Bastian Pagez was a French servant and musician at the court of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was born in Auvergne.Robert Stedall, Mary Queen of Scots' Secretary: William Maitland, Politician, Reformer and Conspirator (Pen and Sword Books, pp. 121, 135 following George Buchanan. He devised part of the entertainment at the baptism of Prince James at Stirling Castle in 1566.Clara Steeholm & Hardy Steeholm, James I of England: The Wisest Fool in Christendom (London, 1938), p. 18. When Mary was exiled in England, Bastian and his family continued in her service. 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.
Christening at Stirling 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.Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1916), pp. lxi, 390. James Melville of Halhill wrote in his Memoirs that Bastian was responsible for an entertainment in the Great Hall of Stirling Castle which offended the English guests at the baptism of the future James VI.Michael Bath, Emblems in Scotland: Motifs and Meanings (Brill, 2018), pp. 81-82.William Barclay Turnbull, Letters of Mary Scots (London, 1845), p. xxiv.
Mary and thirty guests sat at a round table like King Arthur's at the head of the hall. 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. In their other hand the satyrs carried whips to clear the way in front. When the table reached the stage, the satyrs passed their torches to bystanders. Then six servers dressed as nymphs who had been seated on the moving table, passed the food to the satyrs, who brought the dishes up to the round table on the stage.Joseph Stevenson, The History of Mary Stewart by Claude Nau (1883), pp. cxlviii-cl, from BL Sloane MS 3199 fol. 264 and Ashmole. MS 840 fol. 99, gives these details of the round table and service. 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.published title, Pompae Deorum Rusticorum dona ferentium Jacobo VI & Mariae matri eius, Scotorum Regibus in coena que Regis baptisma est consecuta, in George Buchanan, Omnia Opera,, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1725), pp. 404-5 part translated in Thomas Innes, A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland, vol. 1 (1729), pp. 349-352
Although the choreography was perfect, when the satyrs first wagged their tails, the Englishmen took it as reference to an old saying that Englishmen had tails.Sarah Carpenter, "Performing Diplomacies: The 1560s Court Entertainments of Mary Queen of Scots", Scottish Historical Review, 82:2 no. 214 (2003), p. 220. This story of English tails was first set down in the Middle Ages by the chronicle writers William of Malmesbury, Wace, and Layamon in his Brut. The origin was a legend that Saint Austin cursed the Kentish men of Rochester to have rayfish tails, and afterwards they were called muggles.Frederick Madden, Layamon's Brut, or Chronicle of Britain, vol. 3, Society of Antiquaries (1847), pp. 185–187. 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. From this ancient story it had become proverbial in Europe that all Englishmen had secret tails.Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia, (1555), book 13: bilingual version by Dana F. Sutton: see Michael Bath, 'Anglici Caudati,' (2011), pp. 184-188 for a discussion of the development of this legend of the English tail. A few years later, George Buchanan mentioned the legend of the Kentish men in a friendly letter to Thomas Randolph.Henry Ellis, Original Letters, series 4 vol. 3 (London, 1846), p. 373.
James Melville criticised the diplomacy of the English guests for taking offence, saying they should have pretended not to see the joke. Some of the English guests, including Christopher Hatton, sat down behind the high table to face away from the spectacle, and the Queen and the English ambassador, the Earl of Bedford had to smooth things over. Melville said that Hatton told him he would have stabbed Bastian for the offence, done because Mary, for once, showed more favour to Englishmen rather than the French.Thomas Thomson, Sir James Melvill of Halhill: Memoirs of his own life (Bannatyne Club, 1827), pp. 171-172.
