Wardrobe of Mary, Queen of Scots

Mary's skirts are shaped by a French farthingale in the Blairs Museum portrait

She wore farthingales, and danced in masques (with the French governess Françoise d'Humières) in costumes made with lightweight silver and gold fabrics decorated with silver and gold metallic spangles.[9] These were a type of sequin or "oes" called papillotes in French.[10] In 1554, Mary played the Delphic Sibyl and Mary Fleming was the Erythraean Sibyl in a masque written by Mellin de Saint-Gelais.[11]

In 1554 her governess Françoise d'Estainville, Dame de Paroy, wrote to Mary of Guise asking permission to buy two diamonds to lengthen one of Mary's headbands with rubies and pearls. She also wanted to buy a new gown of cloth-of-gold for Mary to wear at the wedding of Nicolas, Count of Vaudémont (1524–1577), and Princess Joanna of Savoy-Nemours (1532–1568) at Fontainebleau. This new costume was intended to emulate the fashion adopted by the French princesses of the blood, Elisabeth of Valois and Claude of France (1547–1575).[12] In a letter to her mother, Mary mentions a pair of embroidered sleeves that were being made for her in Scotland.[13]

Portraits used for Mary's Scottish coinage reflect her costume in France in the 1550s

Some of Mary's Scottish coinage was designed by John Acheson, who visited the court in France in 1553.[14] Coins including the gold ryal show her in profile, wearing a caul or hairnet with two jewelled bands.[15] Several sets of these bands appear in her jewel inventories listed in French in pairs as bordures or brodures, the bordure de touret at the forehead and the longer bordure d'oriellette over the head.[16] In England, the equivalent accessories for French hoods were called upper and nether billiments.[17]

Mary in deuil blanc mourning, after François Clouet, Wallace Collection

After her first husband Francis II of France died in 1560, Mary wore a form of mourning called deuil blanc, involving a white pleated cambric veil. Her portrait was drawn by François Clouet, and reproduced in several painted versions made after her death.[18] The paintings indicate either a dark blue or green gown, not present in the drawing.[19] Mary discussed her image as a woman in mourning with the English ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton in the context of sending her portrait to Queen Elizabeth.[20] Throckmorton's letter suggests she was not wearing the deuil when they spoke in August 1560.[21] She also wrote a poem on her portrait, image, deuil, and her pale violet cheek.[22] The verse may be a response to the courtier poet Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, who wrote of her snow white complexion merging with the white deuil.[23]

In September 1561 tailors and "boys" made black mourning "dule" riding cloaks and skirts for Mary, Queen of Scots, and her 15 ladies to wear at her Entry to Edinburgh. Mary wore black Florence serge, the other costumes were made from 50 ells of cheaper black stemming.[24]

The royal accounts for November 1561 mention the women of the household transitioning into a "second mourning", or perhaps receiving their second allowance of black velvet mourning clothes.[25] In December 1561, Mary solemnly observed the anniversary of her husband's death with Obertino Solaro, Monsieur de Moret, the ambassador of Savoy. The English ambassador, Thomas Randolph, noted that the Scottish nobles at court did not wearing mourning "dewle" for the day.[26] One "dule weid" mourning outfit comprised a large veil and seven components or pieces of "black crisp of silk".[27]

In April 1562, Randolph wrote about plans for Mary's interview with Elizabeth in England, and he thought the Scottish party would be dressed in black cloth, to suit Mary's wearing of mourning clothes and also save money.[28] At the end of May, Mary invited the Hepburn or Cockburn Laird of Ormistoun, the Earl of Cassilis, and others to come the borders for the meeting of the queens. They were instructed that her "whole train will be clad in dule, therefore address you and such as will be in your company in like sort". The meeting (at York) was cancelled. Mary made a progress to Aberdeen and Inverness Castle instead.[29]

