Mary Stuart entered the world on the 8th of December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, just six days after her father, King James V, died from a nervous collapse following the Battle of Solway Moss. She was the only legitimate child of James V to survive him, inheriting the Scottish throne as an infant while the country was plunged into a power struggle between Catholic and Protestant factions. Her mother, Mary of Guise, a French noblewoman, became regent, but the political landscape was volatile. The English King Henry VIII, seeing an opportunity to unite the two kingdoms, proposed a marriage between the six-month-old Mary and his own son, Edward. The Treaty of Greenwich, signed on the 1st of July 1543, promised that Mary would marry Edward at the age of ten and move to England. However, the treaty was rejected by the Scottish Parliament in December 1543, leading to Henry VIII's military campaign known as the Rough Wooing. English forces raided Edinburgh in May 1544, and the Scots moved Mary to Dunkeld for safety. The conflict continued until 1547, when the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie. Fearing for her safety, Mary's guardians sent her to Inchmahome Priory before turning to France for help. King Henry II of France proposed uniting the two nations by marrying the young queen to his three-year-old son, the Dauphin Francis. In February 1548, Mary was moved to Dumbarton Castle and then sent to France, arriving in Brittany in August 1548 to begin a thirteen-year stay at the French court.
The French Court
At the French court, Mary grew into a vivacious and clever young woman, fluent in French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Greek, and skilled in the lute, virginals, horsemanship, and falconry. She was accompanied by her own court, including the four Marys, four girls her own age from noble Scottish families, and her governess, Janet, Lady Fleming. Despite her popularity, she faced rivalry from Catherine de' Medici, the wife of King Henry II, whose interests competed with those of the Guise family. Mary's physical appearance was striking, with auburn hair, hazel-brown eyes, and a height of 5 feet 11 inches, making her tall by 16th-century standards. Her husband, Francis, was unusually short and stuttered, yet they got on well from their first meeting. On the 4th of April 1558, Mary signed a secret agreement bequeathing Scotland and her claim to the English throne to the French crown if she died without issue. Twenty days later, she married the Dauphin at Notre Dame de Paris, becoming queen consort of France when Francis ascended the throne in 1559. However, her time in France was cut short by tragedy. Henry II died in a jousting accident on the 10th of July 1559, and Francis became king. Two of Mary's uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, dominated French politics. In Scotland, the Protestant Lords of the Congregation were rising in power, and Mary's mother, Mary of Guise, died on the 11th of June 1560. Francis II died on the 5th of December 1560 from a middle-ear infection that led to an abscess in his brain. Grief-stricken, Mary returned to Scotland nine months later, arriving in Leith on the 19th of August 1561.
Mary's return to Scotland in 1561 brought her face-to-face with a nation torn between Catholic and Protestant factions. As a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by many of her subjects and by Queen Elizabeth I of England. Scotland was governed by Protestant leaders, including her illegitimate half-brother, the Earl of Moray, who was a leader of the Protestants. The Protestant reformer John Knox preached against Mary, condemning her for hearing Mass, dancing, and dressing too elaborately. Mary summoned him to remonstrate with him but was unsuccessful, and she later charged him with treason, though he was acquitted. To the surprise of the Catholic party, Mary tolerated the newly established Protestant ascendancy and kept her half-brother Moray as her chief advisor. Her privy council of 16 men, appointed on the 6th of September 1561, was dominated by Protestant leaders from the reformation crisis of 1559, 1560. Only four of the councillors were Catholic. Mary sent William Maitland of Lethington as an ambassador to the English court to put the case for Mary as the heir presumptive to the English throne. Elizabeth refused to name a potential heir, fearing that would invite conspiracy to displace her with the nominated successor. However, she assured Maitland that she knew no one with a better claim than Mary. In late 1561 and early 1562, arrangements were made for the two queens to meet in England at York or Nottingham in August or September 1562. In July, Elizabeth sent Henry Sidney to cancel Mary's visit because of the civil war in France. Mary then turned her attention to finding a new husband from the royalty of Europe, but her attempts to negotiate a marriage to Don Carlos, the mentally unstable heir apparent of King Philip II of Spain, were rebuffed by Philip. Elizabeth attempted to neutralise Mary by suggesting that she marry English Protestant Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, but the proposal came to nothing.
