Mary of Guise (; 22 November 1515 – 11 June 1560), also called Mary of Lorraine, was Queen of Scotland from 1538 until 1542, as the second wife of King James V. She was a French noblewoman of the House of Guise, a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine and one of the most powerful families in France. As the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, she was a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked mid-16th-century Scotland, ruling the kingdom as queen regent on behalf of her daughter from 1554 until her death in 1560.
The eldest of the twelve children born to Claude, Duke of Guise, and Antoinette of Bourbon, in 1534 Mary was married to Louis II d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville, the Grand Chamberlain of France. The marriage was arranged by King Francis I of France, but proved shortlived. The Duke of Longueville died in 1537, and the widower kings of England and Scotland, Henry VIII and James V, both sought the Duchess of Longueville's hand. After much persuasion from Francis I and James V, who wrote a personal letter pleading for her hand and counsel, Mary eventually relented and agreed to marry the King of Scots. Following the new queen's arrival in Scotland, James and Mary were married in person in June 1538 at St Andrews Cathedral. Mary was crowned queen at Holyrood Abbey on 22 February 1540, and the marriage produced three children in quick succession: James, Duke of Rothesay; Robert, Duke of Albany; and Mary.Antonia Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots, pp. 3, 12. Both sons died in April 1541, just 14 hours apart,Joseph Bain, Hamilton Papers, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1890), pp. 75–6. and when James V himself died in December 1542, his only surviving heir, Mary, became Queen of Scots at the age of six days.
James V's death thrust Mary of Guise into the political arena as mother of the infant Queen of Scots, with the government of Scotland entrusted to James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, as regent during the early years of the minority and the Rough Wooing. With the Treaty of Haddington in 1548, the child queen Mary was betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France under the protection of King Henry II. Mary of Guise replaced Arran as regent in 1554, and her regency was dominated by her determination to protect and advance the dynastic interests of her daughter, maintain the Franco-Scottish alliance, and reassert the power of the Scottish crown. Throughout her regency, Mary displayed tolerance towards the religious reform movement, and implemented a policy of accommodation towards her Protestant subjects, though she was ultimately unable to prevent the Scottish Reformation.
Early life Mary was born at Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, the eldest daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, head of the House of Guise, and his wife Antoinette of Bourbon, herself the daughter of Francis, Count of Vendome, and Marie de Luxembourg. Among her 11 siblings were François, Duke of Guise; Claude, Duke of Aumale; Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine; and Louis I, Cardinal of Guise.
When Mary was five, she was godmother to her younger sister Louise. Not long afterward, she joined her grandmother Philippa of Guelders in the convent of the Poor Clares at Pont-à-Mousson. Mary grew to be exceptionally tall by the standards of her time and reached a height of . Her mother mentioned that she suffered from bad colds.Marguerite Wood, Balcarres Papers: The French Correspondence of Marie de Lorraine, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1923), p. 228. When she was about 14 her uncle Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, and aunt Renée of Bourbon visited her. Impressed by their niece's qualities and stature, they took her away from the convent and prepared her for life at the French court. In 1531, Mary made her first appearance and debut at the wedding of Francis I and Eleanor of Austria. She established a friendship with the king's daughters Madeleine (whom she would later succeed as Queen of Scots) and Margaret.
Duchess of Longueville
On 4 August 1534, at the age of 18, she became Duchess of Longueville by marrying Louis II d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville, the Grand Chamberlain of France, at the Louvre Palace.David Potter, A History of France, 1460–1560: The Emergence of a Nation State, (St. Martin's Press, 1995), 373. Their union turned out to be happy, but brief. On 30 October 1535, Mary gave birth to her first son, Francis, but on 9 June 1537, Louis died at Rouen and left her a pregnant widow at the age of 21. For the rest of her life, Mary kept the last letter from her bon mari et ami (her good husband and friend) Louis, which mentioned his illness and explained his absence at Rouen. It can still be seen at the National Library of Scotland.Rosalind K. Marshall, Mary of Guise (Collins, 1977), 36–39: Marguerite Wood, Balcarres Papers, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: SHS, 1923), 1. On 4 August 1537, Mary gave birth to their second son, who was named Louis after his deceased father. Louis died very young, but Francis wrote letters to his mother in Scotland. On 22 March 1545 he sent a piece of string to show how tall he was, and on 2 July 1546 he sent her his portrait.Marguerite Wood, Balcarres Papers, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: SHS, 1923), 110 from Joinville, 145 from Fontainebleau.
