Mary I, Queen of Scots

OK then, to round off the week of History For Those Who Didn’t Listen Too Well In School we will examine the life and times of a person for whom the word “complicated” was invented in the English language, for Mary, Queen of Scots, led one of the most convoluted and complicated lives ever recorded unto history, if this woman had only just stopped to think about her life and how decisions that she made had affected her then this passage would not be worth writing, as it is, she didn’t  and in doing so managed to completely firkup her whole existence on this planet.

It wasn’t a good start.

Born 1542, the only legitimate child of King James V of Scotland she was only five days old when her father died “of a nervous collapse”  following yet another Scottish Army defeat at the hands of the English on the borders near Carlisle, not wanting to appear too desperate for a new head of state the Scots left the coronation until she was nine months old, making her Mary I of Scotland.

Five years later and during the relentless European power struggles between the French, English, Scottish and Spanish royal families, she was engaged to be married to three year old Francis II of France and went to live in that country, being raised as a catholic in preparation for their coronation which took place when Mary was 16 years old, one year later and the pair were both ruling monarchs of their own countries – two years later she was widowed when Francis died of an ear infection and she returned to Scotland to live in Leith, the arse of Edinburgh (although not so now, I always park the car in Leith when visiting Edinburgh, its free you see)

Four years later she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Danley, and during a marriage which saw betrayal and counter betrayal between him and several Scottish protestant lords resulted in him leading a small army to roust them out of Scotland only to change his mind and join a secret pact with them to usurp Mary from the throne. After he murdered Mary’s private secretary in front of her eyes one day it was clear that their marriage was not one where the words “long and happy” would apply and a few months later his Lordship was found dead in their garden after a huge explosion in the house, “mere coincidence” Mary insisted.

Shortly afterwards she married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell in a protestant marriage ceremony, presumably she was tiring of catholicism, Bothwell had divorced his first wife a few days previous, and also kidnapped and raped Mary at Dunbar Castle, however as it was almost certain that explosive expert Boswell had been contracted to cause the explosion that killed husband #2, and in recompense Mary decided to marry him anyway.

Later that year a posses of catholic Scottish Lords confronted the royal couple and insisted that Mary denounce the Protestant marriage and proclaim catholicism as the religion of choice once again, she agreed to follow them back to Edinburgh to talk about it whereupon she was imprisoned and held captive in Loch Leven castle for almost a year during which she miscarried twins and was forced to abdicate her monarchy to her one year old son James. Escaping the castle in May 1568 she fled to England seeking the protection of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Are you still with us ?

This is where it gets really complicated.

OK, so she pops over the border to seek exile and finds herself in Workington, now I’ve been to Workington at the start of this years C2C bike ride and believe me, you don’t want to spend more then five minutes in Workington, its the sort of place that can wear the spirit just by being there, Mary was captured there and imprisoned in Carlisle for a month or so before being moved to Bolton Castle near Skipton for the rest of the year while a deputation of English Law Lords tried to decide what to do with her and whether or not she presented a threat to Queen Elizabeth.

Mary was at pains to promise her allegiance to Elizabeth but having eyes on succession to the English throne meant that Elizabeth wasn’t too keen on letting her off the hook so lightly so she stood Mary up in a court of law accused of the murder of husband #2 (or was that #3) in that mysterious explosion (see above), her accusers were the same gang of Scottish Lords that her exploded husband had allied with before his explosive death – when you spend all your life causing trouble then trouble just follows you everywhere it seems.

Just to complicate things Mary refused to acknowledge the authority of the court because she was a Queen and apparently Queens have that ability to simply decide that they are going to ignore you (the current Queen Elizabeth II has ignored me on several occasions), also the man in charge of the prosecution was the same man who was legal guardian to her young son King James of Scotland, so there was a slight conflict of interest in his not wanting her to return to their country alive.

The trial ultimately fizzled out with a verdict of  ”We haven’t got a clue whether she did it or not”, her accusers went home to Scotland and she remained in “protective custody” while Elizabeth pondered on what to do with her.

Elizabeth pondered on what to do with her for the next seventeen years, during which time Mary was officially under protective custody mainly in Sheffield Castle, another city that you really wouldn’t want to spend too much of your spare time in without regretting the waste of your life, but during that time various representations were made to have her restored to the throne of Scotland, and one for the throne of France, but in the main the throne of England was the target and there was a growing suspicion that having exploded at least one husband this Scottish Widow would not hesitate to have a go at her cousin the English monarch and during all of this scheming over those seventeen years there grew an underlying current of support for her royal assent from the secret catholics of England.

In 1572 a plot was uncovered that would have deposed Elizabeth by judicious use of an un-named foreign force (lets guess, it may have been a country involving the word “France”), the result of which Elizabeth passed a law that prohibited Mary from ever being Queen of England, you can do that sort of thing when you are Queen, people think that the path of hereditary in the UK has a natural and well defined path, it hasn’t, it all depends on who has the biggest gun, wait and see the shitfight when our current Queen falls off her perch.

In 1585 another plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth was uncovered, this time possibly originating from a country where they speak a lot of Spanish, and once again Mary was implicated simply because she was the Spanish choice of new regent, her being catholic and all, lets face it being catholic was not the best decision that she had ever made in her life was it, it tended to attract the blame for every bad thing that happened outside of your prison cell.

Found guilty of treason there was only one verdict, execution by a method to be decided by Queen Elizabeth, and still she hesitated to sign the judgement, possibly because Mary’s son, King James was now of an age to have formed alliances with France and Spain and another war was a very distinct possibility, at one point Elizabeth asked Mary’s custodian if he could contrive some sort of cell-based accident that would lead to Mary’s demise, a neat solution all round if a little implausible, “The table fell on her head while she was asleep my Lord”, but her custodian Amias Paulet (a suspiciously sounding French name) refused stating that it would bring “a stain on his posterity”, there goes a chance for a good conspiracy theory then.

Eventually and on 7th February 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire Mary was told that she was to be executed on the morrow, just for being a bloody nuisance all of her life and generally being involved in all sorts of shit stirring and rumour-mongering.

She was executed by decapitation in the great hall at Fotheringhay, the first blow of the axe missing her neck and striking her at the back of the head, you just couldn’t get a decent executioner for love nor money not even in those days when a good executioner was in high demand, the second blow of the axe almost severed the head and they finished off the job with a saw.

Holding the head high in the air in the traditional manner the hopeless executioner forgot that the handsome auburn tresses of the former Queen were in actuality not real and rather embarrassingly they parted company, the head bouncing along the floor while he stood there proudly displaying a wig, its not recorded what his next words were but I’ll take a stab at “Oh Bugger”

And then the Spanish Armada set sail for England…

Oh dear god no, when will this end ?