Mary I of Scots

Mary I, named Mary Stuart (in English: Mary Stuart, Mary Stewart or Marie Steuart; December 8, 1542 – February 8, 1587), was Queen of Scots from December 14, 1542 to July 24, 1567. The only legitimate daughter of James V, at six days old she succeeded her father to the Scottish throne. She spent most of her childhood in France, while Scotland was ruled by regents. In 1558 she married the Dauphin Francis, who ascended the French throne in 1559. Mary was briefly Queen Consort of France until Francis's sudden death in December 1560. Already a widow, she returned to her land on August 19, 1561. Four Years later, she married her first cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, with whom, in June 1566, she had her only son, James.

In February 1567, his consort's residence was destroyed by an explosion and Henry was found murdered in the garden. James Hepburn was thought to have orchestrated the murder, but he was cleared of the charges in April 1567 and, the following month, he was married to his widow.

After an uprising against her, she was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle. On July 24, 1567, she was forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son. After a failed attempt to reclaim the throne from her, she fled to England seeking the protection of her cousin Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Before coming to England, she had already claimed rights to the English throne and was considered her rightful sovereign by many English Catholics, including participants in a rebellion known as the Northern Rising. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth I confined her to various castles and stately palaces in the interior of the country. After eighteen and a half years in custody, Ella Maria Ella was found guilty of conspiring to murder the English queen in 1586. She was beheaded the following year at Fotheringhay Castle.

Early years and accession to the throne

His parents Jacobo V of Scotland and Maria de Guisa. The Scottish monarch died six days after his daughter was born, who was proclaimed queen.

Mary was born on December 8, 1542 in Linlithgow Palace (Scotland). She was the daughter of the Scottish King James V and his French second wife, Mary of Guise, who had caused a scandal a few years earlier by refusing to become the fourth wife of the English sovereign Henry VIII.According to some sources, she was born prematurely. She was the King's only legitimate daughter, Mary was Henry VIII's great-niece, as her paternal grandmother Margaret Tudor was his sister. On December 14, six days after her birth, she was proclaimed Queen of Scots, following the death of her father, probably from the effects of a nervous breakdown after the Battle of Solway Moss or from drinking dirty water. during the campaign.

A popular legend, first recorded by John Knox, states that James V, hearing on his deathbed that his wife had given birth to a daughter, sadly exclaimed: "He came from a girl and will end in a girl!" (It cam wi' a lass and it will gang wi' a lass!). The House of Stuart had obtained the Scottish throne through the marriage of Marjorie Bruce —daughter of Robert I Bruce—with Walter Stewart, VI High Steward of Scotland. Therefore, James V was referring to the fact that the Crown had come to the family through a woman and would lose it because of a woman. This legendary statement actually arose much later, not by Mary, but by one of her descendants, Queen Anne.

Mary was christened in nearby St. Michael's Church shortly after birth. Rumors spread that she was weak and frail, but an English diplomat, Ralph Sadler, saw the baby at Linlithgow Palace in March of 1543, unwrapped by her nurse, and wrote to King Henry VIII: "the girl is as fair as I have seen her for her age, and how much she loves to live." Because of her minority, Scotland was ruled by regents until to reach adulthood. From the beginning, there were two claims to the regency: one by the Catholic Cardinal David Beaton and the other by the Protestant James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, second in line to the Scottish throne. Beaton's claim was based on a version of the King's last will, but which his opponents dismissed as a forgery. With the support of his friends and family, the Earl of Arran held the regency until 1554, when the Queen Mother he managed to remove him and seize power.

Treaty of Greenwich

Cardinal David Beaton was the leader of the Catholic side in Scotland and the main opponent of Henry VIII of England.

Henry VIII of England took advantage of the regency to propose the marriage between his son and heir Edward and Mary, with the hope of a union of Scotland and England. On 1 July 1543, when she was six months old, the Treaty of Greenwich was signed, which stipulated that, at the age of ten, she would marry Edward and come to England, where Henry VIII could supervise her education. It also stated that the two countries would remain legally separate and that if the couple had no children the temporary union would be dissolved. However, Cardinal Beaton returned to power again and began to push a pro-Catholic and pro-French agenda, angering Henry VIII, who wanted to break the Scottish alliance with France. Beaton wanted to take her to the fortified Stirling Castle, but the Regent Arran opposed the move, though he agreed when Beaton's armed supporters met at Linlithgow. The Earl of Lennox escorted Mary and her mother to Stirling on 27 July 1543 with 3,500 armed men. She was crowned in the castle chapel on 9 September 1543, with "the solemnity which is customary in this country." s, it's not very expensive", according to the report by Ralph Sadler and Henry Ray.

Shortly before the coronation, Scottish merchants heading to France were arrested by Henry VIII and their goods were confiscated. The apprehensions caused anger in Scotland and prompted the Earl of Arran to ally with Beaton and convert to Catholicism. The Treaty of Greenwich was annulled by the Scottish Parliament in December. The suppression of the marriage agreement and the renewal of the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland prompted the "English courtship" for Henry VIII, a military campaign designed to enforce his son's marriage to Mary. English forces mounted a series of raids on Scottish and French territory. In May 1544, the Earl of Hertford, future Duke of Somerset, came to the Firth of Forth, hoping to take Edinburgh and kidnap Mary, but the Queen Mother he hid the girl in the secret chambers of Stirling Castle. In May 1546, Beaton was assassinated by Protestant lairds (landlords), and on 10 September 1547, nine months after the After the death of Henry VIII, the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, in what became known as "Black Saturday". Mary's guardians, fearful for her safety, sent her to Inchmahome Priory for about three weeks and turned to the French for help.

