Mary, Queen of Scots

queens of europe mary queen of scots [Music] mary queen of scots ascended the throne at just six days old she became queen consort of france at 16 and was widowed at 17. after returning to scotland she fell in lust with her handsome cousin but the honeymoon ended abruptly when her new groom stabbed her friend 56 times in front of her mary probably had him strangled and then quickly married again to her second husband's murderer but as they say mary and haste repent over the course of your 19-year imprisonment queen mary then got herself entangled in plots to overthrow her lifelong rival queen elizabeth the first but instead of wearing the english crown mary's head ended up on an english chopping block thank you to acorn tv for sponsoring this video mary was born on december 8 1542 her father king james v of scotland sired at least nine illegitimate children but his first wife madeline of valois died of tuberculosis at 16. james had two sons with his second wife french noblewoman mary dickeys when baby james was 10 months old and arthur just eight days old both boys died suddenly within 14 hours of each other likely from illness the king's mother margaret tudor died of a stroke later that same year without her encouraging peace king james declared war on his english uncle king henry viii over old resentments and james's refusal to break with the catholic church within a year of her baby son's deaths queen mary de keys was again expecting king james kissed his pregnant wife goodbye and rode south to attack england after losing at the battle of solway moss james suffered a nervous breakdown add to that a bout of dysentery he caught from drinking contaminated water on the battlefield and the king was on his deathbed when he received the news of the birth of his third and only surviving legitimate child a daughter mary according to legend james ruefully exclaimed it came with alas and it will go with alas referring to the beginnings of his stewart dynasty when marjorie bruce daughter of king robert the bruce married walter stewart in 1314. king james died at the age of 30 leaving the crown of scotland on the tiny head of his six-day-old daughter many feared that baby mary would die leaving scotland to fall into chaos over who would wear the crown but the english ambassador saw baby mary unwrapped by her nurse and wrote it is as goodly a child as i have seen of her age and likely to live as healthy as she was mary was too young to rule a country the next person in the line of succession mary's third cousin the earl of aaron became her regent when mary was six months old he signed the treaty of greenwich agreeing that in 10 years time the baby queen would wed king henry viii's five-year-old son and heir prince edward the treaty stipulated that the long-time rival kingdoms of england and scotland would remain legally separate but united under the couple and their future children scottish catholics rejected the treaty as they wanted to continue their long-standing partnership with catholic france against england never one to be crossed henry viii launched a military campaign called the rough wooing designed to impose the marriage treaty on the scots with the english army closing in aaron made a desperate bid for french aid king henri ii of france agreed to send his troops to beat the english back in exchange for a marriage treaty between the now four-year-old queen mary and his own three-year-old son and heir francois the scottish parliament agreed to this treaty deciding that their queen would be safer out of the country at five mary was sent to paris to be educated in preparation for her marriage and life as the future queen consort of france the entourage that accompanied her included her governess and the four mary's four girls of her own age all named mary who came from the most powerful families in scotland young queen mary was vivacious beautiful and clever she was well liked by everyone at the french court with the exception of her future mother-in-law catherine de medici king henry called her the most perfect child i have ever seen she became close friends with her future sister-in-law elizabeth avaloi her french maternal grandmother antoinette dubourbon became a mother figure to her as her own mother had remained behind in scotland to secure her child's interests mary was the epitome of medieval female accomplishment she played the loot and virginals and enjoyed reading and writing prose and poetry she was competent in horsemanship falconry and needlework and spoke french italian latin spanish and greek in addition to her native scots she had bright auburn hair hazel eyes under heavy lids a long graceful neck and finely arched brows she contracted smallpox in her childhood but was left unblemished by the disease that's so often devastated mary was a pretty child and grew into a strikingly attractive woman standing at five foot eleven well above most women and men of her time du font francois was unusually short and spoke with a stammer but the young fiances got on well from the moment they met as children they grew up together more like siblings than future spouses but by 14 and 15 it was time for their relationship to change mary agreed to sign a secret document which if she died childless would hand scotland and her claim to the english throne to france three weeks later she wed francois at notre dame de paris making him king consort of scotland the teenage queen cut a striking figure in a wedding gown white as a lily and of which two young ladies carried a wonderfully long train while she was living in france mary changed the spelling of the name of her dynasty from stuart with an ew to stuart with the ua to make it easier for the french to pronounce meanwhile in england king henry viii's daughter queen mary the first died leaving the throne to her younger sister elizabeth as their father had broken with the catholic church to divorce catherine of aragon and mary elizabeth's mother and bolin catholics saw