The Tudor Travel Guide

It is impossible to write a series of blogs about Mary, Queen of Scots without talking about Holyroodhouse, also known as The Palace of Holyrood. It was one of Mary’s most favoured residences. It was the place in which she spent her first night on Scottish soil after her return from France in 1561; the place in which she married Henry, Lord Darnley after a short and passionate romance in 1565. It also stood witness to one of the most traumatising events of Mary’s life, the murder of her friend and secretary, David Rizzio, in March of the following year.

Today, Holyroodhouse remains a royal palace, frequented by the current queen for one week each year. While the twenty-first-century palace sits on the site of the original, it has been greatly aggrandised and remodelled over the centuries. So what remains of the sixteenth-palace that can be explored by the twenty-first-century time traveller and how do we follow in the footsteps of what happened on that murderous March evening? This blog delves into the origins of Holyroodhouse and its sixteenth-century history, before reliving the events of the night in question through the words of Mary herself.

Note: This blog accompanies this month’s Tudor Travel Show podcast. If you wish to listen in, the link can be found at the end of this blog.

A Brief History of Holyroodhouse

Long before the current palace existed, outwith the city walls of Edinburgh, there stood an Augustinian Abbey, founded by the pious King David I in 1128. From the moment of its inception, there was a strong connection with royal patronage and the abbey was visited regularly. Initially, whenever the royal entourage visited the abbey, it is believed that they were housed in guest lodgings that were an integral part of the abbey’s monastic buildings.

Until the mid-fifteenth century, Edinburgh Castle, that imposing fortress sited at the top of the Royal Mile, had served as the main lodging for Scotland’s monarch in the city. However, development was restricted to the limited space on the summit of the craggy rock upon which it had been built. Not only that, but it was also, as one commentator stated, ‘wyndy and richt unpleasand’. Having visited the castle on a day blustery day plagued with squally showers, I can wholeheartedly appreciate that sentiment!

In contrast, Holyrood Abbey was sited a half a mile or so outside the city wall. It was away from the press and smell of the city and had been built on low lying land, sheltered by Arthur’s seat, (see the image above) and surrounded by pleasant gardens and orchards. The appeal of Holyrood drew Scotland’s monarchs to visit with increasing frequency. So much so that by the early fifteenth century, it appears that the king and queen were lodged in a (no doubt splendid) guest lodging, separate to the abbey on a semi-permanent or permanent basis.

John Dunbar’s Scottish Royal Palaces shows this building being sited between the western range of the abbey cloisters (on the usual south side of the abbey church) and the monastic, western, boundary wall. In fact, he postulates that is likely stood ‘close to the site now occupied by the great tower of James V (THE place associated with Mary, as we will hear about shortly).

It was James IV, Mary’s grandfather, who spent a great deal of time at Holyrood. Consequently, he instigated a massive building campaign that turned the guest lodgings into what, henceforth, became known as ‘the king’s palace near the abbey of Holyrood’ from 1503 and then, by 1513, as ‘the palace of Edinburgh’. The date is significant. James was due to marry Margaret Tudor in the abbey church at Holyrood in August 1503. It seems that he was keen to have a building that was grand enough to house the reception of his young, English bride. However, work at Holyroodhouse did not begin until the autumn of 1502 and was completed more than a year after the wedding.

As so much of this early, sixteenth-century palace has been lost to later remodelling, the exact layout of the residence that Margaret Tudor would have inhabited is unknown. However, piecing together information from the building accounts gives us a fair idea of some of the key features of the palace floor-plan at the time. Essentially, James IV’s palace built out westwards from the western side of the abbey cloisters to form a quadrangle of buildings around a central courtyard.

At this point, the north range of Holyroodhouse likely contained the chapel royal, the west range the king’s lodgings and the south range the queen’s. This latter range fronted onto an outer courtyard, or base court, which was accessed by a gatehouse (shown in the image above). It has been postulated by Dunbar that it was from windows in this south range that the James IV and Margaret Tudor watched the jousting that had been arranged to celebrate their wedding. The aforementioned imprint of the building endures to this day. However, the interiors of Holyroodhouse have been significantly remodelled.