Henry II of France proposed the union of France and Scotland with the wedding between the young queen and her three-year-old son, the Dauphin Francis. It seemed to María de Guisa the only reasonable solution to resolve the situation. With the promise of military aid and the title of duke in France, the Earl of Arran agreed to the compromise. In February 1548, learning that the English were back, Mary was removed, again for safety, to Dumbarton Castle. The English left a trail of devastation in their wake and seized the town of Haddington. In June, long-awaited French aid arrived at Leith to besiege and eventually retake Haddington. On July 7, a Scottish assembly held in a convent near the town approved the Treaty of Haddington with France.

Life in France

Mary and Francis in the hour book of Catherine of Medici (c. 1558).

With the marriage agreement in place, five-year-old Maria was sent to France to spend the next thirteen years at the court of the Valois, where her relatives, the Guises, controlled French politics for a time. The fleet sent by Henry II and commanded by Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon sailed with her from Dumbarton on 7 August 1548, arriving a week—or later—at Roscoff (or Saint-Pol-de-Léon) in Brittany. She was accompanied by her own court, including two illegitimate half-siblings and the "four Marys"—four girls her own age, with the same name, and daughters of some of Scotland's noblest families: Beaton, Seton, Fleming, and Livingston. Janet Stuart, mother of Mary Fleming and half-sister of James V, was appointed governess.

Maria, described by historical sources of the time as a lively, beautiful girl endowed with a kind and intelligent character, had a promising childhood. At the French court she was the favorite of all, except her wife Henri II, Catherine de' Medici. She received the best possible education: she learned to play the lute and the virginal, she cultivated herself in prose, poetry, horsemanship, falconry, and sewing, and was educated in French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Greek, apart from speaking her native Scots. Her future sister-in-law, Isabella of Valois, was her close friend, of whom she "retained nostalgic memories in later life". Her maternal grandmother, Antoinette de Bourbon-Vendôme, had a major influence on her. in his childhood and was one of his main advisors.

Her beauty was praised by many of her contemporaries, and her physique had the solemn demeanor expected of a sovereign. His portraits show him to have a small, oval head, a long graceful neck, ashy blond hair in childhood that darkened to a vermilion in maturity, hazel-brown eyes, thick low-hanging eyelids, finely arched eyebrows, smooth pale skin, high regular forehead with firm features. At some point in her infancy or childhood she contracted smallpox, which left no visible marks on her physique when treated with a special ointment; however, Elizabeth I described her complexion as disfigured by disease. She was eloquent and of particularly tall stature by 16th century standards, having reached a height an adult of 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m), while Henry II's son and heir Francis had a stutter and was abnormally short of stature. The French king commented: "From the first day they met, she and my son understood each other as well as if they had known each other for a long time." On 4 April 1558, Mary signed a secret agreement bequeathing Scotland. and her claim to England to the French Crown if she died without issue. Twenty days later, she married the Dauphin of France in Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral, who was also proclaimed King of Scotland iure uxoris .

Claimant to the English throne

Elizabeth I of England, "first" of Mary, whom she considered a threat.

In November 1558 Henry VIII's eldest daughter, Mary I, the last Catholic Queen of England, died and was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I. According to the genealogical line, the Queen of Scots was second in line of the English throne after his cousin Elizabeth. The claimed rights went back to the brothers Enrique VIII and Margarita Tudor (Maria's paternal grandmother). Margarita was married to James IV of Scotland, father of James V and grandfather of Mary. However, since Elizabeth I was considered illegitimate by many Catholics in Europe—indeed, her own father had removed her from the line of succession by annulling her marriage to Anne Boleyn—Henry II of France proclaimed his eldest son and Kings daughter-in-law of England; in France, the royal arms of England were quartered in the shields of Francis and Mary. In England, according to the third Act of Succession, passed in 1543 by Parliament, Elizabeth was recognized as heir to her half-sister, Henry VIII's last will and testament had excluded the Stuarts from the succession.

The claim to the English throne was a continuing point of contention between the Queens of Scotland and England. (of 17) were declared kings of France. Two of the queen's uncles—the duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine—then dominated French politics and enjoyed a power referred to by some historians as la tyrannie Guisienne.

In Scotland, the power of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation grew at the expense of Mary's mother, who retained effective control through the use of French troops. The Protestant Lords invited English troops to Scotland in an attempt to to secure their religion. In March 1560, a Huguenot uprising in France—the Amboise conspiracy—made it impossible for the French to send further support. The fifty-two Amboise conspirators were executed publicly and before Francis II, his mother Catherine, his brother Charles, and Maria, who was the only one who was horrified, but was reprimanded by her mother-in-law, who reminded her that "a queen should not feel emotions". The Guises sent ambassadors to negotiate an agreement. On June 11, 1560, the mother of Guises died. Maria and the problem of future Franco-Scots relations was pressing. Under the terms of the Treaty of Edinburgh, signed by Mary's representatives on July 6, 1560, France and England agreed to withdraw their troops from Scotland, while the French king recognized Elizabeth I's right to rule England. The delicate political and religious situation in France did not allow for other solutions, but Francis II and Maria—still hurt by the death of her mother—refused to officially ratify the treaty.

Return to Scotland

His outfit of white mourning earned him in France the nickname of La Reine Blanche (“the white queen”). Portrait of the Clouet workshop (c. 1560).

On December 5, 1560, two years into their marriage, Francis II died of a middle ear infection that led to a brain abscess. His eighteen-year-old widow was distraught, she began to dress in white in mourning and lived through the forty-day mourning in solitude; she then moved to Lorraine with her uncles. Catherine de' Medici, already regent for the late king's ten-year-old brother, Charles IX, believed that two dowager queens were too many and, when the Stuarts returned to court, ordered him to return to Scotland. to fix the serious crisis that was brewing in her country. In fact, the Scottish Parliament, without the royal consent, had ratified the modification of the state religion, which changed from Catholic to Protestant. The Queen refused to endorse the laws passed by Parliament and the new Church existed in a state of legal uncertainty.

