Mary, Queen of Scots

Queen of Scotland (r. 1542-1567)

• Born: December 8, 1542
• Birthplace: Linlithgow Palace, West Lothian, Scotland
• Died: February 8, 1587
• Place of death: Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, England

Through the misfortunes of her personal life, Mary precipitated a political and religious struggle in Scotland that ultimately led to her death in England as a Catholic martyr.

Early Life

Mary Stuart was born just six days before the death of her thirty-year-old father, King James V. His death, hastened by the physical and mental anguish of the English defeat of the Scots at Solway Moss in November, brought to the throne one of the most remarkable and tragic women of the sixteenth century: Mary, Queen of Scots.

Mary’s infancy ensured a regency under her French-born mother, Mary of Guise . In the midst of the war, Henry VIII proposed a marriage between his young son Edward and the infant queen. Ancient Scottish fears of English domination, and the regent’s family connections, led to marriage negotiations with France. Thus, at the age of five, Mary Stuart was sent abroad.

Her departure from Scotland was marked by storms and the danger of shipwreck on enemy shores, but despite the perils, Mary landed in France to receive a warm welcome. Her formidable grandmother Antoinette of Guise met the child and introduced her to the French court at Moulin. There, for the first time, Mary met Francis, the dauphin of France and her future husband. The two children became fast friends. Mary at five was a vivacious, charming, and happy child. Her four-year-old fiancé was frail and shy but affectionate. The French court was enchanted, and King Henry II proclaimed Mary the “most perfect child” he had ever seen.

The education of such a child could not be ignored, but Mary’s training would be much more conventional and less rigorous than that of her Tudor cousins in England. Fortunately, Renaissance France offered much that could challenge and captivate a bright child. Mary learned the traditional Latin and a smattering of Greek as well as Italian and Spanish. More important socially, she learned how to draw, to sing, to play the lute, and to dance elegantly. Hunting and riding became passions shared with the nobility of Europe. Moreover, she absorbed the Catholic faith of the French court with youthful devoutness. Mary became the very model of a French princess. In April, 1558, she and Francis were married, but because of his ill health, the marriage may never have been consummated.

Queen Mary I’s death in England in November, 1558, stirred the French court deeply. Mary, like her English cousin Elizabeth, was a Tudor descendant of Henry VII. Mary’s blood claim to the English throne was, however, untainted by the questions that surrounded Henry VIII’s marriages and children. Indeed, for Catholics, her claim to the throne of England was more pure constitutionally than that of Elizabeth. Henry II responded immediately to Elizabeth’s accession by having Mary Stuart proclaimed queen of England, Ireland, and Scotland. It was a decision that would haunt Mary for three decades and would play a role in her death sentence.

Nevertheless, the year 1559 opened joyously. The royal family, despite family rivalries, the stirrings of religious dissent, and the unpopular treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, celebrated a number of royal weddings. The balls and pageants were magnificent enough to obscure the national tensions. Then suddenly, it all collapsed.

On June 30, 1559, at the conclusion of a tournament, Henry II, wearing the black-and-white colors of his mistress Diane de Poitiers , was injured in a bizarre accident. The lance of an opponent struck the king viciously, splintering into his eye and throat. Nine days later, he died in agony. With his death, Francis II became king and Mary, Queen of Scots, was now queen of France as well. For a timid boy of fifteen and a carefree girl of sixteen it must have been a shattering transition.

Not surprisingly, a tug of war ensued between the young king’s mother, Catherine de Médicis , and the powerful Guise family of the young queen. Yet, in this period Catherine’s example may have been a great influence on her daughter-in-law. Mary watched Catherine maneuver, intrigue, and balance quarreling factions, for the sake of the Bourbon Dynasty. The lessons were not lost. Mary would never match her mother-in-law’s ability as intriguer, but it would not be for want of trying.

In November, 1560, Francis returned from a hunting expedition with a terrible earache. Three weeks later, the young king was dead of a massive infection. Mary had lost both her husband and her closest childhood friend. She was eighteen, and it was time to return to Scotland, a home she had never really known.

