[35] When Lady Fleming left France in 1551, she was succeeded by a French governess, Franoise de Paroy. [71], Modern historian Jenny Wormald found this remarkable and suggested that Mary's failure to appoint a council sympathetic to Catholic and French interests was an indication of her focus on the English throne, over the internal problems of Scotland. 04 July 2022 | The story of the three husbands of Mary Queen of Scots: Francis II of France, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. [174] Elizabeth, as she had wished, concluded the inquiry with a verdict that nothing was proven against either the confederate lords or Mary. On 15 May, at either Holyrood Palace or Holyrood Abbey, they were married according to Protestant rites. It is impossible now to prove either way. Also, Bothwell showed Mary an agreement the nobles had signed which indicated they were prepared to accept him as their overlord. But Mary had more agency than history gives her credit for: beneath the soft exterior lay a steely determination to rule, as was her God-given right. Vivacious, beautiful, and clever (according to contemporary accounts), Mary had a promising childhood. [132] Bothwell and his first wife, Jean Gordon, who was the sister of Lord Huntly, had divorced twelve days previously. [87] They married at Holyrood Palace on 29 July 1565, even though both were Catholic and a papal dispensation for the marriage of first cousins had not been obtained. [139] On 24 July, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son James. She was also a claimant (someone who has a legal claim to be the lawful ruler) to the throne of England. [195], 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. [10], Mary was christened at the nearby Church of St Michael shortly after she was born. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Elizabeth was the illegitimate product of an unlawful marriage, while Mary, the paternal granddaughter of Henry VIIIs older sister Margaret, was the rightful English heir. [95], Mary's marriage to a leading Catholic precipitated Mary's half-brother, the Earl of Moray, to join with other Protestant lords, including Lords Argyll and Glencairn, in open rebellion. [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. Beaton's claim was based on a version of the king's will that his opponents dismissed as a forgery. In the end, Moray returned to Scotland as regent and Mary remained in custody in England. There was never any intention to proceed judicially; the conference was intended as a political exercise. Mary replied, "I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles. 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. 14. [233] Elizabeth's vacillation and deliberately vague instructions gave her plausible deniability to attempt to avoid the direct stain of Mary's blood. 1. Potential diagnoses include physical exhaustion and mental stress,[112] haemorrhage of a gastric ulcer,[113] and porphyria. Francis and Mary were well known to each other at the time of their nuptials, since Mary had been brought up in the French royal court, following the death of her father King James V of Scotland when she was just five days old. The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died and she inherited the throne. Only four of the councillors were Catholic: the Earls of Atholl, Erroll, Montrose, and Huntly, who was Lord Chancellor. The authenticity of the letters, now known only by copies, continues to be debated. Published on December 6, 2018 11:00 AM. ), Mary was a Catholic queen in a largely Protestant state, but she formed compromises that enabled her to maintain authority without infringing on the practice of either religion. The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died and she inherited the throne. [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. [234] Davison was arrested, thrown into the Tower of London, and found guilty of misprision. [19][17], Beaton wanted to move Mary away from the coast to the safety of Stirling Castle. There are incomplete printed transcriptions in English, Scots, French, and Latin from the 1570s. [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. [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. This decision proved to be disastrous, since Mary was soon a prisoner of the queen and would spend the next nineteen years as Elizabeths prisoner, before she was executed for plotting against the queen on 8 February 1587 at Fotheringay Castle. She was considered a pretty child and later, as a woman, strikingly attractive. 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. [170] In contrast, Weir thinks it demonstrates that the lords required time to fabricate them. She had been queen for all but the first six days of her life, John Guy writes in Queen of Scots, [but] apart from a few short but intoxicating weeks in the following year, the rest of her life would be spent in captivity.. [90] Although her advisors had brought the couple together, Elizabeth felt threatened by the marriage because as descendants of her aunt, both Mary and Darnley were claimants to the English throne. 