Mary Well Drawn

Mary, Queen of Scots - part damsel in distress, part slighted monarch, completely the prisoner who thinks deeply of escape. A sad business, the list of castle-prisons doleful and dreary, a journey from one place to another place, jailor to jailor, slowly and unfailingly towards the violent end that, by any road, couldn't be put off any longer. Alongside this slide sits an endangered and fretful Queen Elizabeth.

A Tudor/Stuart tragedy. And, as portrayed in Jean Plaidy's "The Captive Queen of Scots", so so sad. Elizabeth and Mary - bifurcated womanhood? Head and heart? A queen with a realm placed on her at a very young age vs. a queen who started as a princess with no definite future. A meeting between these two would have thematically logistically been impossible. The story would have run quite differently, methinks.

Mary is no solitary prisoner, she enjoys the continual devotion of servants and young idealistic would be rescuers. Plaidy draws them artfully, as well as she does the jailors. The sub plot of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick) is of interest as I am completely new to this pair.

At length regicide happened. But, though not Queen of England, our Mary, she may be considered the mother of the Stuart dynasty to rule for a few generations.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

I have been fortunate over the years in my license to read what appeals to me rather than something assigned. This allows one book to lead to another. The story of the doomed House of Howard depicted in "House of Treason" by Robert Hutchinson led me almost without a hiccup to "Her Majesty's Spymaster" by Stephen Budiansky. The thread is the foolhardy 4th Duke of Norfolk, only duke in the land, who tangled himself up with Mary, Queen of Scots. He was no match for Francis Walsingham, and, perhaps because I have a modest position in the civil service, I wanted to know more about "Mr. Secretary", what made him tick and how he was able to expose Mary.

Mary was reckless in her imprisonment, and Norfolk aimed too high in his hopes for the marrying of her. He was, due to his naivete, rather easily dispensed with, beheaded in 1572. Mary was the center of other plots that were laid bare by Walsingham. She was saved, perhaps, for as long as she was, by a wavering Elizabeth, who didn't want to set an example of regicide.

From here, I will step into some historical fiction, namely "The Captive Queen of Scots", by the mistress, Jean Plaidy.