Mary, Queen of Scots 1542-1587
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Mary was crowned queen of Scotland, at Scone, with the approval of the Three Estates (the Church, the nobles and the burghers). Furious to be snubbed, Henry VIII set about what became the Rough Wooing. He devastated the south of Scotland and earned the bitterness of the Scots. Mary went off to France for safety at the age of five, where she stayed for 15 years, marrying the French Dauphin. While she was away, learning French ways, Protestants resenting the Catholic French influence. The Regent, now Marie de Guise, backed by the French, denounced all Protestants as heretics. This so enraged John Knox, a powerful and energetic reformer, that he incited his followers to destroy the Catholic churches and religious houses. The Regent Queen was deposed in 1559 and Catholicism was abolished. |
At this point, Mary's French husband died and she returned to her country as queen; no longer Mary Stewart, but Mary Stuart because the French have no 'w' in their alphabet.
Mary was not yet 20 when she landed in Scotland in 1561. French in education and attitude, a devout Catholic, high-spirited, passionate, sensual and beautiful, she had the best intentions. She had no desire to tangle with the Protestants. She was not a bigot; she merely wished to be allowed to practise her own religion in peace. This horrified John Knox and his followers, who found her light-hearted ways obnoxious.
In 1565, she married her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, a dissipated Catholic youth, four years her junior, and mistrusted by all. Within a year, when Mary was six months pregnant, Darnley became jealous of her Italian secretary, Rizzio and murdered him, with the help of his friends, in Mary's presence. She never forgave him. When he himself was murdered, the following year, some hinted that Mary may have known of the plot. Eight weeks later, she married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, a buccaneering Protestant of great charm and little honour. He had abducted and allegedly raped Mary in order to force the marriage, having hastily divorced his wife. Some say that Mary was passionately in love with Bothwell and that there was no question of rape.
Bothwell had been heavily implicated in the murder of Darnley and this ill-advised marriage sparked off an inferno of protest from both Catholics and Protestants. Mary, publicly humiliated, was forced to abdicate in favour of her baby son, James VI. Her half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, bastard son of James V, was proclaimed Regent. Mary fled to England and threw herself on the mercy of her cousin, Elizabeth 1. But they never met. Elizabeth, without an heir, could not forget Mary's claims to the English throne. Mary was imprisoned for 20 years, and then beheaded.
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