Mary incorporated mourning clothes into the ceremony when she married Lord Darnley on 29 July 1565. She entered the chapel of Holyroodhouse wearing "a great mourning gown of black" with a "great wide mourning hood". Randolph said the costume resembled her dress at her first husband's funeral.[30] After the wedding and mass, she went to her bedchamber and courtiers unpinned these garments, and her ladies put on her new costume.[31] There were three wedding rings, a gold ring with a rich diamond and red enamelling was perhaps the principal.[32] Her costume and its solemn removal was described by Thomas Randolph in a letter to the Earl of Leicester:

She had on her backe the greate murning gowne of blacke, with the greate wyde murning hood, not unlyke unto that whiche she woore the deulfull daye of the buriall of her husbonde ... there [in her chamber] beinge required according to the solemnitie to off her care, and leave asyde these sorrowful garments ... she suffreth them that stood by, every man that could approve, to tayke owte a pyne, and so being committed unto her ladies, changed her garments.[33]

Mary's mourning clothes after the death of Darnley in February 1567 required 24 papers of pins.[34] The fabric was black serge of Florence, with some black plaid, the skirt and sleeves were silk chamlet lined with taffeta, the headdresses were linen and camerage (cambric).[35] Florian Broshere, the tapestry worker and embroiderer, draped her bed and hanged the chapel at Holyrood with fine French black.[36]

During Mary's adult reign in Scotland, purchases of textiles for her clothes and payments for tailors appear in the accounts of the Lord Treasurer. Her mother, Mary of Guise, as Regent (1554-1560) had paid for her clothes from her own French incomes.[37] Mary had a wardrobe as a department of her household, with several officers and artisans including tailors and embroiderers, and the "tapissiers" who looked after tapestry, beds, and furniture with her menusier, Nicholas Guillebault, the household carpenter or upholsterer. In March 1566 she rewarded her French embroiderer, Pier Veray, with the lucrative position of clerk of the customs of Edinburgh, an office taken from a suspect in the murderer of David Riccio.[38] There were workers outside the household too, mostly in Edinburgh, including the Flemish shoemaker Fremyn Alezard and the furrier Archibald Leche. Servais de Condé, a valet of the chamber, kept a written record in French tracking the use of the more expensive fabrics.[39] A broadly similar record of fabrics used by Mary of Guise from 1552 to 1554 also survives.[40]

In this example from July 1564, black velvet was given to Mary's tailor Jean de Compiègne, also known as Jehan Poulliet,[41] to make a purse for kerchiefs:

Plus a Jehan de Conpiegne i quartier de veloux noyr pour faire une grand bource pour la Royne lequelz fert a metre les mouchoy.
More, to Jehan de Compiegne, a quarter of black velvet to make a big purse for the queen, which she carries to hold kerchiefs.[42]

Some linen mouchoirs in the inventories may have been handkerchiefs, while others appear to be head coverings. Other linen items include pairs of callesons or caleçons, linen hose or stockings or undergarments which were also made for the fool known as La Jardiniere.[43]

Inventories of Mary's clothes written in French survive in the National Archives of Scotland and were printed by Joseph Robertson in 1863. This is an example of a skirt, with a note that it was given to the queen's favourite Mary Beaton:

Une vasquyne de satin cramoysy enrechye d'une bande d'ung passement d'argent faict a jour et borde d'ung passement d'argent.
Au moy de Fevvrier la Royne donne laditz vasquine a Mademoysel de Beton.[44]

This was one of fifteen embroidered skirts with passementerie listed in 1562. There were six plain skirts, and fifteen skirts of cloth of gold or silver. A cloth of gold skirt with matching sleeves was given to Magdalen Livingstone for her wedding. A skirt of cloth of silver was unpicked in 1566 for fabric to dress a bed.[45] Mary had several skirts made to match doublets, in silk camlet, velvet, and satin.[46] Mary wore skirts over a shaped farthingale, these were lined or doubled with taffeta, and their bell-shaped form stiffened with "girds" of whale baleen.[47][48] In December 1563 the tailor and valet of the wardrobe Jacques de Senlis reworked an old black velvet skirt that had belonged to Mary of Guise into a new style for the queen.[49][50]

