 Welcome to the British Library this evening for Mary, Queen of Scots, The Power and the Glory. My name is Karen Limper-Herz and I'm lead curator of Incunabula and 16th century printed books here at the British Library and one of the curators on the Elizabeth and Mary Royal Cousins Rival Queens exhibition. And tonight's talk is one of a number of events related to our major exhibition. To tell you about the exhibition very briefly, it is the first major exhibition to focus on Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots together. The two queens never met, but their fates were always intertwined and their complex and evolving relationship dominated English and Scottish politics for three decades. The exhibition explores the relationship between these two powerful women in the context of the religious reformation between Catholics and Protestants that divided Europe at the time. Elizabeth and Mary is based on the outstanding collections of 16th century manuscripts and printed books here at the British Library and provides a unique opportunity to see letters written by the two queens and their contemporaries displayed alongside printed books, paintings, sculptures, jewellery and other objects brought together from across the UK and Spain. The exhibition, if you haven't seen it yet, is open until the 20th of February next year. Since lockdown, we've been presenting a wide range of events digitally on our bespoke online platform and we've welcomed audiences from around the country and around the world. We would like to extend tonight a very special welcome to all those of you joining us online and we very much hope that you enjoy this evening's lecture. At the end of the lecture, we will be taking questions from our online and in-house audiences. If you're watching online, you can submit your question by using the question box below the video and for our audiences here, if you just raise your hand and magically a microphone will be brought to you. If you're watching online, you can also use the menu above the video to provide us with feedback on tonight's event and also donate to the library or order a copy of the exhibition catalogue. A couple of housekeeping notes for those of us here in the room. If you haven't already done so, could I please ask you to either turn off or turn on silent your mobile phones, please? And we're not expecting a fire alarm tonight, so if you hear the fire alarm go off, please follow the green exit signs. That's enough of the preamble. And it was my very great pleasure to welcome Dr. Amy Blakeway here this evening for her lecture in which she delves into how Mary Queen of Scots wielded her power and influence. Amy is a lecturer in Scottish history at the University of St Andrews. She's an expert on 16th century Scottish politics, propaganda and Scotland's relations with England and France. She's published widely on these topics and enjoys sharing her research through regular appearances on BBC Radio Scotland's time travels and also public lectures. Her forthcoming publication, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528-42, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan next year. Please now join me in welcoming Amy to the British Library this evening to deliver her lecture, Mary Queen of Scots, The Power and the Glory. Amy. Don't worry, I've lateral flowed. It's just usual university plague. Thank you very, very much, both those of you in the room who've come here tonight on what could have been a nice October glass of wine enjoying the last of the London sunshine evening, but also to those of you at home, and particularly to those of you for whom this might be your first time at the British Library. It's really, I suppose, what I was going to say, something like a sweet shop for historians in terms of all of the manuscripts, perhaps a treasure trove, but actually standing here tonight on the stage, I've realised the best analogy for me right now is probably Vegas. Lecturing at the British Library is basically playing Vegas for a historian. So I'm pretty excited to be here, and if anyone's got any like glitter, champagne, roses, you know, I'm your woman. And I think the subject of tonight's lecture would have liked glitter, champagne and roses as well. So we're talking about Mary Queen of Scots, and to introduce her, we've got this fabulous image. How many people tonight, sorry, sorry at home people, don't feel excluded. I'm interested in you've been to the exhibition too. How many in the room with me tonight people have actually seen the exhibition? Not enough. The rest of you have got like, you need to be getting sorted. I mean, maybe you're just waiting till the weekend, but go and see it, because one of the things you're going to encounter there is this beautiful piece. This is a depiction of Mary Queen of Scots's arms, her heraldic achievements produced in a very particular moment. This is the moment just after Mary Tudor, Queen of England died, and Elizabeth exceeded, and for that one glorious moment, Mary thought she would be able to stake a claim, either real or perhaps just in terms of spin and propaganda, and we'll talk about that an awful lot tonight, in the minds of the people. And it shows her achievements as Queen Dauphiness of France. We see the little dolphins there to signify that next to the French Fleur de Lis. The Scottish Lion Rampant, I would explain to my students, Lion Rampant really easy to remember. He's the one going, Rar! Lion Couchant is the one going, Rar! So the Lion Rampants are the two standing up lions, and then the blue and red squares, they're the arms of England that Mary is laying claim to, and this is featured in the exhibition showing Mary at this one particular moment. So Queen of Lots of Places. But in her, tonight, we're going to focus on her as Queen of Scots, the title she held from when she was six days old after her father's death at Flodden, until, at least in her own mind, her own death many years later at the hands of an English executioner. But tonight I want to start on the 19th of June, 1566. The date went perhaps in the eyes and judged by the standards of an early modern monarch, Mary had achieved her greatest triumph. On the 19th of June, 1566, Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to a healthy baby boy. This was the Queen's first known pregnancies. There'd been no miscarriages, there'd been no girls beforehand. Surely this was a sign of our Lord's favour for the Queen of Scots to bring her an heir in her first pregnancy so soon after her marriage. The Scots, of course, rejoiced. Having an heir if you were monarch was more than just having a cute baby and to be able to sell some extra clothes in the kiddie market or for hello. Having a baby meant dynastic security. It meant that if anything happens to you, your country wouldn't be plunged into civil war. It meant that you would keep your people safe through providing strong and consistent government. And Mary had achieved this. You would therefore perhaps have expected that the English might react in a happy manner. Being Scotland's only land border and indeed Scotland being England's only land border, security in Scotland mattered to the English. Well, you'd think wrong. Elizabeth's reaction to Mary's giving birth to a healthy baby boy is recorded here by Sir James Melville of Howell Hill, Mary's ambassador who was sent to tell the news to Elizabeth herself. So soon as the secretary, this is William Sessell, Elizabeth's secretary, whispered in Elizabeth's ear the news of the prince's birth or merriness was that I decide for the night. All present marvelling, what might move so sudden a change for the queen to sit down with her hand on her cheek bursting out to some of her ladies. The queen of Scots was lighter of a fair sun while she was but a barren stock. And this in the second shout out to the exhibition already this evening. The memoirs of Sir James Melville of Howell Hill is one of the treasures that's on display in the British Library exhibition just over the way. So what we see here is Mary at the top of her game. She's