Marriage negotiations
Later, in 1537, Mary became the focus of marriage negotiations with James V of Scotland, who had lost his first wife, Madeleine of Valois, to tuberculosis, and wanted a second French bride to further the interests of the Franco-Scottish alliance against England.Perin Westerhof Nyman, "Mourning Madeleine and Margaret: Dress and Meaning in the Memorials for Two Scottish Queens, 1537 and 1541", Scottish Historical Review, 100:3 (December 2021), p. 369. According to a 17th-century writer, William Drummond of Hawthornden, 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.Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1850), 337–339, quoting William Drummond of Hawthornden, Works, (1711) 104. It is known that Mary had attended the wedding of James and Madeleine.Seward, Denis, Prince of the Renaissance (1973), 193–6; cited Marshall (1977), 38.
Henry VIII of England, whose third wife Jane Seymour had just died, also asked for Mary's hand in an attempt to frustrate James' plan. 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.Letters & Papers Henry VIII, vol. 12, part 2 (London, 1891) no. 1285, (Louis de Perreau, Sieur de Castillon to François Ier) Allegedly, Mary refused the offer by saying: "I may be a big woman, but I have a very little neck", a reference to 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 had been born a princess of France.Alexandre Teulet, Relations Politiques de la France et de l'Espagne avec l'Ecosse, vol. 1 (Paris, 1862) 115, (the surviving draft calls Mary, 'Marguerite'). Mary's mother found the contract "marvellously strange", because the king had included Mary's son's inheritance in the dowry.Marguerite Wood, Balcarres Papers, vol. 1 (SHS: Edinburgh, 1923), ix, 3 & fn., "mervyleusement estrange". 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. Reportedly, her father tried to delay matters, apparently until James, perhaps sensing her reluctance, wrote to her, appealing for her advice and support.Marshall (1977), 51–3, but see fn. 15. However, the authenticity of this letter, which was first produced in 1935, has been questioned.Marshall (1977), 268–269 (fn. 15), the letter first appeared in Stefan Zweig, Mary Queen of Scots (London, 1935), 1–2.
David Beaton (who was made a cardinal in 1538) 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".Andrew Lang, "Letters of Cardinal Beaton 1537–1541", The Scottish Historical Review, 6:22 (January 1909), p. 156. 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 for the resolution of the negotiations.Letters & Papers Henry VIII, vol. 12, part 2 (London, 1891) no. 962: Lang, Andrew, Letters of Cardinal Beaton, SHR (1909), 156: Marshall (1977), 45, (which suggests he thought the couple had not met) The marriage contract was finalized in January 1538, with James V receiving a dowry of 150,000 livres. As was customary, if the king died first, Mary would retain for her lifetime her jointure houses of Falkland Palace, Stirling Castle, Dingwall Castle and Threave Castle, along with the rentals of the earldoms of Fife, Strathearn, Ross and Orkney, and the lordships of Galloway, Ardmannoch and the Isles.Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Boydell, 2015), p. 93.Denys Hay, The Letters of James V (HMSO, 1954), pp. 340–341. The same offer had been made to Madeleine of Valois and Mary of Bourbon. See also; E. Bapst, Les Mariages de Jacques V, 324; Alexandre Teulet, Relations Politiques de la France et de l'Espagne avec l'Ecosse, vol. 1 (Paris, 1862), pp. 115–118
Finally, Mary accepted the offer and made hurried plans for departure. The proxy wedding of James V and Mary of Guise was held on 9 May 1538 in the Sainte Chapelle at the Château de Châteaudun. Some 2,000 Scottish lords and barons came from Scotland aboard a fleet of ships under Lord Maxwell to attend. Lord Maxwell brought a diamond ring and stood as proxy for James V at the wedding ceremony on 9 May 1538.Dana Bentley-Cranch & Rosalind K. Marshall, 'Iconography and Literature', Janet Hadley Williams, Stewart Style, 1513–1542 (Tuckwell, 1996), p. 288.James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer, 7 (Edinburgh, 1907), pp. xxvi, 56.
Queen of Scots Lord Maxwell, and the other lords and barons who had come to France, travelled back to Scotland with Mary of Guise, who sailed from Le Havre on 10 June 1538, leaving behind her three-year-old son, Francis, Duke of Longueville. She landed in Scotland 6 days later at Crail in Fife. She came in a fleet of three French galleys commanded by Jacques de Fountaines, Sieur de Mormoulins.James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 7 (Edinburgh, 1907), p. 60: A. Jal, Documents inédits sur l'histoire de la marine au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1842), pp. 9–10: BnF Français 4574. She was formally received by the king at St Andrews a few days later amid pageants and plays performed in her honour. James and Mary were married in person at St Andrews Cathedral on 18 June 1538. James's mother Margaret Tudor wrote to her brother 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."State Papers Henry VIII, vol. 5 part 4 cont., (London, 1836), p. 135, Margaret to Henry, 31 July 1538Helen Newsome-Chandler, The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, 1489–1541 (Cambridge: Camden, 2025), p. 58.