Life of Mary Stewart - Essay Example

Generally agreeing with Fraser about the nature of these two marriages, Wormald concentrates on condemning Mary's effectiveness as a ruler. This essay will argue not only that she sought to be an effective ruler but also that she did not enter into a marriage of passion with Darnley. It will, however, validate the charge of Bothwell's sexual violence. Scholars have debated whether Mary was born on 7 or 8 December 1542, even though she celebrated her birthday on the 8th. As her contemporaries were sometimes vague about dating events that occurred shortly after midnight, it is likely that she was born in the early hours of the 8th at Linlithgow Palace to Mary of Guise, the second wife of James V of Scotland, whose parents were James IV and Margaret Tudor, a sister of Henry VIII.

As Mary's father died a few days after her birth in despair because of the recent English victory at Solway Moss, she could not remember a time when she was not queen regnant. The immediate accession controversy was not over her sex but her age, for she required a regent. The heir presumptive, James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, gained the office with English aid but soon found that his arrangements for Mary to wed Henry VIIIs heir were extremely unpopular. Arrange major rival was Matthew Stewart, fourth earl of Lennox, who returned from exile as a French partisan and claimed to be the rightful heir presumptive and regent because of some irregularity in the marriage of Arran's parents.

 After Mary's coronation in September 1543, Arran rejected the English alliance, and in 1548, having been promised the dukedom of Chatelherault agreed to her removal to France as the betrothed of Francis.