At the beginning of her talk, Gillian White pondered the reason why the subject of Mary Queen of Scots seems to exercise such a perennial fascination for scholars and members of the public alike.

It’s got everything, basically, murder combined with politics and intrigue, and just enough gaps in the historical evidence for people to fill with their own theories depending on whether or not they are Mary’s supporters.

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What is astonishing is how compressed all the major events of Mary’s life were. She was born in December 1542, and became Queen of Scotland at the age of 6 days, betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin in 1548, married to him in 1558 (aged 16), Queen of France in 1559 and widowed in 1560. She then returned to Scotland in 1561 (aged 18), married Lord Darnley in 1565 and had a son (James) by him in June 1566.  Darnley was murdered in February 1567 and in May of that year Mary married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.  She was forced to abdicate in August, and after an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, she fled to England in May 1568.  She had not yet reached her 25th birthday.

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She spent the next twenty years in confinement at various locations in England until, implicated in the Babington plot to assassinate Elizabeth I, she was executed at Fotheringhay castle in February 1587 at the age of 44.

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Perhaps she would have coped better had she had the nous of her older cousin Elizabeth.  When she returned to Scotland at the age of 18, having lived in France for 13 years, she can scarcely have had the political experience to cope with a Scotland riven by religious faction and tending towards the Protestantism of John Knox.

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One last interesting point. On Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Mary’s son (James VI of Scotland) inherited the throne of England as James I.  All our monarchs since then have been Mary’s descendants.

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