The Tragic Marriage
Mary's marriage to Lord Darnley, her English-born half-cousin, began with passion but ended in tragedy. They had briefly met in February 1561 when Mary was in mourning for Francis, and they next met on the 17th of February 1565 at Wemyss Castle in Scotland. Mary fell in love with the long lad, as Queen Elizabeth called him since he was over six feet tall. They married at Holyrood Palace on the 29th of July 1565, even though both were Catholic and a papal dispensation for the marriage of first cousins had not been obtained. English statesmen William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester had worked to obtain Darnley's licence to travel to Scotland from his home in England. 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. Their children, if any, would inherit an even stronger, combined claim. Mary's insistence on the marriage seems to have stemmed from passion rather than calculation. Before long, Darnley grew arrogant and demanded the Crown Matrimonial, which would have made him a co-sovereign of Scotland with the right to keep the Scottish throne for himself if he outlived his wife. Mary refused his request, and their marriage grew strained. Darnley was jealous of her friendship with her Catholic private secretary, David Rizzio, who was rumoured to be the father of her child. By March 1566, Darnley had entered into a secret conspiracy with Protestant lords. On the 9th of March, a group of the conspirators accompanied by Darnley stabbed Rizzio to death in front of the six months pregnant Mary at a dinner party in Holyrood Palace. Over the next two days, a disillusioned Darnley switched sides, and Mary received Moray at Holyrood. On the night of the 11th to the 12th of March, Darnley and Mary escaped from the palace. They took temporary refuge in Dunbar Castle before returning to Edinburgh on the 18th of March. The former rebels Lords Moray, Argyll, and Glencairn were restored to the council.
The Murder of Darnley
Mary's son by Darnley, James, was born on the 19th of June 1566 in Edinburgh Castle. However, the murder of Rizzio led to the breakdown of her marriage. In October 1566, while staying at Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, Mary made a journey on horseback of at least four hours each way to visit the Earl of Bothwell at Hermitage Castle, where he lay ill from wounds sustained in a skirmish with John Elliot of Park. The ride was later used as evidence by Mary's enemies that the two were lovers, though no suspicions were voiced at the time and Mary had been accompanied by her councillors and guards. Immediately after her return to Jedburgh, she suffered a serious illness that included frequent vomiting, loss of sight, loss of speech, convulsions, and periods of unconsciousness. Her recovery from the 25th of October onwards was credited to the skill of her French physicians. The cause of her illness is unknown, with potential diagnoses including physical exhaustion and mental stress, haemorrhage of a gastric ulcer, and porphyria. At Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh, at the end of November 1566, Mary and leading nobles held a meeting to discuss the problem of Darnley. Divorce was discussed, but a bond was probably sworn between the lords present to remove Darnley by other means. Darnley feared for his safety, and after the baptism of his son at Stirling and shortly before Christmas, he went to Glasgow to stay on his father's estates. At the start of the journey, he was afflicted by a fever, possibly smallpox, syphilis, or the result of poison. He remained ill for some weeks. In late January 1567, Mary prompted her husband to return to Edinburgh. He recuperated from his illness in a house belonging to the brother of James Balfour at the former abbey of Kirk o' Field, just within the city wall. Mary visited him daily, so that it appeared a reconciliation was in progress. On the night of the 9th to the 10th of February 1567, Mary visited her husband in the early evening and then attended the wedding celebrations of a member of her household, Bastian Pagez. In the early hours of the morning, an explosion devastated Kirk o' Field. Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently smothered. There were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body. Bothwell, Moray, Secretary Maitland, the Earl of Morton, and Mary herself were among those who came under suspicion. By the end of February, Bothwell was generally believed to be guilty of Darnley's assassination. 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. In the absence of Lennox and with no evidence presented, Bothwell was acquitted after a seven-hour trial on the 12th of April. A week later, Bothwell managed to convince more than two dozen lords and bishops to sign the Ainslie Tavern Bond, in which they agreed to support his aim to marry the queen.
