Queens of Britain Series: Mary II

 Welcome to the Queens of Britain series. In 2024, the blog will spotlight the reigning queens from the island of Great Britain. Check back regularly to learn about the women who led their nations.

By Willem Wissing via Wikimedia Commons

"Honor thy father." The fifth of the Bible's Ten Commandments was a difficult one for the very pious Mary Princess of Orange. As the eldest daughter of James Duke of York, she had grown up in a privileged but unusual family situation. Her uncle was King Charles II, who had no legitimate children. Thus, her father was the heir to the throne. For most of her life, Mary was second in the line of succession, moving to third for brief periods when younger brothers supplanted her but then died young. 

Mary's relationship with her father was complicated by religion. Both of her parents had converted to Catholicism, but Uncle Charles had insisted that their children be raised as Protestants. Mary and her siblings were removed from the Yorks' authority and raised by Protestant caregivers. Although eight children were born to the couple, Mary and Anne, five years her junior, were the only ones to live more than a few years. They saw their parents only occasionally and both became very staunch Protestants. (See my post When Protestant Daughters Have Catholic Daddies.)

The British Royal Family was very small at this time: King Charles II and Queen Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of York, Anne and Mary, and Queen Henrietta Maria, their grandmother and the widow of the executed King Charles I. Henrietta Maria's youngest daughter had married into the French Royal Family and her eldest daughter had married into the Dutch. Initially, King Charles wanted young Mary to marry the French heir but British politicians bewailed a Catholic marriage and it was determined that she would marry her first cousin, the Dutch Prince William of Orange.

Mary sobbed for an entire day and throughout the wedding. She was only 15 and William was nearly 12 years her senior. Although he was fourth in line to the British throne after Mary and Anne, he was not popular with his young cousins. Anne even compared him to a notorious Greek monster.

Now Princess of Orange, Mary journeyed to the continent and was welcomed with fanfare at The Hague. She quickly became pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage that may have left her barren. She is thought to have had one or two additional but unsuccessful pregnancies. Her childlessness was painful to her all of her life. Nevertheless, her relationship with William began to flourish. Although visually mismatched -- Mary was young, lovely, and tall while William was comparatively old, unattractive, and short -- the couple formed a good partnership with Mary serving as a devoted wife. She even became jealous when she heard a rumor that he had a mistress.

For his part, William was often away at war. His renown and prowess as a soldier was to become important as things started shifting in Britain. When King Charles died in 1685, Mary's father became King James II. His queen, however, was not her mother. She had died when Mary was nine. A few years later, James had remarried a Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, who was only four years older than his daughter, in an attempt to beget sons. The birth of sons would displace Mary and her sister Anne in the line of succession as boys took precedence over girls at that time. So far, Mary of Modena had delivered 10 children, many of whom were stillborn. One little girl, Isabel, had lived four years but the others all died within a few weeks of birth.

All of that changed in 1688 when it was announced that the queen was expecting her eleventh child. Mary and her sister Anne openly questioned whether their stepmother was even pregnant. Other prominent Protestants also spread rumors that the pregnancy was fake and that the Catholic king was preparing to foist a false Catholic heir upon the nation and prevent the crown from going to his Protestant daughter. When a baby boy was born, some suggested that an infant had been secreted into the queen's delivery room in a warming pan.

Whether the infant was a true child of the king or not, the Protestant leadership and Parliament were ready to prevent the continuation of a Catholic monarchy. They invited Mary's husband William to gather his army and invade in the name of his wife's claim to the throne. With the threat from his son-in-law matching the mood of much of his country, James fled to France. Parliament determined that his departure equaled abdication both for him and his Catholic descendants. Mary was invited to assume the throne.

Ceiling painted by Sir James Thornhill,
photographed by James Brittain

Mary herself insisted that she should serve jointly with her husband. Even though she had not wanted to marry William in the beginning, 11 years of marriage had changed her mind. She also believed that a wife should not be superior to her husband. So it was that Britain's first and only joint monarchs were crowned together as King William III and Queen Mary II. Termed the "Glorious Revolution" or the "Bloodless Revolution", the accession of William and Mary permanently changed the relationship between the Crown and Parliament. From thenceforth, the monarch ruled only by the consent of the governed and no longer had the power to act without Parliamentary approval. This was also the moment when all Catholics were banned from inheriting the British throne. Mary and her reign may be one of the least well-remembered and least celebrated of Britain's reigning queens, but it could be said that her leadership has had the most important and lasting impact on the British monarchy.