From the outset, the royal apartments at Holyroodhouse appear to have been located at first-floor level. It is possible that alongside the original queen’s apartments built for Margaret when she first arrived in Scotland, a south tower, constructed in 1505, was constructed to provide additional accommodation overlooking a new south garden, which was laid out around this time. Works accounts from James V’s reign also speak of the building, or rebuilding of a queen’s gallery, a lion house, a chapel, the queen’s great chamber, kitchens and a great hall, which Dunbar suggests was once the refectory for the abbey in the south range of the cloisters. Either way states Dunbar, ‘it was large enough for the king to practice shooting in.’

James IV was, of course, killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. When his son, James V reach his majority in 1528, a huge campaign of the building was launched at ‘nearly all the principle royal castles and palaces’. In fact, James was and still is, known as the Renaissance Monarch on account of his efforts to extensively refurbish Scotland’s royal lodgings to reflect the most swanky renaissance fashions of the day. Holyroodhouse was no exception.

It was during this period that the large rectangular tower, which would later form the privy apartments of his daughter, Mary Stuart, was constructed, between 1528-1532. Initially, a second tower in the south-east corner was planned in a design which would create symmetry across the south-facing range. However, the tower was never built, possibly on account of James V premature death. It would be his great-great-grandson, Charles II who would complete the scheme, giving us the facade of the palace you see today. Luckily for us, a sketch of this range survives from this time from a survey of 1663 (see image below).

Building accounts relating to the erection of a new ‘tour and new werk of Halyrudhous’ are fulsome. From these accounts, we know that the total cost of building the four-storey tower came to around £7000 – at least. A huge amount for the time. It’s design echoes that of renaissance palaces in France, with its ‘conical roofs capped with ornamental finials in the form of lions and miniature turrets, all brightly painted and gilded.’ It must have been quite a sight! Walls were lined with pine and decorated with carved panelling. Dunbar suggests that although remodelled, the ceilings on the second floor probably date from this time.

Interestingly, the original access to this tower was not as it is today. As a twenty-first-century visitor, you will find that the tower is fully integrated into the main building. However, according to Dunbar, the original arrangement was by way of a forestair (Def: ‘an external stone stair, usually to first-floor level’) in the east wall of the tower. The entrance was secured via a drawbridge and a yett (Def: a gate or grille of latticed wrought iron bars used for defensive purposes in castles and tower houses). It seems likely that this arrangement existed only until the building of the north gallery in the 1560s. There is also some evidence that the Tower was initially surrounded by a moat, at least on its north side.

Within the Tower, the royal apartments are divided into two chambers on the first floor and two on the second: an outer and an inner chamber on both floors. Initially, James V’s lodgings were on the first floor and the queen’s on the second, adjacent, on its east side, to the chapel royal. These apartments exist, largely unaltered to this day. When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561, she occupied the rooms in this tower and after her marriage to Henry, Lord Darnley, Mary’s privy apartments were located on the second floor with Darnley’s on the first. It was in these very rooms that Mary witnessed one of the most terrifying and horrific events of her life. Thanks to Mary’s own eye-witness accounts, the following makes for a thrilling read!

9 March 1566: Murder at Holyroodhouse

The following account is based on letters written by Mary, first to the Archbishop of Glasgow and secondly to the King and Queen of France. These letters are reproduced in ‘The Fall of Mary Stuart‘ by Frank Mumby. These documents, penned by the hand of the woman at the centre of the drama, give an invaluable and detailed insight into the shocking events that unfolded at Holyroodhouse on the evening of 9 March 1566, when Mary’s secretary, David Rizzio, was murdered in cold blood, inside her privy lodgings.

At about 7.00 pm, the queen was enjoying supper in her privy apartments on the second floor of the aforementioned tower. Mary was ‘in her cabinet, at our supper’. This small closet, measuring just 12ft by 12ft, is sited just off Mary’s Bedchamber, and at the time is noted to have contained a small bed and table around which sat Mary and her guests: her half-sister the Countess of Argyll; her half brother and the Commendator of Holyroodhouse, Lord Robert Stewart; the laird of Creich; Arthur Erskine ‘and certain others our domestic servitors‘. According to Mary, Darnley then entered and ‘placed himself beside us at our supper.’

