Mary, Queen of Scots

Gold coin of 1553: obverse, coat of arms of Scotland; reverse, royal monogram

King Henry VIII of England took the opportunity of the regency to propose marriage between Mary and his own son and heir, Edward, hoping for a union of Scotland and England. On 1 July 1543, when Mary was six months old, the Treaty of Greenwich was signed, which promised that, at the age of ten, Mary would marry Edward and move to England, where Henry could oversee her upbringing.[16][17] The treaty provided that the two countries would remain legally separate and, if the couple should fail to have children, the temporary union would dissolve.[18] Cardinal Beaton rose to power again and began to push a pro-Catholic pro-French agenda, angering Henry, who wanted to break the Scottish alliance with France.[19][17]

Beaton wanted to move Mary away from the coast to the safety of Stirling Castle. Regent Arran resisted the move, but backed down when Beaton's armed supporters gathered at Linlithgow.[20] The Earl of Lennox escorted Mary and her mother to Stirling on 27 July 1543 with 3,500 armed men.[21] Mary was crowned in the castle chapel on 9 September 1543,[22][17] with "such solemnity as they do use in this country, which is not very costly", according to the report of Ralph Sadler and Henry Ray.[23]

Shortly before Mary's coronation, Henry arrested Scottish merchants headed for France and impounded their goods. The arrests caused anger in Scotland, and Arran joined Beaton and became a Catholic.[24] The Treaty of Greenwich was rejected by the Parliament of Scotland in December.[25] The rejection of the marriage treaty and the renewal of the alliance between France and Scotland prompted Henry's "Rough Wooing", a military campaign designed to impose the marriage of Mary to his son. English forces mounted a series of raids on Scottish and French territory.[26] In May 1544, the English Earl of Hertford (later Duke of Somerset) raided Edinburgh, and the Scots took Mary to Dunkeld for safety.[27]

In May 1546, Beaton was murdered by Protestant lairds,[28] and on 10 September 1547, nine months after the death of Henry VIII, the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie. Mary's guardians, fearful for her safety, sent her to Inchmahome Priory for no more than three weeks, and turned to the French for help.[29]

King Henry II of France proposed to unite France and Scotland by marrying the young queen to his three-year-old son, the Dauphin Francis. On the promise of French military help and a French dukedom for himself, Arran agreed to the marriage.[30] In February 1548, Mary was moved, again for her safety, to Dumbarton Castle.[31] The English left a trail of devastation behind them once more and seized the strategic town of Haddington. In June, the much awaited French help arrived at Leith to besiege and ultimately take Haddington. On 7 July 1548, a Scottish Parliament held at a nunnery near the town agreed to the French marriage treaty.[32]

With her marriage agreement in place, five-year-old Mary was sent to France to spend the next thirteen years at the French court. The French fleet sent by Henry II, commanded by Nicolas de Villegagnon, sailed with Mary from Dumbarton on 7 August 1548 and arrived a week or more later at Roscoff or Saint-Pol-de-Léon in Brittany.[33]

Mary was accompanied by her own court including two illegitimate half-brothers, and the "four Marys" (four girls her own age, all named Mary), who were the daughters of some of the noblest families in Scotland: Beaton, Seton, Fleming, and Livingston.[34] Janet, Lady Fleming, who was Mary Fleming's mother and James V's half-sister, was appointed governess.[35] When Lady Fleming left France in 1551, she was succeeded by a French governess, Françoise de Paroy.

Mary and Francis in Catherine de' Medici's book of hours, c. 1574. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Vivacious, beautiful, and clever (according to contemporary accounts), Mary had a promising childhood.[36] At the French court, she was a favourite with everyone, except Henry II's wife Catherine de' Medici.[37] Mary learned to play lute and virginals, was competent in prose, poetry, horsemanship, falconry, and needlework, and was taught French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Greek, in addition to her native Scots.[38] Her future sister-in-law, Elisabeth of Valois, became a close friend of whom Mary "retained nostalgic memories in later life".[39] Mary's maternal grandmother, Antoinette de Bourbon, was another strong influence on her childhood[40] and acted as one of her principal advisors.[41]

Portraits of Mary show that she had a small, oval-shaped head, a long, graceful neck, bright auburn hair, hazel-brown eyes, under heavy lowered eyelids and finely arched brows, smooth pale skin, a high forehead, and regular, firm features. She was considered a pretty child and later, as a woman, strikingly attractive.[42] At some point in her infancy or childhood, she caught smallpox, but it did not mark her features.[43]