William was firmly established as the "lead" monarch with Mary remaining out of governance unless he was away at war, which he often was. Mary became a kind of summer queen, only governing when he was on campaign, often fighting her father. 

For the most part, Mary preferred to focus on the promotion of the Anglican Church and gardening. Her strong religious fervor is what led her to charter a new college in the Virginia colony that would train Anglican ministers in the New World. To this day, it is known as the College of William and Mary. Her love of gardens also created legacies for her in the gardens of Het Loo in The Netherlands and Hampton Court Palace in London.

Her reign as queen was short-lived. Mary was struck by a particularly deadly strain of smallpox in 1694. She was 32. Her enemies said her early death was punishment for breaking the Commandment about honoring your father. Nevertheless, the decisions she had made ensured that her father, his sons, and his sons' descendants never again ruled in Britain. Instead, she was succeeded by her co-monarch William, the husband she had chosen to support over her father. 

William deeply mourned Mary. He wore her wedding ring on a ribbon around his neck for the rest of his life. He never remarried and, upon his death in 1701, the throne passed to his cousin, Mary's younger sister Anne, as Mary had agreed at the time of their unprecedented, revolutionary accession.

QUEENS OF BRITAIN SERIES
Boudica, Queen of the Iceni 
Empress Matilda 
Margaret Maid of Norway 
Lady Jane Grey
Queen Mary I
Queen Elizabeth I
Mary Queen of Scots 
Queen Mary II
Queen Anne - coming soon
Queen Victoria - coming soon
Queen Elizabeth II - coming soon

MORE ABOUT MARY
The Death of Queen Mary on Madam Gilfurt
Displaying Queen Mary II's Exoticks Collection on Historic Royal Palaces
King William III: The Glorious Revolution and His Reign with Mary II on Hattons of London
Mary II on Culloden Battlefield
Mary II on The Stuart Successions Project
Mary II and Queen Anne: The Representations of Two Sisters on Team Queens
A Monarch a Month by Ten Hour Stitcher
Monarch of the Month: Queen Mary II on An Historian about Town
Queen Mary II: A Short Reign, a lasting legacy for us on W&M News Archive
The Stuart Dynasty - William, Mary, and Anne on A Royal Heraldry
Who Should Sit on the Throne? on The History of Parliament
William III and Mary II: England's Only Joint Sovereigns on Historic Royal Palaces
William & Mary on The Seventeenth Century Lady

Queens of Britain Series: Mary Queen of Scots

Welcome to the Queens of Britain series. In 2024, the blog will spotlight the reigning queens from the island of Great Britain. Check back regularly to learn about the women who led their nations.

By François Clouet via Wikimedia Commons

Child kings are relatively common across European history. A couple of kings were proclaimed from the moment of their births. A child queen, like reigning queens in general, is something much more rare. The two most prominent, Mary Queen of Scots and Christina of Sweden, both led rather unusual lives and each made the decision to abdicate at a young age. (Read my post Abdicating Queens.)

The turbulent life and reign of Mary Queen of Scots reverberates through history and has generated an important segment of tourism across several areas of Scotland. If you can't find a walking tour or spot that references her, you probably never left your inn. For Mary, the tumult started before she was week old. In the space of just 44 years, she was orphaned, was queen regnant of Scotland, queen consort of France, thrice widowed, possibly raped, witnessed a dear friend's brutal murder, perhaps had a husband murdered, abdicated, abandoned her only child, and ultimately was executed by someone she hoped she could trust.

