Claude Nau
Claude Nau or Claude Nau de la Boisseliere (d. 1605) was a confidential secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, in England from 1575 to 1586. He was involved in coding Mary's letters with cipher keys.[1]
Career
Nau was a successful lawyer practicing in Paris. He was recruited by the Guise family in 1574 to be Mary's secretary. Jean Champhuon, sieur du Ruisseau, an advocate who married Nau's sister Claire in 1563, also joined Mary's service.[2][3][4] An account of the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, mentions that Ruisseau was Claude Nau's brother-in-law, a beau frere, and Albert Fontenay was Claude Nau's brother or half brother.[5]
Nau was presented by the
In January 1577, Nau sent cipher code keys to his brother-in-law the treasurer Jean de Champhuon, sieur du Ruisseau, to Mr Douglas, to John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, and to Ralph Lygon, for use in their correspondence with Mary.[8] In August 1577 Nau added a postscript to one of Mary's letters to her ally in France, James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, that he intended to send him the queen's portrait, but the painter working at Sheffield Castle had not completed the work to perfection.[9]
Negotiations in Scotland and London
In June 1579, Mary sent Nau as her ambassador to her son,
Claude's brother-in-law, the Sieur de Fontenay, sent from France, had more success. Fontenay was able to meet James VI in August 1584. Fontenay wrote to Claude Nau about his good reception, James had met him in his cabinet at
While Fontenay was still in Edinburgh, in March 1585, he warned Nau that a rumour was circulating at the Scottish court that Mary made him sleep with her (que sa majeste vous faisoit coucher avec elle), and so they should modify their familiar behaviour when the Master of Gray visited.[17]
Pierrepont
Nau had a relationship with a young woman in Mary's household, Elizabeth Pierrepont. In April 1586 he sent a friend to discuss marriage with her father Henry Pierrepont.[18] Mary was in favour of her marriage, but it seems her father had other ideas and removed her from the household.[19]
Cipher codes and the Babington Plot
Nau and another secretary Gilbert Curle were arrested at Chartley in 1586. They were escorted to London by Thomas Gorges.[20] He seems to have lived comfortably with the family of Francis Walsingham in London.[21] Nau was watched or supervised by a man called Anthony Hall,[22] a Mr Mills, and John Allen. Allen was later accused of allowing Nau to correspond with Bess Pierrepont.[23] Elizabeth I considered that neither Nau or Curle were so desperate that they might kill themselves.[24]
Jérôme Pasquier, a servant who coded Mary's letters, was also arrested. Pasquier was questioned in the Tower of London about the Babington Plot and the writing of cipher codes in Mary's household. He told Thomas Phelippes that Nau kept the alphabets and cipher keys. Pasquier usually did his cipher work in Nau's chamber. Mary kept the letters in cipher herself.[25]
Nau was accused of deciphering a letter from Anthony Babington and composing a reply from Mary (by discussion and dictation) which Gilbert Curle translated into English.[26] Francis Walsingham sent news to the Scottish Court in September 1586 that Mary was to be moved to Fotheringhay, and that "the matters whereof she is guilty are already so plain and manifest (being also confessed by her two secretaries), as it is thought, they shall required no long debating".[27] During his questioning, Nau said that Mary was averse to plans to invade England and deplace Elizabeth, known at the "Enterprise", considering that she might have to renounce her claim to the throne in favour of her son James VI, or that neither she or her son would gain the English throne. Nau claimed Mary only wished to intervene or interfere in Scotland.[28]
Mary thought that her secretaries, Nau and Curle, and the clerk Pasquier, had betrayed her, and she altered her will. After Mary's execution, Nau returned to France where he was exonerated from accusations of treachery to Mary by the King and the Duke of Guise.[29]
In 1605, Nau wrote to James VI and I. He suggested that Mary was not guilty because she had no freedom of action. He said he had tried not to prejudice Mary during his questioning by Cecil and Walsingham. He had not taken any bribes from Elizabeth, and the only gift he had from her was her portrait in miniature or in cameo framed in ebony, which he was given in November 1585. Nau gave this portrait to Mary.[30]
Works
Joseph Stevenson discovered Nau's memoirs of Mary and her history and published these works in 1883. Stevenson also attributed a treatise in French on Mary's title to the English throne to Nau.[31]
Nau wrote a history of the years 1542 to 1545 which describes
Nau started translating John Lesley's Latin history of Scotland, the De Origine, into French. He did not complete this historical work.
Further reading
References
- ^ Katy Gibbons, English Catholic Exiles in Late Sixteenth-century Paris (Boydell, 2011), p. 79: Fanny Cosandey, Dire et vivre l'ordre social en France sous l'Ancien Régime (Paris, 2005), p. 109.
- ^ William Barclay Turnbull, Letters of Mary Stuart (London, 1845), p. 345.
- ^ Samuel Jebb, De Vita Et Rebus Gestis Serenissimae Principis Mariae Scotorum (London, 1725), p. 626: Sheila R. Richards, Secret Writing in the Public Records (HMSO, 1974), pp. 21, 28: George Akrigg, Letters of King James VI & I (University of California, 1984), p. 55.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 113 no. 110: Henry Ellis, Original Letters, series 1 vol. 2 (London, 1824), p. 277.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 183 no. 190.
- ^ William Barclay Turnbull, Letters of Mary Stuart (London, 1845), p. 251.
- ^ Alexandre Labanoff, Lettres de Marie Stuart, vol. 4 (London, 1852), p. 390.
- ^ James Dennistoun, Memoirs of the Affairs of the Scotland by David Moysie (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1830), p. 23
- ^ Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1880), pp. 185-6
- ^ HMC Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield, vol. 3 (London, 1889), pp. 47-62.
- ^ Sadler State Papers, 3, p. 209
- ^ Sophie Crawford Lomas, Calendar State Papers Foreign Elizabeth, vol. 19 (London, 1916), pp. 38–39, 161.
- ^ Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the policy of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (Clarendon Press, 1925), pp. 238-9.
- ^ Sadler State Papers, 3, pp. 212–213, 215
- ^ Sheila R. Richards, Secret Writing in the Public Records (London: HMSO, 1974), p. 29.
- ^ William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1585-1586, vol. 8 (Edinburgh, 1914), p. 278 no. 307, 296 no. 321.
- ^ William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1585-1586, vol. 8 (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 341-2 no. 366.
- ^ Samuel Cowan, The last days of Mary Stuart and the journal of Bourgoyne her physician (London, 1907), p. 182
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 9, p. 242 no. 238.
- ^ Henry Ellis, Original Letters, series 2 vol. 3 (London, 1827), p. 169, 'Jacques Nau'.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 9 (Glasgow, 1915), pp. 281–282 no. 275.
- ^ William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 8 (London, 1914), p. 621 no. 710.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 9 (Glasgow, 1915), pp. 30–31 no. 29.
- ^ Letters and Papers Relating to Patrick Master of Gray (Edinburgh, 1835), pp. 110-111.
- ^ Leo Hicks, An Elizabethan Problem (London, 1964), p. 142.
- ^ Joseph Stevenson, History of Mary Stewart, by Claude Nau (Edinburgh, 1883), pp. xii-lvii, xlvii-xlix.
- ^ Joseph Stevenson, History of Mary Stewart, by Claude Nau (Edinburgh, 1883), lii-lvi.
- ^ Joseph Stevenson, History of Mary Queen of Scots by Claude Nau (1883), pp. xii, xvii, from British Library, Cotton Titus C.xii.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 9 (Edinburgh, 1915), pp. 524-529.