Mary was eloquent, and especially tall by 16th-century standards (she attained an adult height of 5 feet 11 inches or 1.80 m);[44] while Henry II's son and heir, Francis, stuttered and was unusually short. Henry commented: "from the very first day they met, my son and she got on as well together as if they had known each other for a long time".[45] On 4 April 1558, Mary signed a secret agreement bequeathing Scotland and her claim to England to the French crown if she died without issue.[46] Twenty days later, she married the Dauphin at Notre Dame de Paris, and he became king consort of Scotland.[47][48]

Coat of arms sent from France in July 1559.[49] Sinister: Mary's arms as Queen of Scotland quartered with the arms of England, reflecting her claim to the English throne. Dexter: Francis's arms as Dauphin of France and king consort of Scotland, with an inescutcheon of England.

In November 1558, Henry VIII's elder daughter, Mary I of England, was succeeded by her only surviving sibling, Elizabeth I. Under the Third Succession Act, passed in 1543 by the Parliament of England, Elizabeth was recognised as her sister's heir, and Henry VIII's last will and testament had excluded the Stuarts from succeeding to the English throne. Yet, in the eyes of many Catholics, Elizabeth was illegitimate and Mary Stuart was the rightful queen of England, as the senior surviving legitimate descendant of Henry VII through her grandmother, Margaret Tudor.[50] Henry II of France proclaimed his eldest son and daughter-in-law king and queen of England. In France the royal arms of England were quartered with those of Francis and Mary.[51] Mary's claim to the English throne was a perennial sticking point between her and Elizabeth.[52]

When Henry II died on 10 July 1559, from injuries sustained in a joust, fifteen-year-old Francis and sixteen-year-old Mary became king and queen of France.[53] Two of the Queen's uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, were now dominant in French politics,[54] enjoying an ascendancy called by some historians la tyrannie Guisienne.[55]

In Scotland, the power of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation was rising at the expense of Mary's mother, who maintained effective control only through the use of French troops.[56] In early 1560, the Protestant lords invited English troops into Scotland in an attempt to secure Protestantism. A Huguenot uprising in France, the Tumult of Amboise, made it impossible for the French to send further support.[57] Instead, the Guise brothers sent ambassadors to negotiate a settlement.[58] On 11 June 1560, their sister, Mary's mother, died, and so the question of future Franco-Scots relations was a pressing one. Under the terms of the Treaty of Edinburgh, signed by Mary's representatives on 6 July 1560, France and England undertook to withdraw troops from Scotland. France recognised Elizabeth's right to rule England, but the seventeen-year-old Mary, still in France and grieving for her mother, refused to ratify the treaty.[59]

Kirk o' Field drawn for William Cecil shortly after the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, 1567

Mary's son by Darnley, James, was born on 19 June 1566 in Edinburgh Castle. However, the murder of Rizzio led to the breakdown of her marriage.[108] In October 1566, while staying at Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, Mary made a journey on horseback of at least four hours each way to visit the Earl of Bothwell at Hermitage Castle, where he lay ill from wounds sustained in a skirmish with border reivers.[109] The ride was later used as evidence by Mary's enemies that the two were lovers, though no suspicions were voiced at the time and Mary had been accompanied by her councillors and guards.[110]

Immediately after her return to Jedburgh, she suffered a serious illness that included frequent vomiting, loss of sight, loss of speech, convulsions and periods of unconsciousness. She was thought to be dying. Her recovery from 25 October onwards was credited to the skill of her French physicians.[111] The cause of her illness is unknown. Potential diagnoses include physical exhaustion and mental stress,[112] haemorrhage of a gastric ulcer,[113] and porphyria.[114]

At Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh, at the end of November 1566, Mary and leading nobles held a meeting to discuss the "problem of Darnley".[115] Divorce was discussed, but a bond was probably sworn between the lords present to remove Darnley by other means:[116] "It was thought expedient and most profitable for the common wealth ... that such a young fool and proud tyrant should not reign or bear rule over them; ... that he should be put off by one way or another; and whosoever should take the deed in hand or do it, they should defend."[117] Darnley feared for his safety, and after the baptism of his son at Stirling and shortly before Christmas, he went to Glasgow to stay on his father's estates.[118] At the start of the journey, he was afflicted by a fever—possibly smallpox, syphilis or the result of poison. He remained ill for some weeks.[119]

