting and thanks in French, but in any case French was a foreign tongue there. Brittany had only been absorbed into France fourteen years earlier and most people spoke only Breton.
The boundaries of the kingdom were much less extensive than those of today, especially on the east, where Savoy stretched westwards to include Nice. From there, the border ran northwards along the valley of the Meuse, putting Metz and Verdun into the Holy Roman Empire, before turning west to include Picardy, but not Artois, which was in the Netherlands and therefore also under the rule of Charles V. There was a population of about 18 million compared to Scotland’s 800,000, and, with its mild climate and fertile soil, its agriculture was the most prosperous in Europe – there had not been a crop failure for almost a century. The French chroniclers were romantic to a man, and in their reports it seemed that sunshine arrived with Mary and that bad weather only returned on her departure. Joachim du Bellay, a poet and aristocrat who had travelled from Scotland with her, constantly sang her praises in verse as, later, Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme, would do in prose. Du Bellay said that ‘when in her highland garb she resembled a goddess in masquerade’. It is hard to imagine what fantasy passed for Highland dress in a court totally unacquainted with the reality.
Mary’s journey was now across country to Nantes, where the royal party transferred to a barge to take them along the Loire. This should have been an idyllic journey, but at Ancenis, only a third of the way along the river, the young Lord Seton died of a ‘stomach flux’, probably as a result of food poisoning. Mary now had to comfort Seton’s sister, Mary, and attend her first funeralMass. The first link with her Scottish past was broken. She also had to say farewell to de Brézé, who left on royal orders, passing his duties over to Antoinette de Bourbon, Mary’s formidable grandmother.
Apart from her mother, Antoinette de Bourbon was the first scion of this ancient and powerful family that Mary had met. Antoinette was the wife of Claude, Duc de Guise, the son of René II de Lorraine and Philippa de Gueldres. Claude, whose two brothers were Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine, and Antoine, Duc de Lorraine, had, with Antoinette, nine children, all of whom were still alive. They were Mary’s uncles and aunts, and numbered amongst themselves two dukes, one marquis, two cardinals, one grand prior and two abbesses, as well as Mary’s mother, a queen regent. It was obviously vitally important that Mary make a good impression, and on 1 October 1548 Antoinette reported, ‘She is very pretty indeed, and as intelligent a child as you could see. She is brunette, with a clear complexion and I think that when she develops she will be a beautiful girl, for her complexion is fine and clear and her skin white. The lower part of her face is very well formed, the eyes are small and rather deep-set, the face is rather long. She is graceful and self-assured. To sum up, we may be very well pleased with her.’
Despite her good impression of her granddaughter, Antoinette de Bourbon did not find the Maries handsome or even clean, but she thought Lady Fleming was impressive. Excluding Marie de Guise, Antoinette, who lived to the age of eighty-nine, was the first of a long series of women Mary would meet who were powerful in their own right and who neither depended on their husband’s influence nor abandoned their femininity in the pursuit of personal power. At that moment,
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