done what a monarch needs to do and this is celebrated. The baptism takes place in December between the 17th and the 19th. Yes, that's a three day party. And those of you who've seen the exhibition will know that Elizabeth sent as her gift being godmother to the young prince, a solid golden font. It's been melted down and lost since but I mean this was a pretty spectacular present. And Mary as the hostess with the most s was not to be outdone. The three days of celebration included hunting. They included a formal ceremony where the ambassadors from England, from France and from Savoy were formally presented to the queen. There was feasting, of course, and there were performances, some of which alluded to Arthur, the mythical king of a united Britain. But it was also a sign and also a moment for domestic reconciliation. The arrival of an heir provided Mary with an opportunity to get all of her nobility together and to get them to play nice for them to walk together, Protestant and Catholic alike. And particularly important here perhaps was the Earl of Argyle whose influence in Ireland meant he was always of interest to the English and the fact the English ambassador saw him being so good and obedient to his queen really showed London how in charge Mary was. And the climax of these, or perhaps the centre point of these celebrations for the baptism, a pretend fortress was built. It was all taking place in Stirling, by the way, in December outside. So I'm not quite sure how she managed it. Perhaps she had a really lovely wolfskin coat, but she went outside with her court to watch this pretend fortress being besieged by actors and then burnt to the ground with fireballs. And this is a really lavish display of wealth. This is a thing that Renaissance princes love to do. You create something temporary, you create something spectacular and then you destroy it to show your wealth. They're not really into sustainability. It took three days to clear the fortress up. I don't know about you guys, but that's a hell of a party. What this all shows is this is a monarch at the absolute top of her game and she knew it. And she took advantage of this. So after having treated an English ambassador to seeing all of these well-behaved nobles, seeing all of these fantastical celebrations, seeing this ostentatious display of wealth and this style, Mary got down to brass tacks. And she wrote to her cousin just after the New Year festivities. I'm sorry, I can see a typo on there. Oh, sorry, that sort of said 1567. And this is the original letter, but because it might be a bit difficult to read from a distance, I've done a bit of a transcript. And Elizabeth received this from Mary. Mary said to Elizabeth, we've always commended ourselves and the justice, the equity of our cause to you. And we've always looked for good true friendship with you. And because of this, we've continued, well, rather, on this end, we've continued to direct ourselves towards you. And now we think that we're really assured of your friendship. So she thinks Elizabeth is going to be her friend. This has been given to her by so large proof, knowledge of her good mind and entire affection. And she doesn't doubt that in time convenient, Elizabeth is going to perfect and consummate the thing you've begun to utter to your own people and to other nations, which is the opinion you have of the equity of our cause and your affection towards us, namely, in the examining of the will supposedly made by the King, your father, which some would lay as a bar in our way. Now, those of you who've seen the exhibition are going to know what she's talking about. Mary is talking about the issue of the English succession. Having just had a son, one of the first things on the serious diplomatic agenda is to write to Elizabeth and to say, you need to sort this out. Look at the strength in this language. This is what you need to do. You need to examine the will of the King, your father, which allegedly is a breakpoint, something that we should preclude Mary from getting the English throne. This is someone who knows how to work the room. This is somebody who knows about power. And it also shows a very strong awareness, a strong grasp of the legal and technical aspects of the case. This is not somebody who is ranting and raving. This is someone who has the facts that her command and is able to deploy them. But it's also somebody who is not working alone. Because the next day, another letter was penned. Not from Mary, but from this man, William Maitland of Lethington, Mary's loyal secretary, one of the cleverest men in Europe at this time, known as a wily fox by the English diplomats, who were his friends, but also justifiably afraid of him because of his intelligence and the way it could be deployed for his sovereign. And so the day after Mary wrote to Elizabeth, Maitland wrote to Elizabeth's secretary, William Cecil, Lord Burley, and he's the chap on the right. And Maitland said to Cecil, I can't be ignorant that some do object that Her Majesty, Mary, has foreign birth, and thereby she's incapable of the inheritance of England. So people are saying if you're born abroad, you're not allowed to inherit the throne. And he responds, this is a bit embold, but that you know for answer what might be said by any English patron of my mistress's cause, although being a Scott, I won't affirm the same. There arises a question among you whether the realm of Scotland be fourth of the homage and legions of England. And here too, for you in sundry books laboured at several times, laboured much to prove the homage and fealty of Scotland to England. Your stories be not void of this intent. What the judgment of the fathers of your law is matters you know better than I. Now there's a lot going on here, an awful lot to unpack. But Maitland is referring to the fact that William Cecil, before he became Elizabeth's right-hand man in the early years of his political career, served a different master, King Edward VI. And serving King Edward VI of England, Cecil was involved in a regime which created propaganda arguing that Scotland was subject to England. Scotland was a vassal state of England. And here, William Maitland is turning this neatly around a God Cecil. He's saying, okay, you're objecting my queen can't be queen of England because she's foreign-born. But if you believe that Scotland is really a vassal state of England, she's not a foreigner, is she? She's as English as you yourself. And your argument that she should not be queen of your country comes to nothing. I think it's not for nothing that one of my fourth years described this once as the sassy letter, which is how I still carry on thinking of it. And again, we're seeing a knowledge of technical legal expertise here. And we're seeing the two letters working as a team. Mary's asking in a straightforward manner for her, for Henry VIII's will to be examined. And Maitland of Lettington is making longer and more expansive arguments. Now, seeing this sophisticated United regime in early 1567 does raise an obvious question. How did it all go wrong so quickly? Why was it that Mary spent the next Christmas locked up in Lochleven Castle? Now, I could spend my entire career trying to answer that question, but I'm hoping, I'm sure some of you are as well, to make a train about nine o'clock. So perhaps we won't delve into that tonight. We're going to be doing something else. Instead, we're going to ask another question, which I think is answered less often, but it's just as interesting. We tend to compare Mary, Queen of Scots to Elizabeth I. And this makes sense for a lot of reasons. They're both female monarchs, and that's quite unusual at this stage. And as a consequence, they face some of the same challenges, including a shared experience of imprisonment. And again, this is a point made by the exhibition. There are also women who were alive at the same time and actually had a relationship. So when we're studying them, when we're looking at the two together, it's almost impossible not to compare them. And of course, there's the completely diametrically