Mary Queen of Scots (2 page)

Plate 1
James V and Mary of Guise, King and Queen of Scotland

Plate 2
Francois II c.1553 by Francois Clouet, Musee Conde, Chantilly, France/The Bridgeman Art Library

On 8 February 1587 with two English soldiers supporting her under her arms, the crippled Mary Stewart, queen of Scots, encountered Andrew Melville, the master of her household, at the entrance to the execution hall at Fotheringhay Castle.
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During their brief conversation, she asked Melville to testify to the world that she died a true woman to her religion and a true woman of Scotland and France. Although her English succession rights were important to her, she clearly identified herself in those last critical moments as a Catholic of Scotland and France. Mary’s final thoughts focused on her lineage and faith, not her alleged romantic marriages in Scotland that culminated in her long English imprisonment and ultimately her violent, tragic death.

By contrast, beginning even in Mary’s lifetime, her defenders and detractors have mostly been more concerned with the formation and dissolution of those marriages than with her self-identification and understanding of her royal responsibilities and religious commitments. In 1570 John Leslie, bishop of Ross, her ambassador to England, was the first to deny in print that the imprisoned queen had aided and abetted the murder of her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, in order to marry James Hepburn, fourth earl of Bothwell, his assassin and her abductor. About two years later, a treatise, written by George Buchanan, a Protestant humanist and Mary’s former tutor, was published to counter Leslie’s defense. Depicting her as an evil, lecherous woman, it claimed she colluded both in Darnley’s death and in Bothwell’s capture of her.

During the more than four centuries since the polemical works of Leslie and Buchanan appeared, many historians have supported one of their two contrasting characterizations, although some scholars have also favored a third position that somewhat amends Leslie’s stance. Doubting she was totally innocent concerning Darnley’s death, they speculate that she must at least have suspected that a conspiracy against him was afoot but usually agree that Bothwell forcibly seized her.

MARY’S HISTORY

Mary’s life that ended in England had begun in Scotland 44 years earlier on 8 December 1542. The basic outlines of her history are well known. She was the child of Mary of Guise and James V, who died six days after her birth, leaving his crown to her. That she was not only the Scottish queen regnant but also as the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor a claimant to the English throne, caused many parents, including her great-uncle Henry VIII, to seek her as a bride for their sons. In 1548 her mother and her governor, James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, arranged for her transportation to France as the betrothed of Francis, the dauphin. In 1558 she wed Francis, who succeeded as king about one year later. After his death in 1560, she returned home to a realm controlled by Protestants but insisted on continuing Catholic worship at court. She remarried twice: in 1565 to Darnley, the father of her son, and in 1567 to Bothwell, her abductor. Her outraged rebels then imprisoned her at Lochleven, forced her to abdicate, and crowned her son as James VI. In 1568 she escaped, raised an army that was defeated, and fled to England. After holding an inquiry into whether Mary should be restored to her throne, Elizabeth decided to retain her in England, leaving Scotland to the rule of James and his Protestant regents. In 1587 having discovered that Mary consented to Anthony Babington’s plot, which included a scheme for her assassination, Elizabeth signed the warrant for her cousin’s execution, prompting Catholic desires for Mary to be recognized as a martyr to their faith. In 1603 her son succeeded Elizabeth as James I of England.

RECENT STUDIES OF MARY

The most well-known biography of Mary, which was published in 1969 and reprinted in 1993 and 2001, was composed by Antonia Fraser, a popular writer.
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A volume of over 600 pages, it romanticizes her life, claiming she married Darnley for love but wed Bothwell only because he abducted and ravished her. It includes moving passages about the queen’s four attendants also called Mary, who were undoubtedly Mary of Guise’s namesake goddaughters, as their parents were her allies and dependants. Fraser ended the book with references to the corpse of Mary’s son James, which was interred in the tomb of Henry VII in the Tudor king’s chapel at Westminster Abbey, and to Mary’s coffin, which rests under her tomb in that same chapel, surrounded by her many tiny descendants who died in their infancy. In contrast, the remains of the childless queens regnant, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, lie together by themselves under the latter’s tomb, ironically also in Henry’s chapel. By thus highlighting Stewart fertility and Tudor barrenness, Fraser emphasized the Stewart subsumption of the Tudor dynasty.