14/12/2023
Mary, Queen of Scots:-
Today is the anniversary of the accession of Mary Stuart as Queen of Scots on 14th December 1542. Mary’s father James V had died that day in the palace of Falkland in Fife, aged thirty. Mary was then six days old.
"All men lamented that the realm was left without a male to succeed” as John Knox put it. James had been devastated by the Scots’ loss at the Battle of Solway Moss on 24th November 1542 and seems never to have been able to recover from it. When being told that his wife had given birth to a daughter he reportedly said "It came with a lass, it will go with a lass", a possible reference to the marriage of Marjorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert the Bruce to Walter Stewart, ancestor of the Stewart, later Stuart dynasty.
The accession of a child monarch was always a time of anxiety and trepidation and that of Mary was no exception. The Scotland she had been born into was one of deep division due, at least partly, to the religious conflict caused by the Reformation and by the ongoing struggles with England.
James V, Mary’s father, was a son of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, elder sister of Henry VIII making that king Mary’s great-uncle. Her mother, Marie de Guise was a member of a powerful family from Lorraine, which would become prominent in the French Wars of Religion later in the 16th century.
Mary, who was born in Linlithgow Palace on 8th December 1542, was actually her parents’ third child, two sons having died as young infants in 1541. Although James V had several “natural” children, Mary was his only surviving legitimate child. It has sometimes been suggested that Mary was actually born on 7th December and that the date was changed to 8th December in order to coincide with the feast day of the Immaculate Conception (of Mary, the mother of Jesus). However, Mary herself believed that she was born on 8th December.
It seems that Mary was a premature baby as on 12th December 1542 a report was sent to her great-uncle Henry VIII that “ the Queen (Marie de Guise) was delivered before her time of a daughter, a very weak child, and not likely to live as is thought”. Rumours of Mary’s frailty persisted and on 23rd December Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, wrote that both mother and child were very ill and despaired of by their physicians. However, by March 1543, Sir Ralph Sadler, the English ambassador to Scotland who was there to negotiate a treaty between the two countries, reported to Henry VIII, that the little queen “is as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, and as like to live, with the Grace of God”.
When Mary became Queen at the age of six days, a regent, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran (who himself had some claims to the throne of Scotland in the event of Mary’s death), was appointed. On 1st July 1543 the Treaty of Greenwich was signed with England; included among its provisions, as part of a policy to unite the two countries, was a plan for a marriage between between the future Edward VI, then aged five, and Mary.
On 27th July 1543 Mary was moved to Stirling Castle as it was feared that the young queen may be abducted and possibly forcibly removed to England. Mary was accompanied by Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox (and father of her future husband Henry Darnley), her wet-nurse and other attendants and a considerable armed es**rt of more than 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 infantry. Stirling Castle had been part of the marriage settlement of her mother, Marie de Guise, and as well as being a royal dwelling, it was a formidable fortress easy to defend.
The date for Mary’s coronation was set for 9th September 1543; not a really auspicious day coming as it did on the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden. However, no one is likely to have foreseen the drama and tragedy that would be contained in the future life of Mary, Queen of Scots, aged six days on her accession.