Let's start at the very beginning. The course of the Scottish monarchy was perhaps a touch more volatile than most monarchies of the pre-modern era. The nearly constant warfare often led to the early death of kings and accession of youngsters. Mary's father, King James V of Scotland, was the product of an attempt at peace between England and Scotland. His mother was Margaret Tudor, older sister of England's King Henry VIII. The peace was very short-lived. James ascended the throne at 17 months old when his father was killed at the Battle of Flodden. Like his uncle, he was something of a Renaissance man. Also like his uncle, he was not very successful at creating male heirs. His first wife, 16-year-old French princess Madeleine of Valois died within months of their wedding. A year later, he married another French princess Marie of Guise. Marie gave birth to two princes, James Duke of Rothesay and Robert Duke of Albany. However, the two boys died within 14 hours of each other when James 11 months old and Robert just nine days.

James and Marie were distraught but still young. The loss of infants was fairly common in those days. When Marie became pregnant again a year later, they likely thought this would be the first of several more children. James was away at war when Marie went into labor earlier than expected. Alas, he never even met her. He died following defeat at Solway Moss. Some say he suffered a nervous breakdown; others that he drank contaminated water. The outcome was the same: his six-day-old daughter was proclaimed the first-ever Queen of Scotland.

Named Mary for her mother, the infant queen was the center of conflict from the beginning. The struggle for control of baby Mary and the kingdom was primarily between the Catholic Cardinal Beaton and the Protestant Earl of Arran. Arran served as regent for most of Mary's childhood until her mother Marie of Guise was proclaimed regent 11 years later. By then, Mary was living in France being raised at the French court alongside her future husband, the Dauphin Francis.

The first suitor for Mary had actually been Uncle Henry VIII's much longed-for heir Edward. Despite a treaty stating that the two children would marry, Scotland was not keen on the idea, preferring to maintain its longstanding alliance with France against England. Once Henry became aware of their intent, he renewed English attacks on Scotland in what became known as the War of the Rough Wooing. He failed and five-year-old Mary sailed off to France with a retinue of four noble girls also named Mary. 

There, she was under the direct care of her future mother-in-law Catherine de Medici along with Catherine's 10 children. Like her Tudor cousins, Mary was red-haired. She grew to be nearly six foot tall. After 10 years in France, she and Francis were finally wed. The next year, his father died in a jousting accident and the Queen of Scotland was crowned Queen of France. Her double crown was to be short-lived. Francis died in the 17th month of his reign. 

By Francois Clouet in the Royal Collection

via Wikimedia Commons

At 18, Mary returned to Scotland as a widow. The country had changed during her absence. John Knox and the Protestants had gained tremendous power and did not welcome the return of a Catholic queen. With her mother's death the previous year, the young woman was left to navigate dangerous waters with few true allies. Her illegitimate half-brother James Earl of Moray was a Protestant leader at court and her chief advocate. Mary adopted tolerance toward Protestants despite her own staunch religious beliefs. This may have been because she did not have enough power to oppose the Protestants or it may have been because she had her eyes on another prize: England.

By now, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I was firmly in control in England and she had been refusing to marry and beget her own heir. Catholics in England, who saw Elizabeth as illegitimate, already believed Mary was the rightful English queen. She definitely had genealogy in her favor: as the senior descendant of King Henry VIII's older sister, she had the strongest dynastic claim even though Margaret Tudor had surrendered accession rights for her descendants when she married into Scotland. With this close blood between them, Elizabeth was inclined to keep a close eye on Mary, who could pose a strong threat against her.

Unlike Elizabeth, Mary was eager to marry and have children. She was besieged by suitors but ultimately fell sway to the handsome and dashing Henry Stuart Lord Darnley. From the beginning, it was a dangerous liaison. Not only were both of them volatile; they both had claims to both thrones of England and Scotland. Henry's mother was the daughter of Margaret Tudor by a second marriage, making him the most senior male in line for the English crown. On his father's side, Henry was descended from King James II of Scotland. At the time of Mary's accession, there had been a small potential that the throne could have gone to Henry's father. The marriage greatly angered Elizabeth--to have two potential heirs marry each other added to the fact that they were both Catholic felt very dangerous to her. She had Henry's mother Margaret Douglas, who lived most of her life in England, arrested.

