Interesting facts about Marie Stuart

[Silja]

 Was it not Elizabeth who put him in the path of the Scots queen anyway?

This is how the film Mary, Queen of Scots presents it. But from what I've read this isn't historically accurate either. Elizabeth was  apparently quite upset about the union because Henry Darnley, too, was somewhere in line of succession to the English throne. Mary and Darnley married thus might have posed an even greater threat to Elizabeth.

[helenazar]

This is how the film Mary, Queen of Scots presents it. But from what I've read this isn't historically accurate either. Elizabeth was  apparently quite upset about the union because Henry Darnley, too, was somewhere in line of succession to the English throne. Mary and Darnley married thus might have posed an even greater threat to Elizabeth.

Yes, this is the way I remember it too.

[Martyn]

I'll have to check this but I have always been under the impression that Elizabeth was playing cat and mouse with Mary and both the potential suitors for her hand.  She was very ambivalent about Dudley marrying Mary and I think would have preferred the Scots queen to have remained as she was - unmarried.  I was under the impression that she was pushing Darnley in a roundabout way; nevertheless her wrath upon the knowledge of the nuptials was typically Elizabethan - Darnley's mother the Countess of Lennox was immediately incarcerated in the Tower and I think that their estates were confiscated..............

[AGRBear]

Some food for thought.   I've just found the following - a sonnet written by Mary to Bothwell:

'For him I have spurned my honour,
  and disdained
 The only way true happiness is gained.
 For him, I've gambled conscience,
  rank and right!
 For him, all friends and family I've fled,
 And all respectability I've shed
 In short, with you alone will I unite.'

tsaria
 
 

This poem doesn't seem to have the same flow and design in words as have the other poems mention on this thread.

I assume it's been debated as to if it was written by Mary or someone else.

Or, maybe, I should have asked: Who claimed this poem was Mary's?

AGRBear

[Martyn]

Good point.  Requires someone who is an expert on this style of period poetry...........

[Silja]

- Dudley's mother the Countess of Lennox was immediately incarcerated in the Tower and I think that their estates were confiscated..............

Dudley's mother?

[Elisabeth]

Some food for thought.   I've just found the following - a sonnet written by Mary to Bothwell:

'For him I have spurned my honour,
  and disdained
 The only way true happiness is gained.
 For him, I've gambled conscience,
  rank and right!
 For him, all friends and family I've fled,
 And all respectability I've shed
 In short, with you alone will I unite.'

tsaria
 
 

Tsaria, could I ask you where you found this poem? Because I have looked through "Bittersweet My Heart: The Collected Poems of Mary, Queen of Scots" (ed. Robin Bell) and cannot find it - is it perhaps part of a longer poem (it should be 14 lines long if it's a sonnet) and I'm just not seeing it?

According to the editor of this book, many of these poems are of disputed authenticity - the "Sonnets to Bothwell" were originally found with the Casket Letters, and may have been faked or at the very least "tampered with." Bell thinks the poems are genuine because he argues they are consistent with Mary's "characteristic, slightly unorthodox syntax and her wordgames, puns, sideways leaps in thought and conventional piety mixed with deep emotion" as well as her later, favorite themes of "duty, devotion, honor, constancy and suffering." But I don't know enough about Mary's writings to form an opinion on this.

[helenazar]

Dudley's mother?

 I think Martyn meant "Darnley's"  

[helenazar]

I have always been under the impression that Elizabeth was playing cat and mouse with Mary and both the potential suitors for her hand. .

 I think Elizabeth was always playing some sort of "cat and mouse" games, which at first glance seemed like some kind of caprices and only later would they reveal themselves to be very shrewd political tactics. She was quite the politician and she used her gender to hide that so that she could take her opponents completely by surprise later on...  

[Elisabeth]

 I think Elizabeth was always playing some sort of "cat and mouse" games, which at first glance seemed like some kind of caprices and only later would they reveal themselves to be very shrewd political tactics. She was quite the politician and she used her gender to hide that so that she could take her opponents completely by surprise later on...  

Helen, do you think Elizabeth was always so calculating and in control, or do you think sometimes she was just a master (mistress?) at procrastinating? After all, she drove her ministers crazy with her refusal (some historians say inability) to make decisions, and not just on the marriage question.

[helenazar]

Helen, do you think Elizabeth was always so calculating and in control, or do you think sometimes she was just a master (mistress?) at procrastinating? After all, she drove her ministers crazy with her refusal (some historians say inability) to make decisions, and not just on the marriage question.

I think she was pretty calculating, under the guise of being indecisive  .

