A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Stuart, (Mary)
STUART (MARY), Queen of Scotland, born 1542; daughter and heir of James V. King of Scots, by Mary, of Lorrain, his second queen.
Was scarce eight days old at his death, which was followed by great animosities among the nobility, who contested for the administration of public affairs, and the guardianship of the young queen was at last adjudged to the Earl of Arran, the next heir to the crown in legitimate descent, and the first peer of Scotland.
King Henry VIII. wished to obtain her for his son Edward, and at last it was agreed that she should be given in marriage to that prince; but he wished to have her educated in England, which the Scots would not comply with, which was the occasion of the famous battle of Musselburg. Upon their defeat she was conveyed by her mother into the isle of Inchemahom; where she first learned the rudiments of the Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian tongues: of all which she afterwards became a complete mistress.
By her means, when about six years old, Mary was conveyed to France, where she was with great care educated. Her study was chiefly directed to learning the modern languages; to these she added the Latin, in which she spoke an oration of her own composing, in the great guard-room at the Louvre, before the royal family and nobility of France. She was naturally inclined to poetry and so great a proficient in the art, that her compositions were much valued by M. Ronsard, who was himself esteemed an eminent poet.
She had a good taste for music, and played well upon several instruments, was a fine dancer, and sat a horse gracefully; but her chief delight seemed to be, when she was employed among her women at needle-work.
In 1558, she was married to the dauphin, afterwards Francis II. over whom her beauty and understanding gave her great influence. He dying 1560, she returned to her native country; leaving the most refined and gay court in Europe, for the most turbulent and austere.
Soon after she was addressed with proposals of marriage from Charles, archduke of Austria. But Queen Elizabeth, hearing of it, desired she would not marry with any foreign prince, but chuse a husband out of her own nobility, and recommended to her the earl of Leicester, threatening upon refusal, to deprive her of the succession to the crown of England. The arms and title of which, the ambition of her uncles, the Guises, had made her imprudently assume while Queen of France. Yet she now wished to obtain the good graces of Elizabeth, who did not in reality wish her to marry at all; which Mary at length discovering, and being much in love with her cousin Henry, Lord Darnley, married him in 1565. By this husband she had one son, who was afterwards James VI. of Scotland, and I. of England. This union proved most unfortunate; the beauty of Darnley was his only merit, he was weak and cruel, and by the most capriscious and teizing conduct, made Mary bitterly repent the honour she had done him. Indifferent towards her, yet ambitious of power, he wished to extort from her the matrimonial crown, and was furiously jealous of the influence any other possessed. Bursting into her apartment, with some lords, devoted to his purpose, he seized and murdered Rizzio, an Italian musician, whom he had himself first distinguished, and then in a few days openly declared he had no knowledge of the action. He threatened frequently to leave the kingdom, though it appears he had no serious intentions, but merely to distress Mary, who dreaded the censures of foreign courts, and the manner in which it might be misrepresented; and absented himself from her, till an illness which happened to him, being made known to Mary, whose feelings were warm and impetuous, she forgot her wrongs, and flew to his succour, nursing him herself with great tenderness, and in his promises of repentance and amendment, seeming to forget his faults. On his convalescence, he was removed to Kirkafield, a retired situation, which was recommended on account of quiet and good air. Here one night, 1567, during the absence of the queen, who was gone to be present at the marriage of one of her servants, he was murdered, by his apartment being blown up with gunpowder.