opposed views summed up by these images. Elizabeth as the Virgin, Queen at her coronation, Mary as the Mermaid as the Whore. So that provides a nice freeson of dramatic tension, even if it's perhaps a little misogynistic and slightly outdated in its views of women. But as a historian, although I think the Mary and Elizabeth comparison is interesting and it's intriguing, it's problematic for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this Madonna Whore view, which a lot of it is pinned on, is based on hindsight. Contemporaries don't know Elizabeth isn't going to marry. They think she's going to. Contemporaries also don't know that Mary is going to be depicted largely after she is deposed as a sexually voracious woman who cannot be trusted. It's also problematic, not only because of hindsight, because it's a comparison which Mary's contemporaries and Elizabeth's contemporaries for that matter would have been very ill placed to draw. Very few of them had actually met the two women. Very few of them had experienced what it was like to be in the same room of them. And because they were queens of different countries, nobody ever experienced what it was like to be a subject of both Mary and Elizabeth. So if you're thinking about these women as queens, this is not a good comparison to make because it's something that places them beyond the realms of what contemporaries would have done. So then who should we compare Mary to? Who might her contemporaries have thought about when they witnessed her rule and thought, what's she doing? How well is she performing? They might have compared her to the French monarchy. Mary's was a course brought up in France. She was Queen of France. Here she is with her first husband, Francis II. And indeed, many of her subjects travelled to France. They knew the situation there. But I think it's most likely they would have compared her to her father, James V of Scotland, here in an absolutely stunning portrait produced in the French court. Again, also can see him depicted alongside her mother, Marie Deguise, in the exhibition itself. Now, I wanted to introduce James V briefly because we're going to talk about him an awful lot as we go through this lecture. James V has had a bit of a bad rep from historians. He's seen as somebody who is a little bit problematic, a king who was quite fond of power, quite fond of money and less perhaps enamoured of things like justice. I think a lot of that is untrue and recently historians have strongly argued against it. Instead, what we're seeing is that James V was a monarch with an extremely glamorous court. He was a patron of the literary arts. Plays were performed in his court and we know about them from the texts and from reports by English ambassadors. There was a thriving poetic culture and these sources are particularly rich because they give us little insights into what the world was like beyond... the world that we don't see beyond the other sources. James V's court poetry tells us things about the fact he had a court parrot who is critiqued and used as a figure of fun in one of these poems. It tells us that he had an extremely naughty dog who was so sure of the king's favour that she used to jump onto the king's bed even when it had a cloth of gold bedspread on it. I'm slightly worried my own dog might be listening in from home, so I hope her ears were covered for that little interlude. So there's a lot of really interesting vibrant court life. James travelled to Scotland to meet his first wife Madalena of France and he experienced, like Mary, French court culture. And like Mary, James produced this vibrant, exciting, interesting, intellectual court following a long minority. Mary came to the throne aged six days old but James himself had come to the throne a little over a year old, about 18 months. So these are both individuals who need to really build their power up from the ground up. They've not taken over directly from their predecessor. Tonight, I want to suggest that Mary, working with a team of advisors who had served the regimes that came before her, that of her mother, who had ruled as regent during her minority, her cousin, who had also served as regent, her father was consciously maintaining Scottish-Stewart traditions of monarchy. And I've already noted a lot of things which have direct comparisons to Mary's court. And this comparison, I think, provides a realistic measure by which we should judge Mary as queen by how we should see her as a monarch of Scotland. Now, this argument isn't entirely new and I'm going to do a little bit of what historians said because I'm aware there are some A-level students listening in from home, so hello A-level students, I'm going to give you a bit of historiography, whack it in the essay, teacher will love it. So in the 1980s, a historian called Jenny Wormold argued that we ought to judge Mary alongside her pre-decessors and this was a good development because it sort of moved us away from the previous scholarship on Mary which had all been a bit romantic. I mean, you know the kind, a bit sort of, a bit faster. Who was this man with the excellent legs walking towards her? She could sense he had royal blood. Her passion cultivated in the court of France grew quicker in her breast and so on and so forth, right? You know, the kind of thing like hot on bodice ripping less on the primary sources. So this historian Jenny Wormold made a really good move in moving away from that and saying we need to actually treat her as a serious figure and we need to judge her by her pre-decessors. The conclusion that Wormold drew really was sort of said in the title of the book Mary was a failure. The title of the book was Mary, Queen of Scots, colon, a study in failure, something else for the students out in the audience, well-placed colon, teacher all of that too. But this is a good move forward. The problem was it was working on a relatively limited source base and it was working from a set of assumptions about monarchy which we might want to challenge. And subsequently we've indeed seen some very persuasive challenges to that initial foray, which although it broke new ground and set a new agenda didn't do everything. For example, John Guy, who spoke a couple of weeks ago and who contributed to the exhibition catalogue. There was part of this sort of challenge reassessing Mary more positively and also a historian called Michael Lynch who worked extensively on her court ceremony including on the baptism which I discussed at the beginning. This is all really good but the focus on ceremonial and with it a looking towards France what had Mary seen in terms of ceremony in France is great but it's partial. Mary wasn't just an up-to-date European monarch, she was a European monarch and an up-to-date one at that because she appreciated and worked within what had gone before. In the early modern period they were very obsessed with the idea of the past of drawing from your lineage and Mary understood that. Now tonight I'm going to give you two examples of this. The first, I'm going to think about Mary as a very serious monarch in a project launched by her regime to clarify and promulgate a clear set of laws for Scotland. So that'll be the first thing. And after that, so that's a kind of I guess the theory of government. And the second thing I'm going to think about and example if you will is a more practical aspect of government, thinking about her relationship with her half-brother, the Earl of Murray. And we're going to assess both of these ventures in the context of Stuart Government. Now I'm aware that thinking about the clarification and promulgation of law is a little bit heavy for eight o'clock on a Thursday evening. So I thought we'd turn this into a fun game of Spot the Difference. I'm not actually going to shout out to the audience to Spot the Difference except I can kind of make eye contact with Karen so if I run out of things to say I might pounce on you, so get looking hard. Also I know you so it's not rude. But these are, what we're looking at here are two early printed books and these are both