Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Mary Queen of Scots

1542 – 1587 · Generation XXIV · Queen of Scots (r. 1542–1567) · House of Stuart

Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots

Mary, Queen of Scots, was born at Linlithgow Palace on 8 December 1542, the daughter of James V of Scotland and his French wife, Mary of Guise. Her father died six days later and the infant became queen. Through her grandmother Margaret Tudor she was a great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, which gave her a strong claim to the English throne. That claim shaped her whole life.

Henry VIII wanted her as a bride for his son Edward, and the Scottish nobles at first agreed. When they broke off the match in favour of the old alliance with France, Henry sent armies into Scotland in the campaign later called the Rough Wooing. In 1548 the Scots betrothed Mary to the dauphin Francis, heir of Henry II, and sent the five-year-old queen to France. She grew up at the French court among her mother’s Guise relations, learned French, Latin, Spanish and Italian, and is said to have adopted the French spelling Stuart there. She married Francis at Notre-Dame in Paris on 24 April 1558. He became king the following year, making her queen of France as well as of Scotland, but he died in December 1560, six months after her mother.

A widow at eighteen, Mary sailed home in August 1561 to a country that had turned officially Protestant under the influence of John Knox. She remained a Catholic and heard mass in private, but she accepted the reformed church, and for some years she ruled with moderation on the advice of her half-brother Lord James Stewart, later Earl of Moray, and William Maitland of Lethington. Her marriage on 29 July 1565 to her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, himself a great-grandson of Henry VII, ended that calm. On 9 March 1566 Darnley and a band of nobles burst into her supper room at Holyroodhouse and murdered her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, in front of the pregnant queen. Her son James was born in Edinburgh Castle that June.

On 10 February 1567 an explosion destroyed the house at Kirk o’ Field, just outside Edinburgh’s walls, where Darnley was lodging, and he was found dead in the garden. James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, was widely held to be behind the killing, and many suspected that Mary had known of the plot. Three months later she married him. The Protestant lords rose against the couple and faced them at Carberry Hill on 15 June, where her army drifted off and she surrendered. She was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, miscarried twins there, and on 24 July was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, who became James VI. Bothwell escaped abroad and died a prisoner in Denmark.

Mary escaped from Lochleven in May 1568 and raised an army, but Moray defeated it at Langside on 13 May and she crossed into England to ask her cousin Elizabeth I for help. Elizabeth did not give it. Mary was instead held in custody for almost nineteen years, much of the time in the charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Tutbury, Sheffield, Wingfield and Chatsworth. The two queens never met. As a Catholic with a claim to the crown, Mary became the natural focus of conspiracies against Elizabeth, including the northern rising of 1569, the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 and finally the Babington Plot of 1586, in which Sir Francis Walsingham’s agents intercepted her letters. She was tried at Fotheringhay Castle in October 1586, denied that an English court could judge a queen, and was condemned for plotting Elizabeth’s death.

Elizabeth hesitated for more than three months before signing the warrant on 1 February 1587. Mary was beheaded in the great hall at Fotheringhay a week later, on 8 February, aged forty-four, and buried at Peterborough Cathedral. Her son did little more than protest, and in 1603 he inherited Elizabeth’s throne as James I of England. In 1612 he had his mother’s body brought to Westminster Abbey, where it lies beneath a marble monument by Cornelius and William Cure in the south aisle of Henry VII’s chapel, across from the tomb of Elizabeth.

Place in the family

  • Mary Queen of Scots was a great-niece of King Henry VIII.
  • The archive records 107 of her descendants, across 16 generations.

Images

One of 17 people of House of Stuart (from 1371) in this archive. Scotland’s royal house for three centuries before James VI inherited England and wore both crowns.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots.

Read more on Wikipedia

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Life

  • 1542 — Born
  • 1542 — One-week-old Mary, succeeds to the throne on the death of her father James V
  • 1543 — At the Treaty of Greenwich Mary is betrothed to Prince Edward son of Henry VIII of England, but the Scottish Lords refuse to ratify the treaty preferring an alliance with France,
  • 1558 — Married Francis II of France
  • 1558 — Mary, Queen of Scots, marries French Dauphin, Francis Valois (he was aged 14) at Notre Dame in Paris. She adopts the French spelling of Stuart for her surname
  • 1559 — Mary becomes Queen of France when her husband becomes King
  • 1560 — Treaty of Edinburgh between France and England, recognising sovereignty of Mary Queen of Scots and her first husband Francis II
  • 1561 — Mary Queen of Scots lands at Leith on her return from France, after the death of her husband, King Francis II
  • 1565 — Married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley
  • 1565 — Mary marries her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The marriage is a disaster
  • 1566 — Darnley jealous of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio, bursts into her room at Holyrood and Rizzio is murdered.
  • 1566 — Mary Queen of Scots gives birth to the future King James VI of Scotland and I of England
  • 1567 — Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, assassinated
  • 1567 — Mary marries Earl of Bothwell. The Scottish Lords imprison Mary in Loch Leven castle.
  • 1567 — Mary Queen of Scots abdicates and her 1 year old son the young James VI accedes to Scottish throne. William Cecil, English Secretary of State, arranges for Mary's half brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, to return from France and be appointed regent.
  • 1587 — Died

Sources

  1. Mary, Queen of Scots · Wikipedia
  2. Mary, Queen of Scots (r. 1542–1567) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Mary, Queen of Scots · Westminster Abbey
  4. Mary, Queen of Scots · World History Encyclopedia

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