Mary, Queen of Scots (92 page)
Read Mary, Queen of Scots Online
Authors: Alison Weir
Tannenbaum, S.A. and D.R.: Marie Stuart: Bibliography (3 vols, New York, 1944–6)
Temple Newsham Guidebook
(Leeds City Art Galleries, 1989)
Terry, Charles S.: A History of Scotland (Cambridge, 1920)
Thirlestane Castle Guidebook
(Banbury, undated)
Thomson, Duncan; Marshall, Rosalind K.; Caldwell, David H.; Cheape, Hugh, and Dalgleish, George:
Dynasty: The Royal House of Stewart
(Edinburgh, 1990)
Thomson, George Malcolm:
The Crime of Mary Stuart
(London, 1967)
Tranter, Nigel:
The Fortalices and Early Mansions of Southern Scotland, 1400–1650
(Edinburgh and London, 1935)
Trinquet, Roger: “L’Allegorie politique au XVI siècle dans le peinture française—ses Dames au Bain”
(Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art française,
1967)
Turner, Sir George:
Mary Stuart: Forgotten Forgeries
(London, 1933)
Tytler, Patrick Fraser:
An Account of the Life and Writings of Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton
(Edinburgh, 1823)
Tytler, Patrick Fraser:
The History of Scotland
(8 vols, Edinburgh, 1841–5)
Tytler, William:
An Inquiry, Historical and Critical, into the Evidence against Mary,
Queen of Scots
(2 vols, Edinburgh, 1760)
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Historical Journal
, 28, 1985)
Watkins, Susan:
Mary, Queen of Scots
(London, 2001)
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Britain’s Royal Families
(London, 1989)
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Elizabeth the Queen
(London, 1998)
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Mary, Queen of Scots, Vindicated
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Woodward, G.W.O.: Mary, Queen of Scots (Andover, 1992)
Wormald, Jenny:
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(London, 1981)
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(Edinburgh, 1985)
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London, 2001)
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First Section
Mary Queen of Scots: reproduced by permission of The Blairs Museum Trust (photo: Mike Davidson)
Mary & Francis II: from Catherine de’ Medici’s Book of Hours, Bibliothèque nationale de France
James Stewart, Earl of Moray: portrait by Hans Eworth, 1561, Darnaway Castle Collection (photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.)
John Knox: wood engraving from Beza’s Icones, 1580, after Adrian Vanson; Scottish National Portrait Gallery (photo: Antonia Reeve Photography)
Called Sir William Maitland of Lethington: Flemish School, mid-sixteenth century, in the collection at Lennoxlove House, Haddington
James Douglas, Earl of Morton: attributed to Arnold van Brounckhorst, 1577. Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley: artist unknown, c. 1566, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Medal struck to commemorate the marriage of Mary and Darnley, 1565: The British Museum
Mary & Darnley: artist unknown, mid-sixteenth century, The National Trust, Hardwick Hall
David Rizzio: artist unknown, late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, The British Museum
Holyrood Palace: The Royal Collection © 2002, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (photo: John Freeman)
Mary’s bedchamber in Holyrood Palace: The Royal Collection © 2002, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (photo: Antonia Reeve)
The Murder of Rizzio: painting by Sir William Allan, 1833, The National Galley of Scotland
The Old Palace in Edinburgh Castle: The Edinburgh Photographic Library
The birth chamber of James VI: © Crown Copyright reserved, Historic Scotland
Second Section
James Hepburn, 5th Earl of Bothwell: artist unknown, 1566, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Jean Gordon, Countess of Bothwell: artist unknown, 1566, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Hermitage Castle: Scotland in Focus/M. Moar
Mary, Queen of Scots’ House, Jedburgh (Stockscotland)
Mary, Queen of Scots and Darnley at Jedburgh: painting by Alfred W. Elmore, 1877, courtesy of Astley House—Fine Art
Craigmillar Castle: Scotland in Focus/M. Moar
The Murder Scene at Kirk O’Field: drawing made the morning after Darnley’s murder, Public Record Office Image Library (SP52/13)