The account mention furnishings and beds, and a variety of accessories including velvet collars for the queen's little dogs, "les petitz chiens de la Royne".[51] The Scots language and older French vocabulary in the inventories of Mary, Queen of Scots can be difficult to read and interpret. Some help is given by the original cross-referencing numbers which were printed in the 19th-century editions.[52] French and Scots language entries for the same item can be compared, in many cases giving insightful contemporary translations.[53] The letter "H" seen in the inventories refers to items confiscated from Huntly Castle,[54] and a letter "S" means an item was at Stirling Castle.[55][56]

Notes added to the inventories record gifts of clothing that Mary made from her wardrobe to favourite aristocrats, courtiers, and women of her household. She gave a skirt to the "little daughter of her laundress", Margaret Douchall who later followed her mother into royal service and married Jerome Bowie, a servant in the wine cellar.[57]

Costumes were given to household servants. In March 1567 five pages and seven lackeys were provided with riding cloaks of black stemming, pourpoints (doublets), and Mantua-style bonnets and hats by the tailor John Powlett. The list of fabrics survives in French and Scots. The smart and uniform appearance of these servants, visible when Mary travelled, greatly contributed to the impression of royal magnificence. These black clothes were the official mourning for the death of Lord Darnley.[58]

Mary and her court wore Highland clothes in Argyll and during visits to the north and Inverness. In June 1563 the court prepared "Hyeland apparell" for the progress to Argyll and Inveraray. Mary would wear a "marvellous fair" costume which had been a gift from Agnes Campbell the wife of James MacConel or MacDonald of Dunyvaig.[63]

The French author Brantôme claimed to have seen Mary in Highland costume.[64] He said she looked like a goddess, as her beauty transformed such costume, as anyone who had seen her portrait in such clothes would agree. Such a portrait, if it ever existed, does not survive. Brantôme, like other French writers of the period, writes of the "barbarous fashions of the savages of her country".[65]

Locally made woollen tartan or plaid was bought in Inverness. These cloths may not have closely resembled modern tartan fabrics. Some "Highland" items appear in inventories, including three Highland mantles in black, blue, and white, perhaps relating to these progresses, or used as masque costume.[66] Among Mary's smocks or shirts, called "sarks", were four English blackwork sarks, and a "hieland syd sark of yallow lyning pasmentit with purpour silk and silver".[67] Changing clothes to cross regional boundaries was traditional. Randolph, the English ambassador, joked about having to wear a yellow "safferon shyrte or a hylande pladde" if he went to Argyll.[68]

Costumes were made by Mary's tailor Jacques de Senlis for dancers and lute players who performed for Mary and the court during a wedding at Castle Campbell on 10 January 1563. They were dressed as shepherds in white taffeta with purses or satchels made of white damask.[69]

A masque in December 1563 involved three large blue velvet Swiss bonnets and wigs. There was also a blue velvet bonnet for Nichola the Fool, and Mademoiselle Rallay was given canvas to fashion wigs.[70] The occasion may have been her twenty-first birthday, where she tired herself with "dancing over long".[71] Mary's tailor Jehan de Compiegne made costumes from orange "changing" or shot taffeta for a masque in February 1565 at Holyrood Palace, with a smaller costume in the same fabric for a young girl at court. The English ambassador Thomas Randolph the describe Twelfth Night masques and banquets of February 1564. The four Maries and the queen's ladies wore white and black at one banquet,[72] and verses were recited as the courses were brought in by gentlemen wearing black and white.[73] Mary herself in white and black with white and black lace at her neck wore no other jewels except a diamond ring, a gift from Elizabeth I, worn as a pendant.[74] Mary seems to have emulated the fashion of other courts by dressing herself and her ladies in black and white for the masque, echoing colours adopted by Diane de Poitiers.[75]

Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have danced around the Market Cross of Stirling disguised "in homely sort" in July 1566.[76]

Several sources refer to Mary and her ladies wearing male costume for dance and for disguising or "guising", masked visits and promenades in Scottish towns.[77] On Easter Monday in April 1565 Mary and her ladies dressed like "bourgeois wives" and walked up and down the steep streets of Stirling, collecting contributions for a banquet.[78] Thomas Randolph's report of this Easter dressing-up custom, possibly associated with Hocktide,[79] reveals that the clothes worn by ladies at court were notably different from the costume worn by merchant's wives or other women living and working in Scotland's burgh towns, probably both in terms of fabrics and style.[80] Mary celebrated Easter at Stirling Castle this year, not in Edinburgh.[81] She had compared herself to a "bourgeois wife" in February 1565 while staying in a merchant's house in St Andrews, keeping a small household with little ceremony, and no cloth of estate, the canopy used above a throne.[82]

In the days after her marriage, in July 1565, Mary and Darnley walked up and down Edinburgh High Street in disguise.[83] For a masque to entertain the French ambassador, Nicolas d'Angennes, seigneur de Rambouillet, who brought the Order of Saint Michael for Darnley, the tailor Jean de Compiegne made six costumes decorated with flames made of cloth of gold reused from old cushion covers.[84] During the masque the queen's ladies, "cled in men's apperrell", presented 8 Scottish dirks or daggers to the French guests, with black velvet scabbards embroidered with gold.[85] A chroncle called the Diurnal of Occurrents described the scene in February 1566:

And the sammin nycht at evin, our soveranis maid ane banket to the ambassatour foirsaid Rambouillet, in the auld chappell of Halyrudhous, quhilk wes reapparrellit with fyne tapestrie, and hung magnificentlie, be the saidis lordis maid the maskery efter supper in ane honourable maner. And upoun the ellevint day of the said moneth, the king and quene in lyikmanner bankettit the ambassatour; and at evin our soveranis maid the maskrie and mumschance, in the quhilk the quenis grace, and all hir Maries and ladies wer all cled in men's apperrell; and everie ane of thame presentit ane quhingar, bravelie and maist artificiallie made and embroiderit with gold, to the ambassatour and his gentilmen, everie one of thame according to his estate.[86]

Randolph wrote that Mary, Darnley, and David Rizzio took part in a costly masque with seven other dancers in rich attire to welcome Rambouillet. Darnley's costume for his investiture in the Order was given to a French herald (Saint Michael, a Monsieur d'Oze)[87] as a prerequisite, these clothes were of satin guarded with black velvet and satin, sewn with aglets of gold.[88] Rambouillet stayed in Edinburgh's Canongate, and subsequently a number of local women were slandered as prostitutes and said to have visited the lodging dressed in men's clothes.[89]

Mary went to Alloa Tower about a month after the birth of Prince James, and was said to have danced around the Market Cross of Stirling "abandoning herself to riotousness" while "arrayed in homely sort".[90]

On 5 September 1566 Mary ordered fabrics for the household of her son, the future James VI, at Stirling Castle, for beds and bedding for Margaret Beaton, Lady Reres and the gentlewomen appointed as rockers of the prince's cradle. Taffeta was bought to make costumes for the masque at James' baptism. Mary was concerned to impress the guests at the baptism and gave orders for the clothes of her lords and followers. John Forster, an English border warden, heard that Mary had ordered clothes for the Earl of Bothwell in blue, the Earl of Argyll in red, and the Earl of Moray in green, "at her own charge". She asked her lords to each bring a certain number of retainers dressed in colours.[91]

In January 1567 the tailor Jehan de de Compiegne was given clothes including a black "Almain" or German-style cloak. In February the jester George Styne or Stevin had a costume made of blue kersey, and in March Nichola the fool had new linen. 10 ells of linen were bought for lining Mary's bathtub, and canvas for bathing was delivered to Toussaint Courcelles.[92]

