Mary Queen of Scots

 “It cam’ wi a lass and it’ll gang wi’ a lass!”

Some more local history today: 434 years ago today, Mary Queen of Scots was put to death. Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 – 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, reigned over Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567. 

Growing up in Edinburgh is like growing up alongside Mary. At school we learnt about her in primary 3 (aged 7?) and used to play “Mary” in the playground (sorry to my friends who had to be my servants).  I have worked in two places associated with MQoS, spent my free time exploring others, was obsessed with Reign (even though it’s painfully inaccurate most of the time) and I have SO many books on her I could probably open a Mary-themed museum (although I confess although of them are still yet to be read). Thus, Mary was probably the first figure who introduced me to Herstory and has captivated my heart ever since. However, unlike most of the women I fangirl about on here, I’m not necessarily hailing her as a role model – rather perhaps as a warning of what comes from relying on men (especially when contrasted to her cousin, Elizabeth I). But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Mary was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace (near Edinburgh, for those non-natives) to King James V and his French second wife, Mary of Guise (who was a bad-ass in her own right, see my previous post about here). She is said to have been born prematurely and was the only legitimate child of James to survive him. She was also the great-niece of King Henry VIII of England, as her paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was Henry VIII's sister. On 14 December, six days after her birth, she became Queen of Scotland when her father died. A popular tale, spread by Mary’s enemies, suggested that the King died of a broken heart, exclaiming!  “It cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass!”. Their family ahd gained the throne via a woman (daughter of Robert the Bruce) and would eventually be through through a woman – but not Mary, rather her great-great-granddaughter Anne, Queen of Great Britain. However, this is just patriarchal nonsense and it is more likely that James V died either of a nervous collapse caused by his defeat in battle or through drinking contaminated water on the battle field.

Despite reports that Mary was a frail child, she was christened at a few days old and those presents reported that she was “as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, and as like to live."

As Mary was only six days old when she became Queen, Scotland was ruled by regents until she came of age. 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. Beaton's claim was based on a version of the king's will that his opponents dismissed as a forgery. Arran, with the support of his friends and relations, became the regent until 1554 when Mary's mother managed to remove and succeed him.

King Henry VIII of England took the opportunity of the regency to propose marriage between Mary and his own son and heir, Edward, hoping for a union of Scotland and England. On 1 July 1543, when Mary was six months old, the Treaty of Greenwich was signed, which promised that, at the age of ten, Mary would marry Edward and move to England, where Henry could oversee her upbringing. The treaty stipulated that the two countries would remain legally separate and, if the couple should fail to produce an heir, the temporary union would dissolve. However, when Cardinal Beaton began to reclaim his power, he pushed for a pro-Catholic pro-French agenda, angering Henry, who wanted to break the historic Scottish alliance with France.

After (armed) deliberation between her nobles, Mary was moved to the safety of Stirling Castle, where she was crowned on 9^th September 1543.

The Treaty of Greenwich fell apart when Henry VIII arrested Scottish merchants headed for France and impounded their goods, causing outrage north of the border.  The Treaty of Greenwich was rejected by the Parliament of Scotland in December. The rejection of the marriage treaty and the renewal of the alliance between France and Scotland prompted Henry's "Rough Wooing", a military campaign designed to impose the marriage of Mary to his son. English forces mounted a series of raids on Scottish and French territory. Even after Henry VIII’s death, the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie. Mary's guardians, fearful for her safety, sent her to Inchmahome Priory and once again looked to the French for help.

King Henry II of France, proposed to unite France and Scotland by marrying the young queen to his three-year-old son, the Dauphin Francis. In return for French military help and a French dukedom for himself, Arran agreed to the marriage. In February 1548, Mary was moved, again for her safety, to Dumbarton Castle. The English left a trail of devastation behind them once more and seized the strategic town of Haddington. In June, the much awaited French help arrived at Leith. On 7 July 1548, a Scottish Parliament agreed to the French marriage treaty.

With her marriage settled, five-year-old Mary was sent to France to spend the next thirteen years at the French court.  

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. (These gals are the subject of a popular nursery rhyme in Scotland and I still can’t say their names without singing it in my head). James V's half-sister was appointed governess.

