Mary, Queen of Scots: When Embroidery Became a Language

When I visited Oxburgh Hall recently, one of the things I most wanted to see was the group of embroideries known as the Oxburgh or Marian Hangings.

I knew they were associated with Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury — better known as Bess of Hardwick. What I had not appreciated was quite how much story could be contained in these relatively small pieces of embroidery.

Since my visit I have also finished reading Clare Hunter’s Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power. That has made me look at my photographs from Oxburgh rather differently.

I had gone expecting to look at historic embroidery.

I came away wondering whether I had actually been looking at a form of communication.

The embroideries were not made at Oxburgh

Despite their name, the Oxburgh Hangings were not created at Oxburgh Hall.

Mary was held in captivity in England under the guardianship of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwick’s husband. During those years Mary, Bess and women around them produced embroidered panels, many filled with animals, birds, plants, initials and symbolic imagery. The pieces now at Oxburgh date mainly from the period between 1569 and 1584. National Trust

The embroideries only arrived at Oxburgh much later, in 1761, through the marriage of Mary Browne to Sir Richard Bedingfeld. By then the individual panels had been mounted onto green velvet and arranged into larger hangings. National Trust

That is worth remembering when looking at them today. We are not necessarily seeing the embroideries exactly as Mary and Bess would have seen them.

Mary the stitcher

One quotation in the Oxburgh display particularly stayed with me.

Nicholas White, an envoy of Elizabeth I, recorded asking Mary how she passed her time indoors. He reported that she spent much of the day working with her needle, continuing until discomfort eventually made her stop.

That single glimpse suddenly makes her feel much less remote.

We know Mary as a queen, a political prisoner and one of the most famous women of the Tudor period.

But here she is also a stitcher.

Someone choosing colours, filling shapes and spending hour after hour with needle and thread.

And she certainly produced a considerable amount of work. The surviving panels are only part of what once existed.

Not simply something to pass the time

This is where Clare Hunter’s book really changed my thinking.

Hunter argues that textiles were part of Mary’s language of power. During captivity, when her movements were restricted and correspondence could be watched or intercepted, embroidery offered another means of preserving memories and expressing ideas.

Hunter describes Mary’s needlework as capable of carrying personal emotion as well as political meaning, and sees Bess as an important collaborator in creating some of these small symbolic embroideries. National Galleries of Scotland

That does not mean that every bird, tree or animal can be translated neatly into a secret political message.

In fact, that is where things become particularly interesting.

The pruning knife and the fruitful branch

One of the strongest stories I was told at Oxburgh concerned the Marian Panel.

At its centre is a hand holding a curved pruning knife beside the motto usually translated as “Virtue flourishes with a wound.”

The interpretation given at Oxburgh links it to the political struggle between Mary and Elizabeth I.

The barren or unfruitful branch represents Elizabeth, while Mary is the fruitful branch that should be allowed to flourish.

Put rather more plainly: cut away the old branch and let the new one grow.

The Oxburgh guide also connects this imagery with the proposed marriage between Mary and the Duke of Norfolk and states that the Marian Panel was used as evidence at Norfolk’s trial.

Standing in front of it, it is an extraordinary thought.

We tend to associate political communication with letters, speeches and documents.

Yet here a stitched image of a pruning knife and a vine could carry a dangerous political meaning.

But is that the only interpretation?

This is where reading afterwards has made me more cautious.

Sixteenth-century embroidery drew heavily on printed books, emblem books, natural-history illustrations and other existing sources. Images could therefore have recognised meanings before Mary or Bess ever stitched them.

At Hardwick, for example, surviving embroidered panels associated with Bess draw botanical designs from contemporary published sources and combine them with Latin mottoes. National Trust Collections

So perhaps the more interesting question is not simply:

“What does this picture mean?”

but:

“What might Mary have made this picture mean?”

A familiar image could acquire a new significance through its choice, its colouring, its motto or the circumstances in which it was made.

Hunter takes that idea much further.

She discusses, for example, a crowned dolphin as a possible reference to Mary’s first husband, Francis, who had been Dauphin of France.

She also interprets the famous embroidered cat and mouse as political autobiography: the cat representing Elizabeth and the trapped mouse representing Mary. National Galleries of Scotland

Whether every interpretation can ever be proved is another question.

But the possibility changes the way you look at the embroidery.

Looking closely

For me, some of the most fascinating parts were not the large compositions at all.

They were the individual little panels.

Birds.

Animals.

Trees.

Flowers.

Initials.

Tiny enclosed worlds of stitch.

Looking closely at my photographs afterwards, I can see the counted structure of the embroidery, the changes of colour and the careful outlining of each shape.

The pieces were worked on linen canvas using silks and wools, principally in cross stitch and tent stitch. Some also incorporated precious metal threads. Victoria and Albert Museum

They are extraordinarily detailed.

But they are not perfect little pictures floating untouched through history.

The fabric has aged. Threads have faded. Some areas are worn. Panels have been cut, mounted, moved and rearranged.

And somehow I like that.

Their history did not finish when the last stitch was placed.

Mary and Bess

It would also be wrong to make the whole story about Mary.

Bess of Hardwick was an extraordinary woman in her own right, and embroidery formed part of her world too.

Mary and Bess spent years within the same household and shared access to patterns, books and needlework materials. Some surviving embroidery was produced by Mary, some by Bess, and some by other women working around them. National Trust Collections

That makes the hangings something more complicated than the work of one famous queen.

They are evidence of a community of women making, copying, adapting and communicating through cloth.

Stitch as evidence

This is perhaps the part that interests me most.

When I first saw the hangings, I was looking at the embroidery.

Now I find myself looking for the people behind it.

Who chose that animal?

Why that motto?

Why those colours?

Was a particular image simply attractive, or did it mean something deeply personal to the woman stitching it?

We may never know all the answers.

But that does not make the embroidery less valuable as historical evidence.

Quite the opposite.

It reminds us that history does not survive only in official documents.

Sometimes it survives in cloth.

Sometimes it survives in the choices made by a needlewoman nearly 450 years ago.

And sometimes a piece of embroidery can say far more than we first realise.