Mary I of Scotland



Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was crowned Queen of Scotland when she was only nine months old. Her reign was a troubled time for that kingdom, one marked by religious tension between the Catholic Church, to which Mary belonged, and Protestant reformers, who included much of the Scottish nobility. In 1566 the nobility overthrew Mary, and she fled to England without her young son, who eventually became King James VI.

Mary lived the remaining twenty-one years of her life in exile in England, where she became involved in plots against the life of her second cousin once removed, Wueen Elizabeth. (Mary was Elizabeth's closest living relative, and Catholic monarchs throughout Europe insisted that Mary was the legitimate heir to the English throne. Some, insisting that, as Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon was not recognized by the Church, his marriage to Anne Boleyn was illegitimate, Elizabeth was a bastard and Mary was already the rightful Queen of England.)  Elizabeth executed Mary in 1587, and Mary became a Catholic martyr. When Spanish forces conquered England the following year and Spanish King Philip II imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London, he maintained that allowing her to live was a mercy on his part, that he would be justified in killing Elizabeth as vengeance for Mary.