Mary of Guise

Mary of Guise
Queen consort of Scots
Tenure	18 May 1538 – 14 December 1542
Coronation	22 February 1540
Spouse	Louis II, Duke of Longueville James V of Scotland
Issue
François de Longueville Louis de Longueville James Stewart, Duke of Rothesay Robert Stewart Mary I of Scotland
House	House of Guise
Father	Claude, Duke of Guise
Mother	Antoinette of Bourbon-Vendôme
Born	22 November 1515(1515-11-22) Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, France
Died	11 June 1560 (aged 44) (dropsy) Edinburgh Castle, Scotland
Burial	Saint Pierre de Reims, France

Mary of Guise (French: Marie de Guise; 22 November 1515 – 11 June 1560) was the Queen of Scots as the second spouse of King James V of Scotland. She was the mother of Queen Mary I of Scotland and served as regent of Scotland in her daughter's name from 1554 to 1560.

Duchess of Longueville

The eldest daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, head of the French House of Guise, and his wife Antoinette of Bourbon-Vendôme, Mary was born at Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine.

On 4 August 1534, at the age of 18, she married Louis II, Duke of Longueville (born 1510), at the Louvre. Their union was a happy one and on 30 October 1535, her first son, François, was born. On 9 June 1537, Louis died at Rouen and left her a widow at the age of 21. On 4 August, Mary gave birth to her second son, Louis.

Later that year, James V, having lost his first wife, Madeleine of Valois to tuberculosis, wanted a second French bride to further the interests of the Franco-Scottish alliance against England. Mary became the focus of his marriage negotiations and his uncle Henry VIII of England tried to prevent this union by asking for Mary's hand himself. Henry had recently lost his third wife Jane Seymour in childbirth and given Henry's marital history – banishing one wife and beheading the next – Mary refused the offer. She was said to have replied, "I may be a big woman, but I have very little neck." (A tribute to the famously macabre jest made by Henry's French-educated second wife, Anne Boleyn, who had joked before her death that the executioner would find killing her easy because she had "a little neck.") Francis I of France accepted James's proposals over Henry's and conveyed his wishes to Mary's father. Mary received the news with shock and alarm.

She did not rejoice at the prospect of leaving family and country, especially as she had just lost her younger son, Louis, at only four months. Her father was caught in a diplomatic wrangle. He tried to delay matters until James, perhaps sensing her reluctance, wrote to her, appealing for her advice and support. Mary accepted the offer and hurried plans for departure.

Queen of Scots

On 18 May 1538, at Notre-Dame de Paris, James V and Mary of Guise were married with Robert, Lord Maxwell acting as proxy. Accompanied by a fleet of ships sent by James, Mary left France in June, forced to leave little François behind. She landed in Fife on 10 June and was formally received by James. They were married in person a few days later at St Andrews. She was crowned as Queen Consort at Holyrood Abbey on 22 February 1540. James and Mary had two sons: James Stewart, Duke of Rothesay (b. 22 May 1540) and Robert (b. 24 April 1541). Both sons died in April 1541: James at less than a year old, and Robert only days after his older brother, and only eight days after his baptism. The third and last child of the union was a daughter, Mary, who was born on 8 December 1542. King James died six days later, making young Mary queen regnant.

James V, King of Scots and his second wife Mary of Guise

Regency

From 1554, she succeeded James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran as Regent of Scotland for her daughter Queen Mary I, who had been sent to France to be raised with her husband-to-be, the son of the French king Henry II. Mary consulted her brothers in France – Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, and Francis, Duke of Guise, both of whom held government positions – so Scotland and France worked as allies in dealing with other nations.

Mary's regency was threatened, however, by the growing influence of the Scottish Protestants, (namely the Protestant Lords of the Congregation), supported secretly by Elizabeth I of England. The Lords of the Congregation deeply distrusted Mary which led to a breakdown in authority. Mary called on her French family for help, which in the eyes of the Scottish Protestants questioned her loyalties to Scotland (at this time Scotland was worried about being dominated by either England or France). In 1559, the Lords of the Congregation had Mary deposed.

When Mary died of dropsy on 11 June 1560 at Edinburgh Castle, her body was taken to France and interred at the church in the Convent of Saint-Pierre in Reims, where Mary's sister Renée was abbess. Of Mary's five children, only her daughter survived her. Her only other child to survive infancy was her eldest son from her first marriage, François. Unfortunately he died in 1551.

In modern times, such as in Philippa Gregory's novel The Virgin's Lover, it has been suggested that Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered Mary's assassination by poisoning her, or, as portrayed in the 1998 film Elizabeth, that she was assassinated to protect Elizabeth's interests (although apart from the queen's direct order). However, there is a lack of evidence to prove such an allegation. In the usually paranoid 16th century political climate, many royal deaths were suspected of having been the result of poisoning; such as Catherine of Aragon's, Henry Fitzroy's or Jeanne d'Albret's. However, Mary's death was evidently of natural causes and it was, in fact, one of the very few which her contemporaries felt bore no signs of "foul play".^{[citation needed]}

Portrayal in fiction

• Mary de Guise appears in volumes 1, 2, 3 and 5 of The The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. Most notably, the events around her visit to her daughter in France in 1550 are portrayed in the second volume, Queens' Play.
• In the 1998 film "Elizabeth", Mary was played by the French actress Fanny Ardant.

Ancestry

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)

• Marshall, Rosalind K, Mary of Guise: Queen of Scots, NMS Publishing, Edinburgh, 2001 (reprinted 2008) ISBN 978 1 901663 63 1
• Pamela E. Ritchie - Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548-1560: A Political Study (2002)
• Undiscovered Scotland

External links

• Mary De Guise-Lorraine