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. James Feder. [151] A commission of inquiry, or conference, as it was known, was held in York and later Westminster between October 1568 and January 1569. [Marys] failures are dictated more by her situation than by her as a ruler, she says, and I think if she had been a man, she would've been able to be much more successful and would never have lost the throne.. . [91] Their children, if any, would inherit an even stronger, combined claim. [65] Scotland was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions. Despite the fact that Mary was also queen of Scotland, she knew little of the land of her birth. [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. Mary, Queen of Scots, was barely one week old when she succeeded to the throne in 1542. [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. Mary Queen of Scots picks up in 1561 with the eponymous queen's return to her native country. Mary was accused of involvement in the murder, the prime suspect was the Earl of Bothwell, who within weeks would be Mary's husband. [77] Her own attempt to negotiate a marriage to Don Carlos, the mentally unstable heir apparent of King Philip II of Spain, was rebuffed by Philip. To date, acting luminaries from Katharine Hepburn to Bette Davis, Cate Blanchett and Vanessa Redgrave have graced the silver screen with their interpretations of Mary and Elizabeth (though despite these womens collective talent, none of the adaptations have much historical merit, instead relying on romanticized relationships, salacious wrongdoings and suspect timelines to keep audiences in thrall). 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. But in June of 1560, Marys mother died in Scotland at the age of 45. Mary, Queen of Scots became Queen of Scotland at six days old. Elizabeth forbade her attendance anyway. In France the royal arms of England were quartered with those of Francis and Mary. [85] Both Mary and Darnley were grandchildren of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII of England, and patrilineal descendants of the High Stewards of Scotland. [168], The casket letters did not appear publicly until the Conference of 1568, although the Scottish privy council had seen them by December 1567. Now, first-time director Josie Rourke hopes to offer a modern twist on the tale with her new Mary Queen of Scots biopic, which finds Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie stepping into the shoes of the legendary queens. Unlike her Scottish counterpart, whose position as the only legitimate child of James V cemented her royal status, Elizabeth followed a protracted path to the throne. [123] There were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body. Mary, once the fragile last hope of the Stuart dynasty, was just 23 years old and had fulfilled one of a monarchs greatest duties providing a healthy son and heir. [99] Mary broadened her privy council, bringing in both Catholics (Bishop of Ross John Lesley and Provost of Edinburgh Simon Preston of Craigmillar) and Protestants (the new Lord Huntly, Bishop of Galloway Alexander Gordon, John Maxwell of Terregles and Sir James Balfour). [133], Originally, Mary believed that many nobles supported her marriage, but relations quickly soured between the newly elevated Bothwell (created Duke of Orkney) and his former peers and the marriage proved to be deeply unpopular. [205], On 11 August 1586, after being implicated in the Babington Plot, Mary was arrested while out riding and taken to Tixall Hall in Staffordshire. 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. [241] After the accession of James I in England, historian William Camden wrote an officially sanctioned biography that drew from original documents. He had a violent temper and, despite his differences from Darnley, shared the deceased kings proclivity for power. [250] Mary's courage at her execution helped establish her popular image as the heroic victim in a dramatic tragedy.[251]. This fear-driven logic even extended to the queens potential offspring: As she once told Marys advisor William Maitland, Princes cannot like their own children. [239] In 1867, her tomb was opened in an attempt to ascertain the resting place of her son, James I of England. The nobles demanded that Mary abandon Bothwell, whom they had earlier ordered her to wed. She refused and reminded them of their earlier order. [76], Mary then turned her attention to finding a new husband from the royalty of Europe. Meilan Solly Janet Dickinson paints the Scottish queens relationship with Elizabeth in similar terms, arguing that the pairs dynamic was shaped by circumstance rather than choice. James went along with the idea for a while, but eventually rejected it and signed an alliance treaty with Elizabeth, abandoning his mother. They traveled from one royal palace to another Fontainebleau to Meudon, or to Chambord or Saint-Germain. In 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots, upset the applecart of the Protestant Reformation. [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. [152] In Scotland, her supporters fought a civil war against Regent Moray and his successors. To avoid the bloodshed of battle, she turned herself over and the rebels took her to Edinburgh while Bothwell struggled to rally troops of his own. 