elizabeth as illegitimate in their eyes the english throne rightfully belonged to the next legitimate person in the line of succession margaret tudor's granddaughter mary queen of scots king henry declared his son and daughter-in-law king and queen of england but the titles were only theoretical the following year king henry died after being impaled through the eye during a jousting accident leaving the very real positions of king and queen of france to 15 and 16 year old francois and mary catherine de medici threw a coronation gala for the pair which included the first fireworks display ever seen in france the teenage couple reigned for 18 months but mary's maternal uncles the geese brothers had a tight grip on the court and did most of the actual ruling they terrorized the young royals into submission meanwhile perpetrating a number of massacres on protestant huguenots igniting the french wars of religion which would burn the country for 30 years king francois died at the age of 16 of an ear infection that led to an abscess in his brain devastated mary dressed in white the traditional morning color in france the young widow remained in france for nine months while the court waited to see if she was pregnant with a king but as no baby appeared francois was succeeded by his ten-year-old brother charles ix eighteen-year-old mary returned to scotland after living in france for thirteen years her mother mary degese had taken control of the regency from the earl of aaron seven years earlier she ruled on her daughter's behalf but died of dropsy though some suspected poison the year before her offspring's homecoming queen mary had no idea of the dangerous and complex political situation she was stepping into catholics and protestants were at each other's throats a devout catholic mary was resented by her protestant subjects for hearing mass dancing and dressing too elaborately she tried to build cordiality with the head of the protestant faction her illegitimate half-brother james stewart earl of moray by making him her chief advisor and appointing a number of other protestants to her pretty counsel but this infuriated the catholic lairds leaving the queen in a tenuous position rather than dealing with the problems in the country she did rule mary was focused on the country she might rule england she sent an ambassador to london to try and get queen elizabeth to officially name her heir presumptive though by the rules of primogeniture the scottish queen was next in line for the english throne elizabeth refused to make it official it's no wonder mary was keen to get her hands on england the thriving wool train was making the country rich and allowing art music and theater to flourish playwrights like william shakespeare and christopher marlowe were staging remarkable new plays and that great tradition of british drama is carried on today on acorn tv binge thousands of hours of british mysteries dramas comedies and documentaries commercial free for only 5.99 a month you can stream on the app and on dozens of devices i've been catching up with my old favorites including world war ii female driven drama land girls and documentaries about the tudor kings and queens and acorn has a ton of exclusive originals like witstable pearl a modern murder mystery set in an english seaside town with acorn tv there's always something new to discover try acorn tv free for 30 days by going to acorn.tv and using promo code lindsay holiday that's capital l and all lowercase after that and now back to history the strikingly beautiful young queen of scots next turned her attention to finding a new husband and securing her dynasty her french uncle the cardinal of lorraine one of the geese brothers who had controlled and terrorized her during her time in france began marriage negotiations with archduke charles of austria behind mary's back now out of his reach she angrily objected to his attempts to control her from afar mary herself inquired about a match with carlos prince of astorias sun and heir to king philip ii of spain philip was the widower of mary's english cousin queen mary the first and he was currently married to her childhood friend elizabeth avawa but the spanish king rebuffed the scottish queen's proposal the rejection turned out to be lucky for mary as don carlos the product of excessive inbreeding was violently insane his father was later forced to confine him and he died at the age of 23. queen elizabeth wrote to her cousin to suggest she marry elizabeth's own favorite robert dudley earl of lester by this time the english queen had made it public that she intended never to marry or bear children and to remain the virgin queen she offered to make marry her heir if she wed dudley but the scottish queen was furious at her cousin's transparent attempts to control her and had no interest in marrying her ex-lover still single and thus by 16th century standards vulnerable mary became the object of the harassment of pierre du chastellar a french poet employed at her court he was obsessed with the queen and was discovered by guards hiding under her bed waiting to surprise her when she was alone and declare his love for her aghast mary banished him from scotland two days later pierre walked through his exile and forced his way into mary's bedchamber as she was getting undressed she yelled out in fear and fury and her half-brother james murray rushed to help and pierre was restrained and arrested he was found guilty of treason and beheaded at 22 mary danced agear with the dashingly handsome six foot tall henry stewart lord darnley and she fell hard for him the couple married at hollywood palace in july 1565. mary and darnley were first cousins his mother lady margaret douglas was the daughter of margaret tudor by her second marriage after the death of king james iv thus both halves of the scottish royal couple had firm claims on the english throne and their children would have an even stronger combined claim while the marriage was certainly politically convenient