The Darnley Memorial Picture: painting by Livinius de Vogelaare, 1568, The Royal Collection © 2002, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (photo: A. C. Cooper)
Mermaid placard: Public Record Office Image Library (SP52/13 no. 60)
Dunbar Castle: Scotland in Focus/M. Moar
Borthwick Castle: Scotland in Focus/M. Moar
Meeting of the Lords with Mary, Queen of Scots at Carberry Hill, 1567; artist unknown, Public Record Office Image Library (SP52/13)
Lochleven Castle: Scotland in Focus/Willbir
George Buchanan: artist unknown, 1581, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
William Cecil: by or after Arnold van Brounckhorst, c. 1560–70, by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
Elizabeth I: artist unknown, c. 1560, by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
“The Queen Mary Casket,” in the collection at Lennoxlove House, Haddington
Read on for an excerpt from Alison Weir’s
Mary Boleyn
1
The Eldest Daughter
B
lickling Hall, one of England’s greatest Jacobean showpiece mansions, lies not two miles northwest of Aylsham in Norfolk. It is a beautiful place, surrounded by woods, farms, sweeping parkland and gardens—gardens that were old in the fifteenth century, and which once surrounded the fifteenth century moated manor house of the Boleyn family, the predecessor of the present building. That house is long gone, but it was in its day the cradle of a remarkable dynasty; and here, in those ancient gardens, and within the mellow, red-brick gabled house, in the dawning years of the sixteenth century, the three children who were its brightest scions once played in the spacious and halcyon summers of their early childhood, long before they made their dramatic debut on the stage of history: Anne Boleyn, who would one day become Queen of England; her brother George Boleyn, who would also court fame and glory, but who would ultimately share his sister’s tragic and brutal fate; and their sister Mary Boleyn, who would become the mistress of kings, and gain a notoriety
that is almost certainly undeserved.
Blickling was where the Boleyn siblings’ lives probably began, the protective setting for their infant years, nestling in the broad, rolling landscape of Norfolk, circled by a wilderness of woodland sprinkled with myriad flowers such as bluebells, meadowsweet, loosestrife, and marsh orchids, and swept by the eastern winds. Norfolk was the land that shaped them, that remote corner of England that had grown prosperous through the wool-cloth trade, its chief city, Norwich—which lay just a few miles to the south—being second in size only to London in the Boleyns’ time. Norfolk also boasted more churches than any other English shire, miles of beautiful coastline and a countryside and waterways teeming with a wealth of wildlife. Here, at Blickling, nine miles from the sea, the Boleyn children took their first steps, learned early on that they had been born into an important and rising family, and began their first lessons.
Anne and George Boleyn were to take center-stage roles in the play of England’s history. By comparison, Mary was left in the wings, with fame and fortune always eluding her. Instead, she is remembered as an infamous whore. And yet, of those three Boleyn siblings, she was ultimately the luckiest, and the most happy.
This is Mary’s story.
Mary Boleyn has aptly been described as “a young lady of both breeding and lineage.”
1
She was born of a prosperous landed Norfolk family of the knightly class. The Boleyns, whom Anne Boleyn claimed were originally of French extraction, were settled at Salle, near Aylsham, before 1283, when the register of Walsingham Abbey records a John Boleyne living there,
2
but the family can be traced in Norfolk back to the reign of Henry II (1154–89).
3
The earliest Boleyn inscription in the Salle church is to John’s great-great-grandson, Thomas Boleyn, who died in 1411; he was the son of another John Boleyn and related to Ralph Boleyn, who was living in 1402. Several other early members of the family, including Mary’s great-great-grandparents, Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, were buried in the Salle church, which is like a small cathedral, rising tall and stately in its perpendicular splendor in the flat Norfolk landscape. The prosperous village it once served,
which thrived upon the profitable wool trade with the Low Countries, has mostly disappeared.