Hailed by her contemporaries as spirited, beautiful, and intelligent, Mary had a fairly happy childhood. At the French court, she was adored by all, except Henry II's wife Catherine de' Medici (as seen in the show Reign). 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 speaking her native Scots. Her future sister-in-law, Elisabeth of Valois, became a close friend of whom Mary "retained nostalgic memories in later life". Mary's maternal grandmother, Antoinette de Bourbon, was another strong influence on her childhood and acted as one of her principal advisors. A childhood filled with strong female role models is a winning formula, take it from me! She was considered a pretty child and later, as a woman, strikingly beautiful. At some point in her infancy or childhood, she caught smallpox, but luckily this did not leave permanent scars.

Mary was eloquent, and especially tall by sixteenth-century standards (5”11), while Henry II's son and heir, Francis, stuttered and was unusually short. Despite this physical incompatibility, Henry commented: "from the very first day they met, my son and she got on as well together 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 at Notre Dame de Paris, and he became king consort of Scotland.

In November 1558, Mary I of England, was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth I. Henry VIII's will had excluded the Stuarts from succeeding to the English throne. However, many Catholics who had never accepted Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn still viewed Elizabeth as illegitimate and saw Mary Stuart as the rightful queen of England (as the senior surviving legitimate descendant of Henry VII). Likewise, Henry II of France proclaimed Mary and Francis as king and queen of England. Mary's claim to the English throne would prove a perennial point of contention between herself and Elizabeth.

When Henry II died in 1559, the fifteen-year-old Francis and sixteen-year-old Mary became King and Queen of France. Two of the Queen's uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, were now dominant in French politics.

Back in Scotland, the power of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation was rising at the expense of Mary's mother, who maintained control only through the support of French troops. In early 1560, the Protestant Lords invited English troops into Scotland to finally establish Protestantism in the land. The French were unable to provide more military support so the Guise brothers sent ambassadors to negotiate a settlement. On 11 June 1560, Marie de Guise died. Under the terms of the Treaty of Edinburgh, signed by Mary's representatives on 6 July 1560, France and England undertook to withdraw troops from Scotland. France recognised Elizabeth's right to rule England, but the young Mary refused to ratify the treaty.

Only a few months later, King Francis II of France died following an ear infection. A grief-stricken Mary, hated by her mother-in-law – the new Queen regent of France - returned to Scotland nine months later, arriving in Leith on 19 August 1561. 

Having lived in France since the age of 5, Scotland was an alien land to Mary who spoke with a heavy French accent. As a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by many of her subjects, as well as by the Queen of England. Scotland was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions. Mary's illegitimate half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was a leader of the Protestants. The Protestant reformer John Knox (an awful misogynist who I hate more than words) preached openly against Mary. She later charged him with treason, but he was acquitted and released, showing her limited power to resist the Protestant reformation.

To the shock and anger of the Catholic party, Mary tolerated the newly established Protestant ascendancy, and kept her half-brother Moray as her chief advisor. Her privy council was dominated by the Protestant leaders from the reformation crisis of 1559–1560.  Modern historian Jenny Wormald suggests that Mary's failure to appoint a council sympathetic to Catholic and French interests is an indication of her focus on the English throne at the expense of resolving the domestic crisis in Scotland. She also joined with Moray in the destruction of Scotland's leading Catholic magnate, Lord Huntly, in 1562, after he led a rebellion against her in the Highlands. This again damaged her reputation among the Catholic faction who may have supported her.

In England, Elizabeth refused to name an heir, fearing that this would trigger an uprising against her. 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 Mary as heir, but did concede that she knew no one with a better claim. In late 1561 and early 1562, arrangements were made for the two queens to meet in England in August or September 1562. In July, Elizabeth cancelled Mary's visit because of the civil war in France. The two – whose relationship would dominate both their reigns – would never meet (despite what Hollywood would have you believe!).

Mary soon turned her attention to finding a new husband. She first looked to European royalty. She was displeased when her Uncle began negotiations with Archduke Charles of Austria without her consent and the negotiations foundered. Her own attempt to negotiate a marriage to Don Carlos, the mentally unstable heir apparent of King Philip II of Spain, was rejected by Philip. Elizabeth attempted to neutralise Mary by suggesting that she marry English Protestant Robert Dudley – Elizabeth’s own favourite (and rumoured lover) in the hopes that he would be under English control. Elizabeth sent an ambassador to tell Mary that if she married an English nobleman, Elizabeth would "proceed to the inquisition of her right and title to be our next cousin and heir". The proposal came to nothing, in part because of Dudley’s own reluctance.  