Initially, the couple seemed to be very passionate but it soured quickly. Darnley was ambitious and jealous. He wanted to control Mary and Scotland, but Mary refused to name him King. It took little to stoke his anger especially when he was drunk, which he often was. When rumors arose that Mary was having an affair with his former friend and confidante David Rizzio, Darnley was enraged. He ordered a raid on Mary's suite where her entourage, including Rizzio, were dining. Rizzio initially hid behind Mary, but he was dragged away and stabbed over 50 times. One of Darnley's co-conspirators held the queen at gunpoint during the attack. Mary was six months pregnant when she experienced this violence.

Mary officially accepted Darnley's protestations of innocence. Their son James was born but their marriage remained rocky. Divorce was discussed and the couple were separated. Aware that the Catholic Church would not grant a divorce without delegitimizing her son, Mary convinced Darnley to return to Edinburgh. He was staying at the other end of the town from her when his house suddenly exploded. His strangled body was later found outside. Many believed Mary had ordered his murder, just 11 months after Rizzio was slaughtered, but the evidence is impossible to know definitively, even today.

James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, was immediately suspected of leading the murder plot. An early supplicant for Mary's hand in marriage before she married Darnley, Bothwell pressed his suit harder now. He kidnapped Mary and raped her, forcing her to become his wife. Or so one version of the story goes. In another version, Mary had colluded with him all along and willingly joined forces with him to strengthen her position in the wake of Darnley's death. Whichever version is true, the newly married couple was quickly besieged by opposing lords. Within a couple of months, Mary was captured and imprisoned at Lochleven, where she miscarried twins. A month later, she was forced to abdicate in favor of her son, whom she would never see again. The new King James VI was 13 months old.

Bothwell fled to Denmark. Mary escaped Lochleven after a nearly a year and managed to raise an army but was defeated. In desperation, she made her way to England, intending to get her cousin Queen Elizabeth to help her recapture her throne. Elizabeth had no such intention.

Instead, Elizabeth kept her elegant confinement at various stately homes for the next 19 years, never deigning to meet her. She kept her spies busy making sure that Mary was not plotting against her until finally, at last, they had evidence of Mary consorting with Catholics to have Elizabeth assassinated. During her trial, Mary asserted that she was not subject to English judgement because she was a foreign Queen but her protestations fell on deaf ears, particularly since the evidence against her was damning. 

Mary was executed at Fotheringhay on February 7, 1587. Her beheading was one of the bloodiest on record, requiring three strikes to finish the deed. Altogether, Mary spent only 12 years in Scotland. Adding insult to injury, she was not returned to France as requested but was buried with Protestant rights at Peterborough Cathedral.

Nineteen years later, her son succeeded Elizabeth as King of England. Although he expressed little affection for the mother who had abandoned him and whom he had never known, he had her body moved to Westminster Abbey in London to be buried among the monarchs of England.  In the end, she did get the English throne for her descendants. Every British monarch since Elizabeth has been descended from Mary Queen of Scots.

QUEENS OF BRITAIN SERIES
Boudica, Queen of the Iceni 
Empress Matilda 
Margaret Maid of Norway 
Lady Jane Grey
Queen Mary I
Queen Elizabeth I
Mary Queen of Scots 
Queen Mary II
Queen Anne - coming soon
Queen Victoria - coming soon
Queen Elizabeth II - coming soon

MORE ABOUT MARY
The Bloody Death of Mary Queen of Scots on Historic Environment Scotland
Encountering Mary Queen of Scots on University of St Andrews Special Collections
The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots on University of Oxford
In the Footsteps of Mary Queen of Scots on Tweed Valley Blogger
Mary Queen of Scots website
Mary Queen of Scots: Martyr, Monarch, Mystery on Scotland's Wild
Mary Queen of Scots: a Remarkable Life in History on Scotland's Wild
Murder Most Foul on Medieval Manuscripts
Principal Players: Influential and Detrimental People in the Life of Mary Queen of Scots on The Thistle & The Rose
The Tragedies of Mary Queen of Scots on Mercat Blog
What Did Mary Queen of Scots Really Look Like on Royalty Now