The Death of a King December 1542

The windows of Linlithgow Palace, an imposing royal residence with the look of a French château about 17 miles to the west of Edinburgh, were shrouded in darkness as the messenger, dressed in the scarlet and gold livery of the Stuart royal family, rode through the gates and dismounted from his horse in the courtyard. He had ridden through the snow and sleet of a wintry night from Falkland Palace, another royal residence over 40 miles away, and was in no mood to do anything other than bark an order to be taken directly to the Queen, who was recovering from childbirth and asleep in her sumptuous rooms overlooking the loch.

As he raced up the stone staircase to the royal apartments, the messenger would have been aware of the shocked faces of the courtiers and servants who had tumbled out of bed as soon as word went round that news had arrived from Falkland, where the King lay mortally ill. After his resounding defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss by the forces of his uncle Henry VIII twenty days earlier, the King had either been felled by dysentery or by an emotional breakdown. The arrival of an official messenger so late at night was not suggestive of good news and they would have watched him nervously as he made his way through the rooms of the royal apartments, with their tapestry covered walls, intricately painted ceilings and polished and gilded wood panelling, to the Queen.

Marie de Guise, Queen of Scotland, an unusually tall woman in her late twenties, with long chestnut red hair and clear grey eyes, would have been woken by her ladies-in-waiting as soon as news of the messenger's arrival reached her rooms, and it is likely that she hastily dressed and received him beside the blazing fire in her closet, surrounded by her household and with her infant daughter, just 6 days old and named Mary after both her mother and the Virgin Mary, upon whose feast day she had been born.

As expected, the news from Falkland Palace was not good. In fact, it was disastrous. James V, the 30-year-old King of Scotland, had died a few hours earlier of his fever, raving to the very end about his ignominious defeat and lamenting the fact that he had no legitimate sons to succeed him. The tiny baby, less than a week old, who lay asleep in her beautifully carved wooden crib at the side of Marie de Guise, was now Queen of Scotland.

As the now Dowager Queen listened carefully to the messenger's report of her husband's final hours, her mind would have been working fast, weighing up the unenviable situation that she now found herself in. Although she and her husband were more or less estranged, she must have felt sorrow for a life prematurely snuffed out, thankful for the happiness they had shared at the beginning of their marriage and profound regret for the loss of his support.

However, regardless of whatever she felt privately, it was not in the nature of Marie de Guise, strictly raised by those austere great ladies, her mother Antoinette de Bourbon and grandmother Philippa of Guelders, to lose control of her emotions. After thanking the messenger, she would have retired further into her rooms to take proper stock of what lay ahead, while snow fell outside her windows and covered the great park that surrounded Linlithgow, further isolating it from the world.

Once safely ensconced in private with the infant Queen and her most trusted attendants, many of whom had come with her from France in the spring of 1538, Marie would have considered her next move, only too aware of the storm clouds brewing beyond the thick stone walls of Linlithgow. As far as royal successions went, this one involved the worst possible scenario for an already beleaguered Scotland: instead of the desired adult male heir, the new ruler was both an infant and female which, in the sixteenth century, was considered an ominous and undesirable combination.

There was an unfortunate precedent too in the fact that her dead husband had succeeded to his own father's throne in similar circumstances at just 17 months old after James IV had been slaughtered, along with thousands of Scottish soldiers, by the forces of his brother in law, Henry VIII, at Flodden. His mother, Margaret Tudor, had learned the news of her husband's death in the very same rooms at Linlithgow, but there, Marie de Guise determined, the similarity between their situations would end. The feckless Margaret had quickly proved herself to be an inadequate regent for her infant son, having fled back to her brother in England within two years of her husband's death, leaving her son behind.

As she shivered in her fur-lined robes and stared out across the snow covered landscape, it no doubt crossed Marie's mind that, according to the terms of the marriage contract, she was now free to return to France and her own close-knit family, which included her beloved 5-year-old son, the Duc de Longueville, product of her first marriage. However, tempting though this idea might have been, she resolutely pushed it from her mind. From now on, her place was in Scotland with her baby daughter, who could not possibly be entrusted to the Scottish nobles, whom Marie already suspected would not waste an instant before brokering a deal with the hostile English.

After all, it was too convenient that the heir to the English throne, Edward, Prince of Wales, was, at just 5 years old, close enough in age to the baby Queen of Scotland to be considered an eligible contender for her hand. Marie was no fool and it would have occurred to her that as soon as the news of her husband's untimely death arrived in London along with the news of his defeat in battle, the indomitable Henry VIII would start moving heaven and earth in order to secure the little Queen for his son and by extension, Scotland for himself.

However, if he thought that the widowed Queen Marie was going to be a pushover like his sister Margaret had been during her own brief period of regency thirty years earlier, he had underestimated her. It would not take long, however, before events showed him that here, in this member of the noble Lorraine family, was an opponent worthy of respect and it was not for nothing that her personal emblem was a crown set on top of a rock surrounded by a turbulent sea, surmounted by the motto 'Adhuc stat' – 'And yet it stands'.

One for All

Squabbles over succession were not unusual within Marie's family – after all, her great-great-grandfather, Good King René d'Anjou, had famously squandered his family's fortune on pursuing his claim to the thrones of Naples and Jerusalem, while his youngest daughter, Marguerite, as the wife of Henry VI, became one of the main protagonists in the...