Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stewart: Two Queens in One Isle. by Alison PlowdenReview by: Linda S. PopofskyThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), p. 558Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2541256 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 18:05

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheSixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.25 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 18:05:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

558 The Sixteenth Century Journal

Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stewart: Two Queens in One Isle, by Alison Plowden. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1984. xii + 243 pp. $28.50. The turbulent relationship of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots is the subject

of Alison Plowden's sixth book on Tudor England. The "deadly rivalry" of the "tender cousins" is traced along familiar lines: the Queen of Scots' French-supported assertion of her dynastic claim to the English throne; violence in Scotland with the Darnley mur- der, Mary's flight with Bothwell, and her struggles with the Earl of Moray and the Scottish lords; Mary's arrival in England in 1568, the Inquiry at York, and her subse- quent confinement-all are carefully, if conventionally, explicated. Ms. Plowden cor- rectly sees Mary's eighteen year long presence in England as exacerbating two of the most critical issues of Elizabeth's reign, her marriage and the succession. It was Mary's role as the focus of repeated Catholic plots threatening domestic rebellion and interna- tional conspiracy which made the two issues Elizabeth most wanted to avoid the chief concerns of her councillors and people until the coming of the Armada.

Ms. Plowden focuses more on the "real tragedy of Mary Stewart" than on Elizabeth, whose "artful mixture of authoritarianism ... and feminine blandishment" is viewed as successfully restraining increasingly strident public demands for Mary's death. Mary serves as an endless source of fascination. Was her flight to England a "reckless, irrational, destructive impulse"? Was her injudicious behavior after Darnley's death due to an attack of porphyria? But the author abandons speculation when she meticulously sorts out the less well known strands of the Scottish political factions in the 1560s, and the roles of Moray and Maitland of Lethington. Here, some acquaintance with recent scholarship would have sharpened her account, such as Jenny Wormald's contention that, had Elizabeth decisively returned Mary to Scotland under Protestant control in the 1560s, the plots and political near-hysteria they aroused in the 1580s might have been avoided. Similarly, the book's capable account of the deepening international complexities of the 1570s and 1580s might have benefited from Simon Adams' observation that Elizabethan foreign policy moved into an interventionist mode in great part because of pressures from such councillors as Leicester and Walsingham to create a Protestant counter-alliance to the Catholic League and openly support the continental Protestant cause.

The author's overall perspective is clearly colored by her insistence that the two queens "were trapped by history in a life and death struggle over which they had very little control-cousins foredoomed to enmity by their blood and birth." Such innuen- does of a predestined drama are at odds with the general clarity of Ms. Plowden's dis- cussion of such matters as the grounds of Elizabeth's reluctance to execute Mary-the latter's position as heir presumptive (one quickly assumed by her son, the future James I and VI), the threat of international scandal, Elizabeth's adherence to the sanctity of divine right of kings, and the dangerous precedent in killing an anointed queen. The presumption of historical inevitability also detracts from the real significance of the complicated "double game" the author sees as played by both queens: Mary outwardly compliant, but negotiating with Norfolk and receptive to all subsequent plotters, and Elizabeth pursuing reconciliation in Scotland and encouraging courtship from France while repeatedly promising Mary her freedom.

Based on standard contemporary and secondary printed sources, with brief biblio- graphical notes for each chapter constituting scholarly apparatus, Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stewart is a competent work of popular history. The author's penchant for slangy characterizations (of both Henry VIII and Cardinal Beaton as "political operator[s]," Bothwell as an "ugly customer") is jarring in an otherwise intelligently written book. It may offer little that is new to scholars, but Ms. Plowden's recounting of the dramatic rivalry between these two queens will satisfy the earnest general reader. Linda S. Popofsky Mills College

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.25 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 18:05:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions