Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots

 Mary Queen of Scots  36 x 24 inches  Acrylic on Cradled Gessobord

Mary Queen of Scots  (1542-1587)  When 30-year old James V Stewart of Scotland died of illness in 1542, after the failure of his war with England, he left the crown to his newborn daughter Mary, his only legitimate child.  King Henry VIII of England, Mary’s great uncle, demanded that she be betrothed to his son Edward, but the Scottish parliament rejected the offer.  Henry initiated a policy of “rough wooing” mounting raids into Scottish territory and harassing its merchants.  The infant Mary was moved from place to place for her safety.  Henry VIII died, though, in January 1547 before he could obtain a Scottish wife for his son.  The French king, Henry II, stepped in.  He offered an alliance with Scotland with Mary’s betrothal to his son Francis, just a year younger than Mary, to seal the bargain.

Leaving her mother Mary of Guise in Scotland, Mary was thus conveyed to France to be brought up by her mother’s relatives at the court of France.  She remained there until the time she was 18.  Under the guardianship of her uncle and grandmother, she was given a good education, learned Latin and Greek, French, of course, and Italian and Spanish.  (Her native tongue was Scots; it is not reported if she knew English as well, but one presumes so). She would establish her own court about her with Scottish ladies-in-waiting that were her own age and of the noblest families in Scotland.  There were four of them, all named Mary — Beaton, Seaton, Fleming, and Livingston, “The Four Marys.”  Mary Stewart (now styled “Stuart”) developed an appreciation for music and poetry and mastered horsemanship, often riding astride as few women dared.  She was a mentally quick, vivacious, and a pretty child.  And she grew into a very attractive woman, charming, graceful, athletic, and tall — almost six foot, unusual at that time.  Like much of British royalty at that time (Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth) she had red/auburn hair.

She and her betrothed, Francis, the eldest son of King Henry II and Catherine de Medici, developed a deep affection for one another in childhood and into adolescence.  As was the custom, they married young.  On April 24, 1558 they were wed at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.   At age sixteen Mary had became the Dauphine of France and Francis, the King Consort of Scotland.  Their marriage was happy, but not fruitful.  Francis had not matured normally and remained weak and sickly.  His growth was stunted; he was very shy and stuttered.  It is believed that because of a birth defect he was infertile, nor is it certain that their marriage was ever consummated. 

On July 10, 1559 King Henry II painful expired after receiving a lance in the face during a jousting tournament.  Francis ascended to the throne and while, at 15, he was considered an adult, it was thought best that the reins of government rest in other hands.  The Guise family assumed the regency, but they were neither popular nor successful in ruling France, which was plagued by conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.  On December 5, 1560, after a reign of only 17 months, King Francis II died, owing to an ear infection of some sort.  His mentally unbalanced younger brother Charles succeeded to the throne with his mother, Catherine de Medici as regent. 

After 6 months of mourning, Mary returned to Scotland with the intent of assuming rule of the state.  Her mother had died in June of 1560.  But landing at Leith, the capital and port of Edinburgh, she was not greeted with open arms.  Less a Queen of Scots, she was a foreigner, a French woman (and indeed her genealogy reveals that she was actually not all that Scottish). Leaving it as a small child, she had never known the country.  Its society was in turmoil, torn like that of England and France between Catholics and Protestants. 

Probably wary of introducing too much disruptive change, Mary acquiesced to the Protestants who had been ruling Scotland.  She retained her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, a Protestant, as her chief advisor, along with a privy council that was mostly Protestant as well.  Her Catholic supporters were deeply disappointed by these actions.

The austere and influential Protestant reformer John Knox, now considered the founder of the Presbyterian Church, preached against her and condemned her for dancing, for wearing elegant clothes — and for being a Catholic.  She tried to reason with the man, but failing, charged him with treason.  He was acquitted.

Single, Mary sorted through several matrimonial offers, from England, Austria, and Spain.  There were, in fact, few really good offers and, in the end, Mary ended up marrying for love. 
She had met her Anglicized Catholic cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley in France.  The son of the Earl of Lennox, who was a power in Scotland and England, he seemed an ideal match and, having fallen in love with him, Mary would brook no dissent.  On July 29, 1565 Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley were married at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.  The marriage ceremony was a Catholic one, although no one seemed to notice that it was a patently illegitimate one, since papal dispensation for the union of first cousins had not been granted.

The Darnley marriage angered Queen Elizabeth of England, who felt her permission should have been sought.   In 1558 the Protestant Elizabeth had assumed the throne of England after the death of the Catholic Mary.  Like “Bloody” Mary Tudor, Elizabeth was a daughter of King Henry VIII, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was not regarded by Catholics as having been legally married to Henry.  Elizabeth, therefore, was not a legitimate queen.  Mary Queen of Scots, being a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, was instead seen as the rightful monarch of England.  The Protestants rulers of Scotland had signed a treaty with England accepting Elizabeth as queen, though, but Mary had not accepted it.

Marriage to a Catholic outraged the Earl of Moray so much that he and other Protestant earls openly rebelled against Mary’s reign.  Moray’s troops entered Edinburgh, but were rebuffed.  In what came to known as the Chaseabout Raid, the Queen’s troops pursued the Protestant forces, but never actually engaged them in battle.  Mary received further support when the 4th Earl of Bothwell, James Hepburn, a former Lord High Admiral of Scotland, returned from exile in France.  The Earl of Moray, on the other hand sought exile in England.  Free of him, Mary reorganized her privy council and made it more Catholic, although she would later reconcile with Moray and reinstate some of the rebel Protestants.

By this time, Mary had fallen out of love with Lord Darnley, who arrogantly demanded kingly powers and was refused them.  Mary became pregnant, but Darnley jealously suspected the father might be one David Rizzo, an Italian courtier who was a particular friend of the Queen and her private secretary.  Conspiring with some Protestant nobles, Darnley got rid of Rizzo by murdering him in front of Mary at a dinner party in the palace.  A couple months later, on June 19, 1566, the child James was born, but the murder of Rizzo was not forgotten and the marriage was doomed.  Mary met with her nobles to discuss what to do about the unwanted Darnley, divorce him or what.  Darnley feared for his life and left Edinburgh, but when falling ill, was forced to return.  He stayed at a former abbey to recuperate.  Early on the morning of February 10, 1567 the abbey was blown up and Darnley was found dead.  He was obviously murdered, but by whom history has not determined.  Some suspected Mary of the act, although it appeared that at the time of his death they were just becoming reconciled.  She, however, invited suspicion by playing golf a few days after her husband’s death.  (Mary was an avid golfer and had even played the game in France).   Suspicion also fell upon Moray and upon the Earl of Bothwell, who soon became the consensus choice for the murderous deed.

Bothwell was eventually charged with the crime, but with no evidence against him, he was acquitted in a trial held on April 12, 1568.  Encouraged, Bothwell secured the approval of several nobles and bishops for his plan to marry the now widowed queen.  As a first step Bothwell hastily divorced his second wife.  When Mary went to Stirling to visit her young son, Bothwell seized his opportunity.  While she was riding back to Edinburgh, he and his men abducted her and took her to Dunbar Castle.  There he claimed her as his wife, following an ancient Scottish custom that if a man elopes with a woman and spends the night with her the two are considered legally married.  Whether Mary was compliant or complicit in the abduction is not known. But days later they were married under Protestant rites in Edinburgh.  

The tempestuous marriage, which quickly soured, was wildly unpopular with the Scottish people.  Protestants resented a potential Catholic king.  Catholics questioned its legality, since Bothwell may not have been properly divorced from his first wife and, besides, the ceremony had been performed with Protestant rites.  Others were aghast that the queen could marry her husband’s murderer.  And the nobility resented the newly acquired power of the roguish Bothwell, who was granted the title of the Duke of Orkney. 