On the night that Lord Darnley was killed by an explosion at the Kirk o'Field, Mary attended the wedding banquet and masque for her servant Bastian Pagez and Christily Hog. Mary gave the bride satin, velvet, and green ribbons for her gown.[93] Darnley's father, the Earl of Lennox later produced a narrative of events which says that some witnesses said Mary was dressed in men's clothing on that night, "which apparel she loved oftentimes to be in, in dancings secretly with the King her husband, and going in masks by night through the streets".[94]

Some costume for masques, "dansyne" or maskyne cleise", was obtained by Regent Moray in November 1569 and receipted by his lawyer and secretary Robert Fleschour.[95] Amy Blakeway suggests that Moray may intended to use them for festivities at Christmas time, but such plans would have been upset when fugitives from the Rising of the North crossed the border.[96]

When Mary was at Inverness in September 1562 she said, after seeing the armed guard return from watch at night, that she regretted she "was not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and a knapschall (helmet), a Glasgow buckler, and a broad sword".[97]

After the murder of Lord Darnley, when Mary seemed likely to marry the Earl of Bothwell, William Kirkcaldy of Grange wrote to the Earl of Bedford, an English diplomat, that Mary did not care if she lost France, England and Scotland for Bothwell's sake, and she had said she would go with him to the world's end in a white petticoat;

sho caris not to lose France Ingland and her owne countrie for him, and sall go with him to the warldes ende in ane white peticote or she leve him.[98]

A report written by the Captain of Inchkeith, Robert Anstruther, and a chronicle called the Diurnal of Occurrents,[99] mention that Mary wore male clothing on her ride from Borthwick Castle to Dunbar Castle in 1567, and she is sometimes said to have been disguised as a page. Mary wore a short red petticoat at knee-length at Dunbar the next day before the battle of Carberry Hill. Anstruther's report written in French describes another item, but the words appear to be illegible.[100] According to George Buchanan, Mary changed into a short skirt at Fawside Castle on the morning of 15 June 1567 before the battle of Carberry. She left some clothes behind in a chest, including a gown of black "estamet" (stemming) embroidered with grains of jet, a crimson chamlet dress, a plaid, a great cloak, and a hat embroidered with gold and silver, with a panache. The black gown was "faict a la souvaige", perhaps meaning Highland fashion.[101]

An English soldier and border official, William Drury, heard another description of Mary's costume at this time, that she was dressed at Dunbar "after the attire and fashion of the women of Edinburgh, in a red petticoat tied with points, a partlet, a velvet hat, and muffler". The partlet, worn over the shoulders, does not frequently appear in the queen's inventories but was included in lists of townswomen's property.[102] Both male apparel and bourgeois costume featured in the clothing worn by Mary for masques and disguisings.[103][104]

At Carlisle Castle, Francis Knollys was impressed by the hairdressing skills of Mary Seton, who Mary said was the "finest busker, the finest dresser of a woman's head and hair that is to be seen in any country". Knollys wrote "among other pretty devices, yesterday and this day she did set such a curled hair upon the Queen, that was said to be a periwig that showed very delicately, and every other day lightly ... she hath a new device of head dressing, without any cost, and yet sets forth a woman gaily well". Mary had received clothes "of black colour" by 28 June 1568, and Knollys sent to Edinburgh for more of Mary's clothes, as "she seemeth to esteem not of any apparyll other than hyr owne".[120] Andrew Melville of Garvock came to Carlisle bringing three gowns.[121] The first consignment of clothes from Lochleven Castle to arrive in England for Mary proved inadequate, and she complained to Knollys that in three coffers sent by Regent Moray there was only one gown of taffeta, the rest only cloaks, saddle cloths, sleeves, partlets, coifs, and "such like trinketts".[122]

