Queen Mary's Women

‘a fresh and illuminating look not only at Mary but at the plight of 16th-century women in general’ – Scotsman

‘interesting and well researched’ – Scotland Magazine

`a fascinating book’ - Ann Kettle, Women’s History Scotland

Much has been written about the relationship between Mary, Queen of Scots and the various men in her life, especially her husbands and alleged lovers. Far less has been said about the women she knew. Major figures like Elizabeth I of England are usually discussed only for their political interventions in her career. Her female relatives receive merely a brief mention, while her attendants are dismissed as minor characters of no importance, a sort of Greek chorus watching in the background as she travelled from early promise to final tragedy. In this fascinating book, Rosalind K. Marshall redresses the balance, examining Mary’s life from an entirely new perspective, discovering the extent to which she was influenced by the women she knew – Mary of Guise, the mother from whom she was separated at such a young age, Catherine de Medici, the mother-in-law rumoured to be her deadly enemy, and Lady Lennox, the aunt who played such a significant part in her marriage to Lord Darnley.

Most people have heard of the Four Maries, those attendants who were with her from early childhood, but there is confusion about their identities and the other female servants have been ignored. Until now, no one has made a study of them. By extracting their names from the household lists and researching their identities, Dr Marshall shows that they were strong personalities with interesting and dramatic lives of their own. In short, this survey adds a whole new dimension to our knowledge of Mary, Queen of Scots and her world.

Dr Rosalind K. Marshall, a graduate of Edinburgh University, has written widely on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, specialising in women’s history. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and research associate of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, to which she contributed more than fifty articles.