Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication on 24 July 1567.
The only surviving legitimate child of King James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died, and she inherited the throne. During her childhood, Scotland was governed by regents, first by the heir to the throne, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, and then by her mother, Mary of Guise. In 1548, she was betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France, where she would be safe from invading English forces during the Rough Wooing. Mary married Francis in 1558, becoming queen consort of France from his accession in 1559 until his death in December 1560. Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland in August 1561. The tense religious and political climate following the Scottish Reformation that Mary encountered on her return to Scotland was further agitated by prominent Scots such as John Knox, who openly questioned whether her subjects had a duty to obey her. The early years of her personal rule were marked by pragmatism, tolerance, and moderation. She issued a proclamation accepting the religious settlement in Scotland as she had found it upon her return, retained advisers such as James Stewart, Earl of Moray (her illegitimate half-brother), and William Maitland of Lethington, and governed as the Catholic monarch of a Protestant kingdom.
In 1565, Mary married her half-cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley; they had a son, James. Their marriage soured after Darnley orchestrated the murder of Mary's Italian secretary and close friend David Rizzio. In February 1567, Darnley's residence was destroyed by an explosion, and he was found murdered in the nearby garden. James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, was generally believed to have orchestrated Darnley's death, but he was acquitted of the charge in April 1567 and in the following month, he married Mary. Following an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle. In July 1567, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son James VI. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, she fled southward seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Elizabeth I of England.
As a great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, Mary had once claimed Elizabeth's throne as her own and was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics, including participants in a rebellion known as the Rising of the North. Perceiving Mary as a threat, Elizabeth had her confined in various castles and manor houses in the interior of England. After eighteen and a half years in captivity, Mary was found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth in 1586 and was beheaded the following year at Fotheringhay Castle. Mary's life and execution established her in popular culture as a romanticised historical figure.
Mary was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, to King James V and his French second wife, Mary of Guise. Said to have been born prematurely, she was the only legitimate child of James to survive him. Through her paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, she was the great‑granddaughter of King Henry VII of England; Margaret was the elder sister of Henry VIII, making Mary his great-niece. On 14 December, six days after her birth, she succeeded to the Scottish throne following the death of her father, who may have succumbed to the effects of a nervous collapse after the Battle of Solway Moss or from drinking contaminated water during the campaign.
A popular tale, first recorded by John Knox, claims that James, upon learning on his deathbed that his wife had borne a daughter, lamented, "It cam wi' a lass and it will gang wi' a lass!" The House of Stuart had gained the Scottish crown in the 14th century through "a lass" – via the marriage of Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce, to Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland – and, according to the tale, would lose it through one as well. The prophecy was fulfilled not through Mary but through her great-great-granddaughter, Anne, Queen of Great Britain.
Mary was christened shortly after birth at the nearby Church of St Michael. Although rumours circulated that she was weak and frail, the English diplomat Ralph Sadler, who saw her at Linlithgow Palace in March 1543 after her nurse Jean Sinclair unwrapped her, said she was "as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, and as like to live."
As Mary was an infant when she inherited the throne, Scotland was governed by regents until she reached maturity. Two rival claims to the regency emerged immediately: 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 relied on a version of the late king's will that his opponents dismissed as a forgery. Arran, supported by his allies and kin, assumed the regency until 1554, when Mary's mother succeeded in removing him and took up the position herself.
Henry VIII of England took the opportunity of the regency to propose a 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 provided that the two countries would remain legally separate and that, if the couple failed to have children, the temporary union would dissolve. Cardinal Beaton rose to power again and began to push a pro-Catholic, pro-French agenda, angering Henry, who wanted to break the Scottish alliance with France.
Beaton sought to move Mary away from the coast to the safety of Stirling Castle. Regent Arran resisted the move but backed down when Beaton's armed supporters gathered at Linlithgow. The Earl of Lennox escorted Mary and her mother to Stirling on 27 July 1543 with 3,500 armed men. Mary was crowned in the castle chapel on 9 September 1543 with "such solemnity as they do use in this country, which is not very costly", according to the report of Ralph Sadler and Henry Ray.
Shortly before Mary's coronation, Henry arrested Scottish merchants bound for France and impounded their goods. The arrests caused anger in Scotland, and Arran joined Beaton and became a Catholic. 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. In May 1544, the English Earl of Hertford (later Duke of Somerset) raided Edinburgh, and the Scots took Mary to Dunkeld for safety.
In May 1546, Beaton was murdered by Protestant lairds, and on 10 September 1547, nine months after the death of Henry VIII, the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie. Mary's guardians, fearful for her safety, sent her to Inchmahome Priory for no more than three weeks and turned 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. On the promise of 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 to besiege and ultimately take Haddington. On 7 July 1548, a Scottish Parliament held at a nunnery near the town agreed to the French marriage treaty.
With her marriage agreement in place, five-year-old Mary was sent to France to spend the next thirteen years at the French court. The French fleet sent by Henry II, commanded by Nicolas de Villegagnon, sailed with Mary from Dumbarton on 7 August 1548 and arrived a week or more later at Roscoff or Saint-Pol-de-Léon in Brittany.