Meanwhile, a French poet at Mary's court, Pierre de Boscosel de Chastelard, was dangerously besotted with Mary. In early 1563, he was discovered hidden beneath her bed, apparently planning to surprise her when she was alone and declare his love. Mary was horrified and banished him from Scotland. He ignored the edict and wwo days later, he forced his way into her chamber as she was about to disrobe. She reacted with fury and fear and ordered her brother to "Thrust your dagger into the villain!" Moray refused but Chastelard was tried for treason and beheaded. Some claimed that Chastelard's ardour was feigned and that he was part of a French plot to discredit Mary by tarnishing her reputation. However, given Mary’s widely reported beauty and charms, it seems more likely that he was just infatuated.

Mary had briefly met her English-born half-cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in February 1561 whilst mourning Francis. Darnley's parents, the Earl and Countess of Lennox, were Scottish aristocrats as well as English landowners. Both Mary and Darnley were grandchildren of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII of England.

They next met on Saturday 17 February 1565 at Wemyss Castle in Scotland. Mary swiftly 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 29 July 1565 – despite the fact that both were Catholic and a papal dispensation for the marriage of first cousins had not been obtained.

Although her advisors had brought the couple together, Elizabeth felt threatened by the marriage because both Mary and Darnley were claimants to the English throne. Their children would thus inherit an even stronger, combined claim. However, Mary's insistence on the marriage seems to have stemmed from passion rather than political manipulation. The union infuriated Elizabeth, who felt the marriage should not have gone ahead without her permission, as Darnley was both her cousin (and Mary’s, lol) and an English subject.

It was not just Elizabeth who was angered by this marriage. Her marriage to a leading Catholic hastened Mary's half-brother, the Earl of Moray, to join with other Protestant lords in open rebellion. Mary set out from Edinburgh on 26 August 1565 to confront them. On the 30th, Moray entered Edinburgh but quickly retreated, having failed to take the castle. Mary returned to Edinburgh the following month to raise more troops. In what became known as the Chaseabout Raid, Mary and her forces. and Moray and the rebellious lords, roamed around Scotland without ever engaging in direct combat. Unable to muster sufficient support, Moray left Scotland in October for sanctuary in England. Mary broadened her privy council, bringing in both Catholics and Protestants.

Before long, however, Mary may have wished she had listened to her kin’s objections as Darnley grew increasingly arrogant and aggressive. Not content with his position as king consort, he demanded the Crown Matrimonial, which would have made him a co-sovereign of Scotland with the right to keep the Scottish throne for himself should he outlive his wife. Mary refused his request and their marriage grew strained, although Mary became pregnant by October 1565.

Darnley was jealous of her friendship with her Catholic private secretary, David Rizzio, who was rumoured to also be Mary’s lover (and more recently, even Darnley’s secret lover!). By March 1566, Darnley had entered into a secret conspiracy with Protestant lords, including the nobles who had rebelled against Mary in the Chaseabout Raid. 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 (where you can still see the bloodstains from Rizzo’s bloody demise on the wooden floor).

Over the next two days, Darnley switched sides and crawled back to his wife’s mercy.  On the night of 11–12 March, Darnley and Mary escaped from the palace. They took temporary refuge in Dunbar Castle before returning to Edinburgh on 18 March. The former rebels Lords Moray, Argyll and Glencairn were restored to the council.

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Mary's son James was born on 19 June 1566 in Edinburgh Castle. However, Rizzo’s murder irrevocably damaged Mary and Darnley’s marriage.  In October 1566, while staying in the Scottish Borders, Mary made the arduous journey to visit the wounded Earl of Bothwell at Hermitage Castle. This 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 suitably chaperoned 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. She was thought to be dying. Her recovery from 25 October onwards was credited to the skill of her French physicians. The cause of her illness remains unknown.

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 asked her husband to return to Edinburgh. He recuperated from illness at the former abbey of Kirk o' Field, just within the city wall. Mary visited him daily, so it appeared a reconciliation was on the cards. On the night of 9–10 February 1567, Mary visited her husband in the early evening and then attended the wedding celebrations of a member of her household. In the early hours of the morning, an explosion devastated Kirk o' Field. Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently smothered – although there were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body. Bothwell, Moray, Secretary Maitland, and Mary herself were among those who came under suspicion. Elizabeth wrote to Mary of the rumours:

“I should ill fulfil the office of a faithful cousin or an affectionate friend if I did not ... tell you what all the world is thinking. Men say that, instead of seizing the murderers, you are looking through your fingers while they escape; that you will not seek revenge on those who have done you so much pleasure... For myself, I beg you to believe that I would not harbour such a thought.”

By the end of February, Bothwell was widely believed to be guilty of Darnley's assassination. Darnley's father demanded that Bothwell be tried, 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 swiftly aquitted. 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.

