Queen of Scots Mary

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–87), queen of Scotland (1542–67), daughter of James V and Mary of Guise. Brought up in France, she married (1558) the Dauphin, King Francis II (died 1560). Returning to Scotland (1561), she married (1565) Lord Darnley. In 1566 he murdered her counselor, David Rizzio; later Darnley himself was murdered, supposedly by the Earl of Bothwell, whom Mary married. Public outrage and Presbyterian opposition forced her abdication, and in 1568 she fled to England. Mary, heir presumptive of Elizabeth I and a Roman Catholic, soon became the natural focus of plots against the English throne. Parliament demanded her death; only in 1587, after Anthony Babington's plot, did Elizabeth reluctantly agree. Mary's trial and execution at Fotheringay castle inspired Schiller's tragedy Maria Stuart.

See also: Scotland; United Kingdom.