covers of books of the Acts of Parliament. The one nearer to me is produced by James V's regime and this comes out in 1540 and the one further from me is produced by Mary Queen of Scots regime. And the reason this wouldn't actually be a good game of Spot the Difference is there are very few differences to Spot because indeed what Mary has done is she has literally for her Acts of Parliament borrowed the cover of her father's book. Can you guys see that? What they've happened, they've kept that woodcut illustration and to reuse it they've scratched out Jacobus Rex, King James and they've replaced it with Maria Regina Queen Mary and then the title at the top is slightly different but that is exactly the same image. This means you pick up this and you are straight away going to see that Mary is her father's daughter. She is working in the same tradition as Stuart Monarchy and it's not just the image, right? This means that because they've used the same woodcut, they've got the same size book, they have got the same format. This is also going to feel very familiar for the administrators using this. Not only that, as well as using James the Fifth's book which was just the Acts of his own Parliament Mary incorporated ooh yep, that's up the text of her father's book into her own and we can see this here. This is the last page of the Acts of James the Fifth's Parliament and this little bit of text at the bottom basically says this is them as they have been printed as they were printed by James the Fifth his command in 1540 and we can also see some of the examples here of Mary's regime consciously emulating that of her father. You can see there that Latin name, Jacobus Foulis that's James Fowles. Now he's the Clark Register, really important person in the Scottish regime he's got responsibility for keeping records basically but the appearance of the name of the Clark Register in James's book was copied by Mary's regime this is partly how the regime is indicating this is an authentic book and you can see this little Latin little set of couplets below his name that is also repeated throughout Mary's book. They copy that and they use it throughout. So it is consciously drawing on what her father did it is consciously using law using the sense of Scotland as an independent country with a long history and with its own independence to justify her monarchy. I also think given that previous examples of the Acts of Parliament circulated in manuscript in handwriting looked a bit like this means that the contemporaries who viewed that rather stylish printed book that looked like that with a little bit of relief. I certainly would do. Perhaps another one for the students, neat handwriting neat handwriting. Now this was a really big project and that's a quick overview of it. I don't want to go into the kind of detailed technical stuff but I hope what I've shown you there is that Mary is using the types of propaganda associated with the printing press but also the kind of intellectual work she's doing what Monarchs are supposed to do that her father did and it's a conscious continuation of that. But of course I've been talking about Mary and her dad. This is not the kind of thing that you can do quickly. This is something that takes a lot of resource. This is something that takes an awful lot of people. It creates, it really needs a team and a key member of Mary's team was her half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Murray here depicted in an absolutely stunning portrait done around the time of his marriage. Now I'll just briefly introduce the Earl of Murray to you. He was a pointed regent. He was a pointed regent in the immediate aftermath of Mary's deposition. The so-called letters of abdication, I say so-called because she was forced to sign the things. The pointed him as regent. Before that, he'd been someone who's an important part of Mary's regime. He was someone who was used to power. After his appointment as regent, he was present when the casket letters, these documents that incriminated Mary, accused her of complicity at the least if not active for knowledge and planning of her second husband's murder were present and his assassination in 1570, 23rd of January in Linn-Lithgow was the first assassination of a head of state with a handgun which is a pretty cool fact generally but is significant because it prompted an extremely long and bloody civil war in Scotland, which at times gave Mary the possibility of the possibility and the hope that she might be re-restored. So when you think about Mary and Murray, because he's regent after her deposition, you tend to kind of think of him as a bit of a binary, a bit of polar opposites. It's almost like he's Darth Vader to her princess layer, the big bad wolf to her little red riding hood, or perhaps it's the other way around, perhaps he's the Aslan to her white witch, the Batman to her catwoman. Now I've deliberately gone for some fictional baddies and goodies here that are a little bit cartoonish because basically I want to give you a little bit of a sense of the type of characterisation that was given to these royal half-siblings in the aftermath of her deposition by the propagandists who were so keen to justify what went on. And we're just going to go through one example tonight. So this is George Buchanan's History of Scotland. George Buchanan had started his career in the court of James V, so he knew their father. He had been close to Mary, they'd read the classics together after dinner, but he'd also served at times in various roles around the court. And after Mary's deposition he was appointed tutor to young James VI which is why that monarch was so well educated and you see some examples of that towards the end of the exhibition. So you can learn someone who knows both of these people but he has signed up on the opposite side. He doesn't like Mary, not only does he not like her, he wants to make it look legal that she was chucked off the throne. And he creates a big historically based legal theory for that but I mean what's the point of a big historically based legal theory when you can't also have some really rich, ripe insults out there to make sure that you're hitting everything, the broadsheets through to the tabloids as it were. Okay, so this is what he says about Mary. She so demeaned herself for some time, she'd forgotten not only the dignity of a queen but even the modesty of a matron. She gave darnly poison and she would provide for her lust too of which she was very impatient. So we're seeing here a critique of Mary which is based on her as a woman, women are seen in this period as being extremely lustful and somebody who is not only incapable of controlling her physical passions and if she's incapable of controlling her own passions how is she going to be able to rule a country if she's a murderous and somebody who will murder because of her own lust, how can we put her in a position of power? Look at how this contrasts with Murray, the public father of his country. So Mary can't even behave like a respectable woman a matron but Murray is the public father of his country. And his house was like a holy temple, was free not only from the flagitious deeds, that's a word you don't hear enough is it, but even from modern words, after dinner and supper he always caused a chapter out of the Holy Bible to be read sounds like a riot I think I'd rather have gone to James the Six Baptism with the burning castle and the three days of partying and celebration. What this shows you here though is exactly this big bad wolf little red riding hood, cat woman Batman type of opposition between them. But again, this is written after Mary is deposed. This is written after she has been chucked off the throne and Buchanan is writing to justify that. So to quote the late great Christine Keeler, he would say that wouldn't he? I think though actually when we think about Mary and Murray during her personal rule the partnership's a little bit more like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire let me talk you through why I think this. From Mary Queen of