Mary left for Scotland nine months later, arriving in Leith on 19 August 1561. Having lived in France since the age of five, she had little experience with the dangerous and complex political situation in Scotland; if she did not have the support of her cousin Elizabeth I, she would have to quickly capitulate. A devout Catholic, she was treated with suspicion by many of her subjects, as well as by the Queen of England. Scotland was divided between Catholic and Protestant factions. Mary's illegitimate half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was one of the leading Protestants. Protestant Reformer John Knox preached strongly against her, condemning her for going to mass, dancing, and wearing elaborate clothing, among many other "sins". Knox was summoned by the queen to object to her curses, but he did not appear; later, he accused him of treason, although he was acquitted and released.

The Farewell of Mary, Queen of Scotland, in France (1867), by Robert Herdman.

To the disappointment of the Catholic camp, the queen tolerated the newly established Protestant supremacy and retained her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, as her chief adviser. Her sixteen-man privy council—appointed 6 September 1561 — ratified those who already held their posts of state and remained dominated by the Protestant leaders of the reform crisis of 1559-1560: the Earls of Argyll, Glencairn and Moray. Only four of the councilors were Catholic: the Earls of Atholl, Erroll, Montrose and Huntly, who was also Lord Chancellor. The modern historian Jenny Wormald found this exceptional and suggested that the queen's failure to appoint a royal council that sympathizing with Catholic and French interests indicated that his primary objective was the English throne to the detriment of Scottish internal affairs. In addition, the only significant later addition to the council, Lord Ruthven, in December 1563, was another Protestant whom he personally disliked. In this, he acknowledged his lack of military power in the face of the Protestant lords, while pursuing a policy that strengthened his links with England. In 1562, she allied with Lord Moray in driving out Scotland's leading Catholic magnate, Lord Huntly, who led a Highland rebellion against her.

He sent William Maitland of Lethington as ambassador to the English court to present his case for heir presumptive to the throne. Elizabeth I refused to name a possible heir, fearing that doing so would encourage a conspiracy to displace her with the designated successor: "I know the fickleness of the people of England, I know they always dislike the present government and have their eyes on the next person in the line of succession". Elizabeth I, however, assured Maitland that, among possible heirs, her niece was her favorite and the one with the most legitimate rights. In late 1561 and early 1562, arrangements were made for The two queens were scheduled to meet in England, probably at York or Nottingham, in August or September 1562, but in July Elizabeth I sent Henry Sidney to cancel the plans because of the civil war in France.

María concentrated on finding a new husband from the royals of Europe who would guarantee her a useful political alliance. Without asking for her consent, the Cardinal of Lorraine, her uncle, began negotiations with Archduke Charles of Austria, son of Emperor Ferdinand I. However, Maria saw no advantage in that union and had a falling out with her uncle, for having involved her. too much into other political arrangements. Her own attempt to arrange a marriage with Charles, the mentally unstable heir to Philip II of Spain, was rejected by the latter.

In an attempt to neutralize her, Elizabeth I suggested that she marry the English Protestant Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester —Henry Sidney's brother-in-law and favorite or lover, according to some sources, of the English queen—, whom she trusted and he believed he could control. Furthermore, with Dudley, a Protestant, such a union would have satisfactorily solved the double problem of the English queen. He sent an ambassador—Thomas Randolph—to Scotland to propose his niece's betrothal to said English nobleman and that if she accepted Elizabeth I "she would proceed to the inquisition of her right and title to be our future cousin and heir". nothing, especially since Dudley was unwilling.

On the other hand, a French poet at Mary's court, Pierre de Boscosel de Chastelard, was apparently in love with her. In early 1563, he was discovered in a security register hidden under the queen's bed. He apparently planned to surprise her when she was alone and declare her love for her. Maria was horrified and banished him from the kingdom, but he ignored the edict and, two days later, he forced his way into her room as she was about to undress. The queen reacted with fury and fear, and when Moray rushed into the room to cries for help, she exclaimed, "Stab the villain with your dagger!"; Moray did not acquiesce, as Chastelard had already been reduced. The poet was tried for treason and beheaded.Maitland claimed that Chastelard's passion was feigned and that he was part of a Huguenot plot to discredit the queen and tarnish her reputation.

Marriage to Lord Darnley

With your second husband, Enrique Estuardo, Lord Darnley.

In February 1561, he briefly met his English-born first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, when he was in mourning for Francis II. Darnley's parents—the Earl and Countess of Lennox—were Scottish aristocrats and English landowners who had sent their son to France to express their condolences, awaiting a possible union between their son and the Queen of Scotland. Darnley were grandchildren of Margaret Tudor—sister of Henry VIII of England—and patrilineal descendants of the great seneschals of the country. Darnley was part of a more recent lineage of Stuarts with the Hamilton family, descended from Mary Stuart, Countess of Arran and daughter of King James II. Later, they met on Saturday, February 17, 1565, at Wemyss Castle in Scotland, where Mary subsequently fell in love with the "tall boy"—Elizabeth I mentioned that he was over six feet or approximately 1.80 m tall. They were married at Holyrood Palace on 29 July 1565, but although both were Roman Catholics, no papal dispensation had been obtained for the marriage of first cousins.

English statesmen William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester had worked to obtain Darnley's license to travel to Scotland from his residence in England. Although her advisers had reunited the couple, Elizabeth I felt threatened by the marriage, since, being descendants of their aunt, both Mary and Darnley claimed the English throne and their children, if any, would inherit that claim. However, Mary's insistence on this marriage seems to have arisen from love rather than from the political strategy. On this, the English ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton declared that "it is said that she is surely bewitched" and that the union could only be avoided "with violence". The union angered Elizabeth I, who considered that it should not have taken place without his permission, as Darnley was his cousin and an English subject.

James Hepburn, fourth count of Bothwell, third and last husband of Mary.

