Guest Blog by Barbara Henderson
To continue our celebrations of International Women’s Day and the important conversations that continue throughout March, we are delighted to welcome a guest post from author Barbara Henderson.
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If you hear the name of Mary, Queen of Scots – what pops into your head?
I’m no mind reader, but I can predict that you are seeing a figure clad in black, a white hood resembling a nun, a crucifix perhaps. You are seeing prison bars and an executioner’s block. If you love a bit of gore, you may even imagine a rolling head. Yes, without a doubt, Mary has become a tragic figure, associated with scandal, murder, abduction, imprisonment, plots, and a thousand terrible decisions.
But wait – is that the only Mary? Perhaps, on this International Women’s Day, we owe it to her to cast our net more widely instead of reducing her to the tragic caricature we have become so familiar with.
In The Boy, the Witch and the Queen of Scots, we meet Mary at the tender age of 18. She has already experienced much. Queen at only 6 days old (her father reportedly turned his face to the wall and died when he discovered that his wife Marie de Guise had born him a daughter instead of the longed-for heir), she was effectively evacuated to France and separated from her surviving parent as a small child. Raised at the French court, she was now safe from Henry VIII’s ‘rough wooing’. The English King had his eye on the girl as a bride for his own son, but was denied. Instead, Mary married the French Dauphin as a teenage bride at Notre Dame Cathedral. Soon after, tragedy struck for the young Queen of France. Reportedly, an ear infection caused the death of Mary’s husband. Widowed and now of little use to the French court, Mary chose to return to Scotland to take up her throne.
From the frying pan into the fire! Scotland had recently embraced the reformation and become Protestant, with many areas remaining pockets of Catholicism. Resentful Catholic noblemen like the Earl of Huntly longed to manipulate the Catholic Mary to rise up and become a figurehead for a Catholic counter-reformation, but Mary would have none of it. She sought dialogue with the Protestant ‘Lords of the Congregation’ and the firebrand preacher John Knox. When this proved difficult, she stood up to them, just as she stood up to the increasingly deceitful Earl of Huntly. She rode north personally, publicly snubbing the Earl’s invitation (suspecting a kidnap plot, likely with good reason), and establishing her authority as far north as Inverness in the vast lands controlled by the Earl. She was personally present at the Battle of Corrichie, where their forces finally met, and she was victorious and decisive: the Earl and his son paid for their rebellion with their lives.
Yes, she was terrible at choosing good men. Haven’t many of us been there? Let’s not judge her too harshly. Let’s not reduce her to the tragic prototype we are so familiar with.
One could argue that Mary embraced an almost modern approach to religion. She agreed that Scotland may remain protestant, but that she should be allowed to practise Catholicism privately – echoes of ‘live and let live’, surely.
A competent rider and hunter, fond of outdoor exercise. A young woman in love with dancing, party games and music, an accomplished lute player. A considerate employer, attentive to the needs of her faithful servants, even beyond her own death. Adventurous, assertive and yes, courageous.
Yes, all this is Mary, too.
And now that I have got this off my chest: Happy International Women’s Day!