Queen Elizabeth apparently hesitated to send her some of her own clothes, but did send 16 yards of black velvet, 16 yards of black satin and 10 yards of black taffeta, a gift interpreted by the costume historian Janet Arnold as a hint that Mary ought to be in mourning clothes.[123] Mary's secretary Claude Nau mentions the receipt of this gift of textiles at Carlisle, packed in a small box and in shorter lengths than specified in Elizabeth's warrant.[124] The Spanish diplomat, Guzmán de Silva, seems to have reported this particular gift to Phillip II as an unsuitable present for a queen comprising two old chemises, some black velvet, and a pair of shoes.[125]

Francis Knollys sent Richard Graham alias Garse Ritchie, a servant of Lord Scrope, to bring more of Mary's clothes from Lochleven. He brought five cart loads and four laden horses to Bolton Castle on 20 July 1568. He went back to Scotland, where Regent Moray gave him a reward of 50 French crowns and a parcel of new clothing and costume fabric for his half-sister including; grey and black taffeta, black velvet, thread for stitching, jet buttons, and 12 pairs of leather shoes.[126] Mary wanted Garse Richie to fetch her "jewels", the furs with gold mounts known as zibellini, from John Sempill of Beltrees but Moray would not allow this.[127] Mary received her portable sounding alarm clock or chiming watch from Lochleven, kept in a purse of silver and grey réseau work which she may have made herself.[128] She set up an old cloth of estate from Scotland above her chair in the Great Chamber at Bolton Castle, asserting her royal status.[129]

A consignment of furnishing was sent to Tutbury Castle for Mary in January 1569 from the English great wardrobe and "removing wardrobe" and from the Tower of London. This included a group of tapestries, verdure tapestry bedcovers, bedding, and chairs and stools covered in crimson cloth of gold and other rich fabrics, and 2000 hooks and two hammers to hang the tapestry. Some hangings were sent to Tutbury from Sheffield by Bess of Hardwick, the Countess of Shrewsbury. Chambers were "hanged" with tapestry for Lady Livingstone and her husband, and for Mary Seton. There was tapestry for three rooms of Mary's apartment, the great bedchamber, her own bedchamber, and the chamber for her grooms. Mary arrived at Tutbury on 4 February 1569 and her French tailor Jacques Senlis and the tapestry worker and embroiderer Florian rejoined her household.[130]

The Earl of Shrewsbury described her at Tutbury in March 1569, working at embroidery and making designs with Bess of Hardwick, Lady Livingstone, and Mary Seton. This was an innocent domestic activity, unlikely to result in conspiracy and sedition:[131] "this Queen continueth daily resort unto my wife's chamber, where with the Lady Leviston and Mistress Seton, she useth to sit working with the needle, in which she much delights, and in devising of works, and her talk is altogether of indifferent trifling matters, without any sign of secret dealing or practice".[132] The surviving results of their collaboration are known as the Oxburgh Hangings. In a letter of 10 September 1570, Mary mentioned that her servant Bastian Pagez devised or "invented" pieces of work, embroidery patterns, to cheer her up.[133]

There were rumours that Mary would try to escape from captivity in April 1571. One plan was that she should pretend to fall ill while dancing. When she was carried to bed a companion in her clothes would take her place. Mary would escape, dressed as a man, and ride away. Another plan was that she would slip away during a hunt, leaving a companion dressed in her riding clothes. Again, Mary would find an opportunity to change into male clothing and ride away with a messenger. A third plan was for the queen to cut her hair and smear her face with filth, like a "turnbroche", a boy who turned a spit over the kitchen fire. Mary seems not to have attempted escape by such methods.[134]