Mary's marriage to a Catholic leader led her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, to join a major rebellion with other Protestant lords—including Lords Argyll and Glencairn. Mary left Edinburgh on August 26, 1565 to face them and, on the 30th of that month, Moray entered that city, but shortly after left the castle; the queen returned the following month to raise more troops.In what became known as the Chaseabout raid, Mary and her forces and Moray and the rebel lords marauded Scotland without coming to direct combat. The royal troops were galvanized by the release and restoration of Lord Huntly's son and the return of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, from exile in France. Unable to muster sufficient support, Moray left Scotland in October to seek asylum in England. Maria expanded her privy council with more Catholics—Bishop of Ross John Lesley and Mayor of Edinburgh Simon Preston of Craigmillar—and Protestants—the new Lord Huntly, Bishop of Galloway Alexander Gordon, John Maxwell of Terregles, and James Balfour.

In a short time, Darnley, described as physically attractive, but bored and violent, became arrogant and demanded the so-called "marriage crown", which would have made him sovereign with rights to the throne if he outlived his wife. Maria he refused her request, and her relationship with him became strained, despite the fact that they conceived a son in October 1565. On one occasion, Darnley physically assaulted his wife in an unsuccessful attempt to cause her to have an abortion. He was also jealous of Maria's friendship with her Catholic private secretary, David Rizzio, who was rumored to be the child's father. Rizzio, a cunning and ambitious musician of Piedmontese origin, had become the queen's closest confidante: relations between the two were so close that it began to be rumored that they were lovers. The strange bond aroused the heated hostility of the Protestant nobles defeated in the Chaseabout raid and, in March 1566, Darnley entered into a secret conspiracy with them. On 9 March, a group of conspirators, accompanied by Darnley, murdered Rizzio before the pregnant Mary at a dinner party at the palace. of Holyrood. Two days later, the disillusioned Darnley changed sides and the Queen received Moray at Holyrood. On the night of 11/12 March, Darnley and Mary escaped from the palace and took temporary refuge at Dunbar Castle before returning to Edinburgh on 18 March. Three of the conspirators—Lords Moray, Lord Argyll, and Lord Glencairn—were restored to the council.

Maria and Darnley's son, James, was born on June 19, 1566 in Edinburgh Castle, but Rizzio's murder inevitably led to the breakdown of the marriage. Darnley was viewed as an incapable consort and ruler, to the point that his wife gradually deprived him of all royal and marital responsibilities. In October 1566, while staying at Jedburgh in the Scottish Marches, the Queen made long journeys to horseback for at least four hours each to visit the Earl of Bothwell at Hermitage Castle, where he lay ill from wounds sustained in a skirmish with highwaymen on the border. The journey was later used by his enemies as proof that they were both lovers, although suspicions were not raised at the time as she was accompanied by her advisers and guards. Immediately upon her return to Jedburgh, she suffered from a serious illness including frequent vomiting, loss of sight, loss of speech, convulsions and lapses of consciousness. unconsciousness; it was believed that she was about to die or die. Her recovery on October 25 was credited to the skill of her French physicians.The cause of her illness was unknown; possible diagnoses were physical exhaustion and mental stress, bleeding due to gastric ulcer, or porphyria.

Kirk o' Field in a drawing commissioned by William Cecil after the murder of Lord Darnley (1567).

At Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh, Mary and the leading nobles met to discuss the "Darnley problem" in late November 1566. A divorce was considered, but it was probably agreed between the lords present. removal of Darnley by other means: "it was thought expedient and more profitable for the common good [...] that so young a fool and so proud a tyrant should not reign or have authority over them; [...] that [Darnley] should be disappointed one way or another; and whoever achieves or does the deed should defend them." Darnley feared for his safety and, after his son's baptism in Stirling shortly before Christmas, he headed for Glasgow to take up temporary residence on his father's estate. At the beginning of the voyage, he had suffered from a fever—he was officially smallpox, but it is possible that he had syphilis or was the result of some poisoning—and remained ill for a few weeks.

At the end of January 1567, Mary ordered her husband to return to Edinburgh. She recovered from her illness in a house belonging to the brother of James Balfour in the former abbey of Kirk or & # 39; Field, just inside the city walls. The queen visited him daily, so it seemed they were making progress towards a reconciliation. On the night of 9/10 February 1567, she went to see him early in the morning. night and later attended the wedding celebrations of a member of his family, Bastian Pagez. In the early hours of the morning, an explosion devastated Kirk o' Field and Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently suffocated. There were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body. This event, which was to be Mary's salvation, seriously damaged her reputation, although it was still doubted that Bothwell, Moray, Maitland and the Earl of Morton were also among the suspects. The Queen of England sent a letter to her niece to address the rumors: "I would not do my duty of a faithful cousin or affectionate friend if I didn't [...] tell you what everyone else is thinking. The men tell that instead of catching the murderers, you are looking through your fingers as they escape; that you will not seek revenge on those who have done this to you with so much pleasure, as if the act had never taken place or that those who did it had been assured of impunity. For me, I beg you to believe that I would not entertain such a thought."

At the end of February, the Lords believed that Bothwell was guilty of Darnley's murder. Darnley's father Lennox demanded that Bothwell stand trial before the Houses of Parliament, to which Mary agreed, but her request for trial was denied. Lennox of an extension to gather evidence. In Lennox's absence and with no evidence produced, Bothwell was acquitted after a seven-hour trial on 12 April. A week later, Bothwell managed to convince more than two dozen lords and bishops to sign the Ainslie Tavern Bond ("Ainslie Tavern Bond"), in which they agreed to support his goal of marrying the Queen.

Scottish arrest and abdication

Represented with her son James I of England and VI of Scotland (Hilliard, 1583), although she saw him last when he was ten months old.

Between 21 and 23 April 1567, she last visited her ten-month-old son in Stirling. On April 24, on her way back to Edinburgh, with her consent or not, she was abducted by Bothwell and his henchmen, who took her to Dunbar Castle, where he may have raped her and thus irretrievably consummated the crime. planned marriage at Ainslie, to which she was also allegedly engaged, according to the English. On May 6, Maria and Bothwell returned to Edinburgh and, on May 15, at Holyrood Palace or Holyrood Abbey, they they married Protestant rites. Bothwell and his first wife, Jean Gordon, Lord Huntly's sister, had divorced twelve days earlier.

