[Daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Lorraine, a princess of the Guise family of France, born 1542, died 1587. As great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, Mary was heir to the English throne after the failure of direct descendants of Henry VIII, the last of whom was Queen Elizabeth. At the age of sixteen she was married to the dauphin of France; and, as she was put forward as claimant of the English throne (even as against Elizabeth, whom the Catholic powers of Europe affected to treat as the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII), the arms of England were quartered with those of France and Scotland on her escutcheon. Mary’s persistence in protruding this claim, under advice of her Catholic friends, was a main cause of the misfortunes of her sad and romantic career. On the death of Mary’s husband, Francis II of France, she returned to Scotland to resume the functions of government, thoroughly imbued with Catholic and French notions of policy, and already antagonistic to a large portion of her subjects, who had become fanatically Protestant under the leadership of such men as John Knox. Henceforward the Queen of Scots was embarked on a sea of troubles, which are familiar history. She married Lord Darnley in 1565, against the wish of her own Protestant subjects and of Queen Elizabeth; and on the murder of Darnley by the Earl of Bothwell, she consummated her follies by espousing the latter. The rebellion which ensued resulted first in her imprisonment by her own subjects, and afterward, consequent on her escape and defeat in battle by the Protestant lords, her confinement by the Queen of England, on whom she had thrown herself for protection. For nineteen years Mary was the inmate of successive English prisons, though not rigorously treated otherwise. The numerous conspiracies in which she was implicated by the enthusiasm of her supporters in England and France, some of which involved the assassination of Elizabeth, and all of which looked to the complete overthrow of Protestantism, at last caused her trial and condemnation by an English commission. The signature to the death-warrant has been claimed by some historians to have been a forgery; by others to have been genuine, but its commission under the great seal an act without Elizabeth’s consent. But the weight of evidence shows Elizabeth’s conduct to have been a piece of consummate duplicity, and that she manœuvred to receive the benefits of Mary’s death without incurring the odium of its authority. There is no personage in history whose character has been the subject of more controversy. A school of English historical critics, among whom are Carlyle, Froude, and Kingsley, stigmatize her as the incarnation of all that was brilliantly