Mary I of Scotland

Mary I (often called Mary, Queen of Scots) (1542-1587) was crowned Queen of Scotland when she was only nine months old but spent much of her childhood in France, of which she was briefly Queen, while her mother, Mary of Guise, governed Scotland as regent with great difficulty.

Her reign was a troubled time for Scotland, one marked by religious tension between the Catholic Church, to which Mary belonged, and Puritan 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 was alleged to have been involved in as many as three plots against the life of her second cousin once removed, Queen 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 insisted 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.

Mary was tried and convicted of treason against England despite the fact that she was not and had never been an English subject. During the trial she was denied access to legal counsel and was prevented from examining the evidence being introduced against her. On Elizabeth's orders, Mary was executed 1587. She, Mary, became popularly seen as a Catholic martyr, though she was never canonized by her church. Catholics throughout Europe were outraged at the act, due to a combination of disappointment at losing the strongest Catholic claimant to the English throne, the injustice of her trial and execution, and horror at the breaking of the ancient taboo against executing a crowned monarch.

Mary Queen of Scots in Ruled Britannia
When Spanish forces conquered England in 1588, the year following Mary Queen of Scots' execution, Spanish King Philip II imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London, and maintained that allowing her to live was a mercy on his part, as he would have been justified in killing Elizabeth as vengeance for Mary.