Between 21 and 23 April 1567, Mary visited her son at Stirling for the last time. On her way back to Edinburgh on 24 April, Mary was taken, willingly or not, by Lord Bothwell and his men to Dunbar Castle, where it is alleged he may have raped her to force her into marriage. On 6 May, Mary and Bothwell returned to Edinburgh and a week later they were married at Holyrood Palace. They were married according to Protestant rites, Bothwell and his first wife had divorced twelve days previously. This adds further fuel to the claims that this marriage was against Mary’s wishes as it seems unlikely she would have willingly agreed to a non-Catholic ceremony.

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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, and the marriage seems always to have been an unhappy one.

Twenty-six Scottish peers, known as the Confederate Lords, raised an army against the royal couple. Mary and Bothwell confronted the lords at Carberry Hill on 15 June, but there was no battle, as the majority of Mary's troops deserted her during negotiations. Bothwell was given safe passage from the field, but Mary was taken to Edinburgh, where crowds of spectators denounced her as an adulteress and murderer (#patriarchy). The following night, she was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle on an island in the middle of Loch Leven. Soon after, Mary miscarried twins. On 24 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, later to die insane in a Danish prison.  

On 2 May 1568, Mary managed to escape from Loch Leven Castle with the aid of George Douglas, brother of the castle's owner. She escaped dressed as a maid, so the story goes, and managed to raise an army of 6,000 men. She met Moray's smaller forces at the Battle of Langside on 13 May but was defeated and forced to flee to England. Soon after crossing the border, local officials took her into protective custody at Carlisle Castle.

Mary expected her cousin Elizabeth to help her regain her throne. However, Elizabeth was cautious, ordering an inquiry into the conduct of the confederate lords and Mary’s culpability in Darnley's murder. In mid-July 1568, English authorities moved Mary to Bolton Castle - further from the Scottish border but not too close to London. 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,  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 (although she was forbidden to go anwyay). As evidence against Mary, Moray presented the so-called casket letters—eight unsigned letters allegedly from Mary to Bothwell, two marriage contracts, and a love sonnet. All were said to have been found in a silver-gilt casket just less than 30cm long and decorated with the monogram of King Francis II. Mary denied writing them and insisted they were forgeries. The chair of the inquiry, the Duke of Norfolk, sent copies to Elizabeth, saying that if they were genuine, they might prove Mary's guilt.

The authenticity of the casket letters has been the source of much controversy among historians. It is impossible now to prove either way as 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. Other documents scrutinised included Bothwell's divorce from Jean Gordon.

Mary's biographers have concluded that either the documents were complete forgeries, or incriminating passages were inserted into genuine letters, or were written for different recipients. John Guy points out that the letters are disjointed and that the French language and grammar are too poor for a writer with Mary's education. But certain phrases of the letters and some characteristics of style are compatible with confirmed letters of Mary’s.

The casket letters did not appear publicly until the Conference of 1568, although the Scottish privy council had seen them by December 1567. 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, 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 during the commission, although he denied it when Elizabeth questioned him, saying "he meant never to marry with a person, where he could not be sure of his pillow".

Most of the commissioners accepted the casket letters as genuine after a study of their contents and 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.

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For political reasons, Elizabeth wished neither to convict nor to acquit Mary of murder. In the end, Moray returned to Scotland as regent and Mary remained in custody in England. Elizabeth had 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.

On 26 January 1569, Mary was moved to Tutbury Castle and placed in the custody of the 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, 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 sixteen, along with 30 carts of her belongings. 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 ("In my end lies my beginning"), embroidered. She was occasionally allowed outside under strict supervision but 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.

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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, for which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London between October 1569 and August 1570. Early the following year, Moray was assassinated, quickly followed by rebellion in the North of England, led by Catholic earls, which persuaded Elizabeth that Mary was a serious threat. English troops intervened in the Scottish civil war, consolidating the power of the anti-Marian forces. Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s spies watched Mary carefully.

In 1571, the Ridolfi Plot, a plan to replace Elizabeth with Mary with the help of Spanish troops and the Duke of Norfolk was uncovered. Norfolk was executed and the English Parliament introduced a bill barring Mary from the throne - which Elizabeth refused to give royal assent. To further discredit Mary, the casket letters were published in London. Plots centred on Mary continued. In 1583, the Bond of Association and the Act for the Queen's Safety was passed, sanctioning the execution of anyone who plotted against Elizabeth.  

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 improvement to her living conditions. James agreed for some time, 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. Consequently she was placed under stricter guard.

