Elizabeth's instructions clear on treatment of her cousin

Published on Wednesday 3 November 2010 14:23

"IN LOOKING duly to the safe keeping of the Queen of Scotes … we have made choice of you for many respoectes to use your service therein as one fo whose approve wisdome and fidelity we have so great confidence," Queen Elizabeth I wrote in a signed letter to Sir Ralph Sadler on 12 August, 1584.

He was instructed that she was "not permitted to ride farre abroad but onely suffer on foot or in a Coche to take the ayre and use some such exercise neere the howse where she shall lye".

When she arrived at Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire, in December 1584, Mary complained "the lodginges at Tutbury have both the wyndowes unglased & are besides so farr out of order and reparacions as they are not to be used". She asked for table silver and "a tent of Tapestery" for her bedchamber.

Sir Ralph was ordered by the queen's advisers to interrogate noblemen who came too close to her, and "gyve styckt order to his servants that they should have no conference qith the Q of Scottes folkes, spetyally pryvatly".

Some letters suggest that Mary's attempts to mend relations with her cousin were taking effect. In January 1584, Lord Burghley told Sir Ralph: "Hir Majesty is well satisfyed with the scottish Qu. wytynges and therfor would hope yow to make no shew of any mistrust of hir."

But the following month, amid reports of the growing power of the Catholic League in France, headed by Mary's relatives in the Guise family, he was warned by her "spymaster" Sir Francis Walsingham: "This doubtfull and dangerous state of thinges geeveth her Majesty just cause to cary the more watchefull eye over that Queene and her doinges."