Abstract
Over the course of her tumultuous and ultimately tragic career, many of the momentous decisions made by Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587) were motivated by dynastic concerns. A direct descendant of Henry VII of England, Mary was born regnant Queen of Scotland. After spending her childhood in France, where she became queen consort, Mary went to Scotland in 1561, after her first husband’s death, to rule Scotland and entangle herself into the succession of the English crown, as Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, did not marry and bear heirs, making the Catholic Mary Elizabeth’s closest dynastic heir. Beem argues that Mary’s marriage choices and flight to England in 1568 were motivated primarily by her quest to realize her English inheritance.
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Notes
- 1.
John Guy, “My Heart Is My Own”: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (London: Fourth Estate, 2004), 16.
- 2.
Pamela E. Ritchie, Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548–1560: A Political Career (East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2004).
- 3.
John Leslie, History of Scotland, edited by Fr. E.G. Cody and William Murison, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1889–95), 2: 311; Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 36–69.
- 4.
While still in France, Mary requested from English Ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton a safe conduct through England, which Elizabeth initially refused, because Mary had declined to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, which recognized Elizabeth’s right to the English throne. Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth (hereafter CSP, Foreign, Eliz.), edited by Joseph Stevenson, 23 vols. (London: HMS0, 1836–1950), 4: 154.
- 5.
Alexander F. Mitchell, The Scottish Reformation—Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristic (Minneapolis: Fili-Quarian Classics, 2010); Gordon Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
- 6.
The text of the treaty is printed in Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots, 1547–1603 (hereafter CSP, Scotland), ed. Joseph Bain (Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1898), 442–4.
- 7.
See Jenny Wormald, Mary Queen of Scots: A Story of Failure (London: George Philip, 1988).
- 8.
See Mortimer Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), 74–5, 99.
- 9.
Jenny Wormald (Mary Queen of Scots) argues along similar lines concerning Mary’s inadequacies as a ruler.
- 10.
CSP, Foreign, Eliz., 7:264.
- 11.
James Melville, Memoirs of Sir James Melville, edited by A. Francis Steuart (New York: Dutton, 1930), 92, Caroline Bingham, Darnley: A Life of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Consort of Mary Queen of Scots (London: Constable, 1995), 101.
- 12.
Sir James Melville tried to warn Mary of the plot, to no avail. See Melville, Memoirs, 104, 113.
- 13.
Melville, Memoirs, 131.
- 14.
Elizabeth lambasted Mary’s decision to marry Bothwell shortly after the marriage. CSP, Scotland, 2: 336.
- 15.
The classic twentieth-century “romantic” interpretation of Mary and Bothwell’s relationship is Stefan Zweig, Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles, translated by Edena and Cedal Paul (New York: Viking, 1935).
- 16.
Wormald, Mary Queen of Scots, 151–4.
- 17.
A.E. MacRobert, Mary Queen of Scots and the Casket Letters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
- 18.
McRobert, Mary Queen of Scots.
- 19.
Sir Cuthbert Sharp, The Rising in the North: The 1569 Rebellion: Being a Reprint of the “Memorials of the Rebellion of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland” (Durham: J. Shotton, 1975).
- 20.
Francis Edwards, The Marvellous Chance: Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, and the Ridolphi Plot, 1570–1572 (London: Hart Davis, 1968).
- 21.
The Protestant George Buchanan, who served as tutor to the youthful James VI of Scotland, was a particularly harsh “historical” critic of Mary Queen of Scots. See George Buchanan, The Tyrannous Reign of Mary Stewart, translated by. W.A. Gatherer (Edinburgh: The Edinburgh University Press, 1959).
- 22.
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, edited by Robert Lemon (London: Longman, Green, Roberts, Longman and Green, 1865), 210.
- 23.
John Hungerford Pollen, Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1922).
- 24.
See Jayne Elizabeth Lewis, The Trial of Mary Queen of Scots: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999).
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Wormald, Jenny. Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure. London: Trafalgar Square, 1992.
Zweig, Stefan. Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. Translated by Edena and Cedal Paul. New York: Viking, 1935.
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Beem, C. (2018). The Tragic Queen: Dynastic Loyalty and the ‘Queenships’ of Mary Queen of Scots. In: Dunn, C., Carney, E. (eds) Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75877-0_8
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