In late January 1567, Mary prompted her husband to return to Edinburgh. He recuperated from his illness in a house belonging to the brother of Sir James Balfour at the former abbey of Kirk o' Field, just within the city wall.[120] Mary visited him daily, so that it appeared a reconciliation was in progress.[121] On the night of 9–10 February 1567, Mary visited her husband in the early evening and then attended the wedding celebrations of a member of her household, Bastian Pagez.[122] In the early hours of the morning, an explosion devastated Kirk o' Field. Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently smothered.[123] There were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body.[124][125] Bothwell, Moray, Secretary Maitland, the Earl of Morton and Mary herself were among those who came under suspicion.[126] Elizabeth wrote to Mary of the rumours:

I should ill fulfil the office of a faithful cousin or an affectionate friend if I did not ... tell you what all the world is thinking. Men say that, instead of seizing the murderers, you are looking through your fingers while they escape; that you will not seek revenge on those who have done you so much pleasure, as though the deed would never have taken place had not the doers of it been assured of impunity. For myself, I beg you to believe that I would not harbour such a thought.[127]

By the end of February, Bothwell was generally believed to be guilty of Darnley's assassination.[128] Lennox, Darnley's father, demanded that Bothwell be tried before the Estates of Parliament, to which Mary agreed, but Lennox's request for a delay to gather evidence was denied. In the absence of Lennox and with no evidence presented, Bothwell was acquitted after a seven-hour trial on 12 April.[129] A week later, Bothwell managed to convince more than two dozen lords and bishops to sign the Ainslie Tavern Bond, in which they agreed to support his aim to marry the queen.[130]

As an anointed queen, Mary refused to acknowledge the power of any court to try her. She refused to attend the inquiry at York personally but sent representatives. Elizabeth forbade her attendance anyway.[154] As evidence against Mary, Moray presented the so-called casket letters[155]—eight unsigned letters purportedly from Mary to Bothwell, two marriage contracts, and a love sonnet or sonnets. All were said to have been found in a silver-gilt casket just less than one foot (30 cm) long and decorated with the monogram of King Francis II.[156] Mary denied writing them and insisted they were forgeries,[157] arguing that her handwriting was not difficult to imitate.[158] They are widely believed to be crucial as to whether Mary shared the guilt for Darnley's murder.[159] The head of the commission of inquiry, the Duke of Norfolk, described them as horrible letters and diverse fond ballads. He sent copies to Elizabeth, saying that if they were genuine, they might prove Mary's guilt.[160]

The authenticity of the casket letters has been the source of much controversy among historians. It is impossible now to prove either way. The originals, written in French, were possibly destroyed in 1584 by Mary's son.[161] The surviving copies, in French or translated into English, do not form a complete set. There are incomplete printed transcriptions in English, Scots, French, and Latin from the 1570s.[162] Other documents scrutinised included Bothwell's divorce from Jean Gordon. Moray had sent a messenger in September to Dunbar to get a copy of the proceedings from the town's registers.[163]

Mary's biographers, such as Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir, and John Guy, have come to the conclusion that either the documents were complete forgeries,[164] or incriminating passages were inserted into genuine letters,[165] or the letters were written to Bothwell by a different person or written by Mary to a different person.[166] Guy points out that the letters are disjointed and that the French language and grammar employed in the sonnets are too poor for a writer with Mary's education[167] but certain phrases in the letters, including verses in the style of Ronsard, and some characteristics of style are compatible with known writings by Mary.[168]

A portrait of Mary from the latter half of the 16th century

The casket letters did not appear publicly until the Conference of 1568, although the Scottish privy council had seen them by December 1567.[169] Mary had been forced to abdicate and held captive for the better part of a year in Scotland; the letters were never made public to support her imprisonment and forced abdication. Historian Jenny Wormald believes this reluctance on the part of the Scots to produce the letters and their destruction in 1584, whatever their content, constitute proof that they contained real evidence against Mary.[170] In contrast, Weir thinks it demonstrates that the lords required time to fabricate them.[171] At least some of Mary's contemporaries who saw the letters had no doubt that they were genuine. Among them was the Duke of Norfolk,[172] who secretly conspired to marry Mary in the course of the commission, although he denied it when Elizabeth alluded to his marriage plans, saying "he meant never to marry with a person, where he could not be sure of his pillow".[173]

The majority of the commissioners accepted the casket letters as genuine after a study of their contents and comparison of the penmanship with examples of Mary's handwriting.[174] Elizabeth, as she had wished, concluded the inquiry with a verdict that nothing was proven against either the confederate lords or Mary.[175] For overriding political reasons, Elizabeth wished neither to convict nor to acquit Mary of murder. There was never any intention to proceed judicially; the conference was intended as a political exercise. In the end, Moray returned to Scotland as regent and Mary remained in custody in England. Elizabeth had succeeded in maintaining a Protestant government in Scotland, without either condemning or releasing her fellow sovereign.[176] In Fraser's opinion, it was one of the strangest "trials" in legal history, ending with no finding of guilt against either party, one of whom was allowed to return home to Scotland while the other remained in custody.[177]

