ary Queen of Scots (1542-87), only daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise, was born in Linlithgow Palace, and became queen when only a week old. All the more important years of her early life were spent in France, where she was educated with the royal children. In 1558 she was married to the Dauphin. On the death of Mary of England, in November, she formally claimed the succession to the English crown on the ground of Elizabeth’s illegitimacy. The death of her husband on Dec. 5, 1560, led to her return to Scotland. Mary gave her hand to Lord Darcy, on July 29, 1565. Lacking character and ability, the latter found himself suddenly superseded in Mary’s counsels by the Italian Rizzio; and by aiding the conspiracy for Rizzio’s assassination (March 9, 1566), gave his wife offence almost beyond pardon. In addition to this, Mary’s political necessities had compelled her to have recourse to the aid and almost protection of Bothwell. Everything favored the rapid growth of her passionate devotion to him, and riddance from Darnley became a matter of importance to both. Who were mainly responsible for the suggestion of the assassination cannot now be exactly determined; but Bothwell undertook the main arrangements for its accomplishment. Darnley was murdered in the Kirk o’ Field on Feb. 10, 1567.

Besides conniving in the murder, the Protestant leaders cooperated - either passively or actively - with Mary in arranging that the trial of Bothwell should result in his acquittal. But after her marriage to Bothwell, on May 15, they took up arms - avowedly to deliver her from him. This resulted in her surrender to them. Mary was escorted as a prisoner to Edinburgh; and was sent to the castle of Lochleven, from which she escaped May 2, 1568. On May 13, however, her forces were defeated, and Mary fled across the Solway into England, where she was imprisoned by Elizabeth. Nineteen years were spent by Mary as a prisoner - until her execution. Mary met her fate (Feb. 8, 1587) with unshaken fortitude.

Consult Lang’s The Mystery of Mary Stuart (1901); Stoddard’s The Girlhood of Mary Queen of Scots (1908); Abbott’s Mary Queen of Scots (1910). Numerous dramas have been written about her, notably by Schiller, Dumas, and Björnson (1912). [World Wide Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1935]