Originally, Mary thought many nobles had supported her marriage, but things soon got out of hand between Bothwell—renamed Duke of Orkney—and his former companions, because the marriage proved so unpopular with the Scots. Catholics considered the marriage illicit, as they did not recognize Bothwell's divorce or the validity of the Protestant ceremony. Protestants and Catholics alike were shocked that the queen would marry the alleged murderer of her husband. Coexistence between them was stormy and Mary soon lost heart. Twenty-six pairs of Scots, known as the Confederate Lords, rose up against she and Bothwell, and raised an army to overthrow them. The kings faced the lords at Carberry Hill on June 15, but there was no battle, as the royal troops defected during the negotiations, and because Mary agreed to surrender to the lords on the condition that they restore her to the throne and her husband to go. Bothwell was given a safe-conduct across the countryside and the lords escorted Mary to Edinburgh, where crowds of onlookers booed her as an adulteress and murderer. The lords broke their promise and, on the following night, Mary was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle on an island in Loch Leven. Between 20 and 23 July, Mary miscarried her twins. On 24 July she was forced to abdicate in favor of her son by a 1 year old, who ascended the throne as James VI; the Earl of Moray was made regent. Bothwell was sent into exile in Denmark, where he was imprisoned, went mad, and died in 1578.

Escape, imprisonment in England and death

Lake Leven

Workington Hall

Carlisle

Bolton

Tutbury

Sheffield

Wingfield

Chatsworth

Buxton

Chartley

Tixall

Fotheringhay

Places of detention of Mary

On 2 May 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven Castle with the help of George Douglas, brother of the Earl of Morton and owner of the castle. She managed to raise an army of 6,000 men, rushed onto the battlefield and mounted leading his soldiers, urging them to follow his example; she faced smaller forces from Moray at the Battle of Langside on 13 May. Defeated, she fled south and, after spending the night at Dundrennan Abbey, crossed Solway Firth to England in a fishing boat. on May 16. She planned to seek refuge in that country based on a letter from her aunt promising help. She disembarked at Workington, Cumberland and spent the night at the town hall of that village. On 18 May, local officials took her into preventive custody at the Carlisle Castle.

Apparently, she expected Elizabeth I to help her regain the throne, but her cousin was wary and ordered an inquiry into the conduct of the Confederate lords and whether she was guilty of Darnley's murder. In mid-July 1568, the English authorities transferred Mary to Bolton Castle, which was far from the Scottish border, but not too close to London. at Westminster, between October 1568 and January 1569. Meanwhile, in Scotland, his followers fought a civil war against the regent Moray and his successors.

The “cards from the chest”

Mary objected to being tried by any court, invoking her status as a "piously consecrated queen", and because the person in charge of presenting the accusation was her half-brother the Earl of Moray, regent of Scotland during the minority of James, whose The main motive was to keep her out of the country and her followers under control. Maria could not meet with the latter or speak in her defense before the court. In addition, he did not want to participate in the investigation in York - he sent representatives instead - although his aunt forbade his attendance anyway. As evidence against him, Moray produced the so-called "chest letters", eight missives without signature allegedly owned by Mary addressed to Bothwell, two marriage certificates, and one or more love sonnets, which Moray says were found in a silver-gilt casket about a foot (30 cm) long and decorated with the royal monogram of the late Francis II of France. The defendant denied having written them and maintained that, since her handwriting was not difficult to reproduce, they were forgeries. The documents were crucial to the prosecutors because they would prove her complicity in Darnley's murder. The leader of the commission of inquiry, the Duke of Norfolk, described them as "horrifying" letters and "diverse and affecting" ballads, while some members of the conference sent copies to the English queen. she is, insisting that, if they were authentic, they would prove her niece's guilt.

The probative validity of the letters has been a source of controversy among historians, for whom it is impossible to verify them, since the originals, written in French, were probably destroyed in 1584 by James VI, while the copies —in French or translated into English—that still exist do not make up a complete whole. Incomplete printed transcriptions exist in English, Scots, French and Latin from the 1570s. Other documents examined are Bothwell's and Jean Gordon's divorce certificate. The Earl of Moray had sent a messenger to Dunbar in September to obtain a reproduction of the records of the town records.

His biographers—Antonia Fraser, Alison Weir, and John Guy, among others—have concluded that the documents were likely forgeries, that incriminating passages were inserted into genuine letters, or that the missives were written to Bothwell by someone else or by Maria to someone else. Guy noted that the letters are unconnected and that the French language and grammar used in the sonnets are too rudimentary for someone of her upbringing. Even so, certain phrases in the letters —such as verses in the Ronsard style— and some features in the wording would be compatible with known writings of Maria.

The Duke of Norfolk was president of the commission of investigation of the "cartas del cofre". He was subsequently executed for high treason against the Crown.

The "letters from the chest" did not appear publicly until the conference of 1568, although the Scottish privy council had seen them in December 1567. Mary was pressured into abdicating and held captive for nearly a year in Scotland. To ensure her seclusion and force her abdication, the documents were never made public. Wormald considered that this reluctance on the part of the Scots to produce the letters and to cause their destruction in 1584 constitutes, regardless of their content, proof that they contained real evidence against the queen, while Weir argued that they demonstrate that the Scottish lords needed time to make them. At least some of Maria's contemporaries who read the letters had no doubt that they were authentic; among them was the Duke of Norfolk, who secretly conspired to marry her in the course of the investigation, although he would later deny it when Elizabeth I alluded to their marriage plans: "I would never say that anyone who did not even marry another person would marry someone else." he's not even sure of his pillow."