In the meantime, unbeknownst to Mary, but later recounted in the letter, ‘The Earl of Morton and Lord Lindsay, with their assistors, armed in warlike manner, to the number of 18 persons, occupied the whole entry of our palace,’ thus believing that no-one could enter or leave undetected. The first Mary knew of the revolt was the entry of Patrick, Lord Ruthven, ‘armed in like manner, with his accomplices‘. He demanded to speak with Rizzio. Ruthven was a leading member of the Confederate Lords, a dangerous group of committed protestants, who were deeply unsettled by the presence of their Catholic Queen.

Mary demanded if Darnley knew of this intrusion, which he flatly denied. Of course, it would become clear that Darnley had been manipulated by the Confederate Lords to be involved in the plot by stirring up jealousy in the young lad that Rizzio was sharing more than just a platonic relationship with his wife. Mary’s husband had, in fact, allowed the Lords to gain entry to the queen’s apartments via the small vice stair with connected the first with the second floor of the tower.

Mary commanded Ruthven to leave, accusing him of treason in his persistence. It was at this point that ‘for safeguard‘, David took refuge behind Mary’s back. The 2nd Earl of Bedford, Francis Russell, who was English Governor of Berwick and occasionally acted as English Ambassador in Scotland at the time, also wrote a second-hand account of events nearly three weeks after Rizzio’s murder had taken place on 27 March. He adds in his letter to the English Privy Council that Ruthven said to Rizzio that ‘he should learn better his duty (meaning he had overstepped the mark of an acceptable relationship with the queen) and ‘offering to take him by the arm, David took the Queen by the ‘blyghts’ of her gown‘. Clearly, Rizzio sensed that this was not going to end well!

Meanwhile, Ruthven ‘cast down’ the table and ‘put violent hands on him, ‘struck him over our shoulder with hangers, one part of them standing before our face with bended daggs [cocked pistols]. Although Mary does not speak of the following, the Earl of Bedford states that Mary ‘would gladly have saved him, but the King, having loosed his hands and holding her arms’ caused the terrified David to be ‘thrust out of the cabinet through the bedchamber of presence‘. He goes onto say that initially Lords Morton and Lindsay, who were in the latter chamber, had planned to have him hanged the next day. However, it seems the adrenaline and testosterone-fuelled encounter drove one of the rebels to ‘thrust him into the body with a dagger‘. Others followed suit. Mary merely states that they took her secretary ‘out of our cabinet, and at the entry to our chamber gave him fifty-six strokes with whinyards [short sword] and swords‘.

Mary was left traumatised and in ‘extreme fear‘ for her life. Ruthven stalked back into her chamber hurling accusations that the Lords were ‘highly offended with [Mary’s] proceedings and tyranny,’ which they found intolerable and that they had ‘put [David] to death.’ He charged her with maintaining the ‘ancient religion [Catholicism], debarring the Lords who were fugitives and entertaining amity with foreign princes‘. The ‘fugitives’ I am taking to be those loyal to Mary, which she lists in her letter as managing to escape Holyroodhouse; two of them James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell and George Gordon, Earl of Huntley, did so by being lower our of a back window on ‘some cords‘.

However, the drama was not yet over! Hearing of the ‘tumult in our palace‘, the Provost of Edinburgh and the town came ‘in great numbers‘ pressing to see Mary and to find out if she was alright. However, Mary was not permitted ‘to give answer‘. The Lords were harrying her and threatened her. She reported that ‘if we desired to have spoken [to] them, they [the Lords] should cut us in collops, and cast us over the walls.’ This was treason in the extreme!

A Daring Escape…

Mary was detained overnight in Holyroodhouse. In the morning, ‘our brother the Earl of Murray‘ assembled the rebel Lords and together it was agreed that Mary should be moved to Stirling Castle, there to ‘approve in Parliament all their wicked enterprises, establish their religion and give the king [Darnley] the Crown Matrimonial…or else…to put us to death, or to detain us in perpetual captivity.’ Poor Mary! Yet, somehow, amidst all this life and death drama, Mary managed to keep her head. She was not going to go without a fight and already had set a plan of escape in motion. That evening, (the day after the murder), she managed to speak to Darnley and persuade him that he was a puppet and had been duped by the Lords. She convinced him ‘how miserably he would be handled if he permitted the Lords to prevail. ‘ According to Mary’s own hand: ‘By this persuasion, he was induced to condescend to the purpose taken by us, and to retire in our company to Dunbar.’

