Francis, though only sixteen, was entitled to assume the government himself. He went to Rheims, a town northeast of Paris, where is an abbey, which is the ancient place of coronation for the kings of France. Here he was crowned. He appointed his ministers, and evinced, in his management and in his measures, more energy and decision than it was supposed he possessed. He himself and Mary were now, together, on the summit of earthly grandeur. They had many political troubles and cares which can not be related here, but Mary's life was comparatively peaceful and happy, the pleasures which she enjoyed being greatly enhanced by the mutual affection which existed between herself and her husband.
Though he was small in stature, and very unprepossessing in appearance and manners, Francis still evinced in his government a considerable degree of good judgment and of energy. His health, however, gradually declined. He spent much of his time in traveling, and was often dejected and depressed. One circumstance made him feel very unhappy. The people of many of the villages through which he passed, being in those days very ignorant and superstitious, got a rumor into circulation that the king's malady was such that he could only be cured by being bathed in the blood of young children. They imagined that he was traveling to obtain such a bath; and, wherever he came, the people fled, mothers eagerly carrying off their children from this impending danger. The king did not understand the cause of his being thus shunned. They concealed it from him, knowing that it would give him pain. He knew only the fact, and it made him very sad to find himself the object of this mysterious and unaccountable aversion.
In the mean time, while these occurrences had been taking place in France, Mary's mother, the queen dowager of Scotland, had been made queen regent of Scotland after her return from France; but she experienced infinite trouble and difficulty in managing the affairs of the country. The Protestant party became very strong, and took up arms against her government. The English sent them aid. She, on the other hand, with the Catholic interest to support her, defended her power as well as she could, and called for help from France to sustain her. And thus the country which she was so ambitious to govern, was involved by her management in the calamities and sorrows of civil war.
In the midst of this contest she died. During her last sickness she sent for some of the leaders of the Protestant party, and did all that she could to soothe and conciliate their minds. She mourned the calamities and sufferings which the civil war had brought upon the country, and urged the Protestants to do all in their power, after her death, to heal these dissensions and restore peace. She also exhorted them to remember their obligations of loyalty and obedience to their absent queen, and to sustain and strengthen her government by every means in their power. She died, and after her death the war was brought to a close by a treaty of peace, in which the French and English governments joined with the government of Scotland to settle the points in dispute, and immediately afterward the troops of both these nations were withdrawn. The death of the queen regent was supposed to have been caused by the pressure of anxiety which the cares of her government imposed. Her body was carried home to France, and interred in the royal abbey at Rheims.
The death of Mary's mother took place in the summer of 1560. The next December Mary was destined to meet with a much heavier affliction. Her husband, King Francis, in addition to other complaints, had been suffering for some time from pain and disease in the ear. One day, when he was preparing to go out hunting, he was suddenly seized with a fainting fit, and was soon found to be in great danger. He continued some days very ill. He was convinced himself that he could not recover, and began to make arrangements for his approaching end. As he drew near to the close of his life, he was more and more deeply impressed with a sense of Mary's kindness and love. He mourned very much his approaching separation from her. He sent for his mother, Queen Catharine, to come to his bedside, and begged that she would treat Mary kindly, for his sake, after he was gone.
Mary was overwhelmed with grief at the approaching death of her husband. She knew at once what a great change it would make in her condition. She would lose immediately her rank and station. Queen Catharine would again come into power, as queen regent, during the minority of the next heir. All her friends of the family of Guise, would be removed from office, and she herself would become a mere guest and stranger in the land of which she had been the queen. But nothing could arrest the progress of the disease under which her husband was sinking. He died, leaving Mary a disconsolate widow of seventeen.
The historians of those days say that Queen Catharine was much pleased at the death of Francis her son. It restored her to rank and power. Mary was again beneath her, and in some degree subject to her will. All Mary's friends were removed from their high stations, and others, hostile to her family, were put into their places. Mary soon found herself unhappy at court, and she accordingly removed to a castle at a considerable distance from Paris to the west, near the city of Orleans. The people of Scotland wished her to return to her native land. Both the great parties sent embassadors to her to ask her to return, each of them urging her to adopt such measures on her arrival in Scotland as should favor their cause. Queen Catharine, too, who was still jealous of Mary's influence, and of the admiration and love which her beauty and the loveliness of her character inspired, intimated to her that perhaps it would be better for her now to leave France and return to her own land.
Mary was very unwilling to go. She loved France. She knew very little of Scotland. She was very young when she left it, and the few recollections which she had of the country were confined to the lonely island of Inchmahome and the Castle of Stirling. Scotland was in a cold and inhospitable climate, accessible only through stormy and dangerous seas, and it seemed to her that going there was going into exile. Besides, she dreaded to undertake personally to administer a government whose cares and anxieties had been so great as to carry her mother to the grave.
Mary, however, found that it was in vain for her to resist the influences which pressed upon her the necessity of returning to her native land. She wandered about during the spring and summer after her husband's death, spending her time in various palaces and abbeys, and at length she began to prepare for her return to Scotland. The same gentleness and loveliness of character which she had exhibited in her prosperous fortunes, shone still more conspicuously now in her hours of sorrow. Sometimes she appeared in public, in certain ceremonies of state. She was then dressed in mourning-in white-according to the custom in royal families in those days, her dark hair covered by a delicate crape veil. Her beauty, softened and chastened by her sorrows, made a strong impression upon all who saw her.
She appeared so frequently, and attracted so much attention in her white mourning, that she began to be known among the people as the White Queen. Every body wanted to see her. They admired her beauty; they were impressed with the romantic interest of her history; they pitied her sorrows. She mourned her husband's death with deep and unaffected grief. She invented a device and motto for a seal, appropriate to the occasion: it was a figure of the liquorice-tree, every part of which is useless except the root, which, of course, lies beneath the surface of the earth. Underneath was the inscription, in Latin, My treasure is in the ground. The expression is much more beautiful in the Latin than can be expressed in any English words.[D]