Most of the commissioners, after a study of the contents and a comparison of samples of the defendant's handwriting, recognized the letters as genuine. As she might have wished, Elizabeth I concluded the inquiry with a verdict that proved nothing neither against the Confederate lords nor against his niece. For primarily political reasons, he did not wish to convict Mary of murder or "absolve" her, so there was never any real intention to proceed in court. In the end, the Earl of Moray returned to Scotland as Regent, while the prisoner remained in custody in England. Elizabeth I had managed to keep a Protestant government in Scotland without having to convict or release her rightful sovereign. In Fraser's opinion, it was one of the strangest "trials" in the history of English law: it was concluded without finding Neither party was guilty, as one returned to Scotland and the other remained in prison.

Conspiracies

After the York Inquiry, on 26 January 1569, Elizabeth I ordered Francis Knollys, husband of Catherine Carey, to escort Mary to Tutbury Castle and place her in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his feared woman, Bess of Hardwick, who were her guardians for fifteen and a half years, save for brief interruptions. Elizabeth I considered her niece's dynastic claims a serious threat and therefore confined her to the Shrewsbury estates, like Tutbury, Sheffield Castle, Wingfield Mansion and Chatsworth House, located in the interior of England, halfway between Scotland and London and distant from the sea. Mary was allowed to have her own domestic staff—of around sixteen servants —and he needed thirty carts to transport his belongings from one residence to another. His apartments were decorated with fine tapestries and carpets, as well as his canopy on which the French phrase En ma fin gît mon commencement ("In my end is my beginning"). In the residences she lived with the comforts of an aristocrat, except that she was only allowed out under strict supervision. She spent seven summers in the spa town of Buxton and much of her time embroidering. In March, her health deteriorated, probably due to porphyria or a sedentary lifestyle, and she began to have severe pain in her spleen, but the transfer to another Wingfield residence did not improve the situation either.. In May, while she was at Chatsworth House, she was seen by two doctors. In the 1580s, she had severe rheumatism in her limbs that caused her to limp.

In May 1569, Elizabeth I tried to mediate the restoration of her niece in exchange for guarantees for the Protestant religion, but a convention held in Perth rejected the deal outright. Mary then entered into an epistolary relationship with Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, the only English duke and Elizabeth I's cousin. She hoped she could marry "my Norfolk", as she called him, and be free, not to mention confident that she would obtain royal approval for her new marriage. In addition, the Earl of Leicester sent her a letter informing her that if she kept the Protestant faith in Scotland and married Norfolk, the English nobles would return her to the Scottish throne and she would be the rightful heir to her cousin in England.. At this point, Norfolk and Mary became engaged, and he sent her a diamond ring. In September, Elizabeth I discovered the secret negotiations and, in a rage, had the Duke of Norfolk taken to the Tower of London, where he was confined from October to October. 1569 and August 1570, while Mary was again transferred to Tutbury with a new gaoler, Huntington. In May 1570 she was again transferred to Chatsworth House, but at the same period Pope Pius V issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis ("Reigning on High") which excommunicated the Queen of England and freed Catholic subjects from obedience.

Mary in her captivity in England. Anonymous portrait of the centuryXVII.

Moray was assassinated in January 1570 and his death coincided with a rebellion in the north of England in which some local lords organized an escape plan to free Mary, although she did not participate in it because she was still confident of the possibility her cousin, then in her late forties, unmarried and heirless, would reinstate her to the throne. These uprisings convinced Elizabeth I that Mary was a threat. English troops intervened in the Scottish Civil War and consolidated the power of the anti-Marian forces. The main English secretaries—Francis Walsingham and William Cecil, Lord Burghley—watched the prisoner carefully with the help of spies installed in their inner circle. Cecil visited Mary at Sheffield Castle and presented her with a long series of articles that would establish the alliance between her and her cousin. The agreements included the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, with the relative resignation of the English throne by Mary; moreover, the latter could not marry without the consent of her aunt. However, the result was in vain, and in the spring of 1571 Mary expressed, in a letter to the Earl of Sussex, that she had little confidence in the resolution of her problems.

In August 1570, the Duke of Norfolk was freed from the Tower, and shortly thereafter engaged in a far more dangerous conspiracy than before. An Italian banker, Roberto Ridolfi, acted as an intermediary between the duke and Maria so that both would marry with the support of foreign powers. In fact, in the plan, the Duke of Alba would invade England from the Spanish Netherlands to provoke an uprising by English Catholics, with which Elizabeth I would be captured and Mary would ascend to the throne along with her future consort, who would probably be the governor. of the Netherlands and half-brother of Philip II of Spain, Juan of Austria. They had the backing of Pope Gregory XIII, but neither Philip II nor the Duke of Alba had any intention of assisting the duke, and rebellion in England was not guaranteed. Elizabeth I, alerted by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had easily learning of Ridolfi's plans, he discovered the plot and had the conspirators arrested. Norfolk, arrested on September 7, 1571, was tried in January, 1572, and executed on June 2 of the same year. With the Queen's support, Parliament introduced a bill preventing Mary from ascending the English throne in 1572, although Elizabeth I unexpectedly refused to give royal assent. "Chest letters" were published in London to discredit to the detainee and the plots centered on her continued. After the Throckmorton Plot of 1583, Walsingham introduced the Bond of Association and the Queen's Safety Act, which punished by death, into Parliament. anyone who conspired against Elizabeth I and prevented a putative successor from benefiting from her assassination. Given the numerous plots in her name, the "Association Bond" turned out to be a key legal precedent for her subsequent death sentence; it was not legally binding, but was signed by thousands of people, including Maria herself.

In 1584, Mary proposed a "partnership" with her son James VI and announced that she was ready to stay in England, would renounce the Roman pontiff's bull of excommunication and retire from the political scene, supposedly leaving his claims to the English Crown. Also, she offered to participate in an offensive league against France. As for Scotland, he proposed a general amnesty, supported the idea that James VI should marry with Elizabeth I's consent, and also that there would be no change in matters of religion. His only condition was the immediate relaxation of conditions from his captivity. James VI agreed with the idea for a while, but later rejected it and signed a treaty of alliance with Elizabeth I, leaving her mother behind. The English queen also refused the "partnership" because she did not trust her cousin to cease conspiring against her during the negotiations.

