Mary was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, to King James V and his French second wife, Mary of Guise. She was said to have been born prematurely and was the only legitimate child of James to survive him.[۵] She was the great-niece of King Henry VIII of England, as her paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was Henry VIII’s older sister. On 14 December, six days after her birth, she became Queen of Scotland when her father died, perhaps from the effects of a nervous collapse following the Battle of Solway Moss[۶] or from drinking contaminated water while on campaign.[۷]
A popular tale, first recorded by John Knox, states that James, upon hearing on his deathbed that his wife had given birth to a daughter, ruefully exclaimed, “It cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass!”[۸] His House of Stuart had gained the throne of Scotland in the 14th century via the marriage of Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce, to Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland. The crown had come to his family through a woman, and would be lost from his family through a woman. This legendary statement came true much later—not through Mary, but through her great-great-granddaughter Anne, Queen of Great Britain.[۹]
Mary was christened at the nearby Church of St Michael shortly after she was born.[۱۰] Rumours spread that she was weak and frail,[۱۱] but an English diplomat, Ralph Sadler, saw the infant at Linlithgow Palace in March 1543, unwrapped by her nurse Jean Sinclair, and wrote, “it is as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, and as like to live.”[۱۲]
As Mary was a six-day-old infant when she inherited the throne, Scotland was ruled by regents until she became an adult. From the outset, there were two claims to the regency: one from the Catholic Cardinal Beaton, and the other from the Protestant Earl of Arran, who was next in line to the throne. Beaton’s claim was based on a version of the king’s will that his opponents dismissed as a forgery.[۱۳] Arran, with the support of his friends and relations, became the regent until 1554 when Mary’s mother managed to remove and succeed him.[۱۴]
