Who were Mary Queen of Scots husbands?

Answer 1

Short Answer:

1. Francis II(House of Valois-Angoulême), King of France and King Consort of Scotland, Dauphin of Viennois and Duke of Brittany. 1558-1560 (Francis died of a brain absess)
2. Henry Stewart or Stuart, King Consort of Scotland, Lord Darnely and Duke of Albany. 1565-1567 (Darnely was brutally murdered)
3. James Hepburn, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Duke of Orkney and Earl of Bothwell. 1567-1578 (Bothwell was imprisoned and died suffering from insanity in Denmark)

Longer answer linking one marriage to the other with additional details of how the marriages began and came to an end:

Mary, Queen of Scots(a.k.a Mary Stewart or Stuart andMary I of Scotland) was the only legitimate surviving child of James V of Scotland and his French wife Marie De(of) Guise.

She was first betrothed to Henry VIII of England's only legitimate son Prince Edward (later Edward VI of England). On 1 July 1543 - when Mary was six months of age but already The Queen - the Treaty of Greenwich was signed. This promised that - when she reached ten years of age - Mary would marry Edward and move to England, where King Henry could oversee her upbringing. The treaty provided that the two countries would remain legally separate and that if the couple should fail to have children the temporary union would dissolve. However, Cardinal Beaton rose to power and began to push a pro-Catholic pro-French agenda, which angered Henry, who wanted to break the Scottish alliance with France.

Shortly before Mary's coronation on 9 September 1543, Scottish merchants headed for France were arrested by Henry, and their goods impounded. The arrests caused anger in Scotland, and Arran joined Beaton and became a Catholic. The Treaty of Greenwich was rejected by the Parliament of Scotland in December. The rejection of the marriage treaty and the renewal of the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland prompted Henry's "Rough Wooing", a military campaign designed to impose the marriage of Mary to his son.

In May 1546, Beaton was murdered by Protestant lairds,and on 10 September 1547, nine months after the death of Henry VIII, the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. Mary's guardians, fearful for her safety, sent her to Inchmahome Priory for no more than three weeks, and turned to the French for help.

The French king, Henry II, proposed to unite France and Scotland by marrying the young queen to his three-year-old son, the Dauphin Francis. On the promise of French military help, and a French dukedom for himself, Arran agreed to the marriage. In February 1548, Mary was moved, again for her safety, to Dumbarton Castle.The English left a trail of devastation behind once more and seized the strategic town of Haddington. In June, the much awaited French help arrived at Leith to besiege and ultimately take Haddington. On 7 July 1548, a Scottish Parliament held at a nunnery near the town agreed to a French marriage treaty.

With her marriage agreement in place, five-year-old Mary was sent to France to spend the next thirteen years at the French court. The French fleet sent by Henry II of France, commanded by Nicolas de Villegagnon, sailed with Mary from Dumbarton on 7 August 1548 and arrived a week or more later at Roscoff or Saint-Pol-de-Léon in Brittany. She was accompanied by her own court including two illegitimate half-brothers, and the "four Marys", four girls her own age, all named Mary, who were the daughters of some of the most noble families in Scotland: Beaton, Seton, Fleming, and Livingston. Janet, Lady Fleming, who was Mary Fleming's mother and James V's half-sister, was appointed governess.

On 4 April 1558, Mary signed a secret agreement bequeathing Scotland and her claim to England to the French crown if she died without issue. Twenty days later, she married the Dauphin at Notre Dame de Paris, and Francis became king consort of Scotland. When Henry II died on 10 July 1559 from injuries sustained in a joust, fifteen-year-old Francis became King of France, with Mary, aged sixteen, as his queen consort. Two of Mary's uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, were now dominant in French politics,enjoying an ascendancy called by some historians la tyrannie Guisienne.

King Francis II died on 5 December 1560, of a middle ear infection which led to an abscess in his brain. Mary was grief-stricken. Her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, became regent for the late king's ten-year-old brother Charles IX, who inherited the French throne.

Mary returned to Scotland nine months after her husband's death, arriving in Leith on 19 August 1561. Mary had lived in France since the age of five, and had little direct experience of the dangerous and complex political situation in Scotland. As a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by many of her subjects, as well as by Elizabeth I of England, her father's cousin. Scotland was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions, and Mary's illegitimate half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was a leader of the Protestants. The Protestant reformer John Knox preached against Mary, condemning her for hearing Mass, dancing, and dressing too elaborately. She summoned him to her presence to remonstrate with him unsuccessfully, and later charged him with treason, but he was acquitted and released.

Mary had briefly met her English-born first cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in February 1561 when she was in mourning for Francis. Darnley's parents, the Earl and Countess of Lennox, who were Scottish aristocrats as well as English landowners, had sent him to France ostensibly to extend their condolences while hoping for a potential match between their son and Mary.Both Mary and Darnley were grandchildren of Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII of England, and patrilineal descendants of the High Stewards of Scotland. Darnley shared a more recent Stewart lineage with the Hamilton family as a descendant of Mary Stewart, Countess of Arran, a daughter of James II of Scotland. They next met on Saturday 17 February 1565 at Wemyss Castle in Scotland, after which Mary fell in love with the "long lad" (as Queen Elizabeth called him-he was over six feet tall).They married at Holyrood Palace on 29 July 1565, even though both were Catholic and a papal dispensation for the marriage of first cousins had not been obtained.

