Book 2, chapter 40 The Imprisonment and Death of Queen Mary of Scotland1

Although every monarch has felt these harms to their kingdoms and territo- ries, and proximity to England has been detrimental to all of them, Elizabeth has turned her wrath and executed her furious rage most of all against her cousin Mary, queen regnant of Scotland, former queen of France, and rightful heir to the throne of England. Elizabeth had her killed, and I shall relate here the form and rationale of the sentence, drawn from reports I have seen from Paris and England, and from the books printed in Latin and French about the martyrdom (as it may be called) of this saintly queen.2 To understand all this, it must first be understood that King Henry viii had (as we have said) two sisters, the daughters of his father, King Henry vii: ­Margaret, the elder sister, and Mary, the younger. Mary was first married to King Louis xii of France and then to the duke of Suffolk. Margaret married King James iv of Scotland, and by him bore a son, also called James, the fifth of that name in Scotland; he, having wed Mary, the sister of Francis, duke of Guise, had by her a daughter, named Mary Stewart (she of whom we are speaking). After her father died and she became queen of Scots, she married ­Dauphin Francis, the eldest son of King Henry ii of France and heir and suc- cessor to his crown.3 Thus, after the death of his father, Francis succeeded as king of France, and Mary his wife as queen.4 God our Lord willed that King Francis, a youth of high prospects, died soon thereafter without leaving sons by the queen, and so his brother, Charles ix, succeeded him, and thereafter Henry

1 Sander, De origine ac progressu, 415–16. 2 The misadventures of Mary Queen of Scots, produced a veritable flood of publications, before and after her death. I have attempted to identify specific sources for Ribadeneyra’s information, but an excellent guide to the scope of this literature is John Scott, A Bibliography of Works Relating to Mary Queen of Scots: 1544–1700, Publications of the Edinburgh Biblio- graphical Society 2 (Edinburgh: Printed for the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 1896). 3 James v married Mary of Guise (1515–60), elder sister to Francis de Lorraine, second duke of Guise (1519–63). After the deaths of two sons in infancy, Mary gave birth to a namesake daughter at Linlithgow on December 8, 1542. James died six days later, leaving his infant daughter queen of Scotland. Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots, 20, 22–23. 4 Henry ii died on July 10, 1559, two weeks after sustaining wounds to his throat and eye in a jousting accident. His son succeeded him as Francis ii.

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The Imprisonment and Death of Queen Mary of Scotland 511 iii, now living.5 Queen Mary returned a widow to her kingdom of Scotland, and although it had no prince equal to her first husband, the king of France, for her to wed, yet to secure the succession of her line and the tranquility and Catholicism of her realm, she married a prominent nobleman named Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, her kinsman, who came from the ancient lineages of the kings of Scotland and England.6 By the new king she had a son, named James like his grandfather, who is the present king of Scotland, the sixth of his name.7 Once this is grasped, it should also be noted that Queen Mary of Scotland was the rightful heir and successor to the throne of England. For with none such to be found in any legitimate children of the present Queen Elizabeth, and the line of her father King Henry viii ending with her, those called to the throne are the nearest heirs to her grandfather, King Henry vii, whose elder daughter was Margaret Queen of Scots (as we have said): Margaret’s granddaughter and her successor to the throne of Scotland—and by rights to that of England— was the Mary of whom we are speaking. Several prominent lords of her kingdom began to resent and abhor her, be- cause they had committed numerous outrages and crimes during her minority in France, and, at the instigation of the queen of England, robbed the churches and desolated the temples of God, in contempt of his divine majesty and the oppression of his servants. All this they wanted the queen to confirm and ap- prove once she came of age, returned to Scotland, and took full control—but she, a just and Catholic queen, had refused.8 Driven by their hatred, these lords conspired against her, attempting to kill her even as she was pregnant with her

5 Francis fell ill in mid-November 1560, suffering from swelling and pain in his ear and jaw; he died at Orléans on December 5. He was succeeded in turn by his two younger brothers, Charles ix (r.1560–74) and Henry iii (1575–89). 6 Mary arrived in Scotland on August 19, 1561, almost a year after her husband’s death. After sev- eral years of fruitless negotiations with English and continental candidates, on July 29, 1565 the queen wed Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley (1545–67). Henry was Mary’s first cousin, the son of Margaret Tudor’s daughter Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (1515–78). He was also the great-great-great-grandson of King James ii of Scotland (r.1437–60). See Wormald, Mary Queen of Scots, 102, Chapter 6 passim. 7 James vi and i was born at Edinburgh Castle on June 19, 1566. The Spanish here, “como su aguelo,” is ambiguous—it might equally refer to the young James’s grandfather, James v, or to Mary’s grandfather, James iv. 8 After the death of Mary’s mother in 1560, the balance of power in Scotland had shifted dra- matically in favor of the more evangelically inclined Scottish nobles, particularly the associa- tion known as the Lords of the Congregation. In July, they concluded the Treaty of Edinburgh with England, which required the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Scotland, Mary’s abandonment of English heraldry, and domestic arrangements ensuring the dominance of