Mary Queen of Scots 1542-1587

MARY, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587

Biographical Note

One of the most written about women in history, Mary was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, the daughter of King James V and his wife Mary of Guise. As the king had no living legitimate children, Mary immediately became heir. Six days later, James V died and so Mary became queen. Aged five, in 1548 she was betrothed to Francis, heir to the King of France, and was sent to France where she grew up in the sophisticated court of Henry II. Over her life she developed significant literary talents, particularly the writing of poetry. On 24 April 1558, she married Francis, and in November that same year her cousin Mary, Queen of England, died, making Mary the legitimate Queen of England in the eyes of Catholics, in place of the Protestant Elizabeth I. In 1559, Henry II died, thus making Mary also Queen Consort of France; but her husband died in December 1560, and in August 1561 Mary returned to her northern realm (her mother, regent since 1554, had died the previous year), at a time of great political tensions, rivalries and religious conflict, following the overthrow of the Catholic church in 1560. Mary married her cousin Henry, Lord Darnley, in the summer of 1565 and on 19 June 1566 she gave birth to the future James VI. However, Darnley was assassinated in February 1567, and there were strong rumours that Mary was implicated. She did her cause no favours by marrying Francis Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell three months later. Full scale rebellion followed, and she was imprisoned and forced to abdicate on 23 June. After escaping, and being defeated at the battle of Langside, near Glasgow, on 13 May 1568, Mary fled to England and to the mercy of Queen Elizabeth. Over the succeeding years, she was imprisoned in various places, and recurrent plots in her name against the English Queen eventually led to Mary’s execution at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, on 8 February 1587.

Books

Mary was a highly intelligent and well-read monarch. As a child in France, she would have possessed devotional and improving works in manuscript and printed form, as well as having works dedicated and presented to her. Undoubtedly, some books came with Mary to Scotland in 1561. In her early adulthood as Queen in Scotland she would have had access to whatever constituted the royal library, but she clearly added much to it. After her flight in 1568 this collection was of course left behind and imperfect lists of the contents of the royal library were produced in 1569 and the 1570s. Manuscripts were included as well as printed items. These lists of what the Queen might have owned have been most recently published in Higgitt; over 350 entries are involved, but there is considerable duplication between lists. Wingfield (p. 301) suggests that the true total might have been around 285 books. Content is wide ranging, from classical authors to history, geography, literature, music, astronomy, and theology (including a biblical commentary by Luther and a work by Calvin against Michael Servetus). There were some items in Greek, and a number in Latin, but the greatest number were in vernacular languages, including Spanish and Italian; most, unsurprisingly, were in French. Romances were a particular favourite. Very few of Mary’s copies have survived (see Durkan p. 103 for ‘Some books said to have belonged to Queen Mary’). In her days as a prisoner in England her acquisition of books would have been much more circumscribed, but she evidently was able to amass ‘a greate number of bookes’ (Durkan p. 92), and an inventory of 1586 mentioned a manuscript Book of Hours on vellum, bound in velvet, with gold cover ornaments and embellished with precious stones.

Characteristic Markings

Dispute has raged over the authenticity of inscriptions in various books claiming them to have belonged to Mary, and the same is true over books with binding stamps. A copiously annotated manuscript Book of Hours now in St Petersburg was probably with her from childhood to English captivity. Lord Torphichen, after Mary’s flight to England, is known to have taken books with Francis and Mary’s arms on their covers, while a binding bearing the royal arms of Scotland, with ‘M’s surmounted by a crown, on the covers, is on a 1552 edition of Guillaume Paradin’s Chronique de Savoye now in the collection of the Earl of Rosebery.

Sources

• Durkan, John ‘The Library of Mary, Queen of Scots’, in Michael Lynch, ed. Mary Stewart: Queen in Three Kingdoms (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) pp. 71-104.
• Goodare, Julian ‘Mary (Mary Stuart), (1542-1587), queen of Scots’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Higgitt, John, ed., Scottish Libraries, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 12 (London: The British Library in association with the British Academy, 2006), pp. 96-105 (‘Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Midlothian. Royal libraries at Edinburgh Castle and Holyroodhouse’), 105-127 (Book section of the ‘Inventory of goods [at Edinburgh Castle belonging to the twelve-year old James VI and his mother, Queen Mary, dated] 26 March 1578’, 148 entries), 169-185 (‘Books received from Servais de Condé, 25 November 1569’, 89 entries), 185-206 (‘Books from the dispersed library of Mary Queen of Scots [at Holyroodhouse], 1573-8’, 122 entries).
• Wingfield, Emily Scotland’s Royal Women and European Literary Culture, 1424-1587 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp 297-360.