mary was quite bewitched by passion for darnley she proclaimed him the lustiest and best proportioned long man she had ever seen and the english ambassador wrote back to his queen that the marriage could only be stopped by violence once the passion of the honeymoon was over mary saw clearly that darnley was vain arrogant and unreliable she had named him king consort but he wasn't satisfied he demanded the crown matrimonial which would have made him a co-sovereign with the right to keep the throne if mary died the queen refused and the marriage grew tense darnley had a violent streak exacerbated by drink in which he indulged frequently mary became pregnant but the obvious strain in the royal marriage led to rumors that the child had been fathered by her private secretary and confidant david rizzio an italian catholic darnley conspired with a handful of protestant lairs and together they stabbed rizzio 56 times at a dinner party in front of a horrified mary on june 19 1566 mary gave birth to her first child a son she named him james for her own father and the four kings of scotland who had preceded him the murder of rizio and the strain of her terrible marriage overwhelmed mary she was overcome by a serious but undefined illness which included vomiting loss of sight and speech convulsions and periods of unconsciousness many feared that the queen would die leaving four-month-old james on the throne but her french physician skillfully treated her and she recovered her health mary then met with leading nobles to discuss the problem of darnley divorce was considered but everyone knew that darnley was too arrogant to go quietly and that the safest option was to eliminate the king consort fearing for his life darnley fled court and headed for his father's estate in glasgow but while on the journey he too became mysteriously ill possible diagnoses include smallpox syphilis or poisoning he convalesced at the home of a friend on the outskirts of edinburgh mary came to visit him every day and it appeared the couple were reconciling on february 9 1567 mary stopped to see her husband and then left to attend the wedding of a member of her household in the wee hours of the morning darnley's bedroom exploded but he wasn't in it his body was found along with that of his servant half naked lying in a nearby orchard they had been strangled or smothered queen mary's counsel offered a generous reward for information about the conspirators who had assassinated the king consort but suspicion soon fell on the queen herself as well as on james hepburn earl of bothwell darnley's father the earl of linux demanded that both will be tried for murder and the queen agreed but while linux was away gathering evidence mary ordered the trial to go ahead without him with no evidence presented against him bothwell was acquitted after a brief seven-hour trial off the hook for regicide he divorced his wife and gathered support from two dozen protestant lairds for his plan to marry the queen by any means necessary queen mary went to visit her 10 month old son at his household in sterling it would be the last time she would ever see her son on her ride home bothwell abducted her and possibly raped her whether or not she was a willing participant remains a mystery the pair were married in a protestant service on may 13th just three months after darnley's death suspicions about her second husband's demise quickly turned into outrage over her hasty third marriage catholics refused to recognize bothwell's divorce or the protestant marriage service and the protestants resented one of their own being raised above them 26 lairds banded together and raised an army to oppose marion bothwell they squared up with the queen's army at carbery hill but no battle took place while the two sides were busy negotiating most of mary's men deserted her with no army to defend her the queen was taken into custody and returned to edinburgh where crowds jeered her as an adulteress and murderer while imprisoned mary miscarried twins as soon as she was well enough to get out of bed she was forced to sign papers of abdication handing the throne over to her one-year-old son james and making her brother james moray his regent bothwell was driven into exile he sailed towards denmark where he hoped to gain the support of king frederick ii and raise an army to win back the throne for mary but a storm forced him to land in bergen norway instead this just happened to be the birthplace of his first wife anna thronderson her powerful family arrested bothwell for spousal abandonment and for keeping anna's dowry bothwell spent the next 11 years chained to a pillar he died insane at the age of 44. his mummified body showed up in the edinburgh wax museum in 1976. after a year in prison mary was aided to escape by her jailers the former queen fled south reaching england in a fishing boat she was confident that her cousin elizabeth would help her regain her throne but she was mistaken once she reached england she was taken into custody as an anointed queen mary refused to recognize the power of any court to try her and she did not show up to her trial moire also on trial for overthrowing the queen presented the so-called casket letters as evidence against mary these eight unsigned love letters purportedly from mary to bothwell were found in a small silver casket decorated with the monogram of king francois ii the messages appeared to confirm mary's guilt but she insisted that they were forgeries and their authenticity remains a mystery to this day in the end no one was found guilty elizabeth couldn't very well convict a fellow queen but she wanted a protestant regime that she could influence in scotland so she allowed moire to return as regent and she kept mary in prison though under guard and confined to a number of different castles mary wasn't roughing it she had a household staff of at least 16 servants including chefs who served her a nightly feast of 32 dishes on silver plate she needed 30 carts to transport