Scots's return in 1561 and in fact, even from 1560 when it began to look like she might be coming back even as soon as her husband died in December that year, Murray positions himself as her right-hand man. He goes to see her in France he counsels her and again one of the highlights of the exhibition is that really thoughtful letter where he says to her for the love of God, madam, don't change the matter of religion in this country. Don't let anyone else counsel you against it. And when Mary comes back having taken his advice he becomes a key member of her privy council. He's already as I've already said, he's on the commission to force set and organize the laws. He heads down the Royal Army facing out the 1562 revolt of the Earl of Huntley and as a reward for this he's given his earldom. Prior to this he's just called plain old Lord James. He gets his earldom as a reward from Mary and this covers vast tracts of land in the north east of Scotland, a really beautiful part of the country. And this this gift sets him up to be the face of Crown authority in the north. So Murray is there by Mary's side at the centre of government but also her cipher in the localities. Now before Murray got his earldom it had been in the keeping of the Earl of Huntley and as I just said Murray got a hold of it when Huntley committed treason. But before it had been with Huntley it had been with another James Stewart Earl of Murray and unfortunately I don't have a picture of him for you. But he would have looked a lot like Murray and a lot like Mary because he was their uncle. On their father's side and he was the illegitimate son of King James IV. So the relationship between this first Earl of Murray, this first James Stewart and James V is exactly the same as the blood relationship between Mary and her half-brother the Regent Murray. So let me tell you about the first Earl of Murray's career. In the late 1530's and both Mary and Murray would have known this the first Earl of Murray served their father well. He sat on the privy council. He served as a judge in the court of session. He advised James V on diplomacy, helped him with negotiations for his marriage. When there was warfare he fought for his king and when the king wasn't in battle himself it was the Earl of Murray, the half-brother who stood as the king's lieutenant under the royal banner and he did this in 1532 and was shaping up to do this in 1542, the war at the end of which would sort of to the end of James V's life from the beginning of Mary's. I think this summary shows the career of these two illegitimate men, these favoured bastard sons of the dead king are strikingly similar. And I want to pause on the fact that both men served as lieutenants for their monarch. This is especially worth thinking about. The role of lieutenant as it is today is a military one. You're somebody who is acting for the monarch when they are not present, dealing with the royal army all the practical side of it like the supplies and stuff but also the kind of I'm going to make the edge of my knowledge of military stuff here so apologies for anybody who might know more about this than me but also the kind of like right horses there big guns there, charge atom so the Earl of Mary, both of them are occupying a really really prominent position and I think this is worth pausing on because one of the things that we say female monarchs have as a problem is that they can't direct their own armies, they can't lead their own armies into battle but actually this is something that male monarchs don't want to do as well, they use these lieutenants to serve for them and indeed for James V until he's married with an heir there is always a debate in the privy council about whether he should serve in person and there is always a lieutenant appointed so I think perhaps sometimes we tend to overdraw those lines but a bogey between male and female monarchs male monarchs can't be everywhere nor can female monarchs you need people to do stuff for you but perhaps that's another lecture although we might want to pick up on it in questions but the point here is both of the Earl's of Murray are being the monarch when the monarch can't be there they're both given a lot of lands in the north a problematic part of the Stuart realm a little bit further away from royal authority an area that really you need someone you can trust in charge of and they're appointing these half brothers and both of them take a leading role in diplomacy with the English the first Earl of Murray is often in Edinburgh when James V is away and in fact Henry VIII you might be surprised to learn was sometimes a little bit rude to James V I hope everyone at home was sitting down for that as well but Henry VIII would sometimes sort of try and show he was superior to James by sending someone to him a messenger of low status or not Henry the English themselves would do it and it would always be the Earl of Murray who would kind of assess and say well actually this person's too lowly to speak to the king this letters from someone too low down the English hierarchy and deal with it and claim you're not getting access to the king because this is from a mere Earl you know if you want our king to reply you come back with a letter from your king that's what he's going to get out of bed for probably literally in the case of James V I've never seen a record of him going to a meeting in the morning but there you go so we really see here how when Mary got back and appointed her half brother as her right hand man she was doing something that had really worked for her contemporaries this would have been a mark of powerful and sensible continuity she's doing something that we've seen before that we know works it's something that can be trusted that is a system that can be trusted but of course like most families there are disagreements thinking of course in the Blake Gray household the annual Christmas Scrabble match can cause you know bad words to be said probably which wouldn't get points on the Scrabble board but our family rows don't descend into the use of heavy artillery and unfortunately for royal siblings this sometimes happens and again we think of the Earl of Murray the Regent Murray as being a big problem for Mary and this is kind of foreshadowed by his involvement in the 1565 rebellion but we can also see this as part of what happened with the relationship between their father and their uncle in 1532 the first Earl of Murray was not very happy with the agreement that had been organised by the king in the western Isles and the Hebrides and he rebelled against the king he went out he disobeyed the king's orders and he fought against a royal army and like his niece and nephew 30 years later after a period in political in the political wilderness he did come back these big disputes these testing the boundaries these disagreements are expected as part of political life and they can be overcome so far I hope I've convinced you that Mary's government both in terms of its big projects the kind of equivalent of hospitals on schools type of projects the reorganising of the laws and in terms of the practical everyday who are you getting to do stuff it's something which is trying to be traditional it's consciously building on a previous tradition and in both instances she's doing things that worked and she's having success she's repeating successful strategies we've got about 10 minutes left together and so before I conclude I want to focus on an issue that is slightly trickier to deal with this issue of the English succession now one of the biggest critiques of Mary and if you remember towards the start of the lecture I mentioned this historian Jenny Wormold who is famously critical of Mary one of her famous critiques is Mary was so obsessed with the English succession so bothered by the diplomacy of it that she just sort of neglected the country where she was supposed to be ruling which was Scotland and that this basically means kind of as a historian whether or not you think that Elizabeth is illegitimate whether or not you think that Elizabeth is a heretic