Table of encrypted codes used by the secretary of Mary in the conspiracy of Anthony Babington.

In February 1585, the Welsh spy William Parry was sentenced to death for plotting an assassination attempt on Elizabeth I, unknown to Mary, although his own agent Thomas Morgan was implicated in the plot. the so-called Babington conspiracy was hatched, the result of several conspiracies with different purposes, but which was actually a trap set by Francis Walsingham, the leader of Elizabeth I's spies, and the English nobles against Mary, since they considered the inevitable the execution of the "monstrous Scottish dragon". From April 1585, Mary was confined to Tutbury Castle, in the custody of Amias Paulet, a puritan "immune to the charm" of the dethroned queen and who, unlike Knollys and Shrewsbury, found her annoying and did his best to harden the conditions of her isolation. Paulet read all of Maria's letters and also prevented her from sending them secretly through the washerwomen; Furthermore, he did not tolerate her giving charity to the poor, because he believed that it was a way of ingratiating himself with the local people. He got to the point of wanting to burn a package containing "abominable filth", namely rosaries and silk cloth inscribed Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God"). Because she Maria did not tolerate the unhealthy environment of Tutbury, they decided to transfer her to a manor house surrounded by a moat in Chartley, residence of the Earl of Essex, where she arrived at Christmas.

Gilbert Gifford, a courier involved in the plan to free Maria, on his return from France, was captured by Walsingham and convinced to work for him: once Paulet was informed, Gifford was able to contact Maria, who he had not received any letters since last year, and he informed him of a way to contact his French correspondents, without Paulet's knowledge. Maria dictated her letters to her secretary, who coded them, wrapped them in a leather bag, and inserted them into the corks of beer kegs that regularly supplied the palace. The letters reached Gifford's hands in nearby Burton and he delivered them to Paulet, who deciphered them and sent them to London with Walsingham. Once copied, Gifford delivered them to the French ambassador, who took them with him to Thomas Morgan, Maria's correspondent in Paris.

In this way, Gifford's false conspiracy to free Mary was met with a real plot by some young Catholic English gentlemen. The leader of this group, who saw the Scottish queen as a martyr, was Anthony Babington: his plan was to kill Elizabeth I and place Mary on the throne. Babington, who had had contact with Morgan in the past, had unknowingly fallen into Walsingham's trap. Maria, not paying so much attention to the intrigues of the local nobility, felt safe with Babington and Morgan; For this reason, he entered into correspondence with Babington, who on July 14 sent him Elizabeth I's escape and regicide plan. Walsingham, with Babington's letter already deciphered, awaited Maria's response, which he would use to accuse her of high treason. Maria, confused and undecided about what to do, asked her secretary for an opinion, who advised her to abandon those plans, as she always did. In the end, Maria decided to respond and, on July 17, she wrote a letter detailing the conditions of her release, but she did not respond to the plot to murder her aunt. Thus, her complicity was unclear, which is why Phelippes, Walsingham's codebreaker, added a postscript relating to the attempted regicide. Two days after dispatch, the letter was in the hands of Walsingham and Phelippes and, on July 29, it reached Babington, who was arrested on August 14 and taken to the Tower of London, where he confessed everything.

Judgment

Marie Stuart, Queen of Scotland, receives the newly ratified death sentence by Parliament (1809), by Jean-Baptiste Vermay.

Once discovered, the conspirators were tortured, summarily tried, and dismembered. On 11 August 1586, Maria was arrested while riding and taken to the gatehouse of Tixall. With the intercepted missives from Chartley, the captors were convinced that Maria had ordered the attempted murder of her aunt. Always under Paulet's custody, she was transferred to Fotheringhay Castle on a four-day journey, ending on 25 September. Lawyers found it difficult to organize the process, as a foreign sovereign could not be tried and, in such a case, he would have to be sent into exile; they searched for records of other monarchs prosecuted in court, but the results were inconclusive: the unknown Cajetan —tetrarch from the time of Julius Caesar—, Licinius —constantine I's brother-in-law—, Conradin of Swabia and Juana I of Naples. Nor did they have sufficient legal instruments: in fact, at that time, the law provided that a defendant should be tried by his peers, and it was clear that none of the highest English lords was like the Scottish queen; furthermore, Elizabeth I herself could not judge her. In the end, the jurists relied on the fact that the "crime" had occurred in England and, on this basis, they were able to proceed and set up a court made up of the highest English nobles.

In October, a court of thirty-six nobles, including Cecil, Shrewsbury and Walsingham, was set up to try Mary for treason under the Queen's Safety Act., denied the charges and, at first, refused to submit to the process. Before the English ambassadors who summoned her on October 11, she said: "How is it that your lady does not know that I was born a queen? Do you think that I will denigrate my position, my status, the family from which I come, the child that will succeed me, the foreign kings and princes whose rights are trampled on in my person, by accepting such a request? No! Never! As crooked as it may seem, my heart is steadfast and will suffer no humiliation." The next day, she was visited by a delegation of commissioners, including Thomas Bromley, who told her that, even if she protested, she was an English subject and was subject to the laws of England and, therefore, had to appear at trial, otherwise she would be sentenced in absentia. Maria shuddered, wept, and refuted being treated as an English subject and that she would have preferred to "die a thousand times" rather than recognize herself as such, since she would be denying the divine right of kings and admitting the supremacy of English laws also from the point of view from a religious point of view. Finally he told them: "look at your consciences and remember that the world theater is larger than the kingdom of England".

