Moray, James Stewart, 1st Earl of 1531-70
Regent of Scotland

The second illegitimate son of James V of Scotland and Lady Margaret Douglas, he was made Prior in commendam of St Andrews (1538), and was educated at the university there. He emerged as one of the leaders of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation whose revolt produced the Scottish Reformation of 1560. In 1561 he visited his half-sister, Mary, Queen of Scots, in France and after she returned to Scotland he defended her right to attend mass in her private chapel, and fended off the protestsof John Knox. He was granted the earldoms of Mar and Moray (1562), which resulted in the revolt of the Catholic dissident, the 4th Earl of Huntly. He remained the queen's chief adviser until her marriage to Lord Darnley (1565), which triggered an abortive coup by him and the Hamiltons and his flight to England. He returned to Edinburgh on the day after David Rizzio's murder (1566) and was rehabilitated. His foreknowledge of the plot to murder Darnley (1567) induced another diplomatic absence, and he was in France when Mary was overthrown and imprisoned at Lochleven. He returned to become regent for Mary's infant son, James VI. His regency was chequered: it saw for the first time a Protestant government, but little was done by it to advance the Reformation of the Church; the civil war continued, and he had few supporters and many influential enemies in Scotland. He was shot as he rode through Linlithgow by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, and died of his wounds soon after. One of the few Protestant nobles who acted consistently for religious motives, it was he as much as any of the ministers, including Knox, who helped give a Calvinist tone to the Scottish Reformation. His reputation has ironically been obscured by the brilliance of the case put in his defence in the writings of George Buchanan.

Bibliography: Maurice Lee, James Stewart, Earl of Moray (1953)