On This Day 1543: Mary Queen of Scots crowned aged just nine months old

She was born at Linlithgow Palace just nine months earlier - and now she was Queen of Scots.
Mary Queen of Scots was crowned at Stirling Castle on September 9, 1593. PIC: Contributed/CC.Mary Queen of Scots was crowned at Stirling Castle on September 9, 1593. PIC: Contributed/CC.
Mary Queen of Scots was crowned at Stirling Castle on September 9, 1593. PIC: Contributed/CC.

Mary I was crowned at Stirling Castle on this day in 1543 in a solemn ceremony driven by the machinations and manipulations of the Tudor period.

The ceremony was conducted in the Chapel Royal of Stirling Castle by Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews, Scotland’s most senior Catholic cleric.

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Few details of the occasion exists, but accounts of the coronation record it as a hastily arranged affair, with little of the usual lavishness afforded on such a day.

Mary I of Scotland was born in Linlithgow Palace on 8 December 1542 - just six days before the death of her father, James V, who was likely struck down by cholera.

From the day she was born, Scotland's pro-English and pro-French forces moved to take control of her.

The business of Mary - as the youngest of monarchs - was controlled by her Regent, James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, for the first 12 years of her life.

At six-months old, Henry VIII - her great uncle - drew up the Treaties of Greenwich which mapped out her future wedding to the King's son, Edward VI.

The Earl of Arran signed the documents, but her mother remained strongly opposed to the union.

The Scottish Parliament also refused to support the treaties with Henry VIII launching the Rough Wooing in a show of force against Scotland.

As a result, the young queen hid out at Stirling Castle and spent the first five years moving around Scotland for her safety/

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Mary was sent to France in 1548 to be the bride of the Dauphin, the young French prince, in order to secure a Catholic alliance against Protestant England.

In 1561, after the Dauphin, still in his teens, died, Mary reluctantly returned to Scotland, a young and vulnerable widow.