Life’s Work

Mary arrived at Leith, Scotland, early on a typically damp and dismal day. Her reception would have daunted any but the most obtusely cheerful. Barely a handful of local fisherman were on hand to greet the queen of Scotland, and only the generosity of a local inhabitant provided some shelter until a royal welcoming committee arrived.

Her entry into Edinburgh was, however, a triumph. As crowds poured out to greet her, bonfires were lit, bells rang, and bagpipes played. The queen made a vivid impression on all who saw her. Nearly six feet tall, Mary had a delicate-boned elegance that set off her golden blonde hair, white complexion, and hazel eyes. Her voice was light but commanding, her high forehead deemed a sign of intellect, and her long, thin hands a sign of aristocracy. Her most compelling physical feature was probably her sensual, heavy-lidded eyes. Not classically beautiful, she had an indefinable charisma that drew others to her and earned for her the romantic title “the queen of Hearts.” Certainly, she captured the hearts of those who saw her return to Holyrood Palace in 1561.

Mary was equally pleased with her subjects and was thrilled by the rugged, misty beauty of Scotland. Yet the problems she now faced were daunting. Thirteen years of absence gave her little knowledge of her country. Furthermore, she had little real political or administrative experience. Scotland was beautiful but impoverished. A warring nobility and a feudal governmental structure made it more a relic of the medieval era than a modern emerging nation. Moreover, while Mary was growing up in France, the force and fury of the Protestant Reformation had swept across the land. The fiery Calvinist leader John Knox and other adherents of the new faith viewed the queen’s return with alarm.

Despite such problems, Mary’s reign began auspiciously. Indeed, with the advice of her illegitimate half brother James, earl of Moray, her first months of government went well. It was her rash decision to remarry that began a series of crises that would destroy her throne.

In July, 1565, Mary married her cousin Henry Stewart, earl of Darnley, the son of the fourth earl of Lennox. Although a love match, it was, nevertheless, a choice that was certain to antagonize Elizabeth, whose support Mary needed. Elizabeth, always hostile to the Scottish queen and fearful of her claims, was incensed. Darnley, a Tudor descendant, doubly underscored Mary’s rights in England. The earl of Moray despised Darnley personally and hated the Lennox family. He would continually incite other Scottish nobles against the queen.

The real and continuing problem was Darnley himself. Under a tall, thin, elegant, exterior that won Mary’s heart if not her mind, Darnley was at best an amiable dolt. At his worst, which was more often the case, he was weak, spoiled, vain, and silly. Unfortunately, he also possessed a cruel, even vicious streak. In March of 1566, he conspired in the brutal murder of David Riccio. Mary’s hapless Italian secretary was hacked to death in front of the queen, despite her pleas for his life. Mary, who was expecting her first child in June, never forgave Darnley. After the birth of her son James VI, she turned increasingly for support to a group of powerful nobles under the leadership of James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell.

On February 9, 1567, the house at Kirk o’Field near Edinburgh, where Darnley was staying, was destroyed by an explosion. When the crowds came running, Darnley’s nearly naked body was found in the garden, where he had apparently been caught and strangled. Whether Mary was privy to the conspiracy, which had been led by James Hepburn, the fourth earl of Bothwell, is unclear. The only evidence ever introduced against Mary as an accomplice was the highly suspect collection of “Casket Letters.” The letters, however, are a puzzling mixture of genuine documents and outright forgeries.

Whatever Mary’s knowledge of the events, her dependence on Bothwell and his faction was obvious. Bothwell was acquitted of any involvement in Darnley’s death after a farcical hearing. Less than three months later, Mary married Bothwell, after an alleged abduction and rape.