[Martyn]

I do apologise - and thank you Helen for picking that up for me - I did mean Darnley's mother!
Helen is undoubtledly right about Elizabeth's procrastinating tactics and nowhere was this illustrated more chillingly than in her decision about Mary's ultilmate fate.  Antonia Fraser has this to say
"Three days later, at her court at Greenwich, Queen Elizabeth at last sent for Davison to bring the warrant for the execution, which for so long had lacked her own signature.  Davison discreetly placed the warrant in the middle of a pile of other papers which the queen was due to sign.  The ruse - for Elizabeth had made it increasingly clear to her anxious ministers that she must be the subject of a ruse - was succesful.  It was thus, in the middle of an inocuous conversation on the subject of the weather, that Elizabeth finally signed the warrant, with all her other papers, and having done so,threw them idly down on the table......Elizabth then laid it down that she personally was to be told no more on the subject until the execution was successfully completed."
Cynical indeed.

[AGRBear]

In an article in THE HIGHLANDER, The Magazine of Scottish Heritage, Vol 22, No. 6, Nov/Dec 1984  there is an article by Diana Scarisbrick titled MIRROR OF TRAGEDY, THE JEWLES OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.  On page 32 it has --in part and in black and white-- the same portrait of Mary as I've show here  in full and under it is written:  "A posthumous portrait of Mary Stuart wearing a rosary with the inscription 'angustiae undique' (trouble on all sides)...."  The bibical story connected to this rosary is that of Susannah and the Elders, which, according to this article, symbolized "justice through devine aid".  Added to this is an "S" between the arms of the cross...

She had to deal with the Protestant Church on one side, the Catholic Church on the other, the various Scottish Clan Chiefs, and then there was the English Queen Elisabeth....  I think she was wearing a rosary which was very very true to her needs.

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

Returning to an earlier question present by Admin. Forum about Mary's Jewels and adding to this the following quote:

Bob - you were asking about Mary's jewels. Yes, she did have a particularly famous rope of black pearls, the gift of her first mother-in-law, Catherine de'Medici, when the latter was Queen of France to Henri II, and Mary wed their son, the Dauphin Francois. These pearls, as I understand, passed to Elizabeth, and may be seen in her later portraits. Did they possibly pass into the Youssoupov hoard? [there is a strand about this topic elsewhere, I believe].
MQOS is also said to have inherited a ruby [red spinel? garnet?] 'jewel,' called the Great Harry, from her Tudor grandmother, Margaret. It appears to have been one of the monogram pieces popular in the early sixteenth century. I don't know what became of it. She does not seem to have favored rings, and in later life and captivity, her Rosaries and Crucifixes appear to have been passed to those of her loyal household who remained with her.
The Honours of Scotland [the name given to its Crown Regalia], the oldest in Europe, can still be seen in Edinburgh. It was either James IV or V [grandfather and father, respectively, to MQOS] who had  them crafted, setting them in  the heyday of Renaissance design. The English regalia, of course, was broken up under the Commonwelath period.
If I find anything else, I shall surely let you know.

In the same article I mentioned above Diana Scarisbrick tells us on p. 32:  "Not all the jewels which Mary wore as Queen of France had to be returned, and by the terms of her marriage contract she could keep all acquired by gift, inheritance and purchase.  So valuable was this collection that, when she decided to return to Scotland, the Cardinal of Lorraine advised her leave her diamonds in his care, raher than risk losing them at sea. She replied, somehwat ironically, that if it were safe anough for her to travel then it was safe for her jewels."

Evidently there was/is a list of 159 jewels she carried with her back to Scotland.  And, according to this same article, she had added another 21 by 1562.

Before the birth of James VI, an inventory list was made and she made out a will to whom her jewels should go should she and the child die...

The articles talks about the various themes of the jewelry and some were more valuable than others...

Mentiones the "Great Harry".  Evdiently Mary's half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, became Regent after Mary's abdication and took possession of the "Great Harry"....  The Earl of Moray's wife took as her own and as a widow refused to return it to the Scotish Royal Collection until 1575... The "Great Harry" was sent to Queen Elisabeth at a bargain price....  In 1603 it was broken up to become part of the "Mirror of Great Britian" which was to symbolize the union of the crowns of England and Scotland.

Mary lost most of her jewels in 1567 after the rebellion of the Scottish nobility.

I'll write more later.

AGRBear

[Silja]

I think she was pretty calculating, under the guise of being indecisive  .

I disagree. I think she was both, calculating but often also truly indecisive. She often just "muddled through", that is, she often hoped a problem would solve by itself without her having to make a clear and possibly wrong decision. She was rather successful doing this.

In the case of Mary she wasn't really indecisive though. She was simply terrified at the idea of having to have an anointed monarch executed. She always hoped there would be another way eventually, therefore the procrastination. She couldn't bear to accept the responsibility for it because she felt it was wrong, and therefore the indeed cowardly and sad episode with Davison and the death warrant. I think Elizabeth R comes quite close to the truth here, as far as we can reconstruct it.