Aware that she would inevitably be sentenced to death, she capitulated on October 14 and in her letters she compared the process with passages from the Passion of Christ. At trial, she protested that she was denied review of the evidence, had her papers taken, and denied access to a lawyer, alleging that, as a "consecrated by God" foreign anointed queen, she had never been an English subject and, therefore, she could not be convicted of treason. After the first day of the trial, tired and grieving, she told her servants that she felt like Jesus in front of the Pharisees who shouted "Get out! Out! Crucify him!" ( cf. John 19:15 ) At the end of the trial, she pronounced before her judges: «My lords and gentlemen, I put my case in God's hands".

Death sentence of Mary signed by Isabel I

She was found guilty on 25 October and sentenced to death almost unanimously, except for one commissioner, Lord Zouche, who expressed some dissent. Elizabeth I, however, hesitated to sign off on the execution, even with Parliament English pressing to carry out the sentence, because he was worried that the murder of a foreign queen would set an infamous precedent and feared the consequences, especially if, in revenge, James VI of Scotland, the son of the condemned, organized an alliance with the Catholic powers to invade England. Not bearing such responsibility, Elizabeth I asked Paulet, the last guardian of her niece, if he could devise a clandestine way to "shorten the life" of Mary to avoid the consequences of a formal execution, but he refused to do so because it would not "a shipwreck of my conscience or leave so great a stain on my humble offspring". On February 1, 1587, Elizabeth I signed the death warrant. and entrusted her to William Davison, a privy councillor. On 3 February, ten members of England's privy council—summoned by Cecil without the queen's knowledge—decided to comply immediately with the sentence.

Execution

The performance scene drawn by witness Robert Beale.

At Fotheringhay, on the night of 7 February 1587, Mary was told of her execution the following day. She spent the last hours of her life praying, distributing her belongings among her close circle, and writing her will and a letter to the king of France. Meanwhile, the scaffold was erected in the great hall of the castle, two feet (0.6 m) high and draped in black cloaks. It had two or three steps, and was 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 present at the execution. Executioner Bull and his assistant prostrated themselves before her. and they asked for his forgiveness, since it was customary for them to do so before those sentenced to death; she replied, "I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you will put an end to all my troubles". velvet and a pair of crimson-brown sleeves, the passion color of Catholic martyrs, specially chosen by her because she wanted to die a Catholic martyr to English Protestants, with a black satin bodice and black trimmings. When she undressed, she smiled and said that "no one [had] ever groomed me like this... nor [had] ever taken my clothes off in company". Kennedy covered her eyes with a white, gold-embroidered veil. Maria knelt on the cushion in front of the cut, placed her head on top of her and extended her arms. His last words were: In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum ("Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit"; cf. Luke 23:46).

Mary, queen of Scotland, about to be executed in Fotheringay (1916), by James D. Linton.

The executioner did not slash her head off. The first grazed her neck and landed on the back of her head, while the second blow severed her neck, except for some tendons from her, which the executioner severed using the axe. Afterwards, he raised his head and declared: "God save the queen" ( God save the Queen ). At that moment, the brown curls turned out to be a wig and the head fell to the ground, revealing close-cropped gray hair. Cecil's nephew, present at the execution, reported to his uncle that the "lips moved up and down a quarter of an hour after the head was cut off" and that a small dog, owned by the queen, emerged from hiding in the skirts, although eyewitness Emanuel Tomascon did not include such details in his "exhaustive report ». Items she allegedly used or carried in her execution are of dubious provenance; contemporary accounts state that her clothing, the slash, and anything touched by her blood were cremated in the great hall fireplace to evade hunters. of relics.

When Elizabeth I learned what had happened, she was outraged and claimed that Davison had disobeyed her instructions not to dissociate himself from the order and that the privy council had acted without her authorization. Vague vaguenesses suggest plausible deniability to try not to be directly involved with his cousin's execution. Davison was arrested, committed to the Tower of London, and found guilty of negligent conduct, though he was released nineteen months after Cecil and Walsingham interceded on his behalf. name.

Mary's request to be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth I. Her body was embalmed and placed in a protected lead coffin until her burial, in a Protestant ceremony, in Peterborough Cathedral in late July 1587. His entrails, removed as part of the embalming process, were secretly buried within Fotheringhay Castle. His body was exhumed in 1612 by order of his son James VI (James I in England) for burial at the abbey. of Westminster, in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth I. In 1867 the tomb was opened in an attempt to determine the resting place of King James I, who was found with Henry VII, but many of his other descendants such as— Elizabeth of Bohemia, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, and the children of Anne of Great Britain—were buried in Mary's crypt.

Legacy

Effigy of his grave in Westminster Abbey.

Opinions in the 16th century were divided among Protestant reformers such as George Buchanan and John Knox, who vilified it ruthlessly, and Catholic apologists, such as Adam Blackwood, who praised, defended, and praised her. After her son's coronation in England, historian William Camden wrote an authoritative biography based on original documents, condemning the Buchanan's assessments as hoaxes and "emphasized Maria's misfortunes rather than her evil personality". Divergent interpretations persisted into the century 18th century: William Robertson and David Hume argued that the "letters from the chest" were true and that Mary was guilty of adultery and murder, while William Tytler argued otherwise. In the second half of the XX, Antonia Fraser's Mary Queen of Scots was described by Wormald as the work "most objective [... and] free from excesses of flattery or attacks" that had characterized early biographies; her contemporaries Gordon Donaldson and Ian B. Cowan also produced neutrally worded works. Jenny Wormald concluded that Maria's life was a tragic failure because she was powerless to deal with the allegations that they imputed him; his dissenting opinion contrasted with a post-Fraser historiographical tradition in which the Scottish queen was seen as a pawn in the hands of conniving nobles.

There is no concrete evidence of his complicity in the Darnley murder or of a conspiracy with Bothwell; such accusations were based on assumptions, so Buchanan's biography has been discredited as an "almost full-fledged fantasy."Maria's courage in her execution helped establish the popular image of her as the heroic victim of dramatic tragedies..

Genealogy