Notes on Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary was born at Linlithgow, 7 or 8 Dec 1542, while her father lay on his deathbed at Falkland. A queen when she was a week old, she was promised in marriage by the Regent Arran to Prince Edward of England, but the Scottish Parliament declared the promise null. War with England followed, and the disastrous defeat of Pinkie (1547). Mary was offered in marriage to the eldest son of Henry II of France and Catharine de Medici; the offer accepted; and in 1548 Mary was affianced to the Dauphin at St Germain. Her next ten years were passed at the French court, where she was carefully educated; and in 1558 she was married to the Dauphin, who was a year younger than herself. Mary was induced to sign a secret deed, by which, if she died childless, both her Scottish realm and her right of succession to the English crown (she was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII) were conveyed to France. In 1559, the death of the French king called her husband to the throne as Francis II, and government passed into the hands of the Guises. The sickly king died in 1560, when the reins of power were grasped by Catharine de Medici as Regent for her next son, Charles IX. Queen Mary’s presence was already urgently needed in Scotland, which the death of her mother had left without a government, while convulsed by the throes of the Reformation; and she arrived at Leith on 19 Aug 1561. Her government began auspiciously. The Reformation received the sanction of the Scottish Parliament, and Mary was content to leave affairs as she found them, stipulating only for liberty to use her own religion. Her chief minister was a Protestant, her illegitimate brother, James Stuart, whom she created Earl of Moray. Under his guidance, in the autumn of 1562, she made a progress to the north, which ended in the defeat and death of the Earl of Huntly, the chief of the Roman Catholic party. Meanwhile, the kings of Sweden, Denmark and France, the Archduke Charles of Austria, Don Carlos of Spain, the Dukes of Ferrara, Nemours and Anjou, the Earl of Arran, and the Earl of Leicester were proposed as candidates for her hand. Her own preference was for Don Carlos. Only after all hopes of obtaining him were quenched, her choice fell, somewhat suddenly in 1565, on her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lennox, by his marriage with a granddaughter of Henry VII of England. He was thus among the nearest heirs to the English crown. This and his good looks were his sole recommendation. He was weak, needy, insolent and vicious, a Roman Catholic, and 3 years younger than Mary. The marriage was the signal for an easily quelled insurrection by Moray and the Hamiltons. But Mary almost at once was disgusted by Darnley’s debauchery, and alarmed by his arrogance. She had given him the title of King, but she hesitated to grant his demand that the crown should be secured to him for life. Her chief adviser since Moray’s rebellion had been her Italian secretary David Rizzio. Darnley had been his sworn friend, but now suspected in him the real obstacle to his designs upon the crown. In this belief, he entered into a formal compact with Moray, Ruthven, Morton and other Protestant chiefs, and himself led the way into the Queen’s cabinet and held her while the others killed the Italian in an antechamber on 9 Mar 1566. Dissembling her indignation, Mary succeeded in detaching her husband from his allies, and escaped with him from Holyrood to Dunbar. Ruthven and Morton fled to England; Moray was received by the Queen; and Darnley, who had betrayed both sides, became an object of mingled abhorrence and contempt. Just before the birth on 19 Jun 1566 of Prince James, the Queen’s affection for her husband briefly revived. Before the boy’s baptism, in Dec 1556, her estrangement was greater than ever; divorce was openly discussed. Darnley spoke of leaving the country, but fell ill of the smallpox at Glasgow in Jan 1567. Mary brought him to Edinburgh on the 31st. He was lodged in a small mansion beside the Kirk o’ Field, just outside the southern walls. There Mary visited him daily, and passed the evening of Sunday, 9 Feb by his bedside in kindly conversation. She left him between ten and eleven o'clock to take part in a masque at Holyrood, at the marriage of a favourite valet. About two hours after midnight the house in which Darnley slept was blown up by gunpowder, and his lifeless body was found in the garden. The chief actor in this tragedy was undoubtedly the Earl of Bothwell, who had gained the queen’s favour; but there were suspicions that the Queen herself was not wholly ignorant of the plot. On 12 Apr Bothwell was brought to a mock-trial, and acquitted. On 24 Apr he intercepted the Queen between Linlithgow and Edinburgh, and carried her, with scarcely a show of resistance, to Dunbar. On 7 May he was divorced from his new-married wife; on the 12th. Mary publicly pardoned his seizure of her person, and created him Duke of Orkney. On 15 May, three months after her husband’s murder, she married the man regarded as his murderer. This fatal step at once arrayed her nobles in arms against her. Her army melted away without striking a blow on the field of Carberry (15 Jun), when nothing was left but to surrender to the confederate lords. They led her to Edinburgh, where the insults of the rabble drove her well-nigh frantic. Hurried next to Lochleven, she was constrained on 24 Jul to sign an act of abdication in favour of her son, James who, five days afterwards, was crowned at Stirling. Escaping from her island-prison on 2 May 1568, she found herself in a few days at the head of an army of 6,000 men, which was defeated on 13 May by the Regent Moray at Langside near Glasgow. Three days afterwards Mary crossed the Solway, and threw herself on the protection of Queen Elizabeth of England, only to find herself a prisoner for life - first at Carlisle, then at Bolton, Tutbury, Wingfield, Coventry, Chatsworth, Sheffield, Buxton, Chartley and finally, Fotheringay Castle. The presence of Mary in England was a constant source of uneasiness to Elizabeth and her advisers. A large Catholic minority naturally looked to Mary as the likely restorer of the old faith. Plot followed plot; and that of Anthony Babington had for its object the assassination of Elizabeth and the deliverance of Mary. It was discovered; letters of Mary (the Casket Letters) approving the death of Elizabeth fell into Walsingham’s hands; and, mainly on the evidence of copies of these letters, Mary was brought to trial in Sep 1586. Sentence of death was pronounced against her on 25 Oct; but it was not until 1 Feb 1587, that Elizabeth took courage to sign the warrant of execution. It was carried into effect on the 8th, when Mary laid her head upon the block with the dignity of a queen and the resignation of a martyr, evincing to the last her devotion to the church of her fathers. Her body, buried at Peterborough, was in 1612 removed to Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster, where it still lies in a sumptuous tomb erected by James VI. The statue there and the contemporary portraits by Clouet are the best representations of Mary. The preponderance of authority seems now to be on the side of those who believe in Mary’s criminal love for Bothwell and her guilty knowledge of his conspiracy against her husband’s life. Her beauty and accomplishments have never been disputed. She spoke three or four languages, was well and variously informed, talked admirably, and wrote both in prose and in verse. {Burke’s Peerage and Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary} [GADD.GED]

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