(8 December 1542-8 February 1587)
One of the most fascinating figures in history, Mary Queen of Scots was born in Linlithgow, Scotland on 8 December 1542. Her parents were King James V of Scotland and Marie of Guise. King James V’s mother, Margaret Tudor, was a daughter of King Henry VII of England and a sister of King Henry VIII.
Of Mary Queen of Scots, the historian Gordon Donaldson observes:
“She must never be thought of as the maker of her own destiny, for her fortunes were shaped at least as much by events as by any qualities or defects in her character, or by anything she did or left undone . . . The conditions in which Mary was to live and reign and die had been to a great extent determined before she was born, during the lifetime of her father, James V” (9).
The history of Scotland for over two hundred years had been largely formed by the relations between Scotland and England and between Scotland and France. England’s repeated attempts to conquer Scotland made her the old enemy. France, an enemy of England, was Scotland’s old ally. A treaty committing Scotland and France to mutual assistance against English aggression had been made in 1295 and frequently renewed. “While the Franco-Scottish treaty looked equitable on paper, the French had tended on the whole to invoke it only when it suited them to stimulate the Scots into making attacks on England which would divert English attention from the Continent” (Donaldson 10). Many Scots served in the military in France, but the French forces only came to Scotland on occasion. The marriage of King James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, elder daughter of King Henry VII of England, and a treaty of perpetual peace promised better relations between the two nations. However, ten years after this treaty had been made, Scotland invaded England due to the terms of the Franco-Scottish alliance. The Scots were heavily defeated and King James IV was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field on 9 September 1513.
James V became king at the age of one year, five months. His fifteen-year minority was troubled by fighting among the various factions of the Scottish nobility, which interacted with English and French policies. Because of the one-sided nature of the old alliance with France and the disastrous defeat of 1513, some Scots thought that the foreign policy should be reconsidered. John, Duke of Albany, King James V’s cousin, who had been born in France and had come to Scotland to be governor of the kingdom, was the chief representative of the French cause. King Henry VIII considered the Duke of Albany to be the main obstacle to his gaining control of Scotland. Albany was only allowed freedom of action in Scotland when France was warring against England. At Henry VIII’s behest, Albany was detained in France from 1517 to 1521. Margaret Tudor, the Queen Mother, often acted in the English interest.
King James V, Mary’s father, died on 14 December 1542, making her queen at six days old. King Henry VIII wanted to unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland by marrying Mary to his son, the future Edward VI. The Scottish lords agreed to a treaty regarding this, but the Queen Mother opposed it. She did not wish her daughter to be brought up as a Protestant, nor did she wish for Mary’s life to be endangered. “In a clause that had been kept secret Henry VIII bribed the Scottish nobles to agree that if the little girl died before her majority the whole of her rights and ownership in the Scottish crown should pass to him. The clause was undoubtedly suspect . . .” (Zweig 10). Henry demanded that Mary be sent to England and then sent his troops to Scotland to seize Mary. Just in time, Mary and her mother were safely conducted to Stirling Castle. By a treaty Scotland was committed to send Mary to England when she reached the age of ten. After the death of Henry VIII, Somerset, the English regent, demanded that Mary be sent to London. The Scottish lords refused to send her, and an English army was dispatched to Scotland. More than ten thousand Scots were killed at the battle of Pinkie on 10 September 1547. To the consternation of the English spies, Mary vanished from Stirling Castle. She had been secretly taken to the Priory of Inchmahon on an island in the Lake of Menteith. King Henri II of France sent a powerful fleet to Scotland. He requested Mary as a bride for his son François. This was agreed to, and on 7 August 1548, Mary set sail for France.
Mary, with her attendants, Mary Seton, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingstone, and Mary Fleming (“the four Maries”) arrived in France on 15 August 1548. She received a good education at the court of King Henri II. “She and Ysabel with her four Maries learnt to make poetry, to play the harp, the lute, zithern and virginals, to knit in wools and silks, and what she loved most, to embroider” (Morrison 35). Mary was taught the new Italian style of handwriting. She wrote her name in the French form instead of the Scottish form—Marie Stuart instead of Mary Stewart. She signed her name MARIE with all of the letters being the same size. Her signature was very similar to that of her mother, Marie of Guise (Fraser 60n). Mary always greatly admired her mother and was heartbroken at her death.