In the interim, she ‘had resolved to liberate‘ herself and ‘had secretly communicated with Earls Bothwell and Huntley to devise some mode for doing so.’ This they duly did, and in a daring feat (which she would later replicate at Borthwick Castle), Mary and Darnley were lowered down from the ‘walls of our palace in a chair by ropes and other devices which they had prepared‘. Sadly, we do not know which window the pair escaped through, but Mary was free. Although heavily pregnant, she rode through the night to the safety of Dunbar Castle. One can only imagine the expletives that rang through the Queen’s Bed-chamber at Holyroodhouse when the Lords found out she was gone!

Today, you can visit the rooms in which all this drama played out; the closet, bed-chamber and chamber of presence all remain in situ, the latter containing a whole host of Mary, Stuart and other sixteenth-century treasures, not least, the Lennox Jewel which is mesmerisingly beautiful. The intimacy of these chambers holds the energy of the Scots Queen so that her presence, and the dark deeds of the Spring evening, are tangible beyond the veil of time. I lingered for the longest time, reflecting on this turning point in Mary’s life, for we might say that although Mary Stuart could not have known it, things were only going to get a whole lot worse from this point forth.

PODCAST: To listen to the podcast which accompanies this blog, follow this link.

Sources

Sources I have found useful in writing this blog:

Scottish Royal Palaces, by John G. Dunbar.

Holyrood Abbey: The Disappearance of a Monastery, by Dennis B Gallagher.

The Fall of Mary Stuart, by Frank Mumby.

For a fleeting period of time, in the autumn of 1566, those standing around the bed of Mary, Queen of Scots thought she was dead. Her near demise has often been blamed on an extraordinary 50-60 mile round-trip that Mary undertook, on horseback, from the town of Jedburgh to visit the badly wounded Earl of Bothwell at Hermitage Castle – a feat completed within the same day. Sadly, many accounts, which are easily accessible online, have reduced the story to its bare-bones. This is a shame, as the ‘full’ story, based on contemporary letters, reveals an all-together much more dramatic sequence of events.

When I set out to write this blog, all the online accounts that I read regurgitated the same story. The tale goes along these lines; Mary visited Jedburgh; while there, she heard the news that the Earl of Bothwell had been mortally wounded. The Scots Queen set out to ride to where he lay at his castle in the Borders, returning to Jedburgh the same day. It was a gruelling ride and soon after, she fell mortally ill and was thought to have died. Thanks to the intervention of her physician she eventually made a miraculous recovery.

My intention was to delve a little deeper into the likely cause behind Mary’s illness and highlight the importance of Jedburgh as a place to follow in the footsteps of Mary, Queen of Scots.

As an ex-medic myself, I am fascinated by attempts to unravel what lies behind various sixteenth-century accounts of illnesses that were little understood at the time. With my medical background, I could not help but be drawn in by a more detailed and riveting account of Mary’s illness, which I stumbled across in Mumby’s The Fall of Mary Stuart, published in 1921. This was the first account that I came across that recounted in greater depth the nature of the symptoms suffered by the Scots queen, drawing directly original sources. It describes the progression of the illness, as witnessed by those around the queen, which was recorded in various letters penned at the time. Interestingly, the publication of the book in 1921, stimulated correspondence in various medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, with medics taking their best guess at just exactly what did happen to Mary over those few days in the autumn of 1566.

As I continued to read, I was lead from one account to another; some primary and some secondary; from original letters to later historical accounts dating from the early nineteenth century, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All these are listed at the end of the blog and as some of them are online, you can read them for yourself. While the essence of the story aligned across all sources, it did not take me long to find some conflicting accounts of exactly what took place in October 1566, including in the contemporary letters collated in the Calendar of State Papers for Scotland (CSP). This, I admit, has been confusing!

So, in the end, this blog will not only cover Jedburgh as an interesting location for anyone wanting to travel in the footsteps of Mary but will, I hope, provide a much more comprehensive account than is often found online of the Scots queen’s illness at Jedburgh when her life hung precariously in the balance. Along the way, I will try and highlight the discrepancies I have noted thus far and my differential diagnosis of Mary’s near-death encounter.