Mary had clothes sent to her from France. In November 1572 she wrote to the French ambassador Mothe-Fénelon from Sheffield, hoping he could ask her mother-in-law Catherine de' Medici to buy linen for herself and her ladies.[135] A shopping list drawn up in 1572 by her tailor, Jehan de Compiegne, for Jean de Beaucaire, Seigneur de Puiguillon, gives an idea of clothes and textiles obtained from Paris. She may have imported similar goods during her years in Scotland, utilising her French income, although similar goods were available in Edinburgh merchants' booths. The lengths of fabrics were specified for some garments, robes of Florence serge, and doublets of satin lined with taffeta. The order included Milan-style points or fers, and points of jet, an apparently ready-made velvet Spanish-style gown, stockings, shoes, velvet and leather slippers, plain and embroidered handkerchiefs, and other items. The purchases were packed in two coffers or bahuts and shipped in May to the French ambassador Mothe-Fénélon in London to forward to Mary at Sheffield Castle.[136] The clothes had not reached her by 10 June, so Mary wrote to Mothe Fénélon about the missing coffer her tailor had brought to London.[137] Mary seems to have made a similar order in April 1573.[138]

In January 1576, the French ambassador Michel de Castelnau asked Elizabeth I to allow four trunks of French-made clothes to be delivered to Mary at Sheffield Manor by her tailor's servants.[139] Mary made a will when she was at Sheffield Manor in February 1577. She wanted the executors who would arrange for her funeral to have her large bed of "cramoysi brun" embroidered velvet, her tapestries of the Story of Aeneas and the Story of Meleager, a table nef, and a suite of wall hangings of cloth of gold and violet velvet. She bequeathed an old bed of violet velvet to a French servant Baltassar Hully.[140] Ten years later, the "cramoysi brun" bed was described as "old purple velvet, embroidered with cloth of silver and flowers, with curtains of purple damask, and a covering of serge furred with fox".[141]

While at Sheffield in 1581, Marie Castelnau, the wife of the French ambassador in London, Michel de Castelnau, sent her a gown and a "soutane". Her tailor Jacques de Senlis had died and she wanted to employ Jehan de Compiegne, a tailor who had worked for her in Scotland.[142] She asked James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, to buy dress materials in Rouen for her, and forward them to the French ambassador Michel de Castelnau.[143] Mary was able to buy silk fabrics for her clothes in France, using 1039 crowns from her French income.[144]

After Castelnau was recalled from London, Mary wrote from Chartley to the new ambassador Guillaume de l'Aubespine de Châteauneuf about maintaining a secret correspondence. She suggested writing sometimes on supplies of white taffeta, or a fine linen called "linomple". The ambassador was to refer to the cloth in his letters, mentioning the length was a number of yards or ells plus one half. This would tell her that the ambassador had written on the cloth with invisible ink made with alum.[145] An letter sent to Mary's secretary Claude Nau by his brother-in-law, Jean Champhuon, Sieur du Ruisseau, was intercepted. It included the suspicious phrase "a hundred and a half-hundred of feathers", thought to indicate a secret message.[146]

In one coffer stored in Edinburgh Castle there was a set of dolls called "pippens" with their miniature wardrobe of farthingales, sleeves, and slippers.[176][177] The dolls may have been intended for play, or used as fashion dolls disseminating patterns for creating new outfits for Mary and her ladies in waiting.[178] In a treatise on collecting printed in 1565, Samuel Quiccheberg noted that princesses and queens sent each other dolls with details of foreign clothing.[179] Mary's tailor Jacques de Senlis updated the dolls' costumes with grey damask and silver cloth in September 1563.[180]

The dolls are listed in the inventory with miscellaneous items which appear to be a remainder of her cabinet of curiosities in Scotland.[181] A cabinet room at Holyrood Palace had been fashioned for Mary by her valet Servais de Condé in September 1561, the walls lined with fabic called "Paris green".[182] The work was financed with a loan from the banker and textile merchant Timothy Cagnioli.[183]

In 1584, James Stewart, Earl of Arran gained political power in Scotland, and his wife Elizabeth Stewart, Countess of Arran became an influential and controversial figure. An English diplomat, William Davison, reported that she had obtained new keys to Mary's jewel chests, and the official keeper of the keys, Robert Melville, would resign his responsibilities. Davison heard that the Countess of Arran had surveyed the remaining royal wardrobe, and "tried what garments, and that were the Queen's, may best fit her, and choose out, at her own discretion, what she liketh". Davison thought that these actions of Arran and his wife in August 1584 would soon provoke a reaction against them.[184]

