Mary, Queen of Scots summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Mary.

Mary, Queen of Scots, orig. Mary Stuart, (born Dec. 8, 1542, Linlithgow Palace, West Lothian, Scot.—died Feb. 8, 1587, Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, Eng.), Queen of Scotland (1542–67). She became queen when her father, James V (1512–42), died six days after her birth. She was sent by her mother, Mary of Guise, to be raised at the court of the French king Henry II and was married in 1558 to his son Francis II. After Francis’s brief rule as king (1559–60) ended with his premature death, Mary returned to Scotland (1561), where she was distrusted because of her Catholic upbringing. In 1565 the red-haired queen married her ambitious cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and became a victim of intrigues among the Scottish nobles. Darnley conspired with them to murder her confidant David Riccio. After the birth of her son James (later James I of England) in 1566, Mary was estranged from Darnley, who was murdered in 1567. Ignoring objections by the jealous Scottish nobility, she married James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell (1535?–78), a suspect in Darnley’s murder. The rebellious nobles deserted her army at Carberry Hill and forced her to abdicate in favour of her son (1567). After failed attempts to win back the throne, she sought refuge in England with her cousin Elizabeth I, who arranged to keep her in captivity. Several uprisings by English Catholics in Mary’s favour convinced Elizabeth to have Mary tried and condemned; she was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587.

James I Summary

James I was the king of Scotland (as James VI) from 1567 to 1625 and first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625, who styled himself “king of Great Britain.” James was a strong advocate of royal absolutism, and his conflicts with an increasingly self-assertive Parliament set the stage for the

government Summary

Government, the political system by which a country or community is administered and regulated. Most of the key words commonly used to describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000 years and have not

England Summary

England, predominant constituent unit of the United Kingdom, occupying more than half of the island of Great Britain. Outside the British Isles, England is often erroneously considered synonymous with the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) and even with the entire United

Scotland Summary

Scotland, most northerly of the four parts of the United Kingdom, occupying about one-third of the island of Great Britain. The name Scotland derives from the Latin Scotia, land of the Scots, a Celtic people from Ireland who settled on the west coast of Great Britain about the 5th century ce. The