8th December 2017
Today in 1542, Linlithgow Palace in Scotland welcomed the birth of the daughter of James V and Mary of Guise. James, the King of Scotland, was ill with a fever on his deathbed but lived long enough to hear the news of her arrival. James’ death made the newborn baby, Mary, Queen of Scotland.
Henry VIII, who had once tried to marry Mary of Guise, wanted an agreement her daughter, the infant queen, would marry his son, uniting England with Scotland. But many Scots preferred their union with France, and when Mary of Guise was no longer able to keep her daughter safe in Scotland, she was sent to France and betrothed to the dauphin, Francis.
Just two years into their marriage, and one year into Francis’ reign, he died, leaving Mary a widow at only eighteen. She now had to return to Scotland, a Catholic queen in an increasingly Protestant country. While she attempted to navigate this precarious situation politically, she made a disastrous choice for her second husband – her cousin Henry Stuart Lord Darnley. Mary appeared to love him deeply, but the marriage quickly soured.
Darnley became increasingly jealous of Mary’s friendship with her secretary, Rizzio. He eventually gathered with some Protestant nobles and attacked Rizzio while he was dining with a heavily pregnant Mary. Rizzio was killed, having been stabbed over fifty times. Darnley’s own end was also violent. In 1567, the house he was staying at was destroyed in an explosion, and Darnley’s body was found outside, strangled to death.
Three months later, Mary married the main suspect in Darnley’s death – James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. It was this marriage that scandalised the Scottish nobles and forced her abdication. Her thirteen-month-old son became James VI of Scotland – and would later become James I of England. Mary would never see him again. She was imprisoned, eventually escaping and making her way south to England, hoping that her cousin Elizabeth I would support her.
Instead Elizabeth kept Mary imprisoned in England for eighteen years, unwilling to execute her, but unable to let her be free. Mary was eventually executed at the age of 44, after being implicated in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth.
I wrote about this period in Mary’s life in my novel The Other Queen. Her relationship with her gaoler Bess of Hardwick and Bess’s husband the Earl of Shrewsbury is one of the most fascinating love triangles I’ve ever researched.
‘I was born Queen of Scotland, I was crowned Queen of France, and I am heir to the crown of England. Is it likely I will wear anything but ermine?’
Image: Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87) by François Clouet c.1558. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017. RCIN 401229