Mary, whose first language was Scots, “learned Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish and English, although her preferred language for the rest of her life was French” (Boyd-Brent 1). At the age of fourteen, she delivered a Latin discourse of her own composition before Henri II, Catherine de Medicis, and the assembled court, in which she maintained that women should receive a liberal education in the sciences and literature and that it was unjust and tyrannical to restrict them to elementary studies and accomplishments (Dumas Cassette 1).
Mary married the Dauphin François, heir to the French throne, on 24 April 1558. Immediately following the death of Queen Mary I of England, Henri II had Mary and François proclaimed queen and king of England, Ireland, and Scotland. This presumption caused problems with England. Although at the time Queen Elizabeth I observed that the young Mary and François could not be held responsible, this was later used against Mary. The year after the marriage of Mary and François, King Henri II was wounded in the eye during a jousting match and died from the ensuing infection. On 10 July 1559, François succeeded his father as King François II.
A revolution broke out in Scotland. Queen Elizabeth I’s council helped the Protestant revolutionaries. The French garrison of Leith surrendered to a large English force. Although Mary’s representatives signed the Treaty of Edinburgh on 6 July 1560, she refused to confirm it. If Mary had confirmed this treaty, she and all of her descendents would have been excluded from the succession to the throne of England.
François died on 5 December 1560. Mary was prostrated with grief. At first the Scottish reformers had plotted Mary’s deposition, but later her return to Scotland was agreed to. Elizabeth refused to grant Mary a passport and commanded her fleet to watch for Mary’s ship. Fully expecting the worst, Mary sailed for Scotland in defiance of the English. However, on 19 August 1561, she reached Scotland in safety.
Mary was beautiful, with auburn hair, long white fingers, hazel eyes, and a good complexion. She was about five feet, eleven inches tall. She had a charming soft sweet speaking voice.
She was frequently in ill health. “She seems to have suffered from a chronic complaint of the spleen, which assailed her in moments of fatigue or excitement” (Black 65). According to Antonia Fraser, Mary may have suffered from porphyria, a genetically-transmitted defect of blood pigment metabolism in which porphyrins are produced in excess.
Mary was charming, courageous, and adventurous. She was a devout Roman Catholic. Mary was extremely fond of children and kind to servants. She adored both small dogs and hounds. Mary had a strong aversion to violence and was very sensitive to unjust criticism.
“She was easily moved to take a rosy view of events, and just as easily plunged into black despair. Success brought jubilation; failure was accompanied by weeping. But her natural buoyancy of character was remarkable, and her recuperative power immense—until both were broken and crushed by her long imprisonment in England” (Black 65).
She played cards, billiards, backgammon, chess, golf, and croquet. he enjoyed archery, hunting, hawking, and riding fast horses. She was a skillful and fearless rider, who performed feats of endurance on horseback, apparently by will power alone. “Her gallops from Holyrood to Dunbar, from Jedburgh to Hermitage, from Langside to the Solway have become almost legendary” (ibid). She enjoyed watching puppet plays. She loved music, played well on the lute and virginals, had a soft sweet singing voice, and was a good dancer. She liked to have music during Mass.
Mary had good taste in dress. Her clothing was simple and elegant. She frequently wore false hairpieces, which were then in fashion. Due to her love of the Highlands, when in Scotland, she wore “Highland mantles,” loose, embroidered cloaks that reached to the ground.
Mary’s literary tastes were those of an educated Renaissance woman. She especially enjoyed reading history, poetry, and medieval romances, such as those of King Arthur and Roland. Her library included works of the classical writers Livy, Horace, Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Suetonius, Plutarch, Ovid, Cicero, Petrarch, and Marcus Aurelius. She owned copies of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, The Book of Hunting, the sermons and prayers of her uncle, Charles of Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, and the Acts of Parliament of Queen Mary Tudor. She also had books on astronomy, music, and history.
Mary issued an edict of religious toleration—the first in Great Britain. Restoration of the former status quo was impossible due to the vast appropriations of church property, the hatred of John Knox’s followers for Catholicism, and the political revolution.
It is an interesting fact that Mary Stuart, whose religious views, as well as her views on statecraft, were formed with such care by the cardinal [her uncle Charles of Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine] during her adolescence, showed throughout her career a quite remarkable clemency and lack of bigotry towards her subjects of a different religion, marking her off from almost all her contemporaries, except possibly her own mother (Fraser 59).