The Scots Queen Visits Jedburgh

Jedburgh is situated about 20 miles or so within the Scottish lowlands. Today it is in the county of Roxburghshire, about 40 miles south-east of Edinburgh. During her relatively short, six years living in Scotland as it’s reigning monarch, Mary travelled extensively throughout her kingdom. This was partly so that she could be seen by her people. However, another requirement of the monarch at the time was to fulfil a roll in administering justice throughout the realm. This the king or queen would do so in the ‘eyre courts’ (I have also seen it written as ‘ayre’ or ‘oyer’), which were held provincially throughout Scotland.

In 1566, when Mary was 23 years old, the Scots queen came to the town of Jedburgh for that very purpose. The Border area was lawless and had seen such a rise in crime that was thought to reflect a certain level of ‘contempt and disowning’ of Queen’s authority in her Realm. Thus, Mary decided to hold a justice court at Jedburgh ‘for the trial and punishment of all loose, disorderly, and traitorous persons’ (according to a proclamation made a Jedburgh). As James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell was Lord Lieutenant of the area, Keith’s History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland states that Mary dispatched him ahead of the royal court and council to prepare the way for the arrival of the queen.

The same account has Bothwell leaving Edinburgh in the afternoon of the 6 October. Mary rode out a couple of days later, reaching Jedburgh on the 8 October (Rethe Warnike’s account gives the 9th as the date). The following day, she met with her counsellors to set tariffs in the town. This was to prevent merchants from taking advantage of the higher demand brought about by the influx of courtiers to the town. Meanwhile, on 7 October (possibly 8th according to some accounts), Bothwell had been seriously wounded in a skirmish close to one of his properties: Hermitage Castle. This was located some 24 miles away, in Liddesdale, also in the Scottish Borders.

The Earl had been exerting his authority in the area on behalf of the queen. Along the way, he had encountered ‘John Eliot of the Park’, a notorious thief and murderer. The pair ended up in hand-to-hand combat; Bothwell shot Eliott in the thigh and the latter subsequently died but not before Bothwell was attacked with a ‘two-handed sword’ and was hurt ‘in divers parts of his body and head, that hardly he escaped with safety of his life’. The Earl was carried back to the castle. According to John Guy, there were initial reports that the Earl was dead. However, it soon became clear that he was alive, although some thought that he was likely to die on account of the injuries he sustained. There is a letter in the CSP for Scotland dated 14 October from Lord Scrope to William Cecil stating, ‘Has learned that although Bothwell was carried in a cart for dead yet is he recovered.—Carlisle.’ So far, so good.

It has often been reported that Mary rushed to his side upon hearing the news and that this was a sign that they had already developed a relationship. Of course, we know that, in time, Mary would come to marry the Earl after a rather questionable episode when the Scots Queen was abducted by Bothwell at Linlithgow Bridge as she was leaving her palace at Linlithgow. That is perhaps another story for another time!

Confusingly, a letter in the CSP for Scotland dated 15 October from Sir John Forster to Cecil says that ‘Bothwell came this day to Jedburgh in a litter.‘ And yet, on 17 October, Lord Scrope writes again to Cecil from Carlise that ‘The Queen of Scots on Tuesday the 15th instant, visited the Earl of Bothwell at the Hermitage.’ So, we have two different primary sources giving two completely opposite accounts of what happened on the same day – did Bothwell come to Jedburgh to see Mary, or was it the other way around? Neither of the two historians, whose bios of Mary I have read, mentioned the first letter and I am left wondering why? if you know, I would love to hear from you!

However, what does seem to be true is that contrary to some accounts you may read, Mary did not drop everything and go to Bothwell’s bedside. If she did indeed travel to Hermitage Castle (and let’s assume that is the version of events), she waited for the court business to be concluded before riding out from Jedburgh on the 15 October, accompanied by some of her council, including the Earl of Moray. Keith, Warnicke and John Guy’s all conclude that Mary’s business was primarily State business and not personal. Although, her visit was clearly a mark of deep personal respect for one of her councillors, who had been severely injured during the course of carrying out his faithful duty to the monarch.