"A•CATTE". Embroidery done by Mary in captivity (now in the Royal Collection)[178][179]

On 26 January 1569, Mary was moved to Tutbury Castle[180] and placed in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his formidable wife Bess of Hardwick.[181] Elizabeth considered Mary's designs on the English throne to be a serious threat and so confined her to Shrewsbury's properties, including Tutbury, Sheffield Castle, Sheffield Manor Lodge, Wingfield Manor, and Chatsworth House,[182] all located in the interior of England, halfway between Scotland and London and distant from the sea.[183]

Mary was permitted her own domestic staff, which never numbered fewer than 16.[184] She needed 30 carts to transport her belongings from house to house.[185] Her chambers were decorated with fine tapestries and carpets, as well as her cloth of state on which she had the French phrase, En ma fin est mon commencement ("In my end lies my beginning"), embroidered.[186] Her bedlinen was changed daily,[187] and her own chefs prepared meals with a choice of 32 dishes served on silver plates.[188] She was occasionally allowed outside under strict supervision,[189] spent seven summers at the spa town of Buxton, and spent much of her time doing embroidery.[190] Her health declined, perhaps through porphyria or lack of exercise. By the 1580s, she had severe rheumatism in her limbs, rendering her lame.[191]

In May 1569, Elizabeth attempted to mediate the restoration of Mary in return for guarantees of the Protestant religion, but a convention held at Perth rejected the deal overwhelmingly.[192] Norfolk continued to scheme for a marriage with Mary, and Elizabeth imprisoned him in the Tower of London between October 1569 and August 1570.[193] Early the following year, Moray was assassinated. His death occurred soon after an unsuccessful rebellion in the North of England, led by Catholic earls, which persuaded Elizabeth that Mary was a threat. English troops then intervened in the Scottish civil war, consolidating the power of the anti-Marian forces.[194] Elizabeth's principal secretary William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Sir Francis Walsingham watched Mary carefully with the aid of spies placed in her household.[195]

Mary in captivity, by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1578

In 1571, Cecil and Walsingham (at that time England's ambassador to France) uncovered the Ridolfi Plot, a plan to replace Elizabeth with Mary with the help of Spanish troops and the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk was executed and the English Parliament introduced a bill barring Mary from the throne, to which Elizabeth refused to give royal assent.[196] To discredit Mary, the casket letters were published in London.[197] Plots centred on Mary continued. Pope Gregory XIII endorsed one plan in the latter half of the 1570s to marry her to the governor of the Low Countries and illegitimate half-brother of Philip II of Spain, John of Austria, who was supposed to organise the invasion of England from the Spanish Netherlands.[198]

Mary sent letters in cipher to the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, scores of which were discovered and decrypted in 2022–2023.[199] After the Throckmorton Plot of 1583, Walsingham (now the queen's principal secretary) introduced the Bond of Association and the Act for the Queen's Safety, which sanctioned the killing of anyone who plotted against Elizabeth and aimed to prevent a putative successor from profiting from her murder.[200]

In 1584, Mary proposed an "association" with her son, James. She announced that she was ready to stay in England, to renounce the Pope's bull of excommunication, and to retire, abandoning her pretensions to the English Crown. She also offered to join an offensive league against France. For Scotland, she proposed a general amnesty, agreed that James should marry with Elizabeth's knowledge, and accepted that there should be no change in religion. Her only condition was the immediate alleviation of the conditions of her captivity. James went along with the idea for a while, but eventually rejected it and signed an alliance treaty with Elizabeth, abandoning his mother.[201] Elizabeth also rejected the association because she did not trust Mary to cease plotting against her during the negotiations.[202]

In February 1585, William Parry was convicted of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth, without Mary's knowledge, although her agent Thomas Morgan was implicated.[203] In April, Mary was placed in the stricter custody of Sir Amias Paulet.[204] At Christmas, she was moved to a moated manor house at Chartley.[205]

A drawing of the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, 14–15 October 1586, in the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, where she was later beheaded.

