Bastian Pagez
The 19th-century historians Agnes Strickland and William Barclay Turnbull considered his court role as equivalent to the English Master of the Revels; in England he was Mary's chamber valet and designed her embroidery patterns.
Bastian is first recorded at the Scottish court in 1565 when Mary and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley bought him an elaborate and expensive suit of clothes costing over £100 Scots as a mark of their favour.
The courses of the dinner were brought up the hall on a moving table, with twelve men dressed as satyrs, with long tails, carrying lighted torches.
[6] Meanwhile, the nymphs and satyrs sang Latin verses specially written by George Buchanan in honour of the food and hosts as the Rustic gods bringing gifts to James and his mother.
Parts of the song were given to the satyrs, nereids, fauns, and naiads who alternately addressed the Queen and Prince, and it was concluded by characters representing the Orkney Islands.
[8] Polydore Vergil had published a more current version of the ancient legend, writing that the curse applied to the descendants of people from Strood who had cut off the tail of Thomas Becket's horse.
[14] On the day of the banquet with satyrs, there had been fireworks directed by John Chisholm and the gunners Charles Bordeaux and James Hector with a pageant consisting of an assault on a mock castle by wildmen.
"[19] Mary, Queen of Scots attended Bastian's wedding dance on 9 February 1567, a "banquet and masque", the night before the murder of Darnley at the Kirk o' Field lodging.
[21] George Buchanan, who calls him Sebastian, one of the queen's musicians or singers, says that Mary left the wedding to meet Darnley but returned to Holyroodhouse to join the dance and follow the custom of putting the bride to bed.
[22] It was said she wore male costume for the wedding masque, "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".
[23] The confessions of accomplices to the King's murder mention the torchlit procession of the Queen's retinue passing back down Blackfriar's Wynd to the wedding, which has become part of the enduring imagery of the night.
[24] After the Earl of Bothwell was accused of Darnley's murder, on 19 February 1567 a number of the queen's French servants crossed the border to Berwick upon Tweed in England.
Only "Sebastian" was named by the Governor of Berwick, William Drury, who noted they were all, except their single Scottish escort, wearing "Ilande wede."
[25] At the trial of Bothwell on 12 April 1567, a letter from Darnley's father, the Earl of Lennox, was submitted, which named Bastian, Joseph, and Charles Bordeaux, the French gunner who directed the fireworks at the baptism, as suspects who should be arrested.
[28] On 26 February 1567, Bastian arrived in London with Mary's French financial comptroller, Monsieur Dolu, and went to the Scottish ambassador, Robert Melville of Murdocairney.
[29] The Spanish ambassador in London identified Bastian as the "groom who married the night following the death of King" and reported that this letter consisted of Mary's lamentations for troubles and her wish not to calumniated in England by rumours of her involvement in the murder.
The "young French varlet of the Scots queen" arrived in Paris on 4 March, identified by the historian John Hungerford Pollen as Bastian.
[33] Mary had requested that Bastian join her at Lochleven Castle in July 1567, the English ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton noted that she had asked the Lords for, "an imbroiderer to draw forth suche work as she would be occupied about.
[35] Mary wrote to John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, from Sheffield Castle in September saying she had to give up some servants, but Bastian was deemed necessary.
Regent Morton discovered in 1574 that Christine Hogg's mother in Edinburgh was involved in Mary's secret correspondence via the Earl of Shrewsbury's Scottish schoolmaster, Alexander Hamilton.
The other suggested riders, the secretaries Claude Nau and Gilbert Curll, and her master of household Andrew Melville had also been mentioned with Bastian in connection with secret letters.
[43] In November 1584, Bastian travelled as far as Nottingham, accompanying Claude Nau, who was going to London to meet with Elizabeth and with the Scottish ambassador, the Master of Gray.
[45] By August 1587, Bastian and Christine had two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, sons David and Jacques, and five younger children whose names were not recorded.
[58] A letter of the conspirator Charles Paget, who was part of the Babington Plot to free (or incriminate) Mary, gives an insight to Bastian's status, showing he was an intimate of the Queen, but not an essential member of her secretariat.
When the English authorities decided to act on the plot on 11 August 1586, Mary was out riding with Bastian, her doctor Dominique Bourgoing and others, and they were surprised by armed soldiers who took them to nearby Tixall.
[63] In a list made of the Queen's possessions and bequests in the keeping of her servants, Mary Pagez's father has in money 300 French crowns, and a "suit of savage attire",[64] which seems to relate to his masque productions or the "ilande wede" Drury saw him wearing at Berwick.