That Mary did not bring the conspirators to justice, has been alledged against her; but she had little power amidst the nobility; and it appears highly probable, if not an absolute fact, that the Lord Bothwell, who was first accused, had for his judges those who had instigated him to take part in the plot, the earls of Murray and Morton, who suggested to him the seizure and marriage of the queen. He accordingly got her into his power, and the outcries of the people, against the indignities and injuries she suffered, as well as the sonnet attributed to her afterwards by the conspirators themselves, which the letters contradict, shew that she was taken without her own consent; and the marriage, which soon took place on her return to Edinburgh, was not only necessary to her wounded honour; but, as she was yet in his power, and her nobles signed a paper to recommend it to her, she had no means to resist a step so fatal to her reputation and her future peace. Bothwell, who was a protestant, by profession, would not permit the marriage to be solemnized according to her faith, which Mary was very tenacious of, but in her present humbled state could not insist on. Factions and different interests prevailing among the great, every thing ran into disorder and confusion, loyalty and obedience to the royal authority were no longer regarded, but despised and abused. The earl of Bothwell was forced to fly into Denmark to save his life. The queen was reproached as his accomplice, in the murder of Darnley, carried prisoner to Lochlevin, and treated on the road with the utmost scorn and contempt. She was committed to the care of Murray's mother, who had been concubine to king James V. and whose insults added greatly to her affliction.
Queen Elizabeth sent Sir Nicholas Throckmorton into Scotland, to expostulate with the conspirators about this barbarous treatment of their queen, and consult measures to restore her to her liberty. But he returned, without being able to obtain any satisfaction, or relief for her.
After she had been imprisoned eleven months at Lochlevin; and forced to comply with unreasonable terms, highly detrimental to her honour and interest, she made her escape from thence to Hamilton Castle, where there was drawn a sentence, declaratory that the grant extorted from her majesty in prison was actually void from the beginning. Whereupon such numbers of people came in to her assistance, that within two or three days she had got an army of at least 6000. Murray, on the other side, used the utmost expedition in preparing to attack the queen before she became too formidable: and when they joined battle, her army, consisting chiefly of new-raised men, was defeated, and she obliged to save herself by flight; travelling 60 miles in one day to the house of Lord Herris. From thence she dispatched John Beton to Elizabeth, with a diamond which she had formerly received from her, as a pledge of mutual amity; intimating, that if her rebellious subjects should persecute her any further, she would come into England, and beg her assistance. Elizabeth returned her a kind answer. But before the messenger came, she, against the advice of her friends, found means to convey herself, accompanied by Lord Herris, Fleming, and others, into England; and the same day wrote a letter to her in French, with her own hand, in which she gave her a long detail of her misfortunes, requesting her protection, and aid against her rebellious subjects. Queen Elizabeth, in her answers, promised to protect her, according to the equity of her cause; and under pretence of greater security, ordered her to be conveyed to Carlisle.
Being denied access to Elizabeth, which her rebellious subjects were indulged in, and removed from one prison to another, for the space of about eighteen years, in which she had often struggled for liberty, and interested many in her cause; she was at length brought to a trial, condemned, and beheaded, for being concerned in a conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth; and suffered with great equanimity, in the castle of Fotheringhay, 1586–7, and interred in the cathedral church of Peterborough: but her remains were afterwards removed by her son to a vault in Henry VIIth's chapel, where a most magnificent monument was erected to her memory.
Authors vary much in their sentiments concerning the character of this queen; but all agree, that she was most cruelly and unjustly treated. Mary was the great hope of the catholics, and Elizabeth's ministers aggravated the hate of their mistress, by a sort of crusading zeal, which has no pity or faith for a heretic. The letters pretending to be written by her to Bothwell, before the death of her husband, which Mr. Whitaker has shewn to contain many internal evidences of forgery, without seal or subscription, were never, even in copies, submitted to her perusal, or that of her friends, so that she had no opportunity of exposing their falsehood. Of a height approaching to the majestic, with a beautiful and benevolent countenance, dark hair and eyes, Mary had a flexibility of mind, which yielded to her feelings, even when her understanding should have taught her better. Prone to confidence and generosity, she seemed to expect it even where she had been frequently deceived; and before confinement had subdued her feelings, was hysterical under the impression of misfortune or unkindness. She wrote Poems on various occasions, in Latin, Italian, French, and Scotch; Advice to her Son, in two books: the consolation of her long imprisonment. A great number of her original letters were preserved in the King of France's library, and in the Royal, Cottonian, and Ashmolean libraries.