Mary Queen of Scots by Retha Warnicke

previous agreements required her to obtain the estates’ consent before remarrying. Throckmorton believed she valued her honor so highly that she would select only someone who would enhance her rank and reputation.
    CHANGING POWER AT COURT
    Meanwhile after becoming Charles’s regent in December 1560, Catherine persuaded Navarre, who had a hereditary claim to that high office, to serve as lieutenant general. Consequently, Mary’s uncles lost political authority, a change in their fortunes that surely explains her estrangement from Catherine. As recently as late 1559 Mary reported sympathetically to her mother that if Francis did not obey Catherine as well as he did, she would die and that would be disastrous for France. During his short reign the two French queens dined at the same table and attended sermons together daily. Three months after his demise, however, Catherine had begun to suspect that Mary was operating as a spy for Lorraine, who had left court, and his brother, Guise. In a letter to Sébastien de l’Aubespine, bishop of Limoges, the French ambassador in Spain, she explained that Mary was as obsequious as ever but that she was undeceived about the true feelings of her daughter-in-law, who undoubtedly favored her Guise relatives. 2
    From December 1560 Catherine’s activities, focusing as they did on the future of her three small children whom she believed God had placed in her care, seem to have caused Mary concerns that she was neglecting the appropriate mourning for her deceased son. Apparently pleased that the French dynasty’s future was no longer tied to that of the Guise family, Catherine sought to perpetuate that separation, opposing Mary’s union with her son, Charles, and also with Don Carlos. Catherine especially hoped to prevent Guise influence spreading in Spain because her eldest daughter was its queen and because she had been attempting to marry her youngest daughter Margaret to the Spanish prince.
    Rumors of the French queens’ estrangement must have circulated at court. In June 1563 almost two years after Mary’s departure for Scotland, Prospero Publicola Santacroce, cardinal bishop of Chessamos and the papal nuncio to France, claimed that Catherine developed a grudge against her daughter-in-law after overhearing her demeaning her, a de’ Medici, as a shopkeeper’s daughter. Since Santacroce had replaced Sebastian Gualtier, bishop of Viterbo, as papal nuncio in 1561, it is odd that he should have so belatedly reported this gossip. Diplomats often repeated unconfirmed even stale rumors, as this surely was. Given Mary’s upbringing, it seems unlikely that she would have criticized her late husband’s mother within her hearing, and Catherine’s letter to Limoges confirms that she was not breaching court protocol. Catherine’s appointment of Coligny to the conseil des affaires and her conciliatory religious policies led Guise to conspire against her authority. In April after forming a triumvirate with Jean d’Albon, Marshal St André, and Montmorency, his former enemy, Guise sought Spanish aid to bolster the Gallic Church. While Philip felt obliged to support his mother-in-law’s regency, he felt sympathy for her opponents. He also disliked her policies, which many believed were encouraging the spread of Protestantism.
    PREPARING TO RETURN TO SCOTLAND
    On about 18 March Mary left for Rheims to celebrate Easter, breaking her trip at Paris on the 20th to inventory her possessions in preparation for returning home to Scotland. Surian explained that she departed Fontainebleau because she anticipated the Scottish envoy’s arrival to discuss her realm’s affairs. Diplomatic protocol was precise. According to him, it was inappropriate for these deliberations to occur at the French court since Francis’s death officially ended his realm’s concern with Scottish business. 3 Earlier, during his reign, English ambassadors conferred with him in his presence chamber about his kingdom’s affairs