Before long, Darnley grew arrogant. Not content with his position as king consort, he demanded the Crown Matrimonial, which would have made him a co-sovereign of Scotland with the right to keep the Scottish throne for himself if he outlived his wife. Mary refused his request, and their marriage grew strained even though they conceived by October 1565. He was jealous of her friendship with her Catholic private secretary, David Rizzio, who was rumoured to be the father of her child. By March 1566, Darnley had entered into a secret conspiracy with Protestant lords, including the nobles who had rebelled against Mary in the Chaseabout Raid. On 9 March, a group of the conspirators, accompanied by Darnley, murdered Rizzio in front of the pregnant Mary at a dinner party in Holyrood Palace. Over the next two days, a disillusioned Darnley switched sides, and Mary received Moray at Holyrood. On the night of 11-12 March, Darnley and Mary escaped from the palace, and took temporary refuge in Dunbar Castle before returning to Edinburgh on 18 March. The former rebels Lords Moray, Argyll and Glencairn were restored to the council.

At Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh, at the end of November 1566, Mary and leading nobles held a meeting to discuss the "problem of Darnley". Divorce was discussed, but then a bond was probably sworn between the lords present to get rid of Darnley by other means: "It was thought expedient and most profitable for the commonwealth ... that such a young fool and proud tyrant should not reign or bear rule over them; ... that he should be put off by one way or another; and whosoever should take the deed in hand or do it, they should defend." Darnley feared for his safety and after the baptism of his son at Stirling shortly before Christmas, he went to Glasgow to stay on his father's estates. At the start of the journey, he was afflicted by a fever, possibly smallpox, syphilis, or the result of poison, and he remained ill for some weeks.

In late January 1567, Mary prompted her husband to come back to Edinburgh. He recuperated from his illness in a house belonging to the brother of Sir James Balfour at the former abbey of Kirk o' Field, just within the city wall. Mary visited him daily, so that it appeared a reconciliation was in progress. On the night of 9-10 February 1567, Mary visited her husband in the early evening and then attended the wedding celebrations of a member of her household, Bastian Pagez. In the early hours of the morning, an explosion devastated Kirk o' Field, and Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently smothered. There were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body. The Earl of Bothwell,the Earl of Moray, Secretary Maitland, the Earl of Morton and Mary herself were among those who came under suspicion. Elizabeth I wrote to Mary of the rumours, "I should ill fulfil the office of a faithful cousin or an affectionate friend if I did not ... tell you what all the world is thinking. Men say that, instead of seizing the murderers, you are looking through your fingers while they escape; that you will not seek revenge on those who have done you so much pleasure, as though the deed would never have taken place had not the doers of it been assured of impunity. For myself, I beg you to believe that I would not harbour such a thought."

By the end of February, Bothwell was generally believed to be guilty of Darnley's assassination. Lennox, Darnley's father, demanded that Bothwell be tried before the Estates of Parliament, to which Mary agreed, but Lennox's request for a delay to gather evidence was denied. In the absence of Lennox, and with no evidence presented, Bothwell was acquitted after a seven-hour trial on 12 April. A week later, Bothwell managed to get more than two dozen lords and bishops to sign the Ainslie Tavern Bond, in which they agreed to support his aim to marry the queen.

On 6 May, Mary and Bothwell returned to Edinburgh from Stirling and on 15 May, at either Holyrood Palace or Holyrood Abbey, they were married according to Protestant rites. Bothwell and his first wife - Jean Gordon - had divorced twelve days previously.

The marriage was tempestuous, and Mary became despondent.Twenty-six Scottish peers, known as the confederate lords, turned against Mary and Bothwell, raising an army against them. Mary and Bothwell confronted the lords at Carberry Hill on 15 June, but there was no battle as Mary's forces dwindled away through desertion during negotiations. Bothwell was given safe passage from the field, and the lords took Mary to Edinburgh, where crowds of spectators denounced her as an adulteress and murderer.The following night, she was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle, on an island in the middle of Loch Leven.Between 20 July and 23 July, Mary miscarried twins. On 24 July, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son James. Moray was made regent, while Bothwell was driven into exile. He was imprisoned in Denmark, became insane and died in 1578.

Answer 2

Mary Queen of Scots was married to Francis II of France(1558-1560), Lord Henry Stuart of Darnley(1565-1567) and Lord James Hepburn of Bothwell(1567-1578).

Answer 3

Francis, the Dauphin of France, who became King Francis II of France.

Answer 4

Francis, Dauphin of France Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell

Answer 5

Mary I of Scotland was married on three occasions. Her first husband was Francis II of France from 1558 to 1559.

Answer 6

Her third husband was James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.good luck with your research!