Mary, Queen of Scots 1542-87
Queen of Scotland 1542-67

Mary was the daughter of James V of Scotland by his second wife, Mary of Guise. She was born at Linlithgow, while her father lay on his deathbed at Falkland. She became queen when she was a week old, and was promised in marriage by the regent James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, to Prince Edward of England, son of Henry VIII, but the Scottish parliament declared the promise null. War with England followed, which resulted in defeat at Pinkie (1547), and Mary was sent to France to be betrothed to the dauphin (later Fran�ois II) at St Germain.

Her next 10 years were spent in the splendour of the French court, where she was given a thorough French education. She was brought up as a member of the large, young family of Henri II; her special friend was Elizabeth of Valois, later the wife of Philip II of Spain. In 1558 she was married to the dauphin; the marriage treaty contained a secret clause by which, if she died childless, both her Scottish realm and her right of succession to the English Crown (as great-grandaughter of Henry VII) would pass to France.

In 1559 the dauphin succeeded to the throne as Francis II, but he died the following year, and power then shifted towards Catherine de M�dicis, acting as regent for her son Charles IX. Mary became a dowager queen of France, with her own estates and a large income. Meanwhile her presence was increasingly needed in Scotland, where the death of her mother in 1560 had left a highly unstable situation. Effective power in the hands of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, who had held an illegal parliament in 1560 to implement a Reformation and negate the authority of the pope.

On Mary's arrival, a Protestant riot threatened the first mass held in her private chapel at Holyrood and within days a proclamation issued by her privy council imposed a religious standstill, which in effect banned the mass to all but the queen and her household. Her chief advisers were Protestant, the talented diplomat, William Maitland of Lethington, and her illegitimate brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray.

The question of Mary's remarriage arose, and a series of candidates was proposed (1562-65) including Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, but Mary decided unexpectedly on her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, who was a son of Lady Margaret Douglas, a granddaughter of Henry VII; Darnley therefore might strengthen her descendants' claim to the English throne. The immediate effect of the marriage was to cool relations with England and to undermine the position of Moray and the Hamilton family.

Darnley led a debauched life which soon appalled Mary. Eventually he became involved with William Ruthven, James Morton and other Protestant lords in a conspiracy that led to the murder of the queen's Italian private secretary, David Rizzio, in the queen's antechamber at the Palace of Holyroodhouse (1566). As a result, Darnley became an object of mingled abhorrence and contempt. Shortly before the birth of their son, the future James VI and I (June 1566), the queen's affection for her husband seemed briefly to revive, but Darnley refused to attend the child's Catholic baptism at Stirling Castle. Divorce was openly discussed, and Darnley spoke of leaving the country, but he was mysteriously killed while recovering from a bout of smallpox at Glasgow in January 1567, when the house in which he was sleeping was blown up by gunpowder.

The chief culprit in this incident was probably the Earl of Bothwell, who had recently enjoyed the queen's favour; and there were suspicions that the queen herself was not wholly ignorant of the plot. Bothwell was given a mock trial and acquitted; shortly after this he intercepted the queen on her way from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, and carried her, with scarcely a show of resistance, to Dunbar. Mary publicly pardoned his seizure of her, and created him Duke of Orkney; then, three months after her husband's murder, she married the man who was widely regarded as his murderer.

This fatal step united her nobles in arms against her. Her army melted away without striking a blow on the field of Carberry (15 June 1567); after that Mary had no choice but to surrender to the confederate lords. They led her to Edinburgh, where she suffered the insults of the mob. At Lochleven, she was compelled to sign an act of abdication in favour of her son, who within days was crowned as James VI at Stirling.

After escaping and suffering a further defeat, Mary crossed the Solway, and threw herself on the protection of Queen Elizabeth I of England, only to find herself a permanent prisoner in a succession of strongholds, ending up at Fotheringay. The presence of Mary in England was a constant source of disquiet to Elizabeth and her advisers, both as a descendant of Henry VII and because a significant minority naturally looked to her as the likely restorer of Catholicism. Her position, as guest or prisoner, was always ambiguous. A series of plots came to light, including the Ridolfi plot (1571), but Mary's complicity could not easily be established.

Finally, in 1586, the queen's secretary of state, Francis Walsingham, got wind of a plot by Anthony Babington, and contrived to implicate Mary. Letters apparently from her and seeming to approve of Elizabeth's death passed along a postal route to which Walsingham himself had access. Mary was brought to trial in 1586 and sentenced to death, although it was not until February 1587 that Elizabeth signed the warrant of execution. It was carried into effect a few days later, and she was buried at Peterborough. In 1612 her body was moved to Henry VII's chapel at Westminster, where it still lies.

Mary enjoyed great beauty and personal accomplishments, including a knowledge of six languages, a good singing voice, and an ability with various musical instruments. By 1567 she possessed a library of over 300 books, which included the largest collection of Italian and French poetry in Scotland. She is known to have been reponsible for a significant revival of Scots vernacular poetry, including the important collection, The Bannatyne Manuscript. The portraits and defences of her after 1571 largely fall into one of two moulds - Catholic martyr or papist plotter - making all the more difficult a proper assessment of Mary as Queen of Scots.

Bibliography: I B Cowan, Mary, Queen of Scots (Saltire Society pamphlets, new series, no. 9, 1987); A Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots (1969).