Spalding collection's memories of Mary, Queen of Scots

July 29 this year was the 455th anniversary of a pivotal event in English and Scottish history.

It was one which started a chain of events, leading to tragedy, and which still inspires story-tellers today.

On that day in 1565, Mary Stewart (or Stuart), 2better known as Mary, Queen of Scots, married Henry, Lord Darnley, a love match for which she would ultimately pay with her head.

The bare facts of Mary’s turbulent life are well known. Becoming Queen of Scotland in 1542 at the age of six days, following the untimely death of her father, James V, she spent most of her childhood in France while Scotland was ruled by regents.

She eventually married Francis, heir to the French throne and later king, but on his premature death, returned to Scotland in 1561.

She found a turbulent nation riven by conflict between Protestant and Catholic factions, with the most powerful families at each others’ throats, the pot vigorously stirred by the fiery Protestant reformer John Knox.

Mary’s marriage to Henry Darnley probably should not have been sanctioned as they were first cousins, being both descended from Margaret Tudor, sister to Henry VIII, but the union had powerful backers among the senior advisers to Elizabeth I of England.

Darnley, however, was a Catholic, and the marriage set off another round of sectarian struggle in Scotland. Of more long-term significance, however, was that Elizabeth I of England, a staunch Protestant, was furious.

The marriage of Mary and Darnley was commemorated in a couple of items in the collection of Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (SGS).

The first is a copper plate dating from 1613, engraved by Renold Elstracke (1570-post-1625), one of the earliest native English engravers.

The mirror writing at the bottom reveals that this is a blank, designed for the production of prints, one of which can be seen in the second picture (presumably from the same year) which is one of the rarest of his works. It is on heavy paper, and others are held at the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum.

Although the couple were, it seems, genuinely in love, there is little sign of it here in their formal pose. Interestingly, Darnley is described as ‘King of Scotland’, a title he never held in life.

Their son, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England in 1603, and the print was presumably designed to emphasise, if not exaggerate, the new king’s heritage.

He had his mother’s remains moved from Peterborough Cathedral to a more stately resting place in Westminster Abbey in 1612.

The couple’s marital bliss was short-lived. Darnley soon began to press Mary to name him as co-sovereign, but she refused.

Relations between them quickly deteriorated, and in 1567 he died under mysterious circumstances, apparently the result of an explosion.

The rest of Mary’s story is all too familiar: her subsequent marriage to Lord Bothwell, expulsion from the throne and escape to England, apparently believing she could count on support from her cousin Elizabeth.

Instead, she was held in custody, moved from castle to castle, and probably resorted to joining a conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth.

As a result she was tried for treason and beheaded in Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire in 1587.

On the plate and print from the SGS collection, Mary looks every inch the proud European monarch, with no hint of the tragedy to come.

Over the centuries, many have seen her as a victim, a woman trying to assert herself in a world dominated by powerful men.

This view has come under critical scrutiny in recent years, with later historians emphasising that, like any male monarch, she stood or fell by the decisions and choices she made, and how they impacted on the balance of power within her kingdom.

Did watching the troubles of her cousin make Elizabeth even more convinced that not marrying was the surest way to retain power in England?

The SGS museum in Broad Street, Spalding, is still closed to the public.

The government has announced that museums can open so long as they maintain social distancing measures, but it may not be possible for us to do so given the rather restricted layout within our building.

However, you can still keep in touch with us, and see some of the delights of our collections, on our website at sgsoc.org

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