Mary fell in love with her Catholic cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a claimant to both the English and Scottish thrones. When Mary announced her intention to marry him, the Protestant lords rebelled, but were defeated and driven out of Scotland. In 1565 Mary married Darnley and gave him the title of king. He then demanded that the crown be secured to him and to his heirs, if Mary died without children. She refused to grant his demand. Because Darnley considered her secretary, David Riccio, to be the obstacle to Darnley’s gaining the crown matrimonial, he entered into a compact with Mary’s half-brother James, Earl of Moray; Lord Patrick Ruthven; James Douglas, Earl of Morton, and other leaders of the Protestant party to have Riccio killed. On 9 March 1566, the conspirators entered and took control of the castle. They came into the room where Mary, Darnley, Riccio, and others were eating dinner. Darnley complained about Riccio’s being at the table. Mary tried to protect Riccio, but she was restrained. One of the conspirators even pointed a gun at her. They murdered Riccio.
Mary talked Darnley into breaking with the conspirators and leaving with her. Mary was being kept as a prisoner, but she escaped on horseback, riding twenty-five miles posthaste while six-months pregnant. Mary’s son James was born on 19 June 1566.
Darnley did not keep his agreement with the conspirators, so they, with others, including some of his relations and government officials, plotted against him. The building at Kirk o’ Field in which Darnley was lying ill was packed with gunpowder. On 10 February 1567, the house was blown up, on the orders of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Darnley and his servant, who had escaped the blast, were murdered by some of the conspirators. On 12 April Bothwell was tried for Darnley’s murder, and was found not guilty by his peers.
On February 24 the Earl of Bothwell, who had been one of Mary’s greatest supporters, intercepted her small party of followers at Foulbridges and forcibly carried Mary off to Dunbar, where she consented to marry him. Earlier Bothwell had held a supper party for several of the Scottish lords, where he persuaded them to sign a bond requesting that the Queen of Scots marry him. Mary wrote:
“He partly extorted and partly obtained our promise to take him as our husband. As by a bravado in the beginning he had won the first point, so ceased he never till by persuasions and importunate suit, accompanied not the less by force, he had finally driven us to end the work begun, at such time and in such form as he thought might best serve his turn, wherein we cannot dissemble that he has used us otherwise than we would have wished or yet deserved at his hand.” (Gore-Browne 342)
Bothwell then divorced his wife. Mary and Bothwell were married on 14 May 1567.
The Scottish nobles, led by Mary’s half-brother James, Earl of Moray, rebelled. Mary and Bothwell led an army against the rebelling Scottish lords. Mary’s forces were defeated on 15 June 1567 at Carberry Hill. Mary surrendered herself to the confederate Scottish lords, assuming that she would be treated honorably. They imprisoned her on the island of Lochleven, where on 24 July 1567 she was forced to sign an act of abdication in favor of her son, who was crowned as King James VI five days later at Stirling. With the assistance of George and Willie Douglas and other supporters, Mary escaped from Lochleven on 2 May 1568. She quickly assembled an army of six thousand men. On 12 May at Langside, her army was defeated by the troops of the regent, the Earl of Moray. Against the advice of her friends, Mary crossed Solway Firth four days after the defeat at Langside and sought refuge at the court of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Thus, Mary became a prisoner for the rest of her life—almost twenty years.
In England, Mary was put on trial for Darnley’s murder. The Scottish regency government produced the Casket Letters as evidence. The Casket Letters were allegedly written by Mary to Bothwell, implicating her in the plot to murder Darnley and were so named because they had been found in a silver casket. It is interesting to note that although various persons had been blamed for Darnley’s murder, Mary had never been mentioned by the Scottish lords as a conspirator, until the trial in England and the sudden appearance of the Casket Letters. These letters were apparently a conglomeration of extracts from Mary’s letters, another woman’s love letters to Bothwell, and sheer invention. The original letters disappeared and only copies of them are now extant. These copies reveal an attempt at forgery. With the remark that “nothing had been sufficiently produced or shown against the queen of Scots,” Queen Elizabeth dismissed the Scottish lords (Black 373).
Mary was imprisoned in the castles of Sheffield, Tutbury, Wingfield, Chartley, and lastly, Fotheringhay. At first she was allowed to go out riding and to visit a watering place for her health, but later her movements were restricted. Mary had adopted “En ma fin est mon commencement” (“In my end is my beginning”) as her motto (Fraser 413). She embroidered sayings (including “En ma fin est mon commencement”), anagrams, symbols (such as the phoenix), and designs while in prison. She frequently gave alms to poor people and disabled persons, until her money was seized and her liberty further curtailed.
