Mary I, also called Mary Tudor, byname Bloody Mary, (born February 18, 1516, Greenwich, near London, Englanddied November 17, 1558, London), the first queen to rule England (1553-58) in her own right. She also offered to join an offensive league against France. [26] In May 1544, the English Earl of Hertford (later Duke of Somerset) raided Edinburgh, and the Scots took Mary to Dunkeld for safety. The castle was the site of the birth of King James VI, also James I of England from 1603, to Mary Queen of Scots in 1566. [53] Two of the Queen's uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, were now dominant in French politics,[54] enjoying an ascendancy called by some historians la tyrannie Guisienne. [43], Mary was eloquent, and especially tall by 16th-century standards (she attained an adult height of 5 feet 11 inches or 1.80 m);[44] while Henry II's son and heir, Francis, stuttered and was unusually short. [136] Bothwell was given safe passage from the field. Beaton's claim was based on a version of the king's will that his opponents dismissed as a forgery. [67] She summoned him to her presence to remonstrate with him but was unsuccessful. [149] 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. From the outset, there were two claims to the regency: one from the Catholic Cardinal Beaton, and the other from the Protestant Earl of Arran, who was next in line to the throne. [41], Portraits of Mary show that she had a small, oval-shaped head, a long, graceful neck, bright auburn hair, hazel-brown eyes, under heavy lowered eyelids and finely arched brows, smooth pale skin, a high forehead, and regular, firm features. Only four of the councillors were Catholic: the Earls of Atholl, Erroll, Montrose, and Huntly, who was Lord Chancellor. He was the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was the father of James VI of Scotland, who succeeded Elizabeth I of England as James I. Jenn Scott of the Stewart Society tells the story . The nobles demanded that Mary abandon Bothwell, whom they had earlier ordered her to wed. She refused and reminded them of their earlier order. The portraits were made by an unknown artist in around 1565, at the time of their marriage. They traveled from one royal palace to another Fontainebleau to Meudon, or to Chambord or Saint-Germain. English forces mounted a series of raids on Scottish and French territory. She fled to England and begged in letters for her cousin Elizabeth's support and help regaining her throne. She was also a claimant (someone who has a legal claim to be the lawful ruler) to the throne of England. [162] Other documents scrutinised included Bothwell's divorce from Jean Gordon. [132] Bothwell and his first wife, Jean Gordon, who was the sister of Lord Huntly, had divorced twelve days previously. And though Marys father, James V, reportedly made a deathbed prediction that the Stuart dynasty, which came with a lassMarjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Brucewould also pass with a lass, the woman who fulfilled this prophecy was not the infant James left his throne to, but her descendant Queen Anne, whose 1714 death marked the official end of the dynastic line. [37] Mary learned to play lute and virginals, was competent in prose, poetry, horsemanship, falconry, and needlework, and was taught French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Greek, in addition to her native Scots. In July of 1565, she wed a cousin named Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, a weak, vain, and unstable young man; like Mary, he was also a grandchild of Henry VIIIs sisterMargaret. The French fleet sent by Henry II, commanded by Nicolas de Villegagnon, sailed with Mary from Dumbarton on 7 August 1548 and arrived a week or more later at Roscoff or Saint-Pol-de-Lon in Brittany.[33]. Bothwell died a prisoner at DragsholmCastle in Denmark in 1578. Mary was aged just fifteen when she was married to Francis, although the pair had been betrothed ten years earlier. [196] To discredit Mary, the casket letters were published in London. LOVE SCOTLAND'S HISTORY? 04 July 2022 | The story of the three husbands of Mary Queen of Scots: Francis II of France, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. The second blow severed the neck, except for a small bit of sinew, which the executioner cut through using the axe. Francis was the eldest son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, making him heir to the French throne at the time of their marriage. [210][211] Spirited in her defence, Mary denied the charges. [142], On 2 May 1568, Mary escaped from Loch Leven Castle with the aid of George Douglas, brother of Sir William Douglas, the castle's owner. In the end, Moray returned to Scotland as regent and Mary remained in custody in England. [Marys] failures are dictated more by her situation than by her as a ruler, she says, and I think if she had been a man, she would've been able to be much more successful and would never have lost the throne.. [100], Before long, Darnley grew arrogant. Despite the fact that Mary was also queen of Scotland, she knew little of the land of her birth. She had been queen for all but the first six days of her life, John Guy writes in Queen of Scots, [but] apart from a few short but intoxicating weeks in the following year, the rest of her life would be spent in captivity.. [35] When Lady Fleming left France in 1551, she was succeeded by a French governess, Franoise de Paroy. Her only condition was the immediate alleviation of the conditions of her captivity. How Mary dealt with this incident sealed her fate. [110], 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. For the list of documents see, for example. [199] After the Throckmorton Plot of 1583, Walsingham (now the queen's principal secretary) 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. As is often the case, the truth is far more nuanced. The originals, written in French, were possibly destroyed in 1584 by Mary's son. If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content. [140] Moray was made regent,[141] while Bothwell was driven into exile. As biographer. [72] In this, she was acknowledging her lack of effective military power in the face of the Protestant lords, while also following a policy that strengthened her links with England. This fear-driven logic even extended to the queens potential offspring: As she once told Marys advisor William Maitland, Princes cannot like their own children. [103] On 9 March, a group of the conspirators accompanied by Darnley murdered Rizzio in front of the pregnant Mary at a dinner party in Holyrood Palace. Days after this final meeting, Mary fled Scotland