that Mary's obsession with the English succession or the English historians and it's bad from a Scottish perspective because she's not ruling properly so this is something that's really important to tackle I think when we're thinking about Mary's position as a monarch was she someone who was powerful now Mary of course inherited this claim from her father so this is actually something else where we can make a bit of a comparison now it's going to be a short quiz on this at the end so take notes James V and the English succession the big takeaway point here is that throughout James's life he was always second or third in the English succession apart from a six month period between the birth of Elizabeth I and the exclusion of Mary Tudor so James V is always only the heartbeat of Henry VIII the heartbeat of his own mother and the heartbeat of one other person away from becoming King of England that is pretty close and everybody is very aware with it and of course both James and Mary inherit that claim from Margaret Tudor I thought that text was a bit ugly so we can look at Margaret Tudor and James IV instead here they are in a beautiful armory which lives in the National Library of Scotland so James is very close to the English succession now this is different because unlike Mary who was excluded from the English succession by as we saw in those letters from Cecil and from Mary herself by Henry VIII's Will which was January 1547 James has never been excluded formally but it's still there as a live political issue and just as in the 1560s in the 1510s, 20s and 30s this is an issue with considerable political capital during the 1510s and 20s just after James has become monarch Henry VIII is really desperate to secure a good strong friendship on the Scottish board to allow him to pursue his European objectives in France and what does he do for this he offers to Mary James V to his first born well at this point his only legitimate child Mary Tudor there are offers again and again and again if James V will just sign this treaty if Scotland will just do this one little thing then James can marry Mary Tudor and he will be known as Prince of England and she is the king she is the king's only daughter he will inherit in due course so we're seeing this dangling of a title this dangling of the prospect of a marriage and behind that this dangling of the throne of England I think this might decline after Mary was excluded from the succession interestingly it's not her uncle the emperor Charles V then starts off on exactly the same thing to try and get James to invade England if you'll just invade England for me then if you're not dead at the end of it then you can marry my niece and then be king of England so exactly the same dynamic is emerging and just as Mary was seen as a source of discontent for Elizabeth's discontented a source of a figurehead for Elizabeth's discontented Catholic subject I'm thinking the northern rebellion of 1569 I'm thinking the plots towards the end of her life so was James the fifth a figurehead for Henry VIII's discontented Catholic subject who crossed the border in their droves seeking sanctuary in the Catholic university town of St Andrews had to get a shout out there and of course also in 1540 even more seriously than a lot of rebel Catholic clergymen crossing the border which is a pretty big deal Henry's discontented Catholic subject in Ireland actually offered James the chance to be king of Ireland if he will help them in their push against Henry VIII so we are seeing I would argue exactly the same dynamics in place underpinned by this same dynastic claim and we also see going back to that beautiful set of royal arms we saw at the beginning with Mary's claim to the English arms we see James himself laying claims to bits of Henry's titles this is the last big quotation for this evening but it's worth it so bear with me now this is sent by an unknown English official possibly Thomas Rilesly to an unknown Scottish diplomat it survives in a draft so there's a lot we don't know about it but it's clearly coming out of the context of a mission from Sir Ralph Sadler depicted here in a miniature by Holbein and this says that when Sadler had arrived back in London he'd brought with him a lot of little books which were printed and amongst all of these books was one entitled The Trumpet of Honor where in the very titling in the first the opening bits of the book the King Your Master this is the English official writing this is James V take upon him a piece of the title of the King's Majesty i.e. Henry VIII because the King Your Master so James V is called Defensor of the Christian Faith which Henry VIII should think has cause to think it's more than unkindness i.e. it's really very horrible indeed if James V is taking this title upon him and the conjecture is the more pricking because James V has added there too the Christian Faith as though there would be anything other than the Christian Faith and this cannot have any other meaning in it than a good Prince than a good Prince can think much less a friend of his friend or a nephew of his uncle if he would show himself to esteem his friendship so again what's going on here it's a bit complicated before he became the Divorcer of Anne Boleyn Henry VIII was as we all know given the title from the Pope Fidai Defensor Defender of the Faith and this is something that the monarchs of Great Britain still I think encompassing their little melange of titles today do they still claim to be kings of France as well I don't know anyway I'm a bit behind on it perhaps we'll get an interesting royal check-in on the Q&A to correct me on that one but Henry was desperately titled but desperately proud of this title Fidai Defensor Defender of the Faith and they have discovered that in Scotland books have been printed calling James V Defender of the Christian Faith so James is deliberately taking on one of Henry VIII's titles and he's making it even worse by dropping in that word Christian suggesting that his uncle himself is not even a Christian this is exactly the same dynamic as we see after the death of Mary Tudor exactly the same dynamic that produced those beautiful arms so what do we get from all of this it wasn't just Elizabeth with her daddy complex Mary had one as well I think we get a little bit more than that I think we've long acknowledged that the roots of the Mary Queen of Scots Elizabeth's drama the core of that relationship is rooted earlier in the century it's rooted in 1503 in the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor it's rooted in the rough wings of the 1540s fought over the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to Edward VI we've long understood that to understand that relationship in the 1560s we need to root it in those earlier decades but I hope what I've shown tonight is it's not just her relationship with England that we need to look back to the 1530s back to the 1510s for it's Mary's understanding of her role as Queen of Scotland and when we want to assess her in those terms Mary is somebody who understands the traditions of her predecessors and who in wielding them does indeed get for herself the power and the glory and as this statue showing her as Queen of France just outside one of the French royal palace this shows in one respect she gets the power and the glory forever and ever thank you very much thank you very much Amy for this tour of course I can't really describe it as anything else it was absolutely fantastic when you said we have about 10 minutes left I thought really? I thought you just started anyway are there any questions in the room immediately yes I can already see one hand raised curious that if Mary hadn't been with her quite so early on and she'd been Queen of France obviously very prestigious do you think she would have gone back to Scotland become Queen of Scotland as well and I was just curious whether she was being trained to be Queen of Scotland because obviously the French court and Scottish court quite different really interesting point so I think that I'll start with the