The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots
If my latest book Exile were a novel, nobody could predict its ending. With the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, however, the final chapter is well known: the ailing queen, dressed in russet, with a small dog hidden beneath her skirts, places her head on the block, and awaits the executioner’s blow, still believing herself to be the rightful Queen of Scotland. Exile is an account of how she reached that point and of the ways in which, on many occasions, her bloody beheading might have been averted.
In hindsight, Mary’s flight across the Solway Firth to England sealed her fate. Even had things worked out better, she made a calamitous misjudgement in expecting her cousin Elizabeth I to help her quell the Scottish rebels and regain her throne.
Perhaps because the outcome of her terrible choice is so familiar, many historians have devoted most of their energies to the first half of Mary’s life, galloping through the latter period, when she was held in captivity, as if it were a codicil. Yet Mary’s almost 19 perilous and eventful years as a prisoner were anything but a footnote. Between her arrival in England in 1568 and her execution in 1587, she lived in an almost perpetual state of agitation, with an ongoing series of intrigues and dramas – including armed rebellions and daring plans for escape – keeping hopes alive that she might regain her liberty. There was even the possibility of her being restored to her throne with Elizabeth’s blessing.
All of this is fascinating. As is the fact that fascination with Mary never seems to dim. Yet do we really need another account of her often-told tale? And why, as I have done, write one book on her years in Scotland – Homecoming – and another on those she spent locked up in England? I asked these questions myself, wondering what new can be said, before realising that there is no definitive biography of Mary Stuart, no comprehensive narrative, and that each account comes from a particular perspective, bringing a different set of assumptions to bear on the facts, which inevitably influence that version.
Exile picks up events where Homecoming ends, bringing the story to its tragic conclusion by way, on Mary’s part, of almost two decades of wrangling, disillusionment and despair, and mounting anxiety on the English side. To have stopped at the Scottish border would have felt like abandoning Mary when her situation became most vulnerable but also, to my mind, most interesting.
As with its predecessor, Exile is told through the locations where Mary lived and history unfolded. Approaching it in this way offers an extra dimension to our understanding of what she experienced, the ruinous or restored castles and houses in which she stayed adding context and colour to her tale. It is one thing to know that after arriving in England she was constantly shuttled between residences, quite another to visit these buildings and stand where she stood. To gaze over the same countryside or streets as she once did is to share something of her experience, to find the connection between her age and ours. At times this is largely an exercise of the imagination, as at Chartley or Fotheringhay, where so few traces remain. At others, such as Bolton Castle in Yorkshire or St Mary’s Guildhall in Coventry, the 16th century and its Machiavellian politics can almost be tasted in the air.
Finding a fresh angle from which to view Mary’s downfall is reason enough to revisit her life. Reinterpretation and reassessment are the lifeblood of what Tom Devine calls ‘the Queen of disciplines’, and they are what make history sing. So too is groundbreaking research. In the case of Mary, the recent discovery by a team of international cryptographers of a cache of letters written in cipher during the years 1578 to 1584 has rekindled interest. These furtive missives shed further light on the queen’s ceaseless diplomatic manoeuvring and reveal the issues that consumed her as she attempted to find a way out of her predicament.
The day-to-day detail of Mary’s imprisonment, as shown in these newly-found letters and in many other sources, is enthralling. We see the functioning of her household under extreme duress. We see the nature of her friendships and alliances within her entourage, among her far-flung supporters and, most vividly, with her captors, especially the melancholy Earl of Shrewsbury and his opportunistic wife, Bess of Hardwick. And then there was her relationship with her last and harshest keeper, Sir Amias Paulet, which was profoundly uncomfortable for both of them.
Equally interesting is the gradual change in Mary’s personality as the gravity of her position became clear. Suffering chronic ill health and, on several occasions, coming close to death, Mary subtly changed from the headstrong, vivacious young woman who rode at the head of her army and danced the night away at the Palace of Holyrood into a far more cunning and calculating individual. Prematurely aged by her afflictions and the often unhealthy quarters in which she was held, she lost her youthful beauty and grace. In their place she gained a richness of personality and a gravitas that in part explains her continuing allure. She grew more thoughtful, pious and determined when faced with conditions over which she had almost no control. And as her disillusionment increased and she learned to be less trusting, she became formidable.
Exile traces these shifts in character, as her focus narrowed to self-preservation and she learned to place her faith in God alone. Although this part of her tale is cloistered compared with the adventurous activity of her life in Scotland – more Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy than The Three Musketeers – it is arguably even more compelling.