Abduction and Abdication
Between the 21st and the 23rd of April 1567, Mary visited her son at Stirling for the last time. On her way back to Edinburgh on the 24th of April, Mary was abducted, willingly or not, by Lord Bothwell and his men and taken to Dunbar Castle, where he may have raped her. James Melville of Halhill, who was in the castle, wrote that Bothwell had ravished her and lain with her against her will. Other contemporaries dismissed the abduction as bogus. On the 6th of May, Mary and Bothwell returned to Edinburgh. On the 15th of May, at either Holyrood Palace or Holyrood Abbey, they were married according to Protestant rites. Bothwell and his first wife, Jean Gordon, who was the sister of Lord Huntly, had divorced twelve days previously. Originally, Mary believed that many nobles supported her marriage, but relations quickly soured between the newly elevated Bothwell and his former peers, and the marriage proved to be deeply unpopular. Catholics considered the marriage unlawful since they did not recognise Bothwell's divorce or the validity of the Protestant service. Both Protestants and Catholics were shocked that Mary should marry the man accused of murdering her husband. The marriage was tempestuous, and Mary became despondent. Twenty-six Scottish peers, known as the confederate lords, turned against Mary and Bothwell and raised their own army. Mary and Bothwell confronted the lords at Carberry Hill on the grounds of Carberry Tower on the 15th of June, but there was no battle, as Mary's forces dwindled away through desertion during negotiations. Bothwell was given safe passage from the field. The lords took Mary to Edinburgh, where crowds of spectators denounced her as an adulteress and murderer. The following night, she was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle on an island in the middle of Loch Leven. Between the 20th and the 23rd of July, Mary miscarried twins. On the 24th of July, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son James. Moray was made regent, while Bothwell was driven into exile. He was imprisoned in Denmark, became insane, and died in 1578.
The Casket Letters
On the 2nd of May 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven Castle with the aid of George Douglas, brother of William Douglas, the castle's owner. Managing to raise an army of 6,000 men, she met Moray's smaller forces at the Battle of Langside on the 13th of May. Defeated, she fled south, planning to seek asylum from Elizabeth. After spending the night at Dundrennan Abbey, she crossed the Solway Firth into England by fishing boat on the 16th of May. She landed at Workington in Cumberland in the north of England and stayed overnight at Workington Hall. On the 18th of May, local officials led by Richard Lowther took her into protective custody at Carlisle Castle. Mary apparently expected Elizabeth to help her regain her throne. Elizabeth was cautious, ordering an inquiry into the conduct of the confederate lords and the question of whether Mary was guilty of Darnley's murder. In mid-July 1568, English authorities moved Mary to Bolton Castle, because it was farther from the Scottish border but not too close to London. Mary's clothes, sent from Lochleven Castle, arrived on the 20th of July. A commission of inquiry, or conference, as it was known, was held in York and later Westminster between October 1568 and January 1569. In Scotland, her supporters fought a civil war against Regent Moray and his successors. As an anointed queen, Mary refused to acknowledge the power of any court to try her. She refused to attend the inquiry at York personally but sent representatives. Elizabeth forbade her attendance anyway. Mary later requested to attend the conference at Westminster, but Elizabeth refused permission. In response, Mary's commissioners withdrew from the inquiry. As evidence against Mary, Moray presented the so-called casket letters, eight unsigned letters purportedly from Mary to Bothwell, two marriage contracts, and a love sonnet or sonnets. All were said to have been found in a silver-gilt casket just less than 12 inches long and decorated with the monogram of King Francis II. Mary denied writing them and insisted they were forgeries, arguing that her handwriting was not difficult to imitate. They are widely believed to be crucial as to whether Mary shared the guilt for Darnley's murder. The authenticity of the casket letters has been the source of much controversy among historians. It is impossible now to prove either way. The originals, written in French, were possibly destroyed in 1584 by Mary's son. The surviving copies, in French or translated into English, do not form a complete set. There are incomplete printed transcriptions in English, Scots, French, and Latin from the 1570s. Other documents scrutinised included Bothwell's divorce from Jean Gordon. Moray had sent a messenger in September to Dunbar to get a copy of the proceedings from the town's registers. Mary's biographers, such as Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir, and John Guy, have concluded that either the documents were complete forgeries, or incriminating passages were inserted into genuine letters, or the letters were written to Bothwell by a different person or written by Mary to a different person. Guy points out that the letters are disjointed and that the French language and grammar employed in the sonnets are too poor for a writer with Mary's education, but certain phrases in the letters, including verses in the style of Ronsard, and some characteristics of style are compatible with known writings by Mary. The casket letters did not appear publicly