her wardrobe tapestries and household goods to the spa town of buxon every summer the former queen spent much of her time doing embroidery but due to porphyria or merely lack of exercise her health began to decline and by her 40s she was rendered lame by severe rheumatism while mary was locked away the drama continued beyond the castle walls moray was assassinated and scotland broke into civil war catholics against protestants meanwhile queen elizabeth vacillated on what to do about her captive cousin mary's claim to the english throne made her a focal point for catholics who plotted to replace the protestant queen of england the duke of norfolk plotted to raise spanish troops to take the english throne from mary who he of course planned to wed norfolk was beheaded in the tower of london another plot endorsed by the pope planned to wed mary to john of austria governor of the netherlands in exchange for dutch troops to win her the throne mary wrote to elizabeth and her son james now 18 and ruling scotland on his own she offered to relinquish her claim on both of their thrones in exchange for her freedom but neither elizabeth nor james trusted mary instead they signed an alliance between themselves and left mary in prison in 1586 mary was set up by elizabeth's spymaster francis walsingham he arranged for letters to be smuggled to and from mary little did she know that wassingham was reading every word once he intercepted a message in which mary consented to the assassination of the english queen and the invasion of england by spanish and french troops he knew he had her mary was put on trial for treason she denied the charges and protested that as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an english subject and thus could not be convicted of treason but convicted she was and sentenced to death elizabeth wary of further angering the many catholic monarchs already against her and of setting the precedent that one monarch had the legal right to execute another dithered about signing the death warrant she inquired of mary's jailer if he might find some way to shorten the life of her cousin but he refused to make a shipwreck of his conscience finally under pressure from parliament elizabeth signed mary's death warrant on february 7 1587 mary was told that she would be beheaded the next morning she spent her final hours praying writing her will and giving away her possessions to members of her household she was being held at fatheringhay castle and a scaffold was erected in the great hall and draped in black cloth when the executioner knelt before her to ask her forgiveness she replied i forgive you with all my heart for now i hope you shall make an end of all my troubles her servants removed her black cloak revealing a velvet petticoat and pair of sleeves in crimson the color of catholic martyrdom they tied a gold embroidered white blindfold over her eyes and helped her to kneel on a cushion and lay her head down on the block the queen exclaimed into thy hands o lord i commend my spirit and stretched out her arms ready for the axe to strike the inexperienced executioner missed and struck queen mary in the back of her head his second blow severed her neck but left a bit of sinew which he sawed apart with the axe after this barbarous butchery he grabbed the former queen's severed head by her hair and held it aloft declaring god save queen elizabeth but mary's head fell free as her auburn tresses had actually been a wig the already reeling witnesses were shocked that mary's once beautiful locks were now short and gray one witness wrote that queen mary's lips continued to move for a quarter of an hour after her head was separated from her body and that her small pet dog who had been hiding under her skirt ran free amid the chaos mary's clothes the block and everything touched by her blood were burned to deter relic hunters when queen elizabeth was informed that her cousin was dead she was indignant and claimed that she hadn't meant for the death warrant she had signed to be executed she had the counselor who had arranged the execution arrested and imprisoned for two years she denied mary's request to be buried in france the place she had spent the happiest years of her life instead the queen of scots was embalmed given a protestant funeral and buried at peterborough cathedral 16 years later queen elizabeth died as she had no children she left the english throne to her cousin mary's only son king james vi of scotland he became king james the first and sixth of england and scotland uniting the long time rival kingdoms and bringing the entire island of britannia under one monarch king james had his mother's body exhumed and reburied under a beautifully carved tomb in westminster abbey next to the remains of queen elizabeth and the other great monarchs of england though mary queen of scots made many mistakes she did not bring about the end of the stuart dynasty as her father had predicted with the exception of a slight beheading the stuart dynasty reigned over scotland and england for another century finally coming to an end with the death of a different lass queen anne in 1714 if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe comment your thoughts and check out my other royal history videos if you really want to help please consider supporting me on patreon a link is in the description thank you for watching

Channel: History Tea Time with Lindsay Holiday

Views: 573,093

Keywords: history, game of thrones, royal family, royalty, bbc, england, scandal, royal wedding, historic costumes, queen, queens of the world, european royalty, queens of europe, womens history, women in history, mary queen of scots, queen mary of scotland, scottish history, henry lord darnley, queen elizabeth i, henry viii, elizabethian, tudor history, execution of mary queen of scots, mary stuart, henri ii france, francis ii of france, saoirse ronan, margot robbie, history of scotland

Id: -vJCaZ57dmQ

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021