to seek refuge in England, hoping for the protection of Elizabeth I of England. Widowed following the unexpected death of her first husband, France's Francis II, she left. Marys blood claim was worrying enough, but acknowledging it by naming her as the heir presumptive would leave Elizabeth vulnerable to coups organized by Englands Catholic faction. Why Mary wed Darnley remains a mystery. She became queen at 6 days old. [39] Mary's maternal grandmother, Antoinette de Bourbon, was another strong influence on her childhood[40] and acted as one of her principal advisors. Widowed following the unexpected death of her first husband, Frances Francis II, she left her home of 13 years for the unknown entity of Scotland, which had been plagued by factionalism and religious discontent in her absence. Not only was she a female monarch in an era dominated by men, she was also physically imposing, standing nearly six feet tall. Francis and Mary knew each since before they married Mary grew up in the French royal court after her father, King James V of Scotland died when she was only 5 days old. Mary returned to Edinburgh the following month to raise more troops. Mary married her half-cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in 1565, and in June 1566, they had a son, James. A post-mortem revealed internal injuries, thought to have been caused by the explosion. And just six months later, her young husband also died of an ear infection on December 5th 1560. But in June of 1560, Marys mother died in Scotland at the age of 45. [94] The union infuriated Elizabeth, who felt the marriage should not have gone ahead without her permission, as Darnley was both her cousin and an English subject. Elizabeth had succeeded in maintaining a Protestant government in Scotland, without either condemning or releasing her fellow sovereign. [105] On the night of 1112 March, Darnley and Mary escaped from the palace. [75] 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 the eyes of the Catholic Church, Elizabeth was the illegitimate product of an unlawful marriage, while Mary, the paternal granddaughter of Henry VIIIs older sister Margaret, was the rightful English heir. The king consort had been murdered and many believed Mary had played a part in his death. Mary's contemporary supporters, including Adam Blackwood, dismissed them as complete forgeries or letters written by the Queen's servant Mary Beaton. Mary as queen: 10 July 1559 . Despite these concerns, Elizabeth certainly considered the possibility of naming Mary her heir. [188] She was occasionally allowed outside under strict supervision,[189] spent seven summers at the spa town of Buxton, and spent much of her time doing embroidery. Josie Rourkes film sees Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie transform from allies into rivals, but in actuality, the queens relationship was far more complex. Her Marys returned with her as ladies-in-waiting. Elizabeth forbade her attendance anyway. Aged five Mary Queen of Scots was sent to France by her mother Marie of Guise because she was contracted to marry Francis (Francois), the eldest son of King Henri II of France and Catherine de Medici. As biographer Antonia Fraser explains, Marys story is one of murder, sex, pathos, religion and unsuitable lovers. Add in the Scottish queens rivalry with Elizabeth, as well as her untimely end, and she transforms into the archetypal tragic heroine. At the centre of the Scottish court, 1561-68. Chastelard was tried for treason and beheaded. As John Guy writes in Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (which serves as the source text for Rourkes film), Mary is alternately envisioned as the innocent victim of mens political machinations and a fatally flawed femme fatale who ruled from the heart and not the head. Kristen Post Walton, a professor at Salisbury University and the author of Catholic Queen, Protestant Patriarchy: Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Politics of Gender and Religion, argues that dramatizations of Marys life tend to downplay her agency and treat her life like a soap opera. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is often viewed through a romanticized lens that draws on hindsight to discount the displeasure many of her subjects felt toward their queen, particularly during the later stages of her reign. Mary was accompanied by her own court including two illegitimate half-brothers, and the "four Marys" (four girls her own age, all named Mary), who were the daughters of some of the noblest families in Scotland: Beaton, Seton, Fleming, and Livingston. This legendary statement came true much later not through Mary, but through her great-great-granddaughter Anne, Queen of Great Britain. He remained ill for some weeks. [107], Mary's son by Darnley, James, was born on 19 June 1566 in Edinburgh Castle. Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart, was born into conflict. [161] The surviving copies, in French or translated into English, do not form a complete set. At the height of her power, she juggled proposals from foreign rulers and subjects alike, always prevaricating rather than revealing the true nature of her intentions. "[224] 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,[225] with a black satin bodice and black trimmings. All too frequently, representations of Mary and Elizabeth reduce the queens to oversimplified stereotypes. The wedding took place on 29 July 1565 in the chapel of Holyrood Palace. [194] Elizabeth's principal secretary William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Sir Francis Walsingham watched Mary carefully with the aid of spies placed in her household. [230], 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. This decision proved to be disastrous, since Mary was soon a prisoner of the queen and would spend the next nineteen years as Elizabeths prisoner, before she was executed for plotting against the queen on 8 February 1587 at Fotheringay Castle. [208], Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in a four-day journey ending on 25 September. [236] 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. Mary had been in Elizabeth's custody for 18.5 years, after she fled from Scotland to England in 1567, following her forced abdication of the Scottish throne. Darnley was a weak man and soon became a drunkard as Mary ruled entirely alone and gave him no real authority in the country. France recognised Elizabeth's right to rule England, but the seventeen-year-old Mary, still in France and grieving for her mother, refused to ratify the treaty. [191], 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. Edinburgh Castle.