until the Conference of 1568, although the Scottish privy council had seen them by December 1567. Mary had been forced to abdicate and held captive for the better part of a year in Scotland; the letters were never made public to support her imprisonment and forced abdication. Historian Jenny Wormald believes this reluctance on the part of the Scots to produce the letters and their destruction in 1584, whatever their content, constitute proof that they contained real evidence against Mary. In contrast, Weir thinks it demonstrates that the lords required time to fabricate them. At least some of Mary's contemporaries who saw the letters had no doubt that they were genuine. Among them was the Duke of Norfolk, who secretly conspired to marry Mary in the course of the commission, although he denied it when Elizabeth alluded to his marriage plans, saying he meant never to marry with a person where he could not be sure of his pillow. The majority of the commissioners accepted the casket letters as genuine after a study of their contents and a comparison of the penmanship with examples of Mary's handwriting. Elizabeth, as she had wished, concluded the inquiry with a verdict that nothing was proven against either the Confederate lords or Mary. For overriding political reasons, Elizabeth wished neither to convict nor to acquit Mary of murder. There was never any intention to proceed judicially; the conference was intended as a political exercise. In the end, Moray returned to Scotland as regent and Mary remained in custody in England. Elizabeth succeeded in maintaining a Protestant government in Scotland, without either condemning or releasing her fellow sovereign. In Fraser's opinion, it was one of the strangest trials in legal history, ending with no finding of guilt against either party, one of whom was allowed to return home to Scotland while the other remained in custody.
The Final Plot
On the 26th of January 1569, Mary was moved to Tutbury Castle and placed in the custody of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, and his formidable wife Bess of Hardwick. Elizabeth considered Mary's designs on the English throne to be a serious threat and so confined her to Shrewsbury's properties, including Tutbury, Sheffield Castle, Sheffield Manor Lodge, Wingfield Manor, and Chatsworth House, all located in the interior of England, halfway between Scotland and London and distant from the sea. Mary was permitted her own domestic staff, which never numbered fewer than 16. She needed 30 carts to transport her belongings from house to house. 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, embroidered. It had been her mother's motto. Her bed linen was changed daily, and her own chefs prepared meals with a choice of 32 dishes served on silver plates. She was occasionally allowed outside under strict supervision, spent seven summers at the spa town of Buxton, and spent much of her time doing embroidery. Her health declined, perhaps through porphyria or lack of exercise. By the 1580s, she had severe rheumatism in her limbs, rendering her lame. 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. Norfolk continued to scheme for a marriage with Mary, and Elizabeth imprisoned him in the Tower of London between October 1569 and August 1570. Early the following year, Moray was assassinated. His death occurred soon after an unsuccessful rebellion in the North of England, led by Catholic earls, which persuaded Elizabeth that Mary was a threat. English troops then intervened in the Scottish civil war, consolidating the power of the anti-Marian forces. Elizabeth's principal secretary William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Francis Walsingham watched Mary carefully with the aid of spies placed in her household. In 1571, Cecil and Walsingham uncovered the Ridolfi Plot, a plan to replace Elizabeth with Mary with the help of Spanish troops and the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk was executed and the English Parliament introduced a bill barring Mary from the throne, to which Elizabeth refused to give royal assent. To discredit Mary, the casket letters were published in London. Plots centred on Mary continued. 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. Mary sent letters in cipher to the French ambassador to England, Michel de Castelnau, scores of which were discovered and decrypted in 2022, 2023. After the Throckmorton Plot of 1583, Walsingham introduced the Bond of Association and the Act for the Queen's Safety, which sanctioned the killing of anyone who plotted against Elizabeth and aimed to prevent a putative successor from profiting from her murder. In 1584, Mary proposed an association with her son, James. She announced that she was ready to stay in England, to renounce the Pope's bull of excommunication, and to retire, abandoning her pretensions to the English Crown. She also offered to join an offensive league against France. 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. Her only condition was the immediate alleviation of the conditions of her captivity. James went along with the idea for a while, but eventually rejected it and signed an alliance treaty with Elizabeth, abandoning his mother. Elizabeth also rejected the association because she did not trust Mary to cease plotting against her during the negotiations. In February 1585, William Parry was convicted of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth, without Mary's knowledge, although her agent Thomas Morgan was implicated. In April, Mary was placed in the stricter custody of Amias Paulet. At Christmas, she was moved to a moated manor house at Chartley.