When Mary landed in England on 16th May 1568, she had only recently escaped from her rebels, who had captured her and forced her to abdicate while she was held in captivity at Lochleven Castle. Although she escaped and raised an army, it was routed by the Regent Moray’s troops at Langside, near Glasgow. As she abandoned the field, terrified he might capture her, she made the panic-stricken decision to cross into England. From there, she reasoned, she could muster support from Elizabeth; she might also call on help from France, where she was dowager queen and retained a degree of influence and wealth.
Throughout her reign Mary made a number of catastrophic decisions, for which she must be held accountable: marrying Lord Darnley, then marrying Lord Bothwell, the man believed to have murdered him and, worst of all, fleeing to England. Yet throughout these events, Moray sits in the wings, an increasingly malign figure whose manipulation of events throughout her reign, and after her escape to England, was designed to ruin her. If Mary’s abduction to Lochleven were not evidence enough, Moray’s testimony before the York and Westminster conference in 1568, at which he produced the dubious Casket Letters to incriminate Mary in Darnley’s murder, indicate what sort of a man he was. His assassination, in 1570, greatly cheered her.
As the walls of England’s prisons closed around her, and hopes of returning to Scotland became increasingly forlorn, Mary faced a far more redoubtable enemy. Elizabeth I was more intellectually gifted and considerably more cautious than her cousin. She was also blessed with advisors who counselled and steered her, sometimes deviously, in the direction that best served England’s interests. Although she could be emotional and quixotic, her consigliere William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was steadfast in protecting her from the snares, as he saw it, of the Scottish queen.
That Elizabeth never met Mary shows her awareness of her cousin’s ability to beguile. Yet despite Mary’s protestations of friendship and love, nothing could make her presence palatable. With a strong claim to the throne, and thus a potential figurehead for Catholic rebellion, she represented a mortal threat to Elizabeth personally, and to the country at large.
Among Elizabeth’s greatest fears was invasion or war with one of Europe’s great Catholic powers, allied to a rising of Catholics at home. At the same time as keeping Mary under her watch, and trying to prevent her colluding with Philip II in Spain or the kings of France, much of Elizabeth’s diplomatic energy was spent holding at bay the potentially contagious religious conflicts in France and the Low Countries. It was no easy task to maintain good relations with potential allies such as France while keeping Spain’s territorial ambitions in check.
In Scotland, meanwhile, the youthful James VI was playing a delicate game, dancing between subservience to Elizabeth and the pro-English clique at court – in the hope that he would eventually inherit the English throne – and indulging in flashes of rebellion, as he tried to assert himself as an independent ruler, rather than the Queen’s puppet. The tension between both countries did not erupt into aggression, but there were moments when it came close. After Mary’s execution it was the Scottish people, rather than their king, who would gladly have marched against England in protest.
The thread that runs through Mary’s prison years is her duel with Elizabeth. Each was devoured by suspicion of the other, and the consequence of so much mistrust was an atmosphere of secrecy and deception. The antics of Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, saw the English state conduct a campaign of undercover espionage unrivalled until the Cold War. With the full force of the English secret state acting against her, what chance did Mary have?
For her part, Mary revelled in the chance to contact her supporters covertly by means of coded letters, and was happy to use anyone, be it a laundry maid or a passing aristocrat, to convey her messages to the outside world. She proved herself a natural when it came to the black arts of subterfuge and dissemblance.
Beneath the dramas and the diplomatic jousting that enliven these years runs a constant undercurrent of deceit and treachery. No matter in which of the grim fortresses or grand houses she was confined, Mary spent much of her time at her desk writing, petitioning, demanding. Some of these letters are repetitive in their pleas and demands, but many bring her into the room with us. On her forty-second birthday, 8 December 1584, Mary wrote to Elizabeth: ‘may god give you as many happy years as I have had of sorrow these last 20 years!’
To the last, she retained her wit, and her dignity. Is it any wonder, then, that she has captivated every generation since? Whether revered as a Catholic martyr or reviled as a ‘monstrous dragon’, whether viewed as a woman unequal to the demands of the throne or as a ruler crushed by forces beyond her control, she remains, in any reading, a tragic figure. As well as being the subject of countless biographies, she has fired the imagination of novelists the world over, beginning with Walter Scott’s all-forgiving portrayal in The Abbot. Plays and operas have brought her back to life, as have poets and songwriters. Even Bob Dylan is said to have written about her in ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, supposedly a reference to the sky-blue stockings she wore on the scaffold.
Exile is one more stone on the ever-growing cairn, a depiction of the ominous but captivating years in which Mary shaped not just her own her destiny but also that of her homeland and the British Isles. Perhaps one aspect of what makes her perennially intriguing is that she remains forever beyond our reach, never entirely understood or knowable. Whatever the reason, it is safe to say that fascination with this exceptional woman, whose beguiling personality was riven with fatal flaws, will long outlive us all.
Rosemary Goring is a journalist, editor and the author of Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots, which was released in July 2025.