similarities between the French and the Scottish court and kind of work outwards like reverse order through your question I guess so the French and Scottish court are in some ways more similar than we think there's been a lot of intermarriage between the two and the French are really sort of the court in Europe that everyone wants to emulate so there's a lot of similarities there and there's also shared European understanding of what it means to educate a monarch so there's a big amount of shared culture there for Mary however when she arrives in France she's already engaged to the Dauphin and she's very much educated to be a consort her tutor is paid I think about a third of the price of his she's getting some education but not to the same level that the future King of France is but to play with the really interesting bit of your question about that sort of virtual history what if France II hadn't had that dreadful ear infection what if he'd carried on living well we know some of what the plan was her mother married Gis her died and the initial plan where Mary of Gis was ill just before she died her younger brothers to carry on ruling as regent when she could no longer do it so short term the plan is that Scotland is going to be governed by one of Mary's uncles do I think they ever would have lived in Scotland probably not I think that the governing of the Valois Kingdom would have been the priority I think they would have remained there do I think they might have visited Scotland probably yes but I suppose we could also draw a comparison with James the sixth who when he inherits the throne of England only comes back to Scotland the once so I think they might well have been in frequent visits what I think is perhaps even more interesting though is what if they'd had a child and that child had been a girl because in France women were precluded from inheriting the throne that's because of the Salek Law so they were unable to inherit but they could inherit the throne in Scotland as Mary herself had that would have been absolutely fascinating what if you'd had a daughter of that marriage a son would have just inherited both and we would have had a kind of Valois Stuart Empire that eventually might have engulfed England as well so a son might have inherited both but I think that question what if he'd lived and what if they'd had a daughter that I think is what's really fascinating but yeah really interesting questions and I hope that's clarified a bit for you we have a few questions coming in from online put some of those in first of all your question about do the English King's Queen still claim the French throne Joe Fitz Henry says great talk thank you daughter third finally gave up claiming for the English King to be the King of France thank you very much indeed not my period darling it's too late for you so that's just a good statement a question from Jerry why was Mary's half-brother so opposed to her marriage to Lord Darnley yeah really excellent question so I think that when we think about Lord Darnley there's two well there's lots of different facets for all of it but kind of stripping out the issue of personal attraction there's two really big issues one is a dynastic issue which is what Mary sees Darnley has descended from the royal lines of England and of Scotland so that makes him hot dynastic property the paintings also suggest he had good legs so those I guess are the pro sides right he's someone with a claim to two throats with a decent pair of legs on the other hand Darnley's Scottish family have been in political exile since 1544 and their lands have been redistributed because of that political exile during after Mary's birth her father and her father's death the Earl of Lenox Darnley's father was someone who hoped to get the regency during Mary's minority to rule the country on behalf of Mary for himself that didn't happen and so he changed sides from the Scots and supported the English and as a consequence of that his lands obviously were redistributed amongst the Scottish nobility who'd remained loyal so when Darnley came back into Scotland we sort of talk about it like and then Lord Darnley and the Earl of Lenox came to Scotland and they're not just there for the festival they're there to get the Earl's and back regardless of whether or not Darnley gets married the first objective they have is to get that land and that is going to lead to a major reconfiguration of Scottish politics whenever someone is given land that usually means the land has been taken off someone else right so when the Earl of Murray got his earldom it first been taken off the Earl of Huntley so when Darnley comes back there's going to be a huge mess of Scottish internal patronage surrounding the land that used to belong to his family's earldom and that's going to really hurt some of Murray's allies some of his very close political allies now I think that bothers Murray a lot I also think he's opposed to it because he is still really hoping that there is going to be a good amity with England that there's going to be a position where England and Scotland can be at peace and Protestant influences will grow in Scotland and he correctly sees that doing something that will irritate Elizabeth will impede that but I think that that domestic patronage issue is something that's extremely important as well so I hope that answers the question at home. Yep that was very comprehensive thank you very much any other questions in the room here Stunt, silence oh yes there's one at the back right at the back Good. You mentioned earlier the letter exchange between Sir William Maitland of Lettington and William Cecil concerning where he came to the front I was wondering if William Cecil actually answered the letter Yeah he did He did after a while and that's a really good question I think his letter was not as funny or as witty but I might be quite biased basically Cecil just sort of didn't engage with the points about Mary being English born on his own terms and tried to sort of get things back on an even keel but I think the relationship between that that relationship between the two men is really interesting because there was a point when they were friends during the Scottish Reformation Rebellion just before Mary came back they were quite close pals they'd worked a lot together and when Maitland had been on embassies to England he'd stayed with Cecil and there's elsewhere in the letter I mean I've sort of quoted the most provocative bit but there is a bit where you can see him trying to also offer an olive branch at the same time and he says oh I remember this time when you and I and the Earl of Murray were in the Earl of Leicester's chambers and we were all talking and we were putting the worlds to rights and you get the impression it was one of those kind of late nights with friends where you've had a couple of bottles of wine and you've got it all sorted if you were just in charge of course these men were in charge and they didn't manage to get it sorted but yeah really good question Cecil tries to keep a working relationship and I think they are fond of each other as fond of each other as opposing politicians can be in this period but yeah great question if you're interested do you want the source for that Maitland letter because it was on the bottom of that slide and that book's available free scan via Google can I just get up and move back to it in case you'd like to get that noted down anything else anyone else in the yes there's gentlemen right at the front here have they stopped your slide I think so never mind well never mind just yet it'll be available on there or send me an email I'd be happy to send you the source the talk will also be on the BO player so you can watch it again if you want to hello it's a journey to and from Scotland to France obviously they weren't necessarily able to pass through England in order to do that and they go across on the ocean with absolutely great risk being caught by the English as they did their journey so the picture of the king and queen of France going across to Scotland where there would