'Deciphering Mary Stuarts lost letters from 1578-1584', "Stewart, Henry, duke of Albany [Lord Darnley] (1545/61567)", "Deciphering Mary Stuart's Lost Letters to Michel de Castelnau Mauvissire", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary,_Queen_of_Scots&oldid=1152038397, People executed by Tudor England by decapitation, People executed under the Tudors for treason against England, Heads of government who were later imprisoned, Kingdom of Scotland expatriates in France, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using Sister project links with wikidata namespace mismatch, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 27 April 2023, at 19:51. 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. [248] There is no concrete proof of her complicity in Darnley's murder or of a conspiracy with Bothwell. He was the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was the father of James VI of Scotland, who succeeded Elizabeth I of England as James I. Jenn Scott of the Stewart Society tells the story . In May 1567 they wed at Holyrood and Mary wrote to the foreign courts that it was the right decision for her country. Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart, was born into conflict. [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. Over 50 dagger wounds were counted on his body. [79] She sent an ambassador, Thomas Randolph, to tell Mary that if she married an English nobleman, Elizabeth would "proceed to the inquisition of her right and title to be our next cousin and heir". Upon his death in 1547, she was named third in the line of succession, eligible to rule only in the unlikely event that her siblings, Edward VI and Mary I, died without heirs. Given her precarious hold on the throne and the subsequent paranoia that plagued her reign, she had little motivation to name a successor who could threaten her own safety. The castle was the site of the birth of King James VI, also James I of England from 1603, to Mary Queen of Scots in 1566. [193] Early the following year, Moray was assassinated. [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. [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. Mary certainly believed that Darnley, angry because she had denied him the crown matrimonial, wanted to kill her and the child, thus becoming King of Scots. [8], A popular tale, first recorded by John Knox, states that James, upon hearing on his deathbed that his wife had given birth to a daughter, ruefully exclaimed, "It cam wi' a lass and it will gang wi' a lass! LOVE SCOTLAND'S HISTORY? Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently smothered. [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. The portraits were made by an unknown artist in around 1565, at the time of their marriage. [72] In this, she was acknowledging her lack of effective military power in the face of the Protestant lords, while also following a policy that strengthened her links with England. [36] At the French court, she was a favourite with everyone, except Henry II's wife Catherine de' Medici. Fact: Queen Mary's second husband tried to usurp the throne After Queen Mary was widowed by her first husband at 18, she married Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden), her third cousin. 5. From the beginning, her life was mired in struggle as she grappled with the demands of the Scottish throne and the deaths of several husbands. And though Marys father, James V, reportedly made a deathbed prediction that the Stuart dynasty, which came with a lassMarjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Brucewould also pass with a lass, the woman who fulfilled this prophecy was not the infant James left his throne to, but her descendant Queen Anne, whose 1714 death marked the official end of the dynastic line. Not only were the two absolute rulers in a patriarchal society, but they were also women whose lives, while seemingly inextricable, amounted to more than their either their relationships with men or their rivalry with each other. Three months after Darnleys death, Mary wed the man whod been accused ofand acquitted of in a legally suspect trialhis murder. [235], Mary's request to be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth. Mary was aged just fifteen when she was married to Francis, although the pair had been betrothed ten years earlier. A royal residence, a vital stronghold and an iconic structure, Edinburgh Castle is one of the most famous castles in the world. Marys mother Marie de Guise had arranged the marriage when Mary and Francis were infants, and so Mary was brought up knowing she would one day be queen of France and Scotland. Facts about the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. On 7 July 1548, a Scottish Parliament held at a nunnery near the town agreed to the French marriage treaty. [63] Having lived in France since the age of five, Mary had little direct experience of the dangerous and complex political situation in Scotland. Her husband, Francois II, King of France had died unexpectedly, and . [153], As an anointed queen, Mary refused to acknowledge the power of any court to try her. Who were the husbands of Mary Queen of Scots? For the list of documents see, for example. Abduction: 24 April 1567 Here are 10 facts about Mary Queen of Scots. Not only had Darnleys arrogant behaviour during the early months of the marriage angered many of the Scottish nobles, but it had also incurred the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was angry to see Darnley, as her English subject, marry the Queen of Scots, who was herself in line to the throne of England. "[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.
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