The Execution
On the 11th of August 1586, after being implicated in the Babington Plot, Mary was arrested while out riding and taken to Tixall Hall in Staffordshire. In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham had deliberately arranged for Mary's letters to be smuggled out of Chartley. Mary was misled into thinking her letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham. From these letters it was clear that Mary had sanctioned the attempted assassination of Elizabeth. Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in a four-day journey ending on the 25th of September. In October, she was put on trial for treason under the Act for the Queen's Safety before a court of 36 noblemen, including Cecil, Shrewsbury, and Walsingham. Spirited in her defence, Mary denied the charges. She told her triers, Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England. She protested that she had been denied the opportunity to review the evidence, that her papers had been removed from her, that she was denied access to legal counsel, and that as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an English subject and therefore could not be convicted of treason. She was convicted on the 25th of October and sentenced to death with only one commissioner, Lord Zouche, expressing any form of dissent. Nevertheless, Elizabeth hesitated to order her execution, even in the face of pressure from the English Parliament to carry out the sentence. She was concerned that the killing of a queen set a discreditable precedent and was fearful of the consequences, especially if, in retaliation, Mary's son, James, formed an alliance with the Catholic powers and invaded England. Elizabeth asked Paulet, Mary's final custodian, if he would contrive a clandestine way to shorten the life of Mary, which he refused to do on the grounds that he would not make a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot on my poor posterity. On the 1st of February 1587, Elizabeth signed the death warrant, and entrusted it to William Davison, a privy councillor. On the 3rd of February, ten members of the Privy Council of England, having been summoned by Cecil without Elizabeth's knowledge, decided to carry out the sentence at once. At Fotheringhay, on the evening of the 7th of February 1587, Mary was told she was to be executed the next morning. She spent the last hours of her life in prayer, distributing her belongings to her household, and writing her will and a letter to the King of France. The scaffold that was erected in the Great Hall was draped in black cloth. 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. The executioner Bull and his assistant knelt before her and asked forgiveness, as it was typical for the executioner to request the pardon of the one being put to death. Mary replied, I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles. 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, with a black satin bodice and black trimmings. She was blindfolded by Kennedy with a white veil embroidered in gold, knelt down on the cushion in front of the block on which she positioned her head, and stretched out her arms. Her last words were, In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum. Mary was not beheaded with a single strike. The first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head. The second blow severed the neck, except for a small bit of sinew, which the executioner cut through using the axe. Afterwards, he held her head aloft and declared God save the Queen. At that moment, the auburn tresses in his hand turned out to be a wig and the head fell to the ground, revealing that Mary had very short, grey hair. Cecil's nephew, who was present at the execution, reported to his uncle that after her death, Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off and that a small dog owned by the queen emerged from hiding among her skirts. When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth, she became indignant and asserted that Davison had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant and that the Privy Council had acted without her authority. Elizabeth's vacillation and deliberately vague instructions gave her plausible deniability to attempt to avoid the direct stain of Mary's blood. Davison was arrested, thrown into the Tower of London, and found guilty of misprision. He was released nineteen months later, after Cecil and Walsingham interceded on his behalf. Mary's request to be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth. Her body was embalmed and left in a secure lead coffin until her burial in a Protestant service at Peterborough Cathedral in late July 1587. Her entrails, removed as part of the embalming process, were buried secretly within Fotheringhay Castle. Her body was exhumed in 1612 when her son, James VI and I, ordered that she be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth. In 1867, her tomb was opened in an attempt to ascertain the resting place of her son, James I of England. He was ultimately found with Henry VII. 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.