be a great deal of difference between that and Henry VIII and the intruders on the front would be an enormous thing the journey to and from yeah I think you're absolutely right I think that the journey across the ocean is one that is seen with repetition by a range of different individuals and I think that one of the interesting things again is that after Mary's deposition her cousin the Earl of Aaron, Duke of Chattelore who was regent for her sort of says well I ought to be regent not the Earl of Murray and one of the things that the Earl of Murray uses is evidence that Chattelore is unsuitable to be regent he said well he put a baby girl he was a very innocent there but he was willing to put a small baby, a small child on the ocean and send her across the sea so he can't be trusted if you're going to do that you shouldn't be allowed to rule a country so you're right there's a lot of anxiety about seafaring particularly because of course James I was actually captured on his ship by the English so there's a real there is a pulsing anxiety about travelling across the sea there's a big contingence right we're not sort of talking a small ship we're talking a battalion of very very heavily armed ships so I think that you're right it's not a light point to make that you can't be nipping back and cross on the Eurostar a lack there are a few more questions online one I really have to ask before we run out of time it's from middle aged age so you definitely have your young audience here your budding historians so thank you for your talk I really enjoyed it I'm playing Mary in my school film tomorrow do you know what type of dog jumped on the bed with a gold cloth please I have a Jack Russell and it sounds like the kind of thing he would do so firstly Millie thank you very much for writing to me you're eight now when you're 18 you'll be picking universities come to St Andrews and you can talk an awful lot more about this together about dogs as well as history so it wouldn't have been a Jack Russell I think that breed is developed a little bit later and just as I had to get my later century facts from the audience of anyone at home knows when Jack Russell's were bred look out please tell me but I think probably it would have been a grey hound or some kind of hunting hound because we know that hunting was a really important royal pursuit it was a way of showing that you were ready for war it was also a way of communicating with your nobles it was a good sport it was good fun as well so we know that James would have had hunting dogs so I think probably a grey hound or something like it but I think your point that any breed of dog might well have jumped on a bed is a very viable one I have a black lab and it's certainly the kind of thing she would do as well so thank you Millie so for tomorrow it was your school play Jack Russell I think quite a large dog there would have been quite a lot of disruption but I also think James the 5th would have had quite a big bed so I'm not worried that he's going to be kicked out or anything he's not going to be sleep deprived any more questions in the room we have a couple more online I'm just going to go ahead here so probably briefish answers if you can we've got about 5 minutes left Caroline Lloyd thank you so much for this amazing presentation it was brilliant what do you think persuaded the Earl of Murray to turn so completely against Mary do you think it was about Darnley or about religion or something else I think that that's an excellent question I think that the religion point I don't think that Murray is too worried about that they've reached a workable accommodation I also don't think it's just the Darnley murder Murray is out the country for the period leading up to Mary's deposition and he's getting information from France I don't think he's masterminding it from France we've just talked about how difficult it was to get to France he can't have been masterminding it he gets information he comes to England he talks in the English court he gets more information from there and then he comes to Scotland he then has an interview with Mary at Loch Leven and we know that's very emotional we also know that his wife interestingly a fantastic woman called he's extremely intelligent extremely important politician he's getting some kinds of information I think what happens is that at that point it's not so much a case as are you for or against Mary it's a case of Scotland is in complete mess by that point the Queen is not capable of ruling she's just suffered a miscarriage from twins she's unable to hold the political elite together and Murray can see that the country is about to crumble and if he takes on the role and also he gets back and the King has been crowned right? there has been a political consensus that this is what is going to happen I think he hardens against Mary quickly and I think once he's made that decision he has to stay against her because if she ever comes back I mean she gave him his earldom she can take that away and then she can take his head off but I think the thing that really sums up 1567 for me the English ambassador who he says you walk around and the men here they're like someone who's caught a wolf by the ears they're afraid to keep holding on but they're more afraid to let go and I think that's what happens in Scotland in 1567 Interesting I think you're probably absolutely right there I've got one more question here anyone else? that's the last question from Heidi what is your own initiative and political intelligence and how much of it might have come from advisers and councillors Heidi that is an excellent question to answer it I first want to tell you what an early modern monarch a good early modern monarch has meant to do a good early modern monarch is supposed to take advice I think in the modern world we sort of have this idea that kind of strong leadership is making your plan and then sticking to it think of kind of all of the sort of anti-U-turn stuff and the idea that you're returning from Margaret Thatcher all of these things from modern politics in the early modern world a good monarch is meant to take advice from as wide a range as people as possible to listen, to think and then to make a plan and to be responsive to advice so Mary I think is very she understands what a monarch is meant to do and she is therefore taking advice your question is about her own initiative I think we do see Mary's hand in things I think we see Mary's hand in that letter that she wrote to Elizabeth I think we see Mary's hand in the organisation of her privy council I think we see Mary's hand in the provision she makes before she gets back to Scotland before she comes back to Scotland she does a big inventory of everything that she's going to want and without getting into the details she's bringing back furniture that we know is going to be used to furnish rooms where she's going to get advice where she's going to have council made where she's going to have council and advice so I think Mary does have agency but as a monarch part of exercising your agency is listening to those diverse viewpoints bringing them together and making the decision it's the taking advice that demonstrates monarchical agency as much as sort of waking up one morning and saying right I fancy just having a day in bed bring the dog in, she can jump up you know let's just have a duvet day it's about getting that advice it's about working as part of a regime and a team and that would be seen as a strength in a monarch I hope that answers I think it definitely does, thank you very much fascinating I think that draws the evening to a close so thank you everybody for coming here and for watching online if you have enjoyed tonight's talk there are previous talks we have a few more lined up coming over the next few months as I said the exhibition is on until the 20th of February so plenty more to come both live and online and please join me again in thinking Amy very much for this fantastic talk it was very tour de force through Mary's power and glory well thank you for letting me play Vegas