Mary embroidered one of the Oxburgh panels with an image of the "Su", an animal from Patagonia illustrated by André Thevet.[189]

A further inventory was made at Chartley on 18 May of needlework in the keeping of Renée Rallay alias Mademoiselle de Beauregard. This includes 102 flowers worked in petit-point, 124 birds, and another 116 birds cut-out, 16 four-footed beasts including a lion attacking a wild boar, 52 fish, and other works of embroidery intended for a bed and a cloth of estate.[190] Another paper (in two parts) in French describes the devices on Mary's bed, the embroidered emblems with Latin mottoes.[191]

Embroidery was a lifelong hobby and passion for Mary. She used designs from emblem books and illustrations from the natural history works of Conrad Gesner. A ginger "catte" based on a woodcut of Gesner's may have been intended to represent Elizabeth I.[192] Other sources for animals incorporated for motifs worked by Mary include the publications of Pietro Andrea Mattioli and Pierre Belon. Her "bird of America", the toucan, was based on an illustration by André Thevet, and she also copied his "Su". Thevet had a number of connections to Mary, and the Guise and French royal family, and had sailed to Brazil in the fleet of Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, who captained Mary's two voyages between France and Scotland.[193]

A design with the Latin motto Virescit Vulnere Virtus (virtue grows strong by wounding) seems to signal her will and ambition to survive her rival.[194] Made up a cushion cover as a gift to the Duke of Norfolk, the design featured a hand descending from heaven with a pruning hook, as if to clear away old growth for new shoots. This was interpreted as referring to Elizabeth as barren stock and the continuance of the English crown through the descent of Mary.[195]

In August 1586, possibly while Mary was taken to Tixall, an inventory was made of her jewels and silver plate in the keeping of Jean Kennedy. Some fabrics were in the keeping of Elizabeth Curle.[196] There is also a short list of items stolen from Mary in 1586. The circumstances are unclear. The list includes a gold pincase to wear on a girdle, enamelled white and red, doublets of russet satin and canvas, a black velvet cap with a green and black feather, and three embroidered mufflers or scarves of which two were black velvet. Three "carcanet chains" or necklaces were embroidered with gold and silver.[197]

The August 1586 inventory includes some linen and canvas for embroidery, and a bed of work of "rezel", le lict d'ouvraige de rezel.[198] This was probably the same "reseau" network that Mary had crafted at Lochleven. The bed curtains were described again in English as "furniture for a bedd, of network and holland intermixed, not half finished".[199]

After Mary's execution in February 1587 a list of her belongings, jewellery and apparell, in the possession of various members of her household was made.[200] Jean Kennedy, Renée Rallay, Gillis Mowbray, and Mary Pagez, the daughter of Bastian Pagez, each held several items from the queen's wardrobe. Renée Rallay had the queen's embroidery silks. Some pieces, including the black velvet gown set with pearls were said to have been earmarked by Mary to be sold by her Master of Household, Andrew Melville of Garvock, to cover the expenses of the return of servants to Scotland.[201]

Some of Mary's things were sent to Scotland, and in April 1603, the secretary of Anne of Denmark, William Fowler noted or obtained a list of some of the emblems or devices embroidered on the curtains of Mary's bed at Holyrood Palace. Fowler's nephew William Drummond of Hawthornden sent a version of the list to Ben Jonson in 1619. The embroideries included a panel with a Latin motto Unus Non Sufficit Orbis, or "One world is not enough".[202] An picture of a two loadstone magnets was captioned with an embroidered anagram of "Marie Steuart" in French as Sa Verteu M'attire, meaning "its virtue attracts me". This anagram had been used by Mary as a signature to a poem in 1574.[203]