Executing Mary Queen of Scots : strategies of representation in early modern Scotland

This thesis examines a series of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century texts that respond to the 1567 deposition of Mary Queen of Scots. As these texts argue about her character or her sovereignty, they illustrate how Mary became the centre of an ideological debate in which those men whose representation of the Queen prevailed might direct the course of political or religious history. The thesis employs a range of interpretative tools to uncover how cultural references, discursive choices, and clandestine publishing ventures function to discredit or to defend Mary. The first three chapters focus on seminal texts dating from 1567 to 1571: Robert Sempill’s satirical poetry, George Buchanan’s Detectioun (1571), and John Leslie’s Defence (1569) and Historie of Scotland (1570). Working for Mary’s political opponents, Sempill and Buchanan demonise the Queen by manipulating literary and cultural traditions such as Senecan tragedy, medieval poetic fopoi, and the speculum principis. Their rhetorical strategies collaborate with burgeoning Scottish and English print culture - broadsides tacked to market crosses, for instance - to create the illusion of a widespread populist uprising against Mary. In response, her primary advocate John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross, transforms moral into political debate, stridently proclaiming Mary’s title to English throne and writing aversion of Scottish national history sympathetic to her cause. These texts use familiar narrative patterns to authenticate specific views of Mary, demonstrating how systems of language and representation can be enlisted to justify or to challenge political change. The final chapter turns to Sir James Melville’s Memoirs (1603), a retrospective of sixteenth-century court politics written as James I accedes to the English crown. Melville must account for the conflicts between earlier texts, and his depiction of Mary, especially as revealed through substantive alterations made to his holograph manuscript, illustrates a cautious desire to recover her reputation in order to preserve a legacy for her politically successful son. The Memoirs thus register a growing ambivalence that emerges largely from the complexity of the Queen’s textual representation. Privileging the form and strategy of arguments about Mary over the question of her guilt or innocence, this project, unlike previous studies, lays bare the operations of a culture that found in her the source of its most pressing concerns - about female rule, religious change, popular sovereignty, and versions of national history.