The supper with courses served by satyrs was on the 19 December 1566, two days after the baptism of the Prince, according to an English journal of the event. The moving table or stage was drawn up the hall four times for four courses, led by the satyrs. Each time its decorative theme was renewed. It broke during the fifth course.Joseph Stevenson, The History of Mary Stewart by Claude Nau (Edinburgh: Paterson, 1883), pp. cxlviii-cl. Amongst other payments, the royal accounts record that on 6 December Bastian was given 40 ells of "taffeteis of cord" in three colours to be "some "preparatives" for the baptism. "Preparatives" here may mean "harbingers," the role of the satyrs at the feast, but may just mean the preparations in general.Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 12, (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 35, 397: David Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots (London, 1897), p. 501: NRS E23/3/18 precept signed by Mary, 3 December at Craigmillar Castle, and by "Bastien Pagez", 6 December, see external links and illustrated in Rosalind K. Marshall, Mary Queen of Scots (NMS Exhibition, 2013), no. 145, p. 36. Agnes Strickland compared this order for taffeta with John Forster's report in September of outfits in red, blue, and green for the Earls of Moray, Argyll and Bothwell,Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland: Mary Stuart, 5 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1854), p. 59. but Anne of Denmark ordered a comparable amount of taffeta, 48 ells in various colours, for a masque performed in September 1591.Michael Pearce, "Maskerye Claythis for James VI and Anna of Denmark", Medieval English Theatre, 43 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), p. 120. The decoration of the Great Hall was in part the responsibility of Mary's wardrobe servant Servais de Condé.
The detail of the other formal banquet on the day of baptism was described in the chronicle called the Diurnal of Occurrents.A Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents in Scotland (Bannatyne Club, 1833), p. 104 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. The 28 wildmen dressed in goats-skin were fought by fifteen soldiers dressed as landsknechts, moors, and devils, armed with two cannons.Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 58, 405-8. James's father, Lord Darnley, was estranged from the Queen. He stayed privately in the castle, and the French ambassador Monsieur du Croc was instructed not to speak to him by Charles IX. On the day of the baptism du Croc sent a message to Darnley that if he came to his room, he would exit by the other door.Agnes Strickland, Letters of Mary Queen of Scots, vol. 3 (London, 1843), pp. 16-17: Keith, Robert, History of the affairs of church and state in Scotland, vol. 1 (Spottiswoode Society, 1844), pp. xcvii-xcviii: George Buchanan, Ane detectioun of the doingis of Marie Quene of Scottis (1572).
On the night of the murder of Lord Darnley, Mary left Darnley's bedside to attend a dance for Bastian's marriage to Christily Hogg.Alison Weir, Mary Queen of Scots: And the Murder of Lord Darnley (Vintage, 2008), p. 244. While some contemporary polemicists and previous writers had considered it surprising that she left the Kirk o'Field lodging to attend a servant's wedding, the historian Michael Lynch noted that she left to attend celebrations that were, "not those of an obscure servant but of the architect of the Stirling triumph".Michael Lynch, Scotland, a New History (Pimlico, 1992), p. 217. As the biographer Antonia Fraser put it, his masque was of special importance to Mary, "in view of the fact that he had designed one for her only six weeks previously."Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1969), p. 297.
Bastian's wedding masque
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.John Hosack, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her accusers, 1 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1869), p. 239: British Library Cotton Caligula B IX (2) f.298, Diary of events in Scotland.Jade Scott, Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2024), pp. 139–140, 142. On the 8 February she gave him black satin cloth for his wife's marriage gown.Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1970), p. 40. 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.George Buchanan, Rerum Scotarum Historia (1582), book 18, cap. 10-11, "Sebastiani cuiusdam e cantoribus suis," see external links: in Buchanan's Dectectio Mariae, cap.13, or De Maria Scotorum Regina, Day, London, (1571), p.18; "Erat is Sebastianus Auernus genere, homo et ob psallendi peritiam et sales Reginae admodum gratus," an Arvernois by birth, well-trained in song and in the Queen's good graces for his jokes, quoted in Stevenson, (1863), p.lxxxvi, footnote and see external links. Whether Buchanan meant that Bastian was from the small French town of Avernes, or the Auvergne region from the tribe name Arverni, or was using the classical allusion of Lake Avernus to mean that Bastian, an avernian, was a demon is unclear. For Avernus, see Aeneid, book 6, cap.4; Kendal, Gordon, ed., Gavin Douglas's Aeneid 1552, vol.1, MHRT vol.7 (i), MHRA (2011), p.256 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".R. H. Mahon, Mary, Queen of Scots, a study of the Lennox Narrative (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 99, 130: Thomas Finlay Henderson, Mary, Queen of Scots, her environment and tragedy, a biography (London, 1905), p. 659 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.Pitcairn, Robert, Ancient Criminal Trials, vol. 1 part 2 (Edinburgh, 1833), 493, 498-499