Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587)

Scottish monarch Mary Queen of Scots, who was crowned in infancy and later imprisoned and executed by her cousin Elizabeth I of England. Regarded by some as the pawn of the people who surrounded her, she remains a powerful figure in history and literature. Her life is portrayed in the tragedy Maria Stuart (1800) by Schiller and in Walter Scott's popular historical novel The Abbot (1820).

Queen of Scotland (1542-67). Also known as Mary Stuart, she was the daughter of James V. Mary's connection with the English royal line from Henry VII made her a threat to Elizabeth I's hold on the English throne, especially as she represented a champion of the Catholic cause. She was married three times. After her forced abdication she was imprisoned but escaped in 1568 to England. Elizabeth I held her prisoner, while the Roman Catholics, who regarded Mary as rightful queen of England, formed many conspiracies to place her on the throne, and for complicity in one of these she was executed.

Mary's mother was the French Mary of Guise. Born in Linlithgow (now in Lothian region, Scotland), Mary was sent to France, where she married the dauphin, later Francis II. After his death she returned to Scotland in 1561, which, during her absence, had become Protestant. She married her cousin, the Earl of Darnley in 1565, but they soon quarrelled, and Darnley took part in the murder of Mary's secretary, Rizzio. In 1567 Darnley, staying alone in Kirk o'Field House in Edinburgh, was killed in an explosion, the result of a conspiracy formed by the Earl of Bothwell, possibly with Mary's connivance. When, shortly after this Bothwell married Mary, the Scots rebelled. Defeated at Carberry Hill, Mary abdicated and was imprisoned. She escaped in 1568, raised an army, and after its defeat at Langside fled to England, only to be imprisoned again. The discovery by Francis Walsingham of a plot against Elizabeth I, devised by Anthony Babington, led to her trial and execution at Fotheringay Castle in 1587. (See also Scotland: history 1513-1603, Mary of Scotland)