Mary of Guise - Travels in France and England

Travels in France and England

Mary left Scotland on 6 September 1550 and arrived at Dieppe in time to participate in a festival with the French court at Rouen with her daughter on 1 October 1550. At Rouen, Mary and the Queen of Scots rode in procession behind soldiers carrying banners depicting Scottish fortresses recently defended and recovered by the French. She brought with her a large retinue of Scottish gentlemen, including the Earls of Huntly, Cassillis, Sutherland, Marischal, and Wigtown, plus Lords Home and Maxwell, and the Bishops of Caithness and Galloway. Historians have analysed the Scottish retinue as a team-building exercise for Mary.

Over the winter she stayed with the French court at Blois, then spent the summer with Henry II visiting Tours, Angers and Nantes. At Amboise in April, Mary was sickened by news of a plot to poison the young queen of Scots. A Scottish would-be poisoner, Robert Stewart, discovered in London was delivered to the French in May. Throughout her time in France, Mary was anxious to gain the best settlement for her daughter's marriage to the dauphin and financial support for herself in Scotland. At Tours in May, a cynical English observer, John Mason, who scanned the Scottish retinue for signs of dissent, reported, "the Dowager of Scotland maketh all this court weary of her, such an importunate beggar is she for herself. The king would fain be rid of her. The trucking is about money matters."

While accompanying her to Dieppe on her return, her son Francis died at Amiens. In October 1551 she met Edward VI in England. Mary landed at Portsmouth and stayed her first night at Southwick Priory. On her way to London she stopped at Warblington, Cowdray, Hampton Court and Fulham Palace. At his meeting with Mary at Whitehall Palace, Edward gave her a diamond ring. The ring, "sett with a fayer table diamount", had belonged to Catherine Parr. Princess Mary declined to attend her visit. Princess Elizabeth was present, and according to John Aylmer, unlike the other women at Edward's court she did not try to emulate the novel French "frounsed, curled and double-curled" hairstyles of Guise's Scottish retinue.

On her way north to Scotland Ralph Sadler conveyed her through Hertfordshire, and she stopped at Robert Chester's house at Royston Priory and the house of the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk at Grimsthorpe Castle near Stamford. Arran summoned some of the barons of East Lothian to meet her at Berwick, and the gentlemen of Selkirk, Jedburgh and Duns, Peebles and Lauder, Haddington, Dunbar and North Berwick were summoned to meet her at Our Lady Kirk of Steill on 24 November 1551. Six cart loads of breech-loading cannon chambers were brought from the armoury at Leith up to Edinburgh Castle to fire salutes on her return.