A rebellion of the Scottish nobles against Mary and Bothwell was organized.  They raised an army that confronted that of Mary at Carberry Hill, just outside Edinburgh.  There was no real battle, for most of Mary’s army deserted or left the field.  The rebellion was a success.  Mary was brought to Edinburgh where she was reviled as an adulterer and a murderess.  Imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle, she was forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son James.  The Earl of Moray became the regent of Scotland.  The Earl of Bothwell, escaped from the field of battle, fled Scotland, but was arrested in Norway and died insane in 1678 after long confinement in a castle prison in Denmark.

Mary managed to escape from Loch Leven Castle and muster a sizable army, but it was inadequate to defeat the smaller forces of Moray.  In May of 1568 Mary slipped into England where she foolishly hoped her cousin Queen Elizabeth would help her regain her throne.  Instead, Mary was confined on the pretext of a need to inquire into her part in the murder of Lord Darnley.  Documents supposedly written by her and known as the casket letters (perhaps authentic, perhaps forged) were produced to implicate her.  A trial was held, but ended without either exonerating Mary or condemning her.  This was part of the canny Queen Elizabeth’s plan: she wanted to neutralize Mary as a threat without antagonizing her supporters.  The Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick were charged to take custody of Mary, erstwhile Queen of Scots.  They held her under house arrest at their several properties safely located in the center of England.  She, however, was able to live quite comfortably, if not grandly with her own staff and possessions for what turned out to be 19 years.  Elizabeth was afraid of Mary, probably jealous of her charm and good looks, and made a point of never meeting her.

 A civil war raged in Scotland for several years between Mary’s partisans and the Protestant regency.  In 1569 Catholic nobleman from northern England, mostly those of the once powerful Neville and Percy families, attempted to depose Elizabeth in favor of Mary, Queen of Scots.  This rebellion, called the Rising of the North, totally failed and the participants came to a bad end.  There were several subsequent plots on the part of Catholic players and powers to place Mary on the throne of England.

In 1586 the Babington Plot, named after Catholic English nobleman Anthony Babington, aspired to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and bring in a Spanish army to place Mary Stuart on the throne.  Spies had confiscated some letters written by Mary that countenanced the plot.  Therefore, in October 1586, she was formally put on trial for treason before a jury of 36 noblemen.  By this time her health had diminished and she was nearly crippled by rheumatism.  Nevertheless Mary presented a vehement defense and insisted that she could not be guilty of treason since she was not an English subject.  Predictably, Mary was pronounced guilty by 35 of her jurors.  Queen Elizabeth was desirous of sparing her cousin and it was with reluctance that she signed her death warrant on February 1, 1587.

Mary faced her end courageously.  Her last words were, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” in, of course, Latin.  Blindfolded, Mary, Queen of Scots, knelt down on a cushion before a chopping block reached by two or three steps.  It was not a neat job: the headsman needed more than one stroke to severe her head.  When her head was raised up, a red wig fell off revealing short gray hair.  It was also discovered that Mary’s pet Skye terrier, from which she had refused to be parted, was hiding among her clothes. 

Queen Elizabeth denied that she had ordered the execution and even imprisoned for a time the man charged with carrying it out.  Abroad, Catholic countries were outraged. It provided the excuse for Spain to attempt an invasion of English, but the Spanish Armada of 1588 was doomed by superior English ships, bad weather, and incompetence.  With the death of the childless Elizabeth, the throne of England (as well as Scotland) passed to Mary Stuart’s son, the devoutly Protestant James, in 1603.  All subsequent sovereigns of England were descended from him and his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

However ineffective as a monarch she might have been, Mary is remembered not only as a tragic figure, but as a gallant lady.  She has been the subject of many biographies and literary works as well as films in which she has been portrayed by Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Saoirse Ronan, and many others