On 11 August 1586, after being implicated in the Babington Plot, Mary was arrested while out riding and taken to Tixall. 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, not knowing they would be intercepted and deciphered. These letters seemed to prove that Mary had sanctioned the attempted assassination of Elizabeth.

Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle in a four-day journey ending on 25 September. In October, she was put on trial for treason under the Act for the Queen's Safety. 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 thus could not be convicted of treason. All valid objections, I reckon.

She was convicted on 25 October and sentenced to death with only one commissioner half-heartedly objecting. Nevertheless, Elizabeth hesitated to order her execution, even in the face of pressure from her Parliament. She was concerned that the killing of a queen set a dangerous 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 1 February 1587, Elizabeth signed the death warrant. On 3 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.

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At Fotheringhay, on the evening of 7 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. The executioner and his assistant knelt before her and asked forgiveness, as was typical. Mary replied, "I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles." Her servants 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. As she disrobed Mary smiled and said she "never had such grooms before ... nor ever put off her clothes before such a company". 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 latin): “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit".

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" (talk about rubbing salt in the wound). At that moment, the auburn hair in his hand turned out to be a wig and the head fell to the ground, revealing that Mary had very short, grey hair. Eye witnesses reported that after her death: "Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off" and that her small dog emerged from hiding among her skirts. Contemporary accounts state that all her clothing, the block, and everything touched by her blood was burnt in the fireplace of the Great Hall to obstruct relic hunters. It proved an undignified end for someone who had reigned as Queen of at least two powerful nations.

When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth, she became irate and insisted that the Privy Council had acted without her authority. Elizabeth's indecisiveness and deliberately vague instructions gave her plausible deniability.

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, King James VI and I, ordered that she be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth (perhaps he felt guilty for abandoning her to her doom). Many of her descendants, including Elizabeth of Bohemia, Prince Rupert of the Rhine and the children of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, were interred in her vault.

Assessments of Mary in the sixteenth century were divided between Protestant reformers such as George Buchanan and John Knox, who demonised her mercilessly, and Catholic apologists such as Adam Blackwood, who praised, defended and exhaulted her. After the accession of James I in England, historian William Camden wrote an officially sanctioned biography that drew from original documents. It condemned Buchanan's work as an invention,  and "emphasized Mary's evil fortunes rather than her evil character". Differing interpretations persisted into the eighteenth century: William Robertson and David Hume argued that the casket letters were genuine and that Mary was guilty of adultery and murder, while William Tytler argued the reverse. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the work of Antonia Fraser was acclaimed as "more objective ... free from the excesses of adulation or attack" that had characterised older biographies.

Historian Jenny Wormald concluded that Mary was a tragic failure, who was unable to cope with the demands placed on her, but this was a rare dissenting view in a post-Fraser tradition that Mary was a pawn in the hands of scheming noblemen. There is no concrete proof of her complicity in Darnley's murder or of a conspiracy with Bothwell. Such accusations rest on assumptions, and Buchanan's biography is today discredited as "almost complete fantasy".

Despite my lifelong fascination with Mary, I still don’t exactly know where I stand on her. Jenny Wormald does make a convincing case for Mary as a failure and a poor excuse for a Queen (her book is well worth a read!). It isn’t easy to see how her enemies could portray her as a flighty and arrogant young woman who allowed lust to rule her head and who betrayed her religion and her countrymen to save herself.

However, I think I am still inclined to sympathy with Mary. Part of me despairs that she was used as a pawn by various men – her nobles, her husbands, and her son – and that she was virtually powerless to prevent the tragedy which befell her. If we believe that her second marriage was largely the result of kidnap and rape, then her situation seems all the more wretched, and one has to wonder whether ANY monarch – male or female – could have done much better when thrown into a foreign (to her) kingdom already divided by religion and at the mercy of superior foreign powers. Her resistance to Darnley’s bid for power, her possible drastic measures to rid herself and her kingdom of his tyranny, her aptitude in escaping from Leven Castle, her willingness to lead her troops in battle, her religious tolerance, and her bravery in the faith of death all leave Mary to remain as a strong feminist icon in my head. While it is easy to make unfavourable comparisons to her cousin Elizabeth and other female monarchs of the age, Mary had uniquely difficult circumstances to over come. Maybe as an Edinburgh girl, raised on romanticised stories of our national heroine, I am slightly biased, but regardless of your historical opinion Mary remains one of the most popular and infamous figures of Scottish history. Although, she is also a good example of why women make better Queens without a man by their side.