The public was outraged. All over Scotland, placards with the arms of Bothwell went up, depicting the queen as a mermaid, an ancient symbol of prostitution. The implication that she had condoned the murder of Darnley for love of Bothwell was clear. On June 15, 1567, an army led by Mary was defeated at Carberry Hill. The queen was forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son. After nearly a year of incarceration, she escaped and rallied her supporters for a fight at Langside. With Langside lost, Mary fled south. Her advisers agreed that her return to France was essential; there she could appeal to her powerful Guise relatives and to Catholic sentiment to finance a return. At Dundrennan Abbey, she startled her followers by deciding to enter England and seek aid from Elizabeth. Thus, Elizabeth suddenly found herself hostess to the one woman in Europe who might threaten her throne. Mary remained in England for nineteen years under increasingly tight captivity. She proved too valuable a diplomatic prize and too dangerous a rival to set free.

The Rebellion of the Northern Earls in 1569 was the beginning of a long series of plots to overthrow Elizabeth on Mary’s behalf. Over the years, the Norfolk plot, Ridolfi plot, and the Babington plot, all financed by King Philip II of Spain, would exhaust the patience of Elizabeth’s government. In late 1586, Mary was sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate Elizabeth. On February 8, 1587, she was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle.

Significance

Mary, Queen of Scots, met her death as she had lived her life: with courage and a sense of adventure. A prisoner, she still captivated the hearts of those who knew her and stirred the dreams of those who did not. Her famous motto had been “in my end is my beginning.” She knew that Elizabeth was aging, barren, and bitter and that Mary’s son James would be the logical successor to the English crown. The Stuarts would triumph in the end. Despite the turbulence of her early years, she had finally found an inner serenity. In an age of martyrs, she would be surely the most royal. Her end, like her beginning, would capture romantic imaginations forever.

Bibliography

Dunn, Jane. Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Study of the rivalry and political intrigue between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, attempting to portray the private emotions behind their public acts. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, index.

Fraser, Antonia. Mary Queen of Scots. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969. A colorful and sympathetic biography of Mary, written with tremendous zest and extensive research. Fraser is, perhaps, overly antagonistic to Elizabeth’s political situation but is so readable that the reader forgives any imbalance.

Froude, J. A. History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. London: J. W. Parker and Son, 1862. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1969. A panoramic work by a distinguished historian that sets the stage for Anglo-Scottish policies on a national and international scale.

Girouard, Mark. Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era. London: Country Life, 1966. Provides illustrations of several of the places Mary was held during her nineteen-year stay in England. In particular, some of the properties of the earl of Shrewsbury and his formidable wife, Elizabeth, are depicted.

Gore-Browne, R. Lord Bothwell. London: Collins, 1937. Remains the only work to study Bothwell in some detail and is useful if somewhat romanticized on the family background.

Guy, John. Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Exhaustive reexamination of Mary’s life and rule, attempting to rejuvenate her reputation somewhat by blaming her fall on the plots and intrigues of those around her. Reinterprets correspondence usually used to condemn Mary to show how it may actually enhance history’s judgment of her. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Hosack, John. Mary, Queen of Scots, and Her Accusers. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1869. An old but interesting examination of the enemies of the queen, and their motives and weapons in attacking her rule and reputation.

MacNalty, Sir Arthur Salusbury. Mary Queen of Scots: The Daughter of Debate. London: C. Johnson, 1960. A good, readable biography of Mary and the attitudes of those who knew her. While interesting, it does not have the depth of interpretation of character that makes Fraser’s Mary so vivid.

Merriman, Marcus. The Rough Wooings: Mary Queen of Scots, 1542-1551. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2000. Study of Mary’s childhood and her early efforts to preserve Scottish autonomy from England by marrying France’s Francis I.

Phillips, J. E. Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth Century Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964. An interesting and scholarly work that reflects both the concept of royalty and the life of Mary in the literature of her own times.

Strickland, Agnes. Lives of the Queens of Scotland. London: Coburn, 1854. A pioneering work in the use of historical sources. Strickland was deeply stirred by the tragedy of Mary’s life and devoted considerable energy to understanding the queen’s personality and the conflicts within sixteenth century Scotland.

Weir, Alison. Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003. Exonerates Mary of complicity in the murder of her husband, asserting instead that the evidence against her was the product of a cover-up by Bothwell and his coconspirators. Includes photographic plates, color illustrations, map, bibliographic references, and index.