Mary of Guise - Scottish Marriage

Scottish Marriage

Later in 1537, Mary became the focus of marriage negotiations with James V of Scotland, who had lost his first wife, Madeleine of Valois, due to tuberculosis, and wanted a second French bride to further the interests of the Franco-Scottish alliance against England. According to a 17th-century writer, James V had noticed the attractions of Mary when he went to France to meet Madeleine and Mary of Bourbon, and she was next in his affections. It is known that Mary attended the wedding of James and Madeleine.

The recently-widowed Henry VIII of England, in attempts to prevent this union, also asked for Mary's hand. Given Henry's marital history – banishing his first wife and beheading the second – Mary refused the offer. In December 1537, Henry VIII told Castillon, the French ambassador in London, that he was big in person and had need of a big wife. Biographer Antonia Fraser writing in 1968 said Mary replied, "I may be a big woman, but I have a very little neck." This was apparently a tribute to the famously macabre jest made by Henry's French-educated second wife, Anne Boleyn, who had joked before her death that the executioner would find killing her easy because she had "a little neck."

King Francis I of France accepted James's proposal over Henry's and conveyed his wishes to Mary's father. Francis had a marriage contract prepared that offered James a dowry as large as if Mary were a princess. Mary's mother found the contract "marvellously strange", because the king had included Mary's son's inheritance in the dowry. Mary received the news with shock and alarm, as she did not wish to leave family and country, especially as she had just lost her first husband and her younger son. It has been said that her father tried to delay matters apparently until James, perhaps sensing her reluctance, wrote to her, appealing for her advice and support. However the authenticity of this letter, which was first produced in 1935, has been questioned. David Beaton travelled to France for the marriage negotiations. He wrote to James V from Lyon on 22 October 1537 that Mary was "stark (strong), well-complexioned, and fit to travel." Beaton wrote that the Duke of Guise was "marvellous desirous of the expedition and hasty end of the matter," and had already consulted with his brother, the Duke of Lorraine, and Mary herself, who was with her mother in Champagne waiting on the resolution of the negotiations.

The marriage contract was finalized in January 1538 with a dowry including that of her first marriage. As was customary, if the King died first, the Dowager of Scotland would have for her lifetime her jointure houses of Falkland Palace, Stirling Castle, Dingwall Castle, and Threave, with the rentals of the corresponding Earldoms and Lordships. Finally, Mary accepted the offer and hurried plans for departure.

On 18 May 1538, at Notre-Dame de Paris, James V and Mary of Guise were married with Lord Maxwell acting as proxy. Accompanied by a fleet of ships sent by James, Mary left France in June, forced to leave her little son behind. She landed in Fife on 10 June and was formally received by James. They were married in person a few days later at St Andrews. James's mother Margaret Tudor wrote to Henry VIII in July, "I trust she will prove a wise Princess. I have been much in her company, and she bears herself very honourably to me, with very good entertaining." The Duke of Guise sent her masons and miners, an armourer, and she had a French painter to decorate her palaces, Pierre Quesnel. She was crowned as Queen Consort at Holyrood Abbey on 22 February 1540. Preparations for her coronation began in October 1539 when the jeweller John Mosman made a new crown and her silver sceptre was gilded. Payments made for the ceremony include hanging tapestries; carrying church furnishings from the Palace chapel into the Abbey; eleven chaplains; boards for stages in the Abbey; and messengers sent to summon the ladies of the kingdom. A salute of 30 guns was fired from David's Tower on Edinburgh Castle, and there were fireworks devised by James and made by his royal gunners.

James and Mary had two sons. James Stewart, Duke of Rothesay, was born 22 May 1540 at St Andrews. Robert was born and baptised on 12 April 1541, but both died on 21 April 1541, when James was nearly one year old and Robert was eight days old. Mary's mother Antoinette de Bourbon wrote that the couple was still young and should hope for more children. She thought a change of wet-nurse and over-feeding may not have helped. The third and last child of the union was a daughter Mary, who was born on 8 December 1542. King James died six days later, making the infant Mary queen regnant of Scotland.