Some of the English lords plotted to bring about a marriage between Mary and the Duke of Norfolk. The Catholics in the north rose in Norfolk’s support, but this very brief uprising (from 14 November to 21 December 1569) collapsed. The pope excommunicated Elizabeth on 25 February 1570. An Italian banker named Ridolfi promised to get the pope’s support for a marriage between Mary and Norfolk. The intrigue was discovered, and on 2 June 1572, Norfolk was beheaded. The wealthy young Anthony Babington led a plot to rescue Mary and assassinate Elizabeth. Mary wrote to him that she would be glad to be freed from her prison and that if the plot were successful she would reward those involved. She made no mention of an assassination attempt. Elizabeth, in a sonnet she had written, referred to Mary as “The Daughter of Debate” (Cowan 198). Mary insisted that although she had made efforts to escape from her imprisonment, she never sought Elizabeth’s death. The jury of peers (i.e., peers of the realm, not Mary’s peers) declared Mary to be guilty of plotting against the life of Queen Elizabeth I. Mary told the jurors: “Remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England” (Fraser 543). She was sentenced to death on 25 October 1586. The English government sent a letter to her jailer, Sir Amias Paulet, requesting that he assassinate her. He refused.
It was said that on Sunday, 29 January 1587 between midnight and one o’clock a great, bright flame of fire illuminated the windows of Mary’s room three times (Fraser 528). The fire may have been a comet. “In Elizabethan England, comets were traditionally associated with the deaths of famous people, or as Shakespeare put it in Julius Caesar: ‘When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the deaths of princes’” (Fraser 528n). Elizabeth signed the death warrant on 1 February 1587.
Henry Grey, Earl of Kent and Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough were sent to inform Mary of her impending execution. The Earl of Kent told Mary, “Your life would be the death of our religion; your death will be its life.” Mary was pleased that Kent had mentioned her religion as the reason for her execution: “Oh, how happy Lord Kent’s words have made me! Here at last is the truth. They told me I was to die because I had plotted against the Queen, and here is Lord Kent sent to convert me, and he says I am to die on account of my religion” (qtd. in Cowan 212). Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay on 8 February 1587. According to J. H. Pollen in Queen Mary and the Babington Plot:
“After the sentence had been read by Beale, Fletcher came forward, and despite Mary’s objections, began a long denunciation of popery, during which the Queen read her book of Hours. When quiet had been restored, she prayed for some time in English for the peace of Christendom, for the conversion of England, for her son, for Elizabeth, for all her enemies . . . Amid breathless silence Mary’s gentle prayer, 'In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,' was heard throughout the
Mary met her death bravely. She was forty-four years of age.
Mary’s statement about “the theatre of the world” came true, not only figuratively, but also literally. A play and an opera were written about her. Friedrich von Schiller wrote the play Maria Stuart. Gaetano Donizetti composed the music, and Giuseppe Bardari wrote the libretto, for the opera Maria Stuarda. Robert Burns, Algernon Swinburne, and Robert Southwell wrote poetry, and many authors have written biographies, history books, and novels about Mary Queen of Scots.
Mary’s son James, who had become King James VI of Scotland upon her abdication, became King James I of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. King James I had his mother’s remains transferred from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey, the burial place of the kings and queens of England. All of the monarchs of England and Scotland from King James VI and I to Queen Elizabeth II are directly descended from Mary Queen of Scots. Therefore, it can truly be said that “in the long contest in which her life was spent, though she suffered all the way, and at last sacrificed herself, she triumphed in the end” (Abbott 233).
hall . . .” (qtd. in Cowan 212)
Abbott, Jacob. Mary Queen of Scots. New York: Circle, n.d.
Boyd-Brent, John. The Auld Alliance. [Online] Available http://www.aboutscotland.co.uk/mqshfra.html, 12 May 1998.
Black, J. B. The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Cowan, Ian B, ed. The Enigma of Mary Stuart. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971.
Donaldson, Gordon. Mary Queen of Scots. London: English University Press, 1974.
Dumas, Alexandre. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Audiocassettes. Julie Christie. Dove Audio, 0-7871-0009-9, 1995.
Fraser, Antonia. Mary Queen of Scots. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.
Gore-Browne, Robert. Lord Bothwell and Mary Queen of Scots: A Study of the Life, Character and Times of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. Garden City: Doubleday, 1937.
Morrison, N. Brysson. Mary Queen of Scots. New York: Vanguard Press, 1960.
Zweig, Stefan. Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. Trans. Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: Viking Press, 1935.
updated 27 January 2009
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