ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a familiar story: the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots in 1567. After the murder of her husband Darnley and her rash marriage to the Earl of Bothwell, Mary was forced to abdicate by a group of Scottish nobles; her half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, assumed the regency of Scotland. A year later, Mary escaped from her prison at Lochleven and mustered her supporters. Defeated at Langside, she fled to England, convinced she would receive aid from Elizabeth. Although the allegations of conspiracy, murder and adultery against her had begun circulating in early 1567, Mary’s flight to England in 1568 precipitated the first formal anti-Marian tracts, documents designed to portray her as morally corrupt and politically incompetent. The most important of these is George Buchanan’s De Maria Scotorum Regina, known in the vernacular as Ane Detectioun of the duinges of Marie Quene of Scottes. Though printed later in 1571, the Detectioun originated with Elizabeth’s request in 1568 that the Earl of Moray justify the rebellion against Mary with proof of her misconduct. Recruited by Moray to shape his party’s case against the Queen and supplied with the necessary documentation, Buchanan crafted what would become the standard narrative about her descent into criminality. As one of Europe’s most accomplished humanists, Buchanan was an excellent choice: his intellectual interests and political theories pervade the summary of Mary’s misdeeds and give force to the evidence against her.