On 11 August 1586, after being implicated in the Babington Plot, Mary was arrested while out riding and taken to Tixall Hall in Staffordshire.[206] In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham had deliberately arranged for Mary's letters to be smuggled out of Chartley. Mary was misled into thinking her letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham.[207] From these letters it was clear that Mary had sanctioned the attempted assassination of Elizabeth.[208]

Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in a four-day journey ending on 25 September. In October, she was put on trial for treason under the Act for the Queen's Safety before a court of 36 noblemen,[209] including Cecil, Shrewsbury, and Walsingham.[210][211] Spirited in her defence, Mary denied the charges.[212] She told her triers, "Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England."[213] She protested that she had been denied the opportunity to review the evidence, that her papers had been removed from her, that she was denied access to legal counsel and that as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an English subject and thus could not be convicted of treason.[214]

She was convicted on 25 October and sentenced to death with only one commissioner, Lord Zouche, expressing any form of dissent.[215] Nevertheless, Elizabeth hesitated to order her execution, even in the face of pressure from the English Parliament to carry out the sentence. She was concerned that the killing of a queen set a discreditable precedent and was fearful of the consequences, especially if, in retaliation, Mary's son, James, formed an alliance with the Catholic powers and invaded England.[216]

Elizabeth asked Paulet, Mary's final custodian, if he would contrive a clandestine way to "shorten the life" of Mary, which he refused to do on the grounds that he would not make "a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot on my poor posterity".[217] On 1 February 1587, Elizabeth signed the death warrant, and entrusted it to William Davison, a privy councillor.[218] On 3 February,[219] ten members of the Privy Council of England, having been summoned by Cecil without Elizabeth's knowledge, decided to carry out the sentence at once.[220]

The execution scene, drawn by eyewitness Robert Beale

At Fotheringhay, on the evening of 7 February 1587, Mary was told she was to be executed the next morning.[221] She spent the last hours of her life in prayer, distributing her belongings to her household, and writing her will and a letter to the King of France.[222] The scaffold that was erected in the Great Hall was draped in black cloth. It was reached by two or three steps, and furnished with the block, a cushion for her to kneel on, and three stools for her and the earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, who were there to witness the execution.[223]

The executioner Bull and his assistant knelt before her and asked forgiveness, as it was typical for the executioner to request the pardon of the one being put to death. Mary replied, "I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles."[224] Her servants, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curle, and the executioners helped Mary remove her outer garments, revealing a velvet petticoat and a pair of sleeves in crimson brown, the liturgical colour of martyrdom in the Catholic Church,[225] with a black satin bodice and black trimmings.[226] As she disrobed Mary smiled and said she "never had such grooms before ... nor ever put off her clothes before such a company".[227] She was blindfolded by Kennedy with a white veil embroidered in gold, knelt down on the cushion in front of the block on which she positioned her head, and stretched out her arms. Her last words were, In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum ("Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit").[228]

Mary was not beheaded with a single strike. The first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head. The second blow severed the neck, except for a small bit of sinew, which the executioner cut through using the axe. Afterwards, he held her head aloft and declared "God save the Queen." At that moment, the auburn tresses in his hand turned out to be a wig and the head fell to the ground, revealing that Mary had very short, grey hair.[229] Cecil's nephew, who was present at the execution, reported to his uncle that after her death, "Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off" and that a small dog owned by the queen emerged from hiding among her skirts[230]—though eye-witness Emanuel Tomascon does not include those details in his "exhaustive report".[231] Items supposedly worn or carried by Mary at her execution are of doubtful provenance;[232] contemporary accounts state that all her clothing, the block, and everything touched by her blood was burnt in the fireplace of the Great Hall to obstruct relic hunters.[230]

A copy of Mary's effigy, National Museum of Scotland. The original, by Cornelius Cure, is in Westminster Abbey.

When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth, she became indignant and asserted that Davison had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant and that the Privy Council had acted without her authority.[233] Elizabeth's vacillation and deliberately vague instructions gave her plausible deniability to attempt to avoid the direct stain of Mary's blood.[234] Davison was arrested, thrown into the Tower of London, and found guilty of misprision. He was released nineteen months later, after Cecil and Walsingham interceded on his behalf.[235]

Mary's request to be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth.[236] Her body was embalmed and left in a secure lead coffin until her burial in a Protestant service at Peterborough Cathedral in late July 1587.[237] Her entrails, removed as part of the embalming process, were buried secretly within Fotheringhay Castle.[238] Her body was exhumed in 1612 when her son, King James VI and I, ordered that she be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth.[239] In 1867, her tomb was opened in an attempt to ascertain the resting place of her son, James I of England. He was ultimately found with Henry VII. Many of her other descendants, including Elizabeth of Bohemia, Prince Rupert of the Rhine and the children of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, were interred in her vault.[240]