Mary’s near 60-mile roundtrip to Hermitage Castle was quite some feat of personal endurance: although certainly not impossible if the weather was fair. Nobody knows quite why Mary undertook such an exhausting ride, staying for only 2 hours at the Hermitage, according to Tytler’s History of Scotland. It is possible that there was not enough room to lodge a royal court at Hermitage Castle and so she felt compelled to return to Jedburgh. It is also possible that with Hermitage Castle being only some 10 miles from the English border, she felt unsafe to remain there, as the land was always subject to incursions from the English, making the Scottish queen vulnerable to attack. 

A Mysterious Illness Strikes…

Although Mary was still a young woman in her prime, from an early age she seems to have had a delicate constitution. Furthermore, we should remember that 1566 was the most traumatic and eventful year yet for the Scots queen. She had witnessed the horrific murder of her secretary, David Rizzio in March, had fled fearing for her life to ultimately take refuge, then give birth to her son, at Edinburgh Castle in June. All the while, Darnley had been a persistent thorn in her side and their earlier, intense romance of mid-1565 had disintegrated into squabbles, arguments, threats and recriminations. Although she had rested following the birth of her son through June and July, Mary must have been exhausted from the relentless stress and pressure arising from the events of the previous few months.

On this occasion, the extraordinarily long ride to Hermitage Castle took its toll. For shortly after arriving back at Jedburgh, Mary fell dangerously ill. To try to unravel just what happened, we can now turn to various accounts, which go into some detail regarding the events as they unfolded over several days. Contemporary sources come largely from letters sent from those who were apparently physically close to Mary at the time, including William Maitland, Bishop Lesley and the new French Ambassador, Philibert Du Croc. Once again, although the essence of all the accounts tells the same story, the details and sequence are a little more tricky to put together…

According to Warnicke, by 17 October, Mary was suffering from severe left-sided abdominal pain. Her physician diagnosed a disorder of the spleen. She then vomited 50-60 times. Keith states that at first she ‘swooned away and lay as dead for the space of two hours‘. Then, the ‘fever became so violent as to deprive her of the use of her senses‘. Clearly, Mary rallied and a letter from the aforementioned French ambassador says that: ‘We begin to have more hope of the Queen, for the present, the doctors have no fears. She has vomitings after what she takes, which are a little troublesome‘.

Whatever was afflicting the queen seemed to wax and wane in severity over several days. One minute, Mary seems to have been on death’s door, the next the worst seems to have passed and everyone is breathing a sigh of relief. However, Mary certainly feared for her life. She ‘desired the Lords present to pray for her, and behaved herself with much piety and wisdom during all the course of her illness, and her Majesty was pleased to recommend her son to the guardianship of the Queen of England‘. Prayers were said for her in the churches of Edinburgh.

On 24 October, William Maitland, one of Mary’s Councillors, who was at Jedburgh, wrote to Cecil that, ‘The Queen of Scots has been so sick that her life was in danger.’ Du Croc reports on the same day that Darnley ‘has not come to this place, although he has both received advertisement, and has had time enough to come had he been willing. This is such a fault as I know not how to apologize for it‘. He also reports that Mary’s ‘whole body became so cold that those present thought she was dead. The Earl of Murray began to lay hands on the most precious articles, such as her silver plate and rings.’ Mary must have been in this moribund state for time enough that, ‘mourning dresses were ordered and arrangements made for the funeral.’ It seems, therefore, that Mary was in a coma, a deeply reduced state of consciousness, with no obvious signs of life. Despite this, at some point, ‘Gradually the Queen regained consciousness.’ Once more though, this was not the end of Mary’s ordeal.

A second letter, written a few days later, this time from one of Mary’s most steadfast supporters, Bishop Lesley, to Archbishop Beaton, describes how Mary became ill again within a few days and that the Queen began, ‘swooning again and failed in her sight. Her feet and knees were cold. Her Majesty got some relief until about six hours in the morning on Friday when Her Majesty became dead, and all her members cold, eyes closed, mouth fast, and feet and arms stiff and cold.’ This could suggest cardiovascular collapse, in other words, an extreme drop in blood pressure, which was so severe as to render no real signs of life. Nevertheless, ‘Master Nau [Mary’s physician], who is a perfect man of his craft, would not give the matter over in that manner, but anew began to draw her knees, legs, arms and feet and the rest, with such vehement torments, which lasted the space of three hours, until Her Majesty recovered her sight and speech, and got a great sweating, which was held as a relief of the sickness.’

Without the availability of any modern cardiovascular support, such as a transfusion, Mary’s physician’s efforts were heroic – and nothing short of genius! Interestingly, he also poured wine down her throat (which might well have choked her if she had been unconscious at the time). Nevertheless, he seems to have gotten away with that. Instead, it was reported that the Queen then vomited a large amount of blood (‘old’ blood, according to John Guy), before beginning to regain consciousness and slowly coming back to health. On 26 October, Maitland writes again to Cecil that ‘Upon a new accident which fell to the Queen yesterday morning, for half an hour they were all desperate of her life, but now they perceive evident signs of convalescence.’

Mary was on her way back to health. But what was the cause of her illness? There seem to be two leading hypotheses. All the sources I looked at raised the possibility of a ruptured gastric ulcer, brought on by excessive stress. Haemorrhage into the stomach could have accounted for the acute onset of symptoms, blood in the stomach and cardiovascular collapse resulting in unconsciousness. The other possibility is porphyria, a genetically linked enzyme deficiency affecting the liver. While John Guy dismisses this possibility out of hand, I am not so sure and don’t understand the basis of his outright rejection of this possibility. The symptom profile fits well. Warnicke also highlights that clinical observations of Mary’s son, James, while King of England and Scotland displayed similar symptoms. Furthermore, two later Hanoverian Kings of England ‘tested positive for the disorder’. Both were also direct descendants of Mary. I have not investigated this but if you wish to read Warnicke’s account, you can grab yourself a copy of the book (detailed below).

Mary, Queen of Scots House at Jedburgh

But where exactly did all this happen? Legend has it that this traumatic incident unfolded in a tower house at Jedburgh, which today is known as Queen Mary‘s house. There is some controversy as to whether the current house, which stands in well-tended, pretty gardens, is the original building in which Mary lay gravely ill. Some historians have argued that the house was built during the reign of her son James VI of Scotland. Therefore, the events could not have unfolded in the building that you can see today if you visit. However, it is not the original house, it certainly stands in the same position. 

There seems to be another distinct possibility. At the time, whatever building was on the site, it was certainly owned by the Kerr family. They also owned nearby Fernlie Castle and there is some suggestion that Mary may have been cared for there during her short illness. 

Today, this three-story tower house has been converted to a museum in honour of the Scots Queen. And so it is possible to gain access to those upper rooms in which, for a fleeting period of time, Mary’s life hung in the balance. Mary herself must have hoped that her annus horribilis was over. She could not have envisioned that if 1566 was a traumatic year, the following, 1567, would be infinitely worse. Mary would lose her crown, be imprisoned, miscarry of twins and flee for sanctuary to England. At the end of that long road, while awaiting execution at Fotheringhay, she herself lamented, ‘would that I had died at Jedburgh’. It was a close-run thing…but cruel fate had not finished with the scots Queen.

Visitor Information

I was lucky enough to visit during my recent trip to Scotland, following in the footsteps of Mary, Queen of Scots. The tower house is sited close to the main high street, amidst pretty gardens, which are well cared for and in the summer months, full of flowers. There are a couple of car parks in walking distance, including Jedburgh Car Park that sits on the outskirts of the town beneath the town’s impressive abbey ruins, or another off the A68, near Jedburgh Tourist Information Centre. Jedburgh is a relatively small town, so unless you have mobility issues, either car park is within a 5-10 minute walk of the tower house, which today is called the ‘Mary, Queen of Scots Visitor Centre’.

You are unlikely to miss the impressive ruins of Jedburgh Abbey, the most obvious and impressive historic building related to the town. Under normal circumstances, you can explore the ruins for yourself. for a link to the visitor information website click here. It was attacked and burnt twice by invading English forces but its ultimate demise came in 1559 when it was suppressed as part of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.

Sources

History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland, from the beginning of the Reformation to the year 1568. Vol 2, p. 462, by The Right Rev. Robert Keith. 1845.

Calendar of State Papers for Scotland

My Heart is my Own, by John Guy. 2004.

Mary Queen of Scots, by Rethe Warnicke. 2006.

History of Scotland, Vol 7, by Patrick Fraser Tytler